Is libertarianism a progressive doctrine, or a reactionary one? Does libertarianism promise to liberate the poor and the marginalized from the yoke of state oppression, or does talk of "equal liberty" obscure the ways in which libertarian doctrines serve the interests of the rich and powerful? Through an examination of the history of libertarianism, this book argues that the answer is (and always has been): both. In this book we explore the neglected 19th century roots of (...) libertarianism to show that it emerged first as a radical and progressive doctrine. Libertarianism took a conservative turn in the 20th century primarily as a reaction against the rise of state socialism. Now, with international communism no longer a threat, libertarianism is in the midst of an identity crisis, with progressive and reactionary elements struggling to claim the doctrine as their own, most notably on issues of race. This book tells the history of libertarianism through an examination of six defining themes: private property, skepticism of authority, free markets, individualism, spontaneous order, and individual liberty. In doing so, it reveals that history to be longer, wider, and considerably more diverse than is commonly believed. It is a history full of internal tensions, idiosyncratic personalities, and surprising arguments. It is a history of the men (and sometimes women) who called themselves: The Individualists. (shrink)

According to libertarianism, free will requires indeterminism. Many opponents of libertarianism have suggested that indeterminism would inject luck or chance into human action in a problematic way. Alfred Mele’s recent “contrast argument” is an especially clear effort to make this kind of objection to libertarianism precise. This paper is response to the contrast argument on behalf of libertarianism. I argue that worries about luck and chance, enshrined in the contrast argument, arise largely from confusion and lack (...) of imagination. I address the confusion by disambiguating various conclusions the contrast argument is supposed to support. In each case, I claim the libertarian turns out to be on solid ground. I address the lack of imagination by developing (rather tentatively) a hint from William James regarding the relationship between chance and gift. (shrink)

This retrospective, covering half a century, is a personal history of modern libertarianism. It provides some historical perspective on the growth of libertarianism and its impact on society, especially for those who were born into an existing libertarian movement, including political and academic paths. As outsiders, Austrians and libertarians can expect more than their share of difficult times and roadblocks, although that situation has improved over time. It also shows the limitations of the political path to liberty (...) and the importance of the Austrian view that society changes via emphasis on sound economic science, its practicality, and its subsequent impact on ideology. Finally, it conveys the importance of solving practical problems and puzzles via the thin, radical version of libertarianism. (shrink)

Recently, several libertarian philosophers have argued that we appear free on the basis of widespread experience, and that this appearance justifies believing that we enjoy libertarian free will (e.g. Pink 2004 and Swinburne 2013). Such arguments have a long history in philosophy but have been easily dismissed on one of two grounds: either the appearance of freedom does not exist, or else it is an illusion. In this paper, I argue that although presentations of the argument have been historically (...) inadequate, non-libertarians have also seriously underappreciated the force of libertarian appeals to phenomenology. I show that, when properly construed, the appearance of freedom constitutes a wide range of diverse phenomena in need of explanation, of which extant non-libertarian alternatives provide only partial explanations, or else fail to explain altogether. In identifying this lacuna, I take the first step towards providing a better non-libertarian alternative. (shrink)

Originally published in 1934, this book presents the content of an inaugural lecture delivered by the British philosopher Charles Dunbar Broad, upon taking up the position of Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge University. The text presents a discussion of the relationship between determinism, indeterminism and libertarianism. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the writings of Broad and the history of philosophy.

This book argues that political libertarianism can be grounded in widely shared, everyday moral beliefs--particularly in strictures against shifting our burdens onto others. It also seeks to connect these philosophical arguments with related work in economics, history, and politics for a wide-ranging discussion of political economy.

Originally published in 1934, this book presents the content of an inaugural lecture delivered by the British philosopher Charles Dunbar Broad (1887-1971), upon taking up the position of Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge University. The text presents a discussion of the relationship between determinism, indeterminism and libertarianism. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the writings of Broad and the history of philosophy.

There is by now broad consensus in the critical literature that neoliberalism and social conservatism have frequently coexisted in practice. Yet the alt-right fits none of the previously identified alliances: this is not the neoliberal neoconservatism of the Reagan and Bush years, nor the neoliberal communitarianism of the Third Way, nor even a form of neoliberal authoritarianism. Instead, the alt-right claims intellectual descent from economic libertarianism, on the one hand, and paleo- (as opposed to neo-) conservatism on the other. (...) This paper traces the contours of this ‘paleolibertarian’ alliance, first by following the volatile political trajectory of Murray Rothbard, the foremost philosopher of American libertarianism, and, second, by uncovering precedents in the longer history of the American far right. It will be argued that paleoconservatism makes for a uniquely powerful ally because it offers a workable response to libertarianism’s intrinsic contradictions. (shrink)

