ABSTRACT
A tree is a tree is a tree one might think, whatever that is. But what is the difference between a tree that is owned as private property and a tree that is not? How is the tree that is owned related to the owner, so that one may judge that the owner, but not the tree, is harmed if someone else cuts it down or harvests its fruit? What do we recognize in the tree when we respect it as the property of another, leaving alone the apple that dangles temptingly from the branch that reaches over our path? It may be that these questions are illusory once the issue of analysis of the concept is settled. They may turn out to be pseudoquestions, as they used to say. But it may also turn out that the concept of property invokes a distinctive view of persons and the property to which they lay claim which itself constrains the process of analysis and has severe implications for the first philosophical enterprise – that of justification.
