Cite articles as: Author, “Title,” Libertarian Papers [volume #], [article number] (year). Example: Jan Narveson, “Present Payments, Past Wrongs: Correcting Loose Talk about Nozick and Rectification,” Libertarian Papers 1, 1 (2009).
20. “A Reply to the Current Critiques Formulated Against Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics”
Abstract: This article responds to current critiques directed against Hoppe’s justification by performative contradiction of the self-ownership axiom. Maintaining that ethics should be grounded on sound principles, Hoppe observes that only self-ownership can pass the test of performative contradiction. From this idea, he concludes that only libertarianism (the ethical system grounded on the axiom of self-ownership) can be justified. Any other ethic is self-defeating. An important debate in ethics was stimulated by numerous critiques formulated against the performative contradiction and more precisely against the use that Hoppe makes of it in justifying libertarianism. Without endorsing Hoppe’s argumentation, this article prevents some common misunderstandings, systemizes the types of critiques and thoroughly replies to them.
![[RSS Feed]](http://libertarianpapers.org/wp-content/themes/journalist/images/rss.gif "Subscribe to the Libertarian Papers Site Feed")
![[iTunes]](http://libertarianpapers.org/wp-content/themes/journalist/images/itunes.png "Subscribe to the Libertarian Papers Podcast with iTunes")
![[Mises Institute]](http://mises.org/Community/resized-image.ashx/__size/500x400/__key/CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachments/00.00.08.00.78/80x15.png)
![[CC Attribution 3.0]](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/3.0/us/80x15.png)
Hoppe has surely forwarded one of the lamest arguments ever offered in the history of philosophy, as Murphy and I demonstrated. A number of libertarians who read our paper commented to me that it was ‘very cruel — and much needed’.
Mr Callahan, surely? SURELY? One of the lamest argument EVER offered in the history of ALL philosophy? Surely??? Personally I thought your reply was lame, it was very disappointing to me. It was the inadequate objections in your article that helped convince me Hoppe was _right_.
I tried to explain–no doubt inadequately–some problems I had with Murphy and Callahan’s critique in my article Defending Argumentation Ethics: Reply to Murphy & Callahan, Anti-state.com (Sept. 19, 2002), which was a reply to their Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethic: A Critique, Anti-state.com (Sept. 19, 2002). There was an ensuing discussion in the anti-state.com forum, but if memory serves, M&C never did respond directly to most of my points. In their JLS article which seems to be similar to their previous Anti-state piece, they did not even cite my previous criticism of their earlier piece, much less respond to it.
Speaking as a philosophy graduate student at one of the more prominent graduate programs in the world, Hoppe’s argument is truly a cheap balderization of Habermas and Apel, who themselves have a theory that faces serious problems.
While it is arguable (and I think true) that dialogue presupposes the validity of certain norms, dialogue *per se* does not presuppose any determinate set of norms. The normative presuppositions of dialogue are contingent and vary over time. While the presuppositions of dialogue may contain some core norms, this core is not determinate enough to provide strong evidence in favor of one particular political ideology, much less refute all other ideologies.
It is embarrassing that Hoppe, Kinsella and those that follow them think that all the interesting foundational work there is to do in political philosophy can be accomplished in a few short pages of assertion. So much for Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Rawls, Habermas and all the other great figures in the history of the public reason tradition who spent their lives trying to figure out how a society must function if persons are to live well together. Hoppe has done it in just a few pages, and if you don’t like that, Kinsella has added a few more. Who needs Rawls and Habermas when you have Hoppe and Kinsella?
There is a reason that no libertarian philosopher of any prominence think much of this argument (not even David Gordon or Roderick Long), even if they are sympathetic to the deontological constructivism popular in mainstream political theory. It is because these toy arguments do not take philosophy seriously and display a profound arrogance that a serious political movement should ridicule.
Kevin, Your reply is long on outrage over the arrogance or gall of someone coming up with a new, and fairly concise, argument, but short on substance. It reminds of Rothbard’s article Hoppephobia, in which he notes: “Although he is an amiable man personally, Hoppe’s written work seems to have the remarkable capacity to send some readers up the wall, blood pressure soaring, muttering and chewing the carpet. It is not impolite attacks on critics that does it. Perhaps the answer is Hoppe’s logical and deductive mode of thought and writing, demonstrating the truth of his propositions and showing that those who differ are often trapped in self-contradiction and self-refutation.”
Stephan,
Rothbard had these people pegged very well. Don’t even ask them to put up a logical rebuttal to Hoppe. They’re too busy chewing carpet. LOL.
Stephan, it seems to me that I made a very clear point: there’s no clear logical implication from the presuppositions of discourse to any determine political principle. Everything I have read of Hoppe or yours simply makes serious leaps in argument.
It would be nice to have a syllogism. Roderick tried to give us one but then he smashed the argument. I imagine you remember (and probably have replied to) his “The Hoppriori Argument” post from long ago.
