Philosophy Seminar with Roderick Long
June 26-30, 2006
Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama
Roderick T. Long is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University; Editor of the " Journal of Libertarian Studies "; President of the Molinari Institute; Adjunct Scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute; and author of " Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand " and the forthcoming "Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action". He received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1992, and blogs at Praxeology.net.
This seminar on praxeological foundations of libertarian ethics will consist of two primary lectures per day for five days, June 26-30, 2006, and includes discussion time with the professor. Morning sessions are 10:00 - 11:30 Central Time, and afternoon sessions are 2:00 - 3:30, Monday through Friday, with a pizza party following Friday's closing session.
FURTHER DESCRIPTION
On the one hand, the subjective-value approach to economics characteristic of the Austrian school might seem inhospitable to objective theories of ethical value. Yet on the other hand, philosophers like Socrates, Aristotle, and Aquinas based their objective conceptions of ethics on something rather like a praxeological analysis of subjective valuation; indeed, subjectivist economics and natural law ethics both originated from this common tradition. Can an objective ethics in a broadly Aristotelian tradition be grounded in praxeological considerations? And if so, what shape might a radical libertarian political theory take if built on such foundations?
The first half of the seminar will deal with the praxeological foundations of ethics. Topics include: do human beings have an ultimate end? can we knowingly choose the bad? how are morality and self-interest related? why should we care about other people's interests?
For a preview of the sorts of issues to be addressed, listen to this lecture: Economics and its Ethical Assumptions .
The second half of the seminar will explore the implications of praxeological, Aristotelean ethics for such issues as property rights, contracts, land ownership, punishment and restitution, military policy, stateless legal systems, utilitarian vs. rights-based considerations, and the cultural preconditions of liberty.
SCHEDULE
I. From Praxeology to Ethics
1. Objective and Subjective Value [day 1, morning]
2. The Praxeological Case for an Ultimate End [day 1, afternoon]
3. Free Will: Two Paradoxes of Choice [day 2, morning]
4. The Moral Standpoint [day 2, afternoon]
5. An Aristotelian Ethics of Virtue [day 3, morning]
II. From Ethics to Liberty
6. Justice, Rights, and Consequences [day 3, afternoon]
7. Property, Land, Contract [day 4, morning]
8. Punishment and War [day 4, afternoon]
9. Culture and Liberty [day 5, morning]
10. An Anarchist Legal Order [day 5, afternoon]
http://www.mises.org/upcomingstory.aspx?control=85