The Virtue of Liberty

Tibor R. Machan

Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University, Alabama

Reproduced by kind permission of The Foundation for Economic Education,

Irvington-on-Hudson, New York 10533

About the Author:

Smuggled out of Hungary in 1953, Tibor Machan came to the United

States in 1956. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he went on to earn a
bachelor's degree from Claremont McKenna College, a master's degree
from New York University, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University
of California at Santa Barbara.

Professor Machan has taught at numerous colleges and universities in

the United States and abroad, including Franklin College in Lugano,
Switzerland, UC Santa Barbara, and the U.S. Military Academy. He is
currently Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. He has written
and edited several books, among them The Main Debate: Communism
versus Capitalism (Random House, 1987), Individuals and Their Rights
(Open Court, 1989) and Capitalism and Individualism (St. Martin's Press,
1990).

He has contributed to numerous scholarly journals and has written op-ed

pieces for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune,
and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He has been a regular columnist for the
Orange County Register since 1967. Professor Machan is a contributing
editor of The Freeman.

The father of three children, Machan currently resides in Auburn,

Alabama.

Published February 1994

ISBN 0-910614-93-8
Copyright © 1994 by

The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.

Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533

For Mike and Sharon

Acknowledgments
I thank the editors of the Public Affairs Quarterly, and Man, Economy, and Liberty, Essays in
Honor of Murray N. Rothbard for permission to make use in this work of some of the material that
has previously appeared in their publications.

Preface
This book grew out of my Institute for Humane Studies Lectures which I have been giving since
the summer of 1990 throughout Europe- Sweden, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, as
well as in Paris and Aix-en-Provence.

My main objective in these lectures has always been to explain in plain terms- addressed often to
undergraduate and graduate students from around the world for whom English is a novel and not
fully developed language- the ideas underlying classical liberalism. Since there are several
versions of this political viewpoint, the lectures explain these various versions. But I also defend,
as the best of the classical liberal outlook, the natural rights perspective associated primarily with
John Locke and the thinking underlying the political institutions of the United States of America.

A word about the title. "Virtue" is used in it to mean "that which makes for
excellence." Not, however, moral excellence, since liberty, both in its
metaphysical and political senses, is a capacity and precondition of
human life, respectively, not an action guiding principle by which human
beings ought to guide their day to day conduct--except in the sense that
they ought to acknolwedge its role in their lives and the quality of their
political communities. This work, then, examines the merits of (the right
to) political/economic liberty and some of the problems surrounding the
effort to understand those merits.
I have reworked the lectures considerably, and have added discussions that may help in dealing
with certain prominent contemporary social and political issues and controversies. In this effort I
wish to thank Douglas Rasmussen and Mark Turiano for the many hours they spent with me
brainstorming these ideas and considering the numerous objections to them I wanted to anticipate.
I also wish to thank the Department of English at the United States Military Academy- especially
Colonels Peter Stromberg, Anthony Hartle, Paul Christopher, and Captain Ted Westhusing- with
the members of which I had the opportunity, as visiting professor of philosophy during 1992-93, to
air many of these views in a regular faculty seminar during the Spring 1993 term. Comments and
objections by members of the department have helped me, I believe, to clarify some of the issues
covered.

Tibor R. Machan

West Point, New York

 May 1993

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: Varieties of the Freedom Philosophy

I Why Do We Have Rights?

II Liberty and Virtue

III The Right to Private Property

IV Morality, Liberty, and the Market Economy

V Environmentalism Humanized

VI Does the Coercive State Have Moral Standing?

VII Individualism, Naughty and Nice

Endnotes

Index
Introduction: Varieties of the Freedom Philosophy
As the number of those who are concerned to protect, revitalize, and preserve individual liberty
has grown, so have the arguments in support of this effort. From Alcibiades and Lykophron to
Locke, Mill, and Spencer and, finally, to Mises, Hayek, Rand, Rothbard, and others in our time, the
arguments concluding with support for individual liberty have become numerous and varied.

Although this may appear to be good- "variety is the spice of life" and such- there are certain
problems with such pluralism. True enough, the same conclusion can be supported by different
premises. Thus the proposition, for example, that "all cases of theft are wrong" may be justified by
reference to the effects of the theft upon the thief, the victim, the stability of the community, or
God's opinion of the agent, some premises are better than others in that they are more likely to be
true. It is generally a virtue of a theory that it has fewer problems with its premises than do other
theories. And if a theory requires too many speculative premises or even false ones, its
vulnerability is obvious.

In other words, while many arguments are interesting and sometimes helpful for research
purposes, it would probably be best to have one good argument. For those whose defense of
individual liberty is serious, and who respect other people's capacity to appreciate rational inquiry
into human affairs, finding the best case for the classical liberal political order should be a concern.
This does not have anything to do with the right to advance different arguments- of course, anyone
ought to be free to do that. But for the purpose of securing a good case for a position, it may be
useful to have one strong argument rather than many. (The same conclusion, of course, may be
supported, from different premises, but not from contradictory premises, and too often the free
society has been advocated on grounds that are not mutually consistent.)

Following the survey of major liberal or libertarian ideas in recorded

Western thought, it will be possible to begin the discussion of classical
liberalism in a more philosophical vein. Throughout this book I plan to
call on some of the ideas discussed in this introduction, so we should
start with them.

Let me begin with the earliest of hints in the record of Western

philosophy that liberty has been construed as a value. Let us begin way
back in ancient Greece.

Xenophon. In Xenophon's Memorabilia (i, 2, 40-46) we find the young

Alcibiades in a debate with Pericles; here Xenophon records a lengthy
argument in which Alcibiades pushes Pericles into a corner. The idea is
that if law serves to protect against force, then law must not initiate force;
thus any law that does so, is invalid. As Alcibiades puts it, "Isn't it
lawlessness if a tyrant does not use persuasion, but instead enacts
measures and forces the citizens to carry them out?" And he adds,
"Would we, or would we not, call it force when a few in power enact
measures for the people without using persuasion....isn't it force rather
than law if the majority, prevailing over those who have money, make
proposals and do not use persuasion?" This argument is of the reductio
ad absurdum kind and is surely effective as a destroyer of some ideas of
law. Its problem is that it provides no foundation for a better conception.
At most it paves the way for constructive work.
Lykophron. The argument advanced by the sophist Lykophron, whose
case is simply recited by Aristotle in the Politics, amounts to a mere
assertion as to the purpose of law, namely that it is properly "a guarantee
(or guarantor) of mutual rights." It seems, by the context of Aristotle's
discussion, that Lykophron was advancing the idea of a limited
government, assuming, of course, that the rights to be guaranteed were
individual negative rights. But if we keep in mind that only negative rights
can be possessed "mutually," that is, by all people at once, without
conflict, then this assumption is reasonable and we find here a case of
early libertarian political theorizing.

Hippodamus of Miletus. Hippodamus, however, seems to have had more

to say, again, without any record of argument. He believed "that there
were only three kinds of laws concerning which lawsuits should take
place: laws against hubris (violent personal assault), blabe (damage, as
to property), and thanatos (homicide)." I am here repeating the
description offered by Fred D. Miller, Jr., in his highly informative paper
"The State and the Community in Aristotle's Politics" (Reason Papers,
No. 1). Miller discovers the evidence for this early libertarian school of
thought in Aristotle's Politics (b37-39). Clearly Hippodamus is offering a
very restricted scope for government action, one that Aristotle seems to
find too limited.

Christian Theology. Biblical theology alludes to the importance of the

human individual and to the individual's requirement of freedom so as to
aspire to the salvation of his or her everlasting soul. In terms of some
prominent Christian doctrines, one must choose to follow God's will, lest
one earn no credit for behaving properly.
The Middle Ages. Beginning in about the twelfth century we find a serious concern for natural
rights, liberty, and property rights, in such writers as Jean Gerson, William of Ockham and others
(see Brian Tierney's account in "Origins of Natural Rights Language," History of Political Thought,
Vol. 10 [Winter 1989]). Ockham said that property rights are "the power of right reason." This may
well mean that in order for one to be able to successfully exercise moral judgment, one must also
enjoy basic rights, a sphere of moral jurisdiction. Generalized, this view is clearly libertarian- à la
Nozick's doctrine of "moral space." Earlier writers, while they lacked a coherent and developed
natural rights theory, nevertheless made extensive use of the language of natural rights, usually to
indicate spheres of personal or subjective jurisdiction wherein it is morally neutral what the person
might do. (See also Brian Tierney, "Villey, Ockham and the Origin of Individual Rights," T. Witte
and F. S. Alexander, The Weightier Matters of the Law, A Tribute to Harold J. Berman, as well as
other works by the same author investigating the origin of natural rights language, disputing, e.g.,
Alasdair MacIntyre's thesis that such language was invented around the sixteenth century.)

Hobbes. A radical individualism was developed by Thomas Hobbes who,

though an absolute monarchist in his explicit politics, laid some of the
foundations for the homo economicus approach to human social life.
Hobbes saw us all as striving to seek our own self-satisfaction and
thought that this would require the protection of those laws that made
self-satisfactory conduct possible. The only reason he favored a strong
monarchy is that he never learned about public-choice theory and
thought a strong state would best assure peace. Hobbes' psychological
egoism became the cornerstone of the doctrine captured in Bernard
Mandeville's dictum, "private vice, public benefit," whereby the pursuit of
private or selfish objectives could result in the public benefit of
widespread prosperity. This is certainly still one of the most prominent
arguments for liberalism and the free market, especially with reference to
the troubles of Eastern European societies. It is still the crux of the
liberalism advanced by neo-classical economists such as Milton
Friedman and Gary Becker.
Spinoza. Baruch Spinoza didn't quite defend a doctrine of individual rights but did argue that a
good government will provide us with as much liberty as possible- especially the freedom to
express our views.