Times of heightened risk to the physical safety of their citizens inevitably cause democracies to recalibrate their institutions and processes and to reinterpret existing legal norms, with greater emphasis on security, and less on individual liberty, than in "normal" times. This article explores the ways in which the American courts have responded to the tension between civil liberties and national security in times of crises. This history illustrates that courts have rejected both of the two polar positions that characterize (...) public discourse on these issues. Civil libertarians argue that political bodies are too easily gripped by passions, hysteria, and self-interest in these times and that courts therefore ought to play a central role in protecting liberty. Executive unilateralists argue that the qualities that uniquely characterize the executive branch, such as decisiveness, access to information, and efficiency, must become so dominant in these moments that few checks, if any, should constrain executive prerogatives. Oddly, civil libertarians and executive unilateralists find implicit consensus in the view that, in times of war, courts have tended not to play a significant role in overseeing executive power. We argue to the contrary: historically, a significant constitutional tradition of judicial scrutiny in the United States during times of war does exist. But this scrutiny does not take the form of courts making first-order substantive judgments about the content of liberty or other claimed constitutional rights. Nor does it take the form of judicial assessment of how significant or credible the national security claims of the executive branch might be. Instead, judicial oversight has been focused on preserving the institutional structures and processes through which decisionmaking on these issues takes place. The judicial role has centered on the second-order question of whether the right institutional processes have been used to make the decisions at issue, rather than on what the content of the underlying rights ought to be. This approach has historically rejected or resisted most claims of executive unilateralism. When courts have upheld the government's actions, they have done so only after a judgment that Congress, as well as the executive, has endorsed the action. This approach has also rejected the civil libertarian framework. When courts find bilateral institutional endorsement, they have typically accepted the joint political judgment of how liberty and security tradeoffs ought to be made. By focusing on congressional endorsement of emergency measures, the courts have created a broad-based political accountability for the actions taken in the name of national security. We suggest that even if congressional endorsement is more apparent than real in some of these contexts, the judicial maintenance of this structure of rhetorical justifications sustains desirable understandings of political structure. Because the President and Congress draw from different political constituencies in a presidential rather than a parliamentary system, we also raise questions about whether the American judicial approach to these questions should be limited to political systems with separated executive and legislative powers. (shrink)

In the following paper, I wish to examine a problem for the theist libertarian. On the one hand, libertarians insist that freedom requires possible alternatives open to the agent. On the other hand, God’s perfectly formed moral character implies that He always does the morally best. Give His moral character, then, it appears that there are no possible alternatives open to God. We thus get a dilemma for the theist libertarian: either a) God is not libertarian free – because His (...) moral character rules out possible alternatives; or b) God’s character is not perfectly formed – because libertarian freedom requires that it is possible for God to act out of character. In the present paper, I argue that Thomas Reid, a paradigmatic libertarian, has the theoretical tools to retain a robust account of libertarian freedom without compromising a robust account of perfectly formed characters. In sum, it is necessary that agents with fully formed characters always act in character (read de dicto), but it is possible that agents with fully formed characters act out of character (read de re). The former claim captures the robustness of perfectly formed moral characters and the latter claim captures the robustness of libertarian freedom. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus that Emilie Du Châtelet’s challenging essay “On Freedom” defends compatibilism. I offer an alternative, libertarian reading of the essay. I lay out the prima facie textual evidence for such a reading. I also explain how apparently compatibilist remarks in “On Freedom” can be read as aspects of a sophisticated type of libertarianism that rejects blind or arbitrary choice. To this end, I consider the historical context of Du Châtelet’s essay, and especially the dialectic between (...) various strands of eighteenth-century libertarianism and compatibilism. (shrink)

Descartes’s View of the Will Has generally been found problematic and unsatisfactory, especially by those who have read it, or elements of it, in libertarian terms. Attempts to repair the theory, even by sympathetic interpreters, seem only to have aggravated the view’s putative shortcomings—again, especially among those who have read it, or part of it, in libertarian terms—which suggests that the libertarian reading itself might be unsatisfactory. The aim of this paper is to show that the linchpin text on which (...) libertarian readings have been based provides no basis for such readings. The text is the so-called letter to the Jesuit Denis Mesland of 9 February 1645. Among seminal authors—those most .. (shrink)

Building upon his previous books about Marx, Hayek, and Rand, _Total Freedom_ completes what _Lingua Franca_ has called Sciabarra’s "epic scholarly quest" to reclaim dialectics, usually associated with the Marxian left, as a methodology that can revivify libertarian thought. Part One surveys the history of dialectics from the ancient Greeks through the Austrian school of economics. Part Two investigates in detail the work of Murray Rothbard as a leading modern libertarian, in whose thought Sciabarra finds both dialectical and nondialectical (...) elements. Ultimately, Sciabarra aims for a dialectical-libertarian synthesis, highlighting the need to think of the "totality" of interconnections in a dynamic system as the way to ensure human freedom while avoiding "totalitarianism". (shrink)

