ISSN: 1734-9923
eISSN: 2300-7621
OAI
DOI: 10.18276/aie.2023.61-01
Issue archive /
61 (2023)
Libertarianism, Defense of Property, and Absolute Rights
| Authors: |
Łukasz
Dominiak
Department of Social Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland Igor Wysocki
Interdisciplinary Doctoral School of Social Sciences, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland |
| Keywords: | libertarianism defense of property self-defense proportionality gentleness absolute rights |
| Data publikacji całości: | 2023 |
| Page range: | 22 (5-26) |
| Klasyfikacja JEL: | K10 K11 K13 K14 |
Additional information
This research was funded in whole or in part by the National Science Centre, Poland, grant number 2020/39/B/HS5/00610. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC-BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.
Abstract
The present paper argues that libertarians (e.g. Murray Rothbard, Stephan Kinsella) who subscribe the proportionality principle while embracing the view that to have a right to property is to have a right to defend it run into what we call the Property Defense Dilemma. For if the only way to defend property is to defend it disproportionately, then a private property right – contrary to what these thinkers claim – is not accompanied by a right to defend it. The most plausible way out of the dilemma – the present paper argues – is to conceive of private property rights as only weakly absolute, to use Matthew H. Kramer’s illuminating distinction. On the other hand, libertarians who as Walter Block would like to escape the dilemma by replacing the proportionality standard with the gentleness principle run into other sorts of problems (moral implausibility, incoherence) which also shows that it is the libertarian view on rights as infinitely stringent side constraints that calls for revision and attenuation.
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