WEBVTT NOTE Introduction to "The Ethics of Liberty" 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.640 As reason tells us, all are born thus naturally equal, that is, with an equal right to their 2 00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:15.480 persons, so also with an equal right to their preservation. 3 00:00:15.480 --> 00:00:20.520 And every man having a property in his own person, the labor of his body and the work 4 00:00:20.520 --> 00:00:26.760 of his hands, are properly his own, to which no one has right but himself. 5 00:00:26.760 --> 00:00:31.400 It will therefore follow that when he removes anything out of the state that nature has 6 00:00:31.400 --> 00:00:37.520 provided and left it in, he has mixed his labor with it, and joined something to it 7 00:00:37.520 --> 00:00:42.000 that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. 8 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:48.400 Thus every man having a natural right to, or being proprietor of, his own person and 9 00:00:48.400 --> 00:00:54.780 his own actions and labor, which we call property, it certainly follows that no man can have 10 00:00:54.780 --> 00:01:20.820 Introduction by Hans-Hermann Hoppe 11 00:01:20.820 --> 00:01:27.760 In an age of intellectual hyper-specialization, Murray N. Rothbard was a grand system-builder. 12 00:01:27.760 --> 00:01:32.940 An economist by profession, Rothbard was the creator of a system of social and political 13 00:01:32.940 --> 00:01:38.420 philosophy based on economics and ethics as its cornerstones. 14 00:01:38.420 --> 00:01:43.980 For centuries, economics and ethics, political philosophy, had diverged from their common 15 00:01:43.980 --> 00:01:49.520 origin into seemingly unrelated intellectual enterprises. 16 00:01:49.520 --> 00:01:55.200 Economics was a value-free positive science, and ethics, if it was a science at all, was 17 00:01:55.200 --> 00:01:57.760 a normative science. 18 00:01:57.760 --> 00:02:03.040 As a result of this separation, the concept of property had increasingly disappeared from 19 00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:05.240 both disciplines. 20 00:02:05.240 --> 00:02:11.080 For economists, property sounded too normative, and for political philosophers, property smacked 21 00:02:11.080 --> 00:02:14.240 of mundane economics. 22 00:02:14.240 --> 00:02:20.060 Rothbard's unique contribution is the rediscovery of property and property rights as the common 23 00:02:20.060 --> 00:02:26.580 foundation of both economics and political philosophy, and the systematic reconstruction 24 00:02:26.580 --> 00:02:33.880 and conceptual integration of modern marginalist economics and natural law political philosophy 25 00:02:33.880 --> 00:02:42.000 into a unified moral science, libertarianism. Following his revered teacher and mentor Ludwig 26 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:48.720 Ludwig von Mises, Mises teachers Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk and Carl Menger, and an intellectual 27 00:02:48.720 --> 00:02:54.700 tradition reaching back to the Spanish late scholastics and beyond, Rothbardian economics 28 00:02:54.700 --> 00:03:02.160 sets out from a simple and undeniable fact and experience, a single indisputable axiom, 29 00:03:02.160 --> 00:03:09.360 that man acts, that is, that humans always and invariably pursue their most highly valued 30 00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:14.960 and Ends, Goals, with Scarce Means, Goods. 31 00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:20.720 Combined with a few empirical assumptions, such as that labor implies disutility, all 32 00:03:20.720 --> 00:03:27.480 of economic theory can be deduced from this incontestable starting point, thereby elevating 33 00:03:27.480 --> 00:03:34.660 its propositions to the status of apodictic, exact or a priori true empirical laws and 34 00:03:34.660 --> 00:03:40.820 and Establishing Economics as a Logic of Action, Praxeology. 35 00:03:40.820 --> 00:03:46.900 Rothbard modeled his first magnum opus, Man Economy and State, on Mises' monumental Human 36 00:03:46.900 --> 00:03:48.740 Action. 37 00:03:48.740 --> 00:03:54.300 In it, Rothbard developed the entire body of economic theory, from utility theory and 38 00:03:54.300 --> 00:04:00.340 the law of marginal utility, to monetary theory and the theory of the business cycle, along 39 00:04:00.340 --> 00:04:06.820 and Praxeological Lines, subjecting all variants of quantitative, empirical and mathematical 40 00:04:06.820 --> 00:04:13.860 economics to critique and logical refutation, and repairing the few remaining inconsistencies 41 00:04:13.860 --> 00:04:20.220 in the Misesian system, such as his theory of monopoly prices and of government and governmental 42 00:04:20.220 --> 00:04:23.340 security production. 43 00:04:23.340 --> 00:04:28.500 Rothbard was the first to present the complete case for a pure market economy or private 44 00:04:28.500 --> 00:04:35.500 and Property Anarchism as Always and Necessarily Optimizing Social Utility. 45 00:04:35.500 --> 00:04:41.220 In the sequel, Power and Market, Rothbard further developed a typology and analyzed 46 00:04:41.220 --> 00:04:47.640 the economic effects of every conceivable form of government interference in markets. 47 00:04:47.640 --> 00:04:54.020 In the meantime, Man Economy and State, including Power and Market as its third volume, has 48 00:04:54.020 --> 00:04:59.380 has become a modern classic and ranks with Mises' Human Action as one of the towering 49 00:04:59.380 --> 00:05:03.140 achievements of the Austrian School of Economics. 50 00:05:03.140 --> 00:05:10.940 Ethics, or more specifically political philosophy, is the second pillar of the Rothbardian system, 51 00:05:10.940 --> 00:05:17.460 strictly separated from economics but equally grounded in the acting nature of man and complementing 52 00:05:17.460 --> 00:05:22.940 it to form a unified system of rationalist social philosophy. 53 00:05:22.940 --> 00:05:30.200 The Ethics of Liberty, originally published in 1982, is Rothbard's second magnum opus. 54 00:05:30.200 --> 00:05:36.780 In it, he explains the integration of economics and ethics via the joint concept of property, 55 00:05:36.780 --> 00:05:42.380 and based on the concept of property, and in conjunction with a few general empirical, 56 00:05:42.380 --> 00:05:48.780 biological and physical observations or assumptions, Rothbard deduces the corpus of libertarian 57 00:05:48.780 --> 00:05:55.140 and Law, from the Law of Appropriation to that of Contracts and Punishment. 58 00:05:55.140 --> 00:06:00.940 Even in the finest works of economics, including Mises' Human Action, the concept of property 59 00:06:00.940 --> 00:06:06.500 had attracted little attention before Rothbard burst onto the intellectual scene with Man 60 00:06:06.500 --> 00:06:09.300 Economy and State. 61 00:06:09.300 --> 00:06:16.500 Yet as Rothbard pointed out, such common economic terms as direct and indirect exchange, markets 62 00:06:16.500 --> 00:06:23.980 and Market Prices, as well as aggression, invasion, crime and fraud, cannot be defined 63 00:06:23.980 --> 00:06:30.980 or understood without a prior theory of property, nor is it possible to establish the familiar 64 00:06:30.980 --> 00:06:36.700 economic theorems relating to these phenomena without an implied notion of property and 65 00:06:36.700 --> 00:06:38.940 property rights. 66 00:06:38.940 --> 00:06:45.100 A definition and theory of property must precede the definition and establishment of all other 67 00:06:45.100 --> 00:06:48.940 Economic Terms and Theorems. 