OK so let me get something straight: Austrians describe human action and the workings of the free market perfectly. Austrians are perfectly right in preferring liberty. But: Austrians don't know why people don't want liberty these days.
To put it simple, the answer to this question is outside the scope of Praxelogy, because we have to investigate the preferences themselves and the cultures they create. Don't get me wrong, I'm immensely grateful for Praxeology. It's in the three most important things I discovered in my life (Buddhism and Voegelin's writings are the other two.) It's just simply not enough, and it's not even a fault that it's not enough: every discipline has it's clearly defined limits and these questions are outside the limits of Praxeology. Like, chemistry can't answer questions that genetics must answer. So basically the same way as chemistry cannot tell in itself why does a wolf wear a fur, but it does not mean chemistry is wrong, it simply means you gotta learn something else too to be able to tell it.
Similarly, Praxeology is perfect within the limits it sets for itself but you gotta understand some other stuff if you want to figure out how liberty can come about and why didn't it come about yet.
I recommnd reading Eric Voegelin's A New Theory of Political Science - he was a student of LvM and had a long dialogue with Hayek, agreeing in almost everything but looking at the causes of the trend towards collectivism. The important point is what he wrote to Hayek: "I think that I can agree with you on almost everything you have said. […] There is however one point where I should suggest a certain qualification of your argument. I do not believe that the problem is one of the economic system and state intervention exclusively, but I am afraid that the evolution of the religious state of mind towards collectivism – not as an effect but as a cause of economic evolution – plays important role in the structure of modern civilization."Suggested reading
Again, it's not a criticism of Praxeology but a suggestion to integrate Praxeology and Voegelin into some sort of a unified theory of human development.
"What separates Voegelin’s theoretical speculation from that of Hayek’s is the theme of transcendence. For both Hayek and Voegelin scientism is an intellectual movement that expresses the absolutism of science and it realizes it through the mathematization of every aspect of human life, adopting the method of natural science as valid for analyzing reality and establishing that science advances along a line of continuous progress. However, Voegelin takes his criticism to scientism further. In fact, for him, scientism above all denies «the concern for the experiences of the spirit». [12] This scientistic perversion replaces the divine-spiritual dimension with the worldly-material one, transforming this last into a sort of divinity. Hence, Voegelin and Hayek agree in condemning the delirious plans of scientific and political rationalism. Both state the failure of erecting the best political regime on the basis of historical progress, scientific rationalism, violence and power. Both are interested in studying the consequences of the application of scientism to politics. Both are concerned about the intellectual genesis of totalitarianism; but their investigation of this event differs significantly. The Austrian economist does not take into consideration the spiritual dimension of human life which is, for Voegelin, fundamental for human nature, human existence and for the social order."
Define "the spiritual dimension of human life" and why it matters. Phrases like "experiences of the spirit" put up a red flag in my eyes.
My understanding is that nobody's really taken the time to apply praxelogical principles outside of economics.
The very premise that humans act to better their lot in life is a fundamental inherent quality of humans. It can be universally applied to all human action from religion (wanting to better one's lot in the next life) to politics (the perceived betterment of one's life).
Bureaucrats also want to better their lot in life and for them this means bigger government...
I've read some of Voegelin's work, including The New Science of Politics. I had to. The Eric Voegelin Institute is in my department (political science) at Louisiana State University. Ellis Sandoz, the president of the Institute, is on my dissertation committee. I don't like that Voegelin is against philosophical systems as such, which I think leads him to be a kind of status quo religious conservative. His theological bent is another thing that puts me off. He has a tendency to Christianize Plato and Platonize Aristotle. I think he would have considered libertarianism to be a Gnostic political movement. Ellis Sandoz himself once wrote on one of my grad seminar reaction papers "Your doctrinaire libertarianism will never fly in Peoria" in response to my argument that salvation in Christianity requires free choice so if we want people to be saved we have to respect their rights, including the right to be wrong. And he recently gave a speech at an annual Philadelphia Society meeting that ended with "Bush is the wind behind our sails." But he did tell me after my M.A. thesis defense that I'm educable! (High praise coming from him, perhaps, although I'm sure I won't count as educated until I give up my libertarianism and atheism.)
