Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Libertarianism

  • Two Kinds of Diversity: Identity and Ideological

    by Robert Gressis ___ Libertarians, like Robert Nozick, care most of all about negative freedom, i.e., freedom from interference. If you have little money, but the appropriate agency protects you from force and fraud, then you have negative freedom, even if you find yourself unable to do much of what you want to do. Consequently,…

  • on authority [and rousseau’s fork]

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Hannah Arendt maintained that one has authority, when one commands obedience from others, not by exercising power over them, but because they recognize and respect one’s right to do so. [1] To accept authority, then, is to accept hierarchy, which, in turn, is to accept a substantial if not formal…

  • Immigration and Freedom: A Conversation with Chandran Kukathas

    by Kevin Currie-Knight ____ Kevin talks with Chandran Kukathas (Singapore Management University) about his new book Immigration and Freedom, as well as his pluralistic approach to political philosophy. In the book, Kukathas argues that immigration restrictions not only problematically restrict the freedom of immigrants but also of citizens, and that many gains that immigration proponents/skeptics…

  • Prolegomena for a Pluralist Metaphysics: Actions, Reasons, Causes … and Ends

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ I’ve been saying that I’d like a return to philosophical “normalcy,” meaning that I’d like us to stop indulging what I’ve been calling, alternatively, “crazy” and “desperate” philosophical positions: Panpsychism; Hard Determinism; Eliminative Materialism and “Illusionism”; Platonism; Mind/Body Dualism; and so on. I’m running an ongoing series of conversations with…