ȃȄȅ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophy
deserve a more solid grounding than mere intuitions reported in noble-
sounding language. Mises of course did not reject natural law in the
scientific sense; and he did not reject natural law and human rights as eth-
ical precepts if they are interpreted in the tame sense that I sketched out
earlier, the sense compatible with utilitarianism. What Mises rejected was
the exaggerated, foundationalist, almost mystical status that some writers
have accorded to them.ȁ
ŔśŜŜő’ş şšŜŜśşőŐŘť ŢōŘšő-ŒŞőő ōŜŜŞśōŏŔ Šś
ŘŕŎőŞŠōŞŕōŚŕşř
Hans-Hermann Hoppe presents a curious supposed alternative to utili-
tarian ethics (ȀȈȇȇa, pp.Ȅȅ–Ȇȅ;ȀȈȇȇb, pp.ȁǿ–ȁȁ; and contribution to a
symposium, “Hoppe’s Rights Ļeory”ȀȈȇȇ, pp.ȃ–ȄȂ,ȄȂ–Ȅȃ). He purport-
edly dispenses with any appeal to value judgments at all, even such a tame
one as wishing people happy rather than miserable lives. He does not have
to try to get an “ought” from an “is” because the libertarian policy position
rests entirely on logic and facts and not at all on value judgments.
Reason, Hoppe says, can prove moral laws valid a priori. It makes
explicit what the sheer fact of discussion already implies. Ļe libertar-
ian private-property ethic can be justified morally and by argumentation
and without invoking any value judgments. Proposing any alternative
ethic contradicts what inheres in the very act of engaging in argumen-
tation; nonlibertarian proposals are falsified by the very act of making
them.
Argumentation—discussion—requires employing scarce means, pri-
vately owned. Argumentation presupposes that the participants recog-
nize each one’s exclusive control over one’s own body. Furthermore,
argumentation could not be sustained for any length of time without
private property in things beyond one’s own body, property ultimately
tracing to Lockean homesteading. Without private property defined in
objective, physical terms, life, acting, and proposition-making would be
impossible. “By being alive and formulating any proposition, then, one
demonstrates that any ethic except the libertarian ethic is invalid.” Hoppe
further says he has proved “that it is impossible to propositionally jus-
tify nonlibertarian property principles without falling into contradictions.
ȁA section is omitted below because it confronts a reinterpretation of Mises too
strained to be worth the space needed to refute it. For the omitted material, see the original
version of this chapter.