Juan:It seems to me that Morality can't be reduced to religion, but I think it can't be deduced from reason either.
What do you mean deduced from reason?
Aristotelians are not Kantians. We don't deduce morality from reason as if it were an axiom and the moral concepts and oughts emerge fully formed like Athena from the brow of Zeus as its implications are unfolded.
Yours in liberty,Geoffrey Allan Plauché, Ph.D.Adjunct Instructor, Buena Vista UniversityWebmaster, LibertarianStandard.comFounder / Executive Editor, Prometheusreview.com
gplauche: 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.
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.
In the same writting, Rothbard also argued that socialism is a confused middle of the road doctrine that advocates statist or conservative means in the name of obtaining liberal goals. He argued that the libertarian is mistaken in assuming that they are at an "extreme right-wing" pole of the political spectrum because such a spectrum is the result of a skewage that has taken place. He made it quite clear that there has been an ideological disorientation within libertarianism that has spread libertarians across "the left" and "the right" according to temperment. As the old libertarian left abandoned its former positions and moved towards state-socialism, the libertarians were forced into a pragmatic choice between going towards state-socialism or allying with their former enemies: the conservatives. Contemporary libertarianism's kinship with "the right" is thus the result of confusion and pragmatism.
Geoffrey: Juan: It seems to me that Morality can't be reduced to religion, but I think it can't be deduced from reason either. What do you mean deduced from reason?
Juan: It seems to me that Morality can't be reduced to religion, but I think it can't be deduced from reason either.
Aristotelians are not Kantians.
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."
Juan: There's an intuitive side to morals, wich is not necesarily religious, or rational. Spencer's "moral sense" for instance ?
Aristotle didn't exclude a certain kind of intuition, the grasping of first principles (which is inductive, not deductive) from reason, but he wouldn't have considered it some ineffable moral sense.
Juan:And I can add that Aristotle was not a libertarian.
He wasn't, but there is a burgeoning tradition of Aristotelian liberatarianism.
Juan:You can come up with a rational moral system, but there's no way you're going to convince people who are not interested in it. There's an intuitive side to morals, wich is not necesarily religious, or rational. Spencer's "moral sense" for instance ?
That's not necessarily the fault of the theory, and every theory (including religious ones) cannot guarantee convincing everyone.
The matter is, whether one can justify their behaviour. Can one justify plundering others? No. They may do it anyway, but they cannot claim to do so in the name of justice or according to rational principles.
Miklos, thanks for bringing Kekes and Burke to my attention.
To be honest, I always had a problem with Rothbard. I like his writings on economics but his writings on political history... they always manage to raise my blood pressure.
First, I have a doubt Classical Liberalism ever existed as a political philosophy. I think it was only a legal philosophy. To classify a school of thought as political philosophy it must attempt to answer the Big Question, the prevalence of evil: why were periods of peace and prosperity in human history but small island in a sea of bloodbath? The Marxists have an answer, LvM has an answer (competing in consumption instead of competing in production, lack of the division of labour), Conservatives have an answer (evil is a part of human nature), I think Classical Liberals did not have an answer.
Classical Liberals put the emphasis on the freedom of individual decision making, autonomy. This almost automatically leads to Socialism. Because if individual freedom is supposed to solve or at least dampen the prevalence of evil, the only logical reason why it can do so is to assume that people are rational and good and therefore they do not commit evil as a free, autonomous choice i.e. if one commits evil someone else, society, circumstances etc. are responsible. From it follows that evil can be solved by throwing generous welfare on people etc. etc. Or in other words, the logical conclusion is Marx's "one's circumstances determine one's consciousness" and then basically what you get is socialist reform or revolution. This is why Classical Liberalism was an ideology of Socialism - every kind of Left ideology is rooted in that most immoral idea ever conceived: that the individual is not always responsible for his actions. This idea is the most important and definitive idea of every kind of Leftism.
Therefore a correctly understood Libertarianism has nothing to do with Classical Liberalism i.e. individual freedom. Libertarianism correctly understood is based on a taboo, not on a freedom: one is not allowed to violate the property rights of others under no circumstances. (A democratic State is just a proxy people use to f**k with the property rights of each other, in a democracy, it is the voter who is responsible for everything the State does.) This taboo requires the supression of evil (i.e. protection, defense) - whether governmental or private suppression is just a technical, not philosophical question, the important point is suppression of evil. It also requires punishment, as you probably don't want a system where the criminal is free to try to attack again and again until he succeeds, again, the technical details are not so important. But if you agree that suppression (defense) and punishment are the only or at least the most useful ways to counter evil, you must agree that people have free will, that they sometimes choose evil autonomously, consciously, freely. And if you agree to that your philosophical allies are on the Right, not only those almost-minarchists like Burke, but even the oldschool, semi-feudal Right like De Maistre as they always emphasised individual responsibility.
Miklos,
I don't think your historical depiction of classical liberalism and socialism is accurate.
