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Jan Narveson The Libertarian Idea.Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1989. Pp. xiv + 367.

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Jan Narveson The Libertarian Idea.Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1989. Pp. xiv + 367.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Grant Brown
Grant Brown*
Affiliation:
Jesus College, Oxford England, OX1 3DW
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Type
Critical Notice
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , September 1990 , pp. 417 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1990

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References

I would like to thank Jan Narveson for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this review, and for his unparalleled tutelage during my years as an undergraduate and M.A. student at the University of Waterloo.

1 The phrase comes from Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Harvard 1981), 462. It is perhaps this kind of view about which Narveson writes:

some people talk as though rights are peculiar facts. But the facts in question aren't, or anyway needn't be, peculiar. We do need a theory about the relation between those facts and those duties [which correspond to the rights], a theory explaining why those facts constitute or give rise to a good reason for those assignments of duties - and in too many cases the proposed theory is indeed, peculiar. (46)

2 Philippa Foot, Euthanasia, Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Basil Blackwell1978), 45-6. Originally published in Philosophy and Public Affairs 6 (1977).

3 French language rights, and the recognition of Qubec as a distinct society within Canada, can be taken as examples of collective rights which might have arisen from contractarian bargaining.

4 Cf. Harry Frankfurt's seminal paper Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person, Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971), 5-20.

5 I would also suggest that liberty is closely allied to the concept of rights; i.e., liberty tends to denote one's rightful sphere of non-interference. The de facto/de jure distinction will be relevant later.

6 If interference means making someone less free, then the expression interference with liberty (to which Narveson is very partial) would be redundant. Perhaps we can make better sense of this expression if we note that there are more or less direct ways in which we can interfere: (i) a physical attack interferes directly with one's body; (ii) most cases of theft or vandalism, for instance, interfere with one's plans; and (iii) closing options which were previously open to one interferes with - or, as Narveson sometimes says, restricts - one's liberty. (i) implies (ii) which implies (iii), but not vice versa.

7 Cf., for example, the discussion of risky activities in Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974), Ch. 4.

8 How can breaking promises and contracts be construed as interference on Narveson's account? The problem here is that these typically involve a failure of performance - a non-doing of something - whereas Narveson requires an interference to result from some positive action. About this Narveson says that the positive action occurs in the background, when the promise was made and the person's expectations and activities were altered (31; 60). This kind of case shows again the inadequacy of the present-time-slice view of interference.

9 Gauthier's fundamental principle, from which he too attempts to derive private property rights, is that one is not to benefit from interactions which make others worse off. This amounts to a general negative right to welfare (or utility). See Morals By Agreement (New York: Oxford University Press 1986), Ch. 6.

10 Cf. David Braybrooke, Meeting Needs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1987).

11 Narveson quotes Murray Rothbard in this context as follows:

Freedom of speech is supposed to mean the right of everyone to say whatever he likes. But the neglected question is: Where? certainly not on property on which he is trespassing. In short he has this right only either on his own property or on the property of someone who has agreed, as a gift or in a rental contract, to allow him on the premises. In fact, then, there is no such thing as a separate right to free speech'; there is only a man's property right. (66-7)

This suggests another way in which the concept of positive action is normatively conditioned. Since interference requires positive action, Narveson says that negative rights can be satisfied by doing nothing at all (58). Now, sleeping is surely as close as one can get to that state. But the neglected question is, Where? Certainly not on property on which one is trespassing. Thus even sleeping must be reckoned a positive action (when done by the homeless). As will be argued below, private property rights, though negative, can sometimes threaten to undermine the basic right to determine the disposition of one's body and mind.

12 Thus Narveson writes:

The question Why allow? is equivalent to the question Why not forbid? Which is to say that it is really the question Why forbid? The answer to Why allow? is essentially that there is no good reason to forbid: in the absence of such a reason, it stands that the action is allowed. Those who wish to make out that there is something generally wrong with capitalist acts among consenting adults need to find something about those acts that constitutes a good general reason for forbidding them. And if they are attempting to criticize the theory of liberty for its internal coherence, then this reason must be specified in terms of restrictions on liberty. It is not, by contrast, necessary for anyone to find general reasons for allowing them. The fact that people want to engage in them is, on the libertarian theory, all the reason that takes. (81)

13 Cf. A.E. Buchanan, Deriving Welfare Rights from Libertarian Rights, in P.G. Brown, C. Johnson, and P. Vernier, eds., Income Support (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allenhead 1981), 233-46.

14 Possibly the source of confusion here is with the expression your liberty, which may be taken in a de facto or de jure sense. Narveson obviously but illicitly takes it in the latter.

15 Cf. G.A. Cohen, Capitalism, Freedom and the Proletariat, in Alan Ryan, ed., The Idea of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1979), 9ff.

16 Cohen's arguments are found in a pair of recent articles: Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality, in F. Lucash, ed., Justice and Equality, Here and Now (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1986) 108-35; Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality Part II, Social Philosophy and Policy 3 (1986) 77-96. Narveson summarizes these and replies to them at 71-3. Although I think I am faithful to the basic insight of Cohen's arguments, in what follows I take liberties with the way in which they are stated, so as to meet Narveson's position more directly.

17 Gauthier egregiously commits the error noted here of trying to combine a radically subjectivist conception of practical rationality (Chapter II, Choice: Reason and Value) with a strongly objectivist conception of social advancement (Chapter IX, Persons, Peoples, Generations).

18 Cf. Narveson's extended discussion of the article by Allan Gibbard, What's Morally Special About Free Exchange? in Social Philosophy and Policy 2 (1985) 20-8. He writes, Gibbard would need to count the unavailability of an attractive alternative, L, in Sx a restriction on liberty relative to Sy; but I don't. The liberty of those in Sx may not be restricted at all - they may simply have too little talent or imagination or luck to have come up with L (77).

19 It is similar to that of Ellen Paul in Property Rights and Eminent Domain (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books 1987), which Narveson himself criticizes thoroughly (172-4).

20 The conception of coercion I implicitly use here involves this principle: if A is coerced by B, then B's intentions are more closely related to A's actions than A's intentions are. See Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Harvard 1981), 49.

21 Here I agree with the thesis suggested by the title of Bernard Williams Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana 1985).