I don’t have the time right now to reply to all of Feser’s reply all at once. So I’ll post snippets about various points as I get to them. Let’s start here:
But there are two problems with this characterization that reflect Wilkinson’s failure seriously to address my argument. First, his definition doesn’t say anything that an egalitarian liberal or non-libertarian conservative couldn’t agree with; indeed, many egalitarian liberals and non-libertarian conservatives do in fact endorse “a relatively small state governed by a rule of law that protects rights to personal autonomy, contract, and private property from within the context of a robust and free market economy.” So Wilkinson’s definition fails to capture anything distinctively libertarian. The second, related, problem is that what counts as e.g. “rights to personal autonomy, contract, and private property” and a “relatively small state” — something Wilkinson would have to elaborate upon in order to make his definition informative — is itself extremely controversial, and controversial not only between libertarians and non-libertarians, but even among libertarians themselves. It is therefore no good to point to a commitment to “rights,” “the rule of law,” and the like either as the common core of all libertarian theories or as the one thing that all members of a pluralistic modern society can agree on, because the content of these ideas is precisely what everyone disagrees about. Wilkinson might as well argue that libertarianism, egalitarian liberalism, socialism, and communism are all really varieties of the same doctrine, because they “overlap” in their commitment to “freedom.” Finding some terminology that adherents of various positions all use hardly suffices to demonstrate that there is some substantive view they all have in common; what needs to be shown is that they use that terminology in more or less the same way.
Feser is sort of right; I wasn’t putting a great deal of weight on the distinctively libertarian notion of liberal order. I intend to be talking about liberal order, to which I take egalitarian liberals and classical liberal conservatives all to be committed. Political liberalism, of which political libertarianism is a specific instance, is intended precisely to provide a common intellectual framework from within which egalitarians, conservatives, and libertarians can constructively debate and deliberate together in public.
Feser is worried that this or that — rights, rule of law — have no non-controversial specification. I thik he’s still missing the point, and wants to argue against political libertarianism as if it’s something that it’s not. Political libertarianism just isn’t a substantive, highly specified doctrine; it’s an abtract framework for liberal order. Last night at dinnner Julian suggested that political liberalism is to a particular substantive comprehensive conception something like the scientific method is to a particular scientific theory. Feser’s argument has something of the flavor of the claim that the scientific method is a failure (or there is no scientific method at all) because there remains heated, recalcitrant controversy over the possibility of integrating relativity with quantum mechanics.
The libertarian conception of liberal order differs from the welfare liberal version and the conservative versions in exactly the way you would imagine, and in exactly the way I mentioned near the end of my TCS piece. The welfare liberal believes fairly extensive and deep-reaching redistributive and regulatory mechanisms are a necessary condition for stable liberal order. The conservative believes that a considerable number of restrictions on personal choice are required to maintain the conditions for the flourishing of the family, which is a necessary condition for stable liberal order. The libertarian thinks we need neither extensive and deep-reaching regulation and redistribution, nor considerable restriction on personal choice in order for liberal order to hum along quite nicely. Various views about the nature of rights and the rule of law are consistent with the libertarian view.
Feser in general seems to be obsessed with borderline cases, and how exactly to mark out the boundaries of categories. He should relax and acquiesce to the wisdom of ordinary use. While I don’t insist on self-identifying as a libertarian, other people identify me as a libertarian because I have a set of views that are characteristically shared by libertarians. That said, I believe in the possibility of a legitimate state. I believe in the desirability of some small-scale redistribution. I am not opposed to all paternalistic restrictions on behavior. I’m no purist. But people have no problem identifying me as a kind of libertarian. If my views shifted along one or another dimension, I might become more like a welfare liberal or a classical liberal conservative than a libertarian. The point on the continua where I would be best classified as something else, like the point of hair-loss at which I man is best classified as “bald”, is obscure. Nevertheless, I don’t imagine Feser has a problem identifying the bald. And I don’t suppose that people who identify me as a libertarian are confused.
More to come.
I see no link to Feser’s reply, nor did I find on TCS, didn’t know where to look.
John, Sorry. Link in post.
