Definitions of libertarianism often convey a sense that this philosophy is total and complete, that its manifestation in the concrete world is immanently knowable. Vigorous debates about the fundamental tenets of libertarianism dispel any hope that the essence or principal attributes of libertarianism can be easily captured in a brief sentence or paragraph.

The central concern of libertarianism, however, is to maximize individual liberty and economic freedom to enable human flourishing. Liberty and freedom involve the ability of human agents, acting alone or in concert, voluntarily to pursue their wants and goals using their earned talents and natural skills, absent the forcible, coercive mechanisms of government and without infringing on the rights of others to so act.

Elsewhere I have said that “[e]xperimentation is compatible with—perhaps indispensable to—libertarianism to the extent that libertarianism is, as I believe, the search for the correct conditions for human flourishing—as well as the cautious description and reasoned implementation of principles emanating from that condition.”[1]

I used the phrase “to the extent that” to suggest that my conception of libertarianism is not definitive or absolute, that it is subject to scrutiny and debate. I emphasized “the correct conditions for human flourishing” because libertarians have propounded disparate and even contradictory theories about how best to achieve human flourishing.

The conditions that have succeeded to that end have proven themselves to be correct, or at least more correct than demonstratively unworkable alternatives.

The word “search” is meant to underscore the primacy of the intellect and knowledge: Human agents must be free to think and freely articulate the content of their thoughts before practices and institutions—the products of thought—may be tested, refined, verified, modified, adapted, or discarded according to their tangible success within physical (as opposed to purely mental or ideational) experience.

The principles that emerge from this process of applied thinking can be described as libertarian if they aspire to generate and actually generate individual liberty and economic freedom without increasing the forcible interference of government with consensually interacting human agents.

[1] Allen Mendenhall, Literature and Liberty: Essays in Libertarian Literary Criticism (Lexington Books, 2014), p. 14 (italics added).