Description
Book SynopsisAn 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.
Trade 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
Table of ContentsIntroduction; 1. Plato's 'communism', Aristotle's critique and Proclus' response; 2. Plato's 'communism': from late antiquity via Islamic Spain to the Renaissance; 3. Renunciation and communality: thinking through the primitive Church; 4. The poverty of Christ: crises of asceticism from the Pelagians to the Franciscans; 5. The state of nature and the origin of private property: Hesiod to William of Ockham; 6. The state of nature and the origin of private property: Grotius to Hegel; 7. Property as a legal right; 8. Property as a human right; Conclusion.
