From Rothbard’s August 11, 1984 letter to Tony Flood:
Dear Tony: I read your letter in some distress. My my: a blend of mysticism and utilitarianism, holism and Buddhism, all this adds up to what a friend of mine would call “my second favorite thing.” My first favorite? Who knows—it’s a tie between a bunch of things: an example—being kicked in the groin by a concentration camp guard. Frankly, I consider the whole thing gibberish. I’ve know some others who have gone the same route, but usually it takes a pre-immersion in California and its outré life-style. A word of caution? The only point I can make at this juncture is to relay a wise word form that great and hard-hitting Thomist work: Father Toohey’s Notes on Epistemology. Toohey said: look with great mistrust on any philosophic concept that employs capital letters: e.g., your “Absolute Self.”
Also, I don’t think the Buddhist defense of liberty is going to get anywhere. If we are all part of one another’s self (or Self) then surely it is OK for me to cut off my toe-nail, and suppose that I regard the guy down the block as my cosmic toe-nail, or Toe-Nail? What then, O guru?
Tony, you’re a great fellow, but there are two kinds of intellectuals in this world, the Seekers and the Finders, and I am afraid that you are an unregenerate Seeker. I don’t know if anything can save you from seven years of Buddhism at this point, but you might try, before you proceed any further, Volume I, Chapter 1, of Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, “The Origin of the Dialectic,” and the marvelous, acidulous work of Norman Cohn, Pursuit of the Millenium [sic].
Vaya con Dios,
Murray Rothbard
Update: more information on the correspondence referenced above, including the letter Rothbard was referring to.