Locke. The first modern philosopher with a full-blown libertarian political

theory was John Locke. He held that each person is by birth a sovereign
(when he or she reaches adulthood), with no natural rulers or natural
subjects. Government is established to protect individual rights and the
consent of the governed is required to legitimize government and limit its
powers. Locke is also the first major thinker to give a prominent place to
the right to private property as an extension of individual rights and
liberty. In his Two Treatises on Government, Locke built his libertarian
theory on numerous other concepts, or at least claimed to have
borrowed from them. Let us see what argument we find here. Essentially
Locke accepted as an alleged law of nature that each person owns
himself, ergo his labor and whatever this labor touches of as yet
untouched nature. There are some supporting elements to Locke's case
that make it broader: for instance his belief that because nature inclines
man toward seeking happiness, it is a law of nature to do so; and his
assertion that political institutions should protect and preserve what the
law of nature implies for human community life. The natural rights of
Locke are, then, the proper conditions of human social life, the
"libertarian constraints," as Nozick calls them.
Two brief points about this view. The idea that I own myself does not amount to a very clear
position, since it implies that where we find an instance of numerical identity- i.e., I and myself are
the same entity though designated differently for purposes of different grammatical contexts- we
find also a two-term relation- i.e., between me, the owner, and me, that which is owned. While
some rhetorical force may be attributed to saying that I own myself, the point doesn't make sense
from a logical perspective. (It is different when I say that I know myself, since my mind, which
knows, can stand in the relationship of knower to the rest of me, as well as to myself prior to when
it knows.) As to the alternative case Locke offers, resting on some kind of ethical hedonism, this
view is a mixture of plausible and implausible ideas. Locke seems to mean by his phrase "inclines
toward happiness" a psychological fact about us, and he seems to mean by "happiness"
something much closer to "pleasure" than to "self-esteem." If I am right, as the scholarship on
Locke seems to bear out, then we have a false or incomplete basis for natural rights here. In the
one instance Locke is wrong- lots of us aren't inclined toward pleasure; and if we are to take it that
we should pursue pleasure, Locke says nothing about why this is so. So while Locke says many
informative, even brilliant, things about the central libertarian political principles, his support for
them is weak, as was noted by Nozick even as he decided to accept Lockean rights in his
entitlement theory.

Smith. Adam Smith was the first scientific economist, although he himself saw his own work in
moral philosophy, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments as even more important than An Inquiry into
the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, his path breaking book in political economy.
Smith defended the view that there is plenty and stable enough concern on everyone's part with
advancing their own earthly well being that by securing for them all their natural liberty, the
greatest chance would be established for establishing public prosperity. Smith did not stress
individual rights, although something very much akin to a system of individual rights would underlie
his system of free enterprise. Neither was Smith, as many charge, a crass egoist, quite the
contrary- his moral psychology suggested that sympathy arises because of our natural feeling for
others's well being. Furthermore, in his political economic work Smith did not defend individualism
on grounds that everyone is entitled to strive for his or her own good but because such striving
would best secure public wealth. Smith is among those most often targeted as a liberal ideologists,
e.g., by Karl Marx, instead of taken to be defending a political-economic framework he thought
would be genuinely sound for human community life.

Mill. John Stuart Mill argued in On Liberty that government may only
interfere with individual liberty if its exercise harms someone other than
the agent doing the acting. Mill, by no means fully libertarian, maintained
this view on the grounds that in freedom the truth would win out,
creativity would flourish, and, therefore mankind's progress would be
assured. But there is no good reason to count on truth always winning
out in a free debate, since people can turn off their minds at will.
Creativity may indeed flourish, but why is this a good thing? Mill's
answer, that such creativity will secure mankind's progress, is only of
argumentative force if it can be shown that (a) it is true, and (b)
mankind's progress is what we should seek via our political systems. But
it is not even unlikely that some sort of creativity can destroy mankind.
Nor is it clear that mankind itself, since it is not a concrete thing but a
generalization or general term to designate a group, benefits from
anything; only individuals can do so. Indeed, Mill's theory of value is
largely responsible for the birth of the welfare state, since he advocated
that political policy should be geared to securing the greatest (hedonistic)
happiness of the greatest number of people, something that later was
thought to be achievable not by leaving people be (laissez-faire) but by
economic planning. At any rate, Mill's case for liberty rested on the
importance of the collective, so it is not even libertarian in spirit. I am, of
course, speaking of the essentials, not denying that Mill's words give
eloquent expression to some of the ideals of the freedom philosophy.
Spencer. Herbert Spencer, on the other hand, started as an individualist, but his case was fully
deterministic, based on Lamarckian evolutionary theory. He believed that evolution, which governs
all of existence, led toward differentiation- just the opposite of what B. F. Skinner and Marx
believed. And for human beings this means that the highest stage of community life would have to
be laissez-faire capitalism. In his ethics he argued for rational utilitarianism or a version of rational
egoism, but in the end this ethics was no ethics at all. For an ethics to be bona fide- i.e., a genuine
ethical theory- it must be true of it as a minimum that what is said to be right by it people could
choose to do or not to do. But in any determinist theory this is precluded, so determinism, including
evolutionary theory that proposes mechanistic development and motion in human affairs, is
incompatible with ethics or politics. Thus Spencer is unable to argue that we should respect one
another's liberty. (Still, Spencer's discussion of ethics, once we omit the problems with its
foundation, is brilliant.)

Mises. We come now to Ludwig von Mises' freedom philosophy, most

comprehensively presented in his book Human Action. I should note that
Mises was not a fully consistent libertarian. For example, he believed in
conscription and some other statist measures, at least for certain
emergency circumstances. Essentially he defended the free market on
grounds that the achievement of one's goals is far more likely when
people are left free than when they are not. Central planning renders the
market defective in the function of enabling its participants to organize
their lives in line with what they want to do. The price mechanism is
destroyed and information becomes distorted. Mises shows in his book
Socialism that central planning leads to an irrational economic order,
contrary to all those alleged rational planners. But Mises never defends
the view that people ought to be free to do what they want. He believed
that value judgments are subjective, so he could not argue for the value
of liberty. He did seem to believe that since no one else could defend a
denial of the value of liberty, liberty, as a condition for choosing between
alternatives that can have subjective value, should prevail. As all
subjectivist or relativist arguments in support of something, this one is
self-refuting. Indeed, we can see today how many people right and left
denounce the classical liberal stance of value-subjectivity and propose
some of the most detestable notions of what is right and good, simply
because classical liberalism left a vacuum for all sorts of mystics and
statists to fill.
Hayek. F. A. Hayek's approach- which also supports less than a fully libertarian polity, since Hayek
accepts some kind of welfare safety net- is a bit more complicated. Hayek advances his view most
successfully in The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago, 1961), as well as many later
works. Although he learned a lot from Mises, Hayek's views have changed, too. It is not safe to
treat Mises and Hayek as interchangeable. Essentially, however, Hayek argues for liberty on
grounds that central planning leads to suppression of creativity, growth, development, and
progress. Problem- solving proceeds best when the rules of conduct are minimal and
spontaneously generated. One can know only the most general principles of conduct, e.g., the rule
of law; but the more particular these are, the more difficult it is to identify the proper solution to
problems ahead of time. In his semi-Kantian fashion Hayek wishes to accept only general
categories as reliable, leaving all other knowledge for free people to develop in free association
with each other. Hayek is not a purist libertarian and has said that some regulation, some welfare,
some statism in general cannot be ruled out a priori. On the whole, however, he is the libertarian
version of the conservatives' Edmund Burke. As such he does not admit of natural laws or natural
rights, nor of any objective moral standards. He is enamored with the evolutionary and mechanistic
conceptions of science to the extent that he refuses to defend human free will. And he has said
that his defense of liberal political institutions does not rest on, and is incompatible with, an ethical
point of view. Here, too, we find the same faults present in Spencer's case for liberty, although as
in all the thinkers discussed, there are numerous points in Hayek's political and economic theory
that serve to lend strong support to various libertarian analyses of political and social affairs.
Nozick. Robert Nozick's case for the freedom philosophy- advanced in Anarchy, State, and Utopia
(Basic Books, 1974), but abandoned in one of his later books- is based on a so-called
transcendental argument: what principles should we adopt so that our political affairs will make the
best sense? Nozick proposes that by accepting Lockean natural rights as the limits to action, we
will develop a state of nature from which rational and rights-respecting conduct will, by an invisible
hand, generate the limited government form of libertarian political order. He takes Rothbard's
anarchism as a serious challenge and holds that it can be overcome by noting that people are
afraid of arbitrariness, so they will establish a monopolistic defense agency. Once this limited state
exists, nothing can justify enlarging it, except perhaps some instances of repairing past injustices.
Nozick's argument rests on certain methodological assumptions, among them that people will act
to overcome their fears, to abate them by instituting certain procedures, such as government. But
Nozick fails to show that they are right in doing this, that it would not be better for them to refuse to
yield to their fears and remain outside civil society. Rothbard and his students have been attacking
Nozick on this point, as have a number of those who share his views but would ask for greater
scope of government power. Nozick's failure to develop a moral theory on which his Lockean
natural rights might have rested- e.g., rational egoism- has led to the spectacle of a wholesale
intellectual dismissal- left and right- of the first libertarian book to have achieved some modicum of
recognition across the intellectual spectrum. Ordinarily the dismissal of the arguments of a
libertarian could be consigned to prejudice, but here Nozick simply deprives himself of a good
defense.

Friedman. Milton Friedman, a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning economist,

did not provide an extensive philosophical case for liberty in the book
where he plays out his general political position, namely, Capitalism and
Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 1962). As a concerned citizen
and pundit he frequently touches on philosophical issues as he points to
the neglect of liberty across the world. When he does so he tends to
invoke the argument from skepticism and ethical subjectivism. This is not
uncharacteristic of defenses of individual liberty advanced by classical
and neo-classical economists. The argument alleges that no one knows
what is right and wrong, either generally or in the case of some particular
person, institution, policy, and so forth. Therefore nobody should force
anyone to comply with one's own baseless beliefs about right and wrong.
Friedman believes that if we did know right and wrong, and we learned
that we could stop someone doing wrong, we would have an obligation
to stop him. Friedman appears to have a view of virtue as producing
some good, as driving toward some intrinsic good thing, e.g., the
greatest happiness of the greatest number. That would explain why he
believes that knowing that A does something wrong entitles B to stop
him. For that to be true, it would have to be true also that B is obligated
to advance the chances of the realization of some intrinsically good
thing. If the doctrine of moral goodness assumed here is mistaken, then
it does not follow that knowing that A does something wrong requires B
to stop A. A's doing something wrong that does not interfere with B's
doing what he chooses cannot have relevance to B in the way that would
justify interference (defense), not if A's doing wrong is wrong for A, i.e., is
a violation of principle that A should abide by, which means that A should
choose to abide by. B cannot improve A's character, or A himself, by
forcing A to do what A should have chosen to do. But this point is difficult
to make without entering into a lengthy discussion of the difference
between various theories of virtue and goodness. For someone who
believes that all viable ethical theories rest on intrinsicist theories of the
good, it would have to be either that we should all act as paternal leaders
of the fallen, or that we cannot know what is good or how to achieve it.
Yet if so, then there seems to be no reason to advocate liberty either,
since such advocacy assumes that it is good to refrain from doing what
one has no basis for doing, or that it is good to refrain to act from
ignorance. But why is this good? Friedman can have no answer to this
without undermining his own defense of liberty.

