I have a new post up at BHL: Eudaimonist Libertarianism. Not too hot, not too cold – like lukewarm porridge, it’s just right!
I have a new post up at BHL: Eudaimonist Libertarianism. Not too hot, not too cold – like lukewarm porridge, it’s just right!
Interesting post. Happy birthday, Roderick.
I’ve always liked to phrase it that eudaimonism itself is the golden mean between deontology and utilitarianism.
Actually, Vallier is just proposing an alternative liberal social contract:
“on which state coercion is permitted only when persons cannot reasonably reject the rules or principles on which the coercion is based.”
Of course, the problem is the enforceability of the constraint.
Historically, self-ownership, in liberal social contract theory, has never been “too consequence-insensitive.” The whole point of “the State of Nature construct” was to legitimize the rationality/necessity of self-ownership violations regarding government.
To me it’s clear that there is no moral foundation for a libertarian social theory. I wouldn’t bother looking for it.
That’s its point in Hobbes. But in Locke it has the dual function of authorising government and placing constraints on government. And over time, in one strand of liberalism at least, the second function waxed while the first function waned, until state-of-nature theory turned into an argument for anarchism. It was to resist this tendency that a different strand of liberalism pushed farther and farther in the direction of hypothetical rather than actual consent (with public-reason contractualism being the latest flower on this vine).
“I do not wish to approve of claims about which I do not have any knowledge, and about things which I have not seen; and then to observe through those glasses gives me a headache. Enough! I do not want to hear anything more about this.” — Cesare Cremonini
yes, of course, with regards to Locke. I posted a rather long essay on the State of Nature.
http://rulingclass.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/essay-on-the-state-of-nature-part-i/
My position is more or less moral contractarianism, and i would dispute equating it with a refusal to gaze into galileo’s telescope.
It was your wording, not necessarily your position, that prompted the comparison.
Fair enough, but I stand by the position 🙂
Great post (and great discussion in the responses as well)!