Property Philosophical Theories of Property Kinds of Property

Your family flat in Navi Mumbai, the phone in your pocket, the goodwill of a neighbourhood tea stall, a song's copyright and the PF balance in your account are all called property. Yet you can touch only one or two of them. Why is a flat property when it cannot be carried away, and why is a song property when it cannot be touched? And who decided that anyone should own anything at all? This topic asks why we have property, what kinds there are and how a person comes to own something.

In two minutes

Property is the bundle of rights a person holds over a thing or interest that the law recognises; theories explain why it exists (labour, occupation, utility, personality, social function, Marxist critique), law divides it into kinds (movable and immovable, corporeal and incorporeal and others), and it is acquired by occupation, agreement, inheritance, prescription and operation of law.

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