Self-ownership

Self-ownership (or sovereignty of the individual, individual sovereignty or individual autonomy) is the concept of property in one's own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to have bodily integrity, and be the exclusive controller of his own body and life. According to G. Cohen, the concept of self-ownership is that "each person enjoys, over himself and his powers, full and exclusive rights of control and use, and therefore owes no service or product to anyone else that he has not contracted to supply."

The philosophers William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson described those possessed of a mind conducive to self-ownership as sovereign individuals, which have supreme authority and sovereignty over their own choices, without the interference of governing powers, provided they have not violated the rights of others. This notion is central to classical liberalism and individualistic political philosophies such as abolitionism, ethical egoism, rights-based libertarianism, objectivism, and individualist anarchism. Sovereign-minded individuals would then seem to prefer an atmosphere consisting of decentralized administrative organizations acting as servants to the individual.

For anarchist political philosopher L. Susan Brown "Liberalism and anarchism are two political philosophies that are fundamentally concerned with individual freedom yet differ from one another in very distinct ways. Anarchism shares with liberalism a radical commitment to individual freedom while rejecting liberalism's competitive property relations."