Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Schmidtz finally getting his due.

From this month's lead Cato Unbound essay:
Finally, it is possible to advance liberty and defend individual rights in a manner different from Rand’s, as the works of Robert Nozick, Loren Lomasky, Jan Narveson, and David Schmidtz attest, and thus there is nothing in this proposed discussion that should be taken to deny the importance of their works.


It's ridiculous to put the blustering slob Ayn Rand on the same level as Nozick, Lomasky, and Narveson (and by extension Rawls and Gauthier)--the topic of the month's discussion aside, it'd have been better for Rasmussen to write "It is possible to advance liberty and defend individual rights in a manner different from the neo-Aristotelean treatment of myself and Den Uyl..."

But I digress. Arizona's own David Schmidtz--a sort of anti-Rand in his caution with language and his search for a common starting point with his readers--does belong in that bunch and it's pleasing to see him get his due.

Readers unfamiliar with the dean of local (classical-)liberal thinkers would find his Political Theory paper How to Deserve or the draft treatment of property rights recently recommended by Will Wilkinson good places to start. His Elements of Justice was also a lot of fun on an intellectual level, and if nothing else helped tremendously to clarify the questions. (I'd say it provided a few answers, too; your experience may vary.)

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