Libertarianism seems vulnerable to a serious problem concerning present luck, because it requires indeterminism somewhere in the causal chain leading to directly free action. Compatibilism, in contrast, is thought to be free of this problem, as not requiring indeterminism in the causal chain. I argue that this view is false: compatibilism is subject to a problem of present luck. This is less of a problem for compatibilism than for libertarianism. However, its effects are just as devastating for one (...) kind of compatibilism, the kind of compatibilism which is history‐sensitive, and therefore must take the problem of constitutive luck seriously. The problem of present luck confronting compatibilism is sufficient to undermine the history‐sensitive compatibilist's response to remote – constitutive – luck. (shrink)

Luck egalitarianism is a family of egalitarian theories of distributive justice that give a special place to luck, choice, and responsibility. These theories can be understood as responding to perceived weaknesses in influential earlier theories of both the left – in particular Rawls’ liberal egalitarianism (1971) – and the right – Nozick’s libertarianism (1974) stands out here. Rawls put great emphasis on the continuity of his theory with the great social contract theories of modern political thought, particularly emphasising its (...) Kantian character, while Nozick overtly develops his theory as an elaboration of John Locke’s account of property. By contrast, how luck egalitarianism is related to the history of political thought or philosophy more generally has been left unexplored by its proponents. Perhaps this is because they see luck egalitarianism, with its focus on individual choice and association with such contemporary concerns as equality of opportunity, as without significant predecessors in the canon. My purpose in this chapter is to make the tentative first steps towards identifying some historical antecedents of luck egalitarianism among the main works of Western political thought, in particular Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Locke. (shrink)

Abstract In his critique of modern libertarian thinking, Jeffrey Friedman (1997) argues that libertarian moral theory makes social science irrelevant. However, if its moral claims are hypothetical rather than categorical imperatives, then economics, history, sociology, and other disciplines play a central role in libertarian thought. Limitations on human knowledge necessitate abstractly formulated rules, among which are claims of rights. Further, Friedman's remarks on freedom rest on an erroneous understanding of the role of definitions in philosophy, and his characterization of (...) the ?right to do wrong? as a ?logical contradiction? reveals a misunderstanding of logic. (shrink)

It is a delicate task to write about libertarianism. Camps of both of its lovers and haters are vast. Within some not-so-narrow circles, one risks being considered an anti-intellectual even for cal...

On Black Friday, March 27, 1981, at 9:00 A.M. in San Francisco, the “libertarian” power elite of the Cato Institute, consisting of President Edward H. Crane III and Other Shareholder Charles G. Koc...

Isaiah Berlin famously attacked a view he called historical inevitability. He believed that a causal view of history entails the adoption of an extreme deterministic position – a kind of determinism which would rule out the possibility of free will, turning moral responsibility a notion void of meaning. His thesis was also based on the assumption that historians are not just chroniclers of the past but need to engage in moral judgments; therefore should determinism hold true of our world, (...) our moral language – and consequently much of our historical language – would need to undergo serious revision. In this brief article we look in some detail at the arguments offered by Berlin in support of his thesis and offer criticism. (shrink)

In der gesamten Neuzeit war Freiheit ein Schlüsselbegriff für das Selbstverständnis Europas und Deutschlands. Doch was galt hierzulande zu welchen Zeiten als "Freiheit"? Wie und von wem wurden in Deutschland seit der Frühaufklärung Freiheitsvorstellungen formuliert, diskutiert oder auch machtpolitisch vereinnahmt? Anhand ausgewählter Texte aus vier Jahrhunderten verdeutlicht dieses Buch, dass sich Freiheitsvorstellungen in Deutschland wandelten. Der Begriff blieb jedoch stets eine zentrale politische Kategorie, um das Verhältnis des Einzelnen zur Gesellschaft zu verhandeln. Immer bewegte er sich dabei im Spannungsfeld von (...) Selbstbestimmung und Kontrolle, Freizügigkeit und Sicherheit, Alterität und Konformität, Emanzipation und Diskriminierung, Gleichheit und Ungleichheit - also von Themen, die auch heute noch ins Mark der politischen und gesellschaftlichen Debatten treffen. (shrink)

Libertarianism has, seemingly, always been in disrepute among philosophers. While throughout history philosophers have offered different reasons for their dissatisfaction with libertarianism, one worry is recurring: namely a worry about luck. To many, it seems that if our choices and actions are undetermined, then we cannot control them in a way that allows for freedom and responsibility. My fundamental aim in this paper is to place libertarians on a more promising track for formulating a defensible libertarian theory. (...) I begin by arguing that Robert Kane's influential formulation of libertarianism actually generates an acute worry about luck, showing specifically that Kane's recipe for solving the problem of luck and his attendant conception of the location and role of indeterminism derived from it are deeply problematic. I then offer a reformulation of libertarianism ? particularly a new conception of the location and role of indeterminism ? that is capable of avoiding the problems that beset Kane's theory and that, I argue, places libertarians on a more promising track for formulating a defensible theory. (shrink)

