COLLOQUY

THE QUESTION

RESPONSES

BACKGROUND

"I define Rand as an a priorist because Rand (and other libertarians) start from the premise that "freedom" (defined as the absence of coercion) is the essential, necessary quality for human beings."

This is an amazing misrepresentation. What Rand specifically objected to about most other libertarians is that they start out with this premise! She insisted that political premises are derivative and not basic, and that nothing in mere politics is axiomatic.

Indeed, she was horrified by the fact that some libertarians were treating merely political premises as axiomatic, and she said so many times.

Rationality and free will were for her the essential facts of human nature on which morality (and politics) rests. Her conception of free will held that free will is the ability to think, i.e., to be aware beyond the degree of awareness to which forces other than one's own will can push one. Thinking, thus construed, is the exercise of rationality and the exercise of free will. In a sense, rationality and free will, as she conceived of them, are not two different things.

-- Michael Hardy, assistant professor, UNCP (posted 4/20, 12:30 p.m., E.D.T.)

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