Spooner, Stirner, and LeFevre. Some other defenses of liberty might be

mentioned here very briefly. Lysander Spooner, whose ideas so many
libertarians embrace, thought that natural law tells us our moral
responsibilities and the extent of our liberty, but he never demonstrates
this. He assumes a Lockean analysis of personal autonomy, and objects
to contracts made in our name on that ground, but the point strikes home
only within the context of the American political tradition, something we
are not entitled to assume in this discussion. Other anarchists have been
used to give backing to libertarian ideas. For example, Max Stirner is
sometimes cited, because he advocated a subjectivist egoism in terms of
which each person is a unique, unclassifiable entity whose business is to
inject himself into the universe as powerfully as possible. Stirner thinks
that talk of natural rights is spooky, and this is because he construes the
nature or the essence of a human being as something mystical, ideal or
otherwise mythical. But this view begs the question, nor does it make
sense to deny human nature while still talking about what each person,
each individual, everyone, or every ego should do. Who is being
addressed? The paradox is obvious. There is also Robert LeFevre's
case for liberty in terms of which any retaliatory use of force, as in
punishment or defensive injury, is a case of aggression. LeFevre also
denied that any such concept as "justice" makes sense and his views
imply that only the present can be taken care of, only by oneself, with no
possible planning on criminal procedure or authorization of agents to act
in one's behalf. Since this view is without foundation, and since LeFevre
admitted to being a subjectivist about moral principles, his view must be
regarded as a personal testimonial.
Rand. Ayn Rand's case for liberty- presented in her novels and such non-fiction works as The
Virtue of Selfishness (Signet, 1961) and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (Signet, 1964)- derives
from her rational egoism. Since each person should live by striving for happiness or success as a
human being, and since this requires that persons initiate their own conduct in line with their own
judgments, in a social situation it is wrong to prevent anyone from exercising those choices and
decisions that do not prevent others from exercising theirs. Natural rights are the conditions proper
to living a human life among others, and adjudicating disputes that arise among people in terms of
the recognition of these rights will lead to justice. The right to life means that each person should
act by one's own judgment, that none should govern without personal authorization, implicit or
explicit, from those subject to government. Since one is not a disembodied soul but a rational
animal with requirements to be satisfied in regard to both central aspects of one's life, the freedom
of each person in society must imply the freedom to judge and to act. Since to act requires space,
things with which to sustain oneself, etc., the right to liberty implies the right to acquire what nature
places before human beings. The natural right to property means the natural right to take those
actions that will lead one to use and dispose of things in moral security from others (that is, with
moral justification). Granted that not all acts of acquisition are right, still all acts of acquisition that
do not violate others' rights are politically permissible- i.e., they do not authorize anyone to prevent
them. In Rand an entire philosophy underlies the ethics and politics, although Rand herself has
only outlined her objectivism and today a number of people are taking up the task of elaborating
and modifying it. Essentially in Ayn Rand we have the robust philosophical treatment of politics we
find in Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and Kant, something not available from many libertarian sources
today. There is an explicit ethics that provides standards for private conduct and moral evaluation,
and there is a political system in which the liberty of each person to give guidance to his own life is
established as rightful, even if on moral grounds alone such individuals might have to be
condemned. Thus Rand detested pornography, could not stand homosexuality, and had no kind
words to say about current art, yet formulated a most powerful, principled defense of liberty in
terms of which such practices can withstand anyone's alleged authority to ban them.

In my view Rand's position is largely sound. I lament only her bad

manners, occasional thoughtless rush to judgment where her knowledge
did not qualify her, and her unwillingness to give credit for ideas she
learned. Her refusal to enter philosophical debate amidst her complaint
that no one paid her the respect she deserved was also disappointing.
Successful philosophizing is not achieved primarily in novels, nor in self-
published magazines. Unless one makes oneself available to the
inquiring community, one will not be discussed and one's long-term
influence will be correspondingly minimal. Philosophical disputation is
not always pleasant, nor do all those involved in the discussion deserve
to be taken seriously. But to abstain completely is to allow those with
catchy ideas to carry the day, even if their catchiness is not the function
of their soundness and truth but the cleverness and perseverance with
which they have been promulgated.

In these few paragraphs I have tried to outline several roads to the

freedom philosophy. I have not defended a number of my comments,
and much more could be said about these various positions. It may
simply be useful to become aware of the schools of thought that have
given what one values in life some measure of support. One can orient
oneself about how best to make one's own values live longer, acquire
greater strength, and maybe win some major battles, even wars, in the
course of one's lifetime.

I
Why Do We Have Rights?
There is a famous sentence in the U.S. Declaration of Independence which states: "We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
In this chapter I want to reflect upon that remark. I will discuss why we should still believe that
human beings do indeed have these rights, contrary to what many intellectuals argue in our time.

Let us begin by noticing that the statement isn't that these truths are self-evident, only that we hold
them to be self-evident. Now, in any particular context there are a number of facts, claims or
propositions that one can hold to be self-evident. If you go out and play football, soccer, baseball,
or whatever game, you probably hold the law of gravity- that it exists - to be self-evident. Clearly
one doesn't try to prove it right there on the spot but takes it for granted. We can assume that the
Founding Fathers of the American Republic took it for granted that the rights they mentioned exist
and then wanted to build a society based on that. Just because they took them for granted and
held them to be self-evident doesn't mean, however, that we all do or even that we should.

Certainly in the field of political philosophy the proposition that human

beings have individual rights, amongst them life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness or property or any other rights, can't be held to be self-
evident. Such an idea is mostly the product of a great deal of reflection
on ethics, politics, nature, God, human life, and so on.

I will now embark upon a discussion of where this assumption of

individual human rights, or natural rights, comes from in various political
philosophies throughout history.
It is clear that the prominence of the idea of basic or natural rights didn't occur until later in
Western intellectual history, somewhere around the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There
were intimations of such rights in earlier times. As we saw already, there is a passage in Aristotle's
Politics where Aristotle refers to a sophist philosopher named Lykophron, who is proposing that
the only function of law "is mutual guarantee of rights." It is quite clear that Lykophron was about
as close to what is now regarded as classical liberal or libertarian, as one could be, given
discernible conceptual developments in politics at the time. He was basically proposing a very
minimal content to the law. Aristotle opposed this on the grounds that the law ought to encourage
virtue and shouldn't be just a mutual guarantee of rights. Nevertheless, the mere fact of the
existence of that dispute demonstrates clearly enough that the concept of rights, as limitations on
what people- especially governments- may do to one another, had already been present in
Aristotle's times, contrary to what has been proposed by some scholars, such as Alasdair
MacIntyre.1 A good deal of ancient Roman jurisprudence contained concepts that could be most
felicitously explicated today in terms of basic rights that individuals possess. But the issue here is
not the nature of legal or positive rights but the content of political theory. And for that we need to
move several centuries past Aristotle, all the way to William of Ockham, before we can detect the
sort of discussion of rights in any sense of the term similar to how we talk about it now within
liberal political thought. A right in our own political vocabulary tends to designate some area of
exclusive jurisdiction. "Area" doesn't have to be taken literally to mean some land or space- it
concerns here some sphere of jurisdiction. It could involve one's authority concerning the sale of
one's poems or musical compositions, whether one can use the laboratory at a particular
institution, or the use of one's property, one's body or person, and anything else of oneself.

To have a right means, then, to be authorized to exclude others and be

one's own decision-maker about some course of conduct. If I have a
right to the use of a tape recorder or some eyeglasses then I can destroy
them, use them, or give them away or hoard them, or whatever, and no
one is authorized to stop me. In other words I am the one who is in
authority, I am a sovereign.
This is the central sense of the term rights, even in political philosophies
that are not individualistic, nor even natural-rights based. When people
talk about group rights, they mean that if such groups have rights, others
may not deprive them of the authority to do something, to have
something, and so forth. That is about as simple an understanding of
rights and universal as we can get. Rights involve a certain delimitation
of jurisdiction within which a person may decide what to do, and where
no other person may stop him, regardless of whether he decides well or
badly. Now, the concept of natural rights is, of course, more complicated
and is embedded in a broader theory. That theory is an answer to the
question "Where do these rights come from, how do we justify these
rights, how do we show that they exist?" When we talk about natural
individual or human rights, the designation "natural" is really what is
metaethical, that is, of prior concern to the actual content of rights. It
refers to the justification or the source of justification for these rights.

One might have conventional, special, legal, institutional, and potentially

all sorts of other rights. Whenever one designates rights by such an
adjective, one is indicating the source or type of justification that is to be
given for those rights. In the following few passages I will mention some
of the people who have provided various ways in which basic rights
might be justified.

William of Ockham described natural rights as the power of right reason.

It was probably the very first well-publicized indication that to have a right
means to have power or authority to do something and to bar others
from intruding upon oneself as one carries out the action.
The next major proponent of a rights- oriented political philosophy takes a slight detour. Thomas
Hobbes in the sixteenth century developed a theory of natural rights in which having these rights
meant the following: To have a right to do something, the rights possessor exercises certain
natural powers- to do the normal, regular expected thing .

Animals, according to this conceptualization, could have rights, although Hobbes didn't say
anything about animal rights in the context discussed in some circles today. He argued that human
beings had rights in the state of nature. But for him that didn't mean that human beings had an
area of choice, but that human beings had an expected, regular power that was observable by
reference to how they behaved. Hobbes seemed to be saying that the way people may be
expected to act- because they are driven to behave this way by their motive of self-preservation- is
what they have the right to do in the sense that this is consonant with the kinds of things they are.

There is another thing that is peculiar to Hobbes. His is perhaps the most
unfamiliar of the rights theories that we will be considering. Because
Hobbes was a materialist and a very convinced determinist, some refer
to him as the first scientistic philosopher. He was the first major
philosopher who took some of the propositions of the newly emerging
natural sciences and extrapolated them into a total philosophy of nature.
He extended the scientific outlook into the area of moral and political
reflection. Hobbes looked at nature, saw certain laws exhibited and then
applied them to human life and human political organization.
According to Hobbes, human beings behave the way the rest of nature behaves. Ultimately the
laws of human behavior are nothing other than the laws of the behavior of anything else. Human
life is simply a more complicated version of the behavior of molecules, atoms, planets, or anything
else. According to Hobbes, when human beings are in the state of nature- outside of civil society
that has come to be governed by positive law - they are propelled to move in whatever directions
they take so as to sustain their motion, something that's referred to nowadays as the instinct for
self-preservation. But for Hobbes self-preservation didn't have any further meaning than to
continue in motion and to succeed in carrying forth with one's motion. He was in that sense one of
the major reductionists in philosophical history: someone who believed that you could take all
complicated phenomena, even thinking and perceiving, and understand it in terms of the laws of
the science of mechanistic physics.

