I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Jude Chua Soo Meng 227
When I read that book, it struck me that not only was Rothbard the historian whom
Robert Sirico had quoted for his sources, tracing Austrian economics to the Spanish
Scholastics, but even more, that Rothbard was in fact trying to retrace the Lockean theory
of private property to its Thomistic roots—through Jean Quiddort O.P. to Aquinas. He is
none other than the Dominican Friar who had written the very famous Corrections of the
Corruptions in reply to William De La Mare O.F.M.’s Corruptions. The latter work was a
Franciscan challenge to the Thomistic corpus, in particular St. Thomas’ Summa Theologiae.
The dispute was reflective of the antagonism between the two greatest mendicant
orders at the time: the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), to which I belong, and the Order
of Friars Minor (Franciscans). John of Paris O.P. had gotten into trouble with the Church
for his alternative to the theory of transubstantiation—a theory he explicitly declared he
would be happy to retract if it could be shown to be incompatible with sound doctrine—
although otherwise he was a faithful Thomist, especially in his political views. His celebrated
work is On Royal and Papal Power, in which he tried to steer a middle ground between the
Papists (who insisted that Secular Powers only derived their power through the Church)
and Royalists (who argued that the Church has absolutely no claim over Secular business);
it has clear Thomistic antecedents.
In appealing to the natural law, John argued that the right to property was a right of
secular powers granted by natural law, and that the only jurisdiction the Church had over
property was not direct but rather indirect, insofar as the persons who own the property by
natural right were themselves members of the Church, and were thus bound in obedience to
it. Precisely in appealing to the natural law and the natural right of secular authorities to
acquire property rights prior to the Church’s sanction, this offered a loose form of grounding
for private property as something which man may naturally aspire to through labour.
Rothbard unfortunately did not make any citations, but a search points to the distinguished
historian of medieval political theory Janet Coleman, and her works confirm, or
perhaps were in fact the source of, Rothbard’s claims. From a Thomistic point of view, this
project was the conniving of a genius in the (Thomistic) history of economic philosophy.
Despite this I still disagree with Rothbard on some issues. Some of his views are not
invincibly defensible. Still, when I heard Guido Hülsmann questioning some of Rothbard’s
economics at a Rothbard Conference, I knew at once that the Mises Institute was not a
propagandizing association, bent on defending its predecessors come what may, but rather
a company of real scholars committed to critically engaging and bringing forward a libertarian
and Austrian tradition.
So I know in admitting some of my divergences from Rothbard while espousing his
other insights, I will not be excommunicated. But perhaps I should further qualify myself:
the Rothbard of the Ethics is someone I find less appealing—I much prefer some of his
earlier writings, published in the journals in which he tried to grapple as a self-confessed
neo-Thomist with the Kantian epistemological presuppositions in the praxeological tradition
he had inherited from Ludwig von Mises. Here too, I should say, we see genius. But it
was not a job that was complete; rather, there were still loose ends left for others to tie.
Still, as I was to discover, not only did Rothbard not shrink from admitting this, but
was eager to have others develop the theory on his behalf. These points were made to me