Man, Economy, and Liberty

14

Freedom and Virtue Revisited

Douglas J. Den Uyl

Q: How many Libertarians does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: None. The free market will do it.

For me it is both a pleasure and an honor to be associated with this volume of essays paying tribute to Murray Rothbard. I was introduced, figuratively and literally, to Professor Rothbard by some businessmen in Milwaukee who were reading Man, Economy, and the State at an economics discussion group. Later that same year, Professor Rothbard spoke to the Wisconsin Forum where I met him for the first time in person. The meeting came at a time when I was getting over the fact that Ayn Rand was not God. Since Rothbard was persona non grata with the Randians, I expected to meet a man I would not like. Instead, I found a warm, human and humorous man whose personality I found engaging. It was only a matter of time before I developed an affection for him.

My willingness to pay tribute to Murray Rothbard goes deeper than personal affection. In the first place his passion for liberty is infectious. My spirits with respect to the prospects and case for liberty have been lifted more than once by reading Rothbard. Secondly, his intellect is penetrating. I have learned from him. But most important from my point of view is the fact that Rothbard and I come at the defense of liberty from the same Aristotelian or teleological eudaimonistic framework.1 He is thus not only a friend and mentor, but an intellectual partner.

I wish to pay tribute to Professor Rothbard by discussing some themes and issues related to the topic of liberty and virtue. We have both published essays on this topic. In my own case, I wrote a piece entitled “Freedom and Virtue” some years ago, a revised version of which was later reprinted.2 With respect to Rothbard, I shall focus upon one of his perhaps lesser known recent articles entitled, “Frank S. Meyer: The Fusionist as Libertarian Manque.”3 The topic of the connection, if any, between liberty (or freedom) and virtue interests me greatly; but forums for exploring it are rare, because in today’s world one is compelled to spend time just defending the legitimacy of liberty alone.

Some Preliminary Observations

In my own piece on freedom and virtue, I argue that coercion is necessarily destructive of moral agency and that moral agency must be present for virtue to be present. I take moral agency to refer neither to “intention” alone (e.g., the supposed immorality of Jimmy Carter’s “lusting in his heart”), nor simply to the behavior or “action” of the agent. As Aristotle understood,4 moral agency involves both elements linked together by the purpose of the agent. Coercion obliterates one or both elements of moral agency (not to mention the link between them). It can force a behavior that is “good,” but at the expense of the presence of a good intention. It can effectively destroy intention altogether (whether good or bad) by forcing actions (either good or bad) which are performed simply because they are forced and for no other reason. Finally, by severing the connection between intention and action, coercion can encourage good intentions which result in evil (i.e., harmful) actions. This last point is so because the separation tends to create the illusion that the manner in which the action is undertaken (e.g., coercively) is not a factor in determining the moral character of the action.5 Thus, if the intention is “sincere” “heartfelt” “compassionate” or whatever, that is enough to qualify it as “good.” The means by which the intention is fulfilled becomes a practical, not a moral matter.

Since coercion destroys moral agency, a necessary condition for virtue is freedom (or liberty). The social side of my argument, therefore, was that for a “society” to be virtuous, it must also be free. This, of course, does not say that freedom is a sufficient condition for virtue. It is not. But whatever further sufficient conditions there may be for attaining virtue, they cannot come at the expense of the necessary condition. This implies that although a free society cannot be totally immoral (because basic rights are respected), it may be a society whose citizens adhere to a minimalist (i.e., simply rights respecting) form of virtue. Higher levels of moral excellence could be ignored. This thesis raises questions that I do not address in my previous article, and shall only partially address here. The main question, of course, is whether the free society has much of a prospect of going beyond a minimalist morality. This question is uninteresting to those libertarians who are either moral skeptics or moral minimalists,6 but within an Aristotelian framework the question is real, because social and political life is taken to be a component in the development of moral perfection for Aristotle.

The Rothbard article comes at the question of freedom and virtue from a different perspective. In the first place, the main thesis of that article was that Frank Meyer was, in virtually all essential respects, a libertarian and not a fusionist. In the second place, the article shows that there really is not much common ground between libertarians and conservatives. The connection between freedom and virtue is less the topic than the two theses just mentioned. Nevertheless, six theses about the relationship between freedom and virtue are contained in the Rothbard article.

What follows, therefore, depends first upon the assumption that the basic argument of my first article is correct. In other words, I shall not be offering an additional defense of my original thesis here. Secondly, I shall be ignoring the main themes of Rothbard’s article and focusing instead upon the six underlying theses about freedom and virtue. These six theses will be section topics for what follows. I consider what I say below to be a schematic presentation of issues related to the six theses and not as a definitive treatment. But given the paucity of libertarian literature on this topic, a schematic treatment may be sufficient to encourage further exploration of the relationship between liberty and virtue.