68 00:06:48.940 --> 00:06:53.700 At the time when Rothbard had restored the concept of property to its central position 69 00:06:53.700 --> 00:07:01.420 within economics, other economists, most notably Ronald Coase, Harold Demsatz and Armin Alkean, 70 00:07:01.420 --> 00:07:07.620 also began to redirect professional attention to the subject of property and property rights. 71 00:07:07.620 --> 00:07:13.760 However, the response and the lessons drawn from the simultaneous rediscovery of the centrality 72 00:07:13.760 --> 00:07:20.200 of the idea of property by Rothbard on the one hand, and Coase, Demsatz and Alkeon on 73 00:07:20.200 --> 00:07:26.840 the other, were categorically different. The latter, as well as other members of the influential 74 00:07:26.840 --> 00:07:32.720 Chicago School of Law and Economics, were generally uninterested and unfamiliar with 75 00:07:32.720 --> 00:07:39.080 philosophy in general, and political philosophy in particular. They unswervingly accepted 76 00:07:39.080 --> 00:07:45.920 the reigning positivistic dogma that no such thing as rational ethics is possible. Ethics 77 00:07:45.920 --> 00:07:53.920 was not and could not be a science, and economics was and could be a science only if and in 78 00:07:53.920 --> 00:08:01.720 so far as it was positive economics. Accordingly, the rediscovery of the indispensable role 79 00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:08.000 of the idea of property for economic analysis could mean only that the term property had 80 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:14.240 had to be stripped of all normative connotations attached to it in everyday non-scientific 81 00:08:14.240 --> 00:08:15.900 discourse. 82 00:08:15.900 --> 00:08:23.500 As long as scarcity, and hence potential interpersonal conflict, exists, every society requires a 83 00:08:23.500 --> 00:08:27.560 well-defined set of property rights assignments. 84 00:08:27.560 --> 00:08:34.080 But no absolute, universally and eternally correct and proper or false and improper way 85 00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:39.960 The way of defining or designing a set of property rights exists, and there exists no 86 00:08:39.960 --> 00:08:47.000 such thing as absolute rights or absolute crimes, but only alternative systems of property 87 00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:54.960 rights assignments describing different activities as right and wrong. Lacking any absolute ethical 88 00:08:54.960 --> 00:09:00.120 standards, the choice between alternative systems of property rights assignments will 89 00:09:00.120 --> 00:09:06.760 will be made, and in cases of interpersonal conflicts, should be made by government judges, 90 00:09:06.760 --> 00:09:14.640 based on utilitarian considerations and calculations. That is, property rights will be so assigned 91 00:09:14.640 --> 00:09:21.520 or reassigned that the monetary value of the output produced is thereby maximized, and 92 00:09:21.520 --> 00:09:28.800 in all cases of conflicting claims, government judges should so assign them. 93 00:09:28.800 --> 00:09:34.680 Profoundly interested in and familiar with philosophy and the history of ideas, Rothbard 94 00:09:34.680 --> 00:09:40.980 recognized this response from the outset as just another variant of age-old self-contradictory 95 00:09:40.980 --> 00:09:43.400 ethical relativism. 96 00:09:43.400 --> 00:09:48.720 For in claiming ethical questions to be outside the realm of science, and then predicting 97 00:09:48.720 --> 00:09:55.240 that property rights will be assigned in accordance with utilitarian cost-benefit considerations, 98 00:09:55.240 --> 00:10:02.200 or should be so assigned by government judges, one is likewise proposing an ethic. 99 00:10:02.200 --> 00:10:07.400 It is the ethic of statism, in one or both of two forms. 100 00:10:07.400 --> 00:10:13.060 Either it amounts to a defense of the status quo, whatever it is, on the grounds that lastingly 101 00:10:13.060 --> 00:10:20.520 existing rules, norms, laws, institutions, etc. must be efficient, as otherwise they 102 00:10:20.520 --> 00:10:40.400 Rothbard did not dispute the fact that property rights are, and historically have been, assigned 103 00:10:40.400 --> 00:10:46.680 in various ways, of course, or that the different ways in which they are assigned and reassigned 104 00:10:46.680 --> 00:10:50.400 have distinctly different economic consequences. 105 00:10:50.400 --> 00:10:56.420 In fact, his power and market is probably the most comprehensive economic analysis of alternative 106 00:10:56.420 --> 00:11:00.000 property rights arrangements to be found. 107 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:06.380 Nor did he dispute the possibility or importance of monetary calculation and of evaluating 108 00:11:06.380 --> 00:11:10.400 alternative property rights arrangements in terms of money. 109 00:11:10.400 --> 00:11:17.100 Indeed, as an outspoken critic of socialism and as a monetary theorist, how could he? 110 00:11:17.100 --> 00:11:22.820 What Rothbard objected to was the argumentatively unsubstantiated acceptance, on the part of 111 00:11:22.820 --> 00:11:29.940 Coase and the Chicago Law and Economics tradition, of the positivistic dogma concerning the impossibility 112 00:11:29.940 --> 00:11:36.200 of a rational ethic, and, by implication, their statism, and their unwillingness to 113 00:11:36.200 --> 00:11:42.500 even consider the possibility that the concept of property might in fact be an ineradicably 114 00:11:42.500 --> 00:11:48.900 and the normative concept, which could provide the conceptual basis for a systematic reintegration 115 00:11:48.900 --> 00:11:54.060 of value-free economics and normative ethics. 116 00:11:54.060 --> 00:11:59.220 There was little to be found in modern contemporary political philosophy that Rothbard could lean 117 00:11:59.220 --> 00:12:02.580 on in support of such a contention. 118 00:12:02.580 --> 00:12:07.660 Owing to the dominance of the positivistic creed, ethics and political philosophy had 119 00:12:07.660 --> 00:12:13.400 had long disappeared as a science or else degenerated into an analysis of the semantics 120 00:12:13.400 --> 00:12:19.720 of normative concepts and discourse, and when political philosophy finally made a comeback 121 00:12:19.720 --> 00:12:26.320 in the early 1970s in the wake of John Rawls and his Theory of Justice, the recognition 122 00:12:26.320 --> 00:12:32.140 of scarcity as a fundamental human condition and of private property and private property 123 00:12:32.140 --> 00:12:38.780 Rights as a device for coordinating the actions of individuals constrained by scarcity was 124 00:12:38.780 --> 00:12:45.820 conspicuously absent. Neither property nor scarcity appeared in Rawls' elaborate index, 125 00:12:45.820 --> 00:12:53.500 for instance, while equality had several dozen entries. In fact, Rawls, to whom the philosophy 126 00:12:53.500 --> 00:12:59.540 profession has in the meantime accorded the rank of the premier ethicist of our age, was 127 00:12:59.540 --> 00:13:06.540 are the prime example of someone completely uninterested in what a human ethic must accomplish. 128 00:13:06.540 --> 00:13:12.700 That is, to answer the question of what I am permitted to do right now and here, given 129 00:13:12.700 --> 00:13:19.920 that I cannot not act as long as I am alive and awake, and the means or goods which I 130 00:13:19.920 --> 00:13:27.080 must employ in order to do so are always scarce, such that there may be interpersonal conflicts 131 00:13:27.080 --> 00:13:30.080 Regarding Their Use. 132 00:13:30.080 --> 00:13:35.240 Instead of answering this question, Rawls addressed an altogether different one. 133 00:13:35.240 --> 00:13:42.040 What rules would be agreed upon as just or fair by parties situated behind a veil of 134 00:13:42.040 --> 00:13:43.040 ignorance? 