Which libertarian theorist is the most underrated and why should they be given more respect?
I would have to go with Anthony de Jasay for deriving libertarian principles from epistemology and thus bypassing ethics.
Link. :o
why doesn’t that make sense to me?
Take pleasure in the fact that your not the only one having a wtf moment.
Because it is doesn’t make sense. [:P]
The most underrated…I think Jeffrey Tucker. He is the foundation of the Mises institute, the man behind the scenes working his magic. Honestly, you should listen to some of his podcasts about how this site is run, its awe-inspiring.
lol. Which is why a link would be helpful, or at least an explanation. [:D]
Apparently one can come to ethical conclusions w/o ethics, this must be a revolution in philosophy. That is, unless Libertrian principles aren’t ethical in nature.
Jeffrey Tucker is a hero for Austrian economics. He might not be publishing in economic journals, he’s enabling people all around the world to get an exposure to economic education, like never before in history.
And his breathless enthusiasm in his interviews and talks is very sincere and attention grabbing.
What he means by bypassing ethics I suppose is that he does not try to derive an ought from an is. Hoppe’s own theory strictly speaking is unusual for an ethical theory and is itself more epistemological in nature than ethical.
Yet the NAP itself is an ‘ought’
The Presumption of Liberty can be derived from logic and epistemology alone. It is not necessarily an ethical principle.
I guess the fact that almost nobody here knows what I am talking about is evidence for my claim that Jasay is underrated.
To get the full argument you will need to read de Jasay himself, but for a taste of the style you could start with a review like this one.
Ii is sad that more people on these message boards haven’t read him. I would say he is the most important libertarian thinker after Nozick and Hayek.
You seem to be conflating morality with religion.
No, not if it’s proven using negative demonstrations. In that case the point is that all other theorems fail to pass the criteria necessary for an ethical theory to possess, meaning any systems based upon them will be fraudulent at best and safe to ignore as incoherent, certainly possessing no legitimacy whatsoever. So all that’s left purportedly is the NAP. Now one can say that there is an inherent ought here, such as “one must care for sound theories” but that misses the point because the nature of the approach here is to dissolve competing theories on epistemological/logical grounds, regardless of one’s attitude towards them.
People should definitely read Jasay though and that includes myself. From what little I’ve read of his work (and Kinsella’s reviews of it) it seems like an original defence of libertarianism.
Anyway I’ll mention Jan Narveson and David Schmidtz.
So do you mean to say that NAP stops being an ought if you can show examples of it being respected?
Every libertarian interested in the philosophy behind libertarianism ought to study De Jasay; he’s truly a awesome scholar.
De Jasay holds that freedom must be presumed on technical grounds. I qoute :
✦ ANTHONY DE JASAY
The Presumption of Freedom
The presumption of freedom should be understood to mean that any act a person
wishes to perform is deemed to be permissible—not to be interfered with, regulated,
taxed, or punished—unless sufficient reason is shown why it should not be permissible.
Some deny that there is, or ought to be, such a presumption (notably Raz 1986,
8–12). However, the presumption is not a matter of opinion or evaluation that can be
debated and denied. It is a strict logical consequence of the difference between two
meanings of testing the validity of a statement—namely, falsification and verification.
An indefinite number of potential reasons may speak against an act you wish to
perform. Some may be sufficient or valid, others (perhaps all) insufficient or false. You
may falsify them one by one. No matter how many you succeed in falsifying, however,
some may still be left, and you can never prove that none are left. In other words, the
statement that a particular act would be harmful is not falsifiable. Because you cannot
falsify the statement, putting on you the burden of proving that the act would be
harmless is nonsensical, a violation of elementary logic. In contrast, any specific reason
that objectors may advance against the act in question is verifiable. If they have
such reasons, the burden of proof rests on them to verify that some or all of those reasons
are in fact sufficient to justify interference with the act.
All this seems trivially simple. In fact, it is simple, but not trivial.
Hm not quite. The approach here is to disregard whether the NAP is an ought or not and focus solely on the epistemological and logical aspects of justifying a theory. The intended conclusion is to show as theories those which disregard the NAP fail on some level, either logical or epistemological. They differ from normal ethical theorising which tries to derive an ought either as an assertoric/problematic hypothetical or categorical imperative.
You seem to not have any idea of which you speak. Perhaps you should actually familiarize yourself with de Jasay’s argument before you make comments like that.
Jeffery freed me from the confining grasp of shaving cream addiction. He has saved me from my shaving turmoil. For that, my skin, along with my girlfriend, and myself have granted him indefinite hero status.
Have you read his article about how a gentleman should dress?