Against Politics

Toward a depoliticized society

Jim Crawford against natural rights

Posted on | August 4, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf

Jim Crawford’s autobiographical antinatalist manifesto Confessions of an Antinatalist contains an illuminating perspective on the idea of natural rights:

Concurrent with our wish to understand the human condition through over-simplification is our tendency to ground human desire and behavior in ‘natural rights.’ Such ‘rights’ are often gleaned, reasonably, from empathic awareness of the human condition. Where proponents get off track is when they assume these rights are imbedded in the very fabric of existence, like the laws of gravity or motion. To really get a grip on the fundamental difference between laws and rights, one only has to ask: when was the last time anyone had to enforce gravity? To understand human rights as something above and beyond a status granted by authority–or, conversely, the refusal of authority to interfere in what people want to do–is simply an attempt to elevate authority to the abstract. In a sense, it’s the canonization of the human condition. “This is it! This is good! There’s nothing more to be said!” It’s not so much a reflection of reality, as an attempt to make reality conform to a particular moral structure to settle ontological questions.

There is nothing more representative of this tendency than Austro-Libertarianism in which both economics and morality are placed outside of the realm of empirical investigation. In such views morality is not something that has evolved from the ground up to facilitate coordination and mutual advantage between people but a set of moral imperatives that is deduced from concepts such as “human nature”, “reason” or “action.” Historically, such approaches have been a formidable obstacle to the development of the natural sciences and experimental investigation of human conduct.

An important question when evaluating moral and political philosophy is whether it can be reconciled with what experimental science has discovered about human nature. It is striking how often the answer is “no” in the case of rationalist philosophy. One of the most notorious and embarrassing examples  is Ayn Rand’s discussion of free will. One can only wonder how much progress would have been made if such thinkers would have abstained from scholasticism and would have engaged with the relevant empirical sciences instead.

Thomas Ligotti, Karl Popper and antinatalism

Posted on | July 16, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf

In his recently published non-fiction work The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror the contemporary horror writer Thomas Ligotti takes Karl Popper’s “negative utilitarianism” to its [...] Continue Reading…

The national debt means nothing to us

Posted on | July 6, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf

The Tea Party is worried about the national debt.

Public debt is not created by “us” but by the government (“them”) and there is no reason why one should feel [...] Continue Reading…

Nullification: interview with a zombie

Posted on | June 29, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf

Important Voices interview with Anthony de Jasay

Posted on | June 1, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf

On March 15 2010 The Gary Johnson for President blog (!) featured a brief interview with Anthony de Jasay who “wishes to state, though, that he has no views [...] Continue Reading…

Anything that’s peaceful

Posted on | May 28, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf

Libertarians spend a non-trivial amount of time arguing for the obvious. At best, such arguments are redundant because there is no widespread believe that violence or threats of violence [...] Continue Reading…

The liberalization of libertarianism

Posted on | May 24, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf

In the aftermath of the Rand Paul civil rights controversy a surprising number of self-identified libertarians have endorsed state-restrictions on freedom of association. In essence, the argument is that [...] Continue Reading…

Rand Paul and the anti-discrimination paradigm

Posted on | May 20, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf

Newsweek features an opinion piece about “The Difference Between Rand Paul’s Libertarianism and Traditional Segregationism.” If one thing has become clear from this piece (and the “civil rights” controversy [...] Continue Reading…

The truth about voting

Posted on | May 19, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf

Anti-market bias, unemployment and immigration

Posted on | May 16, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf

Economist Bryan Caplan discusses the important topic of market-clearing wages. Why are wages not falling during the recession in order to establish equilibrium and full employment? Caplan gives an [...] Continue Reading…

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