Virtue and the State

The first of the six theses in Rothbard’s essay argues that the state is not an appropriate instrument for promoting virtue. The argument here is similar to my own as I sketched it above. In addition, Rothbard—referring to Hayek’s chapter in The Road to Serfdom “Why the Worst Get on Top”7—shows how those in positions of state power are likely to have precisely the kinds of characters one concerned with virtue would not want to encourage. It hardly seems appropriate, then, to have such people lead a crusade for moral excellence. Yet if we grant Rothbard his point, as we should, who or what remains to encourage the development of moral excellence?

There are two stock libertarian answers to this question: (1) persuasion, and (2) the market. Beginning with the second one, we see here the application of the old joke with which I began this essay. Most people do not see the market as encouraging much of anything with respect to morality, and if we understand the market in a literalist fashion, they are right. For if most people’s desires and goals are base, the market will provide the mechanism for satisfying those desires and goals. Yet advocates of free markets have a deeper insight into what markets do than is offered by the literalist interpretation. As Hayek has shown often enough, the market encourages some not inconsiderable social values—namely, order and cooperation. Furthermore the demands and rigors of the market place tend to encourage numerous virtues such as prudence, honesty, independence, thrift, and diligence. The stock answer, therefore, goes some distance in dispelling the myth that in advocating the market one is not advocating anything morally positive.

But does the stock answer go far enough? It may be the case that the virtues encouraged by the market order are offset by a number of vices. One must be careful here. Some things that are often touted as vices may not be, for example commercialization. Moreover, certain forms of self-destructive behavior might be permitted by the market, but in no way encouraged. Suppose, for the sake of argument only, that taking certain drugs caused in all users the type of irrational addiction depicted on television. A free society would permit such addictions, but it is unlikely that they would be encouraged by market forces. If the actions were truly self-destructive, the costs of engaging in them would be high and thus contrary to the virtues admitted to be encouraged by the market. Yet so as not to appear too ideological, let us remain open to the possibility that maybe there are some vices encouraged by the market. If so, we are nevertheless forced to concede that they must be vices consistent with the virtues admitted to be encouraged by the market.

I believe that finding such vices will not be as easy as first appearances might suggest. The usual list, e.g., lust (pornography leading to sex crimes or the degradation of women), greed, selfishness, materialism, and so on, all seem to be increasing as society’s commitment to the free market is decreasing. If there are aspects of these “vices” that really are vices, it is unclear how the market encourages them. If an individual must bear the costs of these actions him or herself—without a guaranteed income or state supported detoxification centers—what encouragement can there be for such short-sighted hedonic pursuits? In this respect there seems to be a general confusion between what is permitted and what is encouraged. The free society may permit many vices, but it hardly follows from that that it encourages them.

Even if we grant that the free market might encourage some vices that are not counteracted by its virtues, it seems to me that the stronger argument against the second stock response is that the market ignores certain virtues. One virtue often mentioned is charity, but the case here is not compelling. The freest societies have often been the most generous. Indeed our own society seems quite prone to any and all schemes for sharing wealth, and I take this to stem as much from the generosity of the citizens as from the cunning of politicians. The argument here must therefore rest with those virtues that concern moral perfection and not the ordinary virtues that require little more than an appropriate attitude to acquire. These virtues of perfection might include those most often associated with the liberal and fine arts: the development of one’s mind, encouragement of true artistic excellence, the encouragement of friendships based on significant and lasting values, and so on. The market fails to encourage these values, so the argument goes, because the market is a mechanism for catering to the masses of men, and these values stand apart from or go beyond what is ordinary and has mass appeal.

Sometimes the inference is drawn that the market discourages these values by appealing to the lowest common denominator in society. But this inference is false. The free market distributes resources according to their most valued uses. It may be that the bulk of society values goods that have little to do with moral perfection, thus commanding a large share of resources. Other “higher” values, however, are neither ignored nor discouraged. The resources devoted to these higher values are impartially distributed by the market in proportion to their value. If values were to change, so would the distribution of resources. The market does not discourage these values, although its impartiality may do little to encourage them.

