ABSTRACT
A. John Simmons is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia and is the author of important works on Locke, including On the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent and the Limits of Society (1993) and The Lockean Theory of Rights (1992). In this extract from the latter book, Simmons attempts to reconstruct Locke’s account of the origins of property rights, in the face of criticisms such as VVaidron’s in Reading 3.3. He does so by asking us to think of labour not as a substance but as the practice of bringing external objects into line with our particular plans and intentions.
