[gerard.casey]

Yes. The details are still being worked out but I completed the entire manuscript just last week. When it becomes accessible to you, I hope you find it useful. I include a comprehensive bibliography for further reading.

Best wishes,

GC

[gerard.casey]

I hope your students realise how lucky they are to have someone like you to introduce them to one of the classics of western political philosophy. Hobbes’s 17th century English can take a little getting used to, plus his use of some quasi-technical terms, but after that, it’s more or less plain sailing.

Best wishes,

GC

[gerard.casey]

Try Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology, edited by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit. Published in the Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies Series.

This is a 600+ page collection of essays by very distinguished authors, some 38 essays in all covering State and Society,Democracy, Justice, Rights, Liberty, Equality etc.

I hope that this might be the kind of thing you’re looking for.

Best wishes,

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

Dear Keith,

The McCall book is excellent and really fits very well with the course as I present it. You should find it complementary in almost every respect. If you can get it inexpensively online, you should snap it up.

Of the remainder of the books on the list, Veatch’s Two Logics would introduce you to questions in the philosophy of logic, and especially the philosophical/epistemological/metaphysical differences between traditional/Aristotelian Logic (which is what is in the course you’re following) and modern, mathematical logic.

Best wishes,

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

“Aquinas School of Economics’? I’ve never encountered this. Is it meant to be an actual organisation of some kind or is he referring to economics done according to the thought of Aquinas? If the latter, this is going to be quite difficult to elaborate as St Thomas wrote practically nothing on the topic. I have a few paragraphs on St Thomas on economic matters that might be relevant in my 2nd part of the History of Political Thought lectures which I’ve just completed and which should be available shortly.

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

I’ll take a lot at my bookshelves when I am next in my university room and see if there is anything there that would fit the bill.

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

Dear eljarrodo,

I think that what Hobbes means here is simply to get your retaliation in first! The best way to overcome your fear of others is by a preemptive strike, either physical or by some other cunning method.

I’d be interested to hear what your highschoolers make of all this.

I’ve just completed the second part of the course and it’s on its way to Dr Woods. I expect he’ll make it available in the very near future. Here’s a list of topics (2 on Hobbes):

Best wishes,

Gerard Casey

List of Recordings

00 Introduction

The Huguenots
01 Huguenot Political Theory

Jean Bodin, Apostle of Sovereignty
02 Sovereignty and State
03 Freedom, Property and the Right to Resist

The Road Not Taken: Johannes Althusius
04 Consociation
05 City, Realm and Sovereignty

Hugo Grotius
06 War, Contract, and Law
07 Certainty, ius naturale, ius gentium, Sovereignty

Fear, Desire and Hope: Thomas Hobbes
08 Method, Man and Nature
09 Personation, the Sovereign and his powers

The English Revolution
10 The Levellers
11 The Diggers
12 Harrington and Filmer

John Locke
13 Man, Nature, Freedom, Property
14 Ownership of Self and Things
15 Cecile Fabre, Politics
16 Government and Consent

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
17 The Discourses
18 The Social Contract, Freedom

Politics Naturalised: David Hume
19 Human Nature, Convention of Justice and Property
20 Property, Justice, Government, Contract
21 Contract, Resistance

Edmund Burke
22 The Vindication of Natural Society
23 Society
24 Defender of Liberty?

Conservatism and Libertarianism
25 Change, Tradition, Society
26 Freedom, Authority and Tradition

John Stuart Mill
27 Liberty, Utilitarianism
28 One very simple principle?
29 Representative Government

Back to the Future: Karl Marx
30 Introduction
31 Alienation and Exploitation
32 Exploitation again
33 Class Struggle, State

The Anarchist Prophets
34 What is Anarchism?
35 William Godwin
36 Godwin on Property, Max Stirner

The Classical Anarchists
37 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
38 Michael Bakunin
39 Peter Kropotkin—State and Society
40 Peter Kropotkin—All things for all; Anarcho-syndicalism

The Anglophone Anarchists
41 Josiah Warren
42 Lysander Spooner
43 Benjamin Tucker
44 Auberon Herbert

Twentieth Century Tribalism: Fascism, National Socialism and Bolshevism
45 Collectivism and Irrationality
46 Transcendence
47 The American Experience, Totalitarianism, Corporatism
48 Anti-Semitism, Fascism—Left or Right?

War and the State
49 War and Human Nature
50 Types of State, Costs of War
51 The American Experience
52 War and the Totalitarian State

The Twentieth Century
53 Ayn Rand
54 Friedrich Hayek
55 Robert Nozick
56 Murray Rothbard
57 John Rawls

58 Conclusion

[gerard.casey]

Dear Micah_6_8

I have just sent the lectures for part 2 to Dr Woods and I expect that they will be made available very shortly. Here’s what you can expect:

List of Recordings

00 Introduction

The Huguenots
01 Huguenot Political Theory

Jean Bodin, Apostle of Sovereignty
02 Sovereignty and State
03 Freedom, Property and the Right to Resist

The Road Not Taken: Johannes Althusius
04 Consociation
05 City, Realm and Sovereignty

Hugo Grotius
06 War, Contract, and Law
07 Certainty, ius naturale, ius gentium, Sovereignty

Fear, Desire and Hope: Thomas Hobbes
08 Method, Man and Nature
09 Personation, the Sovereign and his powers

The English Revolution
10 The Levellers
11 The Diggers
12 Harrington and Filmer

John Locke
13 Man, Nature, Freedom, Property
14 Ownership of Self and Things
15 Cecile Fabre, Politics
16 Government and Consent

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
17 The Discourses
18 The Social Contract, Freedom

Politics Naturalised: David Hume
19 Human Nature, Convention of Justice and Property
20 Property, Justice, Government, Contract
21 Contract, Resistance

Edmund Burke
22 The Vindication of Natural Society
23 Society
24 Defender of Liberty?

Conservatism and Libertarianism
25 Change, Tradition, Society
26 Freedom, Authority and Tradition

John Stuart Mill
27 Liberty, Utilitarianism
28 One very simple principle?
29 Representative Government

Back to the Future: Karl Marx
30 Introduction
31 Alienation and Exploitation
32 Exploitation again
33 Class Struggle, State

The Anarchist Prophets
34 What is Anarchism?
35 William Godwin
36 Godwin on Property, Max Stirner

The Classical Anarchists
37 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
38 Michael Bakunin
39 Peter Kropotkin—State and Society
40 Peter Kropotkin—All things for all; Anarcho-syndicalism

The Anglophone Anarchists
41 Josiah Warren
42 Lysander Spooner
43 Benjamin Tucker
44 Auberon Herbert

Twentieth Century Tribalism: Fascism, National Socialism and Bolshevism
45 Collectivism and Irrationality
46 Transcendence
47 The American Experience, Totalitarianism, Corporatism
48 Anti-Semitism, Fascism—Left or Right?

War and the State
49 War and Human Nature
50 Types of State, Costs of War
51 The American Experience
52 War and the Totalitarian State

The Twentieth Century
53 Ayn Rand
54 Friedrich Hayek
55 Robert Nozick
56 Murray Rothbard
57 John Rawls

58 Conclusion

I hope you find this part of the course enjoyable as well. I have given rein to my own views quite a bit in the later lectures and I’d be interested to have your reaction at some stage.

Best wishes,

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

Dear Ketih,

I’ve just seen your post. Give me a little time to think about it and I’ll get back to you ASAP.

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

It helps to distinguish between primary texts and secondary literature.

Primary texts I read with a pencil in my hand. I can’t really study a text unless I hold it physically and write on it.

