Abstract: I thank Lamont Rodgers for critically discussing my work and giving me the chance to clarify and elaborate several points about the sufficiency proviso and moderate libertarianism in general. I hope this exchange will help us better understand where the main points of disagreement lie. After a very brief summary of what moderate libertarianism and the sufficiency proviso are (section 1), I try to answer his main allegations: that I advance a problematically “consequentialist derivation of rights” (section 2) and a questionably “robust conception of ‘care’” (section 3). Both allegations invoke a good deal of misunderstanding, as I will explain. I then discuss the role of personal responsibility (section 4) and whether self-ownership rights are mitigated in a problematic way (section 5) and thereby try to refute arguments against my view that many not-so-moderate libertarians will be inclined to make. The last section provides a short discussion of an issue I did not take up earlier: how practices of private property are to be individuated (section 6).
Keywords: sufficiency proviso, consequentialism, care, responsibility, rights, self-ownership
Download PDF: