So, here's the title of the paper, but on reflection I thought that might be a little enigmatic, so here's what it's really about.
Why you should keep a firm grip on your kidneys in your eyes in the company of certain people.
This paper actually, if I was to leave out all the filling, would take about two minutes, but I figured, hey, you've got to get value for money, so there's 18 minutes of nonsense stuck in between.
Under discussion in a seminar was Jonathan Swift's modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country and for making them beneficial to the public.
There we are. There's Swift's modest proposal in action.
This is actually a statue in Bern. I can't imagine what they were thinking of.
One of the students asked a comment on Swift's suggestion that eating babies might simultaneously solve the overpopulation problem
while providing a nutritious source of food to those left alive.
He said, well, that might have been alright in Mr. Swift's day, but I don't think we could do that now.
Talking with an acquaintance about some of the funniest opening lines in literature, I instance the first sentence in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
Well, it's a truth universally acknowledged. I met with a sort of funny stare, with a blank stare. What's funny about that, my acquaintance asked, or puzzled.
The moral of these stories is be careful in your use of irony. Some idiot with a defective irony gland is bound to take you literally and what can seem the height of absurdity to you can present itself as a reasonable option to some others.
So here's a quick overview of my presentation then.
A perennial topic in political philosophy is the nature, extent and limits of property.
An aspect of this of particular interest to libertarians is the relationship between self-ownership and the ownership of external resources.
Libertarians tend to take the position that self-ownership is relatively unproblematic.
What needs to be explained is how self-ownership is, as it were, to be projected into the world to permit the private ownership of external resources.
Left Libertarians, and now there's different uses of the term Left Libertarians,
by Left Libertarians in the context of this paper I mean people like Michael Atsuka, Peter Valentine, Hilal Steiner and so on,
and there's another branch, if you like, of Left Libertarians, which I'm not talking about.
Anyway, these Left Libertarians defend self-ownership while at the same time being prepared to countenance significant restriction on the ownership of external resources.
Oops, sorry about that, so there we are, Michael Atsuka, Peter Valentine, Hilal Steiner.
So there we are, there's the left libertarian position.
Ultra-live prizes, ultra-live property.
The analytical Marxist, G. A. Cohen, who is, according to David Gordon himself, his favourite Marxist,
affirms the antecedent plausibility of self-ownership, noting that leftists who disparage Nusick's essentially unargued affirmation of each person's rights over himself
lose confidence in their unqualified denial of the thesis of self-ownership
when they are asked to consider who has the right to decide what should happen,
for example, to their own eyes.
So, to whom do your eyes belong?
Well, I suspect
how many people think they belong to you?
Let's have hands up on this one.
I don't see your hand absurd. Don't you think you own your eyes?
You, without doubt, you say. Well, perhaps.
So we come to the thesis of body exceptionalism.
So much for the overview. Let's take things just a wee bit more slowly.
The claim that if I own anything at all, I own myself is one of those that divides people.
To some it seems nonsensical, to others more or less self-evident.
As already mentioned, G. A. Cohen is one of those who takes the notion of self-ownership seriously,
finding it intuitively plausible.
In his influential book, Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality, he writes,
The thesis of self-ownership has plenty of appeal.
That wasn't meant to be funny, actually, but it's antecedent that his pre-philosophical appeal
rivals that of whatever principles of equality it is thought to contradict.
Responding to his own musings read the shakiness of the opposition to self-ownership when those
who oppose it are confronted with the possibility of having their eyes reallocated, he continues,
they do not immediately agree that were eye transplants easy to achieve it would then
be acceptable for the state to conscribe down here, I don't know what that means, I obviously
miswrote that, anyway, some verb meaning potential eye donors into a lottery, conscript, potential
who would otherwise be not one-eyed but blind.
The fact that they do not deserve their good eyes, that they do not need two good eyes
more than blind people and so forth, the fact in a word that they are merely lucky to have
two good eyes does not convince them that their claim on their own eyes is not stronger
than that of some unlucky blind person.
What he says, and I emphasise this, is that if the standard leftist objection to inequality
of resources, private property and ultimate condition are taken quite literally, then the
fact that it is sheer luck that these relatively good eyes are mine should deprive me of special
privilege in them. This is Cohen talking. Cohen, it would seem then, intends this last
The contemporary political philosopher, Cécile Fabre, denies that the claim of self-ownership
is unproblematic. She argues that if one thinks that the needy have a right to the material
resources they need in order to lead decent lives, one must be committed to conferring
on the sick a right that the healthy give them some of the body parts they need to lead
such a life. She is the author of a paper ominously entitled, Justice and the Compulsory
I believe that Fabre is correct in thinking that the principles that allow for the restriction of our interference with the ownership of external resources must, if one would be consistent, be extendable to self-ownership.
