Sterba on Machan's "concession"

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 241-243

  Machan, Tibor R ^a  

^a CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34248068163     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0047-2786.00092     Document Type: Article

References (8)

1. James P. Sterba, "Progress in Reconciliation: Evidence from the Right and the Left", Journal of Social Philosophy 28(Fall 1997):102. It might be worth pointing out that there is nothing at all that is "Right" about libertarianism. The Right is conservative, even reactionary, and has traditionally rejected many of the tenets of libertarianism, even its principled adherence to the right to private property and free trade. One need but think of Pat Buchanan's vociferous opposition to free trade to confirm this point or, if one wants more respectable evidence, of Edmund Burke's and other conservatives' (e.g., Russell Kirk's) criticism of individualism, a central feature of the libertarianism at issue here. Indeed, by some accounts libertarianism is Left because it is close to Enlightenment ideas that champion reason and science.
2. See Tibor R. Machan, "Prima Facie v. Natural (Human) Rights", Journal of Value Inquiry 10, no. 1(1976):119-31.
3. Ayn Rand, "The Ethics of Emergencies", in The Virtue of Selfishness, A New Concept of Egoism (New York: Signet Books, 1961), 43-49.
4. Eric Mack, "Egoism and Rights", The Personalist 54(1971):5-33
5. and "Egoism and Rights Revisited", 58(1977):282-88.
6. Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, in Liberty and Nature (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1990), propose to clear up any confusion arising from the apparent conflict of moral justification by way of the concept of metanormativity, one that characterizes the moral status of political principles.
7. I develop some of these points in my most recent discussion of Sterba's position, in "Does Libertarianism Imply the Welfare State?" Res Publica 3, no. 2(Autumn 1997):131-48. (Sterba and I have been debating these matters in several forums over the years, most recently at the conference "Alternative Conceptions of Justice", April 2000, Notre Dame University, Notre Dame, Ind.).
8. (See, in this connection, Tibor R. Machan, Generosity; Virtue in the Civil Society [Washington, D. C.: Cato Institute, 1998].)