QUESTION: “Is there an agreed upon definition of liberty?” – Karl ANSWER: Thank

QUESTION:

“Is there an agreed upon definition of liberty?” – Karl

ANSWER:

Thank you for this great question.

Etymylogically, we can trace the evolution of the term. (the Cuniform Symbol we refer to as the first statement of liberty says ‘return to the mother’, not liberty per se, but means one’s slavery-service is done, and one is free.) In the historical record it often refers to the right to retain local law and custom while paying taxes to a central authority. (more elsewhere if you want to look it up.) But, as you suggest, because of common usage, ‘liberty’ also used analogistically in general to refer to constraints upon ones will or wishes.

I think Jan Lester’s argument is quaint, empty, verbal nonsense, and I’ve beaten it up elsewhere. It think Hoppe’s argument is that it is synonymous with property rights, but I disagree with his scope of property rights constitutes liberty. I think Rothbard’s position is also that it is synonymous with property rights, but that he is not advocating liberty but libertinism: the license of immoral and unethical behavior, but the prevention of retaliation for it. I think Hayek’s argument is that it is a product of property rights under the common organic evolutionary law.

So would say that existential condition of liberty is when the moral constraint that we place upon one another is applied to the organization that we call the government. So liberty merely is a name for the condition of moral constraint by the government regarding our life and property, just as morality is a name for a condition of moral constraint by individuals regarding our life and property. In other words, defense of one’s life and property, individual moral action respecting life and property, and political respect for life and property: liberty , are synonymous terms differentiated only by perspective of the subjective self, objective interpersonal action, and objective political action.

This I think is a non-allegorical, parsimonious, correspondent, consistent, operational, historically accurate, existentially possible definition of the term. And that all other uses of this term must either equally satisfy these conditions or constitute mere analogy.

i.e. it doesn’t matter what’s agreed upon, it matters what survives criticism. 😉

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine.