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Edward Feser - Nozick's Tale of The Slave
Edward Feser - Nozick's Tale of The Slave
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EdwardFeser:NozicksTaleoftheSlave
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Edward Feser
"One of the best contemporary writers on philosophy" National Review
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On Nozick
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EdwardFeser:NozicksTaleoftheSlave
Why arent you a slave? The reason, of course, is that in this case you
consented to the job, consented to be on call, for one year, to your
10,000headed employer; and for the libertarian, consent suffices to
make the situation something other than slavery. (Whether agreeing
to surrender complete control over yourself for life would generate an
enforceable obligation is something libertarians disagree over, but
that issue does not affect the present point.)
Alexander Pruss
But notice that this cannot be a complete answer, for two reasons.
First of all, while you might have consented initially, you might also
come to regret this. You might say I want more than anything else
to be free of this job! Its so horrible I feel as if I were a slave! Oh
how I wish I had never signed that contract! All the same, Nozick
would say, you are obligated to do the job. And this shows that,
whatever it means to say that you are obligated to do what you
consent to doing, it does not mean that you have to be in any way
willing to do it at the time you have to do it. Consent in that sense
is not required. Hence Nozick and likeminded libertarians would
seem to be committed to the following proposition:
Christopher Martin
Francis Beckwith
But notice that even your having initially consented cannot be the
whole story either. For why is it that you are obligated in the first
J. P. Moreland
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ro/2011/06/nozickstaleofslave.html
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Now, keep in mind that none of what has been said so far rests on any
moral premises of my own, natural law or otherwise. All I have been
doing is drawing out what is implicit in Nozicks own position. But
look what happens when we return to the original Tale of the Slave
and apply to it the points we have made. Nozick, it seems, expects us
to regard case 9 the case that parallels a modern democratic society
as tantamount to a mild form of slavery. But why should we so
regard it? The answer cannot be Because it involves our having
obligations to others that we find odious and that we never consented
to having. For given 3, there is nothing necessarily wrong or slavery
like with that.
Note also that Nozick does not tell us in his Tale of the Slave whether
the 10,000headed master gives the purported slave a right of exit
that is, a right to emigrate from the territory over which the 10,000
headed master rules. (This is one respect in which Nozicks thought
experiment is, as I have said, underdescribed.) But he will have to
add such a right to the story if he wants the example to be relevantly
parallel to a modern democratic society, since such societies do allow
their citizens to emigrate. Now, a right of exit entails that anyone
who dislikes the positive obligations a 10,000headed master (or some
government) imposes on him could always escape them by
emigrating. Of course, exercising this option might be burdensome,
but if a person could still take it and yet refrains from doing so, then
his being subject to the positive obligations in question involves at
least partial consent, even if not full consent. But in that case, if we
ask why we should regard Nozicks case 9 as tantamount to slavery,
the answer cannot be Because it involves our having positive
obligations to others that we find odious and that we never fully
consented to having. For given 4, there can be nothing necessarily
wrong or slaverylike with that either.
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ro/2011/06/nozickstaleofslave.html
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But this argument is invalid, for (as anyone who has taken a basic
logic course can see) it commits the fallacy of the undistributed
middle term. Alternatively, we might replace the major premise with
its converse, giving us the following valid argument:
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Major premise: Any demands made on us that are odious and non
consensual amount to slavery.
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EdwardFeser:NozicksTaleoftheSlave
So, the implied argument of the Tale of the Slave seems to be either
irrelevant, or invalid, or to be committed to a premise which both
begs the question against the nonlibertarian and which Nozick
himself implicitly rejects in any case. Vivid and interesting though
the thought experiment is, it thus fails to provide any support for
libertarianism. Its appeal is entirely rhetorical, and has no actual
logical force.
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http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ro/2011/06/nozickstaleofslave.html
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Again, this does not entail that democratic governments, or any other
kind of government, may demand whatever they wish of their citizens
without this amounting to slavery. That a certain argument for a
claim fails does not mean that the claim itself is false. In any event,
like Nozick, I reject socialism and egalitarian liberalism. But the
reasons have to do with natural law considerations of the sort outlined
in the article of mine linked to above, and not with superficial
comparisons to slavery of the sort that the Tale of the Slave rests on.
