The Influence and Significance of Human Action after 75 Years

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Ludwig von Mises’s Epicurean Ethics

DAVID GORDON

These days, Stoicism is very fashionable, and popular books on this subject are easy to find. Ludwig von Mises draws from a different tradition of Greek ethics, Epicureanism. Mises sees in Epicurus, a Greek philosopher who lived from 341 to 270 BC, the beginning of an approach to ethics that he took to be correct. In what follows, I won’t be concentrating on the details of Epicurus’s views but rather on some points that Mises takes from him.

Mises maintains that there are two ways of looking at ethics: one is that ethics is about how each person can satisfy his personal preferences, and the other is that there is an objective law that dictates what people ought to do. Mises places almost all ethical systems except for utilitarianism, which he sometimes calls “Eudaemonism,” in the latter camp. These systems include natural law ethics, divine command ethics, and Kantian ethics. Natural law ethics says that human beings have a certain nature or essence that dictates what they ought to do. Divine command ethics says that God dictates rules that people are required to follow. Kantian ethics says that just through pure reason, we can know that there are moral imperatives—that is, things you are required to do. Here is a passage from Mises’s book Socialism:

Of course one cannot discuss this point with the ethical a prioriist or the intuitionist. Those who uphold the Moral as ultimate fact, and who rule out scientific examination of its elements by referring to a transcendental origin, will never be able to agree with those who are dragging down the concept of Right into the dust of scientific analysis. Ethical ideas of duty and conscience demand nothing less than the blindest submission. A priori ethics, claiming unconditional validity for its norms, approaches all earthly relations from the outside and aims at transmuting them into its own form with no concern whatever for the consequences. Fiat iustitia, pereat mundus is its motto, and it is when it becomes honestly indignant about the eternally misunderstood plea, “the end justifies the means,” that it is most sincere.(Mises 1951, 396–97; emphasis in original)

Here is another passage in which Mises contrasts an ethics based on satisfying one’s preferences with an ethics of duty. This is from Epistemological Problems of Economics:

The most troublesome misunderstandings with which the history of philosophical thought has been plagued concern the terms “pleasure” and “pain.” These misconceptions have been carried over into the literature of sociology and economics and have caused harm there too.

Before the introduction of this pair of concepts, ethics was a doctrine of what ought to be. It sought to establish the goals that man should adopt. The realization that man seeks satisfaction by acts both of commission and of omission opened the only path that can lead to a science of human action. If Epicurus sees in αταραξια [ataraxia] the final goal of action, we can behold in it, if we wish, the state of complete satisfaction and freedom from desire at which human action aims without ever being able to attain it. Crude materialistic thinking seeks to circumscribe it in visions of Paradise and Cockaigne. Whether this construction may, in fact, be placed on Epicurus’ words remains, of course, uncertain, in view of the paucity of what has been handed down of his writings. (Mises 2003, 159–60)

To understand Mises’s position on ethics, it is essential to bear in mind that he is a psychological hedonist. He thinks everyone is always motivated by pleasure and pain, a view that comes straight from Epicurus. We seek pleasure and avoid pain. You might object that this is obviously false. Don’t we do things very frequently like go on restrictive diets, exercise, study subjects that aren’t fun, and so on? How can Mises then claim that we are always motivated by pleasure? Mises’s answer is that even though we are motivated by pleasure and pain, it doesn’t follow that we are motivated by what will give us the most pleasure, or the least pain, at a given moment. We can be motivated by our wish for the most pleasure, or the least pain, over a long period of time. Doing things that are unpleasant now can bring us more pleasure in the long run.

Another point essential to understanding Mises is that when he talks about “pleasure” and “pain,” this isn’t confined to physical sensations. Mises is talking about whatever we prefer and whatever we are averse to. We aim to satisfy our preferences and to remove “felt uneasiness.” In Human Action, Mises (1998, 13–14) says:

We call contentment or satisfaction that state of a human being which does not and cannot result in any action. Acting man is eager to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory. His mind imagines conditions which suit him better, and his action aims at bringing about this desired state. The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness. A man perfectly content with the state of his affairs would have no incentive to change things. He would have neither wishes nor desires; he would be perfectly happy. He would not act; he would simply live free from care.

