Search

Drawing from exploratory participant observation with libertarian socialist groups and individuals emerging as active minorities in the metropolitan areas of the Dominican Republic, twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with ten participants in the beginning and the end of 2013. An advanced theoretical model was reconstructed, which distinguished itself between the persons as the commitment of active self-management, and the passive self-management commitment. This improvement is done thanks to a more profound dialogue between theories and evidence and an enhanced methodological framework. From the explanation of the active self-management we can see the combination of: 1) discursive multiplicities, the overlap of communitarian tools of discourse self-management of the cases studied as optimizers; and 2) personal attitudes that facilitate one taking a protagonist role in self-management commitment as a subject. These conditions are differentiated when explaining the most general libertarian socialist self-management commitment separated from the specifically anarchist commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Libertarian ideas of self‐ownership and the priority of bodily autonomy have featured prominently in the political debate over vaccination programmes and the justifiability or otherwise of restricting the liberty of the unvaccinated. In this article we look at a selection of recent right‐libertarian literature to show that there is a considerable divergence between the application of consistent libertarian principles to this issue by academic libertarians and the strident opposition to vaccination programmes and vaccine mandates expressed by people who profess to be libertarians in the public‐political debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People often fail to make the choices that best satisfy their preferences. The design of the social environment inevitably makes some choices easier than others. According to Libertarian Paternalists, these facts justify governments nudging people towards better choices through changes to the so-called choice architecture. This is a form of means paternalism. However, the social environment affects not only people's choices or means, but also the preferences they adopt in the first place. Call this the problem of 'preference architecture'. This article argues that preference architecture constitutes a fundamental challenge to the justificatory basis of Libertarian Paternalism. More generally, it explores when, if ever, government paternalism that influences preference formation can be justified. While Libertarian Paternalism cannot provide a satisfactory answer, the author defends a contractualist account of paternalism based on a notion of primary goods and democratic deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ayres and Vars are at pains to distinguish their interventions from traditional federal and state laws regulating firearms. The paradigm within which Ayres and Vars write centers civil legal regulation and legal permission (and encouragement) for private firearms regulation, often taking the form of market-based, libertarian solutions that require little in the way of state investment. It is cost-effective - Ayres and Vars emphasize that "looking solely at medical costs and lost productivity further supports the cost-benefit argument in favor of the proposal" for Donna's Law (56). Ayres and Vars are admirably skeptical of the state's ability to compel with armed state agents the changes many would want to see with respect to guns. [Extracted from the article]

With this study we intend to explore the impact of naturism on the Valencian anarcho-syndicalist power base in the 1920s and 1930s. The methodology used in this article has been oral history, since we consider this as the most useful to access the ways of understanding reality, as represented by historical actors. In fact, we have analysed unpublished oral sources to examine the processes of reappropriation of spaces and their uses developed by libertarian militants. Through the collective practices associated with naturism, the libertarian militant structured new contentious discourses that influenced the return to nature as an essential phase of the revolution. These experiences would engender the basis upon which to construct an anarcho-naturist identity, along with a whole set of new meanings and representative universe, which varied according to the experiences of each militant. In short, with this work we interrogate the different representations and subjective experiences of the libertarian militancy around naturism and its practices, which will thus improve the understanding of the weight of naturist collective practices in the imaginary, and in the process of constructing the identity of libertarian militant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of Philosophy / Roczniki Filozoficzne is the property of John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This essay makes a critical defence of free expression through the spirit of outrageousness. Drawing upon the ideas of Oscar Wilde, along with artists such as Frida Kahlo, Francis Bacon, Gilbert and George and Jake and Dinos Chapman, it looks beyond the current attempts to reduce the question of freedom to quintessential liberal tropes. In doing so, the paper both offers a critique of the moral absolutism that’s taken over certain sectors of the so-called ‘radical left’, while demanding more political appreciation for creatives and those with the abilities to reimagine the human subject. Such a critique not only suggests the need to rethink the meaning for freedom beyond the play of libertarians, but it also calls forth a new political subjectivity who appears timely and yet timeless – the much maligned and theoretically ignored figure of the infidel, who allows us to break free from moral entrapments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hoppe (2014) claims that libertarianism, properly understood, is aligned with the right, not the left. The present paper defends the view that it is affiliated with neither; instead, it is unique, sui generous. What, then, is its relationship with both: it agrees a bit more with the right on economics, more with the left on personal liberties, and with neither on foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text aims to allocate the Brazilian anarchist movement in the scenario of the civil-military dictatorship. So, in the face of the 1964 coup, what would be the position of anarchist groups? How was your political-cultural production? It is certain that with the repression that from 1964 promoted a series of arrests and "mistreatment", libertarians would start to act with some caution. Years later, in 1968, with the approval of the AI-5, a more intense phase of repression would affect various social movements, whose libertarian strongholds were also the target of attacks, such as the invasion and depredation of the Professor José Oiticica Study Center, located in Rio de Janeiro, accompanied by the arrest and torture of its militants. In the midst of this, in Rio Grande do Sul, in the city of Porto Alegre, a police-military inquiry was carried out against students accused of anarchist subversion. Therefore, in the face of such dark times, clandestinity would present itself as a correct path for the survival of