I have always considered myself a Misesian utilitarian libertarian, but after reading Rothbard's For a New Liberty, I have begun to question that stance.
What arguments for natural rights are your favorite? Can anybody suggest any other books that I should read?
My favorite argument is the same as the Declaration of Independence - natural rights are inalienable. There is no way to infringe natural rights, only man made rights may be infringed upon. That is why I'm and anarchist. Anarchism is not a political system - it is a discription of the fact that natural rights are inalienable. All statist systems, which exist over every person who interacts with others, occur within the confines of a reality which is comprised of anarchy. Anarchy is to politics as physics is to baseball. It is a description of the distribution of natural rights.
I think you should read "The economics and ethics of private property" - Hans-Hermann Hoppe. It really drives home the emportance of converting the state system into the controlled burn of pure economic governance. Milton Friedman said that capitalism is necessary for freedom, but not sufficiant. But, what are the limits to a capitalist social order? How much coercion is necessary to sustain free markets? Governance is all about property rights, and Hoppe's book investigates the edges of the intersection of property rights, the distribution of goods and services, and the law.
miksirhc: What arguments for natural rights are your favorite?
What arguments for natural rights are your favorite?
Self evidence.
Only I can control my actions. My self determination is inalienable.
The only alternative to natural rights and self ownership is someone else owning me. (If no one else tries to claim ownsership over me, I am self owning by default; in practice, if not in name.)
Universal self ownership is the only possible equal protection under the law. The only alternative is slavery.
Inquisitor:I haven't read their works yet, but I think Veatch's Rational Man, Rasmussen's and den Uyl's The Norms of Liberty and Liberty and Nature and of course Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness are good places to look to. Maybe even Aquinas.
To what Inquisitor wrote, I would add the following:
Douglas Rasmussen's "A Groundwork for Rights: Man's Natural End" in JLS - argues that man's natural end is the proper foundation for rights and that human action must be understood in light of an ultimate end.
Roderick Long's Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand in which he critiques Rand on some things and puts forth Aristotle as a better alternative.
Long's "Slavery Contracts and Inalienable Rights" - in my dissertation, I'm extending his argument against slavery contracts to the state.
Long's "Why Does Justice Have Good Consequences?" - demonstrates the praxeological instability of rule-consequentialism, among other things.
And to plug myself, the working draft of one of the chapters of my dissertation on Aristotelian libertarianism. In this chapter I attempt to synthesize the differing accounts of rights provided by Ramussen/Den Uyl and Long.
I favor the burgeoning tradition of Aristotelian liberalism/libertarianism which can provide an integrated theory of virtue ethics and natural rights that allows for a robust but highly individualized conception of the good while protecting the absolute liberty of the individual.
For more on Aristotle himself, and the roots of liberalism in his thought, I recommend Fred D. Miller, Jr.'s Nature, Justice and Rights in Aristotle's Politics and Roderick Long's amendment to it, "Aristotle's Conception of Freedom" (Review of Metaphysics 49 (1996), pp. 775-802; also see his website, it's been reprinted in an anthology too). There's a lot of other good stuff by Long online and off too, both on Aristotle and aspects of Aristotelian libertarianism.
Yours in liberty,Geoffrey Allan Plauche, Ph.D.Political ScienceLouisiana State University
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"(Who watches the watchmen?)-Juvenal, Satires VI.347
Also in JLS there is Douglas Den Uyl's "In Defense of Natural End Ethics: A Rejoinder to O'Neil and Osterfeld."
miksirhc: I have always considered myself a Misesian utilitarian libertarian, but after reading Rothbard's For a New Liberty, I have begun to question that stance. What arguments for natural rights are your favorite? Can anybody suggest any other books that I should read?
You liked Rothbard on natural rights? Then why not ask Rothbard who he recommends :)
"Prof. Hans Hoppe, a fairly recent immigrant from West Germany, has brought an enormous gift to the American libertarian movement. In a dazzling breakthrough for political philosophy in general and for libertarianism in particular, he has managed to transcend the famous is/ought, fact/value dichotomy that has plagued philosophy since the days of the scholastics, and that had brought modern libertarianism into a tiresome deadlock. Not only that: Hans Hoppe has managed to establish the case for anarcho-capitalist-Lockean rights in an unprecedentedly hardcore manner, one that makes my own natural law/natural rights position seem almost wimpy in comparison."
...
