John of Paris, writing around 1302 in his On Royal and Papal Power, gives the following, proto-Lockean labor theory of property: [I]t must be remembered that lay property is not granted to the community as a whole as is ecclesiastical property, but is acquired by individual people through their own skill, labour and diligence, and individuals, …
Aquinas’s Proto-Lockean Labor Theory of Property
In ST II-II, Q. 66, article 5, "Whether theft is always a sin?", reply to objection 2, Aquinas touches on the question of previously unappropriated goods in a way that anticipates John Locke's later "homesteading" or "labor" theory of property or ownership (from his Second Treatise on Government). First, the objection, then Aquinas's reply: Obj. …
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