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The right to protect oneself and one’s property goes at least as far back as the Code of Hammurabi. Every ancient civilization from Babylon to Tenochtitlan had

The right to protect oneself and one’s property goes at least as far back as the Code of Hammurabi. Every ancient civilization from Babylon to Tenochtitlan had some variation of this idea. It is practically the definition of civilization itself.

zorpner 5y ago
The idea that an individual has "[the] right to protect oneself and one’s property" is fundamentally inconsistent with the existence of slavery throughout most of humanity's history.
- snowgrove 5y ago
  Obviously, but that isn’t what the GP comment asserted and it isn’t the statement I replied to.
- kqr 5y ago
  It's not, though. The Roman idea of protecting oneself and one's property extended to one's slaves (which counted as property).
kqr 5y ago
But unless I've misunderstood Graeber, the idea entered modern jurisprudence and took its recogniseable form from the Roman Empire. In other words, it either looked considerably different in civilisations like Babylon and Tenochtitian, or there's a historic gap of weaker property enforcement between those civilisations and ours.
- snowgrove 5y ago
  I haven’t read any of David Graeber’s books. Your comment doesn’t make his thesis clear, but I do know what’s written in the Code of Hammurabi: “If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death.” https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Codex_Hammurabi_(King_translation) https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Codex_Hammurabi_(King_trans... Likewise in pre-Columbian Mexico, as per the Florentine Codex: “It was a crime to light a fire in the woods without permission, to cut down trees, to move boundary-markers, to take game from another man’s hunting trap and to steal crops from the fields. All these were crimes that could be punished by death.” https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/ask-experts/which-were-the-most-common-crimes-among-the-aztecs https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/ask-experts/which-were-t...

zorpner 5y ago

The idea that an individual has "[the] right to protect oneself and one’s property" is fundamentally inconsistent with the existence of slavery throughout most of humanity's history.

snowgrove 5y ago
Obviously, but that isn’t what the GP comment asserted and it isn’t the statement I replied to.
kqr 5y ago
It's not, though. The Roman idea of protecting oneself and one's property extended to one's slaves (which counted as property).

kqr 5y ago

But unless I've misunderstood Graeber, the idea entered modern jurisprudence and took its recogniseable form from the Roman Empire. In other words, it either looked considerably different in civilisations like Babylon and Tenochtitian, or there's a historic gap of weaker property enforcement between those civilisations and ours.

snowgrove 5y ago
I haven’t read any of David Graeber’s books. Your comment doesn’t make his thesis clear, but I do know what’s written in the Code of Hammurabi: “If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death.” https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Codex_Hammurabi_(King_translation) https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Codex_Hammurabi_(King_trans... Likewise in pre-Columbian Mexico, as per the Florentine Codex: “It was a crime to light a fire in the woods without permission, to cut down trees, to move boundary-markers, to take game from another man’s hunting trap and to steal crops from the fields. All these were crimes that could be punished by death.” https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/ask-experts/which-were-the-most-common-crimes-among-the-aztecs https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/ask-experts/which-were-t...