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Property and the Obligation to Support the Conditions of Human Flourishing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2020

Menachem Mautner
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Abstract

American rights discourse makes it difficult to generate responsibilities for the well-being of the communities within which human personhood is formed. Gregory S. Alexander’s Property and Human Flourishing (2018) focuses on the obligations that property owners owe to the communities in which they are embedded. Drawing on a communitarian ontology—as opposed to atomist ontology—and writing in the spirit of Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, and thinkers of the liberalism of flourishing, Alexander endorses human flourishing as the central ideal of the good life, and argues that ownership of property is justified insofar as it facilitates the opportunity of persons to live flourishing lives.

Type
Review Symposium: Law and Society Meets Jurisprudence
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , May 2020 , pp. 521 - 538
Copyright
© 2019 American Bar Foundation

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