Will: I don’t see how you can dismiss the examples I raise as “borderline cases.” The whole point of “political liberalism” and “political libertarianism” is supposed to be to allow people who deeply disagree over the most contentious issues arising in a contemporary pluralistic society to get along without having to settle those issues, and in particular to avoid having to settle them through the political process. OK, well if that’s the claim, we ought to be able to test it by applying it to specific historical and contemporary cases where major comprehensive doctrines clash: slavery, abortion, same-sex marriage, etc. My argument is that the minute we do apply it in this way, the alleged “neutrality” of “political liberalism/libertarianism” is revealed to be either vacuous or false, and in neither case can it do the job the doctrine was supposed to do. Not only have you not satisfactorily answered this central point, but it seems to me that you’ve never even seriously addressed it.
So it does no good to point out, once again, that “political libertarianism” is supposed to be abstract and non-comprehensive. I know that it’s _supposed_ to be. The argument is that intentions notwithstanding, in fact it’s either going to be too abstract to do the job it’s supposed to do (the first horn of the dilemma I pose) or not truly abstract at all but implicitly committed to some comprehensive doctrine (the second horn). This is what you need to address, and simply reiterating the aims of those who advocate “politial liberalism/libertarianism” doesn’t address it.
I’m glad to see that you disavow any attachment to the label “libertarian,” because maybe the people who’ve been criticizing me for “attacking libertarianism” (which I didn’t do — what I did was attack certain claims about libertarianism, leaving it open that some particular version of libertarianism might be correct) will now direct some of their fire your way and give me a break.
Seriously, though, the variations you note between libertarians on matters like redistribution simply reinforce my argument. I don’t deny that the borders of libertarianism are vague — indeed, that’s part of my point. They are so vague that there’s no useful core to the various doctrines, nothing that can count as a non-trivial “overlapping consensus.” “Libertarianism” is at best a Wittgensteinian “family resemblence” concept rather than a Platonic essence concept. I think it has to at least approximate the latter in order for there to be a useful overlapping consensus, but it doesn’t. And the various comprehensive doctrines competing in modern pluralistic societies have even less in common, making it implausible in the extreme to suggest that an overlapping consensus can be found.
As I said in my article, I certainly understand the motivation for the Rawlsian idea; but there’s just no way it can fly, however nice it would be if it could. And I would be the last person to deny that there is much that is good in libertarian thinking. The point is that libertarianism is not truly “neutral” in any interesting sense — it is one comprehensive doctrine (or set of doctrines) among others.
Edward: you pointed out two specific issues where libertarians have deep disagreement, and presented them as representative counterexamples to the libertarianism-as-overlapping-consensus thesis. But surely it should be clear to you that these are not representative counterexamples. Indeed, as I’m sure you know they are two of the most contentious issues within the libertarian movement.
The whole point of the Rawlsian notion of overlapping consensus is that it’s possible to achieve broad and agreement on a subset of the issues of the day, and use that subset as the basis for a liberal order. Abortion (and probably gay marriage as well) is simply not part of that overlapping consensus for political libertarianism. So what? The fact that there are a few token issues where no consensus is possible doesn’t invalidate Rawl’s approach.
It strikes me as deliberately obtuse to pretend that those abortion and gay marraige are representative of the sorts of issues that libertarians are supposed to agree about. You’ll find near-unanimity among libertarians of all stripes if you ask them about, say, social security privatization, gun control, taxes, drug legalization, rent control, or dozens of other issues. All sorts of libertarians, from traditionalists to Randroids to Chicago school utilitarians, will agree on all those questions.
The fact that you can find two (or even a dozen) issues about which libertarians have fundamental disagreemens doesn’t change the fact that libertarians of starkly different philosophical inclinations agree on a broad swath of public policy issues. It strains credulity to claim that any overlapping consensus that doesn’t include a position on abortion and gay marriage is “so vague that there’s no useful core.” As just one example, I’d refer you to the 25-year body of research produced by the Cato Institute, which I think you’ll find has managed to sketch a pretty damned comprehensive vision of a liberal society without staking out a position on either issue.
Tim: obviously libertarians agree among themselves on a “broad swath of public policy issues.” But libertarians also agree with many non-libertarian conservatives and egalitarian liberals on a “broad swath of public policy issues,” including in many cases the ones you mention. The question is whether one can isolate a core of agreed upon positions that not only unites all libertarians, but _distinguishes_ them from non-libertarians. And that is much harder plausibly to do: as Will has noted, libertarians don’t in fact even agree with one another about whether some level of redistribution is justified, even though in the popular mind eliminating all redistribution is what libertarianism is all about.