135 00:13:43.040 --> 00:13:48.680 Obviously, the answer to this question depends crucially on the description of the original 136 00:13:48.680 --> 00:13:52.940 position of parties behind a veil of ignorance. 137 00:13:52.940 --> 00:13:56.280 How then was this situation defined? 138 00:13:56.280 --> 00:14:02.280 According to Rawls, behind the veil of ignorance, no one knows his place in society, his class 139 00:14:02.280 --> 00:14:07.920 position or social status, nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural 140 00:14:07.920 --> 00:14:12.920 assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength and the like. 141 00:14:12.920 --> 00:14:18.700 It is taken for granted, however, that they know the general facts about human society. 142 00:14:18.700 --> 00:14:23.280 They understand political affairs and the principles of economic theory. 143 00:14:23.280 --> 00:14:29.460 They know the basis of social organization and the laws of human psychology. 144 00:14:29.460 --> 00:14:35.160 While one would think that scarcity ranks among the general facts of society and economic 145 00:14:35.160 --> 00:14:42.040 theory, Rawls' parties, who supposedly knew about scarcity, were themselves strangely 146 00:14:42.040 --> 00:14:44.840 unaffected by this condition. 147 00:14:44.840 --> 00:14:49.640 In Rawls' construction of the original position, there was no recognition of the fact that 148 00:14:49.640 --> 00:14:54.580 That scarcity must be assumed to exist even here. 149 00:14:54.580 --> 00:15:01.200 Even in deliberating behind a veil of ignorance, one must still make use of scarce means, at 150 00:15:01.200 --> 00:15:07.920 least one's physical body and its standing room, that is, labor and land. 151 00:15:07.920 --> 00:15:13.960 Even before beginning any ethical deliberation, then, in order to make them possible, private 152 00:15:13.960 --> 00:15:20.560 or exclusive property in bodies and a principle regarding the private or exclusive appropriation 153 00:15:20.560 --> 00:15:25.400 of standing room must already be presupposed. 154 00:15:25.400 --> 00:15:31.600 In distinct contrast to this general fact of human nature, Rawls' moral parties were 155 00:15:31.600 --> 00:15:38.080 unconstrained by scarcities of any kind, and hence did not qualify as actual humans but 156 00:15:38.080 --> 00:15:43.120 as free-floating wraiths or disembodied somnambulists. 157 00:15:43.120 --> 00:15:49.920 Such beings, Rawls concluded, cannot but acknowledge as the first principle of justice, one requiring 158 00:15:49.920 --> 00:15:52.960 an equal distribution of all resources. 159 00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:59.160 Indeed, this principle is so obvious that we would expect it to occur to anyone immediately. 160 00:15:59.160 --> 00:16:06.960 True, for if it is assumed that moral parties are not human actors, but disembodied entities, 161 00:16:06.960 --> 00:16:11.120 the notion of private property must indeed appear strange. 162 00:16:11.120 --> 00:16:16.520 As Rawls admitted with captivating frankness, he had simply defined the original position 163 00:16:16.520 --> 00:16:20.000 so that we get the desired result. 164 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:26.080 Rawls' imaginary parties had no resemblance whatsoever with human beings, but were epistemological 165 00:16:26.080 --> 00:16:27.080 somnambulists. 166 00:16:27.080 --> 00:16:34.240 Accordingly, his socialist-egalitarian theory of justice does not qualify as a human ethic, 167 00:16:34.240 --> 00:16:37.400 but something else entirely. 168 00:16:37.400 --> 00:16:43.400 If anything useful could be found in Rawls in particular and contemporary political philosophy 169 00:16:43.400 --> 00:16:50.200 in general, it was only the continued recognition of the age-old universalization principle 170 00:16:50.200 --> 00:16:57.000 contained in the so-called Golden Rule as well as in the Kantian Categorical Imperative, 171 00:16:57.000 --> 00:17:04.040 that all rules aspiring to the rank of just rules must be general rules, applicable and 172 00:17:04.040 --> 00:17:08.480 and valid for everyone without exception. 173 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:12.760 Rothbard sought and found support for his contention regarding the possibility of a 174 00:17:12.760 --> 00:17:18.620 rational ethic and the reintegration of ethics and economics based on the notion of private 175 00:17:18.620 --> 00:17:24.640 property in the works of the late scholastics and, in their footsteps, such modern natural 176 00:17:24.640 --> 00:17:29.640 rights theorists as Grotius, Pufendorf and Locke. 177 00:17:29.640 --> 00:17:34.560 Building upon their work, in The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard gives the following answer 178 00:17:34.560 --> 00:17:39.800 to the question of what I am justified doing here and now. 179 00:17:39.800 --> 00:17:45.840 Every person owns his own physical body, as well as all nature-given goods which he puts 180 00:17:45.840 --> 00:17:50.760 to use with the help of his body before anyone else does. 181 00:17:50.760 --> 00:17:57.180 This ownership implies his right to employ these resources as one sees fit, so long as 182 00:17:57.180 --> 00:18:03.180 as one does not thereby uninvitedly change the physical integrity of another's property 183 00:18:03.180 --> 00:18:08.260 or delimit another's control over it without his consent. 184 00:18:08.260 --> 00:18:13.940 In particular, once a good has been first appropriated or homesteaded by mixing one's 185 00:18:13.940 --> 00:18:21.060 labor with it, Locke's phrase, then ownership of it can only be acquired by means of a voluntary 186 00:18:21.060 --> 00:18:28.180 a contractual transfer of its property title from a previous to a later owner. 187 00:18:28.180 --> 00:18:30.740 These rights are absolute. 188 00:18:30.740 --> 00:18:36.020 Any infringement on them is subject to lawful prosecution by the victim of this infringement, 189 00:18:36.020 --> 00:18:41.900 or his agent, and is actionable in accordance with the principles of strict liability and 190 00:18:41.900 --> 00:18:45.780 the proportionality of punishment. 191 00:18:45.780 --> 00:18:51.580 Taking his cues from the very same sources, Rothbard then offered this ultimate proof 192 00:18:51.580 --> 00:18:54.980 for these rules as just rules. 193 00:18:54.980 --> 00:19:02.140 If a person, A, were not the owner of his physical body and all goods originally appropriated, 194 00:19:02.140 --> 00:19:08.940 produced or voluntarily acquired by him, there would only exist two alternatives. 195 00:19:08.940 --> 00:19:15.460 Either another person, B, must then be regarded as the owner of A and the goods appropriated, 196 00:19:15.460 --> 00:19:23.120 Produced or contractually acquired by A, or both parties, A and B, must be regarded as 197 00:19:23.120 --> 00:19:27.860 equal co-owners of both bodies and goods. 198 00:19:27.860 --> 00:19:34.960 In the first case, A would be B's slave, and subject to exploitation. B would own A, 199 00:19:34.960 --> 00:19:41.840 and the goods originally appropriated, produced or acquired by A. But A would not own B, and 200 00:19:41.840 --> 00:19:46.280 and the goods homesteaded, produced or acquired by B. 201 00:19:46.280 --> 00:19:54.080 With this rule, two distinct classes of people would be created—exploitors, B, and exploited, 202 00:19:54.080 --> 00:19:58.200 A, to whom different law would apply. 