The non-aggression principle (or NAP) is a foundational piece of libertarian philosophy. In short, it is:
…a moral stance which asserts that aggression is inherently illegitimate. NAP and property rights are closely linked, since what aggression is depends on what a person’s rights are. Aggression, for the purposes of NAP, is defined as the initiation or threatening of violence against a person or legitimately-owned property of another.
Now, any serious reader will see there’s a problem here: the NAP depends on the establishment of property rights, but if we do not agree on how property rights are established, then the principle isn’t really anti-aggression at all. It’s just pro-aggression in particular property-related circumstances. Here’s Matt Bruenig summing up the trouble with the NAP:
Libertarians typically respond that the violence mentioned here is not aggression: it is defense because the person owns the land. Wait a minute! That begs the question. The central question is: do you actually own the land? I am claiming you do not; and you are claiming you do. The way we are supposed to adjudicate that question is to ask: do the processes involved in you coming to own it involve aggression? The libertarian is saying he owns the land because he is being non-aggressive, and saying he is being non-aggressive (defensive) because he owns the land. The circularity is apparent.
In other words, the only thing the NAP really establishes is that the person advocating it believes in a particular brand of property rights apropos of nothing. What’s new, right? If you’re wondering why I’m still spending time on this, there are two reasons: firstly, I believe that the NAP wrongly appeals to well-meaning Christian libertarians because they mistake it for a principle of non-violence or pacifism; secondly, the NAP is wrongly identified with the Golden Rule, which misleads some Christian libertarians about the message of Jesus.
We’ve already established that the NAP is not a theory of non-violence or pacifism. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: it’s a theory by which violence against other people is justified so long as a person’s property has been threatened. We can immediately see that Jesus would never have advocated such a perversely high valuation of property, here in Luke 6:29-30:
If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.
Whether or not we take all of these principles literally or choose to expand them to any particular scale (many theological arguments are made on both fronts), it is clear that in each formulation, harming another person is the notably excluded alternative. One would expect to be told to hit back if hit, to take back if taken from, and so on — the fact that Jesus intentionally upsets this expectation draws attention to the overwhelming altruism of his alternative prescriptions. It also gives insight into the fundamental values of Christian ethics, by elevating human life and dignity over property or claims to property. The NAP does the opposite: it values human life and dignity only insofar as property is not threatened. So we can immediately see that it is not a Christian theory of non-violence in the tradition of, say, the Religious Society of Friends.
But why hone in on Luke 6? Lo and behold, the Golden Rule comes from Luke 6 (other gospels too, of course, notably Matt 7:12, but the most famous formulation is the Luke one, and none of them differ substantively). Nonetheless, some Christian libertarians consider the Golden Rule to be little more than an adumbration of the NAP. From the NAP wiki article, under their ‘Historical Formulations of the NAP‘ heading:
“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”Jesus of Nazareth advocated, and is closely associated with, the Golden Rule, otherwise known as “the ethic of reciprocity.”
When they say it’s known as ‘the ethic of reciprocity’, they’re referring to Olivier Du Roi and Hans Ritter, both of them 20th century theologians. It’s a neat thought, I guess, but the problems should be immediately visible. To quote John Topel in The Tarnished Golden Rule: the Inescapable Radicalness of Christian Ethics:
Thus both Dihle and Ricoeur understand the underlying motive of the Golden Rule to be do ut des (“I give in order that you may give”). Ricoeur’s fatal error is mistranslating Jesus’ “as you wish that others would do” as “as you expect that others would do.” The verb (e)thelem does not mean “expect,” neither in classical nor Hellenistic Greek, nor anywhere in the New Testament! Jesus’ form does not anticipate a response as the intention of the Golden Rule. He asks disciples to get in touch with their own desires and act accordingly for the other. Thus the underlying motive could be love of neighbor as oneself (Leviticus 19:18); there is no hint of a do ut des.