anarchist practices and knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013, Brazil saw the emergence of several political groups identified with right-wing politics and united against the left and the Worker's Party consecutive administration. This paper investigates the characteristics of this phenomenon in northeastern Brazil to understand how right-wing militancy discursively organizes its identity and that of groups it chooses as antagonists. Based on discourse analysis, the study analyzes transcripts of interviews conducted with nine members of this militancy. Categories such as conservative, liberal and libertarian were used by the interviewees as self-identifying positions. How they describe these categories reveals the plurality of the political right, highlighting its complexity and contradictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that all human beings are endowed with unalienable rights is a core element of America's public philosophy going back to the Declaration of Independence. But it is increasingly clear that many Americans have abandoned the idea that some rights are unalienable- especially, I would argue, libertarians. Given the prevalence of libertarianism in our culture, an important question is whether all libertarians logically ought to reject unalienable rights given their philosophical anthropology. What I propose to do in this article is three things: First, I will introduce and give a definition for "unalienable rights" by reviewing the recent proceedings of the State Department's Commission on Unalienable Rights. Second, I will show why the concept of unalienable rights is generally incompatible with the libertarian philosophical anthropology. Third, I will survey the writings of specific libertarian philosophers, economists, and law professors to consider whether they believe in unalienable rights. This will allow us to better understand the status of unalienable rights in America today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is divided into three moments: in the first, we resume the etymology and the implications of the concept of utopia; in the second, we mapped some uses of this category in writings of libertarian content; finally, we indicate five anarchist projects that are in tune with the conception of utopia in its constructive sense (not pejorative). By censoring the capitalist/liberal dystopia then in force and designing a libertarian eutopia, these projects, far from conceiving utopia as an impossibility, work with its credible and dated projection, conceiving the libertarian project as an attempt to break with national borders and materialize an egalitarian and welcoming place that favored anarchy, a model of society recurrently conceived as a chimera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to demonstrate how it is possible for determinism and free will to be compatible. We will do this firstly by exposing the traditional concept of determinism, demonstrating that its common rejection stems from a misunderstanding of its meaning. Then, we will present Harry Frankfurt's theory of freedom, arguing that it explains in a meaningful way how the actions of each individual can be said free within a deterministic view. Finally, we will conclude the article with brief notes on moral responsibility; we suggest that moral responsibility is a well-justified practice within any description of the world - be it strong libertarian, compatibilist, or determinist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will contrast two views of expert testimony, an authoritarian view and a libertarian view. I will show that the authoritarian view has some problems that the libertarian view can solve. An authoritarian view leads to skepticism about expert testimony, as, on this view, acceptance of expert testimony is blind. It also seems to make scientific revolution inherently unreasonable. Having shown that libertarianism can easily address these problems, I conclude by outlining a way of integrating this view with a broader theory of testimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rothbard (1999) argues that morality and utility require a guerrilla defense of libertarian societies, an assessment shared by many libertarian thinkers. This paper reviews the literature on guerrilla warfare to consider whether guerrilla forces alone, wielding small arms and light weapons, could successfully defend anarcho-capitalist territory. Despite the romance that surrounds them, the expert consensus is that guerrilla wars are fought only out of necessity by relatively weak powers. They are protracted wars of attrition fought on one's own territory and as such are highly destructive of the defending homelands. If the enemy does not distinguish between military and civilian targets, as is likely to be the case in a war with anarchist citizen-soldiers, defeat is almost assured. Guerrillas are most effective as complements to regular forces rather than as substitutes, and a strictly guerrilla defense should be employed only as a last resort in the event of a collapse of the regular army or an inability to raise an army. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Leviathan: Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft (Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG) is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ensayos: Revista de la Facultad de Educacion de Albacete is the property of Ensayos Revista de la Facultad de Educacion de Albacete and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Trans/Form/Ação is the property of Trans/Form/Acao and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

If, as Hans Kelsen argued, law and state are actually one and the same thing, then legal and political philosophy are not essentially separate disciplines. However, even if one departs from Kelsenian tenets, a close connection between these cannot be denied. Evaluation of legal positivism from different libertarian perspectives affords one more instance of this interplay between legal and political thought. This article will specifically explore this libertarian "critique" of legal positivism, which is one of the most relevant achievements of libertarianism's legal-philosophical forefront. It will predominantly focus on libertarian criticism of Kelsen's "pure theory of law," undoubtedly the most acclaimed and influential embodiment of legal positivism. Yet, libertarian legal theory has not always been unsympathetic towards the principles and corollaries of legal positivism, wherefore their points of convergence will also be reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista História da Educação is the property of Historia da Educacao and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Annals of Philosophy / Roczniki Filozoficzne is the property of John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Annals of Philosophy / Roczniki Filozoficzne is the property of John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article informs about third century of the American experiment which is essential to recognize that can draw distinct intellectual traditions in shaping future patterns of organization. Topics include logic of that tradition which run the risk of creating a imperialism to be associated with Presidential Government; and intellectual tradition of the first century and fashion an extended federalism.