The idea that the market ignores certain virtues has been noted by Leo Strauss.8 If we look to the origins of defenses of commercial societies through the eyes of such thinkers as Montesquieu, we find that the market order encourages what Strauss calls the “liberal virtues” at the expense of the “severe and restrictive” virtues. Peace, humanity, comfort, cooperation, and freedom are encouraged by the market order. Courage, self-denial, justice (as opposed to “fairness” or benevolence), and discipline are ignored or discouraged. Let us concede, for the sake of argument, both that the highest levels of moral perfection are not necessarily encouraged by a society grounded in libertarian principles and that such a society may be prone to ignoring the “restrictive virtues.” Would this concession imply that libertarianism ignores virtue? I think not. In the first place, it is a complete non sequitur to suppose that corrective action on the part of the state is required if we made this concession. It may, for example, be the case that the link between virtue and the state is the real problem here, and not the degree to which virtues are or are not present in society. Indeed, I would argue that it is precisely the collectivist perspective on virtue—required when one thinks of virtue in terms of state action—that destroys moral perfection. Even if the coercive methods of the state were not at issue, the collectivist understanding of virtue would be.9 It makes little difference whether the virtues in question are “liberal” or “restrictive.”10 What is latent within libertarian social theory is the idea that virtue is not a collective phenomenon at all. But to grasp this point we must look at the remaining themes discussed in our other sections.

With respect to the first stock response, persuasion, little needs to be said. Persuasion is the means we must use to achieve our end (virtue). As an answer to our question, however, persuasion tells us nothing about whether anyone in a free society is likely to undertake the effort to persuade others. Yet if Aristotle is correct in believing us to be social animals, it would seem that our very sociality would serve to encourage concern for the actions of others. And clearly such concern is manifest in both free and unfree societies—a person’s actions are constantly being evaluated by neighbors, peers, colleagues, superiors, and others. The difference, then, is that in a society where only persuasion is allowed as a means for altering behavior, we might predict an increase in that technique over one where subtle and not-so-subtle forms of coercion are also permitted.

Liberty, Politics and Ethics

Rothbard’s second argument is that libertarianism is a political philosophy and not an ethical doctrine. Elsewhere in the same volume in which Rothbard’s essay appears, Tibor Machan takes a similar position. While Rothbard and Machan may both believe that the only plausible defense of liberty can be given from a particular moral theory, libertarianism may be, and has been, defended from a variety of moral perspectives. Advocating libertarianism as a social doctrine in no way implies that one is advocating that individuals become libertines. This point is effective in defusing the conservative’s tendency to equate the libertarian with the libertine. It is also used by Rothbard (and Machan) to show that there is no necessary incompatibility between libertarianism and a concern for virtue. If we accept this argument (as we must), a difficulty arises. If there is no necessary incompatibility between libertarianism and a concern for virtue, then there would appear to be no necessary compatibility either. For since libertarianism as a strictly political doctrine is logically distinct from moral theories which may be concerned with virtue, it seems difficult to draw anything more than a contingent connection between liberty and virtue. Indeed, libertarianism would seem to be best characterized as indifferent to virtue.

The claim about the indifference of libertarianism to virtue ignores my argument that virtue and coercion cannot be connected to each other. Therefore, the relationship between the two is not as contingent as first appearances might suggest. But my argument only presents a necessary or formal connection, not a substantive one. To make the substantive case we need to say something more about the fallacious belief that if something is not directly advocated by a political doctrine, that doctrine must therefore be indifferent to it. I shall refer to this fallacy as the “fallacy of advocacy.” In general the fallacy of advocacy is committed when one assumes that there is a necessary connection between what people say is, will be, or ought to be the case and what actually is, will be, or ought to be the case. Economists, for example, have long known that what people say they believe in or will do has little bearing on how they actually behave. And in political theory, if a doctrine has no explicit provision for state supported welfare it does not follow that believers in that doctrine have no concern or compassion for the poor. Indeed, precisely the opposite might be true—that is, it may be that concern for the poor is precisely what attracts a person to that political theory in the first place.11

The version of the fallacy of advocacy we are dealing with here is the negative side of the fallacy. The failure of libertarianism to explicitly include a place for virtue as a principle of its political conclusions does not, in other words, give one grounds for claiming that libertarianism is indifferent to the issue. One would have to show in addition that there are features of libertarianism which are incompatible with a substantive concern for virtue. Oddly enough it is the very feature of libertarianism that allows it to be advocated from different moral perspectives (and even moral skepticism) that links the political doctrine to a substantive conception of the nature of virtue. To understand this, one must keep in mind that virtue is something that must be achieved and can thus be lost. If we recognize that the achievement of virtue implies the possibility of vice, we must also recognize that the same soil which nurtures the flower of virtue may also nurture the weed of vice.

The tenuous and contingent character of virtue is correlated to a central component of libertarianism—individualism. Values are pursued, gained, and lost by individuals, and it is only individuals that can have values, not collectivities. Virtue, being the pursuit or possession of good values, must also be achievable only by individuals. The individualist perspective may be arguable, but it does constitute a core component of libertarian political theory. And if virtue (again arguably) must be understood along individualist lines, collective efforts to secure virtue would constitute a virtual contradiction in terms. Virtue is solely and exclusively an achievement of individuals. Collective action, if it can do anything at all, can only lay the foundation for the achievement of virtue.

For the libertarian that foundation is the protection of individual rights. Efforts to go beyond that foundation by collectively prescribing appropriate courses of action may achieve conformity of behavior, but not virtue. Virtuous actions are willed for their own sake by the agent undertaking them. Appropriate behavior without the corresponding understanding and will of the individual agent is not sufficient for producing virtue. Thus even if the state, per impossible, could non-coercively direct or encourage appropriate forms of behavior, there would still be no virtue because of the missing intentional component on the part of the individual agent. That intentional component must be supplied by the individual agent himself.

If the Strausseans are correct and modernity is at least partly characterized by the belief that state efforts to secure and promote virtue along the lines advocated by Plato and Aristotle were failures, then libertarianism must here side with modernity. What I have been arguing is that it is not just the coercive techniques of state action that are incompatible with virtue, but also the collectivist presupposition that stands behind those techniques. Just as economic prosperity cannot be achieved on collectivist principles, so also must collectivism fail with respect to moral prosperity. Conservatives cannot create productive life styles or humane sexuality by wars on drugs and pornography any more than liberals can create compassion and charity by redistribution schemes. All that can be accomplished by such collective efforts is a restriction on the opportunity for vice which simultaneously restricts the opportunity for virtue. In the end such efforts promote not moral excellence, but a drab form of moral mediocrity and conformity.

We are now in a position to realize that the Rothbardian claim that libertarianism is a political doctrine and not necessarily incompatible with a concern for virtue does not imply indifference to virtue. What is implied is that virtue must be understood in light of two libertarian principles—freedom and individualism. If both principles are substantively connected with virtue, then so is libertarianism. This would be true even if libertarianism permits non-rights violating vices. And it would be true even if advocates of libertarianism say they have no interest in virtue but in liberty alone. For what is at issue here is not whether certain virtues are more or less promoted by certain social arrangements, but whether virtue is more properly understood within the context of basic libertarian principles than in other contexts. In the last analysis, then, the debate is not over who cares about virtue, but rather over what constitutes the very nature of virtue. Conservatives, like their leftist enemies, incorporate collectivist premises in their model of virtue. Libertarians reject those premises at the outset.

Virtue and Community

Rothbard’s third argument concerns the relationship between virtue and community. Here Rothbard argues that virtue can be linked to community, but only if a community is understood to be the free and voluntary association of individuals. If the two principles mentioned in the last section—freedom and individualism—are abandoned, then Rothbard would argue that we are not speaking of true human communities. Conceptions of community which hold that the value of the individual is subservient to the collective, or which argue for the organic and metaphysically primary nature of communities over individuals, or which define appropriate roles for individuals in terms of contributions to the collective, all fail to constitute true human communities. There is significant mutuality among persons only when those persons freely associate under mutually agreeable terms. The “human” nature of this significant mutuality is defined by the centrality of choice and judgment. Respect for persons is shown by grounding communities in individual judgment and choice. And since virtue must be achieved by individual judgment and choice, virtue and community are connected by the same conception of personhood.

Little needs to be added to this conception of community, persons, and virtue. Either one finds the perspective attractive or not. I shall not offer a further defense of this perspective, but instead treat an issue that may underlie it. For it seems to me that a certain conception of ethics stands at the core of both the Rothbardian treatment of the relation between individuals, communities and virtue and the apparent belief that libertarian political theory does not emphasize the virtue of community enough. If we can isolate some different approaches to ethics, we can perhaps isolate which approach is most compatible with libertarianism and how that approach may affect the concept of virtue. Consider the following definition of ethics or morality by a noted contemporary moral theorist:

Morality is a set of categorically obligatory requirements for action … that are concerned with furthering the interests … of persons or recipients other than or in addition to the agent or the speaker.12

Moral philosophers today are likely to debate the first part of this definition, viz., whether morality is best thought of in terms of categorical obligations. The last part of the definition would seldom receive comment or disagreement. But it is precisely this last part that is at issue here. Notice that the definition implies that morality is, in the first instance, essentially concerned with standards on how to behave towards others. One might, additionally, consider oneself too, but the self is an addendum to the basic moral enterprise. Now this is certainly an accurate way of conceiving of ethics in the modern era. Yet it is quite incorrect to conclude that the nature of ethics itself is essentially focused upon the other. There is another tradition.

