Individuals and Their Rights - a book by Tibor R. Machan
Machan's view is that libertarianism has a "moral superiority" over other political theories and practices - and hence, that reflects one of the pressing needs for this book to be written.
The essence of the author's arguments in this book is that a comprehensive "moral defense" of the sometimes controversial tenets of libertarianism had not yet been presented - albeit this book was published in 1989, and subsequent to its appearance there have indeed been numerous academic justifications and explanations for the libertarian philosophy herein espoused. The author admits, in the Preface (p. xvi), that he had to choose between a) just "charging ahead" and presenting his arguments (ignoring critics), or b) the path of "looking often at criticisms" and giving readers key rebuttals to those attacks. He chose "b" - because he recognized, in an honest editorial position, that his views, and libertarian politics in specific, "are out of the mainstream on a variety of philosophical fronts."
Like other Libertarian thinkers, Tibor R. Machan places heavy emphasis on the rights of individuals - not just the right to "life, liberty, and happiness," but, for one, the right to "life, liberty, and property" (p. xiv). And beyond simply listing the rights that libertarians hold dear, Machan takes the discussion of rights to great lengths: in the title of each of the first five chapters, "rights" appears: 1) "Rights Theory at a Glance"; 2) "From Classical Egoism to Natural Rights"; 3) "Grounding 'Lockean' Rights"; 4) "Rights as Norms of Political Life"; and 5) "Property Rights and the Good Society."
Machan's salient argument in Chapter 3 centers on the idea of "natural rights," and he insists that there be no conflict between the concept of the "basic rights of human beings" and "natural rights." Natural rights, then, are those rights which one is imbued with through "human nature" - not through politics or social strata. This position, he explains on page 64, "faces enormous resistance today," because those who attempt to defend the concept that there is an "unvarnished right" for any two individuals to "do whatever they want under any circumstances" will be met "with vacant stares."
In detailing his understanding of natural rights (p. 68), which is actually a lengthy and esoteric series of explanations, Machan admits that the idea of the existence of "natures...the nature of trees, the nature of planets, or the nature of medicine" evinces "skepticism."
This is "partly justified" says the author because of an "artificial standard which has been thought to be required of a theory" which involves the nature of things. This artificial standard does not prevent Machan from examining - and reworking - the theory of natural rights in his own way; on page 79, he sums up his explanation of "the present account of the nature of a thing...namely its definition" in four parts, not all of which are easy for the lay person to digest: 1) the definition of the nature of a "thing" (which is couched in a form like "X is a, b, c,...n") "states those objective aspects of (some) beings by virtue of which one is rationally warranted in differentiating these beings from all others, as well as integrating them within a scheme of classification of reality."
For number 2, a paraphrase is offered for purposes of clarity for this paper: 2) the characteristic which is the defining characteristic of some being, is objective, he believes; and hence it can be demonstrated to be true beyond a "reasonable doubt"; 3) no commitment to "inner natures" or "innate essences" is part of the view that true definitions can be "produced"; 4) when defining humans, or other "concepts," one must understand that the definition is purely "contextual" - and that the definition will not be permanent, but rather will remain fluid; further, changes in the nature of some "being" have to be interpreted through "objectively identified causes or reasons."
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