Self-alienation in property explains ownership’s intensity beyond mere utility.

Evidence

For the challenge to have taken the form of the potlatch, that is, of economic rivalry, and from there first for the chief and then for the clan members to have laid claim to private goods, there had to be another original tendency in man: in the preceding chapter we said that the existent can only succeed in grasping himself by alienating himself; he searches for himself through the world, in the guise of a foreign figure he makes his own. The clan encounters its own alienated existence in the totem, the mana, and the territory it occupies; when the individual separates from the community, he demands a singular embodiment: the mana is individualized in the chief, then in each individual; and at the same time each one tries to appropriate a piece of land, tools, or crops. In these riches of his, man finds himself because he lost himself in them: it is understandable then that he can attribute to them an importance as basic as that of his life itself. Thus man’s interest in his property becomes an intelligible relationship. But clearly the tool alone is not enough to explain it; the whole attitude of the tool-armed man must be grasped, an attitude that implies an ontological infrastructure. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 146

Categorization

• DEFINE: Develops the concept of self-alienation as the existential grounding of property and economy.
• XREF: Echoes Hegel’s master-slave dialectic and alienation, which Beauvoir grounds ontologically rather than just economically. — connects to: Settled property ownership is the origin of human homesickness and alienation — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 74; Local property norms shape how people construe ownership over shared resources. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 131; Personal identity theory parallels the language of property and ownership — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 444 (+7 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The move that subsumes economic explanation (Marx) under ontological explanation (existence seeking self through the world) is a dense, paradigm-level theoretical synthesis.

Broader Connections

• Possession defends the self against the Other’s power to define it #corroborates (0.80)
• Personal identity theory parallels the language of property and ownership #corroborates (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 444
• Local property norms shape how people construe ownership over shared resources. #qualifies (0.75) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 131
• Existential dread drives conspicuous consumption beyond rational calculation. #corroborates (0.75) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 456
• Economic value emerges through the distance exchange creates between self and object #qualifies (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 250