Yours in liberty,Geoffrey Allan Plauché, Ph.D.Adjunct Instructor, Buena Vista UniversityWebmaster, LibertarianStandard.comFounder / Executive Editor, Prometheusreview.com
I'm not comfortable with the notion that there are spiritual requirements for the attainment of liberty, as if some kind of religious belief or lifestyle is a prerequisite for a free society. I don't see how this necessarily has anything to do with libertarianism per se.
Byzantine: Brainpolice: I'm not comfortable with the notion that there are spiritual requirements for the attainment of liberty, as if some kind of religious belief or lifestyle is a prerequisite for a free society. I don't see how this necessarily has anything to do with libertarianism per se. Because reason can't bootstrap itself into morality. If the present material world is all there is, then why worry about things like property rights and voluntary exchange? Just use whatever means are at your disposal to satisfy your desires.
Brainpolice: I'm not comfortable with the notion that there are spiritual requirements for the attainment of liberty, as if some kind of religious belief or lifestyle is a prerequisite for a free society. I don't see how this necessarily has anything to do with libertarianism per se.
Because reason can't bootstrap itself into morality. If the present material world is all there is, then why worry about things like property rights and voluntary exchange? Just use whatever means are at your disposal to satisfy your desires.
I don't follow. Why does reason and morality have to conflict? One would think they are intertwined. One would think that any sensible morality is derived from reason, otherwise one can only appeal to some kind of emotionalism or an appeal to authority. And why does a lack of a belief in an afterlife inherently equate to hedonism? Since when is religiousity a prerequisite for morality? Frankly, I think that's outright nonsense. I find the notion that morality and order ceases to exist in the absence of a diety or in the absence of faith to be just as absurd and comparable to the notion that morality and order ceases to exist in the absence of the state and legislative law. Both notions rely on the defering to some higher external authority for there to be order. Property rights and voluntary exchange apply to the present material world. I think that such things would matter even more in light of how short life is. Some theoretical afterlife really has nothing to do with it at all. On the contrary, it would seem to logically follow that if there is an eternal afterlife, this material life doesn't matter too much as it's only a transitional stage.
If mysticism, irrationalism and social conservatism is a prerequisite for libertarianism, count me out of this contaminated movement.
Byzantine: Brainpolice:I don't follow. Why does reason and morality have to conflict? One would think they are intertwined. One would think that any sensible morality is derived from reason, otherwise one can only appeal to some kind of emotionalism or an appeal to authority. And why does a lack of a belief in an afterlife inherently equate to hedonism? Since when is religiousity a prerequisite for morality? Frankly, I think that's outright nonsense. Property rights and voluntary exchange apply to the present material world. I think that such things would matter even more in light of how short life is. Some theoretical afterlife really has nothing to do with it at all. On the contrary, it would seem to logically follow that if there is an eternal afterlife, this material life doesn't matter too much as it's only a transitional stage. If mysticism, irrationalism and social conservatism is a prerequisite for libertarianism, count me out of this contaminated movement. I'm not saying they conflict. I'm saying that if your sole yardstick is reason, then reason still can't tell you why you should be reasonable. And rationally, why shouldn't you use every means at your disposal to satisfy your urges if this life is all there is?
Brainpolice:I don't follow. Why does reason and morality have to conflict? One would think they are intertwined. One would think that any sensible morality is derived from reason, otherwise one can only appeal to some kind of emotionalism or an appeal to authority. And why does a lack of a belief in an afterlife inherently equate to hedonism? Since when is religiousity a prerequisite for morality? Frankly, I think that's outright nonsense. Property rights and voluntary exchange apply to the present material world. I think that such things would matter even more in light of how short life is. Some theoretical afterlife really has nothing to do with it at all. On the contrary, it would seem to logically follow that if there is an eternal afterlife, this material life doesn't matter too much as it's only a transitional stage. If mysticism, irrationalism and social conservatism is a prerequisite for libertarianism, count me out of this contaminated movement.
I'm not saying they conflict. I'm saying that if your sole yardstick is reason, then reason still can't tell you why you should be reasonable. And rationally, why shouldn't you use every means at your disposal to satisfy your urges if this life is all there is?