If we are motivated by our long-term pleasure, Mises goes on to say, we need to cooperate with other people. We can greatly improve our chances of survival, and thus of having more pleasure in the long run, if we do this. In this way, we can vastly increase our productivity through the division of labor. Mises (1951, 432) puts the point in this way:

For liberal social theory proves that each single man sees in all others, first of all, only means to the realization of his purposes, while he himself is to all others a means to the realization of their purposes; that finally, by this reciprocal action, in which each is simultaneously means and end, the highest aim of social life is attained—the achievement of a better existence for everyone. As society is only possible if everyone, while living his own life, at the same time helps others to live, if every individual is simultaneously means and end; if each individual’s well-being is simultaneously the condition necessary to the well-being of the others, it is evident that the contrast between I and thou, means and end, automatically is overcome.

This issue of pleasure versus duty was a main source of contention between the Epicureans and the Stoics, with the Epicureans arguing for pleasure and the Stoics for survival. In most cases, the two types of ethics will come up with similar practical advice. Why, then, does Mises emphasize the differences between the Stoics and the Epicureans?

The answer is that Mises thinks that the survival view leads to the position that there is an objective law of nature that tells people they ought to aim at their own survival. This is in fact what the Stoics believed: people ought to do their duty and act in accord with virtue, because this is in accord with a law of nature. This is just what Mises denies. According to him, all laws of nature are just descriptions of how nature operates. They don’t say that it’s good that nature act that way, or that it ought morally to do so. Nature doesn’t have goals or ends; it just is. As will be apparent, this is an anti-Aristotelian position.

Reason can’t tell you what you ought to want, but it has an instrumental role to play. It can tell people, “If you want to get the most long-run pleasure, you ought to support social cooperation in the free market.” But doesn’t this just reintroduce “ought,” in this case as part of a hypothetical? If Mises rules out laws about what people ought to do, is he guilty of just the error he condemns?

I do not think that he is. We can simply reword the hypothetical to read, “Social cooperation through the free market increases everyone’s long-run pleasure.” In that way, the strict separation between descriptive and normative judgments is preserved. When Mises says that the free market works better than alternative systems, then, he is making a strictly scientific statement, not a subjective “value judgment.” He says in Liberalism:

Liberalism is derived from the pure sciences of economics and sociology, which make no value judgments within their own spheres and say nothing about what ought to be or about what is good and what is bad, but, on the contrary, only ascertain what is and how it comes to be. When these sciences show us that of all the conceivable alternative ways of organizing society only one, viz., the system based on private ownership of the means of production, is capable of being realized, because all other conceivable systems of social organization are unworkable, there is absolutely nothing in this that can justify the designation “optimistic.” That capitalism is practicable and workable is a conclusion that has nothing to do with optimism.

To be sure, the opponents of liberalism are of the opinion that this society is very bad. As far as this assertion contains a value judgment, it is naturally not open to any discussion that intends to go beyond highly subjective and therefore unscientific opinions. As far, however, as it is founded on an incorrect understanding of what takes place within the capitalist system, economics and sociology can rectify it. This too is not optimism. Entirely aside from everything else, even the discovery of a great many deficiencies in the capitalist system would not have the slightest significance for the problems of social policy as long as it has not been shown, not that a different social system would be better, but that it would be capable of being realized at all. But this has not been done. Science has succeeded in showing that every system of social organization that could be conceived as a substitute for the capitalist system is self-contradictory and unavailing, so that it could not bring about the results aimed at by its proponents. (Mises 1985, 88–89)

We can now identify the last step in Mises’s argument. This is that almost everyone does in fact want an abundance of material goods for a long period of time. People who don’t have this preference will tend to die out. Thus, the judgment “the free market will best satisfy the preferences of almost everybody” is not a normative statement—in his view a subjective judgment—but an objective truth. To understand what Mises is saying, we should look at two passages in Human Action.