203 00:19:58.200 --> 00:20:04.360 Hence this rule fails the universalization test, and is from the outset disqualified as 204 00:20:04.360 --> 00:20:11.800 even a potential human ethic, for in order to be able to claim a rule to be a law, just, 205 00:20:11.800 --> 00:20:18.800 It is necessary that such a rule be universally, equally valid for everyone. 206 00:20:18.800 --> 00:20:24.280 In the second case of universal co-ownership, the requirement of equal rights for everyone 207 00:20:24.280 --> 00:20:26.800 is obviously fulfilled. 208 00:20:26.800 --> 00:20:30.760 Yet this alternative suffers from another fatal flaw. 209 00:20:30.760 --> 00:20:36.920 For each activity of a person requires the employment of scarce goods, at least his body 210 00:20:36.920 --> 00:20:39.240 and its standing room. 211 00:20:39.240 --> 00:20:45.120 If all goods were the collective property of everyone, then no one, at any time and in 212 00:20:45.120 --> 00:20:51.760 any place, could ever do anything with anything, unless he had every other co-owner's prior 213 00:20:51.760 --> 00:20:55.280 permission to do what he wanted to do. 214 00:20:55.280 --> 00:21:00.180 And how can one give such a permission if one is not even the sole owner of one's very 215 00:21:00.180 --> 00:21:02.920 own body and vocal cords? 216 00:21:02.920 --> 00:21:09.960 If one were to follow the rule of total collective ownership, mankind would die out instantly. 217 00:21:09.960 --> 00:21:14.760 Whatever this is, it is not a human ethic, either. 218 00:21:14.760 --> 00:21:21.000 Thus one is left with the initial principles of self-ownership and first use, first own, 219 00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:25.320 that is, original appropriation, homesteading. 220 00:21:25.320 --> 00:21:31.160 They pass the universalization test, they hold for everyone equally, and they can at 221 00:21:31.160 --> 00:21:51.000 Rothbard did not claim that these fundamental principles of just conduct or proper action 222 00:21:51.000 --> 00:21:54.760 were new or his own discovery, of course. 223 00:21:54.760 --> 00:21:59.600 Equipped with near-encyclopedic knowledge ranging over the entire field of the sciences 224 00:21:59.600 --> 00:22:04.880 as of man, he knew that at least as far as the social sciences are concerned, there is 225 00:22:04.880 --> 00:22:07.440 little new under the sun. 226 00:22:07.440 --> 00:22:12.640 In the fields of ethics and economics in particular, which form the cornerstones of the Rothbardian 227 00:22:12.640 --> 00:22:19.200 system and which are concerned with non-hypothetical truths, it must be expected that most of our 228 00:22:19.200 --> 00:22:24.440 knowledge consists of old, long ago discovered insights. 229 00:22:24.440 --> 00:22:29.920 Newly discovered non-hypothetical truths, even if not impossible, should be expected 230 00:22:29.920 --> 00:22:36.140 to be rare intellectual events, and the newer they are, the more suspect they are. 231 00:22:36.140 --> 00:22:42.260 It must be expected that most non-hypothetical truths already have been discovered and learned 232 00:22:42.260 --> 00:22:49.960 long ago, and merely need to be rediscovered and relearned by every successive generation. 233 00:22:49.960 --> 00:22:55.760 But it also should be expected that scientific progress in ethics and economics, as in other 234 00:22:55.760 --> 00:23:01.680 disciplines concerned with non-hypothetical propositions and relations such as philosophy, 235 00:23:01.680 --> 00:23:08.000 logic and mathematics, will usually be extremely slow and painstaking. 236 00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:13.780 The danger is not that a new generation of intellectuals cannot add anything new or better 237 00:23:13.780 --> 00:23:20.220 to the stock of knowledge inherited from the past, but rather that it will not, or only 238 00:23:20.220 --> 00:23:28.500 incompletely, relearn whatever knowledge already exists, and will fall into old errors instead. 239 00:23:28.500 --> 00:23:35.980 Accordingly, Rothbard saw himself in the role of a political philosopher as well as an economist, 240 00:23:35.980 --> 00:23:43.020 essentially as a preserver and defender of old inherited truths, and his claim to originality, 241 00:23:43.020 --> 00:23:49.740 like that of Mises, was one of utmost modesty. Like Mises, his achievement was to hold on 242 00:23:49.740 --> 00:23:56.800 to and restate long ago established insights and repair a few errors within a fundamentally 243 00:23:56.800 --> 00:24:04.460 complete intellectual edifice. Yet this, as Rothbard knew well, was in fact the rarest 244 00:24:04.460 --> 00:24:11.740 and highest possible intellectual achievement. For, as Mises once remarked about economics, 245 00:24:11.740 --> 00:24:14.740 which holds equally true for ethics. 246 00:24:14.740 --> 00:24:20.660 There never lived at the same time more than a score of men whose work contributed anything 247 00:24:20.660 --> 00:24:23.900 essential to economics. 248 00:24:23.900 --> 00:24:30.940 Rothbard was one of those rare individuals who did contribute to ethics as well as economics. 249 00:24:30.940 --> 00:24:34.340 This is illustrated in The Ethics of Liberty. 250 00:24:34.340 --> 00:24:40.500 All elements and principles, every concept, analytical tool and logical procedure of Rothbard's 251 00:24:40.500 --> 00:24:45.740 Rothbard's private property ethic are admittedly old and familiar. 252 00:24:45.740 --> 00:24:52.380 Even primitives and children intuitively understand the moral validity of the principle of self-ownership 253 00:24:52.380 --> 00:24:54.900 and original appropriation. 254 00:24:54.900 --> 00:25:01.660 And indeed, the list of Rothbard's acknowledged intellectual predecessors goes back to antiquity. 255 00:25:01.660 --> 00:25:07.200 Yet it is difficult to find anyone who has stated a theory with greater ease and clarity 256 00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:09.240 than Rothbard. 257 00:25:09.240 --> 00:25:15.260 More importantly, due to the sharpened methodological awareness derived from his intimate familiarity 258 00:25:15.260 --> 00:25:21.400 with the praxeological, axiomatic, deductive method, Rothbard was able to provide more 259 00:25:21.400 --> 00:25:27.240 rigorous proof of the moral intuitions of self-ownership and original appropriation 260 00:25:27.240 --> 00:25:33.760 as ultimate ethical principles or axioms, and develop a more systematic, comprehensive 261 00:25:33.760 --> 00:25:39.400 and Consistent Ethical Doctrine or Law Code Than Anyone Before Him. 262 00:25:39.400 --> 00:25:45.240 Hence the ethics of liberty represents a close realization of the age-old desideratum of 263 00:25:45.240 --> 00:25:51.880 rationalist philosophy, of providing mankind with an ethic which, as Hugo Grotius demanded 264 00:25:51.880 --> 00:25:59.600 more than 300 years ago, even the will of an omnipotent being cannot change or abrogate, 265 00:25:59.600 --> 00:26:06.000 and which would maintain its objective validity even if we should assume, per impossibile, 266 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:12.040 that there is no god or that he does not care for human affairs. 267 00:26:12.040 --> 00:26:17.780 When the Ethics of Liberty appeared in 1982, it initially attracted only a little attention 268 00:26:17.780 --> 00:26:19.580 in academia. 269 00:26:19.580 --> 00:26:22.520 Two factors were responsible for this neglect. 270 00:26:22.520 --> 00:26:27.960 First, there were the anarchistic implications of Rothbard's theory, and his argument that 271 00:26:27.960 --> 00:26:33.220 that the institution of government, the state, is incompatible with the fundamental principles 272 00:26:33.220 --> 00:26:35.320 of justice. 273 00:26:35.320 --> 00:26:41.880 As defined by Rothbard, a state is an organization which possesses either or both, in actual 274 00:26:41.880 --> 00:26:46.280 fact almost always both, of the following characteristics. 