Critical reflections on ownership / created by Mary Warnock

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. The Scope of the Investigation: Can Absolutely Anything be Owned?
2. Origins of Society and Property
3: Property, Intimacy and Privacy: Gardening as Ownership in Action
4: Common Ownership 1: Communism
5: Common Ownership 2: Some More Modest Forms
6: The Unowned: The Romantic Idea of Wilderness
7: Taking Responsibility for the Planet
8: What Can be Done? Some Useful Compromises
9: Why Do We Want to Preserve the Natural World?
Index

In this thought provoking work, Mary Warnock explores what it is to own things, and the differences in our attitude to what we own and what we do not. Starting from the philosophical standpoints of Locke and Hume, the ownership of gardens is presented as a prime example, exploring both private and common ownership, historically and autobiographically. The author concludes that, besides pleasure and pride, ownership brings a sense of responsibility for what is owned and a fundamental question is brought to light: can we feel the same responsibility for what we do not, and never can, own? Applying this question to the natural world and the planet as a whole, a realistic and gradualist perspective is offered on confronting global environmental degradation. Critical Reflections on Ownership examines the effect of the Romantic Movement on our attitudes to nature and is a salient commentary on the history of ideas.-- Provided by publisher