Nor are abortion and same-sex marriage the only issues I have discussed; they are just the ones I focus on in my replies to Will because they pose the clearest challenge to his quasi-Rawlsian “neutral” “political libertarianism.” I also have mentioned e.g. cloning and embryonic stem cell research; and in my original article I discussed how some varieties of classical liberalism/libertarianism would seem to entail some kind of religiously-oriented society.
Finally, it is important to focus on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage precisely because they are test cases for the Rawlsian claim that “political liberalism” (or “political libertarianism” in this case) can avoid the problem of different comprehensive doctrines prevalent in a pluralistic society clashing in the political sphere, with one side imposing its views on the others. If “political liberalism/ libertarianism” is not genuinely neutral between both sides in _these_ disputes, in what sense is it supposed to solve the problem of ineliminable pluralism?
If “political liberalism/ libertarianism” is not genuinely neutral between both sides in _these_ disputes, in what sense is it supposed to solve the problem of ineliminable pluralism?
Because there are lots of other hot-button issues that libertarianism does solve in a mutually agreeable way. Three examples:
* Public schools: a whole host of issues, from prayer in school, to sex ed, to evolution, center around attempts to use the public schools to further a social agenda of one sort or another. In a libertarian society of widespread school choice, parents would send their kids to schools whose views and practices they approved of, and there would be no reason for political conflict over curricula.
* Abortion and health care: socialized medicine will bring with it fierce battles over whether the socialized health care system should subsidize abortions. In a libertarian society (assuming it was pro-choice) conservatives would at least not be forced to subsidize abortions they found morally objectionable.
* Obscene art: the perpetual battles to defund the NEA and censor publicly funded art in general comes from the fact of public funding. In a libertarian society, I think most conservatives would be happy to allow obscene art as long as they didn’t have to pay for it or look at it.
I could think of lots of other examples. The point is: political libertarianism dramatically reduces the set of disagreements that need to be settled by political conflict rather than individual choice. And therefore people of a wide variety of backgrounds– traditionalists and secularists, Objectivists and Mormons– have good reasons to support it, because it lets them pursue their own conception of the good (Saying prayers in schools, not paying for obscene art, say) without interfering with the rights of others to pursue radically different conceptions. (Radical environmentalism in schools, not paying for faith-based charities, say)
So no, PL won’t eliminate political disputes from society entirely, but no political system can do that. What it can do is reduce the scope of such disputes to a bare minimum, helping to promote social harmony on the broad range of issues where increased individual choice can cope effectively with pluralism.
Ed,
I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make. If it’s a definitional point about what it means to be a libertarian, as Will said, those issues are going to sometimes be fuzzy – although, lumping same-sex marriage in with slavery and abortion seems kind of odd.
I mean, slavery is clearly a violation from any kind of liberal perspective. Abortion depends on one’s view of the fetus. These are not issues peculiar to libertarianism. They are issues generally with which all of liberalism needs to grapple.
As far as same-sex marriage goes, that’s going to have to do with one’s more comprehensive view, and there the libertarian is generally going to want the state to abstain from determining who should get married.
These are not complicated issues just because we all agree there’s fuzziness at the borders.
Also, Will didn’t say he “disavowed” any connection to libertarianism. He said that he doesn’t insist on being identified as a libertarian, but he doesn’t seem to object to being called one by others.
“The question is whether one can isolate a core of agreed upon positions that not only unites all libertarians, but _distinguishes_ them from non-libertarians.”
Yes, in a nutshell, very little regulation of the economy and of moral behavior. If you’re looking for an ideal type, you’re never going to find one. There’s no platonic ideal of libertarian. This is the real world.
On cloning, libertarians are generally in favor of it. On same-sex marriage, they generally are opposed gov’t determining who should get married. Of course you know this. These are positions – as are all positions – that require moral suasion and evidence. They are not determined on high by some appeal to a Libertarian Type.
Also, I think you mis-apply Hayek. Hayekian insights – about emergence of order and of the problem of constructivism – can be divorced from whatever Hayek’s particular view was of proper social arrangements. Received wisdom and tradition have special statuses in the Hayekian framework only because they are presumed to embody learning over time. Not because they have a special moral status. It says nothing about whether male/female marriage is privileged from a moral viewpoint. You’ll have to look elsewhere for that.