275 00:26:46.280 --> 00:26:54.520 A. It acquires its revenue by physical coercion, taxation, and B. It achieves a compulsory 276 00:26:54.520 --> 00:27:01.760 is a monopoly of force and of ultimate decision-making power over a given territorial area. 277 00:27:01.760 --> 00:27:07.280 Both of these essential activities of the State necessarily constitute criminal aggression 278 00:27:07.280 --> 00:27:13.920 and depredation of the just rights of private property of its subjects, including self-ownership. 279 00:27:13.920 --> 00:27:20.280 For the first, constitutes and establishes theft on a grand scale, while the second prohibits 280 00:27:20.280 --> 00:27:26.840 It's the free competition of defense and decision-making agencies within a given territorial area, 281 00:27:26.840 --> 00:27:33.240 prohibiting the voluntary purchase and sale of defense and judicial services. 282 00:27:33.240 --> 00:27:39.360 Without justice, Rothbard concluded, as St. Augustine had before him, the state was nothing 283 00:27:39.360 --> 00:27:42.840 but a band of robbers. 284 00:27:42.840 --> 00:27:48.440 Rothbard's anarchism was not the sort of anarchism that his teacher and mentor Mises had rejected 285 00:27:48.440 --> 00:27:51.480 as hopelessly naive, of course. 286 00:27:51.480 --> 00:27:56.880 The anarchists, Mises had written, contend that a social order in which nobody enjoys 287 00:27:56.880 --> 00:28:03.600 privileges at the expense of his fellow citizens could exist without any compulsion and coercion 288 00:28:03.600 --> 00:28:08.000 for the prevention of action detrimental to society. 289 00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:13.820 The anarchists overlook the undeniable fact that some people are either too narrow-minded 290 00:28:13.820 --> 00:28:20.060 or too weak to adjust themselves spontaneously to the conditions of social life. 291 00:28:20.060 --> 00:28:26.080 An anarchistic society would be exposed to the mercy of every individual. 292 00:28:26.080 --> 00:28:32.100 Society cannot exist if the majority is not ready to hinder, by the application or threat 293 00:28:32.100 --> 00:28:37.900 of violent action, minorities from destroying the social order. 294 00:28:37.900 --> 00:28:44.800 Indeed, Rothbard wholeheartedly agreed with Mises that without resort to compulsion the 295 00:28:44.800 --> 00:28:50.300 existence of society would be endangered, and that behind the rules of conduct whose 296 00:28:50.300 --> 00:28:56.180 observance is necessary to assure peaceful human cooperation must stand the threat of 297 00:28:56.180 --> 00:29:02.420 force if the whole edifice of society is not to be continually at the mercy of any one 298 00:29:02.420 --> 00:29:04.580 of its members. 299 00:29:04.580 --> 00:29:11.020 One must be in a position to compel a person who will not respect the lives, health, personal 300 00:29:11.020 --> 00:29:18.780 freedom or private property of others to acquiesce in the rules of life in society. 301 00:29:18.780 --> 00:29:24.340 Inspired in particular by the 19th century American anarchist political theorists Lysander 302 00:29:24.340 --> 00:29:31.300 Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, and the Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari, from the outset 303 00:29:31.300 --> 00:29:37.860 Rothbard's anarchism took it for granted that there will always be murderers, thieves, thugs, 304 00:29:37.860 --> 00:29:44.660 con artists, etc., and that life in society would be impossible if they were not punished by physical 305 00:29:44.660 --> 00:29:52.020 force. As a reflection of this fundamental realism, anti-utopianism, of his private property 306 00:29:52.020 --> 00:29:58.580 anarchism, Rothbard, unlike most contemporary political philosophers, accorded central 307 00:29:58.580 --> 00:30:17.580 No one can be said to be the owner of something if he is not permitted to defend his property by physical violence against possible invaders and invasions. 308 00:30:17.580 --> 00:30:23.580 Would, Rothbard asked, somebody be allowed to take the law into his own hands? 309 00:30:23.580 --> 00:30:29.120 Questions? Would the victim or a friend of the victim be allowed to exact justice personally 310 00:30:29.120 --> 00:30:35.460 on the criminal? And he answered, Of course, yes, since all rights of punishment derive 311 00:30:35.460 --> 00:30:41.340 from the victim's right of self-defense. Hence the question is not whether or not evil 312 00:30:41.340 --> 00:30:47.700 and aggression exist, but how to deal with its existence justly and efficiently, and 313 00:30:47.700 --> 00:30:52.820 it is only in the answer to this question that Rothbard reaches conclusions which qualify 314 00:30:52.820 --> 00:31:08.820 The classical liberal answer from the American Declaration of Independence to Mises was to assign the indispensable task of protecting life, liberty and property to government as its sole function. 315 00:31:08.820 --> 00:31:21.820 Rothbard rejected this conclusion as a non sequitur, if government was defined by its power to tax and ultimate decision-making, territorial monopoly of jurisdiction. 316 00:31:21.820 --> 00:31:36.820 Private property ownership, as the result of acts of original appropriation, production or exchange from prior to later owner, implies the owner's right to exclusive jurisdiction regarding his property. 317 00:31:36.820 --> 00:31:50.820 In fact, it is the very purpose of private property to establish physically separate domains of exclusive jurisdiction, so as to avoid possible conflicts concerning the use of scarce resources. 318 00:31:50.820 --> 00:32:09.820 No private property owner can possibly surrender his right to ultimate jurisdiction over and physical defense of his property to someone else, unless he sold or otherwise transferred his property, in which case someone else would have exclusive jurisdiction over it. 319 00:32:09.820 --> 00:32:17.820 That is, so long as something has not been abandoned, its owner must be presumed to retain these rights. 320 00:32:17.820 --> 00:32:34.820 As far as his relations to others are concerned, every property owner may further partake of the advantages of the division of labor and seek better and improved protection of his unalterable rights through cooperation with other owners and their property. 321 00:32:34.820 --> 00:32:46.820 Every property owner may buy from, sell to or otherwise contract with anyone else concerning supplemental property protection and security products and services. 322 00:32:46.820 --> 00:32:58.820 Yet every property owner may also, at any time, unilaterally discontinue any such cooperation with others, or change his respective affiliations. 323 00:32:58.820 --> 00:33:10.820 Hence, in order to satisfy the demand for protection and security among private property owners, it is permissible and possible that there will be specialized firms or agencies 324 00:33:10.820 --> 00:33:17.420 Providing Protection, Insurance and Arbitration Services for a Fee to Voluntarily Buying or 325 00:33:17.420 --> 00:33:20.080 Not Buying Clients. 326 00:33:20.080 --> 00:33:27.460 It is impermissible, however, for any such firm or agency to compel anyone to come exclusively 327 00:33:27.460 --> 00:33:35.380 to it for protection, or to bar any other agency from likewise offering protection services. 328 00:33:35.380 --> 00:33:42.380 That is, no protection agency may be funded by taxes or exempted from competition. 329 00:33:42.380 --> 00:33:44.580 Free entry. 