This is a very influential outlook, one that even today has its distinctive impact on many schools of
the social sciences. Earlier this century behaviorist psychology, for instance, was almost purely
Hobbesian. It had as its goal the reduction of the understanding of the behavior of living- including
human- organisms to the ways in which we understand the laws of matter in motion. Economics,
too, once held out the hope that its principles could ultimately be reduced to those of physics.
Hobbes was the major philosopher who laid out this kind of physicalistic, scientistic outlook, and so
it may seem peculiar that he would have a theory of individual rights. Indeed, his conception of
rights, unlike those of later thinkers, meant a power to behave as one would regularly be inclined
to behave, not the moral justifiability of being free to act in certain ways.

According to Hobbes, when people gathered into civil society the necessity of developing legal
systems became evident to them- because in the state of nature the constant exercise of one's
powers gradually put them into conflict with more and more numerous other people. Ultimately
they reached the point where the exercise of one's rights- i.e., the constant behavior commonly
expected of a living being in a condition of little antagonism from one's environment- became self-
defeating. Laws (or commands of social behavior) had to emerge so as to coordinate behavior in
the way traffic laws have to be introduced when there are too many cars in a vicinity. According to
Hobbes, one actually forfeited one's rights- gave them up to a monarch (or to civil government)- to
enhance one's self interest, so as to make progress in life. All these rights- which, Hobbes said,
we have in the state of nature, prior to civil society- were supposed to have been forfeited and
those who had them put themselves under the authority of civil government. The only exception
was that if civil government became a threat to one's life, one could reassert and protect one's
right to life against the state. In other words, the power to live, the movement forward, trumped any
delegated authority.

There is already an intimation in Hobbes that government is explained as a means to protect

people's rights. He didn't do it in as clear a way as we understand it following the teaching of John
Locke or other classical liberals. Yet there is already this suggestion that the function of the state is
not so much to lead or set out a path for everyone but (even though it has great authority) to serve
individuals so they can live and flourish. Hobbes, of course, still believed- not having the benefit of
James Buchanan's public-choice theories- that, by delegating all of one's personal authority, one
could make this protection most efficient. Later this individualist viewpoint gradually gave rise to
the erosion of the scope and power of the state, as soon as it became evident- e.g., via Adam
Smith- that delegation of wide and extensive powers to government was actually impeding human
well-being.

The next major figure in the evolution of the theory of individual natural rights is, as we saw earlier,
John Locke. Locke is a peculiar figure in political philosophy because in crucial ways his general
philosophical outlook- his epistemology, his reflection on human nature, his explanation of how we
come to learn ideas, and what ideas are and how they relate to the world of things- was very
similar to Hobbes'. He, too, was under the influence of physicalism or materialism. For example,
he believed that perception occurs through the bombardment of the senses by emissions from the
material world. Ideas are basically copies of these bombardments, once one has enough of them.
He was an empiricist and in his philosophic writings he was somewhat of a determinist, and a
subjectivist in ethics. He believed that the good is that which gives you pleasure and the bad is
that which gives you pain and that was all there was to good and bad. Like Hobbes, Locke was a
psychological hedonist who believed people automatically do what pleases them and avoid
whatever does not.

When it came to his political philosophy, Locke made a big leap. Actually, there is an ongoing
scholarly controversy over that- some argue that the leap between Locke's general philosophy and
his political thinking isn't large. In any case, in the context of his political thought Locke maintained
that people are born free, independent, and equal in the respect that, at least to start with- prior to
giving their consent- they are not the servants or masters of anyone else. At the point of their initial
entry into the human race, which usually means when a person becomes an adult, everyone is
equally independent, a sovereign.

This is the beginning of the Lockean political philosophy. Everyone

comes into the human race, at least at the point of maturity, as an equal,
without justified power or authority over other people's lives. This equality
was already present in Hobbes' political thought to some extent. In
Hobbes' reductionism one of the things that is given is that nobody is any
better than anyone else. If you were really consistent with Hobbes'
complete philosophy, then pebbles and human beings are really all the
same. Just as to some psychologists the rat and the human being are
not different except in complexity (but not in kind), the same goes for
Hobbes.
Locke, however, tried to give different reasoning for this equality from what Hobbes argued. It was
Locke's view that everyone is in a way morally neutral in the beginning. There was something in
his theory of knowledge that already suggested this, the doctrine of tabula rasa- the clean slate-
with nothing written on the human mind, with no inclination either for good or for bad, either for
inferiority or for superiority. When one then reasons further and examines what kind of a political
society would be appropriate, it certainly precludes the notion of a natural slave or natural
superiors or of a divine right of some people to rule others. The suggestion emerges, instead, that
we all come into the world as fundamentally equal as regards good and bad (not, however, as
regards tall and short, fat and thin, ugly and pretty, and a lot else that we may care about). When it
comes to whether we are morally better or worse than our fellow human beings, we start from the
same position. On that score alone we all come into the world as equals. (It is arguable that
precisely this moral equality also figures heavily in making any other equality impossible to
enforce.)

That is the first step in Locke's analysis of the idea of natural rights. Given our human nature and
given the fact that it consists in this kind of basic equality- a basic freedom from the attempted
mastery or rule of others- we are warranted in ascribing to people certain basic rights. That is, their
human nature justifies that they must be treated in a certain way and if they are not, they may
retaliate against those who do not abide by this point. That's why we call these natural rights.

What are the natural rights that all human beings have because they are
human beings? The first natural right is that each of us is the governor of
our own life and others may not take over this role unless we consent.
We are the owners of our persons and estates. Each is individually the
sole, sovereign, ruler or master of his or her life.

One can see that point in the Declaration of Independence of the United
States of America. There is a clear intimation of this Lockean idea that all
human beings were created equal and they all have these basic rights to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of their happiness. Locke argued that one
owns one's life, as well as what one has chosen to produce in the course
of it by means either of one's labor or through voluntary exchange,
namely, one's property.

Now in connection with the topic of property Locke's theory gets a bit
complicated. According to Locke's political writings it is God who gave all
property to humankind. Individuals may take out of this common pool
some amount by means of mixing their labor with it and they may make it
their private property. This is the famous labor theory of property. By
mixing one's labor with the common, unowned natural world, one
becomes a proprietor of a portion of this natural world. Thus one has a
natural right not only to one's person but also to one's estate, one's
usable values around the world.

According to Locke there may be some exceptions to this process. The

so-called "Lockean proviso" states that one may acquire things out of the
natural world, make them one's own and have a natural right to these
things, provided enough and as good is left for others. Many people have
read into this proviso a major qualification concerning the absoluteness
of Locke's endorsement of the right to private property. Yet, even though
Locke enunciates this proviso, there is no consensus at all on just what
its practical import is. Are there exceptions to the right to property? Why?
Or should we understand the proviso to mean something else? Of
course, Locke may have been wrong in suggesting the proviso. It may
help, therefore, to explore briefly one approach to certain aspects of the
right to private property, specifically the rare prospect of absolute
monopoly in goods or services that nature contains and for which human
beings may have a vital need.
Classical liberals argue, in the main, that when property is made private, processes are
encouraged that in fact increase and indeed improve what is left for others. In other words, the
institution of the right to private property will tend to lead to the kind of actions on the part of
property owners that enhance the value of what they own. And their subsequent commerce will
confer this value on many others. So by protecting private property via the legal system, the
Lockean proviso- that enough and as good as was there in the first place remain for all- is most
adequately fulfilled.2

This seems to be a valid inference, given certain assumptions about

human beings that are as old as one of Aristotle's comments about the
merits of private property rights. Here is how Aristotle makes his point,
one to which I will return again in this essay:

That all persons call the same thing mine in the sense in which
each does so may be a fine thing, but it is impracticable; or if the
words are taken in the other sense, such a unity in no way
 conduces to harmony. And there is another objection to the
proposal. For that which is common to the greatest number has
the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his
own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is
himself concerned as an individual. For besides other
considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty
which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants
are often less useful than a few. (Politics, 1261b34)

The movement toward privatization throughout the world today is often

justified along similar grounds. If things are privately owned, it is argued,
the people who own them will deal with them in much more responsible,
productive, and protective fashion than they would if things were all
owned in common. Thus the institution of the right to private property
results in greater prosperity.

So even though the Lockean proviso has been invoked by some so as to

undercut the universality and the absoluteness of the doctrine of private
property rights, it can also be interpreted as supporting the right to make
private property more widespread, to extend it into virtually every
possible sphere and to treat it as an absolute right, never to be
compromised. Ergo, privatization.
Yet in certain emergencies it may also be understood that Locke would have wanted property
rights to be temporarily disregarded. Thus, in dire straits, stealing to survive may be at least
morally excusable, even if not something that should be enshrined into law.3

Locke also believed that government is to be established so as to secure for us our natural rights.
We do have these rights in the state of nature. In other words, we ought to enjoy a sphere of
individual sovereignty, we ought to be our own masters already in the state of nature- whether or
not civil or legal society has emerged or touches us in any way. We have these basic rights as a
matter of the proper moral condition of human interaction, quite apart from whether the law or our
fellow human beings recognize it. That is Locke's position.

But Locke also argued that we are not powerful enough to repel those who refuse to acknowledge
our individual sovereignty, those who want to conquer or master us- criminals. Some of us are
unable to resist the invasion, intervention, or incursion of other people, in their efforts to regulate or
regiment others. So we ought to institute some ways of making sure that such violation of our
rights does not happen. Simply because certain boundaries ought to be instituted among people, it
doesn't necessarily follow that it will be done. Whether it will be done also depends on whether we
have the power, the force, and the will to achieve such a state of affairs. (Here is the assumption
of free will in Locke that his broader philosophical system does not support!) A way to accomplish
this is by hiring agents who are specialized in the task of protecting our rights- i.e., to establish
governments. These agents themselves, of course, would be bound by these rights. As an
analogy, if we hire a bodyguard, the bodyguard can only work for us (a) if we did in fact hire him,
(b) if it was through the observance of our basic rights that the relationship between the bodyguard
and ourselves has been created and (c) if the actions he carries out in our behalf are ones we
ourselves would be justified in performing.

So when Locke argued that a government should come about so as to protect us in our natural
rights, he also made very clear that government must arise through the consent of those who are
governed, through the voluntary relationship between the governed and the governors. And so
government- as was already intimated in the political thought of Hobbes- once again was
envisioned as the employee of individual human beings with rights that need protection and whose
rights were to be observed and respected not only by everyone in society but also by those
employed to protect them.

The problem with the Lockean rights theory, to some at least, was that
the beginning point, this doctrine of the moral and political equality of all
people in what was called the state of nature, was not proven. It was not
demonstrated, only asserted. Locke said that human beings were equal,
independent, and free, and from that he could show that they had certain
rights, including those to their person, property, and estates. And he
could argue from there that government has the function of protecting
these rights. But the starting premise needed demonstrating because
many people did not believe that people were indeed equal,
independent, and free. And thus there was a lack of foundation for
natural rights. Even the Founding Fathers, in saying we hold these truths
to be self-evident, dodged the issue, at least in that document. This is
not surprising, since that document was largely a political decree, not a
philosophical treatise. And there was in it a suggestion that, while we
believe in these rights, we lack sufficient arguments to show that they
exist.