A lively history of American libertarianism and its decay into dangerous fantasy. In 2010 in South Fulton, Tennessee, each household paid the local fire department a yearly fee of $75.00. That year, Gene Cranick's house accidentally caught fire. But the fire department refused to come because Cranick had forgotten to pay his yearly fee, leaving his home in ashes. Observers across the political spectrum agreed-some with horror and some with enthusiasm-that this revealed the true face of libertarianism. (...) But libertarianism did not always require callous indifference to the misfortunes of others. Modern libertarianism began with Friedrich Hayek's admirable corrective to the Depression-era vogue for central economic planning. It resisted oppressive state power. It showed how capitalism could improve life for everyone. Yet today, it's a toxic blend of anarchism, disdain for the weak, and rationalization for environmental catastrophe. Libertarians today accept new, radical arguments-which crumble under scrutiny-that justify dishonest business practices and Covid deniers who refuse to wear masks in the name of "freedom." Andrew Koppelman's book traces libertarianism's evolution from Hayek's moderate pro-market ideas to the romantic fabulism of Murray Rothbard, Robert Nozick, and Ayn Rand, and Charles Koch's promotion of climate change denial. Burning Down the House is the definitive history of an ideological movement that has reshaped American politics. (shrink)

In the twentieth century there were two great political and social paradigms, the liberal-democratic and the libertarian. The central idea of the first approach is isonomy: the exclusion of any discrimination on the basis that legal rights are afforded equally to all people. The central idea of the second approach is rather to acknowledge and address a broader spectrum of known inequalities. Such an approach, Bellanca argues, allows the pursuit of pluralism as well as a more realistic and complex view (...) of what equality is. Here he analyzes the main economic and political institutions of an isocratic society, and in so doing, effectively outlines how a utopian society can be structurally and anthropologically realized. This book is ideal reading for an audience interested in the critique of contemporary capitalism through a renewed perspective of democratic socialism and leftist libertarianism. Nicolò Bellanca is Associate Professor of Development Economics at the University of Florence, Italy. He is the author of a broad array of scholarly articles, books and textbooks about both the history of economic thought and development economics. His current research focuses on the theory of institutional change. (shrink)

Książka stanowi syntetyczną próbę spojrzenia na libertarianizm. Porządkując sposoby rozumienia i opisywania libertarianizmu podejmuje dyskusje z tezami utożsamiającymi libertarianizm z doktryną prokapitalistyczną czy prosocjalistyczną, identyfikującymi go z anarchizmem. Wykazuje jego obecność również w metafizyce, naturyzmie, postępowej edukacji i teorii wolnej miłości, liberalizmie, socjalizmie, marksizmie i feminizmie. Prezentacja historii użycia pojęć „libertarianin”, „libertarianizm” i im podobnych od XVIII wieku do XX wieku (w Anglii, Stanach Zjednoczonych, Francji, Rosji, Włoszech, Hiszpanii), koncentruje się przede wszystkim na aspekcie myśli, ale także odwołuje się do (...) dziejów ruchów społecznych. Kończy się próbą zdefiniowania libertarianizmu. The book is a synthetic attempt to look at libertarianism. Through organizing ways how libertarianism is understood and described, it starts the discussions of the theses that recognize libertarianism as the pro-capitalist or pro-socialist doctrine, identifying it with anarchism. It shows its presence in metaphysics, naturism, progressive education and the theory of free love, liberalism, socialism, Marxism and feminism. The presentation of the history of the use of the terms “libertarian”, “libertarianism” and the like since the eighteenth century is primarily focused on the aspect of thought, but it also refers to the history of social movements. The article ends with an attempt to define libertarianism. Das Buch ist ein synthetischer Versuch einen Überblick über Libertarismus zu verschaffen. Indem es die Arten des Verstehens und der Beschreibung ordnet, erörtert das Werk die Thesen, die den Libertarismus mit den prokapitalistischen oder prosozialistischen Doktrinen gleichsetzen und ihn mit Anarchismus identifizieren. Zeigt seine Anwesenheit auch in Metaphysik, Naturismus, moderner Bildung und der Theorie der freien Liebe, Liberalismus, Sozialismus, Marxismus und Feminismus. Präsentiert die Geschichte des Begriffs „Libertär“, „Libertarismus“ und ihnen gleichen seit 18. bis 20. Jahrhundert (in England, Vereinigten Staaten, Frankreich, Russland, Italien, Spanien) konzentriert sich vor allem auf den Aspekt des Denkens aber bezieht sich auch auf die Geschichte der sozialen Bewegungen. Schließlich versucht das Buch Libertarismus zu definieren. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest ukazanie nieznanych w Polsce dziejów libertarianizmu w Stanach Zjednoczonych. Porządkując sposoby rozumienia i opisywania libertarianizmu podejmuje on dyskusje z tezami utożsamiającymi libertarianizm z doktryną prokapitalistyczną czy prosocjalistyczną czy identyfikującymi go z anarchizmem. Prezentacja historii użycia pojęć „libertariański”, „libertarianin”, „libertarianizm”, od II połowy XIX wieku do lat 40. XX wieku, koncentruje się przede wszystkim na aspekcie myśli, ale także odwołuje się do dziejów ruchów społecznych. Kończy się próbą zdefiniowania libertarianizmu. The aim of this paper is to show the (...) unknown in Poland, history of libertarianism in the United States. Through organizing ways how libertarianism is understood and described, it starts the discussions of the theses that recognize libertarianism as the pro-capitalist or pro-socialist doctrine, identifying it with anarchism. The presentation of the history of the use of the terms “libertarian”, “libertarianism”, since the second half of the 19th century to the 40s the 20th century, is primarily focused on the aspect of thought, but it also refers to the history of social movements. The article ends with an attempt to define libertarianism. (shrink)

