The Heterodox ‘Fourth Paradigm’ of Libertarianism: An Abstract Eleutherology Plus Critical Rationalism

This article investigates the key libertarian insight into property and orthodox libertarianism’s philosophical confusion, endeavouring to clarify the differences among abstract liberty, practical liberty, moral defences, and critical rationalism. Additionally, this article considers the two dominant (‘Lockean’ and ‘Hobbesian’) conceptions of interpersonal liberty, and provides a general account of libertarianism as a subset of classical liberalism, defended from a narrower view. Two abstract (non-propertarian, non-normative) theories of interpersonal liberty are developed and defended, and practical implications for these are derived and compared. Finally, the article relates this positive analysis to morals, and concludes that the new paradigm of libertarianism solves the problems of the old paradigm.