However, I believe that what her argument really shows is the incoherence of any form of left libertarianism, a la Asuka Valentine Steiner,
Steiner, leaving the choice between her moral cannibalism and those who defend robust versions
of both self-ownership and the ownership of external resources.
Fabra believes that...
So there's some more of her stuff, right?
So this is not just a once-off, this is not just an aberration, she's been doing this
stuff since 2002.
So she believes that most contemporary theories of justice hold that those who are badly off
Well-off have a right to some of the resources of the well-off in order to live a decent life.
Let's just pause here for a moment.
Even if it were true that most contemporary theories of justice held this, and just how many theories of justice are there,
why should this be of any significance?
It is also held, she believes, that people should have a considerable degree of self-ownership or autonomy.
She uses the two terms interchangeably.
Farber sees the right to a decent life and the right to autonomy as being in competition
and the problem of political philosophy being how to reconcile them.
So she starts from two ordered principles of substantive justice which embody these competing rights.
According to Favre, we have a principle of sufficiency, which is that people have a right to the resources they need in order to lead a decent life
and secondly, a principle of autonomy, which is that once the principle of sufficiency is satisfied for everyone,
Then everyone should be permitted to follow their ideas of the good and enjoy the fruits of their labour.
Now, note that these principles are ordered.
The principle of sufficiency must be satisfied before the principle of autonomy.
Very few libertarians would be willing even to start down this path.
So we could probably stop the conversation right there.
But anyway, once again, we might pause for some reflection.
All sorts of questions might be asked about the principle of sufficiency.
Where does it come from?
What is its justification?
What is meant to be self-evident? As right is used in this principle, is it a claim right? If so, against whom is the claim to be made? Me? You? The state? If the state, why the state? What if there is no state, as actually has been the case for most of human existence? And so on. Lots of questions.
Now, Farber argues that everyone has an interest in living a decent life.
She argues that everyone has an interest in living a decent life and, in order to do so, must have access to an adequate amount of resources, food, clothing, shelter, health, care, as well as being minimally autonomous.
She notes that the provision of sufficiency for some may require the curtailment of autonomy for others, but, she believes, once everyone has sufficiency, then everyone should be allowed to maximise his autonomy as a matter of right.
Once again, time for reflection. How is this supposed to work?
How does one determine what is or what is not a level of decency?
Who makes decisions? Whom does it range over?
The notion of basic decency is so vague as to make it practically impossible to allow
for any autonomy at all. There are some questions.
What is the effect of these principles then of justice on property rights?
Well, she claims that neither collective ownership nor unrestricted private ownership
Collective ownership violates the principle of autonomy, while unrestricted private ownership violates the principle of sufficiency.
She is going to argue for a combination of both kinds of ownership or rights as a way of satisfying her principles.
Under her proposal, principle of sufficiency, all would get equal shares in natural resources.
In the event that Peter Pan has insufficient resources, he has a right against Captain Hook.
David Hooke cultivates his share in certain ways or allowed Peter to do so.
The sufficiency principle requires that neither of us, singly, has the rights to decide by
whom, whether and how the world would be used and to enjoy the whole of the income derived
from it.
We both have these rights only if our life is not decent under the status quo and if the
other's life is better than ours, or more than decent, or already decent, and who would
not get less than decent after the decisions are made.
Again, shades of the sort of standard left libertarian line here.
Let's imagine a situation in which some people need housing and others have more than one property.
In such circumstances, if for example taxation wouldn't do the job, quote,
justice requires that those houses be requisitioned.
In the film Shenandoah, a boy asks his father what requisition means
and he gets the following answer.
I love that film, requisition, it's a fancy word for stealing.
On the face of it then,
it looks as if the composite set of private and collective rights
might impinge negatively on autonomy,
but individuals can use the world as they wish, provided they do so in a way
that the luckless are provided for, and any way they choose after that.
Suppose somebody were to object that requiring the lucky to work for the unlucky
is an infringement of their autonomy.
If the lucky have to work more, let alone all of their time for the unlucky,
my Dworkinian opponent would argue they cannot implement those identity conferring choices of theirs
which do not revolve around work, and they do not therefore have a decent life.
This, one would think, is a pretty potent objection, but it doesn't bother Barbara.
With a straight face, she denies that being forced to do work you don't want to do
is not a form of slavery, provided your life is still decent.
One might wonder whether or not this is in the contradiction in terms, but anyway,
she finally admits that even in such a case, her composite theory of property rights
does in fact infringe on the autonomy of the lucky, but not, she says,
to an unacceptable degree.
I wonder if everybody would agree with her. At which point a libertarian might rudely respond,
says who?
The criticism that it does
Half-Force only if one focuses on the situation of the lucky and overlooks the fact that if they don't work for the unlucky, the latter are not autonomous either, since they lack the material resources necessary for them to enjoy the opportunities society offers them.
