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The Rationality of Property (Citation & Abstract only)
Thesis

The Rationality of Property (Citation & Abstract only)

Richard Stewart
Southern Cross University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Southern Cross University
2026
Appears in  Recent Southern Cross PhD Theses

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Abstract

Property Personhood Hegel Law Theory Jurisprudence Freedom Land
The Rationality of Property employs the Personhood Theory of Property that is derived from the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel to posit property as a human-thing relationship. Property, as distinct from the property law that may be responsive to it, has ontological relevance to the becoming of personhood as a particular state of human being. Property is a human universal because it emerges as an aspect of the human condition. By responding to the reality of property, which it does by recognising and regulating the human-thing relationship through enforceable rights and obligations, the laws of property and the societal institution they form impact upon the extent to which the subjective human person can emerge, flourish, and have objective being in the world. Property laws are thus fundamental to the being of healthy and well human persons, to the freedom they are and which they move in the world, and to the societies they together create. This thesis does not seek to know the nature or function of property by learning property law. Proceeding on the basis that property is a concomitant of human being in the world, this work makes its contribution to property discourse by engaging with knowledge from fields beyond law, including philosophy, anthropology, archaeology, and ethology. When considered through the prism of law, itself nothing less than an expression of the human condition, this knowledge becomes jurisprudentially significant as well as sociologically and ecologically relevant. It is the philosophy of Hegel and the Personhood Theory of Property that permits the knowledge to be so understood, and it supports the conclusion as to the Rationality of Property. That property is rational is demonstrated by this thesis to derive from the fact that property creates the structures through which freedom, the essential attribute of personhood, can most effectually manifest in the world. This inherent rationality is relevant to understanding both the nature and function of property, which is in this work considered by reference to existing property law discourse within which this work confidently situates itself. While it moves from and maintains a somewhat orthodox view of property, the recognition of the ontological and societal relevance of property in this thesis renders it fundamentally consistent with the objectives of progressive property theory. This is particularly so concerning property in land, the human relationships to which are ultimately engaged as a means of demonstrating the contended for Rationality of Property.

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