Gary Chartier

Gary William Chartier
Full name Gary William Chartier
Born December 30, 1966 (1966-12-30) (age 45)
Glendale, California
Era Contemporary philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School analytic philosophy, natural law, process philosophy
Main interests anarchism, left-libertarianism, meta-ethics, applied ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophical theology

Gary William Chartier (born 1966) is an American legal scholar, philosopher, theologian, and "left-wing market anarchist."[1] He currently serves as Associate Professor of Law and Business Ethics and Associate Dean of the School of Business at La Sierra University in Riverside, California.[2] His distinctive approach to market anarchism is rooted in Kevin Carson's mutualism, the new classical natural law theory elaborated by Germain Grisez and John Finnis, the "anarcho-conservatism" of Stephen R. L. Clark, the New Left-influenced left-libertarian decentralism of Karl Hess,[3] and the socialism and individualist anarchism of Benjamin Tucker.[4]

Contents

Life

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Early years

Chartier was born on December 30, 1966, in Glendale, California, at what is now Glendale Adventist Medical Center. His parents were secretary and later realtor Helen Lucile Bloodworth Chartier and accountant and internist Stanley Earl Chartier. He graduated from La Sierra Academy in Riverside in 1984, qualifying as a finalist in the National Merit Scholarship Competition. (Fascinated by constitutions, he had begun his engagement with the law by striking up a friendship with constitutional consultant and law professor Albert Blaustein in his early teens, though the two were only infrequently in contact after this.)[5] While he initially planned on a career as a high school teacher, an interest in political theory spawned by earlier reading of Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, Robert Anton Wilson, and Friedrich Hayek prompted him to refocus his attention on earning a doctorate in political philosophy. As an adolescent political activist, he founded the New America Party, broadly libertarian in ideology; he represented its views (identified exaggeratedly as anarchist for dramatic effect) as a guest on Wally George's Hot Seat television show in 1986.[6]

College and graduate school

Chartier received a bachelor's degree at what is now La Sierra University in 1987; he graduated magna cum laude and received the University President's Award. Though he had majored in history and political science, his undergraduate study of philosophy and religion led to his enrollment in a doctoral program in the philosophy of religion and theology at what was then Claremont Graduate School. While at Claremont, where he studied under John Hick, he applied and was accepted into a PhD program in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, where his teachers included Nicholas Lash and Brian Hebblethwaite, and from which he was graduated in 1991. His dissertation, supervised by Hebblethwaite, focused on the idea of friendship; his examiners were Stephen R. L. Clark and Michael Banner. By this time, his political views had taken a conventionally social democratic turn.[7]

Law School and La Sierra University Faculty Appointment

After working as the editor of a newspaper in Temecula, California, and of a journal published by La Sierra University, and teaching courses in religion and philosophy at Loma Linda University and California Baptist University, Chartier enrolled at the UCLA School of Law. At UCLA, he studied with philosophers including Stephen R. Munzer, Seana Shiffrin, and Pamela Hieronymi, with the political theorist Stephen Gardbaum, with former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, and with constitutional law scholar Kenneth L. Karst; he graduated in 2001 as a member of the Order of the Coif and as the recipient of the Judge Jerry Pacht Memorial Award in Constitutional Law. He had served during law school as Lecturer in Business Ethics at La Sierra; a full-time academic appointment began in September 2001. Following a 2005 stint as Lecturer in Law at Brunel University, Chartier was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor and tenured at La Sierra in 2008. He became Associate Dean of La Sierra's business school in 2009.[8]

Intellectual development

Chartier had abandoned his earlier libertarian views by the time he entered graduate school. Despite his support for the anti-authoritarian New Left and the fact that his doctoral dissertation had called for radical political decentralization,[9] his earlier work in political theory was, perhaps somewhat inconsistently, statist.[10] It assumed, without criticism, that remedying poverty and reducing subordination, especially in the workplace, required the activity of the state.