Antiquity (e.g., Plato and Aristotle) seem to take the self as the basic object of ethics, with our behavior towards others being a function of the requirements for self perfection. Unlike the preceding definition, ethics is essentially a theoretical investigation of the principles of self-improvement and only secondarily and derivatively an investigation of interpersonal relations. Let me illustrate this with an example from Plato that I use in my introductory courses in philosophy. Plato defines justice as having one’s soul in proper order.13 I ask my students if this definition means anything to them. They always say no, because they think of justice as being essentially concerned with rules about appropriate behavior towards others. I point out to my students that for Plato how we behave toward others is a function of what we are like inside. Thus the first and primary object of ethics (justice) is self-perfection or the development of character. If our character is properly developed, our actions towards others will be appropriate as well. The same point could be made about Aristotle who devotes an entire Book (Book II) of the Nichomachean Ethics to character development. From Plato’s perspective, no amount of rules on how to behave towards others, however obligatory, can replace the central role of self-perfection. Even the excessive propagation of rules found in Plato’s Laws seem to reflect Plato’s misguided belief that such rules will help in the quest for self-perfection or the development of character, and not because these rules are dictated by a deontic theory of categorical obligation.

Modern philosophy, however, reversed the emphasis. Ethics became primarily concerned with others and only secondarily concerned with self. Morality became thoroughly infused with the social. The two leading ethical theorists of the modern era, Kant and Mill, labor mightily, and probably in vain, to keep some semblance of self-perfection within the scope of their ethical theories. Moreover, the ordinary citizen in the modern world has a difficult time distinguishing ethics and law. There are, nevertheless, some good reasons for the modern position. Antiquity gave a more or less significant role to the state with respect to the development of self—Plato being one of the more extreme examples, but Aristotle is not to be excluded. Modernity discovered that societies organized to promote virtue were dismal failures. Virtue was lacking, especially among those in charge of promoting it; and the value of freedom was often forgotten. It became more plausible to argue that the state was not the appropriate instrument for promoting virtue. The state should instead focus upon interpersonal conflict and freedom—ends it could reasonably accomplish.

The modern position on the state’s ability to secure virtue is, of course, correct, but it carries with it a fatal flaw. Despite the criticism of the state as an inappropriate vehicle for promoting virtue, the modern era never really severed the connection between state and virtue. At best modernity simply lessened the number of kinds of virtues the state could control. One tendency was to associate virtue with interpersonal relations and ignore self-perfection. States and communities could do little about self-perfection; but since they could observe interpersonal relations, virtue came to be ever increasingly understood in interpersonal terms. Arguments then developed about the degree to which states or communities should control interpersonal relations. Liberalism answered by saying “only to a small degree,” while various forms of statism answered “to a large degree.” Neither answer challenged the proposition that morality is essentially concerned with interpersonal relations.

The other main tendency was moral skepticism and/or relativism. Since states and communities were so unsuccessful in securing virtue, and since vice was everywhere to be found even in the face of efforts to wipe it out, perhaps there are no general principles of virtue (or vice) after all. Perhaps we can say no more about virtue than that, if it has any meaning at all, it must refer to keeping society going by not allowing people to harm one another. This sort of minimalism and/or skepticism is at the heart of much of both classical and modern liberalism.14

The implications of libertarianism in this connection are quite interesting. As a political theory it would agree that the state is not suited to the promotion of virtue. If there is a role for the state, it would rest with the resolution of interpersonal conflict and the maintenance of liberty. Yet insofar as libertarianism is not understood in terms of the skepticism and relativism that are so much a part of the traditional defense of liberalism, the individualism of libertarianism may render its political theory most compatible with the conception of ethics found in antiquity. In short, libertarianism can be understood as a modern political theory based upon a classical moral perspective.

All that remains, then, is the question of the role of virtue with respect to community (as opposed to state). If libertarianism understands community in the way described at the beginning of this section, then it must also be the case that virtue is not a communal concept but an individualist concept. This means that virtue is not a phenomenon achieved by or descriptive of communities, but rather it is an achievement of individuals. The role of community is secondary. It serves to make possible the achievement of self-perfection. In this sense communities serve individuals, not individuals communities. In answer to our opening question, therefore, libertarianism does not stress the virtues of community because communities do not have virtues. Individuals may achieve virtues that concern relations with others, and the environment of one’s community may be more or less conducive to virtue; but the point of emphasis is the individual, not the community. It is for this reason that the explicit focus of libertarianism upon the individual is, given the perspective outlined above, simultaneously a focus upon virtue and community.

Virtue and Reason

Rothbard’s fourth argument concerns Meyer’s attempt to fuse reason and tradition. In an effort to reconcile conservatives and libertarians, Meyer attempted to give equal weight tc che value of reason and tradition. Rothbard counters by arguing that this violates the law of excluded middle. Either reason reigns supreme over tradition or vice versa. One cannot have it both ways, and Rothbard argues for the supremacy of reason over tradition. In other words, traditions are valuable only insofar as they are rational.

Rothbard’s argument is correct so far as it goes, but it raises an issue he does not address and which could place his thesis in jeopardy. Suppose, for example, that what is considered rational is itself a function of tradition, or more broadly, culture. That is to say, reason is itself a product of culture so that there can be no rational perspective beyond one’s culture from which to evaluate that culture. The standards of rationality, in other words, are themselves reflections of the cultural forces surrounding the rational agent. Reason, in some sub-ultimate sense, could still reign supreme over tradition because tradition could be seen as arational cultural forces in need of criticism and evaluation. But in the end, standards of criticism and evaluation would themselves be a function of culture and best understood in historicist fashion.