330 00:33:44.580 --> 00:33:51.720 In distinct contrast, a territorial monopoly of protection and jurisdiction, a state, rests 331 00:33:51.720 --> 00:33:57.820 from the outset on an impermissible act of expropriation, and it provides the monopolist 332 00:33:57.820 --> 00:34:02.100 and his agents with a license to further expropriation. 333 00:34:02.100 --> 00:34:03.660 Taxation. 334 00:34:03.660 --> 00:34:09.780 It implies that every property owner is prohibited from discontinuing his cooperation with his 335 00:34:09.780 --> 00:34:16.300 supposed protector, and that no one except the monopolist may exercise ultimate jurisdiction 336 00:34:16.300 --> 00:34:18.540 over his own property. 337 00:34:18.540 --> 00:34:24.660 Rather, everyone except the monopolist has lost his right to physical protection and 338 00:34:24.660 --> 00:34:30.900 defense against possible invasion by the State, and is thus rendered defenseless vis-à-vis 339 00:34:30.900 --> 00:34:33.900 and the actions of his own alleged protector. 340 00:34:33.900 --> 00:34:43.900 Consequently, the price of justice and protection will continually rise and the quality of justice and protection will continually fall. 341 00:34:43.900 --> 00:34:50.900 A tax-funded protection agency is a contradiction in terms, an invasive protector, 342 00:34:50.900 --> 00:34:57.900 and will, if permitted, lead to increasingly more taxes and ever less protection. 343 00:34:57.900 --> 00:35:05.460 Likewise, the existence of a judicial monopoly will lead to a steady deterioration of justice. 344 00:35:05.460 --> 00:35:11.780 For if no one can appeal for justice except to the state and its courts and judges, justice 345 00:35:11.780 --> 00:35:18.140 will be constantly perverted in favor of the state until the idea of immutable laws of 346 00:35:18.140 --> 00:35:24.440 human conduct ultimately disappears and is replaced with the idea of law as positive 347 00:35:24.440 --> 00:35:28.680 State-Made Legislation. 348 00:35:28.680 --> 00:35:33.760 Based on this analysis, Rothbard considered the classical liberal solution to the fundamental 349 00:35:33.760 --> 00:35:41.000 human problem of protection of a minimal or night-watchman state or an otherwise constitutionally 350 00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:46.980 limited government as a hopelessly confused and naive idea. 351 00:35:46.980 --> 00:35:52.940 Every minimal state has the inherent tendency to become a maximal state, for once an agency 352 00:35:52.940 --> 00:35:59.200 is permitted to collect any taxes, however small and for whatever purpose, it will naturally 353 00:35:59.200 --> 00:36:05.540 tend to employ its current tax revenue for the collection of ever more future taxes, 354 00:36:05.540 --> 00:36:08.780 for the same and or other purposes. 355 00:36:08.780 --> 00:36:16.260 Similarly, once an agency possesses any judiciary monopoly, it will naturally tend to employ 356 00:36:16.260 --> 00:36:22.900 this privileged position for the further expansion of its range of jurisdiction. 357 00:36:22.900 --> 00:36:29.460 Limitations, after all, are state constitutions, and whatever limitations they may contain, 358 00:36:29.460 --> 00:36:36.540 what is or is not constitutional, is determined by state courts and judges. 359 00:36:36.540 --> 00:36:43.380 Hence there is no other possible way of limiting state power except by eliminating the state 360 00:36:43.380 --> 00:36:49.820 altogether, and, in accordance with justice and economics, establishing a free market 361 00:36:49.820 --> 00:36:57.100 and Protection and Security Services. Naturally, Rothbard's anarchism appeared threatening 362 00:36:57.100 --> 00:37:03.860 to all statists, and his right-wing, that is, private property anarchism in particular, 363 00:37:03.860 --> 00:37:09.780 could not but offend socialists of all stripes. However, his anarchistic conclusions were 364 00:37:09.780 --> 00:37:16.260 not sufficient to explain the neglect of the ethics of liberty by academia. Rothbard's 365 00:37:16.260 --> 00:37:21.700 His first handicap was compounded by an even weightier one. 366 00:37:21.700 --> 00:37:29.140 Not only had he come to unorthodox conclusions, worse, he had reached them by pre-modern intellectual 367 00:37:29.140 --> 00:37:30.640 means. 368 00:37:30.640 --> 00:37:37.220 Instead of suggesting, hypothesizing, pondering or puzzling, Rothbard had offered axiomatic 369 00:37:37.220 --> 00:37:40.620 deductive arguments and proofs. 370 00:37:40.620 --> 00:37:46.540 In the age of democratic egalitarianism and ethical relativism, this constituted the ultimate 371 00:37:46.540 --> 00:37:54.080 academic sin, intellectual absolutism, extremism and intolerance. 372 00:37:54.080 --> 00:37:59.100 The importance of this second methodological factor can be illustrated by contrasting the 373 00:37:59.100 --> 00:38:04.620 reception accorded to Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty on the one hand, and Robert Nozick's 374 00:38:04.620 --> 00:38:09.180 Anarchy, State and Utopia on the other. 375 00:38:09.180 --> 00:38:16.980 This book appeared in 1974, three years after the publication of Rawls' A Theory of Justice. 376 00:38:16.980 --> 00:38:22.220 Almost overnight, Nozick was internationally famous, and to this day in the field of political 377 00:38:22.220 --> 00:38:28.620 philosophy, anarchy, state and utopia ranks probably second only to Rawls' book in terms 378 00:38:28.620 --> 00:38:31.580 of academic recognition. 379 00:38:31.580 --> 00:38:35.900 Yet while Rawls was a socialist, Nozick was a libertarian. 380 00:38:35.900 --> 00:38:42.620 In fact, Nozick was heavily influenced by Rothbard. He had read Rothbard's earlier Man Economy 381 00:38:42.620 --> 00:38:48.200 and State, Power and Market, and For a New Liberty, and in the acknowledgments to his 382 00:38:48.200 --> 00:38:54.180 book he noted that it was a long conversation about six years ago with Murray Rothbard that 383 00:38:54.180 --> 00:38:58.920 stimulated my interest in individualist anarchist theory. 384 00:38:58.920 --> 00:39:04.100 To be sure, the conclusions arrived at by Nozick were less radical than those proposed 385 00:39:04.100 --> 00:39:06.300 by Rothbard. 386 00:39:06.300 --> 00:39:11.660 Rather than reaching anarchistic conclusions, Nozick's main conclusions about the state 387 00:39:11.660 --> 00:39:17.220 are that the minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, 388 00:39:17.220 --> 00:39:24.140 theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts and so on, is justified, that any more extensive 389 00:39:24.140 --> 00:39:31.620 state will violate persons' rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified, 390 00:39:31.620 --> 00:39:35.820 and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right. 391 00:39:35.820 --> 00:39:41.560 Nonetheless, in claiming that the state may not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose 392 00:39:41.560 --> 00:39:47.300 of getting some citizens to aid others, or in order to prohibit activities to people 393 00:39:47.300 --> 00:39:55.340 for their own good or protection, even Nozick's conclusions placed him far outside the political-philosophical 394 00:39:55.340 --> 00:39:57.220 mainstream. 395 00:39:57.220 --> 00:40:03.700 Why then, in distinct contrast to the long-lasting neglect of Rothbard's libertarian The Ethics 396 00:40:03.700 --> 00:40:10.220 of Liberty, the stupendous academic success of Nozick's libertarian Anarchy, State and 397 00:40:10.220 --> 00:40:11.940 Utopia? 398 00:40:11.940 --> 00:40:16.300 The answer is method and style. 399 00:40:16.300 --> 00:40:19.540 Rothbard was above all a systematic thinker. 