THE
FOUNDATIONS
OF
MORALITY

THE
FOUNDATIONS
OF
MORALITY

by  HENRY HAZLITT

The Foundation for Economic Education
Irvington-on-Hudson, New York 10533

Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993)

To preach morality is easy,

to give it a foundation is hard.

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

It would be enormously presumptuous for any writer, in a subject that has engaged the earnest attention of the world’s greatest minds over twenty-five centuries, to claim very much originality. Such a claim would, moreover, probably be more presumptuous in ethics than in any other subject; for as I point out in my Introduction, any ethical system that proposed a “transvaluation of all (traditional) values” would be almost certainly wrong.

I wish to express my gratitude to the Institute for Humane Studies for making this new edition possible.

No changes have been made from the original edition of 1964 except to correct a few typographical errors. This does not mean that my ideas on ethics have undergone no change whatever in the last nine years, but simply that these have not been important enough to justify rewriting and resetting.

The following publishers have kindly allowed me to quote from the works mentioned: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., The Measure of Man, by Joseph Wood Krutch; The Clarendon Press at Oxford, The Law of Nations, by J. L. Brierly; Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd. of London, The Common Sense of Political Economy, by Philip H. Wicksteed; Simon and Schuster, Inc. Human Nature in Ethics and Politics, by Bertrand Russell; The University of Chicago Press, The Constitution of Liberty, by F. A. Hayek; and the Yale University Press, Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises.

Preface

chapter

  1.   Introduction

  2.   The Mystery of Morals

  3.   The Moral Criterion

  4.   Pleasure as the End

  5.   Satisfaction and Happiness

  6.   Social Cooperation

  7.   Long Run vs. Short Run