![]() ![]() Again, we might wonder if this person has âstolenâ money just by refusing to hand over their financial property. However, if it is defensible, it is only because of a broad reading of the idea of property, taking the concept far beyond the physical.įinally, consider the example of someone who fails to pay their legally due portion of tax to the government. Again, the original definition might be defensible as a mechanism for capturing such instances of stealing. For example, if a person is being paid by the hour, but spends an undue amount of time on social media or checking sports scores, have they stolen money or time from their employer? Or, as a second possible example, if I make up a joke that is then retold by someone else, have they stolen âpropertyâ without my consent? This is a genuinely important issue in the field of comedy, for example. However, we can also cast doubt on the definition by focussing not on the issue of consent, but on the idea of property. ![]() We might deny that either is an act of stealing, or deny that proper consent was ever given â this seems particularly compelling in the first example. There are responses to these two examples, of course. If you play a game for real money, and beat them in hand after hand after hand, might it be suggested that you have stolen their money even though they freely entered into the game? Even though you have their explicit permission, acting on this verbal instruction and stealing their television still might seem to be an act of theft.Īs a second counterexample to the original definition, imagine that you are better at cards than someone else, although you hide this fact from them. The original definition would rule this out as a conceptual impossibility, but consider someone who, whilst inebriated (perhaps even drugged against their will), gives you permission to take an item of value from their house. For example, we might wonder if it is possible to steal an item even though the owner has given you consent to take it. ![]() Yet, it is not always clear that stealing comfortably fits this definition. Indeed, if reality television programmes following British Traffic Police are anything to go by, this definition is of use not merely for philosophy classes, but for the real world also theft of vehicles is often categorised as an example of TWOC â âtaking without ownersâ consentâ. At first, this may seem like a fairly simple task stealing is just the taking of another personâs property without their consent. Defining Stealingīeginning a chapter on the ethics of stealing, it is important to make clear exactly what âstealingâ amounts to. In this chapter, we apply the key normative theories of Kantian Ethics, Utilitarianism and Virtue Ethics to the issue of stealing. For example, if you hear that someone has been sent to prison for stealing, it would likely take something atypical for you to question whether or not the person deserved punishment for his or her crime. Partly as a result of this particular commandment and the impact of Christianity upon social custom in many parts of the world, the message that stealing is a moral wrong is pervasive and fairly uncontroversial, at least prima facie. Rather, it simply says that you should not steal full stop. It does not say that you should not steal so long as you have enough resources available to you, or that you should not steal if your neighbour has been good to you. The Bible reference above is absolutist in nature. ![]()
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