We need not look to conservatives or various Marxist theorists to find the thesis about reason just mentioned. The position seems to be the one adopted by F. A. Hayek. Hayek argues that we are essentially rule governed creatures whose rules—some of which are not even known but which guide us “tacitly”—are themselves the product of cultural evolution.15 There are no grounds for believing reason escapes or stands outside of these evolutionary forces. In addition, Hayek argues for the extremely limited role of reason. Reason for Hayek is essentially a formal process perhaps best exemplified by logic. Following Hume and Kant, reason has only a limited role to play in human affairs. The limited role of reason translates socially into Hayek’s doctrine of universal and negative rules. Universality, as Kant showed in his moral theory, is a central feature of the nature of reason. Negativity is made plausible by the limited power of reason in the face of evolutionary forces.

But what is to keep the essential components of reason from themselves being swallowed up by culture? In Hayek, as in Hume, I see nothing to prevent this. Here Kant understood the problem better than most. If reason is itself to retain any independence of culture, we must make what Henry Veatch calls a “transcendental turn.”16 Hence Kant locates reason in a noumenal order that remains untouched by the vicissitudes of the phenomenal order, including culture. If the transcendental turn is not made in some way, only two alternatives remain—radical historicity (where what is, is a function of one’s conceptual system and one’s conceptual system is itself the product of culture) or a return to the essential tenets of classical realism. Now the merits of these alternatives are well beyond the scope of this essay. We might, however, bring this outline of approaches closer to home by making one further comment.

Because classical liberalism and libertarianism are so closely allied on many political and social issues, the historical figures libertarians are often most familiar with are also the intellectual fathers of classical liberalism (e.g., Hume). In ethics this means problems tend to be examined from a certain perspective. It is still common among libertarians to see the chief theoretical problem in ethics to be how to derive an “ought” from an “is.” Thus, defenders of natural law (or rights) theory are attacked by their Humean or positivist counterparts for their failure to bridge the gap between “is” and “ought.” How to rationally justify, or even find, any “oughts” in reality is often seen to be the central problem. Unfortunately, this issue is now old fashioned. The problem now is not how to derive “ought” from “is” or find values in a world of facts, but rather whether we can derive “is” from “ought” or discover any facts in a world of values.17 In other words, if the standards of reason itself are essentially culture bound,18 combating radical historicity becomes the main task. And the main thesis of this historicity is that all facets of evaluation (whether in science or ethics) are value laden.

I have obviously not “proven” anything in these remarks. I have sought only to identify a trend—one that thinkers like Hayek are participating in. If I have identified the trend correctly, the task will become one of fending off this radical historicism if, that is, one wishes to defend the rational primacy of liberty. Various efforts to this effect have begun. Among some economists, for example, the strategy has been to adopt a form of essentialism that would embarrass even Plato. We are told that there are certain fixed ends that all human beings possess to the same degree. Economics describes the way people try to pursue that same set of ends under different conditions. What look like different choices based on the premise of a diversity of values are really best described as the economics of trying to pursue the same values under different circumstances.19 Yet another alternative, however, suggests itself. That one is to return to classical realism in all the main philosophical areas of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.20 It is this alternative that Rothbard seems to have adopted.

The Rothbardian thesis that reason stands superior to culture, tradition, or whatever seems predicated upon a philosophy that locates reason at the core of the theory. Modern efforts to abandon classical realism and yet still retain the centrality of reason seem vulnerable to the onslaught of historicism. It is Rothbard’s insight (along with those of Ayn Rand and others) that some fixed values and truths are necessary if liberty is to be defended. While this is my own view as well, my argument here has simply been to suggest that the basic tenets of classical philosophy may deserve the attention Rothbard and others have bestowed upon it.

Liberty, Virtue and Order

Rothbard’s fifth thesis is that liberty, far from creating chaos and disorder, is actually conducive to order itself. This thesis is a mainstay of both liberalism and libertarianism; and as Rothbard himself notes, the thesis has been given added support in recent years by Hayek’s analysis of “spontaneous orders.” Yet assuming the truth of the connection between order and liberty, the question arises as to what, if anything, does order have to do with virtue? To this question the answer must be “very little.”