It also strikes me as incoherent and tendentious. You assert that the criterion for political philosophy is whether it answers the Big Question: the prevalence of evil. I don't see that as necessarily being the Big Question of political philosophy. Did you get that idea from Kekes? But I think are also mistaken that classical liberalism didn't have an answer to this Big Question.
I read the following essay by Kekes:
Kekes, John. 1998. “The Reflexivity of Evil.” Social Philosophy and Policy Vol. 15, No. 1 (Winter): 216-232.
In this essay he tries to argue that moral responsibility does not depend upon autonomy. I find this notion incoherent.
(See my M.A. thesis in philosophy on the issue of autonomy. I clear up important conceptual confusions in mainstream philosophy over the issues of autonomy and moral responsibility.)
You claim:
Miklos Hollender:Classical Liberals put the emphasis on the freedom of individual decision making, autonomy. This almost automatically leads to Socialism. Because if individual freedom is supposed to solve or at least dampen the prevalence of evil, the only logical reason why it can do so is to assume that people are rational and good and therefore they do not commit evil as a free, autonomous choice i.e. if one commits evil someone else, society, circumstances etc. are responsible. From it follows that evil can be solved by throwing generous welfare on people etc. etc.
Your claim for why classical liberals thought people commit evil here is mistaken and merely asserted. Moreover, Aristotelians liberals have a good explanation for why self-directed people (autonomous in the global sense, see my thesis for important distinctions and Aristotle and Henry Veatch for the aforementioned explanation) can commit evil. The claim you make in the last sentence above is also merely asserted and I argue what you claim follows does not automatically follow at all. Classical liberals and modern libertarians have very good arguments as to why.
But later on you claim:
Miklos Hollender:But if you agree that suppression (defense) and punishment are the only or at least the most useful ways to counter evil, you must agree that people have free will, that they sometimes choose evil autonomously, consciously, freely. And if you agree to that your philosophical allies are on the Right, not only those almost-minarchists like Burke, but even the oldschool, semi-feudal Right like De Maistre as they always emphasised individual responsibility.
So you think people can choose evil freely. Well, so do classical liberals and modern libertarians. Oddly though, Kekes does not believe this.
I think Keke's position is incoherent. Moral responsibility depends upon free will and self-direction (or global autonomy). There is no morality, and there can be no moral agency or actions, without this.
So I don't see the point behind your rejection of libertarianism having to do with individual freedom. I think that a libertarianism that isn't about individual liberty is not a libertarianism at all and your position would seem to lead you inexorably down the road of conservative statism.
Libertarianism has nothing to do with freedom? Classical liberals were state-socialists?
Wow. That's news to me.
Geoffrey,
is it possible you and I mean two largely different groups of people when saying "Classical Liberals"? You are a scholar and therefore you are familiar with a large groups of thinkers, but I'm talking about those thinkers who are fairly well-known outside scholarly circles, who had a great influence the thinking of educated classes. When I say Classical Liberal I mean mostly John Stuart Mill who had a huge influence. To a lesser extent Rousseau and Voltaire too, and also Utilitarians like Bentham. And generally those thousands of journalists who were influenced by them.
Responsibility and autonomy: there are multiple definitons of autonomy. I think your definiton of autonomy is simply being free from coercion and in this sense responsibility depends on autonomy indeed, because when one is not allowed to exercise his free will one cannot take responsibilty for the results. But this isn't what Kekes or I mean under autonomy, neither what Classical Liberals meant. This definition of autonomy is a more psychological one - freedom from external conditioning, like social pressure, traditions etc. This kind of autonomy is not necessary for moral responsiblity because only a man grew up alone in the wilderness would be free from it - which is, actually, not far away from what Rousseau wrote about.
These two kinds of autonomy are mutually exclusive.
If one is free from coercion AND lives in a society i.e. not as a hermit, one will naturally exert non-violent social pressure upon others, one will try to convince others of his views and the more resources he has the success he will have in this, the most useful ways of doing things become traditions and the general mindset, worldview, culture of the most successful members of society will become more or less dominant memes. They will have authority. [1] Thus people generally won't be free from conditioning or influence. This is a natural result of being free from coercion and basically what Kekes or I mean is that this there is nothing wrong with it, one should not try to liberate people from this because the only way to do that is coercion. And it would not succeed even then, it's simply that then the memes of the liberators become dominant. There has always been a strong streak in Classical Liberalism that did not agree with it.
Another problem with Classical Liberalism is the concept of rights (free spech, assembly etc. etc.) but I'll explain that next time.
[1] Authority, lat. auctoritas: non-coercive power. A classical example is the auctoritas of the Senate of Rome: custom and tradition required that state magistrates consult with the Senate and take their advice into account. However the Senate had no coercive power whatsoever to force magistrates to do their bidding.
