Argumentation Ethics and the Question of Self-Ownership

The anarcho-capitalist philosopher, Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1993; 2004), claims that self-ownership is the only ethical solution to the problem of social order. He claims that any denial of self-ownership represents a performative contradiction: that actively arguing against self-ownership presupposes one's self-ownership. I examine Hoppe's ethics and argue that, within that framework, self-ownership is a (not the) permissible ethic. There are strong empirical and theoretical cases to be made for libertarianism. Catching nonlibertarians in performative contradictions (gotcha!) is not one of them.