Tim: I never said “political libertarianism” couldn’t solve _any_ disputes. I said that it was not truly “neutral” in the very ambitious Rawlsian sense. The whole point of the Rawlsian framework which Will has adopted is to find a way to defuse the _most contentious_ debates between comprehensive doctrines in a pluralistic society, the ones that seem to entail one side imposing its moral vision of the world on others. Abortion and same-sex marriage are two good examples where this seems to be a problem; the few bucks spent on the NEA is, however important, relatively trivial. So, again, if the Rawlsian/Wilkinsonian project is to succeed, it should be able to tackle these big issues, and it can’t. No view can be that neutral.
You shouldn’t blame me for expecting too much of “political libertarianism”: the whole idea is extremely ambitious (ridiculously so, in my view) by its very nature. If you admit that it shouldn’t try to be so ambitious though, you’re admitting that it isn’t truly neutral between the major competing comprehensive doctrines in contemporary pluralistic society, and thus conceding my point.
DE: the comment about Will “disavowing” libertarianism was made tongue in cheek — I thought the context made that clear.
Re: same-sex marriage, that is an issue that depends not only on one’s view of morality in general, but on one’s view of rights and justice in particular, since the claim made by same-sex marriage advocates is that not to allow same-sex couples to marry is to violate their rights. But that implies that they have a right to marry in the first place, in which case the claim that they have such a right needs to be justified. But then, as I noted in my first article, whether it can in fact be justified depends on one’s view of rights, and libertarians will disagree even among themselves about this.
A contractarian libertarian is plausibly going to be able to make a case for such a right. A natural rights or Hayekian libertarian is not: for a _natural_ right to marriage implies that marriage is a _natural_ institution, and it is very hard to see how to make sense of marriage as a _natural_ institution unless one sees it as inherently procreative and thus heterosexual; and a Hayekian, who sees rights as evolving within a tradition and a change within a tradition as allowable only to resolve an inconsistency, is also going to be hard-pressed to justify such a right, seeing as the traditional conception of marriage is procreational (so that there is no inconsistency in the tradition in its confining marriage to heterosexuals).
The point isn’t to resolve here the question of same-sex marriage. The point is that some libertarians can consistently be against it just as others can (because of their different theoretical foundations) be for it, so that there is no such thing as “the” libertarian position on the issue. And this underlines the lack of a significant common core to the conceptions of rights endorsed by various versions of libertarianism. Different libertarian theories don’t just disagree about whether we have this or that right; they disagree about what rights are in the first place.
(The natural/artifical distinction in the theory of rights, for example, isn’t some minor difference between people who have the same view of rights. It is as major a difference in moral outlook as could possibly exist. Indeed, it is so significant that I would argue that natural rights libertarians are far closer to natural rights conservatives and natural law theorists than they are to libertarians who reject the idea of natural rights.)
Re: a “Platonic ideal” of libertarianism, _I’m_ not the one who’s looking for one in the first place. I’m just pointing out that the claim that libertarianism is “neutral” in the Rawlsian sense itself presupposes something close to such a Platonic conception, even though there isn’t one and can’t be one. So I agree with you on that; you just don’t want to face the implications of it, which I’m trying to draw out. Don’t blame the messenger!
Sorry, forgot to put my name at the end of that last post.
Edward Feser writes:
Andrew Sullivan and others would argue that same-sex marriage may be inconsistent with traditional marriage but nor is there anything about same-sex marriage that is contrary to traditional marriage.
And the issue of natural rights which Mr. Feser brings up is an interesting one, since there is no one I’m aware of who makes a serious (i.e. informed) case for natural rights except for Jaffa and maybe two or three of his students. They argue that natural rights, to have any meaningful political import, must be prumulgated as self-evident, self-evidently true. (And in that sense, I would argue — and I’m not sure Jaffa and others would agree or not — that such proposition is, in fact, neutral).
But — whether self-evident or no — I would argue that natural rights arguments ARE attempts at neutrality, and yet it seems Mr. Feser (if I read him correctly) takes his stand for a natural rights theory which ought be re-asserted within the heart of the Regime. How then does Feser’s arguments against political neutrality comport with his apparent advocacy of natural rights? Natural rights are neutral in the sense that by the mere invoking of nature (physis), one has pre-supposed the emergence of philosophy, or at least of a philosophized politics or a philosophized conception of the world. One eminently important thing I’ve learned recently is that physis (nature) and philosophy are — in a certain, specific sense (i.e. if we’re talking about the origins of these concepts) — synonymous, interchangeable. This is a theme, BTW., which subtly pervades all of Leo Strauss’s works, the tension between physis and nomos, i.e. where “philosophy” can substitute for physis and “politics” for nomos. (Thus, Strauss’s book Philosophy and Law could just as easily have been entitled, or understood to be entitled as, Nature and Law or Nature and Politics. The great question for Strauss is how do you BRING these two antipodal principles/concepts together). The emergence of philosophy is co-eval with the discovery of nature; there is no word (for e.g.) in the Hebrew Bible for the word “nature.”
