Currently viewing the tag: "John Locke"

Who’s Afraid of Natural Rights? (Part II)

By On April 24, 2013 · 14 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Libertarianism, Rights Theory

In my first post, I discussed the argument that there are no natural rights because such rights are too indeterminate. In this post I wish to take up another kind of objection. Taken together, these arguments show us what natural rights really are.

It is common to say that natural rights are those [...]

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Blogging at Libertarianism.org, part 5: More on Liberty and Property

By On February 25, 2013 · 5 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Liberty

A few weeks back, I posted an essay at Libertarianism.org arguing that property rights necessarily restrict freedom. I noted in that post that I thought that property rights enhance freedom in certain ways too, and promised to go into that more in a future post.

Thanks to a skirmish with David Friedman [...]

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On Burdens, Community, and Provisos

By On April 26, 2012 · 3 Comments · In Left-libertarianism, Libertarianism, Symposium on Libertarianism and Land

First, I would like to thank all those commentators who responded to what I wrote in “Natural Rights and Natural Stuff.”  Second, I would like to clarify or restate a few of the basic points that I sought to make in that contribution.

To begin with, I did [...]

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Self-Ownership and External Property

By On April 25, 2012 · 92 Comments · In Left-libertarianism, Libertarianism, Rights Theory, Symposium on Libertarianism and Land

What kind of external property rights are consistent with self-ownership?

It seems to me that once one acknowledges self-ownership, one cannot acknowledge any other rights unless those rights are themselves grounded in self-ownership.

How so? Well, the difference between rights and other moral claims is that rights are legitimately enforceable. So any limits that [...]

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The Geolibertarian Ethics of Land Rent

By On April 25, 2012 · 35 Comments · In Left-libertarianism, Libertarianism, Symposium on Libertarianism and Land

I coined the term “geolibertarian” in 1981 to designate the branch of libertarian philosophy which deems the natural rent to equally belong to human beings.

Public finance theory prescribes land rent as an efficient source of public revenue.  The issue here is whether there is harmony between what is economically efficient and what is morally [...]

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Natural Rights and Natural Stuff

By On April 23, 2012 · 59 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Left-libertarianism, Libertarianism, Rights Theory, Symposium on Libertarianism and Land

Since there are many different sorts of approaches to libertarianism – including many different sorts of moral approaches – there are many different sorts of routes to the topic of “Libertarianism and Land.”  Fortunately, the implicit context of this symposium is the natural rights approach to libertarianism – which I would (elsewhere) argue is the [...]

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A Bleeding Heart History of Libertarian Thought – John Locke

By On April 18, 2011 · 34 Comments · In A Bleeding Heart History of Libertarian Thought, Academic Philosophy, Liberalism, Libertarianism, Social Justice

Few political philosophers have had an influence comparable to that of John Locke.  In his own time, he was a revolutionary whose ideas ultimately triumphed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 with the overthrow of King James II.   And not too long after his death, his ideas would have tremendous influence in the American [...]

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