Original Acquisition and Unilateralism: Kant, Hegel, and Corrective Justice

Abstract

Contemporary Kantians suggest that the original acquisition of property is problematic for Kant’s theory of private law. Kant requires that private law obligations be consistent with the equal freedom of everyone. However, a rule of original acquisition seems to favor the acquirer’s freedom over others’: the acquirer originally obtains property in an unowned object simply by taking control of it, and thus seems to impose obligations on everyone else (to respect the property right) through her own “unilateral” action or choice. This article first addresses proposed Kantian solutions to the supposed “unilateralism” problem, which involve the creation of a “civil condition” of public legal institutions to determine property rights. Such solutions make property rights a matter of distributive justice rather than corrective justice. Moreover, they cannot actually solve the unilateralism problem. But in any event, the supposed “unilateralism” problem is in fact no problem at all for Kant. This is because one person’s original acquisition does not limit others’ “freedom” in the Kantian sense of that term. In this respect Kant’s account of property is equivalent to Hegel’s, which contemporary Kantians have criticized for denying any problem of unilateralism. And both Kant and Hegel’s accounts are fully consistent with a theory that explains property as a matter of corrective, rather than distributive, justice.

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