Two recently published oral histories highlight the long-term trend concerning the mainstreaming of Objectivism, the political and economic ideas of the libertarian conservative writer and ideologue, Ayn Rand. Scott McConnell’s sympathetic interview collection focuses on supporters and acquaintances from Rand’s active period in the 1960s and 1970s. These supporters and acquaintances include former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, who provides McConnell with his considered views concerning Rand. Gary Weiss’s critical interview collection focusses on her more recent supporters, with one displeased (...) and insightful interviewee to be found in both collections. Weiss’s collection reveals the role played by Objectivists in galvanizing the focus of the populist Tea Party movement. Both oral histories reveal the role played by the media and popular culture in mainstreaming Rand’s views. The review ends by comparing Randolph Stow’s socially responsive individualism as described in his novel 'Tourmaline' with Rand’s transactional individualism as described in 'Atlas Shrugged.'. (shrink)

lecture 1. Setting the table -- lecture 2. Liberalism introduced -- lecture 3. Liberalism -- lecture 4. Liberalism in dispute -- lecture 5. Libertarianism -- lecture 6. Conservatism, part 1 -- lecture 7. Conservatism, part 2 -- lecture 8. How society works -- lecture 9. Social capital, part 1 -- lecture 10. Social capital, part 2 -- lecture 11. Socialism -- lecture 12. Non-Marxist socialism -- lecture 13. Socialism, problems & objections -- lecture 14. Ecological ideas, part 1 -- (...) lecture 15. Ecological ideas, part 2 -- lecture 16. Feminism -- lecture 17. Problems of liberal feminism -- lecture 18. Feminism concluded -- lecture 19. Nationalism -- lecture 20. Multiculturalism -- lecture 21. Gay & lesbian politics -- lecture 22. Religion & politics in the West -- lecture 23. Toleration, censorship & pornography -- lecture 24. The end of history. (shrink)

Les cinq penseurs présentés ici par Patrick Chastenet partagent le même amour de la liberté et de la nature. Trois se réclament de l'anarchisme, deux en sont proches, tous ont profondément enrichi le terreau libertaire de l'écologie politique. L'auteur s'est lié d'amitié avec Jacques Ellul, dont il est un spécialiste reconnu. Il a sympathisé avec Ivan Illich et Bernard Charbonneau avant de découvrir les oeuvres d'Élisée Reclus et de Murray Bookchin. Son livre, rigoureux et vivant, nous introduit aux pensées de (...) ces précurseurs encore trop méconnues mais dont l'actualité n'a pas fini de nous étonner"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This is the first book to examine behavioral theories on social preference from institutional and philosophical perspectives using economic experiments. The experimental method in economics has challenged central behavioral assumptions based on rationality and selfishness, proposing empirical evidence that not only profit seeking but also social preferences matter in individuals' decision making. By performing distribution experiments in institutional contexts, the author extends assumptions about human behavior to understand actual social economy. The book also aims to enrich behavioral theories of economics (...) directed toward institutional evolution. The author scrutinizes how specific institutional conditions enhance or mute individuals' selfish incentives or their fairness ideals such as egalitarian, performance-based, labor-value radicalism or libertarianism. From experimental results and their analysis, implications for actual problems in social economy and institutional change are derived: why performance-based pay often fails to promote workers' productivity; why labor wages decline whereas shareholder's values increase after financialization; and whether socially responsible investment can be a social institution for corporate governance. The book is also addressed to philosophers of social sciences interested in how experimental methods can contribute to developing cognition of human behaviors and be extended to social theories. Referring to behavioral theorists in the history of economic thought, the author discusses the meanings of experiments in the methodology of social sciences. She also proposes new ways of interpreting experimental results by reviving historic social theories and applying them to actual social problems. (shrink)

Part I: Building blocks. 1. Folk convictions -- 2. Doubts about libertarianism -- 3. Nihilism and revisionism -- 4. Building a better theory -- Part II. A theory of moral responsibility. 5. The primacy of reasons -- 6. Justifying the practice -- 7. Responsible agency -- 8. Blame and desert -- 9. History and manipulation --10. Some conclusions.

