Given that Objectivists have an appreciation for the role of philosophy, I thought this blog post might be of interest. The original and most up to date version of this post is here: http://www.forindividualrights... .
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Murray Rothbard, the founder of the modern libertarian movement, said, in effect [1][2], that it is a folly to strive for agreement in the philosophical realm, that agreement on the basic ideals of liberty is all that matters.
Consider the meaning of this stance.
The first question an intellectually independent person should ask upon hearing such a statement is: *Is this true? If so, why?* But what properly constitutes *truth* or *reasons why* is a philosophical matter. So, unless you are willing to become as a little child and just take Rothbard's word for it, you are going to have to bring a philosophy to bear on the question.
For sake of argument (or is it for the sake of wishful thinking?), let us suppose that libertarians are not willing to take Rothbard's word for it, but instead are going to work out the question for themselves. This means they are going to have to come at the question from a philosophical perspective.
What Rothbard's dictum boils down to is the creation of an arbitrary line that specifies that certain types of truth are to be argued about within libertarianism, and certain types are to be kept to oneself. We are to keep our deepest and most fundamental thoughts to ourselves, only expressing ourselves on the common points of agreement, at least for the purposes of moving the movement forward. (The squelching of philosophical discourse is ironic within an allegedly "pro-liberty" movement, but that is a matter for another post.)
If one persistently refrains from discussing one's deepest and most fundamental reasons for believing in something, then since as Aristotle says, "we are what we repeatedly do", these deeper aspects of our self disappear. By our own choice, we become superficial, a person fixated only with consequences and not interested in reasons why one is pursuing these consequences.
But even leaving aside the question of whether we should abandon our character for the sake of political activism, a key problem remains: what exactly does it mean for people to agree on a statement, while disagreeing on the reasons why the statement is true?
Consider Aristotle:
> *"It is impossible in a discussion to bring in the actual things discussed: we use their names as symbols instead of them; and we suppose that what follows in the names, follows in the things as well, just as people who calculate suppose in regard to their counters. But the two cases are not alike. For names are finite and so is the sum-total of accounts, while things are infinite in number."*
In other words, even if the words we say we agree with are the same, because words may refer to an unlimited number of different things, we cannot know that we actually agree. As with the case of our character, without the aid of philosophy, any agreement we seem to have is superficial and meaningless.
And this should have been obvious. The question of liberty is a philosophic question. It is a deep question requiring deep reasoning. We cannot know that what someone believes in is authentic liberty without knowing his reasons for believing in it.
And so, [philosophy](/books) is *absolutely indispensable* to authentic pro-liberty activism.
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[1] [Murray Rothbard: Six Stages of the Libertarian Movement](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...).
[2] Rothbardian Stephen Kinsella elaborates on Rothbard's attitude [here](http://www.stephankinsella.com...), a position whose spirit is summed up by commenter Richard Gaylord as "Brilliant! Libertarians need to stop wasting their time and efforts trying to persuade people that individual freedom has a sound philosophical basis. it doesn’t. natural rights are simply a myth. It is a far better strategy to find people who feel in their guts, that no persons or institutions should interfer in their non-violent activities and to make common cause with them." [sic]