Because it's not rational to be a hedonist. It is not in one's rational self-interest to live in such a way, particularly long-term, as it comes back to haunt you. Unobstructed action to appease one's urges is not rational, and no "spiritality" is necessary to figure that out. I don't see how hedonism logically follows from the premise that reason should be one's guide.
Byzantine:What if you don't care about your long-term interest? And since, long-term, you're going to be decrepit and eventually dead, why should you care? So most people don't and happily become net tax consumers for the present term, comfortable in the knowledge that the bill won't come due until after they are dead.
Such people wouldn't be living according to reason. You seem to have a rather Hobbesian view of rationality, as only instrumental and calculative. This is a perverse modern reduction. Rationality is substantive as well, capable of calculating not only means to accomplish ends but also of discovering the proper ends to pursue. See Aristotle on this. And if you want a Christian, see Aquinas and the Spanish Scholastics.
Byzantine: Brainpolice:Because it's not rational to be a hedonist. It is not in one's rational self-interest to live in such a way, particularly long-term, as it comes back to haunt you. Unobstructed action to appease one's urges is not rational, and no "spiritality" is necessary to figure that out. I don't see how hedonism logically follows from the premise that reason should be one's guide. What if you don't care about your long-term interest? And since, long-term, you're going to be decrepit and eventually dead, why should you care? So most people don't and happily become net tax consumers for the present term, comfortable in the knowledge that the bill won't come due until after they are dead.
Brainpolice:Because it's not rational to be a hedonist. It is not in one's rational self-interest to live in such a way, particularly long-term, as it comes back to haunt you. Unobstructed action to appease one's urges is not rational, and no "spiritality" is necessary to figure that out. I don't see how hedonism logically follows from the premise that reason should be one's guide.
What if you don't care about your long-term interest? And since, long-term, you're going to be decrepit and eventually dead, why should you care? So most people don't and happily become net tax consumers for the present term, comfortable in the knowledge that the bill won't come due until after they are dead.
Again, where does rationality come into this? I don't see how this is a condemnation of reason at all. I don't follow the logic of "since I'll be dead one day, I should be a hedonist now". On the contrary, I find the christian notion of forgiveness for one's sins to be a potential excuse for hedonism, since one can "sin" all they want and then be forgiven so long as they believe and pay their religious dues.
The premise that belief in an afterlife is an incentive to be moral and that morality ceases to exist in its absence of utter irrational nonsense.
Byzantine: Brainpolice:Again, where does rationality come into this? I don't see how this is a condemnation of reason at all. I don't follow the logic of "since I'll be dead one day, I should be a hedonist now". On the contrary, I find the christian notion of forgiveness for one's sins to be a potential excuse for hedonism, since one can "sin" all they want and then be forgiven so long as they believe and pay their religious dues. The premise that belief in an afterlife is an incentive to be moral and that morality ceases to exist in its absence of utter irrational nonsense. You're addressing the point you wish was made, not the point that was actually made. If the present, material world is all there is, then a person who chooses to live for the moment is just as rational as the person who lives mindful of succeeding generations. In the absence of morality, reason cannot tell you why one choice is objectively better than the other. You are simply opposing different subjective views of what is in a person's rational interest.
Brainpolice:Again, where does rationality come into this? I don't see how this is a condemnation of reason at all. I don't follow the logic of "since I'll be dead one day, I should be a hedonist now". On the contrary, I find the christian notion of forgiveness for one's sins to be a potential excuse for hedonism, since one can "sin" all they want and then be forgiven so long as they believe and pay their religious dues. The premise that belief in an afterlife is an incentive to be moral and that morality ceases to exist in its absence of utter irrational nonsense.
You're addressing the point you wish was made, not the point that was actually made.
If the present, material world is all there is, then a person who chooses to live for the moment is just as rational as the person who lives mindful of succeeding generations. In the absence of morality, reason cannot tell you why one choice is objectively better than the other. You are simply opposing different subjective views of what is in a person's rational interest.
I don't believe I ever spoke of an absence of morality. You keep making your argument based on the premise that morality is absent from reason. I don't accept your premises. You seem to assume that we are working with a vacuum. I don't believe we're using the word rational to mean the same thing either.
