Currently viewing the category: "Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty"

Reading The Ethics of Liberty, Part 4 – Rothbard’s Second Argument for Self-Ownership

By On October 4, 2012 · 56 Comments · In Book/Article Reviews, Libertarianism, Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty

In my last post, I argued that Rothbard’s discussion of self-ownership in chapter six of The Ethics of Liberty rests on a fundamental confusion between descriptive and normative claims. Individuals in the state of nature might control their own [...]

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Reading The Ethics of Liberty, Part 3 – Rothbard’s Confusion About Self-Ownership

By On October 1, 2012 · 18 Comments · In Book/Article Reviews, Libertarianism, Rights Theory, Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty

In the previous post in this series, I discussed the natural law foundation of Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty, and suggested that it runs into difficulties with David Hume’s famous “is-ought” problem. In this post, I move on [...]

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Reading The Ethics of Liberty, Part 2 – Rothbard on Natural Law

By On July 20, 2012 · 35 Comments · In Libertarianism, Rights Theory, Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty

Most people are comfortable thinking about libertarianism in connection with the idea of natural rights. And Rothbard’s form of libertarianism is, indeed, a natural rights position. But it is also a position based on a kind of natural law ethic, and this position is one that is less familiar to most libertarians. The first five chapters of The Ethics [...]

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Reading The Ethics of Liberty, Part 1 – Hoppe’s Introduction

By On June 7, 2012 · 39 Comments · In Book/Article Reviews, Libertarianism, Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty

I. Rothbard vs. Nozick

Hoppe’s lengthy introduction to the 1998 edition of The Ethics of Liberty begins by describing the book as Rothbard’s second magnum opus, the first being Man, Economy, and State (1962). Its purpose, as Hoppe sees it, is to explain

the integration of economics [...]

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