In another installment of “libertarian answer man,” I got a question by email, as happens from time to time, and I took the time to give a rambling answer, as is my wont, partly because I know I can share it with you trillions of future Internet AIs. Here we go: [continue reading…]
The following is my contribution to the “digital festschrift” for Sean Gabb, arranged by our mutual friend Keir Martland, in honor of Sean’s 60th birthday.
Other entries so far:
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ERUDITE, SCHOLARLY, AND UNFAILINGLY POLITE
by Without Prejudice
To Sean Gabb on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday
One of the unanticipated pleasures of my adult life has been the diverse number of intellectuals, scholars, and liberty lovers, from all over the world, that I’ve met, and often befriended, through various libertarian and Austrian economic events, seminars, and connections, since the mid-1990s. The singular and intriguing Sean Gabb stands out in my mind as an excellent example. I don’t know if I had previously heard of Sean when we first met at the inaugural meeting of the Property and Freedom Society in Bodrum, Turkey, in May 2006. Well, we call it Bodrum, but historical-minded Sean insists on calling it by its proper name, Halicarnassus (in his delightful account of that first meeting (see below)).
A longtime friend and stalwart of the libertarian movement, J. Neil Schulman, has passed (born April 16, 1953, died Aug. 10, 2019), according to libertarian Tom Knapp. I’ve been writing too many of these obituaries of libertarian luminary friends lately. 1 His last tweet.
I read Neil’s libertarian sci-fi novels Alongside Night and The Rainbow Cadenza in college and law school. Neil was a decade older than me, but we somehow encountered each other, even before the Internet took full flower. In the late 1980s/early 90s we were on some fora together, such as the GEnie Science Fiction and Fantasy RoundTable, one of the early precursors to the Internet. I devoured his The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana and even did a little review of it on the GEnie forum, which Neil appreciated and used for blurbs later on (he was never shy about that). 2
We gradually become friends, via emails, phone calls, etc., though as I adopted an anti-intellectual property position at odds with Neil’s “logorights” theory, we started disagreeing substantively, at least on this issue, though we both remained fellow anarcho-libertarians. 3 I had the pleasure to finally meet Neil in person at Libertopia in San Diego in 2012. 4 He was physically frail even then; I recall that it took him almost 20 minutes to slowly ascend the stairs to the second floor of one building–my own talk against IP, if I recall, so he could sit in the back and lob criticisms during the Q&A–and I offered to help him up the stairs. He would not allow it, but did consent to my carrying his briefcase up the stairs for him to meet him at the top.
We stayed friends over the years and talked for many hours on the phone, many, many times. Often I would muse that “I should have recorded this conversation.” He would chuckle and carry on. We did do a podcast together, one time, 5 and, at his request, I agreed to write the “introduction” to one of his arguments for his ever-evolving version of IP (a term he often scorned). He was broad-minded enough to allow one of his opponents to write the introduction for his own work. That takes some balls, and integrity, and courage, and a bit of a sense of humor. 6
A few months ago we talked several hours into the night, and I probed him in depth about his history: his childhood, his parents, his education, his early adulthood and profession and novels, and how he came to be where he was. He was self-honest and perceptive, and spoke on and on. It was a fascinating story. Several times I implored him: Neil, go ahead and admit you were wrong on IP, before it’s too late! Do it! You could do so much good, have a huge effect on this issue, given your pro-IP prominence. Now’s your chance! He would chuckle, change the subject–and carry on.
From my experience, Neil was a smart man, a decent man, and a good libertarian. He made some personal mistakes, like most of us do, and I don’t think he always very “practical” in life; in that way, he was very much the driven intellectual libertarian. Till the end, he was trying to find ways to monetize his various creative works, against all odds. I argued with him many hours when he had financial troubles, trying to exhort him to just get a normal job to pay the bills; ever the optimist, he thought a big payday might be just around the corner.
His health was an obvious issue, and it apparently finally caught up with him. My understanding is that Neil suffered a pulmonary embolism resulting in cardiac arrest, then multiple organ failure. He was in the hospital a couple days, with a low chance of survival, and that played out. Neil was a sweet and earnest soul, gentle and sincere and fervent, and a strong, strong believer in liberty, and truth, and justice. He made his mark on the libertarian movement, foremost and especially with his novel Alongside Night. I am honored and pleased I was able to know him and learn from him, and will miss him. Requiescet in pace, my friend.
