Libertarian Theory
Liberterian theory is a political philosophy that advocates free will, indivual rights, and voluntary cooperation. (Boaz, David 1997)
The core doctrine of liberterianism begins with the recognition that people have certain natural rights to personal autonomy and property rights, and the right to ultilization of previoously unsued resourses. These two basic assumptions form the foundation of Liberterian ideas.
Liberterianism can be tracked back to ancient China, where phillosopher Lao-tzu advocated the recognition of individual liberties. The mordern libertarian theory emerged in 16th Century through the writtings of Etienne de La Boetie (1530-1563), an eminet French Theorist. (Boaz, David 1997)
Libertarianism, in the strict sense, is the moral view that agents initially fully own themselves and have certain moral powers to acquire property rights in external things. In a looser sense, libertarianism is any view that approximates the strict view. This entry will focus on libertarianism in the strict sense. For excellent discussion of the liberty tradition more generally (including classical liberalism), see Gaus and Mack (2004) and Barnett (2004).
The definition characteristics of libertarian theory are its insistence that the amount of government intervention should be kept to a minimum and the primary functions of law should be enforcement of contracts and social order, though "social order" is often seen as a desirable side effect of a free market rather than a philosophical necessity.
Libertarianism is sometimes identified with the principle that each agent has a right to maximum equal empirical negative liberty, where empirical negative liberty is the absence of forcible interference from other agents when one attempts to do things. This is sometimes called “Spencerian Libertarianism” (after Herbert Spencer). It is usually claimed that this view is equivalent to above “self-ownership” version of libertarianism. Kagan (1994), however, has cogently argued
The core doctrine of liberterianism begins with the recognition that people have certain natural rights to personal autonomy and property rights, and the right to ultilization of previoously unsued resourses. These two basic assumptions form the foundation of Liberterian ideas.
Liberterianism can be tracked back to ancient China, where phillosopher Lao-tzu advocated the recognition of individual liberties. The mordern libertarian theory emerged in 16th Century through the writtings of Etienne de La Boetie (1530-1563), an eminet French Theorist. (Boaz, David 1997)
Libertarianism, in the strict sense, is the moral view that agents initially fully own themselves and have certain moral powers to acquire property rights in external things. In a looser sense, libertarianism is any view that approximates the strict view. This entry will focus on libertarianism in the strict sense. For excellent discussion of the liberty tradition more generally (including classical liberalism), see Gaus and Mack (2004) and Barnett (2004).
The definition characteristics of libertarian theory are its insistence that the amount of government intervention should be kept to a minimum and the primary functions of law should be enforcement of contracts and social order, though "social order" is often seen as a desirable side effect of a free market rather than a philosophical necessity.
Libertarianism is sometimes identified with the principle that each agent has a right to maximum equal empirical negative liberty, where empirical negative liberty is the absence of forcible interference from other agents when one attempts to do things. This is sometimes called “Spencerian Libertarianism” (after Herbert Spencer). It is usually claimed that this view is equivalent to above “self-ownership” version of libertarianism. Kagan (1994), however, has cogently argued