As for Hoppe, I have no brook with the man, just the way in which rationalism is used as an excuse for clear argument and engaging in the kind of details moral theory required of a serious political philosophy. Same goes for you.
determinate, not determine
detailed, not details
Actually, this is getting on my nerves the more I think about it. Here are at least three crucial ambiguities in the argument. I’ll start by laying out a formalization of the conclusion:
Argument presupposes that we have legitimate control of kind X over our Y at time Z.
The argument fails to determinately fix the content of X, Y, or Z. This includes your stuff as well.
Take time Z. Perhaps while we’re arguing we have to presume legitimate control at the time, but why longer? Why not minimally slim time slices indexed to utterances? Take Y – what do we have control over? Our bodies? Our property? Our mouths? Our vocal tracts? And take X – what kind of legitimate control are we talking about? Do we have a claim-right on others that any person outside of the argument must respect? Only those inside of the argument? Do we have fully extensive property rights over ourselves as the result of the argument? Or only those rights required to make the argument? And if the latter, the set of rights required is pretty slim – none, in fact – because we could make the argument legitimately without having a right over ourselves or without any normative relations obtaining between us and our interlocutor.
There are more ambiguous dimensions, but these three will do for now.
As for your “concise argument” comment, moral philosophy just isn’t that easy. Ask someone who does it professionally.
Kevin:
While it was plain to see that you were trying to make a point, you did not substantiate it with any meaningful argument I could discern. Instead, it seems to me you sought to discredit Hoppe on the peculiar grounds that some people who think that his argument is essentially correct might not pay enough attention to the thoughts of other political philosophers. Well, so? Hoppe might still be right.
Your follow-up responses based on agitated nerves (you obviously have a case of Hoppephobia) is a little better. You might be too excited though because I’m not sure you are thinking clearly.
There is nothing in your post that Hoppe does not explain in his writings. I suggest you reexamine the primary sources where Hoppe tells you what those X, Y, and Z are all about. Then you can address those specific arguments.
The nature of the so-called performative contradiction establishes that the ethic applies beyond whether or not someone is actually arguing. Hoppe likens his argument to the law of contradiction. I’m sure you are familiar with that law. You cannot justify that it is false, as Bradley said, because “either in endeavoring to deny it or even attempting to doubt it, we tacitly assume its validity.” You cannot argue that the law of contradiction is false without contradiction. This does not imply that the law of contradiction is only true when someone is arguing.
Some aspects of moral philosophy might be easier than you think. Is it really THAT implausible that an argument that justifies propositions like “stealing is wrong” or “murder is wrong” might be pretty simple? And I say this as someone who deeply appreciates the writings of the folks you mentioned in your first post (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Rawls, Habermas).
Clayton,
The law of contradiction analogy fails. We don’t think the law of contradiction is true because we presuppose it in argument. That’s a fine indicator of its truth, to be sure, but that’s not the truth-maker. The reason we think it is universally true is because it cannot be conceived to be false. But the self-ownership thesis is not like that. Lots of reasonable people deny it and while I affirm a version of it, it is certainly not a truth that cannot be *conceived* to be false. Hoppe must argue that *because* there’s a performative contradiction in denying the thesis of self-ownership that *therefore* it is universally valid. But I don’t see any reason to accept the implication.
Incidentally, about eight years ago I poured over the Hoppe literature in detail. The fact is, there isn’t that much of it, and it’s embarrassingly bad. Hoppe does not address the point I made to any significant degree nor does the literature that follows it. Nor are there good replies to Roderick’s devastating criticisms.
And yes, it really is *that* implausible to think that Hoppe – an economist, not a philosopher – accomplished in five pages what the finest political philosophers in history could not. The self-ownership thesis is notoriously complex and subject to many penetrating criticisms (See G. A. Cohen’s, Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality for a lot of them). The criticisms can be defeated. But not with tricks like Hoppe’s.
Let me explain my agitation a bit. I spent quite a few good years hanging around LvMI, ones that were very important to my intellectual formation. Hoppe’s argument is one of the first ethical arguments I ran across. At 18 I accepted it and began mulling it over, trying to see how it could be true. At 19 Roderick convinced me it was false but its falsity was illuminating. The idea that the norms of justice were implicit in the structure of practical reason fascinated me. In 2006, Roderick gave a series of lectures developing a comprehensive conception of practical reason that would generate libertarianism out of its conceptual structure, but many of the key moves were missing – something he acknowledged. Since then I’ve been studying the public reason tradition (from which this view arises in great detail) under one of the world’s great public reason theorists.
So when I run across this issue again, and Stephan, et al. don’t see the complexities that this topic raises – the profound complexities which show why many reasonable people would laugh at Hoppe’s formulation of the argument – it seems to me that it is either the result of an early introduction to the topic (which is cool) or of someone making a culpable error about the ease of moral philosophy (which is not cool). Stephan is not guilty of the first error.