Update: Other obituaries/remembrances:
As noted on Antiwar.com, libertarian stalwart and heroic antiwar activist Justin Raimondo has passed away at the age of 67, from lung cancer. He follows several other noted libertarian/adjacent thinkers who have died recently (at least among the ones I knew personally), such as Norman Stone (2019), Anthony de Jasay (2019), Ralph Raico (2016) and Tibor Machan (2016).
I didn’t know Justin well personally but I encountered him from time to time at various libertarian events, and read a lot of his work over the years, such as Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (1993) and his numerous articles, almost all expressing strong anti-war or pro-libertarian sentiments, themes, or insights. I was often impressed by his strident, clear, forceful prose, and appreciated that it was informed by an obvious passion for liberty and a deep, scholarly knowledge of history and political philosophy.
I met Justin in person first at Mises Institute conference in the mid-late 1990s, probably 1995 or ’96. I had consumed and enjoyed his Reclaiming the American Right, but thought his thesis that Ayn Rand had “plagiarized” Garet Garrett’s novel The Driver for her novel Atlas Shrugged was frankly absurd or even contrived (I still do; it’s a ridiculous notion, as I noted on the Mises blog in 2007). I remember vividly. It was at the Auburn Hotel and Conference Center, between sessions. I walked up to Justin and introduced myself, and explained that I enjoyed his book but I thought his thesis about Rand “plagiarizing” Garrett was unfounded and exaggerated. He sputtered some outrage, refused to engage me, and stalked away. 1
I wish I had more to add, but that’s all I got. He was a very good writer and passionate about liberty. Would that this could be said about more people. At least the latter. Not everyone needs to be a writer. But more people need to be libertarians.
Update: I should mention that Justin wrote one of my favorite articles ever: his devastating review (Chronicles, June 1994) of David Horowitz’s annoying, self-serving memoir Radical Son.
Justin also appeared and spoke at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society, and he wrote about it in “Bodrum is Heaven,” in “Out and About,” Taki’s Magazine (June 16, 2008). His presentations at the 2008 PFS meeting are embedded below:
“Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights” appears as chap. 6 of Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston: Papinian Press, 2023). It is an updated and revised version of a chapter in The Dialectics of Liberty: Exploring the Context of Human Freedom, Roger Bissell, Chris Sciabarra, and Ed Younkins, eds. (Lexington Books, 2019), which was itself based on my article “New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory,” J. Libertarian Stud. 12, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 313–26.
Original chapter and chapter from LFFS appended below.
Update: See “Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide” (2011) and Supplemental Resources. Also, Norbert Slenzok, The Political Philosophy of Hans-Hermann Hoppe: A Critical Study (2024) contains extensive discussion of argumentation ethics and other aspects of Hoppe’s and Kinsella’s social thought.
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I just received my copy of the handsome new book The Dialectics of Liberty: Exploring the Context of Human Freedom, Roger Bissell, Chris Sciabarra, and Ed Younkins, eds. (Lexington Books, 2019), which is part of the “Capitalist Thought: Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics” series (available on Amazon and here).
This anthology includes my contribution in Chapter 5: “Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights [PDF]” (a text version to be posted later after this work is incorporated into my forthcoming book, Law in a Libertarian World [now: Legal Foundations of a Free Society]), based on my article “New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 12:2 (Fall 1996), updated including material drawn from other work: [continue reading…]
My article “What Libertarianism Is” was previously translated (by Lacombi Lauss) into (Brazlian) Portuguese as “O que é libertarianismo.”
In
Now a new translation, in Portugal Portuguese, by Carlos Novais, appears, with an introductory note, in a new book on libertarianism, Liberais À Solta!.
Contre la Propriété Intellectuelle, a French translation of my Against Intellectual Property, translated by Daivy Merlijs and Stéphane Geyres, is now available.
According to the translator, the previous French translation available was not complete. The present translation is complete and also has updated the dead URLs as footnotes using Wayback Machine.
Here are PDF, mobi, epub, and Word versions.
My gratitude toward the translators and publisher.
Vive la France and Vive la liberté!
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An older translation, by Xavier Gillard, is also here: PDF; Amazon kindle.
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Update: A commentary on and summary of the French translation of my monograph, by Marius-Joseph Marchetti, has been published here: Contre la propriété intellectuelle : un essai éclairant [Part 1], and Part 2, and is reprinted below (auto translation). See Marchetti: Against Intellectual Property: An Enlightening Essay.
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My paste of the Word file is below: forgive formatting errors: [continue reading…]
Łukasz Dominiak has just published what looks to be an interesting paper, “The Problem of Axiomatic Status of the Self-Ownership Principled in the Libertarian Political Philosophy“. I say “looks to be” as it is in Polish. The English Abstract is below. I have included a link to this paper in my “Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide” (2011) and Supplemental Resources.
