 Kant first defends the right to occupy and appropriate objects as implicit in, and justified by, the exercise of individual freedom. He then points out that removing things from common use prevents other people from enjoying the object in question, and this unilateral exercise of one’s freedom is therefore incompatible with the exercise of other people’s freedom. The only way out of this dilemma is through the multilateral recognition of ‘rights of property’ (by which he means agreement on the obligation to respect the acquisition, transfer and use of objects in the external world) and institutions of justice to set and enforce these multilateral rights. This provides an argument for why people who live in close proximity to one another, and therefore cannot avoid interacting, are morally obliged to enter the civil condition and acknowledge a political authority whose coercive law can guarantee their property rights. On Kant’s account, everyone in the state of nature has an obligation to leave a ‘a state devoid of justice’ and replace it with ‘a rightful condition’.