Download or read book Explaining Libertarianism Some Philosophical Arguments written by J.C. Lester and published by Legend Press Ltd. This book was released on 2014-11-30 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explaining Libertarianism: four theses: 1. Interpersonal liberty requires an explicit, pre-propertarian, purely factual, theory. 2. Liberty is and need only be morally desirable in systematic practice, not in every logically possible case. In practice, there is no clash between the two main moral contenders: rights and consequences. 3. Nothing can ever justify, support or ground any theory of liberty or its applications because it is logically impossible to transcend assumptions. Theories can only be explained, criticised and defended within conjectural frameworks. 4. The state is inherently authoritarian and also negative-sum. It reduces welfare overall, with the losses compounding over time. Libertarian anarchic order is the positive-sum solution to illiberal political chaos. J C Lester is a philosopher of libertarianism. He has written widely on the subject in books, articles and dialogues. His solution to the crucial philosophical problem of interpersonal liberty provides an explicit theory of liberty and explains how its application entails self-ownership and external property, and relates to all other interpersonal matters.
Download or read book Libertarianism written by Jason Brennan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an introduction to libertarianism, describing how libertarians view such topics as human nature, government, democracy, civil rights, economics, social justice, and contemporary problems, including immigration, health care, and education.
Download or read book Arguments for Liberty written by J. C. Lester and published by Legend Press Ltd. This book was released on 2016 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential book on liberty. Liberty is what libertarians advocate, both because of the inherent value of human liberty and because of the increasing wealth and welfare it brings to all. They see the aggressive coercion of the state as the main enemy of liberty. The solution is to roll back the state until there is little or no state left. Libertarianism has been rapidly growing since the 1970s but it is still not commonly understood or even given a proper hearing. You will increasingly come across it. Often it will be state enthusiasts disingenuously claiming to be libertarians. At other times it will be state enthusiasts attacking libertarianism as an extremist ideology. And very occasionally it will be real libertarians explaining and defending their views. J C Lester is a libertarian philosopher who has been writing about why liberty is preferable to politics for about 30 years. This book contains many of his shorter writings on the subject. These range from the populist to the philosophical. Together they function as a miscellaneous introduction to libertarianism. The various different topics and approaches should give the reader a good cross-reference grasp of the subject.
Download or read book Burning Down the House written by Andrew Koppelman and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively history of American libertarianism and its decay into dangerous fantasy. In 2010 in South Fulton, Tennessee, each household paid the local fire department a yearly fee of $75.00. That year, Gene Cranick's house accidentally caught fire. But the fire department refused to come because Cranick had forgotten to pay his yearly fee, leaving his home in ashes. Observers across the political spectrum agreed—some with horror and some with enthusiasm—that this revealed the true face of libertarianism. But libertarianism did not always require callous indifference to the misfortunes of others. Modern libertarianism began with Friedrich Hayek’s admirable corrective to the Depression-era vogue for central economic planning. It resisted oppressive state power. It showed how capitalism could improve life for everyone. Yet today, it's a toxic blend of anarchism, disdain for the weak, and rationalization for environmental catastrophe. Libertarians today accept new, radical arguments—which crumble under scrutiny—that justify dishonest business practices and Covid deniers who refuse to wear masks in the name of “freedom.” Andrew Koppelman’s book traces libertarianism's evolution from Hayek’s moderate pro-market ideas to the romantic fabulism of Murray Rothbard, Robert Nozick, and Ayn Rand, and Charles Koch’s promotion of climate change denial. Burning Down the House is the definitive history of an ideological movement that has reshaped American politics.
Download or read book The Libertarian Idea written by Jan Narveson and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2001-03-05 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Libertarianism is both a philosophy and a political view. The key concepts defining Libertarianism are: Individual Rights as inherent to human beings, not granted by government; a Spontaneous Order through which people conduct their daily interactions and through which society is organized independent of central (government) direction; the Rule of Law which dictates that everyone is free to do as they please so long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others; a Divided and Limited Government, checked by written constitution; Free Markets in which price and exchange is agreed upon mutually by individuals; Virtue of Production whereby the productive labour of the individual and any translation of that labour into earnings belongs, by right, to the individual who should not have to sacrifice those earnings to taxes; and Peace which has, throughout history, most commonly been disrupted by the interests of the ruling class or centralized government.
Download or read book Arguments for Liberty written by Aaron Ross Powell and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two schools of thought have long dominated libertarian discussions about ethics: utilitarianism and natural rights. Those two theories are important, but they’re not the only ways people think about ethics and political philosophy. In Arguments for Liberty, you’ll find a broader approach to libertarianism. In each of Arguments for Liberty’s nine chapters a different political philosopher discusses how his or her preferred school of thought judges political institutions and why libertarianism best meets that standard. Though they end up in the same place, the paths they take diverge in fascinating ways. Readers will find in these pages not only an excellent introduction to libertarianism, but also a primer on some of the most important political and ethical theories. Assuming little or no training in academic philosophy, the essays guide readers through a continuous moral conversation spanning centuries and continents, from Aristotle in ancient Athens to twentieth-century philosopher John Rawls in the halls of Harvard. What’s the best political system? What standards should we use to decide, and why? Arguments for Liberty is a guide to thinking about these questions. It’s also a powerful, nine-fold argument for the goodness and importance of human liberty.