Accordingly while a good deal of subsequent philosophy followed Locke

in his epistemology and his theory of mind and many other areas, it didn't
follow Locke when it came to his political philosophy. In other words,
British empiricism weakened rather than strengthened the doctrine of
natural law. It is thus suggested that if we are to accept the philosophical
foundations of empiricism then this strong natural individual-rights
position cannot be maintained.

Let me make a little excursion here into philosophy. From a purely

empiricist position (which says that all knowledge must come from our
sensory contact with the world) you run into some problems. One is that
in the end all you can know is what is in your mind and not what is "out
there," because what you know consists of sensory impressions in your
consciousness, but you don't really know what they are impressions of.
As I look at any object, I know that my mind is receiving all these little
bits and pieces of sensory input, but can I really go outside of my mind
and check whether this stuff I am receiving signifies something out
there? As a result, the very idea of an independent nature, with its laws,
principles, and specific characteristics, begins to be wobbly. A kind of
uncertainty about the nature of things results.
Bentham and Mill, who also were liberals in many ways as well as empiricists, were not
enthusiastic about the doctrine of natural rights. When we get to Karl Marx, the doctrine of natural
rights becomes characterized as a convenient myth invented for rationalizing political rule, and
lacks objective validity. This is how the doctrine of rights evolved. Although it did have a serious
impact on constitutional and common law and other political developments, in philosophy where
the most fundamental justifications are sought, the doctrine of natural individual rights took a
severe beating. Jeremy Bentham ridiculed it as nonsense upon stilts. Mill only gave it a kind of
instrumental support. In On Liberty where Mill develops a very strong case for many of the
institutions of liberalism- including a free press and separation of church and state, free markets,
especially a free market of ideas- the idea of individual rights is expounded as a means rather than
as a firm foundation. What became popular is what people sometimes call in philosophy a
``consequentialist" justification of natural rights rather than a ``deontological" or ``principled"
justification. In the end Mill himself makes certain concessions on the doctrine of natural rights; for
example, in advocating certain kinds of redistribution of wealth because the greatest happiness of
the greatest number might in fact be enhanced through that redistribution. He does not believe in
the firm principle of natural rights, so that even for the sake of charity, generosity, and compassion
one may simply not (with impunity) engage in expropriation of property. The utilitarianism of Mill
isn't firmly committed to individual rights- especially property rights- in a legal system of a just
society, compared to the Lockean doctrine. This is probably because the Lockean doctrine at least
suggested, but didn't prove, that the basis for rights is human nature, which assumes that we can
know human nature.

But the empiricists didn't think you could really know human nature. You
could only know human experience and the future may be very different
from the past and so any kind of a firm, transcendent, ongoing, and
stable nature was only suggested by experience. But experience can be
overridden by the future and thus the idea that human beings have these
rights might also be overridden by future experience. In contrast, for
Locke the suggestion was that there is something stable about human
nature that lasts no matter what else happens; by virtue of this stable
human nature we have these basic rights.

At some point we pass the era where rights really are not treated as
important, or are regarded as myths, as in Marx. He believed, for
example, that the right to private property, with the resulting high level
production, was a convenient belief of a certain phase of humanity's
development. Although the production would often be trivial and
wasteful, like MTV, pet rocks, and tie-dye shirts, it would establish
powerful processes. For Marx and others, the structure of such
production is not a fundamental principle of human life, only a sort of
temporary and variable phase.

Once we took this turn in philosophy in the early part of the twentieth
century, little support for natural rights remained. This is because the last
three hundred years has really been dominated, though not exclusively
ruled, by empiricism, by the doctrine of what you see is what you get.
This was made into a very prominent, well-developed, precise, and
technically proficient philosophical doctrine called logical positivism. In
Anglo-American philosophy, and also in continental philosophy through
the influence of existentialism, the idea of a stable nature (which outlasts
and which indeed governs experience) was dropped. Indeed the world
was supposed to be known only through the logical manipulation of
sensory experiences.
This view actually led, for about 60 years of the twentieth century, to what some theorists called
the death of political philosophy. From the time that A. J. Ayer wrote his Language, Truth, and
Logic in the 1930s, drawing on the philosophical speculations of what is called the Vienna Circle of
the 1920s- up until about the time of John Rawls (except for Roman Catholic philosophers and
such thinkers as Ayn Rand, who was of course outside of academic philosophy), very few people
had the confidence that political knowledge is even possible, let alone that it was based on human
nature and individual rights. Even though legal institutions and our political rhetoric and political
movements still made room for this language, a good deal of the language was itself changed from
discussing natural rights to human rights. "Human" is a somewhat vague term and doesn't require
any ascription or acceptance of a doctrine of stable nature. Partly as a result, all kinds of new
rights began to be thought of- suddenly we were supposed to have the right to read, to have
vacations, a fair wage, medical care, and so on. On U.S. radio stations one hears even of "a right
not to be lonely," which logically suggests that one can get a slave as an exercise of this right.
Because the doctrine is so loose, what kind of rights can be accumulated through this vague
notion of "human"? Practically anything you want, anything you like intensely enough, and
certainly anything you can convince people that you need, can become a basic, politically
protected right. The United Nations charter of human rights is practically a wish list of such rights.
It is like a fantastic Christmas: you write down the things you believe people ought to give you and
you call them your rights. There is absolutely no check on it because we no longer know what
human nature is. We only have what in Anglo-American analytic philosophy used to be called an
ordinary conception of what it is to be human. Such a conception of what it is to be human is of
course influenced by ordinary stupidity as well as ordinary wisdom. You have this hodgepodge of
ideas called rights and by the time you get to the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s this loosely politicized,
non-philosophical discussion of rights and individual rights lets you want or desire anything and
call it a right. Practically everyone around the world uses the word right in this human right sense
actually to express what they very strongly desire.

There is a lot of intellectual history that one could enter into here and
explore. Let me just speculate a little bit before I move on to continue
demonstrating the normative classical liberal position.
Around the time of the American civil rights movement and when the American involvement in the
war in Vietnam became controversial, people got very upset about the positions taken about those
issues. The notion that what is politically right couldn't be known- that moral judgments were really
merely emotional expositions or ejaculations or expressions as Language, Truth, and Logic
maintained- finally gave way to popular pressure. Young men and women, who went to march for
blacks in the early 1960s, or who wanted to protest or defend the Vietnam War, went into the
classroom and heard that all their protestations were no more than saying hurrah, or boo. One
side had one emotion and the other side had another, opposite, emotion. Many of the professors
took this kind of protestation seriously and "went back to the drawing board." John Rawls'
intuitionist defense of the welfare state, which aims to lay some modicum of an objective
foundation for political judgments, is a result of that disenchantment with the emotivist, logical
positivist approach to politics.

Still, there was no serious academic talk about individual natural rights.
Yet there emerged a flicker of hope that some kind of foundation for
moral and political judgments might be provided through the discipline of
philosophy. With Rawls, that foundation in the end was intuition. Rawls,
in his 1976 presidential address to the American Philosophical
Association, explicitly said that we must remove moral philosophy and
politics from the rest of philosophy. We can't wait for the rest of
philosophy to come up with some sort of foundation for political
reflection. We must trust our intuitions. An intuition means a kind of
knowledge the origin of which is unknown. According to Rawls, intuition
is the only kind of foundation that we can depend upon when it comes to
our moral and political reflections.
Rawls did not develop a robust doctrine of rights although some room for rights exist in his political
philosophy: a right to liberty, and to welfare. There are some other political philosophers who also
contributed to this. For example, Alan Gewirth at the University of Chicago began to develop a
kind of Kantian justification of rights. There are similarities between these views and those of some
libertarian rights theorists such as Roger Pilon and Jeff Paul. The Kantian approach isn't a natural
rights doctrine, but one in which rights are derived from the idea of being human, not by reference
to human nature in any objective sense that one could know nature. Even Robert Nozick, who was
perhaps the major critic of Rawls- he wrote his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia three years after
Rawls published A Theory of Justice and discussed Rawls in it at great length- didn't maintain that
we could demonstrate that individuals have rights. He also approached the matter intuitively. He
argued that we should begin by assuming that Locke was right and people have basic rights to
their lives, liberty, and property. Let's treat them as firm assumptions and see if we reason from
them what kind of society would arise. Would that society accord with our moral and political
intuitions. In other words, when we imagine libertarian society, would its workings please our moral
gut reactions more than what Rawls came up with?

The concept of rights has by now lost its function as a clear guide to political justice in a free
society. In the late 20th century what are called human rights are not linked to an individualist idea
of human nature- as I explain in a later chapter- but to human beings conceived of as members of
groups. So we have women's rights, rights of African-Americans, students, gays, workers, artists,
and so forth. And the rights in question are usually not negative rights- rights not to be invaded-
ones identified in the classical liberal, Lockean framework. Instead, these are positive rights, that
is, rights to some kind of provision or service from other persons. Thus we all are supposed to
have a basic right to health care, never mind that this could well require compelling doctors to
serve us or other people to pay the doctors who would try to heal us.

There is still, of course, a fairly sizable contingent of thinkers- philosophers, legal theorists,
economists, political scientists- who consider the Lockean, negative rights approach, especially
one spoken of as natural rights, sound. It was Ayn Rand, the Russian born American novelist-
philosopher who placed that tradition back on to the public agenda and whose students are
developing this position within the context of contemporary political concerns. Such philosophers
as Eric Mack, Douglas J. Den Uyl, Douglas B. Rasmussen, Fred D. Miller, Jr., and myself have
worked out similar, although at times slightly varied, arguments showing that because of what a
human being is and what it is to live among other persons in an organized human community, it is
vital that basic rights to life, liberty and property will be respected and, if need be, protected in law
for everyone. This view has it that there is a stable enough human nature- not in the form of a
timless Platonic ideal but as a kind of most sensible categorization of the phenomena that human
beings represent in nature- with a distinctive moral aspect to it. And by virtue of this fact, all human
beings but the crucially incapacitated have these negative rights and no one has the authority to
violate or compromise these rights, including governments, especially in their efforts to provide
those rights with proper protecetion. And, in consequence, a human community needs to avoid
coercive force in the solution of its problems, a project that would seem to be, in the long run, the
most sensible hope for making human life a success here on earth.

So we have here a brief account of the history and meaning of the concept of rights. Essentially, to
have a right means to be in authority to decide to do something and to resist efforts by others to
stop one from what one has decided to do. The Declaration of Independence claims we all have
certain rights- to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness- because we were created equal. This
means that by virtue of our human nature, which is that we are all equal moral agents with the task
to make sound choices in our lives, we have the full authority to make choices as to our lives, our
conduct, and the goals we strive to achieve.

