Shelby is quite right to observe that owning and possessing are closely allied, though distinct. In fact, possession is neither necessary nor sufficient for property. I can, at least under prevailing cultural practices, rightly claim to own something that is long out of my possession, such as the circular saw I loaned to a colleague six months ago, or the car I bought in graduate school that someone stole in Chicago (wherever it is it's still mine, dammit, and I want it back even if it is 40 years old now). Likewise I may possess many things that do not belong to me, such as the snowblower my neighbor stores in my garage in exchange for letting me use it, the stack of library books on my desk (both cases of justified possession that do not entail ownership) or the Bob Dylan CD I once vindictively hid from my ex-wife when she moved out (a clear case of theft and other moral limitations).
Yet frequently we do possess what we own, and also own what we possess, and possession (or the control over things that it implies) seems a logical precursor to more formal property arrangements. We might speculate that the rightful ownership Locke describes as existing in a state of nature could have grown out of the pragmatic and psychological attachment people tend to have to the things they make, use, and identify with.
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I think too, there are degrees of ownership, and while we may own something completely; it’s difficult to see how we might own a thing absolutely. (If absolute ownership entails that under no conditions exterior to the self—these powers be forfeited. Theft, seizure, etc.) We might say that we own a home, or car, but if we have a mortgage or loan on such property, we are not the sole owners—we have a stake in the property but so does the bank, or loan lender, etc.. We might possess a minor or major claim on the property; but we do not own it exclusively. This applies also to a homeowner who does not have a mortgage, and is the sole owner of a home, or property. This property might be seized in any number of ways. (Failure to pay property taxes, federal taxes, D.E.A.) I think the idea of use and possession "as a logical precursor to more formal property arrangements" makes sense; and, what might Locke think of such property as vacation homes visited two or three weeks yearly? I tend to donate things (clothes, furniture, etc.) that I do not wear or use; and I do so on the speculation that these donated items will be put to good use. It might be an interesting thought experiment to define "usage" as a necessary condition for ownership--
The notion of use -- for the reasonable enjoyment of life -- as a desideratum of justifiable property claims is explicit in Locke. We should try to take seriously the implications of this in our conversation Wednesday.
I agree; the concept of absolute ownership seems impossible to me. I can't think of anything that could not be stolen, seized, incinerated, or lost with one's death. I think there are certainly degrees of ownership, but one cannot own something absolutely.
I think that the notion of use being important to property claims makes sense. After all, if you claim to own something that you never use/never plan on using, while this thing could actually be used by others (who would use it for the "reasonable enjoyment of life") then it could be argued that your right to whatever the thing is would be diminished.
For example, if I happened to own a particularly nice winter coat, but I never used it because I had a better one, and also because the coat is a color I hate, then it would seem almost immoral if I demanded the prosecution of, say, a homeless person who stole the coat in order to survive sleeping outside in cold weather.
Legally, the homeless person was in the wrong for stealing something that was rightfully mine, but in the bigger picture, I would be even more in the wrong for punishing them for taking something of mine that I never used/didn't plan on ever using when the the object could have been put to much better use if owned by the homeless person.
I agree with Nick about the coat -- and that's what Locke's so-called "charity" proviso is about. The homeless person needs it and cannot otherwise provide for himself, the coat is an unused spare, so it actually already belongs to him. Taking would not be stealing (though Locke does not specify how he thinks the transaction should occur, the moral principle is clear).
As for absolute property, the point is not that it could be stolen, since that does not remove the right to it (property being fundamentally a matter of right rather than possession). Shelby seems correct, though, to observe that the fact of human mortality means we never own anything forever, so our right to it is not total. But could it ever be absolute in the moment? Might we own something, say our very selves, in an otherwise unqualified sense?
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