Wether the present material world is all there is or not is entirely irrelevant to the question at hand. And your argument hinges on the assumption that in the absence of an afterlife there is no objective criteria for what is rational in the present material world, as if some kind of religious authority or diety or afterlife is a requirement for such a criteria to exist.
Byzantine:Says you.
What kind of a response is that?
Byzantine:And again, in the absence of morality, whether you live for the long term or the short term is simply a subjective value judgment. If you choose to offload as much of your costs on others as you can get away with, that's your preference.
Says you.
I don't see how bringing religion into it somehow miraculously alters the equation. Morality doesn't require religion.
Byzantine:My response underscores that two separate chains of internally logical reasoning arrive at different conclusions, both of which are valid for either the hedonist or the ascetic. That's all reason will get you. It will not get you to morality.
Says you!
I mean, seriously, these bald and unsupported assetions are meaningless. You've got no real argument. And if reason can't get you to morality, I don't see how blind faith can either. I really do think you have some kind of Hobbesian conception of reason. And are operating against a strong tradition in Christianity that is heavily influenced by Aristotle, which holds that reason is capable of grasping right and wrong by itself.
Byzantine:You're straining at gnats. My point is simpler than that: reason cannot lift itself up by its own bootstraps into morality. You can demonstrate, with elegant and bullet-proof reasoning, why the murderer shouldn't murder. You can even demonstrate why it's a violation of an inalienable right, but your reason won't tell him why he shouldn't violate an inalienable right in a world of, ultimately, the same consequences for all.
This is self-contradictory. You say reason can't rise to the level of morality then you go and show how it can! You use moral terms like "should" and "shouldn't". But then you contradict yourself again when you revert to the claim that reason can't tell him why he shouldn't violate rights. Your position is incoherent. What is this at the end about the same consequences for all? So you're a consequentialist on morality? You are aware that there are other approaches to morality, right?
I'd say it's a rather weak and hypocritical "morality" that can only get people to do the right thing and refrain from the wrong thing out of fear of punishment and hope for rewards in the afterlife. It's a rather cheap motivation. It also devalues life in this world. And it is a rather blind view: there are plenty of things about life in this world that provide a much richer motiviation to be moral.
gplauche: I'd say it's a rather weak and hypocritical "morality" that can only get people to do the right thing and refrain from the wrong thing out of fear of punishment and hope for rewards in the afterlife. It's a rather cheap motivation. It also devalues life in this world. And it is a rather blind view: there are plenty of things about life in this world that provide a much richer motiviation to be moral.
I agree that such a view devalues life in this world and ignores the incentives that exist in this world for being moral.
Byznatine: And again, in the absence of morality, whether you live for the long term or the short term is simply a subjective value judgment. If you choose to offload as much of your costs on others as you can get away with, that's your preference.
February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
Byzantine - if you could provide me with a quotation where either Mises or any other Austrian founding father said God is necessary for reason to have binding force, I'll concede your point.
BTW, I am a deist personally. I just do not think positing the existence of a deity is a necessary component for a binding moral system.
But what the theist is saying is that theft is objectively immoral because an infinite and omniscient God has declared it so.
This doesn't change anything. There is nothing about this that causes people to be more moral then if they reject that god is the source. Declaring that one should be moral because a god says so isn't going to cause people to be any more moral then giving any other reason to be moral. You have not established why "because god says so" causes people to be more moral then if they hold a different reasoning for being moral. It is utter nonsense to think that if someone rejects this reasoning that they have no other possible reasoning to be moral. I do not require an argument from authority to act morally, and I personally find the insinuation that I cannot be truly moral in the absence of a rationalization from religious authority to be insulting and demeaning.
