Interesting read. I had this same issue myself when trying to understand the non-aggression principle; what is aggression? Socialists see the Capitalist having full control over the means of production to be aggression, and Conservatives see violation of traditional morality as aggression against the nation as a whole.
So the NAP has to derive from something else. Rothbard seems to derive it from property rights, which I think is ridiculous since property rights have to be derived from another idea, i.e. individual rights.
The big issue here is exactly that the NAP needs to presuppose what qualifies as aggression, but then pretends to be establishing what is or isn't aggression.
If the NAP were derived from something else, then it is no longer acting as a principle. Hence it is not the Non-Aggression Principle anymore, and just the more common idea of defense.
Yeah, there is no problem with the idea of non-aggression itself. That is a pretty widespread concept for good reason, both among anarchists and non-anarchists. The issue here is how people try to use it in the argument, as a principle from which the rest of their political ethic can be derived.
The first example from Ayn Rand makes it clear too, where she suggests her non-initiation principle as a way to "determine that a right has been violated." The NAP cannot do that because we only call something 'aggression' when we already know it's a rights violation.
The only way that we might avoid that problem is if we defined 'aggression' in non-rights based terms. Ayn Rand kinda did that too, trying to make it a focus on violence. But in that case, any version she gave of the NAP would have been wrong, because there are times when she would think it's fine to initiate physical violence (e.g. if you tackle someone after they steal something from you, you'd be the one initiating physical violence, but Rand would argue that'd be justified because of the rights-violation of the theft).
It does not, as I demonstrate thoroughly in my essay.
Aggression isn't just a word they made up, nor is it something its major proponents every argued needed to be determined independently.
If you want to make up your own idea and words, great. Do that. But don't try to shoehorn it into already well defined concept to pretend like everyone in the past was agreeing with you.
Whether Rothbard believed the non-aggression principle was original to Rand is irrelevant. As I made clear in my conclusion, the distinctive feature of the NAP is not the division of actions into aggressive or non-aggression, invasion or non-invasion, but the belief that their entire political theory can be deduced from this singular principle. In that respect, the NAP is not found in Labadie, Spooner, Tandy, Spencer, or anyone else. As far as I can find, it really is original to Rand, even if it is an original error as a circular argument.
It is irrelevant, because I decide the subject of my own post. The topic here is the circularity of the NAP, as it is found in its most prominent defenders: Rand and Rothbard. This is stated directly in the title. If you decide you want to use a special definition of the Non-Aggression Principle which only needs to make a distinction between aggression and non-aggression and doesn't have to work as a principle, then you can do that on your own page. Even if you do, it only further illustrates the claim I make in my title.
None of the people you list go beyond making the distinction between aggression and non-aggression. This includes Tandy, who does summarize his anarchism this way, which is not the same as DEDUCING his anarchism from this singular idea.
I consider the topic closed here, especially since we had this same discussion on reddit.
This is not a page about Tandy. Not gonna say it again, comments need to be on topic. If you want to see why no one can deduce things from the NAP, you can read my article. The concept of "invasion" is meaningless unless we already have a sense of what limits, if crossed, would qualify as an invasion. Consequently, people who claimed they could deduce where these limits are from the concept of non-invasion, like Rand and Rothbard, needed to engage in circular reasoning, baking the conclusions they wanted into how they defined their terms and then pretend to "deduce" them.
I know it's been a year since this exchange happened, but didn't Tandy deduce his idea of Anarchism from Egoism, and then used the NAP to explain what his idea of Anarchism entails?
Answer is still mostly the same as a year ago. I'd want to do more reading from Tandy before I comment on their specific argument.
However, even your summary shows the issue with calling that the NAP. It isn't acting as a principle at all, hence the title of my paper.
The idea of self-defense is extremely common in ethical and political philosophies, and has been used long before anarchism was ever proposed. But the entire idea of self-defense needs to presuppose someone having a just/legal/normative/whatever claim to something which is being "defended." The idea of self-defense cannot be made into a principle then without becoming circular or tautological.
If Tandy did use this argument, then he'd fall to the same answer. But the description so far makes it sound like he didn't. Instead, he just used the idea like everyone else does, or how we can see Berkman using the idea of self-defense. As far as I can tell, the NAP properly speaking is a faulty argument originally attributed to Ayn Rand.
