[From my Webnote series]
My view is that rights are metanorms, not morals themselves. I used to think rights are a subset of morals. Now I think that the sets are intersecting, that most rights violations are immoral but not necessarily so as the purpose of rights is to tell us which laws are justified not how to act on a day to day basis. There might be situations where it is moral to violate rights (breaking into a cabin in the woods to save your baby) and where is is immoral to stand on one’s rights (being needlessly cruel to your grandma doens’t violate rights but is immoral).
Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), ch. 6, n.22:
I now am of the view that rights are best viewed as metanorms that direct us as to which laws are just, not directly to personal behavior. Most libertarians would view rights as a subset of morality; not everything that is immoral should be illegal, but every rights violation is necessarily immoral. I believe the sets are intersecting sets only. Just as some immoral actions are not rights violations, some rights violations might be morally mandatory (breaking into a cabin to feed your baby in the middle of a storm). I do believe most rights violations are immoral, though libertarianism itself cannot make this determination. For more on rights as metanorms, see Douglas B. Rasmussen & Douglas J. Den Uyl, “Why Individual Rights? Rights as Metanormative Principles,” in Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005):
An individual’s right to liberty is thus not in essence a normative principle. Rather, it is a metanormative principle. In other words, it is concerned with the creation, interpretation, and justification of a political/legal context in which the possibility of the pursuit of flourishing is secured.
See also my criticisms of “thickism”, and The “Liberty Is Your Only Value” Canard.
Also: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., “What Libertarianism Is, and Isn’t,” LewRockwell.com (March 31, 2014):
Libertarianism is concerned with the use of violence in society. That is all. It is not anything else. It is not feminism. It is not egalitarianism (except in a functional sense: everyone equally lacks the authority to aggress against anyone else). It has nothing to say about aesthetics. It has nothing to say about religion or race or nationality or sexual orientation. It has nothing to do with left-wing campaigns against “white privilege,” unless that privilege is state-supplied.
Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty:
Sadowsky’s definition highlights the crucial distinction we shall make throughout this work between a man’s right and the morality or immorality of his exercise of that right. We will contend that it is a man’s right to do whatever he wishes with his person; it is his right not to be molested or interfered with by violence from exercising that right. But what may be the moral or immoral ways of exercising that right is a question of personal ethics rather than of political philosophy—which is concerned solely with matters of right, and of the proper or improper exercise of physical violence in human relations. The importance of this crucial distinction cannot be overemphasized. Or, as Elisha Hurlbut concisely put it: “The exercise of a faculty [by an individual] is its only use. The manner of its exercise is one thing; that involves a question of morals. The right to its exercise is another thing.
Rothbard, “Myth and Truth About Libertarianism,” Modern Age (Winter 1980): 9–15 (pdf; LewRockwell.com version):
The fact is that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral or aesthetic theory; it is only a political theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life.
Political theory deals with what is proper or improper for government to do, and government is distinguished from every other group in society as being the institution of organized violence. Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal. Libertarianism, therefore, is a theory which states that everyone should be free of violent invasion, should be free to do as he sees fit, except invade the person or property of another. What a person does with his or her life is vital and important, but is simply irrelevant to libertarianism.
It should not be surprising, therefore, that there are libertarians who are indeed hedonists and devotees of alternative lifestyles, and that there are also libertarians who are firm adherents of “bourgeois” conventional or religious morality. There are libertarian libertines and there are libertarians who cleave firmly to the disciplines of natural or religious law. There are other libertarians who have no moral theory at all apart from the imperative of non-violation of rights. That is because libertarianism per se has no general or personal moral theory.
Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral principles. Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that “liberty is the highest political end” — not necessarily the highest end on everyone’s personal scale of values.
See also Laurence M. Vance, “Libertarianism and Value Judgments,” FFF (Feb. 1, 2025).
Libertarian Answer Man: Voting, for Libertarians:
one could argue it is immoral (wrong) to vote—or even that it is immoral or wrong to commit aggression; but technically speaking, the morality of one’s actions is not within the province of libertarianism. Libertarian norms are metanorms that tell us which laws are justified; they are not normal morals that directly guide human action on a daily basis.
00:35:10
So this sort of blurs the distinction between morals and rights. Libertarians tend to have a much sharper distinction from that. They recognize that just because something is immoral like animal cruelty or being disrespectful to your grandmother, lots of things are immoral. And most people would not argue that they’re immoral, but libertarians are clear that it’s only prohibitable by the force of law if it is not just immoral but if it actually violates someone’s rights. It has to go to another level.
00:35:50
Now, this leads to another debate in libertarianism, which I will just touch on here. It is commonly said – some of you may have heard this said before by libertarians that correctly recognize that there’s a distinction between morals and law or morals and rights. We recognize that just become something is immoral does not mean that you can outlaw it. Okay, we think it has to rise to a higher threshold or a higher level, but this leads some libertarians to say that rights are a subset of morals.
