Comparing Rousseau And Nozick

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Rousseau and Nozick naturally have two opposite perspectives on property because their political views appearing on different parts of the ideological spectrum. Rousseau has negative and critical views of property in A Discourse on Inequality and Nozick allows for property if it does not violate the entitlement theory. Rousseau beholds property as the commencement of the ills of man. He writes, “to the right of property, the elimination of equality was followed by the most terrible disorder.” Property, an unnatural institution, conceives abundant complications, and natural inequalities begin to merge into moral inequalities. With the conception of early property through labour, issues of domination of the poor by property owners, who are the biologically stronger individuals, arise with the division of land. The rules of justice proceed from the division of land. There is an extreme imbalance between the type of work that one is capable of due to natural inequalities, and “it is thus that natural inequality merges imperceptibly with inequality of ranks” . It is …show more content…

As an example, one can inherit property that produces a lot of wealth for the owner because it is through the transfer of holdings. It will put him or her above many others financially, but it is acceptable because it doesn’t violate the entitlement theory. Even in terms of the original acquisition of land, Nozick uses the Lockean proviso to defend this. Nozick defines this proviso as “a process normally giving rise to a permanent bequeathable property right in a previously unowned thing will not do so if the position of others no longer at liberty with the thing is thereby worsened” . In essence, as long as the appropriation of land does not make any individual worse off, then it satisfies this proviso and the acquisition cannot be opposed or deemed as

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