Interesting read. I had this same issue myself when trying to understand the non-aggression principle; what is aggression? Socialists see the Capitalist having full control over the means of production to be aggression, and Conservatives see violation of traditional morality as aggression against the nation as a whole.
So the NAP has to derive from something else. Rothbard seems to derive it from property rights, which I think is ridiculous since property rights have to be derived from another idea, i.e. individual rights.
The big issue here is exactly that the NAP needs to presuppose what qualifies as aggression, but then pretends to be establishing what is or isn't aggression.
If the NAP were derived from something else, then it is no longer acting as a principle. Hence it is not the Non-Aggression Principle anymore, and just the more common idea of defense.
So it'd be better to call it the Non-Aggression Idea, but the NAI doesn't have the same ring as the NAP
Yeah, there is no problem with the idea of non-aggression itself. That is a pretty widespread concept for good reason, both among anarchists and non-anarchists. The issue here is how people try to use it in the argument, as a principle from which the rest of their political ethic can be derived.
The first example from Ayn Rand makes it clear too, where she suggests her non-initiation principle as a way to "determine that a right has been violated." The NAP cannot do that because we only call something 'aggression' when we already know it's a rights violation.
The only way that we might avoid that problem is if we defined 'aggression' in non-rights based terms. Ayn Rand kinda did that too, trying to make it a focus on violence. But in that case, any version she gave of the NAP would have been wrong, because there are times when she would think it's fine to initiate physical violence (e.g. if you tackle someone after they steal something from you, you'd be the one initiating physical violence, but Rand would argue that'd be justified because of the rights-violation of the theft).
It does not, as I demonstrate thoroughly in my essay.
Aggression isn't just a word they made up, nor is it something its major proponents every argued needed to be determined independently.
If you want to make up your own idea and words, great. Do that. But don't try to shoehorn it into already well defined concept to pretend like everyone in the past was agreeing with you.
Whether Rothbard believed the non-aggression principle was original to Rand is irrelevant. As I made clear in my conclusion, the distinctive feature of the NAP is not the division of actions into aggressive or non-aggression, invasion or non-invasion, but the belief that their entire political theory can be deduced from this singular principle. In that respect, the NAP is not found in Labadie, Spooner, Tandy, Spencer, or anyone else. As far as I can find, it really is original to Rand, even if it is an original error as a circular argument.
It is irrelevant, because I decide the subject of my own post. The topic here is the circularity of the NAP, as it is found in its most prominent defenders: Rand and Rothbard. This is stated directly in the title. If you decide you want to use a special definition of the Non-Aggression Principle which only needs to make a distinction between aggression and non-aggression and doesn't have to work as a principle, then you can do that on your own page. Even if you do, it only further illustrates the claim I make in my title.
None of the people you list go beyond making the distinction between aggression and non-aggression. This includes Tandy, who does summarize his anarchism this way, which is not the same as DEDUCING his anarchism from this singular idea.
I consider the topic closed here, especially since we had this same discussion on reddit.
This is not a page about Tandy. Not gonna say it again, comments need to be on topic. If you want to see why no one can deduce things from the NAP, you can read my article. The concept of "invasion" is meaningless unless we already have a sense of what limits, if crossed, would qualify as an invasion. Consequently, people who claimed they could deduce where these limits are from the concept of non-invasion, like Rand and Rothbard, needed to engage in circular reasoning, baking the conclusions they wanted into how they defined their terms and then pretend to "deduce" them.
I know it's been a year since this exchange happened, but didn't Tandy deduce his idea of Anarchism from Egoism, and then used the NAP to explain what his idea of Anarchism entails?
Answer is still mostly the same as a year ago. I'd want to do more reading from Tandy before I comment on their specific argument.
However, even your summary shows the issue with calling that the NAP. It isn't acting as a principle at all, hence the title of my paper.
The idea of self-defense is extremely common in ethical and political philosophies, and has been used long before anarchism was ever proposed. But the entire idea of self-defense needs to presuppose someone having a just/legal/normative/whatever claim to something which is being "defended." The idea of self-defense cannot be made into a principle then without becoming circular or tautological.
If Tandy did use this argument, then he'd fall to the same answer. But the description so far makes it sound like he didn't. Instead, he just used the idea like everyone else does, or how we can see Berkman using the idea of self-defense. As far as I can tell, the NAP properly speaking is a faulty argument originally attributed to Ayn Rand.