WHAT I LEARNED FROM HANS HOPPE? Someone asked me what I learned from Hoppe, accu

WHAT I LEARNED FROM HANS HOPPE?

Someone asked me what I learned from Hoppe, accusatorially. that I hadn’t learned elsewhere. And I was so stupefied by it that I couldn’t put it into words that the time.

But, what I learned from Hans-Hermann Hoppe that I did NOT learn from any other source, was how to construct moral arguments in economic terms. Or rather, that all moral statements were reducible to statements of property, and that, furthermore, economic reasoning was applicable to ALL human behavior.

Yes, I have to filter out the Rothbardian and Misesian errors. And yes, Hans likes to interject a lot of sarcastic humor or ridicule into his speeches. But in general, the way of constructing arguments with that much rigor reliant entirely on demonstrated ACTIONS not empty VERBALISMS, is unique to libertarianism. It’s unique to Hoppe really. You just don’t find that intellectual rigor anywhere else. He makes almost all academic philosophy look like the work of children by comparison.

And that’s where my approach got it from – although I tend to think in more Hayekian voice.

Now, in my work, I have the ADDITIONAL burden of having to describe the CAUSE of liberty, where Hans didn’t. (He didn’t know it.) Where he had only to work with correlation, I have to work with causation.

And it’s harder to do that. I can’t rely on an assumed natural morality the way he did. Instead I treat human cooperation as a form of rigorous logic – a science. It’s more burdensome. But it works.

Anyway. Hans solve the problem I was looking for. He solved what we hadn’t solved for 2500 years. And what he DIDN”T solve, I will (assuming I live long enough – cause that’s a hell of an assumption.)

That’s why I am so indebted to Hans despite the fact that he didn’t directly give me much help. On the other hand, he didn’t need to.

Curt Doolittle

Kiev