Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Of course not , writes John Médaille: We cannot own ourselves for the simple reason that we cannot create ourselves; we cannot seize control of our origins or be present at our beginnings. Rather, all of us are called into being through an act of love into the ready-made community of the family. From this little society, we receive certain gifts. The gift of being itself, in the first instance, and a sufficiency of material gifts—food, clothing, shelter—or else we would not have survived. But beyond these material gifts, we are graced with other kinds of gifts: language, culture, our first ideas of right and wrong, our first experience of love and beauty. Of course, Locke was anything but consistent, however, it seems pretty clear to me that if he followed through on his homesteading principle, it would be our parents who own us. After all, they are the ones who "mixed their labor" to create us. But Locke was just throwing together whatever ideas seemed to recom...

'I was dead wrong. There are two main problems with the idea of self-ownership -- the "self" part, and the "ownership" part.' -- Ed Feser Read the whole thing .

Rajiv Shah shows why the concept is incoherent .