A Critique of Libertarian Self-Ownership
Freedom, the market, and our existential predicament
The Western shift from theocratic feudalism into what we think of as modernity was due to a series of revolutions that promoted different forms of individualism.
These began with Martin Luther’s protests and they continued with the influence of the Medici bankers on the Italian Renaissance, and with the philosophical Enlightenment, the American and French revolutions, and the scientific and industrial revolutions.
What united those upheavals was a rethinking of human nature. The ancient hierarchical view of social classes as being part of the “Great Chain of Being” derived from the evolutionary perpetuation of the dominance hierarchy as the default power distribution in social animal species.
Modernists broke free from all of that by promoting or perhaps discovering the human potential for personhood. Owing to our rational capacities, we each have godlike freedom of choice and creativity, compared to the animals that seem to be slaves to their traits and circumstantial stimuli.
Libertarianism and Modernity
Libertarianism or classic liberalism is a political development of individualism, the main idea being that our self-directedness is a…
