Causation and aggression

Abstract

F or libertarians, the purpose of a legal system is to establish and enforce rules that facilitate and support peaceful, conflict-free interaction between individuals. In short, the law should prohibit aggression. Because aggression is a particular kind of human action--action that intentionally violates or threatens to violate the physical integrity of another person or another person's property without that person's consent--it can be successfully prohibited only if the law is based on a sound understanding of the nature of human action more generally. Praxeology, the general theory of human action, studies the universal features of human action and draws out the logical implications of the undeniable fact that humans act (Mises 1966, pp. 15-16, 480; and 1978; Hoppe 1995). Praxeology is central to Austrian economics, the hitherto best elaborated part of the science of praxeology (Mises 1966, p. 3). However, other disciplines can benefit from the insights of praxeology. Hans-Hermann Hoppe has already extended praxeology to the field of political ethics (Hoppe 1989b, chap. 7). The related discipline of legal theory, which also concerns ethical implications of human action, can also benefit from the insights of praxeology. In the context of legal analysis, one important praxeological doctrine is the distinction between action and mere behavior. The difference between action and behavior boils down to intent. Action is an individual's intentional intervention in the physical world, via certain selected means, with the purpose of attaining a state of affairs that is preferable to the conditions that would prevail in the absence of the action. Mere behavior, by contrast, is a person's physical movements that are not undertaken intentionally and that do not manifest any purpose, plan, or design. Mere behavior cannot be aggression; aggression must be deliberate, it must be an action.