After today I have two/three weeks until I next have to hand in a philosophy essay, and so I am expected to do a lot of reading. However, there is no specific set of reading I have to do, except for the fact it needs to be moral philosophy, because that’s what I’m studying this term (specifically focusing on Mill and Utilitarianism).
Anyway, what’s the best libertarian ethics/moral philosophy stuff people would recommend?
They have literally everything published in the UK somewhere in one of our libraries, so it doesn’t matter if it’s obscure, but I generally prefer articles to books, if the issue can be adequately described in shorter length.
The book John Stuart Mill and the Religion of Humanity reviewed here by David Gordon looks interesting.
From the review…
" Like Maurice Cowling and Joseph Hamburger, by whom she has been much influenced, she sees Mill as mainly a propagandist anxious to replace Christianity with a Religion of Humanity, guided by intellectuals such as himself."
Cowling and Hamburger look like good sources to check out as well.
Also essential would be to read Rothbard’s discussion of Jeremy Bentham (the father of modern utilitarianism) in Volume II of the History of Economic Thought book Laughing Man mentioned.
If you can get your hands on Robert Nozick’s work, do it. He’s a minarchist, and talks about self-ownership and various other libertarian ideals. I had to do some reading on him for my Moral and Political Philosophy class.
No he didn’t. He was a libertarian to his dieing breath (contrary to what the jealous Rothbardians want you to think). Have you even read The Examined Life where he supposed rejects libertarianism?
Surely Rothbard’s “The Ethics of Liberty” is the book you are looking for. It demolishes utilitarianism along with lots of other stuff. One of the best books I’ve read.
He didn’t? You must define Libertarian differently than me. How do you define it? How did Nozick?
Jealous of what exactly?
No. And I haven’t read Keynes General theory, nor Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations. Is there a need to read it? Is Hoppe’s analysis wrong?
Are you going to address the arguments and the passages he quotes from the book and other Nozick works?
Got a free pdf of it? I doubt it would be worth my fiat paper.
He was never hardcore to begin with. That’s an argument in my favour. What on earth is his conception of Libertarianism, if he believes arguments are coercive? Seriously?
“Further, in a truly startling twist, Nozick went on to say that the use of knockdown arguments even constituted coercion and was hence morally offensive:”
The terminology of philosophical art is coercive: arguments are powerful and best when they are knockdown, arguments force you to a conclusion, if you believe the premises you have to or must believe the conclusion, some arguments do not carry much punch, and so forth. A philosophical argument is an attempt to get someone to believe something, whether he wants to believe it or not. A successful philosophical argument, a strong argument, forces someone to a belief. . . . Why are philosophers intent on forcing others to believe things? Is that a nice way to behave toward someone? I think we cannot improve people that way. . . . Philosophical argument, trying to get someone to believe something whether he wants to believe it or not, is not, I have held, a nice way to behave toward someone; also, it does not fit the original motivation for studying or entering philosophy. That motivation is puzzlement, curiosity, a desire to understand, not a desire to produce uniformity of belief. Most people do not want to become thought-police. The philosophical goal of explanation rather than proof not only is morally better, it is more in accord with one’s philosophical motivation. Also it changes how one proceeds philosophically; at the macro-level . . . it leads away from constructing the philosophical tower; at the micro-level, it alters which philosophical “moves” are legitimate at various points. 20
"With this surprising redefinition of systematic axiomatic-deductive reasoning as “coercion,” Nozick had pulled the last tooth from his libertarianism. If even the attempt of proving (or demonstrating) the ethical impermissibility and injustice of democratic socialism constituted “bad” behavior, libertarianism had been essentially disarmed and the existing order and its academic bodyguards rendered intellectually invincible. How could one not be nice to someone as nice as Nozick? It is no wonder that the anti-libertarian intellectual establishment took kindly to a libertarianism as gentle and kind as his, and elevated Nozick to the rank of the premier philosopher of libertarianism."