The modern challenges to social and political stability. The presentation of the book’s modest proposal.

Boethius’ initial question in the Consolation of Philosophy is why God, who orders the natural universe beautifully, would allow human affairs to proceed in a chaotic fashion, even permitting the wicked to trample on the virtuous and go unpunished. Lady Philosophy responds that God governs everything well. What seem to limited human beings to be misfortunes can all be turned to good. This introduces the importance of human free will and a perennial question for Christian philosophers: If God foreknows future choices, can they be free? Human foreknowledge is a sign that the foreknown event does not happen voluntarily. God, being eternal, sees all time as present, and so divine foreknowledge does not impose or indicate any necessity that would conflict with free will. Boethius concludes by expressing theist compatibilism: Even free choices fall under the absolute sovereignty of God.

In Chapter 5, I address self-interest as a foundation for capitalism by discussing the development of the Chicago School and the life and writings of Ayn Rand. Neoclassical economists after Alfred Marshall continued the narrowing of their discipline begun by classical economists. Whereas Polanyi and Keynes emphasized responsibility and duty in their moral foundation based on humanism, neoclassical economists associated with the Chicago School eschewed all social and moral responsibility and made narrow self-interest their reigning behavioral assumption. I begin by discussing the continued narrowing of neoclassical economics in the twentieth century and the rise of self-interest as the defining principle in economics. I discuss how the assumption of self-interest gained momentum and eventually conquered the Chicago School of Economics. I then discuss Ayn Rand’s glorification of self-interest in her novels and her interaction with the political right in America. I show how Rand’s moral foundation for capitalism based on narrow self-interest (rational egoism) represented a natural extension of the straightjacket of self-interest out of Chicago. This sets up a discussion of self-interest as a moral foundation for capitalism based on the seminal writings of the Chicago School and Ayn Rand.

Chapter 5 notes that the anarchist argument against private property underdetermines which positive position libertarian property rights theorists ought to endorse. One option is to simply concede that people lack any sort of claim rights when it comes to natural resources ‒ that is, endorse what the chapter calls the Hobbesian conclusion. However, the chapter argues that this proposal must be rejected because it violates the moral tyranny constraint. Instead, the chapter argues that libertarians and property rights theorist should accept what it calls the anarchist conclusion. This thesis holds that persons do possess certain claims against others using unowned resources, where these claims correspond to the prescriptions of a luck egalitarian principle of distributive justice. The chapter then argues that libertarians have limited basis for rejecting the anarchist conclusion, as it is compatible with both their favored property-based theories of justice and the arguments that support such theories.

Chapter 4 provides an alternative argument for rejecting private property. While Chapter 3 derives this conclusion from the Lockean proviso, this chapter begins with the consent theory of legitimacy as its starting premise. It then argues that property ownership is a form of legitimate authority. Thus, if one accepts a consent theory of legitimacy, one must also maintain that ownership has consent as its necessary condition. However, given that no one has ever consented to such ownership, it follows that no one owns any natural resources. The chapter then considers three objections to this argument, namely, that (1) there is nothing problematic about imposing obligations on others, (2) legitimacy only requires consent when it conflicts with previously acquired property rights, and (3) there is a morally salient distinction between land and territory. It concludes with a discussion of what this argument from consent theory implies vis-à-vis self-ownership.

Chapter 3 argues that the Lockean proviso entails two further conclusions embraced by social anarchists. First the chapter argues that, contrary to what right-libertarians typically maintain, the Lockean proviso implies that no one owns any natural resources. This is because any appropriation of such resources would leave others worse off in a way that the proviso does not allow. By contrast, the chapter argues that the proviso is necessarily satisfied when it comes to each agent’s own body ‒ at least, if self-ownership is interpreted in the way proposed in Chapter 1. Thus, while people do not own any external resources, they can easily come to own themselves via acts of self-appropriation. The chapter then goes on to defend at greater length the interpretation of the Lockean proviso proposed in Chapter 1. Finally, it concludes by discussing what the proposed position implies vis-à-vis the rights of children.

The introductory chapter presents the aims and outline of the book’s argument. It then situates the book within the broader ideological landscape by explaining the relationship between its argument, the anarchist movement, and some of the defended position’s philosophical rivals. Specifically, it considers, first, the question of what it means for a moral position to be an anarchist position and, next, whether the position defended by the book can be reasonably characterized as “social anarchism.” The introduction then discusses the central aims of the book in a bit more detail, with the primary two being (1) showing that social anarchism is coherent (in a sense to be described below) and (2) showing that the position is independently plausible. Finally, the introduction concludes by arguing that social anarchism will be attractive (in at least some respect) to partisans of a number of rival philosophical positions.

Chapter 2 argues that the anarchist theses can be derived from a single meta-principle that limits which moral theories qualify as theoretically acceptable. This posited moral tyranny constraint holds that a theory of duties is acceptable only if full compliance with that theory (and the demands of morality more generally) would not allow any person to unilaterally, discretionarily, and foreseeably act in a way that would leave others with less advantage than they would have possessed given some other choice by the agent. After explicating the constraint, the chapter defends its plausibility, arguing that it should be accepted on both foundationalist and coherentist grounds. The chapter then explains how the constraint entails three of the posited anarchist theses (the consent theory of legitimacy, the Lockean proviso, and luck egalitarianism’s responsibility component). Finally, it addresses three potential objections that might be raised against the moral tyranny constraint.