Nor do I intend any disrespect toward Nozick or his arguments. On the
contrary, Nozick was a brilliant philosopher, and the arguments he sets
out in Anarchy, State and Utopia are important ones that deserve our
consideration even if we ultimately reject them. Certainly they are
far more formidable than those of Nozicks absurdly overrated rival
John Rawls, whose main arguments are little more than flatulent
tautologies. The contrast between the cringemaking hagiography
usually afforded Rawls and the condescension toward Nozick one finds
in commentators like Metcalf (and Matthew Yglesias) says more about
the commentators than it does about the respective merits of Rawls
and Nozick themselves. Rawlss arguments are murky, plodding, and
(given their ultimate circularity) anticlimactic, but reinforce liberal
prejudices. Nozicks are clever, clear, and crisp, but challenge those
prejudices. Nothing more need be said.
Posted by Edward Feser at 2:06 PM
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20 comments:
Routledge Handbook
I really like the way you dissect arguments and expose logical
fallacies Dr. Feser! As an amateur philosopher, it is my goal to
some day be proficient enough to do that.
That said, I hope you'll forgive me for crashing this thread but I
asked a question in the On Aristotle, Aquinas and Paley thread
that got overrun by another discussion and I'm hoping you will
answer it here.
It is basically this:
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ro/2011/06/nozickstaleofslave.html
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Thanks in advance!
March (10)
February (11)
Jinzang said...
My problem with the extreme libertarianism position, such as
Nozick argues for, is that I feel it leads to immoral conclusions.
The libertarian considers it more odious to impose a tax to pay
for the care of an orphan than to let the orphan starve.
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If you can say why you believe the "starving orphans" should be
saved, you may have gone some way to clarifying the question
for yourself by laying out your presuppositions.
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I don't see the relevance of your second and third points. The
point is that we only have enforceable obligations not to aggress
against other people, i.e., treat them as mere means. That is
perfectly compatible with nozick's tale of the slave. In other
words, we can use force to stop an initiation of force, but we
can't initiate force.
That shows that even to a nozickian libertarian that wouldn't be
a problem, since it's the contractviolator that is initiating
force, and the enforcement would be the defensive force.
Your fourth point is very strange. How come the contractor did
not consent to being obligated to do whatever he consented to
do? I suppose you are arguing that there is no continued
consent, but 1 I don't think how that invalidates the tale of the
slave in a nozickian framework. If you contracted to do X, when
you don't do X, you've breached the contract, thereby initiating
force, so the enforcement is nothing else than defensive force.
and 2 In other libertarian's frameworks there wouldn't be such
problem.
In other words, the whole point is that your positive enforceable
obligations are necessarily *derivative* from negative
enforceable obligations. Something that holds for the tale of the
slave, but wouldn't hold for someone demanding that I do X with
no previous contract or without there being a negative right's
violation.
January 11, 2013 at 2:50 AM
Pedro Eidt said...
What you say about being allowed to leave the state also strikes
me as utterly missing the point, though nozick indeed doesn't
make such provision. Anyway here it goes: The slave master lets
you leave his command if you want, but he demands that, if you
leave, you'd have to give him some set of property that you
justly acquired (your house or some money, for example), and if
you leave, you'll anyway end up in the command of another
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ro/2011/06/nozickstaleofslave.html
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One can clearly see how the libertarian would answer: Of course
there are demands that don't depend on your consent and which
do not amount to slavery. Those are exactly the claims that say
that *you cannot use initiatory force against me*. But every
claim that involves iniatory force will be a claim that violates
that, and so *those* will amount to slavery.
Ok. I'm done with criticising now. To end in a positive
commentary, I also endorse aristoteleanthomistic natural law.
January 11, 2013 at 2:50 AM
Geoff said...
"To see how, lets first alter the thought experiment a little bit
by supposing that the 10,000headed master emancipates you,
but that, for whatever reason, you go on voluntarily to sign an
employment contract with this group of people."
You just contradicted the nature of the state, thus making your
"addition" a dropping of the context Nozick was addressing.
May 7, 2013 at 12:07 PM
Joe C said...
I want to read the article about Rawls "flatulent tautologies" but
the link doesn't work. Prof. Feser, can you fix the link? Or does
anyone else have the link? Thank you.
July 25, 2015 at 8:02 AM
Anonymous said...
I disagree with your point about that government making
expressly accepted demands on the population doesn't equate to
slavery. Consider the EU where you have the Brits deciding
whether to remain part of it or to leave it. When you talk to
people on the remain side they view remaining as part of the EU
as being "european" completely oblivious of the fact that the EU
was designed specifically to rob citizens of what liberties they
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ro/2011/06/nozickstaleofslave.html
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