Volume 46, Issue 1, Spring 2024
Private Property and the Environment
Lilian Kroth

Pages 71-89
https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics202422371
Property and ¡°le Propre¡±
Limits, Law, and a New Naturalism with Michel Serres
This paper is concerned with Michel Serres¡¯s critique of property. Through the concept of ¡®le propre,¡¯ which in French can mean both ¡®clean¡¯ and ¡®one¡¯s own,¡¯ and a naturalist reading of Rousseau, he proposes a ¡®stercorian¡¯ eco-criticism of property. Focusing on concepts of limits provides a fruitful angle from which to illuminate Serres¡¯s critique of law and property. The first section will introduce Serres as a thinker of limits, borders, and boundaries. In the second and third parts, attention will be drawn to his eco-criticism of law and property from a feminist and philosophy of science perspective, concluding with a fourth part, in which Serres¡¯s approach will be contextualized in relation to other naturalisms. His work has far-reaching consequences for discourses of human agency in the context of the Anthropocene and makes a crucial contribution to how a new naturalist criticism of property might be conceived.