Prototypizing and archeotypizing ownership: A pilot study

The author’s point of departure is Alf Ross’s analysis of ownership as a tool of presentation for a set of disjunctive conditioning facts and conjunctive legal consequences. The author first analyses Ross’s conjunctive compo-nent, and shows that, if one adopts the perspective of Polish-Russian legal realism, it can be pro-vided with a full-blown meaning. Then, the disjunctive component is discussed. By drawing in-spiration from prototype theory, the author argues that a specific set of disjunctive conditioning facts and of conjunctive legal consequences can be regarded as making up the core – albeit in a gradual way - of ownership phenomena, provided that one restricts them to movables. Finally, the author presents two Freudian hypotheses that can explain the emergence of the prototype of own-ership. This explanation is based on the way babies conceive of their bodily parts and feces. Based on that, an archeotype (i.e., archaic conception) of ownership is proposed.