By contrast, Chartier's current work in political theory is libertarian and anarchist in flavor. His return to his libertarian roots reflects the impact of his encounters with the thought of contemporary left-libertarians Kevin Carson, Roderick T. Long, and Charles Johnson, as well as a renewed appreciation for Stephen R. L. Clark's critique of state authority.[11] Carson's work, in particular, provided a model for Chartier's reconciliation of his leftist politics with opposition to the state, and helped him to frame a version of left-libertarian market anarchism informed by insights from a version of natural law theory.[12]

Professional and community involvement

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Chartier serves as a member of the editorial board of Libertarian Papers; as a member of the advisory board of and an article reviewer for the Journal of Philosophical Economics; as a member of the advisory board of the Center for a Stateless Society; as a member of the book review board of Spectrum; as chair of the Riverside County Libertarian Party;[13] and as an occasional copywriter for AntiWar.Com. He is a member of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left and is the long-time leader of a Sabbath School class at the Loma Linda University Church previously taught by Jack Provonsha, Fritz Guy, and David Larson.

Personal life

Chartier and Elenor Webb married on March 4, 2008.[14] One of their two cats is named for American anarchist Lysander Spooner.[15]

Work

Chartier's philosophical work focuses on topics in moral and political philosophy (including legal theory) and the philosophy of religion (and philosophical theology).

Moral, political, and legal philosophy

Chartier defends a variant of natural law thinking, which he has employed in discussions of sexuality,[16] lying,[17] and economic life.[18]

Chartier offers an understanding of property rights as constrained but contingent social strategies—reflective of the importance of multiple, overlapping rationales for separate ownership and of natural law principles of practical reasonableness. This account is distinguished both from Lockean and neo-Lockean views (like those of Murray Rothbard), which often interpret rights with respect to justly acquired property as absolute, and from consequentialist accounts that might license widespread ad hoc interference with the possessions of groups and individuals. The various property rationales provide good reason for the existence of a stable property system that safeguards autonomy without justifying an absolutist conception of property rights.[19] Chartier uses this account to ground a clear statement of the natural law view that some wealth redistribution is appropriate, but that it is fitting as an individual response to particular circumstances rather than a state-driven attempt to achieve a particular distributive pattern.[20] He advances detailed arguments for workplace democracy rooted in such natural law principles as subsidiarity.[21] He discusses natural law approaches to land reform and to the occupation of factories by workers.[22] And he develops a general natural law account of boycotts.[23]

Chartier's work in natural law theory has been primarily concerned with reasonable personal action more generally, rather than with political theory—or with anarchism in particular. However, even in the context of a discussion of natural law theory, he explicitly challenges the necessity of the state, and his discussion of law in a natural law context focuses on "communal norms, rules, and institutions"—which need not be maintained using force and which are intended to be understood as elements of a polycentric legal order—rather than on state-made laws.[24]

Natural law theorists from St. Thomas Aquinas to the present have frequently been statists. They have often rejected consent-based theories of state authority as unrealistic, arguing instead, in a manner similar to David Hume's, that actually existing states deserve allegiance because of their capacity to preserve order. Chartier contends that the state is not needed to maintain social order, and that natural law theorists need not be attached to it in preference to other means of maintaining order, including custom, convention, and various voluntary arrangements.[25] He has also linked his concerns with anarchism and natural law theory indirectly by defending anarchism against objections levelled by natural law theorist Mark C. Murphy. Murphy has maintained that all arguments for "philosophical anarchism" fail because they misconstrue the nature of many people's support for the authority of state-made law and that people who believe in the authority of state-made law are entitled to retain their beliefs in the face of anarchist criticism. Chartier argues in response that for many people, at least, belief in state authority is defeasible and can rightly be undermined by positive arguments against particular justifications for the authority of state-made law.[26]

While supporting vegetarianism and affirming that non-human animals have moral standing, Chartier follows Stephen R. L. Clark in rejecting consequentialist defenses of vegetarianism like those offered by Peter Singer.[27] Singer acknowledges that, on consequentialist grounds, it might seem as if there is little reason for individuals to be concerned about their dietary choices, since few of those choices will actually have consequences for any actual animals. But Singer maintains that some few dietary choices will, by crossing certain demand thresholds, dramatically increase production of animals for food and that taking this possibility into account provides good reason to avoid purchasing meat, since there is a small chance that a single meat purchase might lead to substantial negative consequences for many animals.[28] Chartier dissects Singer's argument, maintaining that it is unsuccessful because it fails to take proper account of the actual characteristics of the meat production market (or any similarly enormous market). He examines in detail consequentialist, natural law, and virtue theoretic accounts of boycotting the meat industry, concluding that both natural law and virtue theory provide limited grounds on which a boycott might be defended, but that consequentialism does not. While he maintains, in tandem with the new classical natural law theorists, that consequentialism is in principle incoherent, he also challenges the factual predictions made by consequentialist proponents of the meat industry boycott.[29]

