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• Bibliographical Essay: Henry B. Veatch, Natural Law: Dead Or Alive?
• I: Natural Law
• “nature” and “law” In Natural Law
• The Anatomy of Natural Rights
• Egoism and Rights
• The Is/ought Chimera
• Deriving “ought” From “is”
• Facts Vs. Value-laden Whims
• Is/ought and Probable Reasons
• Does Righteous Anger Imply Rights?
• Why Be Moral?
• Truth As an Objective Value
• Was the Revolution Objectively Necessary?
• Natural Law and State of Nature
• Natural Law and the State
• Natural Rights and Anarchism
• Dworkin On Rights
• Liberalism, Rights, and Abortion
• Rights and “mercy Killing”
• Rights and the “brain Drain”
• The Natural Law Right to Work
• Grotius: Contract and Natural Law
• Rights and Communication
• II: Autonomy, Privacy, and Authority
• Bureaucracy and “the Organization Man”
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• Autonomy, Motivation, and “buck-passing”
• Schooling For Conformity
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• Obedience to Authority
• The Meaning of Privacy
• Privacy and Autonomy
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• III: The Ambiguities of Liberty
• Clarifying Freedom
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• Negative Vs. Positive Freedom
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• Locke, Freedom, and Tacit Consent
• Religious Freedom
• Freedom, Existentialism, and Innocent Victims
• Does Censorship Harm Freedom?
• IV: Slavery
• Slavery, Ideology, and Subordination
• Slavery and Imperialist Ideology
• Enlightenment Liberalism Vs. Slavery
• The Anatomy of a Slave Revolt
• Colonial American Slave Law
• Jefferson On Slavery
• Slavery and the Poor
• V: Planning
• Regulation and the Warfare State
• Mail, Privacy, and Social Control
• Corporate State Capitalism: Coal
• French War “planification”: Chlorates
• Bureaucracy and British Regulation
• British Foreign Policy and Stagnation
• Political Decisions and the Economy
• Government, Labor, and Multinationals
• Black Markets Vs. Regulation
• Regulation Vs. Academic Autonomy
• Government Schools and Social Control
• The Economics of Charity
• International State Planning and Inflation
• Competition and Individual Knowledge

Natural Rights and Anarchism

Peter Danielson

• York University

“Taking Anarchism Seriously.” Philosophy of Social Science (Canada), 8 (1978): 137–152.

Has Robert Nozick's Lockean or natural rights defense of the minimal state in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) defeated the anarchist's natural rights objections to the state? Not if we invoke Nozick's own analysis. It is clear from Nozick that the anarchist's fears and arguments against the risk of a monopoly government usurping individual rights hold with equal force against Nozick's own minimal state.

Neither utilitarian nor John Rawls's contractarian justifications of the state answer the anarchist's challenge.

As Rawls rejects utilitarianism for permitting slavery so long as there is a net benefit, the natural-rights theorist rejects Rawls's contractarianism for permitting slavery so long as everyone benefits. Natural rights require the additional constraint that each individual consent rather than merely benefit (and hence hypothetically consent).

Indeed, both of these approaches tend to avoid the moral problem, whereas Nozick's natural rights approach aims to meet it directly.

The anarchist challenges the moral legitimacy of the state. The state, as distinct from a private hired defense agency, claims both (1) monopolistic right to forbid unauthorized uses of force and (2) the dubious right to charge some for the protection of others. The anarchist believes that any claims to a monopoly of enforcement and taxing “rights” contradict the property rights of sovereign individuals.

Nozick does not meet this anarchist challenge because he does not defend property rights. Where he does invoke property rights he does so in a way that suggests he must logically accept the anarchist's concerns. Various complications with Nozick's theory of property rights, his view of community, and his conception of the Lockean proviso lead to an embarrassing conclusion. Despite a highly innovative effort, Nozick has not shown the compatibility of natural rights with monopoly government. Nozick's own natural rights theory should force him to take the anarchist case even more seriously.