And if nature, in an absolute, abstract denotes something completely neutral because nature qua nature is a UNIVERSAL (i.e. principle of “motion and rest” within an organism) — how can we recur to some metaphysical doctrine (i.e. natural rights) when we know that nature, so conceived today, is not the indubitable, fixed entity we thought it was?
Rights then become — as far as I can tell — conventional (positive). I don’t think there’s any middle ground. And if they are conventional, doesn’t this then entail that rights are determined by majority interest? Don’t we then have here the making of all rights being the gift of government? Will no doubt would accuse me here of — again — making false alternatives; but I don’t see any other way.
Correction:
How then _DO_ Feser’s arguments against political . . .
Correction #2:
And if nature, in an absolute, abstract _SENSE_ denotes something completely neutral . . .
Ed,
Your bottom line seems to be that every political philosophy must take a position on abortion, (to the extent that libertarians disapprove of cloning and stem cell research, it’s almost always for the same reasons they object to abortion) and since libertarians are split on the question, libertarianism doesn’t count as a distinct political philosophy.
That just strikes me as silly. Abortion is an important issue, to be sure, but it’s one issue among many. There are other issues (I gave three examples, but there are many others) where libertarianism helps diffuse what would otherwise be intractable political conflicts. Political libertarianism is the set of such issues on which libertarians do agree and can help to diffuse such conflicts. If it’s not obvious to you that that set is non-empty, you might want to spend some time browsing the web site of the Cato Institute, which offers a comprehensive vision of a liberal society without breathing a word about abortion or gay marriage. It seems obvious to me that the program laid out there is clear, comprehensive, and distinct from anything you’ll get from other contemporary political philosophies.
I see no link to Feser’s reply, nor did I find on TCS, didn’t know where to look.
John, Sorry. Link in post.
Will: I don’t see how you can dismiss the examples I raise as “borderline cases.” The whole point of “political liberalism” and “political libertarianism” is supposed to be to allow people who deeply disagree over the most contentious issues arising in a contemporary pluralistic society to get along without having to settle those issues, and in particular to avoid having to settle them through the political process. OK, well if that’s the claim, we ought to be able to test it by applying it to specific historical and contemporary cases where major comprehensive doctrines clash: slavery, abortion, same-sex marriage, etc. My argument is that the minute we do apply it in this way, the alleged “neutrality” of “political liberalism/libertarianism” is revealed to be either vacuous or false, and in neither case can it do the job the doctrine was supposed to do. Not only have you not satisfactorily answered this central point, but it seems to me that you’ve never even seriously addressed it.
So it does no good to point out, once again, that “political libertarianism” is supposed to be abstract and non-comprehensive. I know that it’s _supposed_ to be. The argument is that intentions notwithstanding, in fact it’s either going to be too abstract to do the job it’s supposed to do (the first horn of the dilemma I pose) or not truly abstract at all but implicitly committed to some comprehensive doctrine (the second horn). This is what you need to address, and simply reiterating the aims of those who advocate “politial liberalism/libertarianism” doesn’t address it.
I’m glad to see that you disavow any attachment to the label “libertarian,” because maybe the people who’ve been criticizing me for “attacking libertarianism” (which I didn’t do — what I did was attack certain claims about libertarianism, leaving it open that some particular version of libertarianism might be correct) will now direct some of their fire your way and give me a break.
Seriously, though, the variations you note between libertarians on matters like redistribution simply reinforce my argument. I don’t deny that the borders of libertarianism are vague — indeed, that’s part of my point. They are so vague that there’s no useful core to the various doctrines, nothing that can count as a non-trivial “overlapping consensus.” “Libertarianism” is at best a Wittgensteinian “family resemblence” concept rather than a Platonic essence concept. I think it has to at least approximate the latter in order for there to be a useful overlapping consensus, but it doesn’t. And the various comprehensive doctrines competing in modern pluralistic societies have even less in common, making it implausible in the extreme to suggest that an overlapping consensus can be found.
