Inquiry Concerning Political Justice by William Godwin 1793 INQUIRY CONCERNING POLITICAL JUSTICE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON MODERN MORALS AND HAPPINESS BOOK I: OF THE POWERS OF MAN CONSIDERED IN HIS SOCIAL CAPACITY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The object proposed in the following work is an investigation concerning that form of public or political society, that system of intercourse and reciprocal action, extending beyond the bounds of a single family, which shall be found most to conduce to the general benefit. How may the peculiar and independent operation of each individual in the social state most effectually be preserved? How may the security each man ought to possess, as to his life, and the employment of his faculties according to the dictates of his own understanding, be most certainly defended from invasion? How may the indi...
BOOK II CHAPTER II OF JUSTICE Extent and meaning of justice.-Subject of justice: mankind.- Its distribution by the capacity of its subject.- by his usefulness.- Self-love considered.-Family affection.-Gratitude.-Objections: from ignorance-from utility. An exception stated.-Remark.- Degrees of justice.-Application.-Idea of political justice. FROM what has been said it appears, that the subject of our present inquiry is strictly speaking a department of the science of morals. Morality is the source from which its fundamental axioms must be drawn, and they will be made somewhat clearer in the present instance, if we assume the term justice as a general appellation for all moral duty. That this appellation is sufficiently expressive of the subject will appear, if we examine mercy, gratitude, temperance, or any of those duties which, in looser speaking, are contradistinguished from justice. Why should I pard...
or An Essay on the Right of Authors and Inventors to a Perpetual Property in their IdeasSECTION IV. Objection Fourth. It is said that ideas have no ear-marks, by which their ownership may be known. And hence it has been inferred that ideas cannot be subjects of ownership; though it would doubtless puzzle any one to show any connection between the premises and the conclusion. This objection is as frivolous as the others; for neither has corporeal property usually, if ever, any ear-marks by which the world at large can know who is the owner. Nevertheless, when mankind see corporeal wealth, as a horse, a house, or a farm, for example, which bears evidence of human labor, and which has too much market value to justify the idea that the owner would voluntarily abandon it, they infer that it has an owner, though he may be at the time unknown to them. So it should be with an idea. When a man has communicated to him an idea, or a device, that he never knew before,—as that...
Natural Law. Lysander Spooner Part First. Chapter 1. The Science of Justice. Section I. The science of mine and thine — the science of justice — is the science of all human rights; of all a man's rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is the science which alone can tell any man what he can, and cannot, do; what he can, and cannot, have; what he can, and cannot, say, without infringing the rights of any other person. It is the science of peace; and the only science of peace; since it is the science which alone can tell us on what conditions mankind can live in peace, or ought to live in peace, with each other. These conditions are simply these: viz., first, that each ma... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Their Present Limits and Their Possible Extension
(The substance of a paper read on December 5, 1899, before the Freedom Discussion Group, London by M. Nettlau.) The following remarks, based on an article published by me in Freedom, November 1897, must not be understood as wishing to replace direct Anarchist propaganda by a "remedy or a "hobby," they simply raise a general subject which has been, as far as I know and am told, neglected up till now : the possibility of some new form and combination in the labor struggle; and I am anxious for Anarchist criticism, which, apart from the general possibility has to examine whether the means suggested are on the road to freedom or the contrary ; consequently, whether they merit the support of Anarchists or not. Progress in the labor movement seem... (From : Anarchy Archives.)