Download or read book Libertarian Free Will written by David Palmer (Professor) and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title provides a collection of essays on the libertarian position on free will and related issues that focus specifically on the views of philosopher Robert Kane. Written by a distinguished group of philosophers, the essays range from various areas of philosophy, including metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy of mind.
Download or read book The Problem of Political Authority written by Michael Huemer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-10-29 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The state is often ascribed a special sort of authority, one that obliges citizens to obey its commands and entitles the state to enforce those commands through threats of violence. This book argues that this notion is a moral illusion: no one has ever possessed that sort of authority.
Download or read book Anarchy State and Utopia written by Robert Nozick and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1974 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Nozicka s Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a powerful, philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age ---- liberal, socialist and conservative.
Download or read book A Theory of Justice written by John RAWLS and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.
Download or read book Libertarian Accounts of Free Will written by Randolph Clarke and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2006-02-23 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text examines free will in the context of determinism on the one hand, and the notion that this choice may in fact be random and arbitrary on the other.
Download or read book The Libertarian Mind written by David Boaz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rev. ed. of: Libertarian: A primer. New York: Free Press, 1997.
Download or read book A Minimal Libertarianism written by Christopher Evan Franklin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Christopher Evan Franklin develops and defends a novel version of event-causal libertarianism. This view is a combination of libertarianism--the view that humans sometimes act freely and that those actions are the causal upshots of nondeterministic processes--and agency reductionism--the view that the causal role of the agent in exercises of free will is exhausted by the causal role of mental states and events (e.g., desires and beliefs) involving the agent. Franklin boldly counteracts a dominant theory that has similar aims, put forth by well-known philosopher Robert Kane. Many philosophers contend that event-causal libertarians have no advantage over compatibilists when it comes to securing a distinctively valuable kind of freedom and responsibility. To Franklin, this position is mistaken. Assuming agency reductionism is true, event-causal libertarians need only adopt the most plausible compatibilist theory and add indeterminism at the proper juncture in the genesis of human action. The result is minimal event-causal libertarianism: a model of free will with the metaphysical simplicity of compatibilism and the intuitive power of libertarianism. And yet a worry remains: toward the end of the book, Franklin reconsiders his assumption of agency reductionism, arguing that this picture faces a hitherto unsolved problem. This problem, however, has nothing to do with indeterminism or determinism, or even libertarianism or compatibilism, but with how to understand the nature of the self and its role in the genesis of action. Crucially, if this problem proves unsolvable, then not only is event-causal libertarianism untenable, so also is event-causal compatibilism.
Download or read book Free Will and Theism written by Kevin Timpe and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concerns both about the nature of free will and about the credibility of theistic belief and commitment have long preoccupied philosophers. In addition, there can be no denying that the history of philosophical inquiry into these two issues has been dynamic and, at least to some degree, integrated. In a great many cases, classical treatments of one have influenced classical treatments of the other--and in a variety of ways. Without pretending to be able to trace all the historical integrations of these treatments, there is no real question that these philosophical interrelations exist and are worthy of further exploration. In addition, contemporary discussions contain more than a few hints of suspicion that theistic belief is adversely affecting the purity of inquiry into contours of human free will. Nevertheless, until now there has been no volume systematically exploring the relationship between religious beliefs and various accounts of free will in the contemporary domain. With a particular eye on how the former might be--either legitimately or illegitimately--affecting the latter, this collection fills an important gap in the current debate. Here, sixteen leading philosophers focus their attention on a crucial point of intellectual intersection, with surprising and illuminating results.
Download or read book A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear written by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tiny American town's plans for radical self-government overlooked one hairy detail: no one told the bears. Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road. When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town's thick wilderness. The anything-goes atmosphere soon caught the attention of Grafton's neighbors: the bears. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. The bears smelled food and opportunity. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying tale of what happens when a government disappears into the woods. Complete with gunplay, adventure, and backstabbing politicians, this is the ultimate story of a quintessential American experiment -- to live free or die, perhaps from a bear.
Download or read book Libertarianism written by Eric Mack and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essence of libertarianism is the view that coercive political institutions, such as the state, are justified only insofar as they function to protect each person’s liberty to pursue their own goals and well-being in their own way. Libertarians accordingly argue that any attempt to enforce top-down concepts of social justice or economic equality are fundamentally misconceived. In this book, leading expert Eric Mack provides a rigorous and clear account of the philosophical principles of libertarianism. He offers accounts of three distinctive schools of libertarian thought, which he labels the natural rights approach, the cooperation to mutual advantage approach, and the indirect consequentialist approach. After examining the historical roots of these approaches in the thought of figures such as John Locke and David Hume, he provides illuminating accounts of the foundational arguments and the theories of economic justice offered by Robert Nozick and F.A. Hayek. He then examines a range of other debates, such as those surrounding the nature of the minimal state and those between critics and defenders of libertarianism. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in political philosophy, political ideologies and the nature of liberty and state authority, from students and scholars to general readers.
Download or read book Free Will A Very Short Introduction written by Thomas Pink and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-24 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every day we seem to make and act upon all kinds of free choices - but are these choices really free? Or are we compelled to act the way we do by factors beyond our control? This book looks at free will.