If virtue is as we have conceived it—that is, achieved by individuals according to teleological eudaimonistic standards of self-perfection—then the value of order must be instrumental at best. What seems evident about conservatives is that order is taken as an end, not a means. However, if we use Aristotle’s simple test for distinguishing ends in themselves from means or intermediate ends, we can see that order is not an end in itself. Aristotle held that something was a final end if it was sought for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else. Can this be said about order? It would seem that order is valuable because of what it makes possible. Order generally signifies peace, and peace allows the productive aspects of human nature to flourish. Order makes planning possible; the security it provides allows for long run plans to be conceived and undertaken. Order provides the kind of stability necessary for social relationships between individuals to be nurtured. But whether one is speaking of peace, planning, or stability, the value of each is a function of what is contributed to human perfection. Order does not seem to be valuable in its own right. Indeed, order is not even a necessary condition for virtue, since at least certain virtues can be, and often are, exhibited in times of disorder and social chaos.

Order tends to nurture virtue by creating those conditions under which virtue is most likely to flourish. But, of course, the kind of order one has will also have a bearing on the promotion of virtue. A free order is conducive to virtue; an imposed order is not. As we have argued here and elsewhere, if there is disorder and conflict present in society, the solution does not come through an imposition of rules of conduct. That is order for the sake of order and is bought at the price of what is a necessary condition for virtue, namely liberty. We must not confuse a favorable environment for the production of virtue with virtue itself.

Our argument implies that order, like virtue itself, must be endogenous rather than exogenous. Exogenous efforts to dictate order through formalized rules of conduct imposed by an instrument like the state (as opposed to procedural principles designed to encourage endogenous forms of cooperation), can actually produce disorder and conflict. It is at this juncture that tradition factors in so importantly. What is traditional is not necessarily virtuous nor rational, but it may be extremely significant with respect to what is orderly. The position is expressed best by James Buchanan.

It is in this context that some of the behavioral changes of the 1960s raise fundamental and disturbing issues for social stability. As noted, individuals have lived, one with another, under the implicit behavioral rules that were respected by all, or nearly all, persons in community. But one of the instruments employed by the participants in the counterculture involved the explicit flaunting of traditional codes of conduct, the direct and open disregard for what had previously been considered to be acceptable standards for elementary “good manners.” This placed stresses on the ordered anarchy that still describes much of ordinary social life in our society, stresses which were evidenced by calls for “law and order,” for formalization and enforcement of rules that were previously nonexistent.21

The increased efforts to solve conflicts through the formalization of all rules of conduct has the effect of generating more conflicts over the rules themselves, of generating bureaucratic institutions to execute and monitor those rules, and of instilling a sense of alienation from the rules on the part of citizens. Buchanan correctly describes the present day situation as “constitutional anarchy”—disorder in the face of numerous rules and regulations.22

Traditions are endogenous rules of order. They cannot be flaunted without jeopardizing the environment most conducive to human perfection. But to say this is simply to recognize the important value of tradition. It in no way compels us to treat tradition and order as virtues or ends in themselves. Tradition and order are valuable because they serve individuals in achieving self-perfection and not because they are objects of self-perfection itself.

Conclusion

In the final section of Rothbard’s paper the issues of elitism and populism are discussed. Conservatives, Rothbard argues, have within their ranks those who favor rule by an elite (e.g., Kirk and Wilhelmsen) and those who are drawn to more populist outlooks (e.g., Wanniski). The various schools of thought within conservatism do not concern us here, but Rothbard goes on to suggest that for libertarians the “masses” are neither inherently good nor inherently bad. This position reflects the individualist character of virtue we have spoken of above. The masses are neither virtuous nor vicious because such terms are not applicable to collectivities.

But the question of the masses raises an old issue in moral and social theory. Is it true, as Aristotle seemed to believe, that there is natural superiority among men? Or is Hobbes more correct in believing that men are by nature equal? The first thesis suggests that virtue is likely to be attained only by the few who, by their superior natures, already have a leg up in the quest for virtue. The second thesis suggests that virtue may be attained by almost anyone who makes the effort. Rothbard argues that libertarians tend more towards the equality position than the elitist one. The reasons for this probably stem from the original reaction of modernity to antiquity. Early liberalism held that “all men are created equal” and possessed equal rights. Antiquity seemed to give additional rights to those few of naturally superior powers and talents.

Yet in light of what we have argued for in this paper, the issue of whether people are equal by nature or unequal is irrelevant. In the first place, equality of basic rights must holds because of the metaethical thesis that natural (or human) rights apply to persons as such. The kind of person one is, whether by nature or nurture, is not a determining factor with respect to natural rights. If we add to the metaethical point our claim about the state not being a suitable instrument for the promotion of virtue, then natural superiority would be relevant only if it had some bearing on the protection of legitimate rights. By the same token, the natural equality of man would only be relevant if it gave a reason to treat all inequalities as aberrations of nature in need of correction. It seems to me that both these positions fail to justify the conclusions commonly drawn from them. Natural superiority is not a necessary precondition for protecting basic rights, and the equality of human nature does not imply that inequality is somehow illegitimate. The first is largely an administrative issue; the protection of rights might be achieved equally well without men and women of superior talent. The second could only be true if equality precluded differences in talent, effort, desire, taste, and so on, which is clearly not the case.

