The Right to Property

Many of us might imagine that it was the early modern period during which an individual right to property was first conceived as something that we could claim against all other people and against the state itself. The reason we could do so is because such a right was grounded in natural law and therefore preceded the creation of political society. Indeed, the state, according to this account, was created to protect such rights. We would probably have John Locke in mind as the basis for this argument and it is true that such an account of the right to property could be derived from his work. However, Locke’s understanding of property was not typical in the early modern period. Instead, it was far more common for early modern political theorists to see the right to property as something that was established by civil society and therefore completely dependent upon the laws of the state.