After a short historical survey of philosophical views on property, the article contains an analysis of the argument which justifies property by referring to the universal respect due to anyone’s right to use any thing for any purpose. Usage of things for the realization of set ends (or goals) is among the conditions of action/ agency. The capacity of freedom as a specific causal power in real world is dependent on the possibility of using things as means. However, without a (...) real prospect to finish the process of realization of set goals, this causal power would not be real. Property is a scheme within which this prospect becomes a real possibility. Property is thus a condition of effective successful purposeful agency. In property the normative position of all others, besides the owner, has been changed, as they do not have the right to use things possessed for their ends, although they have a right to use any non-possessed thing as a means for whichever end they might set. As a right, property entails, first, the obligation to respect the fact of any established possession, and, second, an obligation to accept and recognize the established possession as ownership, which does not depend on the fact of factual physical control of the property. Ownership is therefore a guarantee of future possession. For this to be established there is a need for an explicit recognition from all others; however this recognition is normatively necessary for everybody, as no-one has a right to withdraw the recognition of a legitimate right to property. This comes from the ontological and axiological difference between persons and things: persons have a right to use and possess unpossessed things as means for realization of ends they set. (shrink)

The article highlights the role of property in the establishment of free will. Human freedom is usually understood as individual’s capacity for arbitrary decision- making. While it seems that we are dealing with conscious actions, actions where we are closest to ourselves, we nonetheless remain unaware of the causes whereby these actions are determined. But instead of reconciling the age old divide between freedom and necessity, our aim is to expound how the logic of freedom is immanently bound to the (...) necessity to go outside oneself. Hegel was not the first to demonstrate this logic, but was the most consistent in laying out the idea of freedom as self-othering. For him, being a free person, subject, means to externalize our will into a non-independent extraneous things and thereby obtain ownership over them. Freedom is therefore not an individual quality, but a societal principle as property rights can only exist in intersubjective relationships. In this context, the following question comes to the fore: how is in circumstances where subjectivity is a product of ownership still possible to create something out of nothing? (shrink)