"Aristotelian Liberals"

A FB group:

Aristotelian Liberalism is a burgeoning tradition in political philosophy, an Aristotelian form of classical liberalism or libertarianism.

Aristotelian Liberalism synthesizes the best features of Aristotelian ethical and political thought and liberal political and economic thought. Aristotelian Liberals argue that a neo-Aristotelian philosophy not only provides liberalism with a sounder foundation, it also provides liberalism with the resources to answer traditional left-liberal, communitarian, and conservative challenges by avoiding some Enlightenment pitfalls that have plagued it since its inception: atomism, an a-historical and a-contextual view of human nature, license, excessive normative neutrality, the impoverishment of ethics and the trivialization of rights.

Aristotelian Liberalism attempts to transcend the liberal/communitarian debate by embracing liberalism's commitment to pluralism, diversity, and the free market while grounding politics in a eudaimonistic theory of virtue ethics and natural rights. Aristotelian Liberalism avoids the specters that continue to plague communitarianism – paternalism and totalitarianism – and the traditional communitarian and conservative criticisms of liberalism – atomism and license – while promoting freedom in community and human flourishing.

Aristotelian Liberalism holds that man's natural end is a life of eudaimonia (flourishing); that virtue is constitutive of one's own flourishing but must be freely chosen to count as such; that man is a profoundly social being, but nevertheless that individuals are ends-in-themselves and not means to the ends of others; that the right to liberty is a metanormative ethical principle necessary for protecting the possibility of all forms of human flourishing and an interpersonal ethical principle such that rights-respecting behavior is constitutive of one's own eudaimonia. Thus, unlike most Enlightenment versions of liberalism, Aristotelian Liberalism is not solely concerned with rights or political justice narrowly conceived. It is also important to identify ethical and cultural institutions and principles necessary for bringing about and maintaining a free and flourishing society.

Hence, Aristotelian Liberalism embraces free markets and free enterprise but not statist capitalism; it is severely critical of the state. There is still an excessive focus on the State and what it can and should do for us. Our focus, rather, needs to return to a notion of politics as discourse and deliberation between equals in joint pursuit of eudaimonia and to what we as members of society can and should do for ourselves and each other. True immanent politics presupposes liberty. Thus, Aristotelian Liberalism seeks to shift the locus of politics from the state to civil society. The market is not the whole of society, however; nor is politics - rather, both are aspects of society while the state is an antisocial institution.

Some prominent Aristotelian liberals are:
Douglas Rasmussen (http://new.stjohns.edu/academics/graduate/liberalarts/departments/philosophy/faculty/bi_phi_rasmussend.sju)

Douglas Den Uyl, VP of Educational Programs at Liberty Fund (http://www.libertyfund.org/)

Roderick Long (http://www.praxeology.net/)

Chris Matthew Sciabarra (http://www.dialecticsandliberty.com/)

Fred D. Miller, Jr. (http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/phil/faculty/miller/miller.html)

Ayn Rand (http://www.objectivistcenter.net/)

Fellow Travelers:
Murray Rothbard (http://www.mises.org/content/mnr.asp)

For your convenience, edification and reading/viewing pleasure, I have created an Aristotelian Liberal Amazon.com Store (http://astore.amazon.com/geofallaplau-20), which includes books on this burgeoning political philosophy, on market anarchism and the Austrian school of economics, and liberty-themed fiction - especially fantasy and science fiction (books and dvds).