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The Right Road to |
This work focuses on the topic of freedom. The author starts with the old issue of free will—do we as individual human beings choose our conduct, at least partly independently, freely? He comes down on the side of libertarians who answer Yes, and scorns the compatibilism of philosophers like Daniel Dennett, who try to rescue some kind of freedom from a physically determined universe. From here he moves on to apply his belief in radical freedom to areas of life such as religion, politics, and morality, tackling subjects as diverse as taxation, private property, justice and the welfare state.
Tibor Machan is no mere theoretician. He was smuggled out of Hungary in 1953, as a 14-year old, and served in the US Air Force before taking up academic life. He has written many books and presents his robust views in a trenchant no-nonsense style.
Table of Contents: I: Free Will Reconsidered, II: Politics, Faith and God's Non-Existence, III: Individualism, IV: Liberty and Morality, V: What's Worst About Taxation and What can Take its Place?, VI: The Ethics of Private Property? VII: Justice and the Welfare State, VIII: Disputing Positive Rights, IX: Can Commerce Inspire?
Tibor R. Machan teaches ethics at Chapman University and is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.