The present paper probes the relation between the metaphysics of human freedom and the Rothbardian branch of Austrian economics. It transpires that Rothbard and his followers embrace metaphysical libertarianism, which holds that free will is incompatible with determinism and that the thesis of determinism is false as pertaining to human action. However, as we demonstrate, their economics with its reliance on value scales requires for its tenability compatibilist freedom. Moreover, we attempt to show that the notion of value scales (...) (or preferences) postulated by them implies that value scales are determinative of choices people make. We contend that it is for this reason that the said Austrians should jettison their metaphysical libertarianism. (shrink)

The problem of luck is advanced and defended against libertarian theories of responsibility-enabling ability. An outline of an account of ability is articulated to explore some features of the sort of ability moral responsibility requires. The account vindicates the luck objection and suggests a novel puzzle: Libertarianism is structurally barred from answering the problem of luck because responsibility requires, but inherently lacks, an explanation from reason states to actions that preserves reliability of connection between responsibility-grounding reasons-sensitivity and action.

It’s a commonplace that Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke draws his policies from Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s A Monetary History of the United States. With that in mind, this article establishes five points. First, contrary to conventional wisdom, Friedman and Schwartz merely insinuate their claim the Fed caused the Depression in MH. Second, their criticisms of Fed policy during the Depression, which turn on its refusal to adopt open market purchases, repudiate Friedman’s famed libertarianism and market fundamentalism. (...) Third, Friedman and Schwartz don’t refute the practical objections of bankers who opposed OMPs in the 1930s. Consequently, Bernanke’s policies for addressing the financial crisis risk doing precisely what Friedman’s targets warned against—encouraging financial speculation without addressing problems of unemployment. Fourth, Friedman and Schwartz’s prescriptions entail a neoliberal, not a libertarian, state, one governed by technocrats and answerable to financial markets. Finally, what accounts for and unifies Friedman’s contradictions is the beneficiary—finance. (shrink)

‘We Are Also Here.’ Whose Revolution Will Democracy Be? Steven Winter’s argument is premised on a sharp contrast of individualist and social revolutions. I elaborate my doubts about his argument on three accounts, involving feminist perspectives at various points. First, I take issue with Winter’s portrayal of liberal theory, redirecting the focus of his concern to economic libertarianism rather than liberalism, and arguing a more hospitable attitude to the Kantian pith in the theory of democracy. Secondly, I discuss his (...) conceptualization of democracy, adding the conceptual distinction of civil society and public sphere. Thirdly, I question his normative notion of socially situated selves as having an intrinsic relation to social freedom. I moreover consult cultural history on the gendered symbolics of market and democracy to further problematize Winter’s take on either’s meaning for social freedom. (shrink)

Nagle, Cormac The goal of this essay is to seek a better understanding of the freedom of the children of God that Jesus Christ lived, taught and bequeathed to the world. To pursue this we consider briefly the meaning of independence as distinct from childish dependence and libertarianism. The essay goes on to present an overview of the teaching of the New Testament on law and freedom. Since there have been different understandings of the nature of authority in the (...) church and especially the practical exercise of authority, we examine its history and tradition. This helps us to avoid being impaled exclusively on one or other approach, whether legalist or relativist or one burdened by a particular culture or historical circumstance. (shrink)

Libertarians claim that human behaviour is undetermined and cannot be predicted from knowledge of past history even in principle since it is based on the random movements of quantum mechanics. Determinists on the other hand deny thatmacroscopic phenomena can be activated bysub-microscopic events, and assert that if human action is unpredictable in the way claimed by libertarians, it must be aimless and irrational. This is not true of some types of random behaviour described in this paper. Random behaviour may (...) make one unpredictable to opponents and may therefore be rational. Similarly, playing a game with a mixed strategy may have an unpredictable outcome in every single play, but the strategy is rational, in that it is meant to maximize the expected value of an objective, be it private or social. As to whether the outcome of such behaviour is genuinely unpredictable as in quantum mechanics, or predictable by a hypothetical outside observer knowing all natural laws, it is argued that it makes no difference in practice, as long as it is not humanly predictable. Thus we have a new version of libertarianism which is compatible with determinism. (shrink)

Some recent hostile responses to the rapid growth of Libertarianism have depicted it as a febrile spin-off from the post-hippy 'Me Decade'. In fact we are the inheritors of an illustrious centuries old tradition, largely overlooked by the myopic current fashions in the history of ideas. Liberals like J. S. Mill and Jeremy Bentham receive plenty of attention in college courses, but the libertarian tradition as a whole is largely ignored, and misrepresented where touched upon. Mill and Bentham (...) constitute one aspect - in many ways the feeblest - of liberalism. Dozens of thinkers and activists who embodied the most systematic or radical elements in Libertarianism have been consigned to the Memory Hole. (shrink)

This chapter analyses the problem of free will and moral responsibility, to which the history of philosophy records three standard reactions. Compatibilists maintain that it is possible for us to have the free will required for moral responsibility if determinism is true. Others contend that determinism is not compossible with our having the free will required for moral responsibility – they are incompatibilists – but they resist the reasons for determinism and claim that we do possess free will of (...) this kind. They advocate the libertarian position. Hard determinists are also incompatibilists, but they accept that determinism is true and that we lack the sort of free will required for moral responsibility. Source and leeway theories, and the notions of incompatibilism and libertarianism, are discussed. (shrink)

