Political Justice : On "Property"
William Godwin2022

As Godwin’s philosophy is relatively unfamiliar, it will be necessary to start with a sketch of its main features, before I can turn to the points to which I wish chiefly to call attention. Men come into the world without any distinctive character, but with the potency of an unlimited development. This development is the outcome of certain simple laws. External impressions are made upon us; these are found to be connected with various pleasures and pains; and this system of interconnections, or associations, determines the complex of our characters and our lives. All our conduct is determined in the end, therefore, by ideas which have got associated with pleasurable or painful feelings, and which consequently lead to efforts to obtain the one and avoid the other; our acts are due, that is, to opinions, or reason, since reason is nothing more than a utilitarian recognition or calculation of consequences. It follows that human happiness or misery will depend very largely upon what it is that gives rise to these opinions. Now a vast number of them, and these the most highly important, are not formed through direct and first-hand experience, but are the indirect product of our social surroundings, of the institutions under which we are brought up. The first business therefore of the philosopher who desires the good of mankind, is to determine what is, and what is not, the desirable form for government, or social organization, to take. Or, since every one admits in some sense that government should be just, what is the nature of justice?