Chartier has been an active participant in discussions among market anarchists and others about the aptness of "capitalism" as a label for what some participants in the conversation have termed "freed markets"in order to distinguish them from existing economic arrangements, which they see as shot through with statist privilege.[30] He has argued that proponents of genuinely freed markets should explicitly reject capitalism and identify with the global anti-capitalist movement, while emphasizing that the abuses the anti-capitalist movement highlights result from state-tolerated violence and state-secured privilege rather than from voluntary cooperation and exchange. According to Chartier, “it makes sense for [left-libertarians] to name what they oppose ‘capitalism.’ Doing so . . . ensures that advocates of freedom aren’t confused with people who use market rhetoric to prop up an unjust status quo, and expresses solidarity between defenders of freed markets and workers—as well as ordinary people around the world who use ‘capitalism’ as a short-hand label for the world-system that constrains their freedom and stunts their lives."[31] He has joined Kevin Carson, Charles Johnson, and others (echoing the language of Benjamin Tucker and Thomas Hodgskin) in maintaining that, because of its heritage and its emancipatory goals and potential, radical market anarchism should be seen—by its proponents and by others—as part of the socialist tradition, and that market anarchists can and should call themselves "socialists."[32]

Philosophy of religion and philosophical theology

Chartier's work in the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology has focused especially on theodicy and divine action, but he has also addressed a range of other topics. For instance, he has offered a reading of language about God as personal that partly parallels logical behaviorist interpretations of talk about consciousness. He suggests that, because we cannot pretend to know what God is like in se, this sort of reading, while inappropriate when applied to finite persons, could be helpful when used in relation to God.[33]

He suggests that talk about divine action provides a necessary starting point for theological reflection, and argues that the only reasonable way to think about divine action, in turn, is to begin by considering the constraints on credible talk about divine providence imposed by the reality of suffering and evil.[34] Reviewing a range of options in theodicy, he concludes that, while their underlying assumptions (and accounts of creation) are different, classical free will theism and process theology lead to very similar predictions regarding what kinds of divine action are to be expected, and that, in connection with the task of constructive theology, there is therefore no need to choose between them,[35] though the differences continue to matter with respect to questions in the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology.

When he does directly addresses questions related to theodicy, he implies that process philosophy offers a more satisfactory theodicy than any alternative approach to theism, but he argues that even the process approach has significant difficulty taking proper account of the reality of animal suffering.[36] He maintains that Christian attempts to use the Incarnation as a component of theodicy are rendered problematic by the need to articulate belief in incarnational Christology using a robust account of divine action, which seems likely itself to make it harder to resolve the problem of evil (if God is in the business of working miracles, as such a robust view implies, why aren't there more of them?).[37]

Chartier argues that divine command views of ethics turn out to be inconsistent with talk about God's love for the world. Talk about love in this context is meaningful only if some intelligible sense can be given to the notion of the beloved's well being that is independent of the choice of the lover, so the theist cannot maintain that God is love without acknowledging that some objective sense can be given to the notion of creaturely flourishing apart from God's will. The range of reasonable moral principles is constrained by facts about flourishing, and basic moral norms seem credible independently of the divine volition. And imposing obligations over and above those following from these principles would itself be an unloving thing to do.[38]

Criticizing substitutionary accounts of atonement, Chartier notes that such theories purport to be committed to believe in retributive justice, and thus fall victim to standard objections to retributivism. At the same time, however, by allowing for substituted punishment, they imply a view of justice unlikely to be satisfactory to retributivists themselves.[39]

Publications

Chartier is the author of three books—Economic Justice and Natural Law, The Analogy of Love, and The Conscience of an Anarchist—and of articles in journals including the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Legal Theory, Ratio Juris, the UCLA Law Review, and Religious studies. He is preparing to begin work on a book about anarchism and the philosophy of law.[40]