400 00:40:19.540 --> 00:40:25.420 He set out from the most elementary human situation and problem, Crusoe ethics, and 401 00:40:25.420 --> 00:40:31.780 then proceeded painstakingly, justifying and proving each step and argument along the way 402 00:40:31.780 --> 00:40:37.420 to increasingly more complex and complicated situations and problems. 403 00:40:37.420 --> 00:40:42.920 Moreover, his prose was characterized by unrivaled clarity. 404 00:40:42.920 --> 00:40:49.220 In distinct contrast, Nozick was a modern, unsystematic, associationist or even impressionistic 405 00:40:49.220 --> 00:40:53.820 thinker, and his prose was difficult and unclear. 406 00:40:53.820 --> 00:40:59.040 Ludwig was explicit about his own method. His writing, he stated, was in the mode of 407 00:40:59.040 --> 00:41:06.380 much contemporary philosophical work in epistemology and metaphysics. There are elaborate arguments, 408 00:41:06.380 --> 00:41:13.100 claims rebutted by unlikely counter-examples, surprising theses, puzzles, abstract structural 409 00:41:13.100 --> 00:41:19.700 conditions, challenges to find another theory which fits a specified range of cases, startling 410 00:41:19.700 --> 00:41:22.800 and Conclusions and so on. 411 00:41:22.800 --> 00:41:27.360 One view about how to write a philosophy book holds that an author should think through 412 00:41:27.360 --> 00:41:33.400 all of the details of the view he presents and its problems, polishing and refining his 413 00:41:33.400 --> 00:41:39.080 view to present to the world a finished, complete and elegant whole. 414 00:41:39.080 --> 00:41:41.900 This is not my view. 415 00:41:41.900 --> 00:41:47.440 At any rate, I believe that there also is a place and a function in our ongoing intellectual 416 00:41:47.440 --> 00:42:11.000 Methodologically, then, Nozick and Rothbard were poles apart. 417 00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:17.240 But why would Nozick's unsystematic ethical explorations find so much more resonance in 418 00:42:17.240 --> 00:42:23.400 in Academia than Rothbard's systematic ethical treatise, especially when their conclusions 419 00:42:23.400 --> 00:42:27.040 appeared to be largely congruent. 420 00:42:27.040 --> 00:42:31.920 Nozick touched upon the answer when he expressed the hope that his method makes for intellectual 421 00:42:31.920 --> 00:42:34.320 interest and excitement. 422 00:42:34.320 --> 00:42:37.340 But this was at best half of the answer. 423 00:42:37.340 --> 00:42:42.240 For Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty, too, was an eminently interesting and exciting 424 00:42:42.240 --> 00:42:48.560 book, full of examples, cases and scenarios from the full range of everyday experiences 425 00:42:48.560 --> 00:42:55.160 to extreme lifeboat situations, spiced with many surprising conclusions and above all 426 00:42:55.160 --> 00:43:01.360 solutions instead of merely suggestions to problems and puzzles. 427 00:43:01.360 --> 00:43:07.240 Nozick's method rather made for interest and excitement of a particular kind. 428 00:43:07.240 --> 00:43:12.560 Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty consisted essentially of one successively and systematically 429 00:43:12.560 --> 00:43:19.160 drawn out and elaborated argument, and thus required the long sustained attention of its 430 00:43:19.160 --> 00:43:20.160 reader. 431 00:43:20.160 --> 00:43:25.600 However, a reader of Rothbard's book could possibly get so excited that he would not 432 00:43:25.600 --> 00:43:29.000 want to put it down until he had finished it. 433 00:43:29.000 --> 00:43:35.140 The excitement caused by Anarchy, State and Utopia was of a very different kind. 434 00:43:35.140 --> 00:43:40.940 The book was a series of dozens of disparate or loosely jointed arguments, conjectures, 435 00:43:40.940 --> 00:43:48.660 puzzles, counter-examples, experiments, paradoxes, surprising turns, startling twists, intellectual 436 00:43:48.660 --> 00:43:54.540 flashes and philosophical razzle-dazzle, and thus required only short and intermittent 437 00:43:54.540 --> 00:43:56.940 attention of its reader. 438 00:43:56.940 --> 00:44:02.420 At the same time, few if any readers of Nozick's book likely will have felt the urge to read 439 00:44:02.420 --> 00:44:04.060 it straight through. 440 00:44:04.060 --> 00:44:09.880 Instead, reading Nozick was characteristically done unsystematically and intermittently 441 00:44:09.880 --> 00:44:11.980 in bits and pieces. 442 00:44:11.980 --> 00:44:16.600 The excitement stirred by Nozick was intense, short and fleeting. 443 00:44:16.600 --> 00:44:22.220 And the success of anarchy, state and utopia was due to the fact that at all times, and 444 00:44:22.220 --> 00:44:28.780 especially under democratic conditions, there are far more high-time-preference intellectuals, 445 00:44:28.780 --> 00:44:41.180 In his subsequent book, Philosophical Explanations, Nozick further confirmed this judgment. 446 00:44:41.180 --> 00:44:42.180 There he wrote, 447 00:44:42.180 --> 00:44:50.020 I, too, seek an unreadable book, urgent thoughts to grapple with in agitation and excitement, 448 00:44:50.020 --> 00:44:57.540 revelations to be transformed by or to transform, a book incapable of being read straight through, 449 00:44:57.540 --> 00:45:04.680 A book even to bring reading to stop? I have not found that book or attempted it. Still, 450 00:45:04.680 --> 00:45:09.980 I wrote and thought in awareness of it, in the hope that this book would bask in its 451 00:45:09.980 --> 00:45:17.220 light. At no point is the reader forced to accept anything. He moves along gently, exploring 452 00:45:17.220 --> 00:45:23.380 his own and the author's thoughts. He explores together with the author, moving only where 453 00:45:23.380 --> 00:45:25.380 The Theory of Money and Credit 454 00:45:53.380 --> 00:45:59.140 If they are correct, I do not think it important for me to believe them correct, either. 455 00:45:59.140 --> 00:46:04.760 Still I do believe and hope you will find it so, that these proposed explanations are 456 00:46:04.760 --> 00:46:09.780 illuminating and worth considering, that they are worth surpassing. 457 00:46:09.780 --> 00:46:16.280 Also that the process of seeking and elaborating explanations, being open to new possibilities, 458 00:46:16.280 --> 00:46:22.880 the new wanderings and wanderings, the free exploration, is itself a delight. 459 00:46:22.880 --> 00:46:27.760 Can any pleasure compare to that of a new idea, a new question? 460 00:46:27.760 --> 00:46:33.740 There is sexual experience, of course, not dissimilar with its own playfulness and possibilities, 461 00:46:33.740 --> 00:46:39.880 its focused freedom, its depth, its sharp pleasures and its gentle ones, its ecstasies. 462 00:46:39.880 --> 00:46:42.920 What is the mind's excitement and sensuality? 463 00:46:42.920 --> 00:46:44.360 What is orgasm? 464 00:46:44.360 --> 00:46:50.320 Whatever, it unfortunately will frighten and offend the Puritans of the mind. 465 00:46:50.320 --> 00:46:58.640 Do the two puritanisms share a common root, even as it expands others and brings them joy? 466 00:46:58.640 --> 00:47:04.720 Despite his politically incorrect conclusions, Nozick's libertarianism was deemed respectable 467 00:47:04.720 --> 00:47:11.620 by the academic masses and elicited countless comments and replies because it was methodologically 468 00:47:11.620 --> 00:47:13.620 non-committal. 469 00:47:13.620 --> 00:47:20.300 That is, Nozick did not claim that his libertarian conclusions proved anything. 470 00:47:20.300 --> 00:47:25.940 Even though one would think that ethics is and must be an eminently practical intellectual 471 00:47:25.940 --> 00:47:33.140 subject, Nozick did not claim that his ethical explorations had any practical implications. 