"Because god says so" doesn't tell us why the right must be honored anymore then any other rationalization. It's contingent on one's belief in such a god in the first place. "God" could be replaced with any other authority (state, science, whatever) and it works just as the same so long as the person one is trying to convince believes in that authority. Of course, I reject that arguements from authority can be a sufficient justification for moral premises. So "because god says so" holds no more weight for me then "because the president said so" or "because highly esteemed individual X said so". It's just an arguement from authority, not a rational explainaton as to why one should act morally. It just begs the question or avoids an actual rationalization.
gplauche: I've read some of Voegelin's work, including The New Science of Politics. I had to. The Eric Voegelin Institute is in my department (political science) at Louisiana State University. Ellis Sandoz, the president of the Institute, is on my dissertation committee. I don't like that Voegelin is against philosophical systems as such, which I think leads him to be a kind of status quo religious conservative. His theological bent is another thing that puts me off. He has a tendency to Christianize Plato and Platonize Aristotle. I think he would have considered libertarianism to be a Gnostic political movement. Ellis Sandoz himself once wrote on one of my grad seminar reaction papers "Your doctrinaire libertarianism will never fly in Peoria" in response to my argument that salvation in Christianity requires free choice so if we want people to be saved we have to respect their rights, including the right to be wrong. And he recently gave a speech at an annual Philadelphia Society meeting that ended with "Bush is the wind behind our sails." But he did tell me after my M.A. thesis defense that I'm educable! (High praise coming from him, perhaps, although I'm sure I won't count as educated until I give up my libertarianism and atheism.)
You are right about the fact that Voegelin adopts a largely Platonic philosophical perspective, but you're wrong to call him a conservative, a defender ex officio of the cultural status quos, an anti-philosophy type or to try to picture his scholarly reflections on metaphysics as some sort of religious eulogies for Christianity.
He explicitly wrote somewhere (don't remember where) that conservatism as a political movement is a retrograde, backward looking, failed from the start and gnostic political philosophy.
He believed, on the other hand, that the Western civilisation is in a deep spiritual (or cultural, if you prefer) crisis, something not uncommon for thinkers and writer across the political and philosophical spectrum in inter-war Europe, but he repeatedly emphasised that the only exit for this is the emergence of a new "cosmion", of a new underlying spiritual order of society. Moreover, his trilogy, "Order and History" as well as "The Political Religions", tell the story of many other "Old World" "cosmions" ( Egypt, Old Israel, Classical Greece) of which Christianity is only the latest, dying "cosmion", and he specifically states that he abstracts from analyzing other non-European cultural spaces.
He was a philosopher in his own right and highly read who fused Plato, Heidegger, elements of Wittgenstein , Georg Simmel, Gadamer and phenomenology (particularly in his theory of consciousness, see "Anamnesis") in a titanic effort to arrive at a deeper and more unified understanding of man, history, societies and their evolution. Maybe he failed, maybe he reached a dead-end or incorrect conclusions, but his quest is of outstanding grandeur.
He not only believed that a reactionary Christian spirituality is a wrong solution to the spiritual crisis of the age (just as the Greek-Roman religion could not match the revolutionary spiritual richness and vigour brought by the Christian faith at the end of the classical world) but he was not a religious man himself, but rather an agnostic intellectual who enjoyed a life of reflexion and occasional reading while taking a bath with a glass of champagne besides him.
As to Voegelin's concept of reason, he adopts the Platonic concept of "nous" which is anchored in the transcendent reality of the Being unlike the Aristotelian reason which is grounded in the immanent "teleos" of things and Being. The comparison with the modern, Hobbesian and Humean concept of instrumental and calculative reason is totally off-track. Finally, his use of words with religious connotations like God, divine and so on must be understood not as refering to religious categories, but primarily to philosophical concepts in the vast tradition of Platonic metaphysics and ontology.
Here's a pretty good essay on Voegelin thought and its relation to Christianity that might prove useful to those interest:
Glenn Hughes, Eric Voegelin and Christianity, October 1, 2004
http://www.heartland.org/pdf/16499.pdf
I think you are right, however, I'm using the word "Conservative" in a special sense.
Generally there are only two directions, Left and Right i.e. dream-world vs. reality. Libertarianism is that part of the Right-approach, that part of the reality-based approach that mainly deals with mechanisms, systems. There is the other approach that mainly looks at the roots of good, reality-based mechanisms, roots in culture, religion, generally in human thinking, and I'm calling that Conservativism because there isn't a better word for it.
Conservativism as a politiical movement is bullshit (OTOH it's often the lesser evil of the two f.e. Reagan, Thatcher. Note: in today's America I think there is a special situation, Obama is a lesser evil than McCain - warfare is a bigger problem now than welfare. However in the UK the Tories are the lesser evil in every possible sense.)