Reactions to publications

Jonathan Crowe called Economic Justice and Natural Law "important and original." Timothy Chappell declared that it was "[e]ssential reading" and maintained that it was "elegant, clear, and well-informed." According to Stephen Munzer, it was "perceptive, timely, and beautifully ordered" and featured arguments that were "probing and trenchant."[41]

The Analogy of Love received mixed reviews. In the course of a tepidly favorable assessment, Timothy Gorringe maintained that some passages disposed him to "reach for the whiskey bottle," though he also observed that the book did "not parade its erudition" and suggested that it was "consistently on the side of the angels."[42] By contrast, Ian Markham characterized the book as "a rare treat," labelling it "[c]ompelling, well-argued, crystal clear and deeply creative" and identifying it as "[a]n absolute must-read."[43]

Brad Spangler has written about Chartier’s third book: “I'm absolutely giddy about The Conscience of an Anarchist; this book could electrify a generation.” Stephan Kinsella has described it as "the best of the crop of political 'conscience' books."[44] Free Patriot Press editor and Boston Tea Party national chair Darryl Perry maintains that "Gary Chartier has raised the bar in his new book . . . ."[45] Historian Jeff Riggenbach maintains that "Libertarians who are now in their teens and twenties could do far worse than to let their own attention be captured by Gary Chartier's Conscience of an Anarchist.[46]

