Philosophy of the Family and Political Power

Most philosophy can only be understood as motivated reasoning in furtherance of political aims. Even something as seemingly neutral as the philosophy of the family has deep political implications.

The perennial problem for political elites is that there is no good justification for compulsory obedience to the State. Why should the masses do what their rulers tell them to do? Everyone ordered to pay taxes and obey State edicts asks themselves this question at some point. If the masses do not believe that they should obey, then the elites have to resort to forcing them with violence. This is hard, since the elites are always outnumbered by the masses. It is much easier for elites if the masses are convinced to obey by arguments.

This is where intellectuals like philosophers come in. The main role of intellectuals throughout history has been to provide persuasive arguments to justify power. This is ultimately why intellectuals are subsidised by the State. Their most important task is to convince the masses to obey their rulers. As long as intellectuals do this, their other activities are tolerated by the State.

One of the ways in which the masses can be persuaded of the legitimacy of political authority can is if they are indoctrinated as children. If children can be convinced that they owe obedience to the State during their most suggestible years, then the adults that they become will be obedient.

This means that even if a philosopher is making arguments about something like the nature of the family, a good default assumption is that he has a political agenda. That agenda is almost always to make arguments that imply that it is good to obey the political rulers he is obedient to.

Interestingly, there are competing views about the best way to indoctrinate children into obedience to the State. Although many philosophers have had the goal of justifying political rule to children, they have disagreed about how to treat parents within this goal.

One school of thought sees parents as allies of State power. This school is represented best by the philosophy of Patriarchalism of the absolutist period.

Another school of thought sees parents as barriers to State power that should be overcome. This is best represented by the communist movement in its goal to abolish the family.

In future posts I will discuss each of these schools of thought in more detail.

A Response To Kerry Baldwin on Fetal Self Ownership

Whilst doing research for a forthcoming book about libertarianism and parental obligations, I was interested to come across the work of Kerry Baldwin. This post is a response to the ideas that Baldwin put forward in her two-part podcast series on libertarianism, abortion, and fetal self-ownership as well as her debate with Walter Block on evictionism.

Abortion

On this blog, I have written about how support for abortion has corrupted libertarian theory. Baldwin makes an excellent point in this regard. She argues that the belief that abortion is legitimate undermines the principle of self ownership. The logical implication of assuming that abortion is valid is that individuals only have rights if their mother decides to grant them rights. As Baldwin puts it, this is not a theory of self ownership, it is a theory of "matriarchy".

In a recent post, I argued that the theory of acquired rights violates Hoppe's specificity principle. Although she used different terms and argued it a little differently, Baldwin made a very similar point in her series on fetal self ownership.

In her debate with Walter Block, Baldwin made an important objection to Block's evictionism. She pointed out that Block's characterisation of abortion as "eviction plus killing" is not accurate. As she noted, in fact most abortions are a process comprised of "killing plus removal of a dead body". This objection applies to Judith Jarvis Thomson's defence of abortion too, which also relies on the idea that abortion is legitimate because it can be categorised as an example of letting die not killing.

If Block is concerned to allow eviction but deny killing as he says, the logical consequence would be for him to argue that only extractive abortions (for example, hysterotomy) are legitimate and all non-extractive abortions are illegitimate according to evictionism. Extractive abortions are arguably examples of letting die, not killing, which is central to Block's justification. Yet Block seems entirely uninterested in such details. He provided no defence to Baldwin's objection in the debate, saying "I don't know as much about this as she does so I defer to what she said".

Parental Obligations

Baldwin is one of the few libertarians who argue that parents do have enforceable obligations towards their children as a result of their own causal actions. She argues that since pregnancy is a known possible outcome of consensual sex, parents have responsibility for the consequences of their actions and therefore they have obligations towards the child. This argument is of great interest to me, since I believe that among the competing libertarian views about parental obligations, only the principle of causal responsibility is correct. It seems that Baldwin might accept this principle.

However, Baldwin seems to have a much narrower definition of parental obligations. If I understand her correctly, she holds that a mother has the obligation to provide life support (gestation) during the period of non-viability of a fetus, and if the baby is unwanted then the mother also has the obligation to find a suitable caregiver once the baby is born.

If parents have an obligation to their children because they have responsibility for the consequences of their actions (in cases of consensual sex), then the obligation is far greater than Baldwin seems to accept. Children have a rightful claim against their parents not only for life support during pregnancy (as Baldwin argues), but also for whatever else is necessary to get the child out of peril and to a position of safety and self-sufficiency. This involves raising the child (and all that this entails) to the independence and self-sufficiency of adulthood.

According to this principle, parental obligations apply to both the mother and the father and both are jointly and severally liable towards the child, since both are responsible for putting the child in a state of peril as a result of creating the child. Baldwin makes the case for some limited enforceable obligations of the mother, but it is not clear to me whether she thinks that fathers have enforceable parental obligations or what these are.

Baldwin argues that it is a legitimate choice to give up a child for adoption. She emphasises that "there are many good reasons for not wanting to have a child". There are some cases in which parents do not have obligations, such as pregnancy resulting from rape. However, apart from those exceptions, you cannot legitimately give up parental obligations.

Parents who place a child in peril have a tort liability until that child is out of peril. Adoption is at best a delegation of this obligation, but even then the parents can never fully rid themselves of the legitimate claim that the child has on them (since it is not their claim to give up or nullify). It may be beneficial to support the institution of adoption for purely pragmatic reasons (making the best of a bad situation). Even if adoption should be supported for the sake of children, it is not a legitimate choice for the parents in terms of libertarian theory.

Finally, Baldwin seems to argue that the nature of pregnancy is significant for the role of women within libertarian theory, although it is not clear to me exactly what her argument is. She likens pregnancy to an act of production, with the mothers being "the producers of new self owners". Perhaps she is advocating some form of the theory of gestationalism (the idea that gestation is the primary basis for parental rights and obligations). This idea is not compatible with her support for children as self owners from conception because the unborn self owner already exists during gestation. Gestation is not an act of production since it does not contribute to the existence of the child. Rather, gestation is the first form of nurturing for an already existent unborn child that is developing. This idea of the mother as the "producer" is therefore incompatible with inherent self ownership.

Although I have outlined some disagreements, Baldwin is one of the few libertarians making philosophical arguments for inherent rights and for parental obligations and I appreciate her work.