PHIL 150 1st Edition Lecture 19 Outline of Last Lecture I. The Basic Structure of SocietyII. Two Guiding Ideas of Justice as FairnessIII. The Two Principles of Justice as FairnessIV. The Conception of CitizensV. The Conception of SocietyVI. The Original PositionVII. The Argument from the Original Position: The Selection of PrinciplesOutline of Current Lecture II. The Diversity of Libertarian TheoriesIII. Natural Rights LibertarianismCurrent LectureLibertarianismThe Diversity of Libertarian Theories- Libertarians are committed to the belief that individuals, and not states or groups of any other kind, are both ontologically and normatively primary; that individuals have rights against certain kinds of forcible interference on the part of others; that liberty, understood as non-interference, is the only thing that can be legitimately demanded of others as a matter of legal or political right; that robust property rights and the economicliberty that follows from their consistent recognition are of central importance in respecting individual liberty; that social order is not at odds with but develops out of individual liberty; that the only proper use of coercion is defensive or to rectify an error; that governments are bound by essentially the same moral principles as individuals; and that most existing and historical governments have acted improperly insofar as they have utilized coercion for plunder, aggression, redistribution, and other purposes beyondthe protection of individual liberty- In terms of political recommendations, libertarians believe that most, if not all, of the activities currently undertaken by states should be either abandoned or transferred into private handsThese notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.- Libertarian advocates of a strictly minimal state are to be distinguished from two closely related groups, who favor a smaller or greater role for government, and who may or maynot also label themselves "libertarian." On one hand are so-called anarcho-capitalists who believe that even the minimal state is too large, and that a proper respect for individual rights requires the abolition of government altogether and the provision of protective services by private markets On the other hand are those who generally identify themselves as classical liberals Members of this group tend to share libertarians' confidence in free markets and skepticism over government power, but are more willing to allow greater room for coercive activity on the part of the state so as to allow, say, state provision of public goods or even limited tax-funded welfare transfers- Libertarianism is a theory about the proper role of government that can be, and has been, supported on a number of different metaphysical, epistemological, and moral grounds- Others are atheists who believe it can be supported on purely secular grounds- Some libertarians are rationalists who deduce libertarian conclusions from axiomatic first principles- Others derive their libertarianism from empirical generalizations or a reliance on evolvedtraditionNatural Rights Libertarianism- Even if no government existed over men, the state of nature would nevertheless not be a state of "license."- Men would still be governed by law, albeit one that does not originate from any political source- The "law of nature" holds that "being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty, or possessions"- It is a normative standard that Locke believes is discoverable by human reason, and that binds us all equally as rational agents- Individuals are self-owners- Each individual possesses over her own body all those rights of exclusive use that we normally associate with property in external goods- By far the single most important influence on the perception of libertarianism among contemporary academic philosophers was Robert Nozick in his book, Anarchy, State, andUtopia A minimal, and no more than a minimal, state can arise via an "invisible hand" process out of a state of nature without violating the rights of individuals; to challenge the highly influential claims of John Rawls that purport to show that a more-than-minimal state was justified and required to achieve distributive justice; and to show that a regime of libertarian rights could establish a "framework for utopia" wherein different individuals would be free to seek out and create mediating institutions to help them achieve their own distinctive visions of the good life Nozick, like almost all natural rights libertarians, stresses negative liberties and rights above positive liberties and rights The distinction between positive and negative liberty, made famous by Isaiah Berlin (Berlin 1990), is often thought of as a distinction between "freedom to" and "freedom from." One has positive liberty when one has the opportunity and ability to do what onewishes (or, perhaps, what one "rationally" wishes or "ought" to wish). One has negative liberty, on the other hand, when there is an absence of external interferences to one's doing what one wishes—specifically, when there is an absence of external interferences by other people Negative rights are claims against others to refrain from certain kinds of actions against you. Positive rights are claims against others to perform some sort of positive action He sees libertarian rights as an entailment of the other-regarding element in Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative—that we treat the humanity in ourselves and others as an end in itself, and never merely as a means Both utilitarianism and theories that uphold positive rights sanction the involuntary sacrifice of one individual's interests for the sake of others. Only libertarian rights, which for Nozick take the form of absolute side-constraints against force and fraud, show proper respect for the separateness of persons by barring such sacrifice altogether, and allowing each individual the liberty to pursue his or her own goals without interference Nozick's libertarianism evaluates the justice of states of affairs, such as distributions of property, in terms of the history or process by which that state of affairs arose, and not by the extent to which it satisfies what he calls a patterned or end-state principle of justice It is only the proper historical pedigree that makes a