tdh@frog.UUCP (T. Dave Hudson) (04/29/85)
>From: mck@ratex.UUCP (Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan) >Any ethical >system other than Ethical Nihilism can be formulated in terms of rights. >You may not agree with Libertarian assertions about rights, but you cannot >rationally reject both them and Ethical Nihilism. An ethical system suitable for a Robinson Crusoe sans Friday would not have to take rights into consideration. A complete ethical system would only in part be dealing with rights, and therefore could not be formulated in terms of rights. Furthermore, it is not necessary for a complete ethical system to formulate rights, although it is necessary to provide a basis for rights, which are formulated (no, not arbitrarily as legal "fictions") in political philosophy (dependent for their existence on the existence of a societal framework that most of us would call government), and to relate values to rights. I apologize for not having been prepared to oppose that ridiculous assertion that all rights derive from self-ownership that crept into the Libertarian platform at the 1983 convention. (If you want to see how stupidity creeps into a platform, go see a convention. Watch how things are rushed and swept aside in confluent attempts to get pet amendments passed.) I oppose both that particular Libertarian assertion about rights and also ethical nihilism -- rationally. (An ethically subjective approach to values is consistent with ethical objectivity and does not imply nihilism.) David Hudson