On the Incommensurability of Rights: A Reductio ad Absurdum Proof from Self Ownership

This paper demonstrates that within a rights framework grounded in self-ownership as the first principle, no hierarchical ordering can obtain among the right to will, the right to body, and the right to property. The argument appeals neither to external value presuppositions nor to casuistic enumeration, but employs a rigorous symmetrical reductio ad absurdum to prove, pair by pair, that none of these rights can be either superior or inferior to another without logical contradiction. I first show that the right to will and the right to body are mutually non-subordinable: suppressing the right to will entails the loss of a free will that can command the body, thereby destroying the right to body; conversely, suppressing the right to body deprives the will of its sole channel of physical expression, thereby destroying the right to will. Second, by redefining the right to property as the right to freely dispose of the fruits of one's labor through one's will and body, I anchor property rights in the free exercise of will and body. On this basis, I demonstrate that subordinating the right to property is tantamount to negating the freedom of will and body in disposing of property, while elevating it severs the very source from which property arises and results in the self-destruction of the right to property. Thus, any attempt to establish a hierarchy among these three rights proves logically self-contradictory. The right to will, the right to body, and the right to property emerge as incommensurable and indivisible projections of one and the same self-ownership into three dimensions.