"Man's Propriety in the Creatures": Locke, Divine Ownership, and the Right to Exclude.

The article addresses John Locke’s “ownership puzzle,” which arises from his simultaneous claims that every person owns themselves and that God owns all human beings as their creator. This apparent conflict is resolved by understanding Lockean property as a four-place relation involving an owner’s right to exclude certain agents from an object under specific conditions. Because God’s ownership entails an absolute right to exclude all agents from all creation, while human ownership involves a more limited right to exclude other humans from certain things (including themselves), both can univocally own the same thing without contradiction. Thus, Locke’s conception of property centers on the right to exclude, allowing for overlapping divine and human ownership distinguished by the scope and strength of exclusion rights rather than by different kinds of ownership.