I think a lot of the economists at the Mises Institute think that economics is complex even if the basics can be grasped by anyone. But when it comes to the principles of justice, they often follow Rothbard in thinking that the theory of justice is pretty easy vis-a-vis the truths of economics. Rothbard gave us 1000+ pages of writings on economics. When it comes to the foundations of ethics, we are cheated by The Ethics of Liberty. And you know what? It makes the Mises Institute’s ethical theorists look really shallow. It looks like a lot of folks there just think that the theory of justice is easy and anyone who doesn’t agree with them is just a jerk statist.
I wish for these Hoppe-esque Mises Institute scholars (by no means all or even a majority), that they would follow Roderick’s lead and think that the theory of justice and economic theory contained equal levels of complexity and were worth equal levels of detailed argumentation.
Surely a criticism of argumentation ethics based on the fact that it is not long or complex enough or that it is impossible for greater philosophers to have failed to discover it is a demonstration that one does not understand argumentation.
Kevin, you spend a great deal of effort in what are, in effect, fallacies. Saying that you are in a prominent graduate program or that you are studying under one of the worlds greatest public reason theorists or that most LvMI scholars are economists who don’t understand the complexities of moral theory can’t really count as an argument, can it? So I’m interested to hear any substantial criticism you have against the basic argument, whether as proposed by Apel, Habermas, Hoppe or Van Dun (I haven’t read Eabrasu’s paper yet).
What are the problems Apel and Habermas their theory faces? I’ve read critiques by Albert and Puntel and didn’t really find them convincing. Long’s critique of Hoppe certainly makes some good points, but I don’t think it completely destroys the entire approach, especially if you take into account Van Dun his comments.
In any case, I’d be interested to hear more of your (substantial) thoughts.
To Stranger and Michael: Well, if you think those particular comments are intended as refutation, then I guess they were fallacies! They’re certainly evidence, though, that the argument isn’t serious. I guess I hoped that I could convince someone interested in this topic that their time is better spent elsewhere.
To Michael: I gave reasons for concern about Hoppe’s argument above. As for the others, I take it that Habermas thinks that the rules of justice are those that citizens would converge on under ideal discourse conditions. You might think (a) that this allows for relativism, (b) that the discourse conditions are rigged to get social democratic outcomes, (c) that some idealization of the citizens are needed beyond the discourse conditions, (d) that the best form of deontological constructivism isn’t completed with a discourse procedure but something like an evolutionary procedure. I’m happy to go into more detail.
“Speaking as a philosophy graduate student at one of the more prominent graduate programs in the world…”
No offense, but that makes me less likely to believe what you say is true.
I find this submission interesting simply for the reason that Marian Eabrasu, who here shows his expertise of the landscape around this topic, is actually himself a critic of argumentation ethics. You can find his working paper on the topic here. I’m not sure if this is a well known fact, or if it will turn out to be somewhat embarrassing for the pro-argumentation ethics fans of this paper to learn of this. That will depend, I suppose, on how convincing his argument is to them. Unfortunately, Eabrasu’s English starts to deteriorate right around the section where he lays it out so the argument may never succeed simply for lacking clarity. This all assumes, of course, that Eabrasu hasn’t put down his own argument since then.
Stephan Kinsella has kindly posted up-to-date news on Eabrasu’s current position in the comments here. Thanks, Stephan.
Even though I have just come across this discussion, I would like to add a few words, pertinent, as I think, especially in the context of what was said by the boastful graduate student. It is not complexity, but simplicity, clarity and conciseness that is the mark of true philosohpical genius and ground-breaking character of any given philosophical assertion. Kripke’s “Naming and Necessity” is simple, non-technical and short – it was, as I presume you know well, originally delivered over the course of three hour-long lectures – and yet it overturned much of metaphysics, logic and philosophy of language. Gettier demolished the age-old notion that knowledge is justified true belief in a few short pages. Searle provided an example of how to derive ought from is, thereby undermining a dogma dating back to Hume, over the course of 16 pages. I am confident that Hoppe’s arguments belong in the same category – even though I could engage in a bit of minor nitpicking over the details of some of his assertions, I buy his general train of thought wholeheartedly. Hoppe – who is an economist as well as a philosopher, and who makes excellent use of this dual expertise – made an imppressive contribution to applied ethics, and I am sorry to see that Hoppeophobia is a fact.
Best wishes,
Jakub
I wanted to comment that Marian Eabrasu’s paper was well written as it was relativley easy to understand and I like his style of summing the criticism and his counter-arguments. Very well written indeed.
In regards to what Kevin wrote I agree with Mr. Wisniewski. Shortness and conciseness of new groundbreaking arguments are the characteristics of not only breakthroughs in philosophy but also in other fields of thought and research.
“Speaking as a philosophy graduate student at one of the more prominent graduate programs in the world…”
might stumble upon a truth or two.
That is simply pulling rank and as such a un-respectful behaviour. Even the hoi polloi (which Hoppe certainly is not, but I probably am