下川 潔

There are two distinct lines of thought which we can find in the earlymodern European discourse on the origin and justification of property.One is a conventionalist line represented by Grotius, Hobbes andPufendorf. The other is a unilateralist one, which was hinted at by somePuritan colonists in America and came to be clearly formulated in thelanguage of Locke. The former makes a mutual compact of human beingsa necessary condition for the emergence and justification of property. Thelatter dispenses with the compact altogether, and claims that a unilateralacquisition of natural resources under certain favourable circumstancessufficiently explains and justifies property. It is Locke who proposedhis unilateralist theory of appropriation as an alternative to the earlierconventionalism of Grotius, Hobbes, and Pufendorf. The purpose of this paper is to give a narrative of the developmentof post-Lockean unilateralism. It considers the works of Jean Barbeyrac,Gershom Carmichael, and Francis Hutcheson. It seeks to provide textualevidence to show that there is a significant line of continuity from Locketo Hutcheson, while it also involves the use of diverse strategies andarguments. Barbeyrac and Carmichael inherited Locke's basic principlesthough they added one or two claims of their own. Hutcheson modifiedLocke's unilateralism by combining his functionalist and humanitarianviews with Locke's insights. In the Inquiry Hutcheson seized upon theconsequentialist part of Locke's unilateralism, and recast it in terms of self-love and motives to industry. In the Short Introduction, he appealed to thegeneral interest of all, but he focused more sharply on the sense of humanityor the lack of it by discussing the case where one intercepts the product ofanother's honest labour. And in A System of Moral Philosophy, Hutchesonlinked human labour to 'the immediate feelings of our hearts' as well as'the consideration of the general interest'. Despite the diverse views foundin Hutcheson's early and later works, it is possible to see that Barbeyrac,Carmichael, and Hutcheson are united in defending the unilateral mode ofappropriation, and rejecting the claim of conventionalism.