Rawls introduces the idea of a well-ordered liberal society in the 1996 introduction to Political Liberalism. A liberal society is well-ordered when governed by one or another reasonable liberal political conception. Rawls says: “political liberalism is to be understood as a freestanding family of reasonable liberal political conceptions.” I discuss the main features of reasonable liberal conceptions within well-ordered liberal societies, and the centrality of the criterion of reciprocity. Liberal conceptions are not reasonable if they fail to impose any formal restrictions on permissible inequalities or fail to limit the effects of wealth on democratic politics. This includes not only libertarianism but also a wide range of classical and neo-liberal positions. None of these are reasonable according to Rawls’s criterion of reciprocity, and none satisfy his liberal principle of political legitimacy, since all permit and even encourage unrestricted inequalities and individuals’ unlimited accumulation of wealth and economic powers.

The tension between democratic autonomy and judicial authority over democratic process cannot be wholly resolved. The best way to balance this dilemma incorporates an unsettling reality about the freedom that vindicates democratic self-rule: the values and realization of freedom are necessarily the subjects of ongoing intractable struggle over its moral meaning. This perpetual contestability also offers the possibility of reimagining judicial review. This chapter exploits the election law doctrine’s fiercely unsettled case law to suggest that continual judicial debate about the appropriate terms of democratic freedom is the best way to reconcile judicial review with constituent self-determination. Conceiving of judicial review of election law as a dispute over self-rule answers the challenge at three levels: it (1) explains how nonaccountable courts can play a legitimate institutional role in democratic self-determination; (2) allows courts to opine on self-rule without overdetermining the meaning of freedom, and thus undermining its moral value; and (3) offers the best account of the doctrine as a battle over the meaning of liberalism.

Making good decisions about sustainability requires explicit consideration about what criteria to use. Three grand traditions dominate most policy discussions: utilitarianism, deliberative ethics and anarchism/libertarianism. The chapter proposes seven criteria for good decisions. Three are criteria for the outcomes. A good decision should enhance the well-being of humans and other species while reducing stress on the environment; be efficient in allocating resources; and enhance individual freedoms. Four are criteria about process: take account of uncertainty in both facts and values, as well as value conflicts; promote fairness in both the decision process and its outcomes; rely on human cognitive strengths and compensate for weaknesses; and allow for social learning.

Several concerns stand to lead policing away from its mandate to protect the full range of citizens in a pluralist democracy. Among them are special interests, coarse majoritarian rule, and populism. Given that policing involves the discretionary allocation of power and resources in a strategic sense, and that the enforcement of a wide range of laws is subject to police discretion in individual encounters, each of these concerns can turn policing toward illiberal ends when they exert undue influence. In this sense, the discretionary nature of police power is most typically turned toward injustice in the pursuit of sectarian or populist goals that may have a veneer of democratic process, but are insufficient to justify the ensuing disparities of privilege, protection, or access to public space. The duty of the police to resist this impulse and only act upon reasons that treat citizens as substantive equals (i.e., by employing Rawlsian public reason) is a critical way to mitigate this hazard. The chapter closes by recounting the failed but valiant struggle of police to prevent populist rioters from seizing the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 as an example of the duty of the police to safeguard democracy from virulent populist interests.

Theological compatibilists have considered the will of God and creaturely wills to be aligned, such that divine election or determination does not undermine but rather preserves the free will of the creature. In the person of Jesus Christ this compatibility is held to be utterly flawless, and the human will of Christ to “follow after” or conform itself perfectly, and without sin, to the divine will. As a theological compatibilist I am persuaded by this largely Augustinian and Cyrillian Christology. However, critics may well wonder whether Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane does not make such a view implausible, perhaps incoherent, and leads to an undermining of a proper doctrine of atonement. This essay undertakes to examine the narratives of Gethsemane in light of this criticism, and to offer a reply.

The principle of sufficient reason (PSR) says that every contingent truth has an explanation. It is widely thought that if one strengthens "explanation" to "contrastive explanation," then the PSR entails modal fatalism – the view that no proposition is contingent. In a theistic context, this would force full theological determinism: of creaturely behavior by God and of divine behavior by the divine nature. I discuss about a dozen accounts of what could be meant by “contrastive explanation.” Some of them support these arguments and some do not. I argue, however, that we should not extend the PSR to contrastive explanation in any of the senses given.

An important tradition of thinking about divine and human agency takes divine transcendence as key to reconciling human freedom with God’s universal causality. Proponents of this tradition, who often claim Aquinas as their inspiration, sometimes maintain that this “transcendence approach” (TA) offers a third way that defies classification as libertarian or compatibilist. I argue that, carefully defined, libertarianism and compatibilism are mutually exclusive and exhaustive options for those affirming free will, but that it is an open question whether a view that affirms free will alongside God’s universal causality is compatibilist or libertarian. I then consider the interesting strategies employed by proponents of TA and argue that they leave it unclear whether TA is a libertarian or compatibilist view. Finally, I argue that a consistent deployment of these strategies results in a version of TA that is clearly libertarian, but which maintains a strong view of divine sovereignty and providence.

The doctrine of creation ex nihilo gives some reason to support theological determinism. Intuitively, an eternal God who creates the entire history of the universe “at once” will determine every detail of the universe. Likewise, intuitively, a God who creates each time-slice of the universe will determine every detail of the universe. This conclusion cannot be avoided by supposing that creatures help determine the details of the universe, nor can it be avoided by supposing that God has middle knowledge of counterfactuals of freedom. It can be avoided by supposing that God issues non-specific decrees. However, this view yields a deity largely indifferent to the matters of concern to human beings.