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Hans-Hermann Hoppe (born September 2, 1949) is an Austrian school economist, a anarcho-capitalist (libertarian) philosopher, and a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Born in Peine West Germany, he attended the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, and the Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, studying philosophy, sociology, history, and economics. He earned his Ph.D. (Philosophy, 1974) and his Habilitation (Foundations of Sociology and Economics, 1981), both from the Goethe-Universität. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor from 1976 to 1978.
He taught at several German universities as well as at the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center for Advanced International Studies, Bologna, Italy. In 1986, he moved from Germany to the United States, to study under Murray Rothbard. He remained a close associate until Rothbard's death in January 1995.
Hoppe is currently Professor of Economics at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, a Distinguished Fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and, until December, 2004, the editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. The author of several widely-discussed books and articles, he has put forth an "argumentation ethics" defense of libertarian rights, based in part on the discourse ethics theories of German philosophers Jürgen Habermas (Hoppe's PhD advisor) and Karl-Otto Apel.
Controversy
Hoppe's comments during a lecture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas about time preference and homosexuals have generated controversy. An academic investigation resulted in a letter being issued instructing him to "cease mischaracterizing opinion as objective fact". Others have defended him regarding this controversy--he was defended, for example, by over 1700 academics and others. He was also defended by the editorial board of The Rebel Yell, UNLV's school newspaper, who stated in a 10 February 2005 that the school was "a virtual black hole of thought--a barren desert of oppression where the most fragile bloom of originality is stomped out under the mud caked boots of clodhopping ignorance." Carol Harter, president of UNLV, in an 18 February 2005 letter (.pdf) declaring a close to the case that "Teaching is of its nature and origin provocative. Faculty are called upon to challenge students, to push them to a greater understanding, and to encourage them to question the current base of knowledge and, in so doing, to create new knowledge... In the balance between freedoms and responsibilities, and where there may be ambiguity between the two, academic freedom must, in the end, be foremost... UNLV considers this matter closed."
In June 2005, Hoppe granted an interview in the German nationalist newspaper Junge Freiheit, in which he praised monarchy and attacked democracy, calling it mob rule and saying, "Liberty instead of democracy!" In the interview Hoppe also condemned the French revolution as belonging in "the same category of vile revolutions as well as the Bolshevik revolution and the national socialist revolution," because the French revolution led to "Regicide, Egalitarianism, democracy, socialism, hatred of all religion, terror measures, looting, rape and murder, the general military compulsion obligation and the total, ideologically motivated war."
Books
- Handeln und Erkennen (Bern 1976)
- Kritik der kausalwissenschaftlichen Sozialforschung (Westdeutscher Verlag 1983)
- Eigentum, Anarchie und Staat (Westdeutscher Verlag 1987)
- A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (Kluwer 1989)
- The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (Kluwer, 1993)
- Economic Science and the Austrian Method (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1995)
- Democracy: The God That Failed (Transaction, 2001)
- Editor: The Myth of National Defense. Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2003)
External link
- Hans-Hermann Hoppe homepage
- More on Hoppe's argumention ethics.
- Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Mises Institute
- "Professor Who Was Accused of Making Derogatory Remarks in Class Wants UNLV to Clear His Record" The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 14, 2005