As I said in my article, I certainly understand the motivation for the Rawlsian idea; but there’s just no way it can fly, however nice it would be if it could. And I would be the last person to deny that there is much that is good in libertarian thinking. The point is that libertarianism is not truly “neutral” in any interesting sense — it is one comprehensive doctrine (or set of doctrines) among others.
Edward: you pointed out two specific issues where libertarians have deep disagreement, and presented them as representative counterexamples to the libertarianism-as-overlapping-consensus thesis. But surely it should be clear to you that these are not representative counterexamples. Indeed, as I’m sure you know they are two of the most contentious issues within the libertarian movement.
The whole point of the Rawlsian notion of overlapping consensus is that it’s possible to achieve broad and agreement on a subset of the issues of the day, and use that subset as the basis for a liberal order. Abortion (and probably gay marriage as well) is simply not part of that overlapping consensus for political libertarianism. So what? The fact that there are a few token issues where no consensus is possible doesn’t invalidate Rawl’s approach.
It strikes me as deliberately obtuse to pretend that those abortion and gay marraige are representative of the sorts of issues that libertarians are supposed to agree about. You’ll find near-unanimity among libertarians of all stripes if you ask them about, say, social security privatization, gun control, taxes, drug legalization, rent control, or dozens of other issues. All sorts of libertarians, from traditionalists to Randroids to Chicago school utilitarians, will agree on all those questions.
The fact that you can find two (or even a dozen) issues about which libertarians have fundamental disagreemens doesn’t change the fact that libertarians of starkly different philosophical inclinations agree on a broad swath of public policy issues. It strains credulity to claim that any overlapping consensus that doesn’t include a position on abortion and gay marriage is “so vague that there’s no useful core.” As just one example, I’d refer you to the 25-year body of research produced by the Cato Institute, which I think you’ll find has managed to sketch a pretty damned comprehensive vision of a liberal society without staking out a position on either issue.
Tim: obviously libertarians agree among themselves on a “broad swath of public policy issues.” But libertarians also agree with many non-libertarian conservatives and egalitarian liberals on a “broad swath of public policy issues,” including in many cases the ones you mention. The question is whether one can isolate a core of agreed upon positions that not only unites all libertarians, but _distinguishes_ them from non-libertarians. And that is much harder plausibly to do: as Will has noted, libertarians don’t in fact even agree with one another about whether some level of redistribution is justified, even though in the popular mind eliminating all redistribution is what libertarianism is all about.
Nor are abortion and same-sex marriage the only issues I have discussed; they are just the ones I focus on in my replies to Will because they pose the clearest challenge to his quasi-Rawlsian “neutral” “political libertarianism.” I also have mentioned e.g. cloning and embryonic stem cell research; and in my original article I discussed how some varieties of classical liberalism/libertarianism would seem to entail some kind of religiously-oriented society.
Finally, it is important to focus on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage precisely because they are test cases for the Rawlsian claim that “political liberalism” (or “political libertarianism” in this case) can avoid the problem of different comprehensive doctrines prevalent in a pluralistic society clashing in the political sphere, with one side imposing its views on the others. If “political liberalism/ libertarianism” is not genuinely neutral between both sides in _these_ disputes, in what sense is it supposed to solve the problem of ineliminable pluralism?
If “political liberalism/ libertarianism” is not genuinely neutral between both sides in _these_ disputes, in what sense is it supposed to solve the problem of ineliminable pluralism?
Because there are lots of other hot-button issues that libertarianism does solve in a mutually agreeable way. Three examples:
* Public schools: a whole host of issues, from prayer in school, to sex ed, to evolution, center around attempts to use the public schools to further a social agenda of one sort or another. In a libertarian society of widespread school choice, parents would send their kids to schools whose views and practices they approved of, and there would be no reason for political conflict over curricula.
* Abortion and health care: socialized medicine will bring with it fierce battles over whether the socialized health care system should subsidize abortions. In a libertarian society (assuming it was pro-choice) conservatives would at least not be forced to subsidize abortions they found morally objectionable.
* Obscene art: the perpetual battles to defund the NEA and censor publicly funded art in general comes from the fact of public funding. In a libertarian society, I think most conservatives would be happy to allow obscene art as long as they didn’t have to pay for it or look at it.
