Comments (3)

• Bruce Koerber

  I think it is good for everyone to know that Rothbard considered himself an Aristotelian and Thomistic thinker. This is the heritage of natural law which is the womb of subjectivism. These are our roots.

  Published: July 10, 2008 9:09 PM

• Miklos Hollender

  One of the things I always found hard to understand about Rothbard is that his thoughts is deeply rooted in the traditional thinkers (Aristotle, Aquinas) and yet he was a very dedicated opponent of every kind of Conservativism.

  Which, understanding that C. politicans are usually idiots, is understandable, but I said "every kind", and that I see as a problem.

  It's unusual to build upon traditional philosophy and yet have no friends amongst traditionalist/Conservative philosophers (not politicians, not journalists!).

  Published: July 11, 2008 5:32 AM

• Anthony Flood

  Miklos, if we consider that Rothbard was an eclectic thinker, there is no problem unless we try to marry all of his sources in our systems. His notion of property, for example, was Lockean, but he was no "Lockean," with the empiricist epistemology that implies. Similarly he acknowledged his debt to Thomas Aquinas for stimulating his own thinking on the natural law, but he was no "Thomist," with the theistic belief that that label suggests. What "conservative" thinkers were doing with one or another of his sources was not a factor in how he creatively melded of all of them into his systematic thought.

  Published: July 13, 2008 4:46 PM