Hospers, author of “The Libertarian Manifesto,” advocates a Millian sense of liberty, as he believes that each individual should be free from government interference and allowed to exercise complete control over his or her own body. Nozick, another advocate of libertarianism, holds that a distribution is just if everyone has that to which he is entitled; thus, we have a right to any good that came into our possession as long as the acquisition and maintenance of that good is in a just manner. My project is to show, through examples given by Nozick and Hospers, that liberty causes an upset in distributive patterns of justice. Rawls' contrasting view, that liberty coincides with justice, will also be included in my project.
Libertarianism focuses on the notion that justice consists in the protection of liberty and, thus, it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that each citizen may use his liberty as he sees fit and without infringing on the rights of others.