Smallpaul t1_j76r40r wrote on February 4, 2023 at 2:41 PM

Reply to comment by VoxVocisCausa in There Are No Natural Rights (without Natural Law): Addressing what rights are, how we create rights, and where rights come from by contractualist

I agree with every individual sentence you say, but in a philosophy subreddit I am queasy about saying we can only evaluate an idea by looking at where the idea came from.

These are two separate issues. You could demolish the idea intellectually and then say “and in case you wonder why such a weak idea was proposed, here is the answer.” But going directly to the ad hominem is sus.

And yes I agree that the NAP is incredibly weak, because it depends on a skewed definition of “aggression” which privileges the rich and makes poor people simply trying to stay alive “aggressors.”

VoxVocisCausa t1_j76vkov wrote on February 4, 2023 at 3:15 PM

It's important to examine ideas on their own merit and within a vacuum. But it's also important to acknowledge that we carry our own biases and perspectives into our examination of these ideas and to consider why these ideas and thinkers are popular enough that we're talking about them now. Also if we're going to use these ideas as a basis to comment on public policy we need to examine them within the context under which they're being applied. If we want to place Rothbard's ideas within the context they were written we need to consider that on this topic he's writing against a backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement and that while his ideas are often used by Libertarians as a defense of individual rights Rothbard's conception of individual rights was influenced by who he considered worthy. I am not necessarily criticizing OP for referencing Rothbard, who was a prolific and influential writer, but at the same time in the context of amateur discussions of philosophy on this subreddit I don't think it's necessarily out of line to point out the nature of the non-academic organizations who have made his papers available online.