These days this outlook is not very prominent. Robert Nozick, a philosopher at Harvard, provided it
with some measure of prominence back in 1974, when he wrote Anarchy, State, and Utopia,
although even he recanted later and embraced a version of the welfare state, on grounds that the
classical liberal, libertarian polity lacks heart, fails to give sufficient expression to human
compassion. Although nothing could be further from the truth- nothing gives as solid an expression
to human virtues than the belief that free men and women can best be counted upon to choose
them over vices- Nozick's change of heart has left the academy without a star quality advocate of
the distinctively American political vision. The support for it will have to come from those who have
a much harder fight on their hands. We will see in the rest of this book how their position might
fare. Indeed, the reader will be the judge of that.

II.
Liberty and Virtue

In order to begin this discussion with a degree of coherence, I need to discuss two types of liberty.
The one kind I will designate as metaphysical liberty; it means the capacity for initiating, starting or
being the first cause of movement supposedly possessed by some things in nature- maybe by
human beings, maybe by God. That is the first type of liberty that is relevant to the issue of virtue.

The second type of liberty is political. It is the condition that may exist among human beings when
they do not intrude on one another, do not limit one another's choices and/or conduct. Political
liberty refers to that state of organized social life in which individuals are not deprived of their
sovereignty, autonomy or personal authority, or a sphere of jurisdiction concerning their lives and
works.4

These are elementary ways of discussing these two forms of liberty. In

order to have a coherent conception of these two types of liberty, one
would have to develop an elaborate philosophical analysis. For example,
political liberty is easily defined in terms of persons not intruding on one
another, but exactly what constitutes an intrusion and what doesn't is not
easy to spell out. Does looking or staring at someone amount to
intruding on that person? In some cultures that constitutes an intrusion
and in others it does not. Talking to someone is not an intrusion in most
cases, but some consider it intrusive to say certain things to women. In
some political ideologies conscripting someone's labor is not an intrusion
because it is believed that we all naturally owe one another some
services. In others it is intrusive because a person and his or her skills
are seen as inviolable. So spelling out exactly the meaning of political
liberty by reference to intrusion, or invasion, or violation is not simple.
One has to know the borders that are to be placed around people and
which are to prohibit entry past those borders, and where permission is
needed for entering them and how those borders get established. That is
very complicated and most political philosophies in the liberal tradition
revolve around spelling out what those borders are.
The liberal idea of the spontaneous order, popularized by F. A. Hayek, depends on the idea of
borders, as well, because the conduct or behavior that creates it without macroeconomic planning
assumes that the agents are not being regimented, controlled, or coerced. But what is the agent?
Does an agent include his or her labor and property? Does it include one's thought? Put
differently, what does "oneself" include in its meaning? What does personal sovereignty amount
to? Developments that lead to a spontaneous order presuppose this personal sovereignty which
needs to be delineated or described, something very difficult to do.5

The issue of metaphysical liberty is difficult to spell out in detail and

coherently, but on the simple level it concerns whether there is free will.
Are human beings in some way responsible for what they do as agents
or are they merely linked in the infinite chain of causal relationships?
Metaphysical liberty- the possibility of free will- appears, on first inspection, to fly in the face of the
idea of universal causation. If the world is structured in some rational form or another, this idea
would be indispensable. Now does universal causality allow for metaphysical liberty? Is it possible
that despite the existence of such a causal order, individual human beings are in some way
responsible for what they do and may therefore be blamed and praised for their behavior?

In any case, the two kinds of liberty, metaphysical and political, are not
that simple to identify. Indeed, in a philosophical discussion, to start with
definitions is not useful. Most of the disputations occur where definitions
come into the picture. How, indeed, should we define things? Is a
definition arbitrary, stipulated, conventional, traditional or in some sense
real? These are basic philosophical issues, so merely to start with
defining liberty, be it metaphysical liberty or political liberty, is of no great
use.

Let me note that of the two major schools alleging the existence or
possibility of metaphysical liberty, one holds that this liberty exists
because some random element exists in the universe. The idea goes all
the way back to Lucretius, the student of Epicurus who maintained that
although there is an order of nature governed by the laws of physics, tiny
random particles also exist that exhibit little swerves in nature. It is these
random particles that give rise to liberty or some element of
metaphysical freedom.

The other metaphysical account of liberty is held to be compatible with

the idea of universal causation, not an exception to it. Here the notion is
that although there exists, of course, universal causation, there can be
different types of causes. The causal relationship between Mozart and
his music is not the same as the causal relationship between, say, a
push on a pool stick and the movement of the cue ball that ensues.
There are different kinds of causes and the differences depend upon the
kind of entities involved in the causal relationship. If it is a human being
and music, the causal relationship will be very different from that
involved between a dog and the production of its pups, or an earthquake
and its destruction of a city. These are all causal relationships but they
involve different kinds of causes.
We then can appreciate the idea that there would be some causal relationships where some
entities initiate the cause, that is, they may have the capacity to begin a causal relationship. In
other words, they may be first causes. Very often people, of course, regard God as a first cause.
But some philosophers regard human mental activity as a first cause. And there are some
scientists who share this view. Ayn Rand, for example, understood causation this way.6 And
Roger W. Sperry, the Nobel Prize winner in connection with his split brain research, also believes
that the human mind/brain has the capacity for initiating action and thus is a first cause of the
person's behavior. He calls the kind of causation involved "downward causation."7

So quite probably universal causation is compatible with free will, that is,
with the idea that a human being initiates some of what he or she does in
life. One may not find all this persuasive, but it is worth investigating,
because theoretically it is more pleasing than either hard determinism or
the idea of randomness in nature. The most recent attempt to secure
free will via randomness comes by way of the famous Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle.

Werner Heisenberg, a physicist who lived in the earlier part of the

twentieth century, argued that we aren't able to estaqblish determinacy in
nature at the subatomic level. From this it has been inferred that there
may indeed be actual randomness or indeterminacy in nature.

There is a great deal of dispute, however, whether his theorems really

imply randomness in the universe. Some maintain that they do and that
what he discovered is not just an epistemological limitation which bars us
from knowing the determinacy but actually identifies indeterminacy in
nature. That's probably the most recent way of trying to find some
account of metaphysical liberty, namely, by means of this doctrine nature
contains indeterminacy. Sir Karl Popper seems to have found this idea
promising.

Throughout the history of ideas different people have played with these
two variations of the idea of metaphysical liberty. Of course metaphysical
liberty contrasts with the two opposing doctrines: hard determinism and
soft determinism.

The idea of metaphysical freedom is closely connected with the notion of

virtue and vice, or moral behavior and misbehavior. In contrast, most
people tend to accept some version of determinism that rules out free
will. Hard determinism is the doctrine that everything in nature behaves
analogously to the way bricks are moved when they collide and cause
each other's movements, or the way in which a locomotive causes the
movement of the cars that it pulls. This view embraces strict, efficient
causation that classical physics describes. Thomas Hobbes is a clear
case of a hard determinist, and so are a number of philosophers of the
Enlightenment, interestingly enough.

Soft determinism is a kind of indirect hard determinism. The idea here is

that unlike in the hard determinist case where the bricks just hit at each
other we have a kind of soft, rubbery buffer which then will cause the
next movement. There is something that shapes the human will so that it
exerts its particular kind of influence on behavior.

Of course, the reason that this is an interesting issue is that human

beings continue to hold one another responsible for bad deeds and
sometimes for good deeds. The inclination of human beings to attribute
free will to one another is unceasing. Is the whole idea of moral
responsibility and moral choice and thus moral good and moral evil an
illusion that we human beings are stuck with, or is it something that has
philosophical, objective validity? That is the substance of our concern
about this issue.

Even those who believe in determinism or behaviorism tend to ask us to

believe them when they expound their doctrine. And when you talk about
"what people should do," there is an implication that they have some sort
of choice about the matter. They may either do it or they may not do it,
but they should do it. If it is not implied that they have some freedom,
then there would be no question of should or shouldn't; it is only a matter
of whether we can predict that they will or they won't. "Should" drops out
of the question.

There is a famous philosophical slogan which became prominent in post-

Kantian philosophy and the slogan goes "ought implies can." It indicates
that if one can meaningfully say that someone ought to do X, then one
must also admit that someone has the capacity either to do or not to do
X. If you deny the capacity then the meaningfulness that someone ought
to do X is canceled.

A good many philosophers who are determinists have concluded that in

some sense the idea of moral responsibility is fiction or meaningless.
(Logical positivists viewed it that way.) Many have prophesied that the
whole field of ethics or moral philosophy will probably be taken over by
psychology. There will be no more talk about should and should not or
ought and ought not because there simply isn't any philosophical base
for such talk.

One can see why this is a problem. Most of us are divided on the issue
of determinism versus freedom in our everyday conduct and reflections,
on whether human beings initiate their conduct or not. Suffice it to say
that if one does accept the idea that human beings have moral
responsibilities that they can fulfill or neglect or corrupt or avoid or in
some sense fail at, it commits one to the view that there must be
metaphysical freedom.
The metaphysical freedom that I find evident is one that is Aristotelian or
Randian. It leaves the law of universal causation intact, as compared to
the kind defended by reference to randomness in reality. But if one is a
modern physicist, especially of the Niels Bohr and Heisenberg variety,
one would prefer the libertarianism of the random theory. But in any
case, if one believes in moral responsibility it commits one to some kind
of metaphysical liberty.
Now what about political liberty? There are two reasons that determinists- even soft determinists-
who at least like progress, good health, or prosperity, would defend that at the political level
individuals should be free. They would hold that intrusiveness in the lives, behavior, or conduct of
people is an obstacle to progress, development, prosperity, the spread of knowledge, and so forth.
The reason is that though many determinists do not believe in moral goodness, they do believe in
values.

Now values are different from moral values. One might look at it this
way. In the universe everything is a kind or type of being. In a small
segment there is being-with-value. Then in a smaller segment there is
being-with-moral-value. Now this last segment requires metaphysical
freedom. Yet if one denies this smaller segment, one still can admit to
the existence of being-with-value.
Consider, for example, that in your garden you may find some tomatoes that are good and others
that are bad. But they do not possess free will. They are not morally good or morally bad
tomatoes; they are just good or bad tomatoes. An ecologist, for example, very often laments the
destruction of the ecosystem without blaming the ecosystem for it. One might well blame human
beings for it. Because trees don't have free will, one doesn't blame an oak tree for having grown
defective or unhealthy. But one may blame a human being for having destroyed the oak tree. So
one can talk about a bad or good oak tree, or about healthy or sick gazelles or frogs, and so forth.
Clearly, then, the idea of good and bad can be meaningful or valid quite independently of the idea
of moral goodness or evil. One can hold the view that whatever is alive could either be enhanced
or destroyed in its being. Anything alive is subject to this. But of a rock or a bucket of water (unless
there is life in it) one cannot meaningfully say that it's good or bad except in relation to something
that has life. A bucket of water may be good for a cow or human being or bad for it, but in and of
itself it is not good or bad. A solar system, the Milky Way, or an eruption on the sun is neither good
nor bad- it just is. There is nothing for which it is good or bad other than some living being that may
be affected by it.