What does seem to be true empirically is that virtue is relatively rare. Perhaps it is the exceptional character of virtue that leads us to regard its qualities as virtuous in the first place. Yet whatever the reason for its rarity, liberty demands that we face squarely the prospect that a society may be peopled with relatively less men and women of virtue than with more. No mechanism—whether it be markets, democracy, progressive socialism, or whatever—can guarantee more rather than less virtue. The modern eras attempt to replace the rule of virtuous men and women with mechanism or “systems” of social order as a means for controlling vice or promoting virtue, no more guarantees virtue than antiquity’s efforts to institute the rule of the wise. Both approaches make the mistake of thinking that virtue is essentially a social problem. Embedded within libertarian social theory is the alternative. Virtue is essentially a problem for individuals. Whether the society in which one lives has more or less virtue is irrelevant to one’s obligation to pursue it.

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I wish to thank Douglas Rasmussen for some helpful suggestions on an early draft of this paper. My understanding of the metaphysical and epistemological issues related to the topic of this paper owes much to his influence.

Notes

1. See, for example, the first two chapters of The Ethics of Liberty (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1982).

2. “Freedom and Virtue,” Reason Papers 5 (1979); reprinted in The Libertarian Reader, edited by Tibor Machan (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982); also reprinted in The Main Debate, edited by Tibor Machan (New York: Random House, 1986).

3. The essay can be found in Freedom and Virtue: the Conservative /Libertarian Debate, edited by George W. Carey (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984).

4. Nichomachean Ethics, book II, chap. 4, 1105a30-35.

5. Douglas Rasmussen has reminded me that the term “moral” here stands not only in opposition to “amoral” but also to “immoral.” Self-directedness, in other words, is not only a necessary condition for an action being moral, but is itself necessarily a constituent of the morally good.

6. “Moral minimalists” being those libertarians who, like their welfare state liberal counterparts, equate morality essentially with rights—there being fewer rights for the libertarian.

7. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944.

8. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1974), p. 300.

9. It is here that a great debt is owed to Ayn Rand’s novels; for she, more than anyone else, has severed the connection between moral perfection and the collectivist premise that had always been tied to it.

10. With regard to the “restrictive virtues,” the promotion of these by the state is usually achieved at the price of the liberal virtues (e.g., Sparta vs. Athens). On the face of it, this would be too high a price to pay. In any case, it is presumably the presence of both types of virtues that we desire.

11. The fallacy cuts both ways, however. Critics of libertarianism might argue that although the doctrine claims to respect individual rights, the society libertarians envision does not in fact do so. We must keep separate the issues of what is the case from what is claimed to be the case, as the next paragraph indicates. The fallacy of advocacy simply argues that saying X (or not) does not make X (or not X) so.

12. Alan Gewirth, Reason and Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 1.

13. Republic, Book IV, 443d-e.

14. The latter sees itself as offering a different interpretation on what it means to be harmed, and not as expanding the state’s role in the direct promotion of morality or virtue.

15. F. A. Hayek, Law; Legislation and Liberty, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), chap. 1.

16. Henry B. Veatch, For an Ontology of Morals (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1971), pp. 49-56.

17. Given the Kantian position that we cannot know things in themselves and that therefore what X is is a function of our conceptual system, the question we face is what conceptual system to adopt? Contemporary philosophers from Quine to Feyerabend to Rorty seem to answer this question in terms of what values we have. But then which value system should we adopt? For a useful discussion of these matters see, Douglas Rasmussen, “Ideology, Objectivity, and Political Theory,” (Paragon Press, 1986). Kant’s own belief that he had discovered a fixed conceptual scheme was, of course, threatened by non-Euclidean geometry.

18. And we find this thesis advanced from diverse sources. See Post-Analytic Philosophy, edited by John Rajchman and Cornel West (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

19. George J. Stigler and Gary S. Becker, “De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum.” The American Economic Review (March 1977).

20. The central tenets of classical realism are: (1) existence exists independently of our awareness of it; (2) we can come to know the nature of existent things; and (3) that ethics is essentially concerned with self-actualization. For some realist perspectives in one or more of these categories see Douglas Rasmussen, “Quine and Aristotelian Essentialism,” The New Scholasticism 58 (Summer 1984): 316-35; David Kelley, The Evidence of the Senses, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986); Henry Veatch, For an Ontonology of Morals, pp. 49-56; David Norton, Personal Destinies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976); Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand (Champaign, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1984), chaps. 1, 4, 8.

21. James Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), p. 20.

22. Ibid., pp. 7, 14.