In The Community of Advantage, Robert Sugden reconstructs and defends an account of the liberal tradition (LT) in normative economics in the light of the findings of Behavioural Economics (BE). In this paper, the LT in neo-classical welfare economics which has roots in J.S. Mill's thought is contrasted with Sugden's account. Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's Libertarian Paternalism (LP) arguably attempts to reconcile the LT in neo-classical welfare economics with the findings of BE and to provide it with a Millian pedigree. To the extent that it attempts this, LP is unsuccessful. While Sugden abandons core elements of traditional normative economics – notably the 'view from nowhere', welfarism and the preference satisfaction view of welfare – which have a Millian pedigree and advances a contractarian alternative, he successfully reconciles his reconstruction of the LT with the findings of BE and also provides it with a sound Millian pedigree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heumer and I debate animal rights, utilitarianism, libertarianism, morality and philosophy. We agree that suffering is a problem, and diverge, widely, on how to deal with it. I maintain that this author's reputation as a libertarian, let alone an intellectual leader of this movement, is problematic. Why? That is because libertarianism, properly understood, is a theory of intra-human rights; this philosophy says nothing about right from an extra-human perspective, Heumer to the contrary notwithstanding. That is to say, he is improperly importing into the freedom philosophy considerations extraneous to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human freedom is in tension with nomological determinism and with statistical determinism. The goal of this paper is to answer both challenges. Four contributions are made to the free-will debate. First, we propose a classification of scientific theories based on how much freedom they allow. We take into account that indeterminism comes in different degrees and that both the laws and the auxiliary conditions can place constraints. A scientific worldview pulls towards one end of this classification, while libertarianism pulls towards the other end of the spectrum. Second, inspired by Hoefer, we argue that an interval of auxiliary conditions corresponds to a region in phase space, and to a bundle of possible block universes. We thus make room for a form of non-nomological indeterminism. Third, we combine crucial elements from the works of Hoefer and List; we attempt to give a libertarian reading of this combination. On our proposal, throughout spacetime, there is a certain amount of freedom (equivalent to setting the initial, intermediate, or final conditions) that can be interpreted as the result of agential choices. Fourth, we focus on the principle of alternative possibilities throughout and propose three ways of strengthening it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the noncausal libertarian view of free will, in order for a person's action to be free, it must be uncaused. A standard criticism of this view—the control objection—is that a person cannot have control over whether an uncaused action occurs and, so, such an action cannot be free. The background to this criticism is the claim that control over action is plausibly a causal rather than noncausal matter. In this paper, I defend noncausal libertarianism against the control objection by developing a new noncausal theory of control. What emerges is not simply a defense of noncausal libertarianism against the control objection but a new theory of control more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If we have libertarian free will, then it is plausible to believe that the occurrences of certain physical events have irreducible and ineliminable mental explanations. According to a strong version of (metaphysical) naturalism, everything in the physical world is in principle explicable in nonmental terms. Therefore, the truth of naturalism implies that libertarian choices cannot explain the occurrences of any physical events. In this paper, I example a methodological argument for the truth of naturalism and conclude that the argument fails. I then consider additional concerns raised against the reality of libertarian freedom. First, I examine the claim that if a physical event E is not causally determined to occur by another physical event, then there is no way to account for the difference between E’s occurring randomly and E’s being causally determined to occur by a mental event. Second, I consider the assertion that the affirmation of libertarianism is a mind-of-the-gaps version of the God-of-the-gaps objection to a divine explanation of a physical event. Third, I take up the question of whether the inability of libertarians (or anyone else) to pinpoint precisely where the initial physical effects of libertarian choices occur is a good reason for rejecting libertarianism. Fourth, I examine the claim that belief in the existence of the soul or immaterial mind is the result of an explanatory hypothesis to account for how libertarian free choices can causally produce physical effects. Fifth, I look at the traditional objection to substance dualism from the impossibility of causal interaction between a soul and its body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article articulates and defends an indeterministic weightings model of libertarian free will (LFW). It begins by defining the conception of free will at issue and then goes on to