Ep. 494 I IMMANUEL KANT AND LIBERTARIANISM

Lecture by Thorsten Polleit, 15 August 2026, F. A. v. Hayek Club Weimar.

The main theses can be summarized as follows (thanks, AI):

1. The meaning of Enlightenment according to Kant

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from self-incurred immaturity by having the courage to use his own reason (“sapere aude”). Freedom and independent thinking are not guaranteed and do not happen by themselves; they must be won against unfreedom and ideological paternalism (e.g. socialism, communism, and today’s political currents).

2. Kant’s epistemology as foundation

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) distinguishes between statements that depend on experience (a posteriori) and those that are independent of experience (a priori). Especially important here are synthetic a priori judgments: they expand our knowledge, yet they are not dependent on experience; they arise from the structures of our understanding. According to Kant, we impose on the objects of our experience properties that originate in our cognitive faculty (a priori categories).

3. Ludwig von Mises’s logic of human action

Ludwig von Mises does not regard economics as an empirical science, but as an a priori science of human action. The central proposition: “Man acts” is an a priori, irrefutable starting point. From it, economic truths can be derived logically without their validity having to be subjected to empirical testing. Examples: Voluntary exchange makes all participants better off. Or: An increasing supply of goods lowers prices. Or: An expansion of the money supply lowers the purchasing power of the monetary unit.

4. Critique of the state and fiat money

A priori praxeological thinking is, in the truest sense of the word, eye-opening: The state reveals itself as an apparatus of coercion and violence that is incompatible with the freedom, rights, and property of the individual. Or: The state’s fiat money system proves to be the cause of many economic and social ills (inflation, redistribution, growth of the state, crises). Or: The European Union and the social market economy are identified as forms of interventionism—and therefore as economically and socially harmful.

5. Libertarianism as consequence

Libertarianism is built on the a priori logic of action. Its central principle is the a priori non-aggression principle: every person is the owner of himself and of his justly acquired property. The state as we know it today is incompatible with the non-aggression principle, because it rests on unwanted coercion and unwanted violence. In libertarian theory the state (as we know it today) has no place—on both economic and ethical grounds; the state must instead be rolled back as far as possible in favor of individual freedom.