Now let’s look at Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, and at natural rights.
Ayn Rand is famous for being a novelist, but she wrote also lots of philosophy, probably
best known for her book Atlas Shrugged.
Robert Nozick was a Harvard philosopher who wrote a famous book called Anarchy, State,
and Utopia.
Both of them taking the so-called natural rights approach.
So they believed that natural rights is the correct approach to deciding political questions.
America has a strong tradition of natural rights going back to the American founding.
They were strongly influenced by the ideas of John Locke, who believed these natural
rights came from God.
And we saw that expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
Ayn Rand is associated with what she called objectivism.
She believed that there was an objective reality and an objective morality, that we can discover
reality and morality by the use of reason.
We know that it is in the nature of man to want to live, to want to survive.
In order for people to live, in order for people to survive, they have to have certain
natural rights.
They are necessary to exist.
So we know that natural rights exist because they arise from man’s nature.
This is called a teleological explanation, that is, natural rights exist for the goal
or purpose of human beings.
Robert Nozick also believes in natural rights.
He believes that it’s by pursuing rational self-interest you would not violate the natural
rights of others.
He assumes that rights exist.
He examines what’s the consequences of that.
It doesn’t depend on a particular view of human nature.
So in this view, natural rights is a so-called deontological approach.
Natural rights tell us the limits of what we should do.
For example, thou shall not kill, clear moral principle that tells us that we should protect
the rights of people, in this case, not to be killed.
So both believing in natural rights but coming, explaining it by two different methodologies.
They both agree that the problem with government is that it violates our natural rights.
It is immoral to use force to obtain your goals.
Capitalism, they argue, is the only moral economic system.
It is based on voluntary exchange; it’s not based on coercion.
So the problem with government is that much of what government does is to undermine our
natural rights.
So what is the role of government?
It’s a minimal state whose sole purpose is to protect our natural rights.
Rand describes this as a minimal state, which places force under objective control.
rObjectively, we can determine what the role of government should be.
And Nozick says that there should be a minimal state against force, theft, fraud, and the
enforcement of contracts is justified.
Anything beyond that role is illegitimate because it violates people’s rights.
He talks about defending capitalist acts between consenting adults.
As long as the people involved are agreeing voluntarily, they should be allowed to do
whatever they want to do.
So the result of this is that they believe in a minimal state solely designed to protect
us.
So the state should provide a military to defend us.
It should provide a police to defend us against criminals.
It should provide a court to avoid conflict between people.
And that is it.
There’s no justification for any form of government beyond that, such as a welfare
state.