But there is this group of intellectuals, who had little to do with Conservative politics, like Voegelin, Burke, Oakeshott, Aurel Kornai, Roger Scruton, Theodore Darlymple and the whole http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/ staff. Or John Kekes who is my current favourite, http://www.deepleafproductions.com/utopialibrary/text/kekes-conservatism.html
which could be mapped almost sentence by sentence to Human Action, it's just that he is using a different vocabulary, the vocabulary of the philosopher, the cultural anthropologist, not the economist. I'm calling them Conservative even though Burke was an Old Whig, the Social Affairs Unit explicitly denies being a traditionalist because they think _modern_ traditions suck and the old ones are forgoten (I agree) - but how else should I call them?
BTW congratulations. I didn't really expect to find anyone who knows something about Voegelin on the Internet as his writings are extremely hard to understand, I've read The New Science of Politics half a dozen times and I'm just still scraping at the surface.
BTW I'm not a Christian myself (I'm Buddhist) but I respect Christianity because it adopted classical philosophy.
You don't really get it - it's not about a deity at all - Christianity was quickly taken over by people like Thomas Aquinas who were basically classical philosophers and used the deity as mainly as a methaphor.
I have a riddle for you which I will explain later on. This is just an example of the actual and very important phenomena which I will explain later on.Edmund Burke wrote his Thoughts and Details on Scarcity in 1795, which is as a good justification for the free market as anyone could wish for at that time. That was 50 years before Bastiat and 5 years before Say. Economics didn't really exist as coherent science, whatever existed of it was studied by few peop and Burke clearly wasn't one amongst them. He wasn't too interested in economics, this is pretty much his only economical writing. He clearly did not study much economics. So - how the hell did he figure out then that the free market is a good thing?I'll explain it later on and also explain why is it extremely important but please try to make a guess on how might he figured it out.
Miklos Hollender:Generally there are only two directions, Left and Right i.e. dream-world vs. reality. Libertarianism is that part of the Right-approach, that part of the reality-based approach that mainly deals with mechanisms, systems. There is the other approach that mainly looks at the roots of good, reality-based mechanisms, roots in culture, religion, generally in human thinking, and I'm calling that Conservativism because there isn't a better word for it.
In "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty," Rothbard argued that the classical liberals were the original Left and that libertarianism is really on the Left too. The original Right were the conservative monarchists and plutocrats who resisted free markets and liberalism.
Bogdan:You are right about the fact that Voegelin adopts a largely Platonic philosophical perspective, but you're wrong to call him a conservative, a defender ex officio of the cultural status quos, an anti-philosophy type or to try to picture his scholarly reflections on metaphysics as some sort of religious eulogies for Christianity.
I think you didn't read me carefully enough. I didn't say he was anti-philosophy. I said he was anti-system (i.e., against system-building in philosophy) and that this and his philosophical ideas tended to result in rather conservative, status quo positions in the realm of practical politics. He was no radical and he criticized radical politica movements (including libertarianis). By Christianize Plato, I didn't mean that he is a denominational Christian of some type, but I think it is undeniable that he tended to Christianize Plato and Platonize Aristotle.
Bogdan:The comparison with the modern, Hobbesian and Humean concept of instrumental and calculative reason is totally off-track.
Who made this comparison? I don't think I did.
Bogdan:Finally, his use of words with religious connotations like God, divine and so on must be understood not as refering to religious categories, but primarily to philosophical concepts in the vast tradition of Platonic metaphysics and ontology.
No, by imposing Christian categories onto Plato and the Greeks (even if he's using them philosophically rather than theologically, which I don't buy: he didn't employ the vulgra Christian conception of them, but he didn't use them strictly philosophically) he was Christianizing Plato. The categories are anachronistic.
Byzantine:You're reading into my argument. I did not say that the carrot and the stick.are the basis for morality. I said that ultimately, reason in an existential world cannot tell you why you should respect the rights of others. In such a world, the person intent on murder occupies the same plane as his victim.
That's what your argument implied.
I have yet to see an actual argument for your assertions.
What does being on the same plane (whatever that means; what other planes are there?) have to do with it?