Principles Are Still Universal: a Reply to Ari

by Justin Longo | 6:11 pm, October 29, 2009 | Comments Off

First off, I’d like to thank Ari for his thoughtful response to my original post – “Principles are Universal, not Convenient.” These types of discussions help move important debates forward.

But Ari ended up going far beyond the point I was trying to make. I realize I’m not the best, most clear writer out there, but I’m still a bit baffled by Ari’s response.

The point I was trying to make in my original post was that if one is claiming to be principled, or that they claim to hold certain values as principles, then they must apply their principles universally. To me, a principle is distinguished from a preference in that a principle is applied to all people, at all times, in all situations.

I was hoping that after someone read my post, they would try to pinpoint their first principles and apply them universally to see where it would take them.  I feel it is extremely important to have a foundation for which the rest of our beliefs build from.  And again, my first principle to which all my beliefs stem from is the principle of self-ownership.  When I said applying self-ownership is sometimes scary, I meant that the conclusions we draw like “taxation is theft,” and ultimately that of a stateless society can be uncomfortable for many people.

Although I hope that someday everyone would agree with my first principles, I never intended to convince anyone of the validity of self-ownership.  In fact, if a leftist were to say to me that one of their principles is that no person should ever go hungry — and the leftist applied that principle universally to justify theft of food — that would be a principle.  (A morally disgusting one anyway).

My problem with both Republicans and Democrats is that the political process forces them to abandon their principles when they become too costly to hold.  I was merely trying to get across that abandoning principles from time to time indicates that it is a preference, not a principle.  I have more respect for the leftist who comes right out and declares everyone has a right to a job and food – and is consistent – then all the Republicans out there who claimed limited government is a principle, and then held their tongues during 8 years of George W. Bush.

As for my principle of self-ownership being “pulled from nowhere,” I obviously disagree.  And so would John Locke.  Locke is the first person to put the idea of self-ownership into words.  He said, “every man has a Property in his own Person.”  After Locke, came many others who expounded on self-ownership theory and natural rights in general, including Henry David Thoreau, most of the founding fathers, tons of abolitionists, and various other libertarians, many of whom are in the Austrian school of economics.

To have such problems with the idea of natural rights as Ari has is still puzzling to me. Although I do realize that objectivism requires ridiculously complex, long-winded pronunciations on concepts that could otherwise be boiled down to a simple one or two sentences.

I would like to close by stating that in my humble opinion, the best way to come to a philosophy is to start with a few core beliefs and then extrapolate universally from there.  Being as complex and nuanced as Ari tends to be is okay when you get further down the line and into the nitty gritty stuff.  However, something as simple as “I own myself” needs neither complexity nor any nuance.

Furthermore, if Ari does not believe that he owns his own body, then who does he believe owns it?  (his wife perhaps??!)

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