Self-ownership

Cohen states that if “ownership requires separability of what owns from what is owned, then self-ownership is impossible”. His interpretation of the “self” invoked by the thesis of self-ownership is that the term is reflexive; the “self” signifies that “what owns and what is owned are one and the same, namely, the whole person”. Thus to say that “A enjoys self-ownership is just to say that A owns A”. There is no “deeply inner thing” that is owned. If “self-ownership” refers to a whole person in the sense that there is no distinction between the owner and his property, so that what is owned cannot be separated from the owner, it follows that the property cannot be alienated.