472 00:47:33.140 --> 00:47:39.900 They were meant to be nothing more than fascinating, entertaining or suggestive intellectual play. 473 00:47:39.900 --> 00:47:45.620 As such, libertarianism posed no threat to the predominantly social-democratic intellectual 474 00:47:45.620 --> 00:47:47.740 class. 475 00:47:47.740 --> 00:47:54.420 On account of his unsystematic method, his philosophical pluralism, Nozick was tolerant 476 00:47:54.420 --> 00:48:01.440 vis-à-vis the intellectual establishment, his anti-establishment conclusions notwithstanding. 477 00:48:01.440 --> 00:48:07.440 He did not insist that his libertarian conclusions were correct, and, for instance, socialist 478 00:48:07.440 --> 00:48:13.700 conclusions were false, and accordingly demand their instant practical implementation, that 479 00:48:13.700 --> 00:48:19.020 That is, the immediate abolition of the social democratic welfare state, including all of 480 00:48:19.020 --> 00:48:22.460 public tax-funded education and research. 481 00:48:22.460 --> 00:48:29.900 Rather, Nozick's libertarianism was and claimed to be no more than just an interesting thought. 482 00:48:29.900 --> 00:48:35.100 He did not mean to do any real harm to the ideas of his socialist opponents. 483 00:48:35.100 --> 00:48:40.200 He only wanted to throw an interesting idea into the democratic, open-ended intellectual 484 00:48:40.200 --> 00:48:56.520 Following the publication of Anarchy, State and Utopia, Nozick took even further steps 485 00:48:56.520 --> 00:49:00.280 to establish his reputation as tolerant. 486 00:49:00.280 --> 00:49:06.000 He never replied to the countless comments and criticisms of his book, including Rothbard's, 487 00:49:06.000 --> 00:49:09.300 which forms chapter 29 of this book. 488 00:49:09.300 --> 00:49:14.660 Nozick confirmed that he took his non-committal method seriously, for why, indeed, should 489 00:49:14.660 --> 00:49:19.760 anyone reply to his critics if he were not committed to the correctness of his own views 490 00:49:19.760 --> 00:49:21.400 in the first place? 491 00:49:21.400 --> 00:49:27.640 Moreover, in his subsequent book, Philosophical Explanations, Nozick removed all remaining 492 00:49:27.640 --> 00:49:31.960 doubts as to his supposed non-extremist tolerance. 493 00:49:31.960 --> 00:49:38.420 He went further than merely restating his commitment to the methodological non-committal. 494 00:49:38.420 --> 00:49:43.540 So don't look here for a knockdown argument that there is something wrong with knockdown 495 00:49:43.540 --> 00:49:48.260 arguments, for the knockdown argument to end all knockdown arguing. 496 00:49:48.260 --> 00:49:53.860 It will not do to argue you into the conclusion, even in order to reduce the total amount of 497 00:49:53.860 --> 00:50:00.140 presentation of argument, nor may I hint that I possess the knockdown argument yet will not 498 00:50:00.140 --> 00:50:01.900 present it. 499 00:50:01.900 --> 00:50:13.900 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. 500 00:50:13.900 --> 00:50:24.900 The terminology of philosophical art is coercive. Arguments are powerful and best when they are knocked down. Arguments force you to a conclusion. 501 00:50:24.900 --> 00:50:30.620 If you believe the premises, you have to or must believe the conclusion. 502 00:50:30.620 --> 00:50:34.820 Some arguments do not carry much punch, and so forth. 503 00:50:34.820 --> 00:50:39.180 A philosophical argument is an attempt to get someone to believe something, whether 504 00:50:39.180 --> 00:50:41.420 he wants to believe it or not. 505 00:50:41.420 --> 00:50:47.780 A successful philosophical argument, a strong argument, forces someone to a belief. 506 00:50:47.780 --> 00:50:52.500 Why are philosophers intent on forcing others to believe things? 507 00:50:52.500 --> 00:50:55.700 Is that a nice way to behave towards someone? 508 00:50:55.700 --> 00:50:59.220 I think we cannot improve people that way. 509 00:50:59.220 --> 00:51:03.980 Philosophical argument, trying to get someone to believe something whether he wants to believe 510 00:51:03.980 --> 00:51:09.820 it or not, is not, I have held, a nice way to behave towards someone. 511 00:51:09.820 --> 00:51:16.060 Also, it does not fit the original motivation for studying or entering philosophy. 512 00:51:16.060 --> 00:51:22.240 That motivation is puzzlement, curiosity, a desire to understand, not a desire to produce 513 00:51:22.240 --> 00:51:24.920 Uniformity of Belief. 514 00:51:24.920 --> 00:51:28.060 Most people do not want to become thought police. 515 00:51:28.060 --> 00:51:34.160 The philosophical goal of explanation rather than proof not only is morally better, it 516 00:51:34.160 --> 00:51:37.760 is more in accord with one's philosophical motivation. 517 00:51:37.760 --> 00:51:42.340 Also, it changes how one proceeds philosophically. 518 00:51:42.340 --> 00:51:47.800 At the macro level, it leads away from constructing the philosophical tower. 519 00:51:47.800 --> 00:51:55.280 At the micro level, it alters which philosophical moves are legitimate at various points. 520 00:51:55.280 --> 00:52:02.480 With this surprising redefinition of systematic axiomatic deductive reasoning as coercion, 521 00:52:02.480 --> 00:52:06.680 Nozick had pulled the last tooth from his libertarianism. 522 00:52:06.680 --> 00:52:12.960 If even the attempt of proving or demonstrating the ethical impermissibility and injustice 523 00:52:12.960 --> 00:52:20.960 of Democratic Socialism constituted bad behavior, libertarianism had been essentially disarmed, 524 00:52:20.960 --> 00:52:26.760 and the existing order and its academic bodyguards rendered intellectually invincible. 525 00:52:26.760 --> 00:52:31.080 How could one not be nice to someone as nice as Nozick? 526 00:52:31.080 --> 00:52:35.920 It is no wonder that the anti-libertarian intellectual establishment took kindly to 527 00:52:35.920 --> 00:52:42.780 a libertarianism as gentle and kind as his, and elevated Nozick to the rank of the premier 528 00:52:42.780 --> 00:52:52.740 In accordance with this non-methodical mindset, Nozick's philosophical interests continued 529 00:52:52.740 --> 00:52:58.860 to drift from one subject to another. Already, in his philosophical explanations, he had 530 00:52:58.860 --> 00:53:06.220 confessed, I have found, and not only in sequence, many different philosophies alluring and appealing, 531 00:53:06.220 --> 00:53:10.180 Sogent and impressive, tempting and wonderful. 532 00:53:10.180 --> 00:53:17.240 Libertarianism, ethics, carried no particular or even unique weight within Nozick's philosophy. 533 00:53:17.240 --> 00:53:23.580 It was one exciting subject among innumerous others to be taken up for exploration or dropped 534 00:53:23.580 --> 00:53:27.120 as one's curiosity demanded. 535 00:53:27.120 --> 00:53:32.420 It was not entirely surprising then when, only a few years after the publication of 536 00:53:32.420 --> 00:53:37.740 of the very book that had made him famous, it became increasingly obvious that Nozick 537 00:53:37.740 --> 00:53:42.640 had all but abandoned even his kind and gentle libertarianism. 538 00:53:42.640 --> 00:53:48.500 And when he at last acknowledged openly in The Examined Life, a book of neo-Buddhist 539 00:53:48.500 --> 00:53:53.700 musings on the meaning of life, that he was no longer a libertarian and had converted 540 00:53:53.700 --> 00:53:59.940 to communitarian social democracy, he still felt under no obligation to give reasons for 541 00:53:59.940 --> 00:54:07.540 for his change of mind, and explain why his previous ethical views had been false. Interestingly, 542 00:54:07.540 --> 00:54:12.020 this development seems to have had little effect on the status of anarchy, state and 543 00:54:12.020 --> 00:54:15.660 and Utopia as Prime Libertarian Philosophizing.