On the one hand, he says that if people don’t want a life in which they are seeking well-being but prefer a vegetative life, this is an ultimate value judgment; and praxeology, which is a value-free science, can say nothing against this:

Some philosophies advise men to seek as the ultimate end of conduct the complete renunciation of any action. They look upon life as an absolute evil full of pain, suffering, and anguish, and apodictically deny that any purposeful human effort can render it tolerable. Happiness can be attained only by complete extinction of consciousness, volition, and life. The only way toward bliss and salvation is to become perfectly passive, indifferent, and inert like the plants. The sovereign good is the abandonment of thinking and acting.

Such is the essence of the teachings of various Indian philosophies, especially of Buddhism, and of Schopenhauer. Praxeology does not comment upon them. It is neutral with regard to all judgments of value and the choice of ultimate ends. Its task is not to approve or to disapprove, but to describe what is. (Mises 1998, 28–29)

On the other hand, he says that almost no one is an ascetic:

Asceticism teaches that the only means open to man for removing pain and for attaining complete quietude, contentment, and happiness is to turn away from earthly concerns and to live without bothering about worldly things. There is no salvation other than to renounce striving after material well-being, to endure submissively the adversities of the earthly pilgrimage and to dedicate oneself exclusively to the preparation for eternal bliss. However, the number of those who consistently and unswervingly comply with the principles of asceticism is so small that it is not easy to instance more than a few names. It seems that the complete passivity advocated by asceticism is contrary to nature. The enticement of life triumphs. The ascetic principles have been adulterated. Even the most saintly hermits made concessions to life and earthly concerns which did not agree with their rigid principles. But as soon as a man takes into account any earthly concerns, and substitutes for purely vegetative ideals an acknowledgment of worldly things, however conditioned and incompatible with the rest of his professed doctrine, he bridges over the gulf which separated him from those who say yes to the striving after earthly ends. Then he has something in common with everyone else. (178–79)

Thus we see how Mises tries to remain within the strict limits of science when he says that the free market enables human beings to get what they want.

I’d like to mention a final objection one might raise to Mises’s position about ethics. When he says, commenting on asceticism, that “the enticement of life triumphs,” isn’t he saying that it’s part of human nature to want to live? In that case, isn’t he a supporter of natural law, despite his repeated opposition to natural law theories of ethics? Once again, he can escape the objection. Mises is not saying that people ought to act in accord with the life instinct but that they in fact do so. He is not making an ultimate “ought” judgment but keeping within the bounds of science.

In conclusion, I have tried to show that Mises has a well-developed conception of ethics that merits our careful attention. That is a normative judgment of my own but, because I don’t think that all normative judgments are subjective, a judgment that I claim is objectively true.

References

Austin, Emily A. 2023. Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mises, Ludwig von. 1951. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. Translated by J. Kahane. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. https://mises.org/library/book/socialism-economic-and-sociological-analysis.

———. 1985. Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition. Translated by Ralph Raico. Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for Economic Education. https://cdn.mises.org/Liberalism%20In%20the%20Classical%20Tradition_3.pdf.

———. 1998. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Scholar’s ed. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute. https://mises.org/library/book/human-action.

———. 2003. Epistemological Problems of Economics. Translated by George Reisman. 3rd ed. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute. https://mises.org/library/book/epistemological-problems-economics.

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A good source for the ethics of Epicurus, written for a popular audience but in command of the latest scholarship, is Austin (2023).

Fiat justitia, pereat mundus is a Latin maxim that means that justice must be done, regardless of consequences. It is the antithesis of Mises’s approach, in which consequences are all that matter, once an ultimate end has been specified. The plea “the end justifies the means” is “eternally misunderstood” because it suggests that one can do evil so long as one’s goal is good, but its true meaning is that the means to an end derive their value from the end, as explained below.

Ataraxia refers to a final state of rest in which people no longer have unsatisfied desires.