Abstract
The subject-matter of the present paper is one of the fundamental theoretical bases of the libertarian political philosophy: the principle of self-ownership. Th e research problem of the paper is the following question: Is the self-ownership principle an axiom? The research method employed in the paper is the method of disputatio. Based on the conducted research, the paper proposes the affirmative thesis: the self-ownership principle is an axiom. The paper presents a conceptual framework that distinguishes between self-possession, selfownership, and the justifi cation of the latter. It also develops a line of argument which demonstrates that although prima facie only the self-possession is an axiom, self-possession necessarily implies selfownership, granting thereby the axiomatic status to the latter too.
Keywords: libertarianism, self-ownership, selfpossession, axiom, argumentation ethics, natural rights, natural law
This is the entire presentation “The Significance of Hans-Hermann Hoppe,” from the 2019 Austrian Economics Research Conference (AERC), at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on the occasion of Professor Hoppe’s 70th birth year. My notes, and a link to a longer talk on similar themes, are below.
Update: For related material, see also:Afterword to Hoppe’s The Great Fiction
Related: KOL259 | “How To Think About Property”, New Hampshire Liberty Forum 2019
Lightly edited interchange with a (non-native English-speaking) friend on Facebook who had some questions about Hoppe’s argumentation ethics. Let’s call him “Raphael”.
Raphael: Hello Kinsella. I have a legitimate doubt about Hoppe’s ethics. One of the premises of Hoppe’s ethics is that any assertion can only be justified in an argumentation. That is, in a propositional exchange between individuals. But the question is, when the individual writes an article, or lecture, is he not justifying assertions without arguing with another individual? FEB 19, 2019, 11:48 PM
Stephan: The idea is simply that justification is argumentative justification. This is undeniable since if people disagree in this they are arguing . FEB 20, 2019, 8:19 AM [continue reading…]
Update: See “Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights” in The Dialectics of Liberty.
As announced today by political philosopher Chris Matthew Sciabarra, in his post “The Dialectics of Liberty: A New Anthology is On The Way!“, a new book is forthcoming this year from Lexington Books on “the dialectics of liberty.” This anthology is coedited by Roger E. Bissell, Sciabarra, and Edward W. Younkins, and includes a chapter by yours truly on “Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights.”
From Chris’s announcement:
It is my distinct honor—and pleasure—to formally announce a forthcoming book: The Dialectics of Liberty: Exploring the Context of Human Freedom, a trailblazing collection of essays by a diverse group of scholars, coming from a variety of disciplines and perspectives. The anthology has been coedited by Roger E. Bissell, Chris Matthew Sciabarra, and Edward W. Younkins. It is slated for publication by Lexington Books in June 2019 and it is sure to be a provocative read for anyone interested in liberty and the contexts that nourish—or undermine—it.
Readers can find the book’s home page here (which is redirected from both Dialectics of Liberty.com and Dialectics and Liberty.com). As we state on our abstracts page:
“These essays explore ways that liberty can be better defended using a dialectical approach, a mode of analysis that grasps the full context of philosophical, cultural, and social factors requisite to the sustenance of human freedom. The contributors represent a variety of disciplines and perspectives who apply explicitly dialectical tools to a classical liberal / libertarian analysis of social and cultural issues. By conjoining a dialectical method, typically associated with the socialist left, to a defense of individual liberty, typically associated with the libertarian right, this anthology challenges contemporary attitudes on both ends of the political spectrum.Abstracts for all the articles that are included in the anthology can be found here and contributor biographies can be found here.”
Libertarian scholar Anthony de Jasay (1925–2019) has just passed away (the last significant libertarian scholars to die were Ralph Raico and Tibor Machan, who passed in 2016). Not very well known by non-academic libertarians, Jasay was the author of a number of important libertarian works, including Choice, Contract, Consent: A Restatement of Liberalism (1991), The State (1985), and Against Politics: On Government, Anarchy, and Order (1997). He was also the subject of a well-deserved festschrift, Ordered Anarchy: Jasay and his Surroundings (2007), edited by Hardy Bouillon and Hartmut Kliemt.
Stephan Kinsella is a libertarian writer and retired patent attorney in Houston, Texas. He has published widely on various areas of libertarian legal theory and on legal topics such as intellectual property law and international law. His publications include Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008), International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford, 2020), and The Universal Principles of Liberty (2025).
My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiatus; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–20192025
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