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.
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…]
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.
“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.”
I lived in the Philadelphia area from 1994–97 and while there I associated a bit with local libertarian or related groups. For example I spoke a couple of times at the Philadelphia chapter of the Federalist Society. I also attended a few meetings of the Freeman Society of Valley Forge, which was run by my friend and free market economics professor John McGinnis. My recollection is that the Freeman Society was sponsored by or somehow affiliated with the Foundation for Economic Education, which published the magazine The Freeman. [continue reading…]
I’m here in Positano, at the beautiful Villa TreVille, on the last leg of the longest vacation of my life so far (July 1-20: Venice, Capri, Positano, Berlin). And this morning, here in Positano, walking down the steps from our room to the terrace to lounge, I had my sixth epiphany. Or so.
First, there were two fairly minor and personal ephanies.
1. Hell/Jesus/Religion: First: at age 15 or so when riding the Gravely tractor/lawnmower, mowing our 3-4 acre tract. As a pretty devout Catholic schoolboy and former altar boy, I was thinking hard about religion and the world around this time. It had already occurred to me that if God condemns you to eternal damnation as punishment for some sins committed while mortal, this can’t be just. An infinite punishment is disproportionate for a finite amount of crime. So, I reasoned, there cannot be hell. Therefore not evertyhing the Catholics teach is right. So what else might be false? Then I dared to question the idea of Jesus, and of God, and it all crumbled. My epiphany was in the realization that I could dare not only to question Hell but the whole Catholic story about Jesus. [continue reading…]
Note: An updated and revised version of this article appears as chap. 16 of Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023).
The “Conversation” linked below appears as chap. 17 of the same book.
***
I wrote the “Introduction” (really, a foreword) to J. Neil Schulman’s† latest book, Origitent: Why Original Content is Property (Steve Heller Publishing, 2018), just published this week (PDF; Amazon; discussed by Neil on Facebook here). It includes a transcript of our previous discussion at KOL208 | Conversation with Schulman about Logorights and Media-Carried Property.
Anthony Wile: You’ve called the following a fallacy: “If you own something, that implies that you can sell it; and if you sell something, that implies you must own it first. The former idea, which is based on a flawed idea about the origin and nature of property rights and contract theory, is used to justify voluntary slavery; the second, which is based on a flawed understanding of contract theory, is used to justify intellectual property.” Can you elaborate please?
Stephan Kinsella: I discuss this in more detail in some podcasts such as
This is hard to elaborate in a quick interview. But here is a summary answer.
Ownership means right to control. It is not automatically clear why this would imply the power or ability or right to stop having the right to control it. My view is that we own our bodies not because of homesteading but because each person has a unique link to his body: his ability to directly control it. Hoppe recognized this decades ago, as I point out in How We Come To Own Ourselves. I had to find an old German text of his and have it translated, to find out his early insight on this, from 1985. This has implications for the idea of the voluntary slavery contract and the so-called inalienability debate. [continue reading…]
Another great legal scholar, and friend of mine, LSU Law Professor Robert Pascal, has passed away. I previously commented on the death of my friend, LSU Law Professor Saúl Litvinoff, a giant of civil law scholarship who died in 2010. I never even knew Saúl while I was at LSU law school, but I became close friends with him shortly after my graduation in 1991, and maintained correspondence with him until his death in 2010 (he was one of the three professors who wrote recommendation letters for me to apply to the University of London’s PhD in Laws programme, the others being Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Randy Barnett). 1
And another Louisiana legal titan, A.N. ‘Thanassi’ Yiannopoulos, died last year at age 88. I never met Yiannopouls at all, but we corresponded in the years before his death in 2017 about some civil law matters. He was friends with my friend Gregory Rome, a young Louisiana lawyer who co-authored Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary with me in 2011. [continue reading…]
I also discuss LeFevre here: 
Another great legal scholar, and friend of mine, LSU Law Professor Robert Pascal, has passed away. I previously commented on the death of my friend, LSU Law Professor 
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