[From my Webnote series]
Related:
- Other posts on apriorism and praxeology
- Hoppe on Falsificationism, Empiricism, and Apriorism and Protophysics
- Extreme Praxeology
- Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics and Its Critics
- Quotes on the Logic of Liberty
- Deschamps Vargas, “AI Alignment from First Principles: Why Current AI Cannot Be Conscious, Why Strong AGI Requires Consciousness, and Why This Resolves the Alignment Problem”
(Archived comments below)
Extreme Praxeology
Two of my favorite pieces are Rothbard’s In Defense of “Extreme Apriorism” 1 and Hoppe’s In Defense of Extreme Rationalism. 2 Also of great interest to me is the idea of extending praxeology–e.g., as Hoppe does in his argumentation ethics–and The Other Fields of Praxeology: War, Games, Voting… and Ethics?. This post mentions Adam Knott’s interesting working paper, Rothbardian-Randian Ethics and The Coming Methodenstreit in Libertarian Ethical Science; Knott has various praxeology sites too.
A couple of older works I’ve been wanting to get around to for some time are John M. McTaggart’s Nature of Existence and other works, and Leonard Nelson’s System of Ethics. [Update: for more on McTaggart, see the Wikipedia entry; John McTaggart’s The Nature of Existence; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on McTaggart] David Gordon long ago mentioned McTaggart to me, who apparently tried to deduce the nature of the universe from the proposition “something exists”; he also argued that it can’t be false that something exists. Gordon also told me Nelson has a very interesting Kantian-style ethic which relies on self-refutation arguments. Of course these are not praxeology but given Hoppe’s argumentation ethics extension of praxeology these seem to be very interesting.
Update: See also Yuri Maltsev, R.I.P.: Yuri “told me one of his biggest philosophical influences was an obscure and eccentric Russian philosopher, Pyotr Chaadayev, in particular his Philosophical Letters & Apology of a Madman (Grok summary).”
Update: Praxeology and Ethics: Three Philosophers Considered–Rothbard, Hoppe, Searle (In this regard Per Christian Malloch (Per Christian Malloch — Again; Per Christian Malloch) is worth noting, e.g. his interesting Amoralism in One Lesson, a defense of a hypothetical approach to ethics.)
There’s also Conrad Schneiker’s The Supreme Scientific Method Of (Universal Value Logic) Praxeology which, he notes, “is the Universally-Supreme Logical-Value System of (Axiomatic, Reflexive, Praxeological, Intensional) Logic, Which is the Provably-Universal Ethical-Logic of All Genuinely Realistic Thinking and is “the Logical Telescope of the Second Scientific Revolution”. Ahem. And, shades of Mises, Schneiker’s The Provably Ultimate Foundation of Science. And of course, there are others, such as the Axiomatic Theory of Economics.
Update: And now we have this doozy (h/t @Conza): by one Luke “DePrey,” or whatever his real name is, “Axiomatic Erosion: The Law of Universal Incompleteness (A Meta-Structural Limit Condition for All Formal & Scientific Systems of Knowledge) [[Breeze Theory]]“. Hokayyy.
Update: Ultimate Law: “do no harm, or else”: “Every tradition already agrees. Click yours. Communism National Socialism Fascism Critical Theory Satanism Mainstream Media Environmentalism Modern Feminism” “Do not do to others what they would not want done to them. From this one rule, plus logic as the supreme law, a complete framework for ethics, economics, and science follows.”
Some others worth noting here are Steven Yates’s De-Kanting Mises and Hoppe: Notes Toward an Austrian-School Metaphysics; Jude Chua Soo Meng’s Hopp(e)ing Onto New Ground: A Rothbardian Proposal for Thomistic Natural Law as the Basis for Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Praxeological Defense of Private Property; and Barry Smith’s In Defense of Extreme (Fallibilistic) Apriorism. Food for thought.
Update: See also Deschamps Vargas, José Ángel, “AI Alignment from First Principles: Why Current AI Cannot Be Conscious, Why Strong AGI Requires Consciousness, and Why This Resolves the Alignment Problem” (also at https://nicomaco.org/)
Latest one I am aware of (May 18, 2026): From an email sent to Hoppe:
Subject: Liberty Philosophical System Project exceeding 2000 pages.
Dr Hoppe,
I am close to completing a project I committed to around 2008 when I realized that my engagement w libertarianism since circa 1972 was lacking something. I perceived that as an ideology libertarianism was deracinated. It was not anchored in an integrated philosophical system. So I began a quest to develop one.
Composed of: 1 Limen, 7 axioms, 14 defending Lemmas, approaching 28 Theorems, 18 Corollaries, and Praekepta, Responsa and more.
The third axiom is perhaps the most impactual as it boldly repredicates man and potentially dissolves the is / ought problem.
The implications of how it addresses both Rights and Duties and in fact create a unique philosophy of Morality are important.
Being philosophically trained and an important defender of liberty, you’d be uniquely able to review the corpus and give me input and guidance.
If you’d be so kind as to consider helping, I would send the first 7 Axioms for your review. You would then have enough to discern it additional assistance was warranted.Michael R. Stoddard, CPA/PFS & CFP
www.OurCPAFirm.com
Fibonacci Financial, LC
Integritas Public Accounting, LC
- Murray N. Rothbard, “In Defense of ‘Extreme Apriorism,'” in Economic Controversies (Auburn, Ala: Mises Institute, 2011; Mises Institute publication; Mises Daily), originally published in the Southern Economic Journal (January 1957). [↩]
- “In Defense of Extreme Rationalism: Thoughts on Donald McCloskey’s The Rhetoric of Economics.” Rev. Austrian Econ. 3, no. 1 (1989): 179–214. . in The Great Fiction) The Great Fiction: Property, Economy, Society, and the Politics of Decline, 2nd ed (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2021) [↩]
Published: January 20, 2007 4:21 PM
Published: December 21, 2007 1:33 PM