Free Libertarian Philosophy!

By On October 10, 2012 · 9 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Announcements, Links

Those outside of academic philosophy departments might not have heard of it, but Social Philosophy and Policy is one of my favorite journals. More than any other journal I know, they consistently publish high-quality work of interest to libertarians and classical liberals. That includes articles written by libertarians and classical liberals, of course. But it also includes some of the most interesting criticisms of libertarian and classical liberal positions.

For a limited time, Social Philosophy and Policy is offering free access to their top ten downloaded papers of 2011 and 2012. Those of you without access to the benefits of a university library will want to act quick!

Here are the articles:

  1. Ilya Somin – “Foot Voting, Political Ignorance, and Constitutional Design“
  2. Iris Marion Young – “Responsibility and Global Justice: A Social Connection Model“
  3. Edward Feser – “There is No Such Thing as an Unjust Initial Acquisition“
  4. Loren Lomasky – “Libertarianism at Twin Harvard” [MZ: I love this piece.]
  5. David Lewis Schaefer – “Procedural versus Substantive Justice: Rawls and Nozick“
  6. A. John Simmons – “Consent Theory for Libertarians“
  7. Larry Alexander – “What Are Constitutions, and What Should (and Can) They Do?“
  8. Gerasimos Santas – “Plato’s Criticisms of Democracy in The Republic“
  9. James Fishkin – “Deliberative Democracy and Constitutions“
  10. Chandran Kukathas – “The Mirage of Global Justice“

Freebies last until November 30th, 2012!

P.S. Let me know if the links from the individual articles don’t work. They should, but if they don’t, use the main link here instead.

 
  • Herp Derp

    Thanks for sharing. All the links worked fine for me. The only article I had read before was Lomasky’s, which I would think BHL readers will be most familiar with. Look forward to reading the others!

  • Ilya Somin

    I am flattered to be listed alongside Simmons, who has written some of the greatest-ever work on consent theory, and was a big inspiration for some of my own early work.

  • Chet Lake

    Thanks for the tip!

  • Shannon’s Mouse

    It might be worth noting that Feser has largely disavowed the views expressed in his piece listed here since it was first published. Google will help you find out why.

    • good_in_theory

      Why be elliptical when you could just, you know, link to something where he disavows his views?

    • Sean II

      Also, why does it matter? Maybe Matt finds the ideas in this paper more interesting than some later repudiation of those ideas by the same author. Maybe he thinks Feser was right the first time.

      When talking about ideas, proper names can be a useful shorthand, and great scholars a useful source, but the names themselves should never come to dominate the ideas, and the scholars should never be confused with the schools.

      The lamest arguments are always the ones where people forget that, and start quibbling about names instead of ideas. You know what I’m talking about, since that sort of thing pops up here from time to time. Sometimes it’s hard not to laugh when you come across people posting comments that sound like this:

      “But don’t you see! The American reading of Pashkudenyak’s fifth precept has been largely invalidated by P.N. Schmendrick’s interpretation of Professor Gonif’s later work on moderate Neo-Pashkudenyakism. Everyone knows that, or should!”

      • good_in_theory

        Well, the post implies that he renounced it because of the arguments of others. Which makes sense because the claim made in the title seems ridiculous.

    • Georgian Tutuianu

      I googled and didn’t come up with much… are you refering to the piece by Michael Vincent? Would you mind posting a link or hashing out the counter arguments?

  • Edward Feser

    As Shannon’s Mouse indicates, I have moved away from libertarianism in the time since the article linked to by Matt was written. I recently had occasion to recount that move here:

    http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-road-from-libertarianism.html

    My current views on property, appropriation, etc. are most fully spelled out in my later Social Philosophy and Policy paper “Classical Natural Law Theory, Property Rights, and Taxation,” which you can find online via Google.

    It’s too strong to say that I have “disavowed” the article Matt linked to, though. I still think that given the background premises — premises shared by lots of people who would not accept my current (Aristotelian-Thomistic natural law) views — the argument of the paper is basically correct. It’s just that I no longer accept those background premises (for reasons that should be evident from the later paper). But the paper is still important, I like to think, from a dialectical point of view.