In other words, you can’t have an ethic of reciprocity when the other agent hasn’t even acted yet, as reciprocity entails the reciprocating of an action. Since the other agent hasn’t necessarily even undertaken the act of estimating what you would want, the only active agent is you. The only action the Golden Rule asks you to undertake is to empathize with other people by recognizing their subjectivity (e.g. ‘they are like me in that they feel, think, and desire, as I can imagine them feeling, thinking, and desiring as I do) and proceeding accordingly. So the Golden Rule is not, strictly speaking, advocating reciprocity: it’s advocating superior forms of altruism regardless of what the other agent may do.
Most theologians refer to the negative formulation of the Golden Rule as the ‘silver rule’, that is, the notion that you shouldn’t do harm. (Remember: the NAP isn’t this, either.) But the Golden Rule in its positive formulation goes even further than that, and much further than reciprocity. Topel goes on:
The principle of beneficence… is the general principle underlying the Golden Rule, and it governs three different types of actions: (a) one ought to prevent evil or harm, e.g., not only by not doing it oneself ( = the principle of non-maleficence) but by interposing oneself between the one harming and any victims of an injurious action; (b) one ought to remove the cause of evil or harm, e.g., by legislation or individual action to combat exploitative business practices or epidemic disease; (c) one ought to do the good positively: on the level of basic duty, by acting justly, and on the level of heroic charity, by forgiving the same offense for the seventh time, or even “laying down one’s life” for the other, even the enemy. Now it is clear that the Silver Rule does not cover actions described in (a), (b), or (c). “Do not do unto others what you do not want done to yourself does not obligate the Good Samaritan.
Topel’s explanation is right, I think, especially because a decontextualized Golden Rule is sort of nonsensical on its face; that is, we all want different things, and it would not necessarily yield good to do to others what we want specifically done to us unless we enact a sort of veil of ignorance regarding our own personal situation. Instead, the Golden Rule must be understood to follow the rest of the commands in Luke 6: to turn the other cheek, to give selflessly of our possessions, and to behave with utter mercy to those who offend us. As you can see from Topel’s expanded exploration of those maxims, none of them align with the NAP, which would suggest that one is doing good by doing nothing. On the contrary, the Golden Rule would require us to use any means at our disposal with due respect to a person’s dignity and life to prevent harm from befalling them, even if it means preventing poverty from befalling others by using tax-funded cash transfer programs.
And this brings me to the last reason that the NAP is not the Golden Rule, and moreover not a useful Christian axiom. Christianity contains sins of omission — that is, sins which occur because a person chose not to do something: e.g. James 4:17 — “Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” Thus, suppose I’m sitting in my house, and across the street I see the roof of my neighbor’s house is falling in. I call my neighbor and tell her that her roof is about to cave in, and she says she knows and doesn’t care, that it’s her house and she isn’t leaving. I know I can’t just let my neighbor die, so I break into her house and put her in a burlap sack. I carry her out of her house just before the roof caves in, and she isn’t crushed to death. Under a Christian ethical framework, I’ve done the right thing here — though it’s contrary to the NAP.
On the other hand, if I’m sitting in my house watching my neighbor’s roof cave in under a libertarian frame, I’m not obligated to rescue my neighbor, or even to try to mend her roof. It’s her property to administrate as she sees fit, and I can’t intrude. By sitting still in my house while my neighbor’s roof caves in and kills her, I’m following the NAP, and therefore acting rightly, that is, doing good.
But the Golden Rule, and the breadth of Christian ethics at large do not imagine doing nothing as doing good. Doing nothing is sometimes neutral, and sometimes bad, but it’s never constitutive of moral good. As Topel writes, Jesus’ Golden Rule imagines an incredible form of altruism, which is an active, integrated altruism. It requires people to reach out to one another, to care for one another, to meet one anothers’ needs — physical as well as emotional and spiritual. There’s nothing ‘non’ about this rule: it’s not an injunction not to. It’s an injunction to do, with an implicit charge that not doing is, in fact, a serious problem.