I could think of lots of other examples. The point is: political libertarianism dramatically reduces the set of disagreements that need to be settled by political conflict rather than individual choice. And therefore people of a wide variety of backgrounds– traditionalists and secularists, Objectivists and Mormons– have good reasons to support it, because it lets them pursue their own conception of the good (Saying prayers in schools, not paying for obscene art, say) without interfering with the rights of others to pursue radically different conceptions. (Radical environmentalism in schools, not paying for faith-based charities, say)
So no, PL won’t eliminate political disputes from society entirely, but no political system can do that. What it can do is reduce the scope of such disputes to a bare minimum, helping to promote social harmony on the broad range of issues where increased individual choice can cope effectively with pluralism.
Ed,
I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make. If it’s a definitional point about what it means to be a libertarian, as Will said, those issues are going to sometimes be fuzzy – although, lumping same-sex marriage in with slavery and abortion seems kind of odd.
I mean, slavery is clearly a violation from any kind of liberal perspective. Abortion depends on one’s view of the fetus. These are not issues peculiar to libertarianism. They are issues generally with which all of liberalism needs to grapple.
As far as same-sex marriage goes, that’s going to have to do with one’s more comprehensive view, and there the libertarian is generally going to want the state to abstain from determining who should get married.
These are not complicated issues just because we all agree there’s fuzziness at the borders.
Also, Will didn’t say he “disavowed” any connection to libertarianism. He said that he doesn’t insist on being identified as a libertarian, but he doesn’t seem to object to being called one by others.
“The question is whether one can isolate a core of agreed upon positions that not only unites all libertarians, but _distinguishes_ them from non-libertarians.”
Yes, in a nutshell, very little regulation of the economy and of moral behavior. If you’re looking for an ideal type, you’re never going to find one. There’s no platonic ideal of libertarian. This is the real world.
On cloning, libertarians are generally in favor of it. On same-sex marriage, they generally are opposed gov’t determining who should get married. Of course you know this. These are positions – as are all positions – that require moral suasion and evidence. They are not determined on high by some appeal to a Libertarian Type.
Also, I think you mis-apply Hayek. Hayekian insights – about emergence of order and of the problem of constructivism – can be divorced from whatever Hayek’s particular view was of proper social arrangements. Received wisdom and tradition have special statuses in the Hayekian framework only because they are presumed to embody learning over time. Not because they have a special moral status. It says nothing about whether male/female marriage is privileged from a moral viewpoint. You’ll have to look elsewhere for that.
Tim: I never said “political libertarianism” couldn’t solve _any_ disputes. I said that it was not truly “neutral” in the very ambitious Rawlsian sense. The whole point of the Rawlsian framework which Will has adopted is to find a way to defuse the _most contentious_ debates between comprehensive doctrines in a pluralistic society, the ones that seem to entail one side imposing its moral vision of the world on others. Abortion and same-sex marriage are two good examples where this seems to be a problem; the few bucks spent on the NEA is, however important, relatively trivial. So, again, if the Rawlsian/Wilkinsonian project is to succeed, it should be able to tackle these big issues, and it can’t. No view can be that neutral.
You shouldn’t blame me for expecting too much of “political libertarianism”: the whole idea is extremely ambitious (ridiculously so, in my view) by its very nature. If you admit that it shouldn’t try to be so ambitious though, you’re admitting that it isn’t truly neutral between the major competing comprehensive doctrines in contemporary pluralistic society, and thus conceding my point.
DE: the comment about Will “disavowing” libertarianism was made tongue in cheek — I thought the context made that clear.
Re: same-sex marriage, that is an issue that depends not only on one’s view of morality in general, but on one’s view of rights and justice in particular, since the claim made by same-sex marriage advocates is that not to allow same-sex couples to marry is to violate their rights. But that implies that they have a right to marry in the first place, in which case the claim that they have such a right needs to be justified. But then, as I noted in my first article, whether it can in fact be justified depends on one’s view of rights, and libertarians will disagree even among themselves about this.
A contractarian libertarian is plausibly going to be able to make a case for such a right. A natural rights or Hayekian libertarian is not: for a _natural_ right to marriage implies that marriage is a _natural_ institution, and it is very hard to see how to make sense of marriage as a _natural_ institution unless one sees it as inherently procreative and thus heterosexual; and a Hayekian, who sees rights as evolving within a tradition and a change within a tradition as allowable only to resolve an inconsistency, is also going to be hard-pressed to justify such a right, seeing as the traditional conception of marriage is procreational (so that there is no inconsistency in the tradition in its confining marriage to heterosexuals).