So we have three regions of reality at issue here. Even the determinist could leave room for value.
Indeed, many philosophers who are often discussed as ethicists or moral theorists are, in fact,
more accurately identified as value theorists. Consider, for example, John Stuart Mill, who, living in
the age of the ascendancy of science and having been eager to reconcile all facets of his
philosophy with the tenets of science, believed in soft determinism. So did David Hume. Spinoza,
on the other hand, was a hard determinist, as was Thomas Hobbes. They were all determinists in
an era of scientism. The idea of metaphysical freedom had fallen out of favor with all of these
thinkers. Some, such as Spinoza, tried to develop a case for what is called compatibilism. But
those who did accept free will were mostly religiously oriented. Only by importing another world,
one that differed from the natural world, were they able to make room for free will. Those who were
naturalists- who wanted to keep it all at home so to speak- opted for determinism, soft or hard.

Still, they didn't have to abandon value theory. Certain conditions,

behavior or institutions seemed valuable to them. Bentham thought of
pleasure this way. Mill argued that the maximization of happiness is of
value. Spencer thought that individuation was a value produced by the
evolutionary process. Marx believed that the maturation of the human
race is of value.
Many of these determinist philosophers believed in values but not in free will and, therefore, in the
idea of moral responsibility, blame, or praise. When they reflected on values relating to human
conduct and politics they got themselves into a muddle. The reason is that in claiming, for
example, that pursuing the greatest happiness of the greatest number is good, if no one could help
what he or she did, that good was not in our power to choose to pursue. If something- pleasure,
the maximization of happiness, or the achievement of human emancipation- is good but one can't
help achieving or failing to achieve it, one is really in the same category as the tomatoes, oak
trees, or gazelles mentioned above. The good or bad will simply occur- human choice, being
nonexistent, can have nothing to do with that. And in the area of personal and public conduct, this
means that the world simply is the way it is and will change for the better or worse simply as a
matter of forces quite apart from human choice and decision.

The connection between freedom or liberty and morality is evident in

those who denied liberty because morality is concerned with responsible
conduct, rather than just with goodness or value. Clearly, in criminal law
we distinguish between actions that are chosen versus behavior that
merely has occurred. These philosophers retained their concerns with
value but denigrated, at least by implication, any concern with moral
responsibility and with moral blame or praise.
Indeed the major modern philosopher who is an exception, Immanuel Kant, solved the problem of
reconciling determinism with morality by dividing reality into two parts. He divided reality into the
phenomenal and noumenal realms. The phenomenal part would be the natural world governed by
deterministic laws associated with Newtonian mechanics, and studied by empirical observation.
But he added that we must assume- though we can never know for certain- the existence of
another dimension of reality. The noumenal dimension is where we find freedom. If this
assumption is kept firmly in mind, we can discuss moral responsibility, moral blame or praise. This
element is in effect supernaturalistic freedom, and secures for us moral responsibility and moral
blame, according to Kant.

Now as to political, economic, and civil liberty, Hume, Mill, and a number of the more empirically
and scientistically oriented philosophers still affirmed it. The idea of noninterference in what human
beings did in the marketplace, for instance, had instrumental value for them. This means that in
order to facilitate progress, knowledge, prosperity, riches, or some other goods, we need to leave
people alone to pursue- strive to attain, motivated by innate desires- their ends. This is the
mechanistic approach to liberty evident in our time in the works of neoclassical economists who
defend the free market. It says: the less friction, the more efficient movement. And the more
efficient movement, the more efficient pursuit of the ends of those movements whether to achieve
prosperity or knowledge or whatever.

So even though one may not accept the idea of the connection between
liberty and virtue in the metaphysical sense, one may still accept the
connection between political liberty and value in the morally neutral
sense. Liberty facilitates the pursuit of value.

Troubles, of course, do arise within the framework of this instrumental

approach to defending political liberty. What if someone doesn't respect
one's right to liberty? Is he or she to be blamed and condemned? Are
those who murder, kidnap, assault, or rob us, guilty of anything other
than behaving in ways that are not conducive to the achievement of our
values? If not, why punish them, why worry about finding an accused
person guilty or not guilty? The problem is that they lack the
metaphysical freedom to limit or not to limit our political, economic or civil
liberty. So a tyrant is going to be a tyrant quite independent of anything
he or she may choose since choice is an illusion. And while it would be
valuable if there were no tyrants, tyranny must be looked upon no
differently from how an earthquake or some other natural disaster is
regarded.
That is the liberty-morality connection. If that connection is established, then political liberty can be
defended on moral rather than on merely instrumental grounds. If it turns out that we have
metaphysical liberty- that it is a fact of human life- and that in our society not granting it respect
obstructs our capacity to strive for or neglect virtue when someone intrudes on us, then we are
stopped from being able to seek out virtue in what could be a blameworthy manner. Total lack of
political liberty makes morality impossible. Progressive enslavement in a society is demoralizing in
the very literal sense of that term: it decreases the relevance of morality in the society. The more
we have of a coercive state, the less we have of personal responsibility. On the whole, without the
respect for citizens' right to political, economic, and civil liberty deprives us of a moral map of a
country. We have a diminished moral map the more successful the regimentation. In the book by
Vladimir Bukovsky on To Build a Castle, the chapter "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" shows
that when one lives under a socialist system, moral categories get completely confused. One does
not know whether to lie or tell the truth or to trust or betray or whatever should be done because
one has no freedom and therefore lacks personal responsibility.

Of course no totalitarian system or tyranny is absolute, so we always

have some sphere of personal authority, de facto liberty. It is like a zoo
that is actually a large animal park, but still contains secure borders.
Ultimately one is still not fully responsible for one's conduct in such
societies.
The elimination of political liberty has objectionable aspects whether we have an instrumental
conception or a moral conception of value. That is why there are both determinist (or empiricist- or,
as some people call them, utilitarian) defenders as well as natural law (and/or rights) or moral or
normative defenders of the free society. The moral defenders tend to be those who associate
human freedom of the will with political liberty. The scientific or utilitarian defenders tend to be
those who associate the drive to progress and to reach desirable goals with the value of political
liberty.

Let's now turn to virtue. I have taken it for granted that we all know
something about virtue, morality, ethics. But I think it is better to clarify
the idea.
If we are free in the metaphysical sense, if there is such a thing as freedom of the will- i.e., to
some extent human beings cause their own behavior or are responsible for starting or failing to
start things at their own discretion depending on whether their will- then a question can arise for
human beings: "How should I live? How should I conduct myself? What standards should I used
as I make my choices?" The free will aspect introduces choice, but if you have no standard then
you might as well flip a coin, since anything you do could be as good as anything else. But that
seems to be evidently false, so the question arises: "Here I am a free being, but what should I do?"

We generally take it that cats, fish, mice, and orangutans don't ask this question. I have not
recently been in communication with them so maybe there is some new development, but I am
fairly certain that even those few chimpanzees at American universities that seem to exercise
some degree of choice have been clobbered into it by their trainers. After about 20 weeks in those
cages they say, "Okay, I'll make a choice." But it is not as if it comes naturally with their lives. That
it is a basic distinction between the human and the rest of the animal world versus the human
world. Human beings evidently lack the instinctual, natural inclination or direction to do what is
necessary for them, to live right. Birds fly south in the winter. None says, "Oops, I went north; what
a mistake: I probably should have read the directions more carefully." We, on the other hand, do
get lost, we oversleep, we fail to pay attention, we fail to think, and so on. We have guilt, regret,
and at times feel some pride. If a lecture or paper goes well, I may justifiably say "good Machan"
but if it bombs I just as rightly say "bad Machan." If I treat my kids rashly or fail to take good care of
them, I blame myself, whereas if I do well as a parent, I feel pride. This seems part of our nature,
whereas the rest of the animal world does not seem to share it. At the most fundamental level it
seems that each of us asks the question, "How should I live?" And it is at this point that morality
comes in as the most basic standard of the right course. It has to be so basic that it applies to all
times, anywhere, anytime. But as long as there are human beings in a relatively stable world, (and
there have been for about 92 thousand years8), this question seems to have been relevant to
human life. We all ask it. When someone asks "What the heck am I going to do now?" that is much
like "How should I act?" Most people use an informal moral language around the house, amongst
each other. We don't say "You are a bad human being" but "You are a jerk." We don't say that
"You are a wonderful human being and a fine moral person" but say "You are a great guy," or
something like that.

This is indeed a pervasive issue in human life. In novels, plays, movies,

highlighted history, or personal relations, the issue is prominently
brought to mind. Virtually all current news deals with who did something
wrong and what might be done about it. The field of applied ethics is a
growing industry in the academic curricula of most civilized societies.
The press is constantly harping on what some people in public life do
wrong and how the public is morally lax in responding.

Is there any basis for the kind of pervasive attention paid to ethics and
morality? Are these questions valid ones, or are we captive to some
mythology here, like those who take astrology seriously? Are we perhaps
biologically programmed to ask questions about how we should act,
even though these questions are really meaningless, akin to grunts or
sneezes in that what we need is to explain them?

Could there be a right answer to the question that gives rise to ethics or
is what we say in response just parroting, opening our mouths, making
sounds but without any meaning to them. The two matters of foremost
concern to moral philosophy is (1) whether this question of "How should I
live?" is meaningful and (2) which of the proposed answers is the best:
utilitarianism, altruism, egoism, hedonism, stoicism, asceticism or some
other.
One central issue, of course, that interests classical liberal moral and political theorists is the
connection between respect for the right to liberty and trying to answer the question of ethics and
acting accordingly.9 "Is there a necessary or merely accidental connection between this liberty and
living the life one ought to live?" Of course, it needs to be noted right off the bat that a lot of people
don't care about such issues. Evil persons are just as pleased at not having any answers to the
question because the skepticism and confusion so engendered lead to ambivalence about the
quality of their character. If one cannot know who is evil, who is good, who is mediocre, and what
actions of other aspects of someone's life make for all of this, then their own evil can never be
pinned on them. Then there is also the simple fact that a great many philosophers are in the
business of criticism, not of the development of theories or the construction of answers. The era
when grand philosophical systems laid out the cases for all kinds of supposedly true propositions
about reality, including morality and politics, has been eclipsed by an era of relentless criticism and
skepticism. This is unfortunate but even if it were justified, it should not be permitted to distort the
picture of the possible universality of classical liberal political ideals. We should not factor
professional skeptics into a data base showing us what ordinary people in different cultures
believe about right and wrong, either ethical or political.

