gocrew,
-
When I say he supports the NAP for its own sake, I mean exactly what it sounds like. He holds it as an end in itself, not as a means to some further end (unless that further end is just libertarianism in general, in which case I think its the same thing since he defines libertarianism as strictly adhering to the NAP). I support the non-aggression principle only because its a damn good personal ethic in normal situations, and because its a pretty good rule of thumb to measure any legal or political institution against in order to acheive a florishing society. Since I think there is more to a flourishing society than just the absence of institutionalized aggression, I think there is more to political theory than the NAP.
-
I won’t go into detail here, but I’ve pointed out before how Block believes that there are cases where it is actually moral to defy the NAP. If someone is behaving in a moral manner but ought to be punished by law anyway, I would say that the consequences of that law are both absurd and udesireable.
3 and 4. If you were trying to solve a math problem, you wouldn’t try to apply the NAP, and that wouldn’t make you any less of a libertarian. Why are you so sure that abortion is a problem which the NAP can solve, or is at least the best approach? This is what I’m talking about with the NAP for its own sake – you just adhere to it in any context regardless of whether it would really be the best idea given certain circumstances. Its become a magic 8 ball.
EDIT:
Nir,
I don’t think Block actually holds the NAP for its own sake, but its not an off-the-wall claim to make because it does come off that way.
Roderick Long jokingly agrees: “Well, unless rights are the only thing you care about, the only value you have — and I’ve sometimes told Walter that that’s his view (although it isn’t really, but it’s fun to say that)…”
And regarding rights regardless of the consequences, Long says earlier in the same lecture: “On the other hand, you might think rights are completely independent of utility, that rights just are what they are, regardless of their results. Maybe Walter Block thinks that, I’m not sure. Rothbard is often said to have thought that, but if you read The Ethics of Liberty it’s not so clear; there is some sort of eudaimonic thing going on in the background there, with the Aristotelian stuff in the early chapters.”