i think i’ve stumbled down a philosophy rabbit hole and i’d love to here some people’s thoughts / discussion…

rothbard’s ‘the ethics of liberty’ was a great book, but it left me with some questions - primarily, the axiom of libertarianism seems to be (for rothbard at least) natural rights

these natural rights are “life, liberty and property” but (i’m not at all disputing this, just trying to understand), it’s not obvious to me how these rights are derived as THE natural rights - what makes a right natural? how did we discover these as being natural rights at all? what’s the criteria?

“life, liberty and property” seems to be credited to john locke, and that’s an interesting part of history i definitely had no idea about (locke vs. rousseau vs. hobbes)

but, the “original” natural law seems to be traced back to thomas aquinas? (and then i think he was influenced by aristotle / plato but i haven’t gone that far yet)

aquinas’ natural law, from my very basic and incomplete understanding, makes the case that humans are distinct from other animals due to our rationality, our reason, our logic, our ability to reflect upon our existence, and our relationship with God - is this then the basis of natural rights (life, liberty and property)?

we as humans are distinctly different due to our rationality ->

with this rationality we can reason about our “human nature” and draw out some fundamental ?rules? ->

this “fundamental rule” seems to be something like: “good is to be done, evil is to be avoided” ->

then from this rule he derived the primary precepts for natural law as: “preservation of human life, reproduce and educate your children, live in a society, worship god” ->

then were these essentially reinterpreted by locke as “life, liberty and property” during enlightenment era, and then this picked up by rothbard in his work on libertarianism?

do i have the narrative *somewhat* on the right track? or am i horrendously wrong in some places here?

pls help me out here team

#philosophy #libertarianism #naturallaw #naturalrights #reason #aquinas #locke #rothbard #enlightenment