present versions of the luck objection which is often made against theories of LFW. It is argued that the sort of indeterministic weightings model of LFW which has been defended in the recent literature by Storrs McCall and E.J. Lowe (2005, 2008) and John Lemos (2018, Ch.5) has the resources to answer such luck objections while possessing virtues which some other libertarian views lack. According to the indeterministic weightings model of LFW, in making undetermined free-willed choices between two courses of action, A or B, the reasons for choosing each option don’t come with pre-established evaluative weights. During the process of deliberation, the agent assigns weight in an undetermined way to the reasons for each option and this typically leads to the choice of the option that has been assigned a greater value. In the paper, it is not only argued that this theory can resolve worries about luck but also that the view has virtues which certain other libertarian views lack, as such the view is contrasted with the modest libertarian models of LFW from Daniel Dennett (1978) and Alfred Mele (1995) as well as Robert Kane’s view (1996, 2002, 2007, 2011, 2019) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explains the experiences of Proeja students at Ifes during the activities proposed by the Philosophy and Sociology seminars. The theoretical and methodological contributions of the systematization of experiences were appropriated in order to make the educational actions built with EJA´s students visible. The data production, organized through a documentary sources, were constituted by the records of the pedagogical and planning meetings, field journal notes, photographs and audiovisual records, that indicate the protagonism of Proeja´s students and the practice of Freire's dialogue, exercised in the collective production of seminars and in the various movements of educational action that envision the concreteness of curricular integration, in the perspective of integral human development and libertarian education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses coercive paternalism, a concept of liberty-limitations that has gained significant attention in recent decades. In opposition to the libertarian type of paternalism proposed by the well-known 'Nudgers' Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (2008), Sarah Conly (2013) advocates coercive interventions in Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism. Her influential work serves as a basis for scrutinizing the validity of coercive paternalism's presuppositions as well as the internal coherence of the concept. Following the fundamental groundwork of especially Joel Feinberg and Gerald Dworkin, arguments against coercive paternalism are evaluated. They include the reciprocal (rather than unilateral) relationship between the 'present self' and the 'future self' in the paternalist's account, the questionable legitimacy of punishment for self-harming behaviour and of coercion in general, the challenges of so-called 'perfectionism' and slippery-slopes, as well as a misconception about the alleged lack of rationality that serves as a justification for coercive paternalism. The article concludes by suggesting that - given the flaws of the concept - it may be reasonable to favour soft paternalism à la John Stuart Mill based on the harm principle over Conly's proposal for a more extensive form of coercive paternalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competition is building block of any successful economy, while a cartelized economy is against the common good of society. Nowadays, developing artificial intelligence (AI) and its plausibility to foster cartels persuade governments to revitalize their interference in the market and implement new regulations to tackle AI implications. In this sense, as pooling of technologies might enable cartels to impose high prices and violate consumers' rights, it should be restricted. By contrast, in the libertarian approach, cartels' impacts are defined by government interference in the market. Accordingly, it is irrational to rely on a monopolized power called government to equilibrate a cartelized market. This article discusses that AI is a part of the market process that should be respected, and a restrictive or protective approach such as the U.S. government Executive Order 13859 is not in line with libertarian thought and can be a ladder to escalate the cartelistic behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cerebral automatism, using scientific experiments, maintains that the experience of the decision-making process is a simple illusion, a mental process interpretative of a cerebral response to the external stimulus. On the other hand, any model of imputation of personal responsibility, whether in the civil or criminal sphere, imposes the existence of a reproachability of conduct. The exclusion of the volitional element removes all responsibility, since the agent could not be required to act in a different way, in the absence of a choice. The problem is connected with the philosophical controversy between determinists, libertarians, and compatibilists. There are profound implications not only for the structures of the legal model of liability, but also for the construction of public policies for the prevention and repair of damages. More than this, the adoption of one or another perspective points to a particular worldview and, for this, a peculiar understanding of what it is to be human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]