[msickmeier]

I am finishing up my undergraduates and am currently taking “business ethics.” While the first few chapters have me “sighing” out loud, it seems like a good avenue to have some lively debates. I have learned the “bullet points” to the non-aggression principle, but would like to get more “meat” to my understanding of it. Can anyone provide me with some references? I already have a few books that touch on them, but rather then pulling each one out separately, maybe a few references will get me in the right area.

[cboyack]

Have you read ‘The Ethics of Liberty’ by Murray Rothbard? If not, I would highly recommend it.

I just finished reading it today…

[rt]

“The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the “nonaggression axiom.” “Aggression” is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else. Aggression is therefore synonymous with invasion.”
http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp
Also look:
http://mises.org/daily/3660
https://mises.org/daily/4641

[msickmeier]

Thanks Ess and Sons. I will check out that book. What I’m looking for is more then just the elevator speech on it. I understand the summary, but would like to get more literature on a more detailed explanation. I’ll check out that Rothbard book.

[rt]

There are different justifications for the NAP. Rothbard derives the NAP from natural law and natural rights. He explains this at lenght in the first chapters of Ethics of Liberty. But there’s the is-ought problem: We know what the nature of man is but which rights/laws ought there to be?
Hoppe and Stephan Kinsella have come up with different justifications for the NAP which are described in the articles I linked to.

[msickmeier]

Wonderful. That should be sufficient to get me started. Thanks all!

[msickmeier]

Just to continue the conversation. Where do you think the NAP would fall in Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development?

[porphyrogenitus]

But there’s the is-ought problem: We know what the nature of man is but which rights/laws ought there to be?

The Natural Law tradition from which Rothbard derives his version of the NAP rejects the “is/ought” question for reasons too extensive to go into here (but I recommend, for example, Ed Feser’s Aquinas or The Last Superstition; he may be a lapsed Libertarian but he’s still a decent philosopher on things like that. Also books by David Oldenberg such as Moral Theory. I’m also sure if you got in touch with David Gordon he’d be able to recommend works that address the so-called “is/ought problem” and attempt to refute it). (N.B. Aquinas was not “just” a very significant theologian; he was also a very significant ethicist that even non-Catholics, like myself, and non-Christians, can and should take seriously. That is to say, he makes points that can and should be considered separately from his purely religious arguments; Rothbard definitely wasn’t a Catholic but took him, and all the Scholastics, seriously. I point that out because I know there are a lot of Athiest libertarians, and I don’t want them to feel they’re being confronted with a religious argument that has no bearing for them).

In short, an acorn is a seed of an oak, it is in its nature to sprout and grow into a study, healthy oak tree, and a good acorn will – and ought, by its nature – to do that (good acorns also serve to feed squirrels, and healthy acorns will, if eaten by such squirrels, produce healthy squirrels); any acorn that falls short of that is deficient in some respect; it’s not as good as it could be.

A good square has four sides of equal length, each one at a 90 degree angle to two others and perfectly parallel to the line opposite it. Any square that does not meet this standard (as all real squares fail to do) is deficient in some respect, not quite as good as it could be (which does not mean they aren’t good enough).

From that one goes to humanity; humans have certain qualities, and the word humanity is used advisedly here because it is an English word that still retains its pre-Humean unity; humanity not only designates a type of being (humans); it also conveys a sense of how they ought to behave (humanely). Is and ought are a unity in this moral conception, and the discussion/dispute then is over what constitutes the good for humanity, what humans should do if they are to pursue their nature.

Note the above is a short, imperfect exposition of the principle, into which many holes can be poked, I therefore recommend any of the above resources for more fully addressing it.

[porphyrogenitus]

People raise Hume as if he had the last and best word, when it just isn’t so, and as if no-one in over 200 years has addressed the point, which isn’t so either.

It pops up all the time in discussion such as these as if it is a trump that settles the debate. And I guess it does in a rhetorical sense, but not in a philosophical sense, so it is important for people to arm themselves intellectually against this trope-invoked-as-a-trump.

Another book I’d recommend which addresses this, and indeed why Hume has been taken as dispositive, but is not, is Alasdair MacIntyre’s “After Virtue,” an excellent book on the blind alley post-enlightenment philosophy went down.

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