I believe that secondary texts are, unless exceptional, to be consulted rather than read. I use the index (also table of contents, introduction) to find where the author discusses matters that concern me, read those, and return the book to the shelf. Some (few) secondary texts require more extensive reading but I believe that many of us are in the grip of a naive belief that we are somehow obliged to read all of a book once we start! Once you learn to consult books, libraries become an ally in the search for knowledge and not an intimidating enemy!

The 80-20 rule tends to apply to books as much as to anything else. The more you know and the more extensive your experience, the more you can focus on the 20% contribution of any given book.

[gerard.casey]

I’ve just seen your post. Sorry for the delay in responding.

I’m a member of the School of Philosophy at UCD so my knowledge of the School of Economics is derived from what my colleagues and students tell me and the course listings.

To the best of my knowledge, the School of Economics is pretty much mainstream. You shouldn’t expect to find anyone teaching Austrian economics or other non-mainstream theories and my impression is, also, that the history of economics is pretty low on the priority scale.

All that said, the School has a good reputation.

[gerard.casey]

Your question raises what I like to call ‘the boundary problem.’ If you and I live on desert islands 100 miles apart, it doesn’t much matter what I do since it’s unlikely to interfere with your peace and quiet. However, if we live next door to each other, it’s inevitable that there will be some spillover of, say, noise (of lawnmowers) and smells (of barbecues).

The common law tends to treat these situations matter of factly and along a continuum. So, if you complain that you can hear your next door neighbours having a cup of coffee on their patio you’re unlikely to get much sympathy. If, however, you complain about rock music played at 150 decibels at 3.00 a.m.. then you’ll be in a much stronger position. Other situations fall in between. The law tends to take a ‘reasonable man’ approach to these situations, using as its standard what a normal person in normal circumstances would find tolerable/intolerable. Practically, most situations are sorted out by a combination of tolerance and reasonableness.

On the visual side of things, common law (at least on the eastern side of the Atlantic) recognises a right to light but not to a view. So if someone constructs a building on their property that radically reduces the amount of light you get, then you have grounds for complaint. If they obstruct your view, you don’t.

In the end, in a libertarian society, much of this would be sorted out by covenanting or some other device. A libertarian jurisprudence can set out the large principles but detailed regulations would be a matter for local devising and implementation.

[gerard.casey]

Here’s something I wrote some time ago that might be of help.

********

So, you’ve discovered the joys of liberty. You’ve started reading and listening to Rothbard and Rand and Mises and Barnett and Kinsella and Molyneux and dozens of other thrilling writers and YouTubers. You’ve found your way to the treasure sites of the Internet—the Mises Institute, Cato and others. You talk to other like-minded people.

But what about everyone else?

Are you filled with an evangelical passion to spread the good news of liberty? If so, how do you go about it?
If someone shows a polite interest in the subject, do you talk him to death? Flood them with more information than a library could hold? Do you buttonhole total strangers who’ve never done you any harm and talk at them? Do you become angry when your listeners fail to be convinced by your brilliant arguments? Do you wait impatiently for others to stop talking before resuming your monologue?

There are so many ways to go wrong in preaching the gospel of liberty that it can be useful to learn from the experience of others. There is no experience so cheap as that of other people.

Michael Cloud has written a number of books on what he calls ‘Libertarian Persuasion’ and I’m going to cherry-pick and adapt some of the ideas from his books that I have found most useful. [Michael Cloud, Secrets of Libertarian Persuasion, Cartersville, GA: Advocates for Self-government, 2004]

Remember, you’re speaking to people, not machines. Your aim is to persuade them of the truth of what you say not to beat them into intellectual submission. So, talk by all means, but listen, really listen. You’re having a conversation, not giving a lecture. St Francis is reported to have said, “ I preach constantly—sometimes, I use words!” It’s no use winning an argument if you lose the person.

The most important element in your evangelical efforts is you. If people believe IN you, they’ll be willing to believe you. If they don’t believe IN you—because you’re insensitive, crass, rude, impatient, unwilling to listen, offensive—they won’t believe a single word you say and, instead of adding another liberty lover to our efforts, you’ll have made things worse.

