Private Property Between the Convergence and Divergence of Natural Rights Ideas and Imamiyah Jurisprudence

Abstract

The contradiction between selfishness (personal interest) and altruism (public interest) and how they are combined are issues that have engaged the minds of the greatest thinkers of human history. The school of natural rights is one of the pioneers in this regard that it has played a significant role in justifying the right of ownership and identifying its limits. Some thinkers believe that the right to private property is a natural right inherent in human nature and in opposite, others, despite the recognition of the right to public ownership as one of the examples of natural rights, consider private property as the exception and maintain that this right has come about as a result of rulers’ act or on the basis of a social contract. On the other hand, in the school of Islam (theImamiyah jurisprudence), it is believed that the real property belongs to God and the man is indebted to Him in this divine gift. Defending private property rights is observed in both of these views (convergence) but each of them, under the auspices its intellectual foundations, has adopted a distinct policy about the scope of this right and sometimes has come to different results (divergence). This leads the mind of anyone to study these theories, reasons and argumentative methods so that be able to deal with a kind of convergence and conciliation between these thoughts and the existing divergence between them and come to a favorite result in this lane of dogmatism.

Keywords

• natural rights
• imamiyah jurisprudence
• private property right
• individual rights
• public interest