No - it's rather that if we do think deep enough into it, it's much more plausible to build Libertarianism on the duty to not violate the property of others than any kind of rights or freedoms. Cassical Liberals weren't state socialists but their core idea if again we think deep enough into it, leads there. Another problem was the concept of rights - but that's for next time.
Edit: I replied to Geoffrey too but that post somehow has not appeared yet, but these two did appear. I'm not sure why, I hope it will appear.
I'll answer my riddle: how was an XVIII. century politican who hardly studied any economics able to write a quite convincing defense of the free market? Because it was common knowledge at that time. A few centuries before no one seriously believed intervention can make anyone better off. There was a lot of intervention, of course, but with the aim of raising money for war. Of course that does not make it any more moral, however, that's at least more honest because their intentions weren't disguised into some kind of faux public-good veil and it also means it was easier to challenge, to question it.
Even without having access to economic theory our ancestors got a lot of things righter than the average journalist or intellectual today.
Why?
Here comes Voegelin. He wrote that in the classical/Christian world the first moral virtue was sophia or prudentia i.e. wisdom, knowledge, rational thinking, the understanding of the structure of reality because without that, the rational coordination of means and ends is not possible, so no matter how nice goals one has, he will not reach them.
This is why I think the classical/Christian tradition is interesting, not because of some kind of deity or belief.
However in the Modern worldview the first moral virtue is to consciously misunderstand and misrepresent the structure of reality and to build a dream world with it's own dreamy laws of nature. Thus when the Modern intellectual or journalist urges price controls in times of extreme scarcity, for example, he does it not because he does not understand economic theory. Burke didn't understand it either and yet he was against it. At that time people did not really need economics as much as today because common sense, traditional knowledge had pretty much the same effect. Rather, the Modern intellectual consciously ignores the ways things work because the rational analysis of causes and effects is seen as inhumane, and the humane thing is to build a dream world with different laws of nature, for example where prices are raised by unscrupulous conspirators etc. etc.
Voegelin's point is, if we could just stop building dream worlds we would understand a lot about reality even if we don't study a lot of economics or other theory.
Unfortunately, in conservative ideology this "realism" quickly becomes a mask for either a mere apologia for the status quo or an equally irrationalist romanticization of the past. "That's how it is" and "that's how it always was" becomes a tool of stagnation. Such a conservative attitude brushes off all foreward thinking ideas as utopian, and hence functions to justify whatever the current state of affairs is.
I'm also rather mystified at this outlook that is expressly anti-modernity and romanticizes the past as if it were more knowledgable times. If anything, people had even less of an understanding of the nature of reality centuries and millenia ago and they made up their own dream worlds and supernatural explainations to fill in the gaps that had not yet been provided.
While I would readily concede that modernity has its drawbacks or even regressions, it also is a consequence of some limited degree of progress.
Rothbard's "Ethics of Liberty" builds a moral edifice from reason alone.
"He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper." Edmund Burke
When I hear the term "classical liberal" the names that pop into my mind are along the lines of Herbert Spencer and Frederic Bastiat. Not Rousseau.
Miklos: If one is free from coercion AND lives in a society i.e. not as a hermit, one will naturally exert non-violent social pressure upon others, one will try to convince others of his views and the more resources he has the success he will have in this, the most useful ways of doing things become traditions and the general mindset, worldview, culture of the most successful members of society will become more or less dominant memes. They will have authority.
I thought Miklos defined authority sufficiently well to evade such a response. Whilst I disagree with him on his interpretation of classical liberalism, I think he does make a good point that we should be careful to just what extent we emphasize the notion of autonomy, for if we take it far enough to mean being free from the facts of reality, as many socialists do, libertarianism will come off as inadequate for its very aim. But then again, few classical liberals make this error.
I thought Miklos defined authority sufficiently well to evade such a response.
I'm not familiar enough with that period of history to say. What I do know is that authority (as in non-coercive power) will continue to exist even after the state is gone. Ostracism and the like depend on it. You may not want to call it authority; fine, but it in effect amounts to what Miklos spoke of.
In my understanding, authority must face a burden of proof (I.E. ethics), since it is authority making the positive claim. If it does not pass the burden of proof then it is not legitimate.
I am insisting nothing of the sort. You read too much into what I say, and I am not sure why you are so contrary in general. Rome was far more complicated as an entity than to say it can be reduced into a militaristic, slave-holding society. It underwent many different changes throughout its long existence. At some point in time the senate might've possessed authority of the sort Miklos outlined - I am not familiar with Roman history, hence I refuse to pronounce judgement over a period of history I know little about.
Moreover, Miklos made it clear in what sense he was using the term. What is the point of semantic quibbles? You never disputed his contention that that was the original meaning of the term.
Bogdan: Glenn Hughes, Eric Voegelin and Christianity, October 1, 2004 http://www.heartland.org/pdf/16499.pdf
Glenn Hughes, Eric Voegelin and Christianity, October 1, 2004
http://www.heartland.org/pdf/16499.pdf
I think they removed that file - Do you know of any other link to it?