Locke and the Fundamental Right to Preservation: on the Convergence of Charity and Property Rights

2015 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-215
Author(s):  
Juliana Udi

AbstractLooking to the relatively recent “religious turn” in Locke scholarship, this paper argues for an interpretation that reconciles two apparently contradictory aspects of his thought: on the one hand, property rights, thought absolute by many of Locke's readers; on the other hand, Locke's notion of duties of charity. On the basis of a rereading of the “Essay on the Poor Law,” I argue that Lockean charity may ground coercively enforceable distributive obligations. Nevertheless, I contend that the redistributive poor-relief system grounded on the principle of charity does not infringe property rights. The reason for this is that the right to charity and the right to property are both based on Locke's theological commitment to the right of each man to the means of preservation.

2019 ◽  
pp. 121-152
Author(s):  
Susan Marks

Mid-1790s England saw an episode of fearful dearth. This chapter continues discussion of the contested meaning of the rights of man in the Revolution Controversy, in the light of approaches to dearth which emphasised, on the one hand, the moral economy of the poor and, on the other hand and alternatively, the new ‘political economy’ of laissez faire. It transpires that, for Thomas Paine and other proponents of the rights of man such as John Thelwall, the rights of the living were not simply a matter of political control and popular sovereignty. The living also had the right to live.


Grotiana ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-353
Author(s):  
Dire Tladi

Abstract The concept of a Grotian moment remains rather obscure in international law. On the one hand, it can refer simply to an empirical fact which galvanises the ordinary law-making processes, whether treaty-making or State practice, resulting in major shifts in international law. On the other hand, a Grotian moment might be seen as an event so significant that it results in an extraordinary shift in international law without full adherence to the processes for law-making. The former understanding has little legal significance, while the latter, which would be legally significant, would be controversial and without legal basis. Against this background the article discusses the intersections between peremptory norms and Grotian Moments. It does this by looking at the intersection between the two concepts as well as the intersection between Grotian Moments, on the one hand and, on the other hand, particular jus cogens norms. With respect to the former, for example, the article will consider whether the high threshold of peremptory status facilitates and hinders Grotian moments. With respect to the latter, the article will consider particular norms that have been said to have shifted on account of the Grotian moments, namely the right to use of force in self-defence as well humanitarian intervention.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 126-133
Author(s):  
Vlad-Cristian SOARE ◽  

"The fundamental transformations through the Romanian state passed since the Revolution of December 1989, have also put their mark on the legal system. For this reason, there have been major changes in the content of administrative law. However, the regulation of the territorial-administrative subdivisions survived the change of political regime, due to Law 2/1968. Moreover, regulations on administrative-territorial subdivisions are also found in Law 215/2001 and in the 1991 Constitution, revised in 2003. This has led to problems of interpretation. Thus, on the one hand, we need to identify who has the right to constitute administrative-territorial subdivisions, and on the other hand, it must be seen whether the answer to the first question, leads to a possible interpretation that would be unconstitutional. At the same time, administrative-territorial subdivisions have created problems of interpretation regarding their legal capacity. Through this article, we have proposed to look at the issues mentioned above."


2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Beukes

When the idea of heritage conservation arises, one specific facet of the ensuing reflection is bound to emerge at some stage: the (inevitable) tension between property rights, on the one hand, and the right to culture (of which heritage conservation is an aspect), on the other. This tension intensifies when the cultural material to be conserved concerns a traditionally sensitive issue—that of the burial places of the ancestors of people designated in the South African context as previously disadvantaged.


Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Martínez Martínez

La exégesis que Kant lleva a cabo del mandamiento evangélico del amor en la KpV y en la Fundamentación de la Metafísica de las costumbres pone en juego algunos de los principales aspectos de la “doctrina” ética kantiana. En este trabajo me propongo analizar si el enfoque moral kantiano sería el instrumento hermenéutico adecuado para una correcta comprensión no sólo del imperativo evangélico, sino de la realidad ética en la que el hombre, por un lado, se desenvuelve, y por otro lado, vivencia precisamente en medio de los valores ambivalentes o más bien anfibológicos que caracterizan a toda experiencia moral humana impresa con el sello de la autenticidad.The exegesis that Kant realizes about the Gospel commandment of love in the KpV and the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals shows some of the main aspects of the “doctrine” Kantian ethics. In this paper, I will analyze whether the kantian moral approach would be the right tool to get a correct understanding of the imperative Gospel and the ethics reality in which, on the one hand, the man grows and, on the other hand, has experience right in the middle of ambivalent or ambiguous values that distinguish every human moral experience printed with the stamp of authenticity.