00:36:27
So, in other words, they picture this is morals, and there’s a little part of it that’s the subset, which is rights. Okay, so they say, well, by that thinking, everything that’s a rights violation is necessarily immoral, but not everything that’s immoral is necessarily a rights violation. Now, that’s a topic that – I mean I would say it’s debated in libertarianism, but it’s not always debated because people don’t really appreciate that this is not uncontroversial. I’m sorry – that it’s not controversial. I think it’s actually controversial because at least from the domain of a libertarian thinker, we’re talking about what the rights should be, what should be legally enforceable.
00:37:10
I’m not sure. This is my personal opinion. I’m not convinced that it has been established that everything that’s a rights violation is necessarily immoral. The reason I say that is because you can imagine some situations where – in your life where you’re faced with a choice. You might choose consciously and explicitly to violate a right for something that you value higher. Now, to my mind, all that means is you still couldn’t deny that it’s a rights violation. You couldn’t deny the right of the victim to use force to defend his right or whatever.
00:37:51
But in some cases, I’m not sure. I think that’s the more the domain of ethics of ethical philosophy, and I don’t know if I’m enough of an expert on that to say that. I’m not sure if duress would because a lot of times these duress cases might be an example where it’s actually not a rights violation either, but it could be in some cases.
00:38:14
But my point is I view morals and rights as intersecting sets. Morals intersect rights because clearly most rights violations or many rights violations are immoral, and they’re rights violations. But whether every rights violation is immoral I don’t know, but what is the libertarian view is that not everything that’s immoral is a rights violation. So that is the key thing that is different about libertarianism than other political theories.
so just a minute or so ago
20:18
you said rights have nothing to do with morality well what I what what I what I
20:23
meant was um what I meant was uh yeah I wouldn’t say have nothing to do with it you could you can
20:29
view you are permitted it is arguable that there is a moral aspect to rights
20:36
but I do think they’re logically that they’re separate and here’s the reason why um I I said earlier in shorthand I
20:42
said that rights are a subset of morals I actually think that’s incorrect um most Libertarians would say
20:49
that everything that’s a rights violation is immoral but not everything that’s immoral is a rights violation
20:55
right so they view they view rights violations as a proper subset of morality yeah um but that implies that
21:02
rights are a subset of morality and that implies that every time you violate someone’s rights you’re you’re committing something immoral I don’t
21:09
think that that’s been established because now I do think that in most cases in almost every case violating a
21:16
right is also immoral but I don’t think it’s necessarily the case and the reason
21:21
is because you can imagine cases where you would you ought to violate
21:26
someone’s rights like if you had have to break into a cabin in the woods um which would violate someone’s
21:33
property rights you have to do that to save your your your child’s life uh you
21:38
could you could see a selfish person saying listen I I value my child’s life
21:43
more than the strangers property rights and so I’m going to do it and suffer the consequences and take the crime so I
21:49
don’t think that it’s necessarily the case now I do think there’s a connection I do think that morality is a guide to conduct and as part of that code of
21:57
conduct we need to know how to act with each other in terms of force and we need to know which laws and
22:04
which rights are Justified according to rational argumentation yeah well the
KOL451 | Debating the Nature of Rights on The Rational Egoist (Michael Liebowitz):
I think Hume was right when he made the criticism of many
natural law or M natural rights arguments that you you make a you make
an assertion about the world the fact a factual assertion and then you just all of a sudden jump to a should statement
or an ought statement which is normative right um without recognizing that you
need to do some work to justify going from Facts to Norms because there’s there’s a gulf there there’s a
difference um so I think of a right as a a type of normative
claim and by normative I mean like a moral or an ethical claim something about shoulds and what we should do and
so I think of it a subset of of a broader class of normative claims um and
if you just think about morality in general like a code of morals or
ethics we talk about what you should do what you shouldn’t do right what you ought to do what you ought not do um and
either that’s implicitly hypothetical because it’s based upon a presupposed
goal like if you want to live a good life then you should do this or it’s
categorical in the conent sense of you ought to do this because of your nature
something like that right so that’s how people think about these terms but the point is it’s it’s a normative thing it’s a prescript it’s a prescription not
a description so if I tell you about the law of gravity or the way you build a road or the way you you know um cook a
recipe it’s all in the realm of causality and causal laws you’re
describing the way the world is in a factual sense but if I tell you how you should behave as a human being in a
social context um you I’m telling you what you should do you shouldn’t be a bad friend
you shouldn’t be dishonest um so these Norms have to do
with prescription and and the other thing to notice is um when when you when you say that
you should do this you shouldn’t do this or we’re talking about moral or ethical or normative
laws when we say when we say law we mean a rule that says here’s how you should
act in a certain in a certain situation um that’s distinct from causal laws because
causal laws are not like choice-based like we’re not saying that gravity has a choice to be other than what it is right
we’re saying that it just is and we’ve noticed this and we can we can we can base our behavior on that but when yo
