Nick’s First Book-He’s Excited!
The recent thinking I’ve done on issues from gay marriage to children’s rights has led me to see the major importance of culture and dialectical method. I’ve decided to explore this further with my first book titled Studies In Dialectical Libertarianism that will take some time to finish. I’ll examine the connections I see between cultural, political, and economic radicalism. It’s important to look at issues from multiple vantage points if we want to arrive at a libertarianism that will lead to a genuinely better society.
I want to thank Chris for helping me take another step in my intellectual evolution. It was our private correspodence and his work that provoked the thought that led to this idea. I’ll end this announcement with a quote from pg.383 of Total Freedom: Towards A Dialectical Libertarianism that gells with my book project.
“Just as relations of power operate through ethical, psychological, cultural, political, and economic dimensions, so too the struggle for freedom and individualism depends upon a certain constellation of moral, psychological, and cultural factors. By further articulating this radical constellation, Rand and her intellectual progeny move toward a dialectical libertarianism.
Thus, in a very real methodological convergence, virtually every major school of thought within late-twentieth-century and early-twenty-first-century libertarianism-from the neo-Aristotelian to the dialogical to the Austrian to the Randian-is moving toward a similiarly dialectical construction of its political project. But there is so much more work to be done.”
I plan on contributing to that unfinished work Chris speaks of.
Natasha | Studies in Dialectical Libertarianism
Good luck, Nick. It sounds like a fascinating topic. And even if you wind up paying to have it printed by a vanity publisher and only sell a few dozen copies (like me), it’s a great feeling to see a bound copy of a real book that you wrote yourself.
I wish you joy of researching and writing.
Kevin,
I appreciate the warm words of support and it is a fascinating topic.
The intellectual stimulation I’ve had from musing over it has excitied me a great deal.
Your work will be quoted in it!
Nick, I would love to see somebody really flesh this whole idea of dialectical libertarianism out more. I just got a copy of Sciabarra’s book and it looks fascinating (though dense). I’m glad there’s other libertarians out there who want to really understand the statist situation we’re in, instead of just writing everything off to contradictions in axiomatic principles. I think there’s something critical about human nature that dialectics can discover, and it can inform an approach to finding ways of interacting with each other more harmoniously and less violently.
So kudos to you, and I’ll make sure I continue to check in on your progress! Thanks for blogrolling me!
Jeremy,
Your warm words mean a great deal and no problem on blogrolling you. My progress is very slow but I am still committed to it.