Let’s say the person you’re talking to brings up an objection. You respond immediately and without pause: ”That’s just the usual X argument which has been conclusively shown to be nonsense.” Good job, Einstein. You’ve managed to insult your soon-to-be-leaving-for-an-urgent-appointment interlocutor. No matter how many times you may have heard this objection, treat it with respect. Failure to do so is to treat the other person disrespectfully. Try pausing for a moment and then saying, “Yes, that’s a good point. If your objection could be met, would that make libertarianism more appealing to you?” On the off chance that your listener asks a question that you can’t immediately answer, do you dodge around and pretend as if you know or do you come right out and say “That’s a really good question. I’ll have to think about that and get back to you. Would you be interested in continuing the conversation then?”

One thing that people often do when they feel that they’re being browbeaten into a certain position is to resist. So, how about getting them to persuade themselves! Ask, “What one thing more than anything else does Government do that it shouldn’t do at all” or “What does Government do that would be better done by individuals or groups?” Now you’re starting from where your listener is, not from where you’d like him to be. The danger of being disrespectful is greatly lessened. And your listener will be far better convinced by his own ideas than by yours.

Libertarians are so passionate against so many things that we run the risk of being taken to be naysayers. We also defend ourselves by saying what it is we’re not in favour of.

The message we need to get across is what we are for—We want little or no government so that people can take personal responsibility for themselves, their families, and their communities. We think that all human dealings should be voluntary. We believe that people should be free if they choose to care for those less fortunate than themselves.

Suppose that you are successful in persuading your listeners of some libertarian point. Congratulations! Now what? If they wander off, the power of the dominant non-libertarian environment will soon dissipate any effect your words might have had on them. After persuasion, comes action. Get them to agree to do something—buy a book, read an article, go online at Mises.com, return to continue the conversation with you. Anything, as long as they commit to doing something.

However persuaded you are of the truth of certain positions—pro-choice or pro-life, the validity or stupidity of religious belief, the evils of social welfare—don’t risk losing your audience by getting in their faces by crassly asserting your beliefs. Some topics are the libertarian equivalent of demilitarized zones on either side of which are your fellow libertarians. Instead, find out what your listeners think and work back from there.
In summary, these are just a few of the many things to bear in mind when spreading the good news of liberty:
• Persuade people—don’t win arguments
• Respect your listeners
• Try getting your interlocutor to persuade himself by switching sides
• Be positive FOR liberty
• Get your listeners to agree to DO something.

[gerard.casey]

Good point!

I’ll shortly (fingers crossed!) be finishing the second part of my lectures on the history of political philosophy and I’ll see if I can adopt your suggestion.

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

What you call ‘grey areas’ is another way of naming the sorties problem (or boundary issues)

When, for example, does a child become an adult. In law, this occurs at a specific point in time. Before that point, a child; after that point, an adult. In reality, we know that the transition from child to adult is a process that itself takes time. At age 5, child; at age 25, an adult. Somewhere in between, the change takes place. The sorties problem is often used in argument to argue that if we cannot point to a bright line point of transition from A to B, there’s really no difference between A and B. That, of course, is nonsense.

let’s see how we deal with this in practice. If your neighbour is having some friends over and they’re having a barbecue in their back garden, your likely to hear some sound and smell some hamburgers cooking. Is this an invasion of your rights as a property owner? Most people would say no – that’s what you get when you live adjacent to someone else: a little noise, some smells, etc. However, now let’s have the same party take place at 3 a.m. when you’re trying to sleep. This time the noise prevents you from sleeping. Do we now have an invasion of your rights as a property owner? Most people would say yes.

What does all this tell us, if anything?

We have and exercise our rights in a context of social conventions which are rarely completely (sometimes never) realised in law. Most properly socialised people understand and abide by those conventions and that’s what makes life together possible.

GC

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