Convivium Irenicum 2019 Part 2

(Part 1 of my commentary on 2019's Convivium Irenicum here.)

Jared Eckert presented "‘You Are Not Your Own,’ Exposing the Limits of Libertarian Self-Ownership and the Non-Aggression Principle." Or, in my words, what Murray Rothbard gets wrong.

Libertarianism comes in many flavors but two propositions provide the principles of most libertarian ethics and political theory. The first is the non-aggression principle. Quoting Murray Rothbard,

The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. …“Aggression” is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else.

Second is the correlative axiom of individual self-ownership. As summarized by Eckert:

The thesis of self-ownership asserts that the individual’s exclusive use of and lack of interference in her person implies a natural and complete ownership of herself. Self-ownership is thus comprehensive: it extends to the entirety of one’s own person—body, capacities, skills, and labor.

From these two propositions hang all that follows including natural rights (notably the natural rights to life and property). (Note: some libertarians disclaim its ethical pretensions, referring to libertarianism as a political theory only. Go here, here, and here for my observations on that claim.)

After providing a fair explanation of the moral intuitions that ground libertarianism's suppositions, and elaborating the goods that follow from them -- "human rights, the respect for human dignity, and the maximum individual freedom" -- Eckert asks, “What's missing?”

In Eckert's analysis, the axiom of individual self-ownership is problematic: no individual human self exists (or has ever existed) except as embedded in an existing social relationship: child « parents « family « larger social groups. An absolute right to self-ownership cannot be grounded in an absolute self that exists not as a natural fact but only as a heuristic device. Embedded as humans are, they owe duties as well as possess rights. This gap is a serious problem for "insofar as they depend upon self-ownership, human rights, private property, and the non-aggression principle are left vulnerable."

Insofar as ...

On what can human rights and the respect for human dignity as well as the individual be grounded if not self-ownership? Eckert expends some effort to reach two conclusions with a limiting corollary. First,

Any Protestant account of human rights or ownership or dominion must acknowledge this reality: that the world belongs to God. For only God can be said to own the world in the truest sense. Necessarily, this means that man’s dominion and possession is only ever secondary and derivative. Indeed, because everything belongs to God, man cannot be an owner in any real sense at all. Rather, he is a steward.

Second, 

God gives man dominion [not absolute ownership] over the earth. And this dominion enables humanity to make use of the world according to their needs. Private property may be established on this basis. Because man is given dominion for his survival and for his flourishing, property enables him to achieve those things. ... This dominion, though it does not produce a natural right of self-ownership, is the natural corollary to man’s being able to create private property. This would mean that private property is not “socially constructed” in the sense that it is totally artificial and arbitrary. Rather, though it does not exist in nature, private property is a social reality that is derived from a natural ability found in man—namely, his God-given dominion and ability to make use of things.

On the other hand, "mankind’s circumscribed dominion has significant implications. First, it implies that there are limits on private property and ownership. Private property does not exist for its own sake, as something intrinsically good." In other words, property has an end or purpose, which may limit its licit (and legal) use.

Yet, as Eckert observes, 

The individual is not left without rights and/or vulnerable to aggression because he does not own himself by nature. For the individual does not simply lack ownership in herself; she belongs to God. So there are still limits on aggression. Neither the state nor others have a right to treat a person as if she only belonged to them. For a person belongs not to himself, nor to any other, but principally to God.

In short, an ethical and political philosophy grounded in the truths of the Christian religion gives the anthropological foundation that libertarianism lacks. (Shameless plug: such is the conclusion for which I argued in Looking for Bedrock: Accounting for Human Rights in Classical Liberalism, Modern Secularism, and the Christian Tradition (download here or here).)

I'm confident that most Christians who lean libertarian would agree with Eckert's critique of libertarianism. What is more important, however, is that two of the virtues of libertarianism -- it's simple, intuitive premises and "clean edges" when it comes to limits on civil government -- aren't quite as easy as folks might like. Which means, as if anyone needed to be reminded, that ethics and politics stand in need wisdom.