38. “Discussion Note: Contemporary Philosophy Versus the Free Society”
by Tibor R. Machan
Abstract: Some libertarians are impatient with philosophical discussions and even dismiss philosophy as not needed to make the case for the free society. I dispute this and indicate why. As many have found, even to dismiss philosophy, one needs a bit of it!
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Feeling addressed by Tibor Machans verdict against “some friends of liberty [who] hold, there is . . . one Archimedean point”, I like to recall the explanatory power of the axiom of human action not to “gain a full understanding of the world, including human affairs”, but to understand that only individual humans can act, not some virtual entities like a multitude and that this very solidly lays ground to knowing what’s right or wrong in human social relations as a field of contract vs. command.
Other than for “a full understanding of the world, including human affairs”, this knowledge does not depend on “the broadest, widest accessible and possible understanding of human life”, namely not on “psychology [and] sociology”, dealing with reality as it is impregnated with all aspects of human descent from the animal world. Keeping these realms intellectually separated must be the very hinge of our dispute with socialist of any colour, IMHO.
Besides, the copy-and-paste-way of text-producing does have its traps, sometimes . . .