Authored books

Edited book

Articles

Book reviews

Other

References

  1. ^ Chartier offers this self-description in his Blogger profile.
  2. ^ See "School of Business - La Sierra University" (Faculty & Research); La Sierra University, Undergraduate Bulletin 2009-2010 (Riverside, CA: La Sierra U 2009) 168, 179.
  3. ^ For Hess's left-libertarian decentralism, see Karl Hess, Dear America (New York: Morrow 1975). Re. Chartier as left-libertarian, compare, for instance, blogger TGGP's claim that "there are plenty of people on the left I would consider unquestionably libertarian. Left-libertarians like Kevin Carson, Roderick Long, Charles "Radgeek" Johnson, Gary Chartier, Sheldon Richman and so on."
  4. ^ For Tucker's account of the two as compatible, see "State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree and Wherein They Differ," Instead of a Book: By a Man Too Busy to Write One (New York: Tucker 1897). Cp. Brad Spangler, "Market Anarchism as Stigmergic Socialism"; Gary Chartier, "Socialism Revisited."
  5. ^ See Gary Chartier, "Getting from There to Here"
  6. ^ Gary Chartier, "Getting from There to Here"
  7. ^ See Gary Chartier, "Getting from There to Here"
  8. ^ See Gary Chartier, "Getting from There to Here"
  9. ^ Gary Chartier, "Toward a Theology and Ethics of Friendship" (PhD diss., U of Cambridge 1991) ch. 4.
  10. ^ See, e.g., Gary Chartier, "Peoples or Persons? Revising Rawls on Global Justice," Boston College International and Comparative Law Review 27.1 (Winter 2004): 1-97; "A Progressive Case for a Universal Transaction Tax," Maine Law Review 58.1 (2006): 1-16; The Analogy of Love: Divine and Human Love at the Center of Christian Theology (Exeter: Imprint Academic 2007) 126-8.
  11. ^ See Stephen R. L. Clark, Civil Peace and Sacred Order, Limits and Renewals 1 (Oxford: Clarendon-OUP 1989); "Slaves and Citizens" and "Anarchists against the Revolution," The Political Animal: Biology, Ethics, Politics (London: Routledge 1999).
  12. ^ See Gary Chartier, "Getting from There to Here"
  13. ^ Current officers are identified on the RCLP website.
  14. ^ See public records, County of Riverside, CA.
  15. ^ See Gary Chartier, "Getting from There to Here"
  16. ^ "Natural Law, Same-Sex Marriage, and the Politics of Virtue," UCLA Law Review 48.6 (Aug. 2001): 1593-1632.
  17. ^ See "Toward a Consistent Natural Law Ethics of False Assertion," American Journal of Jurisprudence 51 (2006): 43-64; "Self-Integration as a Basic Good: A Response to Chris Tollefsen," American Journal of Jurisprudence 52 (2007: 293-6)
  18. ^ See Gary Chartier, Economic Justice and Natural Law (Cambridge: CUP 2009). This book is principally an exercise in applied ethics, in which differences from other natural law views are more described than defended; it nonetheless addresses some more fundamental theoretical issues. These include the differences between natural law views and others regarding the character of practical reason and the limits of the arguments offered by other natural law theorists regarding the authority of the state.
  19. ^ See Justice 32-46.
  20. ^ See Justice 47-68.
  21. ^ Justice 89-120.
  22. ^ Justice 123-54.
  23. ^ See Justice 176-82.
  24. ^ Chartier clearly intends Economic Justice and Natural Law to be read as an anarchist text; see Gary Chartier, "An Anarchist Text?" For the brief challenge to state authority in the book, see Justice 26-9. Chartier's Thomist view that multiple possible property systems are just allows for a broader range of property rules than, e.g., many modern Lockeans might find appropriate and leaves room for at least some courts in a stateless society justly to enforce rules Lockeans and others might regard as unjust; see, e.g., Justice 32-46, 69-122.
  25. ^ Justice 26-9.
  26. ^ "In Defence of the Anarchist," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 29.1 (2009): 115-38.
  27. ^ See the discussion of consequentialism and meat purchases in Gary Chartier, "Consumers, Boycotts, and Non-Human Animals," Buffalo Environmental Law Journal 12 (Spring 2005): 123-94. Singer's own position is articulated in Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, 2d ed. (London: Cape 1990); Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2d ed. (Cambridge: CUP 1993) 55-63. For Clark's rejection of consequentialist arguments for the vegetarian position he himself endorses, see Stephen R. L. Clark, The Moral Status of Animals, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon-OUP 1984) x-xi; Stephen R. L. Clark, "Vegetarianism and the Ethics of Virtue," Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat, ed. Stephen F. Sapontzis (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus 2004) 139, 146; Stephen R. L. Clark, Animals and Their Moral Standing (London: Routledge 1998) 100.
  28. ^ Peter Singer, "Utilitarianism and Vegetarianism," Philosophy and Public Affairs 9 (1980): 335.
  29. ^ See Gary Chartier "On the Threshold Argument against Consumer Meat Purchases," Journal of Social Philosophy 37.2 (Sum. 2006): 235-51.
  30. ^ For this phrase, see William Gillis, (The Freed Market).
  31. ^ Richman, Sheldon, Libertarian Left, The American Conservative (March 2011)
  32. ^ See Gary Chartier, "Advocates of Freed Markets Should Oppose Capitalism," "Free-Market Anti-Capitalism?" session, annual conference, Association of Private Enterprise Education (Cæsar's Palace, Las Vegas, NV, April 13, 2010); Gary Chartier, "Advocates of Freed Markets Should Embrace 'Anti-Capitalism'"; Gary Chartier, Socialist Ends, Market Means: Five Essays. Cp. Tucker, "Socialism."
  33. ^ Analogy 52-5.
  34. ^ For the latter point, see Analogy 39.
  35. ^ Analogy 39-49.
  36. ^ "Non-Human Animals and Process Theodicy," Religious studies 42.1 (2006): 3-26.
  37. ^ See "The Incarnation and the Problem of Evil," Heythrop Journal 49 (2008): 110-27.
  38. ^ Analogy 112-21.
  39. ^ Analogy 213-6.
  40. ^ See Chartier's Blogger profile.
  41. ^ Economic Justice and Natural Law cover blurbs.
  42. ^ Timothy Gorringe, rev. of The Analogy of Love, by Gary Chartier, Theology, Sep.-Oct 2008: 384-5.
  43. ^ Analogy of Love cover blurb.
  44. ^ Spangler’s and Kinsella’s comments appear as jacket endorsements on the back cover of the book. For earlier versions, see Brad Spangler, "Early Draft: The Conscience of an Anarchist"; Stephan Kinsella, "Chartier's Conscience of an Anarchist." The title is a reference to such earlier works as Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative, Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal, Zell Miller's A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat, and Wayne Allyn Root's The Conscience of a Libertarian.
  45. ^ Darryl W. Perry, "Darryl Perry: ‘Chartier’s ‘Conscience’: A Vision of Better Tomorrows.’”
  46. ^ Jeff Riggenbach, "The Anarchist Conscience".

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