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Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism
Building upon his previous books about Marx, Hayek, and Rand, Total Freedom completes what Lingua Franca has called Sciabarra's "epic scholarly quest" to reclaim dialectics, usually associated with the Marxian left, as a methodology that can revivify libertarian thought. Part One surveys the history of dialectics from the ancient Greeks through the Austrian school of economics. Part Two investigates in detail the work of Murray Rothbard as a leading modern libertarian, in whose thought Sciabarra finds both dialectical and nondialectical elements. Ultimately, Sciabarra aims for a dialectical-libertarian synthesis, highlighting the need (not sufficiently recognized in liberalism) to think of the "totality" of interconnections in a dynamic system as the way to ensure human freedom while avoiding "totalitarianism" (such as resulted from Marxism)
- GenresPhilosophyPolitics
480 pages, Paperback
First published November 2, 2000
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August 26, 2022I gotta be honest: I love the subject, but I am not intelligent enough, not knowledgeable enough, and don't have a large enough vocabulary to appreciate this as well as I would like, even after two readings.
I also love the author. He and I have exchanged correspondence, though never spoken or met, and we share mutual interests in movies and music. And the Freedom Philosophy. And jokes. (One of these days, I will prevail upon him to write a review of my book, "World-Famous Jokes," wherein he is mentioned.)
Mostly I love him for his Ayn Rand studies, and I see him as one of the world's foremost authorities on her and on her books.
Rand herself, for some neurotic reason or other, or maybe for several, denied, vehemently, being "libertarian," but she was.
So is anybody who endorses human rights and individual liberty.
But some people, and I can include a certain former president, call themselves "libertarian" when they are really just U.S. conservatives, maybe opposing certain government infringements on human rights, but enthusiastically supporting others.
Liberty has an uphill fight.
Always.
If more scholars would read this excellent book, they could lead the rest of us toward creating that proverbial shining city on the hill, that beacon of liberty for all the people and all the nations of this oppressed world.
All of the included authors of these several essays are themselves beacons of liberty, and all should be world-famous, but so far only a few are. I would love this review to encourage, to urge, many thousands of readers to its pages, and eventually to the book's conclusions.
I would encourage readers by the hundreds of thousands to recognize the rightness, the morality of human rights and individual liberty, and to recognize the huge talent of the editor, Chris Matthew Sciabarra.
"Dialectics" is a good book. It is an important book.
And I'll soon start on my third reading, and eventually my fourth, because I want to fully understand the thoughts and the facts contained in "Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism." And I urge millions more readers to join me.
I also love the author. He and I have exchanged correspondence, though never spoken or met, and we share mutual interests in movies and music. And the Freedom Philosophy. And jokes. (One of these days, I will prevail upon him to write a review of my book, "World-Famous Jokes," wherein he is mentioned.)
Mostly I love him for his Ayn Rand studies, and I see him as one of the world's foremost authorities on her and on her books.
Rand herself, for some neurotic reason or other, or maybe for several, denied, vehemently, being "libertarian," but she was.
So is anybody who endorses human rights and individual liberty.
But some people, and I can include a certain former president, call themselves "libertarian" when they are really just U.S. conservatives, maybe opposing certain government infringements on human rights, but enthusiastically supporting others.
Liberty has an uphill fight.
Always.
If more scholars would read this excellent book, they could lead the rest of us toward creating that proverbial shining city on the hill, that beacon of liberty for all the people and all the nations of this oppressed world.
All of the included authors of these several essays are themselves beacons of liberty, and all should be world-famous, but so far only a few are. I would love this review to encourage, to urge, many thousands of readers to its pages, and eventually to the book's conclusions.
I would encourage readers by the hundreds of thousands to recognize the rightness, the morality of human rights and individual liberty, and to recognize the huge talent of the editor, Chris Matthew Sciabarra.
"Dialectics" is a good book. It is an important book.
And I'll soon start on my third reading, and eventually my fourth, because I want to fully understand the thoughts and the facts contained in "Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism." And I urge millions more readers to join me.
Displaying 1 of 1 review