Hoppe Is Cool, But Argumentation Ethics Isn't
So To Speak
A Preamble on Hoppe
Hoppe is a rarity among public intellectuals, in that when you’re reading his work you feel like you’re hanging out with the cool kids. Monarchy is closer to freedom than democracy? Non-aggression allows for the physical removal of socialists and democrats? That’s some hardcore stuff—and somehow he defends it all surprisingly convincingly. Coolness is usually not something you’d associate with an economics professor, but if Hoppe isn’t cool I don’t know what is.
He’s sharp, transgressive, and strikingly original. In this way he’s like pre-Gray Mirror Moldbug, or how I imagine it would have been to read Rothbard in the 90’s—after reading him, everything else has a faint stale and hackneyed scent to it. He’s like a really dank meme that only those immersed in a certain subculture can truly appreciate, but that many adjacent to that subculture pretend to appreciate in order to seem cool. You feel comfortable looking down your nose at those who express disagreement or disapproval because they just don’t get it, man.
A lot of the time that dismissiveness is actually warranted. The hordes of NPCs calling Hoppe a racist fascist Nazi really do deserve that eye-roll and that helicopter joke in place of a serious response. The entry-level libertarians really do deserve to be mocked when they claim that Hoppe’s border positions make him a non-libertarian. Some of the time, however, it gets in the way. I worry that smug dismissal might have become such a habit that it may be used to shield Hoppe in situations where he is just wrong.
I would really like for Hoppe’s “Argumentation Ethics” to work. I mostly agree with its ethical conclusions, and I think the idea of starting from argumentation to get there is a very useful one. Hoppe was one of the three most important intellectuals on my journey to libertarianism. Entirely aside from his undeniable coolness, Hoppe has produced an enormous amount of important, brilliant and original work, and I do not want one of his most defining contributions to libertarian thought to be fallacious.
However, fallacious is what it is.
I would also like to head off at the pass, the idea that I am oversimplifying. My response will be simple. However, the argument is itself very simple, as Hoppe agrees.
“When I had worked out this argument at last, I was struck by how simple and straightforward it was. I was almost astonished why it had taken me so long to develop, and even more so why no one else apparently had thought of it before.”
-Hans Hermann Hoppe, “On The Ethics of Argumentation” (PFS 2016)
Argumentation Ethics
Argumentation ethics is an argument for libertarian ethics (private property, voluntary interactions). He claims that libertarian ethics can be proven a priori (through pure reason, with no supporting evidence), which is important, because if so, then libertarian ethics is a certain as 2+2=4.
Argumentation ethics in short, is the idea that libertarianism is the only ethical system which can be defended by rational argument without running into a performative contradiction.
“The truth or validity of the norms or rules of action that make argumentation between a proponent and an opponent at all possible – the praxeological presuppositions of argumentation – cannot be argumentatively disputed without falling into a pragmatic or performative contradiction.”
-Hans Hermann Hoppe, “On The Ethics of Argumentation” (PFS 2016)
A performative contradiction would be something like “I can’t talk” (if said out loud). It’s not a regular contradiction like “this shirt is both red and not red”, where the content of the sentence contradicts itself. Rather, it is a statement which is disproved by the act of being stated.
Hoppe claims that the act of engaging in an argument inherently follows libertarian ethics, and therefore it is a performative contradiction to argue against libertarian ethics. He defends this as follows:
“The praxeological presuppositions of argumentation, then, i.e., what makes argumentation as a specific form of truth-seeking activity possible, are twofold: a) each person must be entitled to exclusive control or ownership of his physical body (the very mean that he and only he can control directly, at will) so as to be able to act independently of one another and come to a conclusion on his own, i.e., autonomously; and b), for the same reason of mutually independent standing and autonomy, both proponent and opponent must be entitled to their respective prior possessions, i.e., the exclusive control of all other, external means of action appropriated indirectly by them prior to and independent of one another and prior to the on-set of their argumentation.”
-Hans Hermann Hoppe, “On The Ethics of Argumentation” (PFS 2016)
There is some truth to this. When arguing about ethics you are essentially arguing about how your interlocutor ought to behave. In other words you are making use of scarce resources which you control (your body, the ground you are standing on, etc.) in order to convince someone else to change how he makes use of scarce resources he controls (his body, the ground he is standing on, and whatever else he makes use of while performing acts upon which ethics casts its judgement). Crucially, you are not using force or the threat of force to coerce him into complying. You are respecting his ownership of his property, and trying instead to convince him to use it in a different way.
If you did not consider him to be the owner of his property (including his body), and you the owner of yours, why would you be arguing that he conduct himself in a certain way rather than just forcing him?
