Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘Property’ is not treated as a simple legal or economic category but as a term freighted with ontological, psychological, and institutional weight. Plato interrogates whether received notions of private property represent the best ordering of society, framing communal versus private holding as a question of the soul’s education rather than mere expediency. Evagrius and the ascetic tradition, transmitted through Antony, position property as an obstacle to spiritual liberation — ‘propertylessness’ (aktēmosunē) paired with tranquility, so that attachment to goods and attachment to grievance are seen as structurally identical. Benveniste’s etymological investigations reveal that the Indo-European conceptual field linking ‘own,’ ‘self,’ and ‘proper’ (sva-, eigen, proprius) underlies notions of inheritance, succession, and social belonging, making property inseparable from identity and kinship structure. Derrida seizes on the Stirnerian conflation of Eigentum (property) and eigen (own/proper) to expose the rhetorical sleight of hand by which private property is naturalised through etymology. Plotinus addresses property as a metaphysical category, asking whether possession forms a coherent ontological class at all. Dōgen, meanwhile, frames the complete surrender of property as a prerequisite for genuine Zen practice. Together, these voices triangulate a concept whose psychological significance lies precisely at the intersection of selfhood, social belonging, renunciation, and power.
‘propertylessness’ (ἀκτημοσύνη) and tranquil relationships go hand in hand: property is so often the cause of strife.
The ascetic tradition, exemplified by Antony’s teaching, frames renunciation of property and interpersonal forgiveness as mutually constitutive psychological goods, linking ownership to conflict and its relinquishment to inner peace.
, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus, 2003thesis
he here bases the impossibility of abolishing private property by transferring it into the concept of property ownership, by exploiting the etymological connection between the words Eigentum (property) and eigen (proper, own).
Derrida, following Marx’s critique of Stirner, exposes how the ideological defence of private property is secured by a linguistic manoeuvre that collapses property-as-possession into property-as-selfhood through bad etymology.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
the right of private property is based on expediency, and may be interfered with in a variety of ways for the public good. Any other mode of vesting property which was found to be more advantageous, would in time acquire the same basis of right.
Plato’s Republic is read as establishing that the legitimacy of property arrangements is contingent and functional rather than sacred, opening the question of whether any distribution of wealth is optimal for human education and flourishing.
, Republic, -380thesis
As for Possession, if the term is used comprehensively, why are not all its modes to be brought under one category? Possession, thus, would include the quantum as possessing magnitude, the quale as possessing colour.
Plotinus interrogates possession as an ontological category, asking whether the having of a magnitude, a quality, or a bodily object constitutes a single coherent class, thereby questioning the metaphysical coherence of ‘property’ itself.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
he threw away all of his property in this way he was considered a person of Zen. Monks, moreover, should give up their property completely.
Dōgen presents total divestiture of property as the defining gesture of genuine spiritual practice, casting wealth not as neutral resource but as an active impediment to the practitioner’s integrity.
thesis
Sanskrit sva- signifies ‘his,’ but in a technical sense which goes beyond mere personal possession. Sva- is applied to the person who forms part of the same tight group; this term plays an important role in legal provisions affecting property, inheritance or the succession to titles and honors.
Benveniste demonstrates that the Indo-European root for ‘own/self’ (sva-) is simultaneously a social and legal term, so that property, identity, and group membership are etymologically and institutionally co-originary.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
He shall not be permitted to have more property than he who gave him liberty, and what more he has shall belong to his master.
Plato’s Laws regulates property as an instrument of civic order and social hierarchy, connecting permissible accumulation directly to civic status and freedom.
, Laws, -348supporting
Thou shalt not, if thou canst help, touch that which is mine, or remove the least thing which belongs to me without my consent.
Plato grounds the social compact in the inviolability of personal belonging, framing respect for property as the foundational norm of all dealings between persons.
, Laws, -348supporting
Money is not just a rational medium of exchange, it also carries the soul of communal life. It has all the complications of soul, and, like sex and disease, it is beyond our powers of control.
Moore extends the concept of property into soul-psychology, arguing that money and material exchange are not merely economic but are charged with the shadow dimensions of communal soul-life.
, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992supporting
Intrinsic purposiveness is a constitutive property of an autopoietic system, but it is an emergent property analyzable in terms of the relational autopoietic organization.
Thompson uses ‘property’ in the technical philosophical sense of an emergent, relational attribute of living systems, tangentially relevant to the broader discussion of what it means for a being to ‘have’ or ‘own’ a characteristic.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007aside
The metaphor, then, refers either to a function or to a resemblance — i.e. either to an activity, which is the concern of the verb, or to a property, which is described by an adjective.
Snell distinguishes property as an adjectival category from action as a verbal one, a structural distinction that bears obliquely on the conceptual analysis of what it means for something to ‘have’ a quality versus to ‘do’ something.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953aside