Such focus unacceptably fails to live up to what motivates justice in the first instance. Clearly the lucky will suffer a loss of autonomy, but this is an unavoidable condition of securing minimal autonomy for all.
So that's all right then. We're all happy with that. You couldn't make this stuff up.
You might even begin to think here we have a conflation of autonomy and sufficiency in
a way which pulls the rug out completely from her enterprise. But anyway, let's move on.
Once again she mentions to her acceptability of taxation and its onerousness in a bid to
make her proposals seem less appealing. She says, I quote, conceptions of ownership which
For justice may very well require that the income owners derived from their property be taxed to such an extent that they would have to work and do nothing but work in order to meet the needs of the unlucky, which would render their life, as she says, with no indication of irony, less than decent.
Finally, and I would think brazenly, she rejects the applicability of the objection that her
proposal is simply unworkable.
Constantly checking, she says, that the allocation of ownership rights at any given time does
not fall foul of justice and fairness, and modifying that allocation as necessary are
They are likely, she says, to be very costly and difficult.
Masterpiece of understatement here.
Perhaps these considerations provide good reasons not to implement my proposal.
Surely not, however she thinks.
They cannot disqualify it as that ownership which best satisfies both justice and fairness.
Now listen to this.
My proposals are completely unworkable, but they're still the right principles.
Okay, all right. Only in universities can you get away with this.
Now we come to the really interesting part.
The standard libertarian left and right view is that our body is beyond the reach of legitimate demands from others,
whereas our personal possessions and our money are not.
Moreover, on the liberal view, we are not at liberty to use our bodies in ways we ourselves desire,
even if in so doing we do not necessarily harm others and may in fact benefit them,
for example as in prostitution and the sale of organs.
The position that holds that people's bodies must not be interfered with, Faber calls, body exceptionalism.
Faber argues that if it is the case that we are susceptible to legitimate claims on our material resources from those who would appear to need them,
we are also susceptible to legitimate claims on the use of our bodies and our body parts from those who need them.
Effectively, she argues that taxation, to which she thinks we have no objections, negatively
affects her life plans more extensively than, say, the forcible extraction of one of her
kidneys.
Why kidneys, by the way?
Why not an eye?
After all, I have two and you have none.
You're much better off with gaining one than I am worse off with being reduced to one.
Therefore, she thinks, we shouldn't object to the forcible extraction of our kidneys.
I would run the argument, of course, precisely in the opposite direction.
We do object to others interfering in our bodies without license, the level of objection
rising with the level of intrusion.
Kidney extraction ranks pretty high.
That being so, if the reason for the rejection of kidney extraction were based on interference
with life plans and taxation is more devastating from the point of view, then, of course, as
This brings us back to our starting point, which is that there is no position so absurd
that some philosopher has not held it, and I instance the case in point.
Farber's account then is the case in point.
Her position, while consistent, is in fact a reduxio of the standard liberal position.
She is right to see a connection between the body and material resources, and right to
accuse the liberal position of inconsistency.
These would run, as I said, the argument in the other direction. If conceding the legitimacy
of taxation and such like leads to having to concede the rights of others to use our
bodies without our consent, this turning the argument around shows us that in protecting
the autonomy of our bodies we are also committed to a protection of our ownership of external
and material resources. So Faber's position then has at least the merit of consistency
even if it's the consistency of the crazy. The libertarian position is likewise consistent.
The liberal position is incoherent.
Her view is radically challenging in some respects, but not in others.
She has the merit of showing that the standard is a liberal view is incoherent and that the
issue then is between her and libertarians.
I don't see how the standard liberal or left libertarian can resist her argument, so that
leaves only the libertarian position standing.
So we get this.
So there's a summary of the positions.
So here you have, number one, the left libertarian liberal position, so you have non-voluntary
Redistribution Possible of Natural Resources but not of the bodies and
phabras which is everything can be redistributed including your kidneys and
your eyes and the libertarian position says get your hands off my kidneys and my
eyes to put a bloody, all right, yeah sorry well maybe we I'm sure David
would probably wait to have questions after it and so on I'll just finish my
presentation then allow the other speakers so there we are so the last
The last word, let's leave the last word as well as the first word, Cicero.
Sednescio quadmodo nihil tamen absurdi dichi potus quadnum decatur ab alico filociforum
Cicero.
There's no position so dumb, right, that some philosopher hasn't held it.
And here's a shame of subversion, okay.
My book on Murray Rothbard came out a couple of years ago, which has been read by me, the
editor, and the cat, and I'm not so sure about me.
was available at some ridiculous price and is actually going to be available on the 1st of August at a price that won't make your nose bleed.
If anybody wants a copy of this presentation, send me an email at jerry.casey at ucd.ie. Thank you very much.