1994 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blake Leyerle

Few themes so dominate the homilies of John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407 CE) as the plight of the poor and the necessity of almsgiving. His picture of the poor, however, is always set against the prosperous marketplace of late antiquity. It seems therefore scarcely surprising that his sermons on almsgiving resound with the language of investment. With such imagery, Chrysostom tried not only to prod wealthy Christians into acts of charity but also, and perhaps more importantly, to dislodge his rich parishioners from their conviction that an uncrossable social gulf separated them from the poor. The rhetorical strategy he used is typical of all his polemical attacks. On the one hand, he denigrated the pursuit of money and social status as fundamentally unattractive; it is both unchristian and unmasculine. On the other hand, he insisted that real wealth and lasting prestige should indeed be pursued, but more effectively through almsgiving. I shall first examine how Chrysostom effected this recalculation of wealth, and then I shall turn to the question of whether there may have been some advantage for him in pleading so eloquently on behalf the poor.


Author(s):  
Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld

This chapter highlights the various aspects of the daily lives of the poor. In Amsterdam, the poor among the Portuguese Jewish community ranged from the highly educated to the illiterate. On the one hand there were those whose sense of honour debarred them from asking for poor relief, and on the other there were those described as inveterate beggars. There were men and women; large, complete families and fragmented units; and there were people left completely on their own. Some were healthy or young or both, others old or sick or both, with all sorts of variations between them. Many applied for poor relief no more than occasionally; others relied permanently on outside help. The poor relief provided by the Portuguese community constituted no more than a supplement to income from work, private funds, and legacies, and help from friends, relatives, private charity, and other sources. Sephardi Jews who had no access to these sources, or who missed out in other ways, found themselves forced to seek their fortune elsewhere sooner or later.


Author(s):  
Teerink Han

This chapter offers insight into a typical initial public offering (IPO) process, highlighting key practical and legal considerations around disclosure, through the IPO prospectus and otherwise. The prospectus plays a key role in the preparations for, and execution of, an IPO. As an IPO prospectus typically constitutes a company's first public dissemination of financial and business information, the company and other parties involved in the IPO process must carefully consider the right balance between, on the one hand, drafting the IPO prospectus as a marketing document introducing the company and its business to potential investors, whilst, on the other hand, being able to use the prospectus as a disclosure document that protects the company against liability arising from claims from investors or others after the IPO. Here, the chapter summarizes the different phases in an IPO process and the most important documents and parties involved, focusing on the central role of the IPO prospectus. In addition, a number of changes resulting from the enactment of the Prospectus Regulation are likely to be of particular relevance to IPO processes. The expected impact of these changes is therefore also discussed.


Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 129 (516) ◽  
pp. 1127-1156 ◽  
Author(s):  
C Thi Nguyen

Abstract There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. Our attempts at aesthetic judgments aim at correctness. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than through deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. How can we resolve this tension? The best explanation, I suggest, is that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. When one defers to aesthetic testimony, then, one makes the same mistake as when one looks up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments.


2004 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 571-573
Author(s):  
James R. Stoner

It was not the exquisite self-consciousness of a Henry James that I had in mind when I wondered about equality and hierarchy in Locke, but the assertive self-consciousness or—what is for Locke ultimately the same—self-interestedness of an Andrew Carnegie, as exemplified both in the acquisition and the dispersion of his fortune. After all, it was Locke's genius in chapter five of the Second Treatise to make the case for private property on different grounds than had Aristotle because he conceived of property in a different way: as the fruit, not of nature, but of human creativity, less interesting for its use in leisure than for its origin in labor. As Strauss and even Zuckert have suggested, the brilliance of Locke's argument does not eclipse its underlying contradiction, that on the one hand the initial right to acquire seems to depend on there being “enough and as good” left for others, as though man lived amidst natural plenty, while on the other hand the account of the progressive rise in value consequent to enclosure (and the post hoc justification for property rights that it implies) describes natural scarcity. Holding that “a man may deliberately contradict himself in order to indicate his thought rather than to reveal it,” Strauss takes Locke's “revolutionary” teaching about “‘dynamic’ property” to indicate his true intention:


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