"Hoppe's most important breakthrough has been to start from standard praxeological axioms (e.g., that every human being acts, that is, employs means to arrive at goals), and, remarkably, to arrive at a hard-nosed anarcho-Lockean political ethic. For over thirty years I have been preaching to the economics profession that this cannot be done : that economists cannot arrive at any policy conclusions (e.g., that government should do X or should not do Y) strictly from value-free economics. In order to come to a policy conclusion, I have long maintained, economists have to come up \nth some kind of ethical system. Note that all branches of modern "welfare economics" have attempted to do just that: to continue to be "scientific" and therefore value-free, and yet to make all sorts of cherished policy pronouncements (since most economists would like at some point to get beyond their mathematical models and draw politically-relevant conclusions). Most economists would not be caught dead with an ethical system or principle, believing that this would detract from their "scientific" status.
"And yet, remarkably and extraordinarily, Hans Hoppe has proven me wrong. He has done it: he has deduced an anarcho-Lockean rights ethic from self-evident axioms. Not only that: he has demonstrated that, just like the action axiom itself, it is impossible to deny or disagree with the anarcho-Lockean rights ethic without falling immediately into self-contradiction and self-refutation. In other worlds, Hans Hoppe has brought to political ethics what Misesians are familiar with in praxeology and Aristotelian-Randians are familiar with in metaphysics: what we might call "hard-core axiomatics. " It is self contradictory and therefore self-refuting for anyone to deny the Misesian -xiom (that everyone acts), since the very attempt to deny ith is itself an action. It is self contradictory and therefore self-refuting to deny the Randian axiom of consciousness, since some consciousness has to be making this attempt at denial. For if someone cannot attempt to deny a proposition without employing it, he is not only caught in an inextricable self-contradiction; he is also granting to that proposition the status of an axiom.'"
"Nevertheless, by coming out with a genuinely new theory (amazing in itself,considering the long history of political philosophy) Hoppe is in danger of offending all the intellectual vested interests of the libertarian camp..."
"Hoppe has lifted the American movement out of decades of sterile debate - and deadlock, and provided us a route for future development of the libertarian discipline."
http://hanshoppe.com/publications/liberty_symposium.pdf
Google Hoppe and "argumentation ethics". You should come across one of several defenses of his thesis, and more than a few discussions of it.
Hehe it's really embarrassing that Rothbard said that, eh?
http://libertarian-left.blogspot.com/
Donny with an A: Hehe it's really embarrassing that Rothbard said that, eh?
How so?
Donny with an A:Hehe it's really embarrassing that Rothbard said that, eh?
Hah! :D
Pauled, to plug my own work: On the Objectivity of Self-Ownership
Donny with an A:Pauled, to plug my own work: On the Objectivity of Self-Ownership
I'm not sure I understand what you just said, but my point was that it's embarrassing that Rothbard wholeheartedly bought into an intellectual framework with such obvious flaws. Are you arguing that my rejection of Hoppe's claims was premature?
gplauce, could you please paraphrase your hah! ?
kaxahdan:gplauce, could you please paraphrase your hah! ?
I thought what Donny said was really funny. I've been arguing with Paul about the deficiencies of AE for months now on a different forum.
gplauche, thanks.
now i have a penny for denny, as i'm just trying to digest your questioning the nexus b/w morality and owning. i think it's important. are you saying it is totally nonexistent, not even implied? isn't it a kind of coersion and hence "immoral" for a stranger to even use one's pen without permission?
kaxahdan:gplauche, thanks. now i have a penny for denny, as i'm just trying to digest your questioning the nexus b/w morality and owning. i think it's important. are you saying it is totally nonexistent, not even implied? isn't it a kind of coersion and hence "immoral" for a stranger to even use one's pen without permission?
I believe in the rights to life, liberty and property. I just think that Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics is flawed and can't be fixed.
I'm arguing that the idea of ownership, even self ownership, requires our acknowledgement of certain ethical ideas. Some ethical claims (e.g., murder is wrong) are relatively uncontroversial, but they are still normative in nature. Hoppe tries to get around making normative claims, as does Rothbard, but I don't believe they succeed, or that anyone can. Ethics is not a science which can be settled by appeals to empirical evidence.
Donny with an A:I'm not sure I understand what you just said, but my point was that it's embarrassing that Rothbard wholeheartedly bought into an intellectual framework with such obvious flaws. Are you arguing that my rejection of Hoppe's claims was premature?
Yes, i have to admit i had to ponder a while to identify your point, but that is the point i finally decided you were making and that is what i was responding to. I think that it is one thing to disagree with Hoppe, and to disagree with Rothbard's assessment of Hoppe's argument. But to express the sentiment that one thinks Rothbard's comments are an embarrassment to himself, should come, if at all, after one can first demonstrate he's grasped the argument in question and has a sound rebuttal to it. And you fail to do this with the link you provide. So i view your rejection as yes, weak, premature, and for you, an embarrassment.
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