Self Ownership as First Principle: The Logical Construction and Justification of a Normative Political Philosophy Framework

Abstract

This paper aims to construct the logical framework of a normative political philosophy system and to provide a rigorous philosophical justification for its core value hierarchy. The argument proceeds from the first principle of selfownership, demonstrating that it constitutes the Archimedean point of any normative discourse—it cannot be further derived, for it is the presupposition of all derivation; it cannot be denied, for the act of denying it is itself an exercise of it. This paper further argues that self-ownership is not merely a factual capacity for selfdirection, but the transcendental condition that makes any normative claim possible. From this principle, the paper derives in sequence the absoluteness of human rights, the normative priority of democracy as the procedure for collective decision making, and the binding force of contract as the solidified form of democratic will. These three constitute a unidirectional and irreversible normative pyramid: human rights authorize democracy, and democracy authorizes contract. The paper further demonstrates that this hierarchical ordering is not a value ranking based on subjective preference, but the necessary structure of the logic of rights generation. Any attempt to reverse this order will fall into logical self-contradiction.