Thinking about Property: From Antiquity to the Age of Revolution: 90 (Ideas in Context, Series Number 90) - Hardcover

Garnsey, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 052187677X ISBN 13: 9780521876773

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Synopsis

This book explores ancient 'foundational' texts relating to property and their reception by later thinkers in their various contexts up to the early nineteenth century. The texts include Plato's vision of an ideal polity in the Republic, Jesus' teachings on renunciation and poverty, and Golden Age narratives and other evolutionary accounts of the transition of mankind from primeval communality to regimes of ownership. The issue of the legitimacy of private ownership exercises the minds of the major political thinkers as well as theologians and jurists throughout the ages. The book gives full consideration to the historical development of Rights Theory, with special reference to the right to property. It ends with a comparative study of the Declarations of Rights in the American and French Revolutions and seeks to explain, with reference to contemporary documents, why the French recognised an inalienable, human right to property whereas the Americans did not.

About this title

Review:

''This marvellous book combines very substantial and wide-ranging scholarship with great conceptual and analytic rigour to present a sophisticated, entirely original and highly compelling history of conceptions of property in the West from the Greeks to the 19th century.' Raymond Geuss, Professor in Philosophy, University of Cambridge

'Garnsey's meticulous and focused scholarship will fundamentally change our basic thinking about the origins and legitimation of property in the western tradition ... I know of no other work that so accurately traces the genealogy of modern debts to ancient thought on this important subject.' Brent Shaw, Professor of Classics and Andrew Fleming West Professor of Classics, Princeton University

'... this is a wide-ranging, learned and ambitious book that is intended to appeal to a wide audience. It should interest historians of ideas, students of political thought, scholars of religion, and anyone interested in the intellectual roots of rights theory. ... Garnsey stakes out fruitful common ground for classical, Christian, and early modern legal and political texts.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Book Description:

An intellectual history of broad scope, beginning with Plato and ending on the brink of modernity. It explores the historical development of some central themes about property, showing how these themes sparked confrontation between apologists and critics of private property over its legitimacy, among philosophers, theologians and jurists through the ages.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 052187677X
• ISBN 13: 9780521876773
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288