Quotation
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“Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself.”
John Locke · Empiricism · Early modern · 1689
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as the start of his labour theory of property: a person owns their own body and labour, and by mixing that labour with unowned nature can come to own the result, within limits he states about spoilage and leaving enough for others. A rival reading stops at self-ownership and treats it as a ban on all tax or all collective claim, which the chapter's limits and the book's account of government do not say. Section 27 is in the chapter on property, and it is doing foundational work for what follows.
Did John Locke really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Locke's own English in the Second Treatise, chapter 5, section 27, slightly smoothed in punctuation. The paragraph goes on to ground property in labour mixed with what nature provides. The core sentences are his.
Where it comes from
Second Treatise of Government, chapter 5, §27
Approximate date: 1689.
How to use it
A dispute in a shared allotment in Bristol about who owns the beans turns, on this paragraph, on whose labour is in them, and also on whether the taking left enough and as good for the other gardeners. Self-ownership does not settle the fence by itself. It explains why a person who did the digging has a claim the person who only watched does not; The council's rules are a further layer; Locke is not describing an allotment association, and the limits in the chapter still matter.
A mindset reading
Property in one's person is a phrase later politics loads with more than the paragraph carries. He is blocking a right in another person's body, and he is opening a route to ownership of goods. He is not yet describing money, inheritance, or the welfare state; A rival use quotes the sentence for or against those institutions as if the section had voted; The honest use is the structure: person, labour, the mixing, and the limits that come in the same breath.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is property, which for Locke begins in the person and extends, by labour, to what one has mixed one's work with, provided enough and as good is left and nothing is left to spoil. Chapter 5 is the classic statement. Later sections explain how money changes the spoilage limit. The English is his, in the Second Treatise of 1689; This entry keeps two sentences from section 27 and not the whole theory.
- justice
- freedom
- self
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as the start of his labour theory of property: a person owns their own body and labour, and by mixing that labour with unowned nature can come to own the result, within limits he states about spoilage and leaving enough for others. A rival reading stops at self-ownership and treats it as a ban on all tax or all collective claim, which the chapter's limits and the book's account of government do not say. Section 27 is in the chapter on property, and it is doing foundational work for what follows.
Did John Locke really say this?
Well attested. Locke's own English in the Second Treatise, chapter 5, section 27, slightly smoothed in punctuation. The paragraph goes on to ground property in labour mixed with what nature provides. The core sentences are his.
Which work is it in?
Second Treatise of Government, chapter 5, §27 Approximate date: 1689.