apparently the state burned some of his books
"After many wanderings, he came to Vienna, where he was court secretary of the council of war, from 1801 till 1806. "
Council of war ? Libertarian ?
“Public opinion at home resulted in his being recalled by the Bernese Government in 1806, and appointed professor of political law at the newly founded higher school of the academy. When the old aristocratic regime was reinstated, he became a member of the sovereign Great Council, and soon after also of the privy council of the Bernese Republic.”
Sounds like a conservative to me…
“All his later writings are influenced by the ideas here set forth, and oppose vigorously the revolutionary tendencies of the times and the champions of liberalism in Church and State.”
What exactly is ‘libertarian’ about a reactionary conservative… ?
He was anti-nationalist and was worried about giant government bureaucracies.
ok?
Boehm and Mises were high ranking consuls to the Austrian government, are they not libertarian?
Forgive Juan, he thinks this is a forum of monarchists.
Excuse me ? It is obvious that Herr Haller was a conservative. The quoted article makes it very clear.
Good find Fez. I agree with Juan. Karl Ludwig von Haller is a libertarian.
I would most certaintly call him a libertarian; more specifically, a proto-Hoppes libertarian, methinks.
You’ve selectively quoted. Congratulations.
I don’t know anything about von Haller, but if you hate him in the same way you hate Hoppe he must have been on to something.
Right. A guy who fits this description is a libertarian.
“All his later writings are influenced by the ideas here set forth, and oppose vigorously the revolutionary tendencies of the times and the champions of liberalism in Church and State”
So you’re assuming that by “liberalism” they mean private property anarchism, huh? A bit of a stretch there.
Me too. I know nothing about Haller, except what I read on the article, which, btw, happens to be a copy and paste from an article from a ‘catholic encyclopedia’.
Now, I quoted the relevant parts that show that he was not a libertarian. You can all feel free to gloss over them.
I knew you would come around.
I think I’m correctly assuming that.
edit : The article is talking about 1800’s liberalism, which is, I believe ‘classical’ liberalism.
Yeah, that’s a common usage. That’s why people call Barack Obama a liberal, its his market anarchism.
Edit: Its also a wiki article written within the last few years.
his book Restauration of Science and state, according to wiki makes the argument that ‘laws’ provisioned by the state are not necessary, later Hegel attacked Haller.
Jon, Wiki’s article is mostly a transcription of this
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Karl_Ludwig_von_Haller
which was written in 1913, and in turn seems to be based on a speech given in 1854.
“SCHERER, Erinnerungen am Grabe Hallers (Solothurn, 1854); Notice sur la vie et les ecrits de Haller (Fribourg, 1854); MOHL, Geschichte und Literatur der Staatswissenschaften, Il. 529-60.”
My quotes come from that 1913 (or 1854) article. The article was not written by an obama ‘liberal’…
edit: SCHERER, Erinnerungen am Grabe Hallers : Speech at haller’s funeral.
Notice sur la vie et les ecrits de Haller (Fribourg, 1854); : notes on haller’s life and writings.
Hard to judge with so little info on him, but from the google bits he was not a Libertarian at all. He opposed the modern buerocratic state, but he seems a fierce defender of the statist (aristocratic) privilege. He sounds like a fairly typical reactionary of his time with their arguments for the state as a natural moral body and speaking up for bogus divine rights. Except he seems to belive his propaganda so much he thinks there is very little coercion about the rule of kings.
EDIT:
Link1
Haller’s major work, Die Restauration der Staatswissenschaft, a defense of, among other things, local, territorial, and family-based rule in the Swiss cantons, was published in the early 1830s, about fifteen years before Calhoun wrote his two dense tracts as the advocate inter alia an American manorial society.
If we digg a little deeper maybe we can guess he had some good concepts defending the traditional Swiss administration, but using that to justify the rule of monarchs was reactionary and over the top.
I’m having trouble finding english translations of his magnum opus
So…Sorry about being tedious and annoying…but…What’s the veredict ? Was Haller a ‘libertarian’ who supported the divine right of kings ? A libertarian with feudal sympathies ?
Or perhaps some ppl in this thread jumped to (wrong) conclusions…?