Self-ownership and alienity of the world: ontology of the institution of property in modern age

The work is devoted to the ontological foundations of the Western institution ofproperty in the Modern Age. Philosophy plays a significant role in the project of the Modern Age to substantiate the natural, rather than religious, origins of propertybecause it can provide rational legitimation for the institution. In this regard, to explicate the ontologyof property in the Modern Age, the studyturns mainly to two authors in whose texts such a discourse unfolds: John Locke and Karl Marx. John Locke, in his political philosophy, for the first time in the history of Western culture, derives the ownership of things from labor and explains the ownership of labor itself as the unconditional ownership of itself. Self-ownership implies a split into self-ownership and self-property while simultaneously identifying oneself, so the question of the meaning of self-ownership is raised. What ontologyis based on this specific idea of the Modern Age about the natural belonging ofa person tohimself, and how does a man actually realize this belonging?Answers to these questions are given through an analysis of the early works by K. Marx, in which it is possible to explicate the ontology of self-ownership: it is thematized in the distinction between individual existence and the genericessence of man. Marx continues the division of men into themselves and themselves and proceeds from the fact that men as individuals initially belong to men as generic entities (which made possible Marx’s statement that in the process ofalienated labor, men are alienated from themselves). It is concluded that the ontology of self-ownership is rooted in the ontology of the subject of the Modern Age in general. Since onlyself-ownership is recognized as unconditional property in modern times, all things in the world appear in this ontologyas initially alien and requiring appropriation in order to become one’s own.