Artykuł jest próbą ukazania etyki troski jako szczególnego i ciekawego przypadku ekologii społecznej i doktryny zrównoważonego rozwoju. Stawia sobie za cel również unaocznienie politycznego i ekologicznego wymiaru etyki troski. Rozpoczyna się prezentacją krótkiej historii stosunku do troski w zachodniej filozofii społecznej i źródeł kryzysu opieki. W części głównej, z perspektywy teorii Daniela Engstera, stara się odpowiedzieć na pytania: czym jest troska, dlaczego powinniśmy opiekować się innymi, jak powinniśmy dystrybuować obowiązki troski, jakie relacje zachodzą między troska a sprawiedliwością, co łączy etykę (...) troski z liberalizmem, libertarianizmem, socjalizmem, komunitaryzmem i teorią praw naturalnych.The article is an attempt to show care ethics as a particular and interesting case of social ecology and a sustainable development doctrine. It also tries to point the political and ecological aspects of care ethics. The article starts with a short history presentation of the attitude toward care in western social philosophy as the source of care crisis. The main part of the essay tries, from the perspective of Daniel Engster’s theory, to answer the following questions: What is care? Why should we take care of the others? How should care duties be distributed?, What are the relations between care and justice?, What do care ethics and liberalism, libertarianism, socialism, communitarianism and natural law theory have in common? (shrink)

Notwithstanding its long history, libertarianism became intellectually respectable within academe with the publication of Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. More or less starting with the claim that, "Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them," Nozick's book attempts to argue that a minimal state "limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on" is morally justifiable, and that a more extensive state violates (...) the rights of individuals and is thus morally stained. Respectability, however, did not forestall criticism, and Anarchy, State, and Utopia was attacked from all fronts. Philosophically, perhaps the most damaging critique came from Thomas Nagel, for he argued that Nozick had erected "Libertarianism without Foundations." Libertarianism as Nozick crafts it is without foundations because he provides little by way of justification for the strong theory of rights that drives this political philosophy and, as such, drives the minimalist conception of state and conception of free markets that constitute it. (shrink)

This article revisits the question of Alfred Russel Wallace’s relationship to eugenics and explores the basis of Wallace’s consistent rejection of attempts to label him a eugenicist. Whereas some scholars have identified an ‘ambiguity’ or ‘tension’ between Wallace’s hereditarianism and his libertarianism and maintained – despite Wallace’s statements to the contrary – that he was, in some senses, a eugenicist, this article argues that Wallace’s oft-repeated claims he was not a eugenicist are fully justified. By exploring Wallace’s relationship with (...) Francis Galton using a hitherto neglected correspondence between the two concerning the establishment of a proposed laboratory, and Wallace’s criticism of non-Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms in the writings of William Bateson and others, this article situates Wallace’s opposition to eugenics in his broader ultra-Darwinian agenda. The article concludes by arguing that it is misleading to characterise Wallace as a eugenicist, and that doing so tends to obscure and confuse our understanding of his thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 153 These objections to one side, one must compliment Anglin on the thoroughness with which he pursues his points. He almost always provides several arguments for the same point. So we get eight arguments for libertarianism, five for how natural evil comports with the existence of a benevolent, all-powerful God, and so on. These arguments carefully avoid the repetitiveness one might expect and rather skillfully succeed (...) in revealing a mind concerned with mapping out all the knolls and hollows on the intellectual terrain of the particular issue under consideration. Almost inevitably, any one hook's discussions of such disparate topics will vary in both quality and depth. Some parts of this hook (for example, the chapters on the existence of God and the problem of evil) should he generally accessible to the interested beginner in the philosophy of religion. Chapters 5 and 6 on the goodness of God and the problem of evil are especially well done. Anglin honestly and squarely faces the standard objections and manages to produce as complete and compelling a defense as one is likely to find anywhere in the literature. His use of the Principle of Double Effect to exonerate God from blame for creating creatures who may freely do evil was effective and innovative. Other parts of Free Will and The Christian Faith (say, the chapter defending God's foreknowledge featuring the rather paradoxical concept of "backwards causation " in which future free choices cause past foreknowledge) seem to require and presuppose a more thorough immersion in the recent scholarly literature. Some readers may find the author's use of logical notation to explicate his arguments distracting or alienating, though he takes great pains to explain the symbols he employs in the prose he uses. In addition, he is quite helpful to the reader at the start of each chapter in providing concise previews of the arguments to come. On the whole, this is a hook with occasional flashes of insight and innovation, hut with tangles and tensions in the arguments in other parts. JOSEPH M. INCANDELA Saint Mary's College Notre Dame, Indiana Quest for the Absolute: The Philosophical Vision of Joseph Marechal. By ANTHONY MATTEO. De Kalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois Press, 1992. Pp. xi + 173. $30.00 (cloth). The Belgian Jesuit Joseph Marechal (1373-1944) is little known in North American philosophical circles. Indeed he is simply little known outside the somewhat small circle of scholars interested in the history 154 BOOK REVIEWS of twentieth century Roman Catholic theology. There Marechal's work, in particular his five volume Le Point de Depart de la Metaphysique (PDM) has a special place of honor. One need but think of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan among his intellectual heirs to recognize the impact of the thinker and of the volumes. The service of Anthony Matteo's Quest for the Absolute (QA) is to provide a clear and concise study of Marechal's thought. It makes a valuable companion to Joseph Donceel's A Marechal Reader (1970). To my knowledge, the only other full-length discussion in English is Otto Muck's The Transcendental Method (1968), a book which is nearly unreadable in its Eng· lish translation if not in its German original. Marechal was a committed and convinced Thomist, but discussing him under the rubric " transcendental method " brings home a critical conjunction between his Thomism and certain strategies more characteristic of Immanuel Kant and his followers. Instead of seeing Kant simply as undermining the objectivity of metaphysics and of natural theology, he came to believe it possible to take the Kantian "turn to the subject" and to show that it had possibilities not dreamed of by Kant himself. One early indication of Marechal's revisionary approach appeared in his notes for a 1914-1915 course on epistemology: "Kant deceives himself in recognizing, in the operations of spirit, only the pure synthesis of an empirical given. The human spirit is at once an empirical faculty and a faculty of the Absolute. This second aspect was only imperfectly grasped by the author of the Critique of Pure Reason." Thus Marechal was already on his way to answering his opening question for volume I of PDM... (shrink)