The point isn’t to resolve here the question of same-sex marriage. The point is that some libertarians can consistently be against it just as others can (because of their different theoretical foundations) be for it, so that there is no such thing as “the” libertarian position on the issue. And this underlines the lack of a significant common core to the conceptions of rights endorsed by various versions of libertarianism. Different libertarian theories don’t just disagree about whether we have this or that right; they disagree about what rights are in the first place.
(The natural/artifical distinction in the theory of rights, for example, isn’t some minor difference between people who have the same view of rights. It is as major a difference in moral outlook as could possibly exist. Indeed, it is so significant that I would argue that natural rights libertarians are far closer to natural rights conservatives and natural law theorists than they are to libertarians who reject the idea of natural rights.)
Re: a “Platonic ideal” of libertarianism, _I’m_ not the one who’s looking for one in the first place. I’m just pointing out that the claim that libertarianism is “neutral” in the Rawlsian sense itself presupposes something close to such a Platonic conception, even though there isn’t one and can’t be one. So I agree with you on that; you just don’t want to face the implications of it, which I’m trying to draw out. Don’t blame the messenger!
Sorry, forgot to put my name at the end of that last post.
Edward Feser writes:
Andrew Sullivan and others would argue that same-sex marriage may be inconsistent with traditional marriage but nor is there anything about same-sex marriage that is contrary to traditional marriage.
And the issue of natural rights which Mr. Feser brings up is an interesting one, since there is no one I’m aware of who makes a serious (i.e. informed) case for natural rights except for Jaffa and maybe two or three of his students. They argue that natural rights, to have any meaningful political import, must be prumulgated as self-evident, self-evidently true. (And in that sense, I would argue — and I’m not sure Jaffa and others would agree or not — that such proposition is, in fact, neutral).
But — whether self-evident or no — I would argue that natural rights arguments ARE attempts at neutrality, and yet it seems Mr. Feser (if I read him correctly) takes his stand for a natural rights theory which ought be re-asserted within the heart of the Regime. How then does Feser’s arguments against political neutrality comport with his apparent advocacy of natural rights? Natural rights are neutral in the sense that by the mere invoking of nature (physis), one has pre-supposed the emergence of philosophy, or at least of a philosophized politics or a philosophized conception of the world. One eminently important thing I’ve learned recently is that physis (nature) and philosophy are — in a certain, specific sense (i.e. if we’re talking about the origins of these concepts) — synonymous, interchangeable. This is a theme, BTW., which subtly pervades all of Leo Strauss’s works, the tension between physis and nomos, i.e. where “philosophy” can substitute for physis and “politics” for nomos. (Thus, Strauss’s book Philosophy and Law could just as easily have been entitled, or understood to be entitled as, Nature and Law or Nature and Politics. The great question for Strauss is how do you BRING these two antipodal principles/concepts together). The emergence of philosophy is co-eval with the discovery of nature; there is no word (for e.g.) in the Hebrew Bible for the word “nature.”
And if nature, in an absolute, abstract denotes something completely neutral because nature qua nature is a UNIVERSAL (i.e. principle of “motion and rest” within an organism) — how can we recur to some metaphysical doctrine (i.e. natural rights) when we know that nature, so conceived today, is not the indubitable, fixed entity we thought it was?
Rights then become — as far as I can tell — conventional (positive). I don’t think there’s any middle ground. And if they are conventional, doesn’t this then entail that rights are determined by majority interest? Don’t we then have here the making of all rights being the gift of government? Will no doubt would accuse me here of — again — making false alternatives; but I don’t see any other way.
Correction:
How then _DO_ Feser’s arguments against political . . .
Correction #2:
And if nature, in an absolute, abstract _SENSE_ denotes something completely neutral . . .
Ed,
Your bottom line seems to be that every political philosophy must take a position on abortion, (to the extent that libertarians disapprove of cloning and stem cell research, it’s almost always for the same reasons they object to abortion) and since libertarians are split on the question, libertarianism doesn’t count as a distinct political philosophy.
That just strikes me as silly. Abortion is an important issue, to be sure, but it’s one issue among many. There are other issues (I gave three examples, but there are many others) where libertarianism helps diffuse what would otherwise be intractable political conflicts. Political libertarianism is the set of such issues on which libertarians do agree and can help to diffuse such conflicts. If it’s not obvious to you that that set is non-empty, you might want to spend some time browsing the web site of the Cato Institute, which offers a comprehensive vision of a liberal society without breathing a word about abortion or gay marriage. It seems obvious to me that the program laid out there is clear, comprehensive, and distinct from anything you’ll get from other contemporary political philosophies.