It seems to me people often ask about what to read to learn about natural rights (myself included) and it seems a bit silly for me to suggest a topic like this seeing as I wouldn’t have much to add to.
But I think it would be beneficial to have a list for what to read on natural rights, even if only to direct people to it if they ask elsewhere.
I would suggest Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty and Hoppe’s A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism.
Hoppe is not a NR ethicist. I’d recommend Henry Veatch and Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas den Uyl. More classical sources such as Aquinas or Finnis or Annas are also good, but the above writers present their arguments in condensed form and are of a libertarian perspective. Rothbard recommends Veatch as well. Keep in mind Rothbard takes NR as justified in TEOL. His task there is to draw out its implications.
Isn’t Hoppe’s argumentation ethics a justification of NR?
No. NR are the right to life, liberty and property, the latter two being corollaries of the first, and self-ownership being implicit in the right to liberty. Hoppe’s proof, if successful, does prove their corollaries/derivatives, but only in the same way that Kantian ethics might do so, which is not in any sense a NR theory. Hoppe acknowledges as much anyway. What might be done is, Hoppe’s proof could be incorporated into NR theory as a negative demonstration. If that were to be done it’d indeed be a justification of NR, amongst others.
Geoffrey Allan Plauche’s dissertation here: http://www.veritasnoctis.net/docs/plauchedissertation.pdf
and other writings here: http://www.veritasnoctis.net/academic-writings/
My suggestion is “The Law” by Fredrick Bastiat