Nor can we use it to establish the validity of a particular pattern of property ownership among many - that would be circular: ownership rights cannot acquire the condition of justice simply by asserting that their violation would be unjust.Īnd yet property claims must derive from something they seem all but inescapable. Note that we can’t use the NAP to establish that property may be justly held. Both are contentious topics in political theory about which libertarians offer a specific set of answers, but not everyone will agree with us. Crucially, the NAP depends on the existence of a definition of aggression if this definition of aggression is to encompass assaults not committed directly on the body, then the NAP also depends on a valid theory of property ownership. Although it may be foundational to libertarian theory – and thus axiomatic in a weaker sense of the term - the NAP clearly does not prove itself just as clearly, reasonable people can and do deny it. The NAP requires more argument than these. An example of a philosophical axiom might be something like “I am aware of phenomena” or “ modus ponens is a valid form of reasoning.” If we use the standard meaning of the word “axiom,” the NAP is no such thing: an axiom is a statement that is self-evidently true or that cannot reasonably be denied. The nonaggression principle is sometimes (and confusingly) called an axiom, a practice which Rothbard also began. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory.“] In short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that no one may threaten or commit violence (“aggress”) against another man’s person or property. There are many historical antecedents to the NAP, but libertarians usually trace its current formulation to Murray Rothbard, who put it as follows: But what exactly is the non-aggression principle? What does it do? And why does it get talked about so much? You’ve heard libertarians talking about it.

Non aggression principle