Tibor Machan's Individuals and Their Rights: A Review
This paper reviews Tibor R. Machan's 1989 book Individuals and Their Rights, which offers a comprehensive moral defense of libertarianism. The review traces Machan's central arguments across the book's key chapters, examining his treatment of natural rights, his four-part account of the nature of things, and his grounding of property rights as moral prerequisites for human self-development. It also surveys his postscript rebuttal of utilitarian critiques—particularly those advanced by Ernest van den Haag—and concludes with Machan's overarching conviction that engineering human goodness through political force is both impossible and morally objectionable.
- Introduction: Machan's Case for Libertarianism: Machan's motivation and the book's central purpose
- Natural Rights and Human Nature: Machan's four-part theory of natural rights
- Property Rights as Moral Prerequisites: Property rights linked to morality and self-development
- Rebutting Utilitarian and Conservative Critics: Machan answers van den Haag's utilitarian critique
- Conclusion: Against Engineered Goodness: Political force cannot make humans virtuous
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What makes this paper effective
- The review follows the book's own argumentative structure chapter by chapter, giving readers a clear and organized map of Machan's progression from rights theory to property rights to political rebuttal.
- The writer helpfully paraphrases dense philosophical passages—such as Machan's four-part account of the nature of a thing—while signaling the paraphrase explicitly, maintaining academic honesty.
- Occasional meta-commentary (e.g., noting that the author's property-rights argument doubles as a moral argument) demonstrates analytical engagement beyond simple summary.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of direct quotation combined with explanatory paraphrase. When Machan's prose becomes too technical for straightforward summary, the reviewer explicitly signals a shift to paraphrase and then returns to direct quotation to anchor key claims. This technique shows readers both the author's exact words and a readable interpretation of their meaning.
Structure breakdown
The review opens with Machan's stated motivation for writing the book, then moves sequentially through his treatment of natural rights (Chapters 1–4), property rights (Chapter 5 and surrounding discussion), and his postscript rebuttals of utilitarian and conservative critics. It closes with Machan's concluding remarks on the futility of using political force to engineer human virtue. The structure is linear and text-driven rather than thesis-driven, appropriate for a book review at this level.
Tibor R. Machan's view is that libertarianism holds a "moral superiority" over other political theories and practices — and this conviction reflects one of the pressing reasons the book was written.
The essence of Machan's arguments is that a comprehensive "moral defense" of the sometimes controversial tenets of libertarianism had not yet been presented — albeit the book was published in 1989, and subsequent to its appearance there have indeed been numerous academic justifications and explanations for the libertarian philosophy it espouses. The author admits, in the Preface (p. xvi), that he had to choose between two paths: a) simply "charging ahead" and presenting his arguments while ignoring critics, or b) "looking often at criticisms" and giving readers key rebuttals to those attacks. He chose option b — because he recognized, in an honest editorial position, that his views, and libertarian politics in particular, "are out of the mainstream on a variety of philosophical fronts."
Like other libertarian thinkers, Machan places heavy emphasis on the rights of individuals — not just the right to "life, liberty, and happiness," but also the right to "life, liberty, and property" (p. xiv). And beyond simply listing the rights that libertarians hold dear, Machan takes the discussion of rights to great lengths. In the title of each of the first five chapters, the word "rights" appears: 1) "Rights Theory at a Glance"; 2) "From Classical Egoism to Natural Rights"; 3) "Grounding 'Lockean' Rights"; 4) "Rights as Norms of Political Life"; and 5) "Property Rights and the Good Society."
Machan's salient argument in Chapter 3 centers on the idea of "natural rights," and he insists that there be no conflict between the concept of the "basic rights of human beings" and "natural rights." Natural rights, then, are those rights with which one is endowed through "human nature" — not through politics or social strata. This position, he explains on page 64, "faces enormous resistance today," because those who attempt to defend the concept that there is an "unvarnished right" for any two individuals to "do whatever they want under any circumstances" will be met "with vacant stares."
In detailing his understanding of natural rights (p. 68) — which constitutes a lengthy and esoteric series of explanations — Machan admits that the idea of the existence of "natures...the nature of trees, the nature of planets, or the nature of medicine" evokes "skepticism." This skepticism is "partly justified," says the author, because of an "artificial standard which has been thought to be required of a theory" involving the nature of things.
This artificial standard does not prevent Machan from examining — and reworking — the theory of natural rights in his own way. On page 79, he summarizes his explanation of "the present account of the nature of a thing...namely its definition" in four parts, not all of which are easy for the lay reader to digest:
1) The definition of the nature of a "thing" (couched in a form like "X is a, b, c,...n") "states those objective aspects of (some) beings by virtue of which one is rationally warranted in differentiating these beings from all others, as well as integrating them within a scheme of classification of reality."
2) The characteristic which defines some being is objective, Machan believes, and hence it can be demonstrated to be true beyond a "reasonable doubt." 3) No commitment to "inner natures" or "innate essences" is part of the view that true definitions can be "produced." 4) When defining humans or other "concepts," one must understand that the definition is purely "contextual" — it will not be permanent but will remain fluid; further, changes in the nature of some "being" must be interpreted through "objectively identified causes or reasons."
The author undertakes these semantic explorations of natural rights in order to defend the libertarian view that genuinely human rights — natural rights — exist quite above and beyond man-made or politically created "rights." On page 97, he insists that "natural rights theory" is not "some alternative to a theory of justice"; to the contrary, it reflects a "systematic respect for the moral and political sovereignty of others." By way of context, it should be noted that libertarians strongly favor less government and more individual choice. It is no secret that libertarians view "big government" as too much like "big brother" — a hindrance to a citizen's natural rights to think and act according to his or her own judgment, rather than in conformity with laws that governments impose.
With his lengthy and often challenging Chapter 4 justification in place, Machan, on page 99, launches into why "natural rights" are connected to "property rights" — property rights being, as noted earlier, among the most vociferously defended precepts of the libertarian movement. It makes good sense, he insists, to look at property rights "as one of the several human or basic rights" each of us possesses.
He clarifies on page 139, however, that "property — any rightful and exchangeable belonging — cannot include human beings." Nor, he continues, "can one own oneself." True to his practice of developing specific points at great length, he explains that property (p. 140) can be "land...furniture, paper...poetry, computer programs, musical arrangements..." and many other things. "Property is anything tradable or exchangeable that may be of value to persons," he concludes. "To regard a person...as property, as a belonging, is a metaphysical and categorical mistake."
The right of private property — the point he has been developing for many pages — is "a moral prerequisite for the realization" of self-development. Moreover, private property is justifiable on two grounds: a) a "sphere of jurisdiction," consisting of items of private property, "is indispensable for the moral life of humans"; and b) a person should be the "authority over items or processes" that person has "recognized and made valuable or received from someone...or from a series of persons who have done the same." When property rights are eroded, he explains on page 142, "...the prospect for a moral life will also erode."
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