Mises on The Free-Will Controversy

From Chapter 5 of Mises’ Theory and History,
Man chooses between modes of action incompatible with one another. Such decisions, says the free-will doctrine, are basically undetermined and uncaused; they are not the inevitable outcome of antecedent conditions. They are rather the display of man’s inmost disposition, the manifestation of his indelible moral freedom. This moral [...]

Why should values be agent-relative?

Heumer’s critique of Ayn Rand’s ”The Objectivist Ethics” begins with
…premise 1 [Value is agent-relative; things can only be valuable for particular entities] begs the question.
One of the central groups of opponents Rand is facing is people who believe in absolute value, and not just agent-relative value. The absolutist view is that it is possible for some things [...]

Moral Absolutes

In a comment on my previous post “Terrorism and moral outrage“, wgreen asked
The inward sense of justice is evidence of the existence of moral “absolutes”. How do you justify the existence of such absolutes?
Is an inward sense of justice really evidence of the existence of moral absolutes? Consider the concept ‘justice’. Without any absolute (universal and [...]

Equality

The doctrine of equality is a key one in modern politics. Yet it is fairly ambiguous. Does it mean equality of wealth or equality of opportunity or equality under law or something else? The doctrine is widely held as a given, a primary, as something that needs no justification. Is it really a primary or can it be derived from more fundamental principles?
Men [...]

Social Justice

In another instance of “social justice”, the Indian Supreme Court upheld the 27% quota for OBCs (Other Backward Castes) in seats in central educational institutions. The article linked to mentions that two aspects of the case received attention from the court.
“Two aspects received a fair bit of attention from the apex court. First, the mode of [...]