The Response
One reply is that it may be easier to convince him than to force him. Perhaps you would argue that libertarian ethics is wrong (he doesn’t own himself and you are perfectly within your rights to force him to comply) but you are unfortunately unable to come up with a more expedient way of controlling his behavior in this instance than convincing him. You would like to force him, but his brain is annoyingly wired up to his body, giving him an unfair advantage in controlling it. Thus you are stuck convincing him.
As for why you also expect your interlocutor to respect your property rights sufficiently to allow you to argue, this can be justified on similar instrumental grounds. Perhaps you don’t even think that he ought to respect your property rights, rather you merely think that he will, and so are taking advantage of this.
Basically, the fact that you are acting in a way that is consistent with libertarian ethics does not mean that you are accepting libertarian ethics. You are also acting in a way that is consistent with moral nihilism—you may think that nothing is right or wrong, and just be using argumentation pragmatically for your own ends. You could even think that utilitarianism is correct, and just think that using argumentation is the best way of maximizing utility.
It doesn’t even rule out anti-libertarian ethics: the ethic that says it is always wrong to act in a way which is consistent with libertarian ethics. It would make you a hypocrite to argue in favor of anti-libertarian ethics, but hypocrisy is not performative contradiction. It is impossible for me to correctly say out loud that I can not talk. It is not impossible for me to correctly say out loud that I should not talk—though it is hypocritical.
A Narrower Version (But At Least It Works!)
I believe that argumentation ethics is ingenious, but overly ambitious. It just doesn’t prove what Hoppe wants it to prove. However, in order to show that there really is the beginnings of something brilliant in argumentation ethics, I want to propose an argument with a narrower conclusion. That argument is as follows:
Engaging in argumentation for anti-libertarian ethics (defined as “the ethic that says it is always wrong to act in a way which is consistent with libertarian ethics”) is hypocritical, because argumentation is consistent with libertarian ethics.
This argument does actually follow, but it is pretty useless, because so far as I know, nobody argues for anti-libertarian ethics as I’ve defined it. However, if we move away from a priori proofs and apodictic arguments, we find that there is something to this.
Argumentation certainly seems libertarian. The fact that the inverse of libertarian ethics is rendered hypocritical by the very act of arguing about ethics does hint towards libertarian ethics. The fact in order to argue about ethics you must make use of scarce means to achieve the end of voluntary cooperation does make it seem as though someone arguing too strongly against libertarian ethics is on shaky ground.
Furthermore, if you consider the fact that most people will engage in argumentation even in situations where force would be more expedient for someone without a moral presumption against force, it appears as though there is some element of libertarian ethics that almost everyone implicitly accepts when they argue.
To be clear, these vague seemings are not strong arguments. However, perhaps it is possible to flesh them out, and make them more specific.
This is why I say that argumentation ethics is ingenious, but overly ambitious. It does not, in its simple form, come even close to proving libertarian ethics. However, it does give us a promising way forward. Start from the nature of argumentation, and use that to reveal things about ethics that people tacitly accept. While it is unlikely we could get as far as Hoppe claims to have already gotten—making libertarian ethics as solid as 2+2=4—it may turn out that there is a lot we can learn about ethics from the nature of argumentation. But the work is still ahead of us.
If you still don’t see why I find argumentation per se as a philosophical starting point to be so compelling, then… well, nobody explains it better than Hoppe himself, so I’ll let him have the last word.
“The question of how to begin philosophy, i.e., the quest for a starting point, is almost as old as philosophy itself. In modern times, Descartes, for instance, claimed his famous “cogito, ergo sum” as such. Mises considered the fact that humans act, i.e., that humans pursue anticipated ends with means (whether successfully or not), as such. The later Wittgenstein thought of ordinary language as the ultimate point of departure. Others, such as Popper, denied that any such starting point existed and could be found. As a little reflection shows, however, none of this will quite do. After all, Descartes’ “cogito” is a proposition and its justification comes in the form of an argument. Likewise, Mises speaks about action as an “ultimate datum” and presents an argument: namely that one cannot purposefully not act, to justify this point of departure. Similarly, Wittgenstein’s ordinary language philosophy is not just ordinary talk but claims to be true talk about talking, i.e., a justificatory argument. And as for relativists a la Popper, to assert that there is no ultimate starting point and yet claim this proposition to be true is plain contradictory and self-defeating.
In short: Whatever has been claimed here as starting points, or even if the existence of such a point has been denied, they all, unwittingly and as a matter of fact, have affirmed the existence of one and the same point of departure: namely argumentation;”
-Hans Hermann Hoppe, “On The Ethics of Argumentation” (PFS 2016)
Video version of this essay: https://odysee.com/@dannyduchamp:2/Hoppe-Is-Cool,-But-Argumentation-Ethics-Isn't:7