The enigma of an evil will -- The order of actions to the ultimate end -- The satisfaction of desire -- Venial sin -- The first moral act -- The shared good -- Sins of passion -- Weakness of will -- Sins from an evil will -- Sins of ignorance -- Omissions -- The first cause of moral evil -- Compatibilism or libertarianism -- Free decision -- Choose life.

Why do corporations and wealthy philanthropists fund the human sciences? Examining the history of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), a private research institute founded in the early 1980s, this article shows that funders can find as much value in the social worlds of the sciences they sponsor as in their ideas. SFI became increasingly dependent on funding from corporations and libertarian business leaders in the 1990s and 2000s. At the same time, its intellectual work came to focus on the (...) underlying principles of adaptation, innovation, and decentralized coordination supposedly at work in ‘complex systems’ from biological ecosystems to markets and firms. This research cast the ideas of the libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek into a new scientific idiom. SFI also became a space where figures in business, media, academia, and politics could come to learn to see the world in a particular way—to acquire the subjectivity of what I call ‘the Santa Fe Institute libertarian’. At SFI, visitors did not simply learn the principles of neo-Hayekian complex system science. They came to see themselves as agents of social evolution, providing the spark that the free-market system needed to produce new technologies and new solutions to social problems without top-down political direction. For the Institute's corporate and libertarian financiers, SFI was not just a space where intellectuals described the world in favored ideological terms, but a space where elite actors became committed to the project of making a new political-economic order. (shrink)

Individualism is one of most criticized and least understood ideas in social and political thought. Is individualism the ability to act independently amidst a web of social forces? A vital element of personal liberty and a shield against conformity? Does it lead to or away from unifying individuals with communities? Individualism: A Reader provides a wealth of illuminating essays from the 17th to the early 20th centuries. In 26 selections from 25 writers individualism is explained and defended, often from unusual (...) perspectives. This anthology includes not only selections from well-known writers, but also many lesser-known pieces--reprinted here for the first time--by philosophers, social theorists, and economists who have been overlooked in standard accounts of individualism. The depth and complexity of ideas about individualism are reflected in the six sections in this collection. The first examines individuality generally, with the following five detailing social, moral, political, religious, and economic individualism. Throughout, individualism is analyzed and defended through the lenses of classical liberalism, free-market libertarianism, individual anarchism, voluntary socialism, religious individualism, abolitionism, free thought, and radical feminism. Both richly historical and sharply contemporary, Individualism: A Reader provides a multitude of perspectives and insights on personal liberty and the history of freedom. (shrink)

Drawing on empirical evidence from history and anthropology, we aim to demonstrate that there is room for genealogical ideology critique within normative political theory. The test case is some libertarians’ use of folk notions of private property rights in defence of the legitimacy of capitalist states. Our genealogy of the notion of private property shows that asking whether a capitalist state can emerge without violations of self-ownership cannot help settling the question of its legitimacy, because the notion of private (...) property presupposed by that question is a product of the entity it is supposed to help legitimise: the state. We anchor our genealogical critique in recent work on ideology in epistemology and philosophy of language, and in current debates on the methodology of political theory. But, unlike more traditional approaches that aim to debunk whole concepts or even belief systems, we propose a more targeted, argument-specific form of ideology critique. (shrink)