The Ontology of Property and Stewardship
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25365/jso-2025-9267Keywords:
property, stewardship, metaphysics, hylomorphism, creationist account of property, original establisments accounts of propertyAbstract
The paper explains the original establishment of property by the creationist account. Still, it shows that creationists cannot account for non-creatable things as property without collapsing into the labor-mixing account. Non-creatables, however, can be held in stewardship. The latter is a relation originally established and upheld by acts of care of something held in possession. Stewardship is conditioned and constrained by duties and it grounds stewardship rights to exclusion and control. Based on a hylomorphic account of what it means to create something so that a relation of property is established, the paper shows that an agent has ground to claim an exclusive right of control of a tangible or intangible object just in case (1) they are in a stewardship relation to the non-created parts, which they uphold by sustained acts of care or conservation, and (2) just in case they create the formal proper parts simpliciter of the whole. Property can thus supervene on stewardship, which in turn can supervene on possession. I mention some moral, positive legal, and ecological implications of this position, but they are not my focus.
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