One of the causes of concern on the part of those who are interested in liberal institutions is that if
a political order doesn't have some firm connection with standards of right and wrong- if its
institutions stand apart from what passes as the best answer to the moral question- than that
society lacks confidence in the face of attacks, criticisms, and crises. We should remind ourselves
that bourgeois society throughout the Western world is constantly blamed for its excessive
materialism, decadence, hedonism, commercialism, and its dearth of spirituality, seriousness, and
culture, not to mention concern for the needy of the world.10

Now if the liberal could respond to that "and that's great, fun is wonderful, decadence really shines,
materialism is the greatest thing that we should pursue," then there would be no problem with
these charges. Or the liberal might claim that while those charges are off base, there are genuine
values that liberalism does secure in human communities- ones, indeed, that we have reason to
consider more important than the values stressed in competing systems.

The liberal has to admit, however, to one charge, namely that he or she is so firmly committed- at
the political level- to tolerating any form of behavior that he forgets that people are more than
political animals. They also need some confidence that their cultural, scientific, educational,
psychological, paternal, familial, athletic, artistic lives have to have moral legitimacy or validity,
capable of being defended from the critics.

One of the problems that Solzhenitsyn pointed out with the West is precisely that although in the
West people are largely free and enjoy the benefits of ordinary free societies, they do not have the
confidence that their free institutions are morally valid and that they answer the question "How
should we live?" If these free institutions can be related to that answer in an affirmative way- if free
markets, civil liberties, pluralism, the rule of law, defense against self-incrimination and all those
classical liberal, libertarian values could be related to the best answer to the question of ethics,
then these institutions would stand more firmly and more confidently and could intellectually,
philosophically, and maybe even spiritually rebuff the critics.

So that is one reason why the classical liberal worries about the connection between morality and
political economy. It is just humanly too important to have one's political, legal and economic
institutions connected with some morally praiseworthy, respectable, upright form of life. It is
something of a crowd stopper to be told "You have these fine institutions, but what is their merit?-
nothing. Ultimately where lies their value in human life, how do they relate to the moral purpose or
vision that every human being wants and indeed needs to associate with his or her life or
community or family or association?" That's what explains the worry about the connection between
liberty and the pursuit of virtue. By their very nature, human beings are closely wedded to the
problem of virtue, and if liberty is only accidentally connected with virtue- so that under numerous
circumstances it might be given up and maybe tyranny or chaos may facilitate virtue- then it
doesn't seem so unrealistic that people would select non-liberal, even anti-liberal, institutions. If
the connection between liberty and virtue is not a firm and indispensable one, then it makes sense
that people might not insist on liberty.11

My own position- a position that is not at all terribly original, although it is a controversial position
even amongst classical liberals- is that what makes liberty (both in the metaphysical and the
political senses) so closely wedded to virtue is that the human moral good, whether it is prosperity,
artistic beauty, scientific progress, loyalty to family and community, generosity, charity, or
whatever, is connected with individual initiative.
Firstly, if one could become generous without doing anything about it,
that generosity would not be a virtue. If one could be honest by accident,
one's honesty, too, would fail to be a virtue. If one could be made kind,
compassionate, humble, modest, or excellent in many other ways, it
would not be a virtue.

This point is a very old one and has figured in the works of most moral
philosophers. Some crucial passages of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics,
show a recognition of the fact that moral virtue is intimately tied to our
capacity for choice, for taking the initiative, for volitional conduct. Only
those virtues that are practice as a matter of volition can be genuine
moral virtues. And this makes good sense.
If one understands by morality or ethics the dimension of human action involving personal
responsibility- actions for which one may be praised or blamed, actions that are chosen- one can
see clearly why this is so. For one is morally good, responsible, praiseworthy to the extent that
what one does is a deed done by oneself, not merely some movement of one's body possibly at
random or caused by forces impinging upon oneself. To say "You ought to be honest" makes no
sense at all if one either must be or could not be honest. It only makes sense if one has the option,
the genuine freedom to be or not to be honest.

Secondly, this all has a bearing on the classical liberal concern with the
right to life, liberty, and property. These rights are imperatives to all
members of society to choose to abstain from interfering with one's life,
actions, and belongings. And an imperative is a moral edict: "You ought
to abstain from doing what amounts to interfering." Yet if one has no
choice to act or refrain from acting, there cannot be any meaning to the
imperative expressed by individual human rights to life, liberty, and
property. In other words, the normative force of classical liberal political
theory is completely lost unless human beings are metaphysically free to
make basic choices as to what they will do.

Thirdly, if one is being coerced by another person to do the right thing, it

is not really a case of doing the right thing at all. One is not doing the
right thing if a hood or a bureaucrat backed with police power is making
one behave in a way that a morally good personal initiative or choice
would lead one to behave.
So not only is the right to liberty a precondition for virtuous or vicious- that is, morally significant-
conduct, but that right is itself a morally significant imperative only if choices are available to
human beings. And the right also secures one the sphere of personal initiative, so that one's life
has moral meaning.

Thus, we can see, there is indeed a vital and intimate connection

between morality and the classical liberal ideals of human freedom. If
one lacks such freedom, one's moral nature is being thwarted,
suppressed. This explains clearly why some thinkers such as B. F.
Skinner knew that when they deny human liberty, they go "beyond
freedom and dignity," that is, beyond the condition of free choice and
morality.
III.

The Right to Private Property

One instructive way to understand the nature of the right to private property is to consider how it
was understood by its main critic, Karl Marx (1818-1883). This famous German political
economists and revolutionary states in his essay On the Jewish Question, that "the right of man to
property is the right to enjoy his possessions and dispose of the same arbitrarily without regard for
other men, independently from society, the right of selfishness." Actually, this is a rather good
definition. The right to private property- be it one's toothbrush, a steel factory or stocks in a
multinational corporation- authorizes a person to use what one owns as he or she sees fit without
regard to other men. And this use may be reckless as well as prudent, provided it does not invade
the rights of others.

The right to private property as a natural right was not discussed in such
direct terms until about the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. William of
Ockham (c.1285-1349), an English philosopher, referred to it as "the
power of right reason," as a power to make one's moral choices on one's
own, free of others intrusion within the natural world. Some earlier
philosophers made oblique references to natural rights, usually so as to
indicate spheres of personal authority concerning options that were
morally indistinguishable.

The issue of property rights has arisen, of course, in different conceptual

terms throughout human history. One of the most pronounced and
evident examples of its discussion can be found in Aristotle's Politics. He
noted, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, that "Every one thinks
chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he
is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations,
everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another
to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few."
[Politics, 1261b34] And saying this need not amount to a criticism of
people for their supposed selfishness. Rather it amounts to noting that
people are single- minded and goal directed, and will pursue their own
goals more readily than the goals of others.
Aristotle's criticism of Plato- or at least one interpretation of Plato- is that communal ownership
leads to impossibility of carrying out any kind of responsibility and a corresponding lack of care for
and attentive involvement with whatever is publicly owned. This is well illustrated by the common
condition of public beaches. On a public beach, especially in the United States where the tradition
of public service is weak, one finds much litter and trash. When, for example, people notice that
they are late for an appointment and leave everything there, they do not return to clean up. At
home this is different- if they are late and rush off they usually return and clean up their mess. At a
public place their attitude tends to be: "It will get cleaned up somehow, by someone."
In the twentieth century this Aristotelian observation, taking only a few
lines in the Politics, was developed into a major thesis by the University
of California, Santa Barbara, environmental biologist Garrett Hardin. His
article "The Tragedy of the Commons" (Science, 162, December 13,
1968), argues that if things are commonly owned a moral tragedy will
obtain. His case in point is a grazing area being used by private citizens,
owners of cattle. This area, which belongs to everybody, will be exploited
much sooner, indeed abused, than if it were privately owned. The reason
is that no one knows the limits of his or her authority and responsibility
and will, therefore, tend to use more than would be prudent in terms of
the general interest.

Both Aristotle's and Hardin's thesis point up a practical or utilitarian

feature about what private property rights do for human beings in
societies. They place a limitation around what people may do, and also
what may be done to them, so as to produce overall benefit. Just as
one's own backyard puts a limitation on what one may do, thus confining
one's good or bad activities, there is everywhere this practical use for the
idea of private property rights. Private property rights are very important
for those who must act responsibly and who can fail to act responsibly
because their activities will promote public welfare if kept within proper
limits.

Initially this appears to be a mere practical necessity for human social

life. If we were all angels and omniscient, there would be no problem
because we would know what ought to be done within the commune. But
we are human beings who can fail and can make mistakes, so it is vital
to confine these mistakes within a sphere attached to the agent. If X is
mine and I make a mistake vis-à-vis X, I should be the one who suffers
the consequences of my mistake. If it is yours and you make a mistake,
you should experience the consequences of your actions, either good or
bad. Now, if we pool our resources voluntarily, as in a corporation, club,
or family, then mistakes will overlap but no one will be justified in
complaining about it. Thus private property rights encourage industry
and care, though they do not guarantee it.

Yet there is more to all of this than practical usefulness. Some defenders
of private property rights have stressed the moral importance of the
institution. This is evident in the social world.
If one is on a desert island all by oneself, the issue of property rights is of no significance, because
there is no one else who could threaten one's authority over what one is going to do and no one
else will set out to manage the natural world that surrounds one. But if there is somebody else- for
example, Robinson Crusoe is met by Friday- both now have the choice to do good, bad, or
mediocre and either may have an impact on the other. In his choice of actions Friday might
damage Robinson Crusoe or he might help himself significantly. There should be some way to tell
what Robinson Crusoe does and what Friday does and let the two of them decide whether or
when they want to cooperate.

From the point of view of morality one needs to know one's scope of
personal authority and responsibility. One needs to know that some
money is in one's own jurisdiction to use before one can be charitable or
generous to other people. If one does not know that some particular area
of human concern is under one's proper authority or under the authority
of people who have voluntarily come together, then one could not know if
it will be courageous or foolhardy to protect it.
The term "property" is also used to mean some attribute of something- e.g., water has the property
of viscosity. The idea of private property is somewhat derivative of this philosophical meaning,
suggesting that to own something is to relate to it in an intimate fashion, although not
metaphysically but morally and socially, normatively.

In other words, private property rights are a social precondition those of

us in society ought to establish so as to secure the possibility of a moral
life. If one is to be generous to the starving human beings in the Sudan
but one has nothing of one's own from which to be generous, generosity
will not be possible. So there is a necessary connection between a
practical morality and the institution of private property rights.

John Locke (1632-1704), perhaps the most prominent English

philosopher who defended the theory of private property rights, was
aware of this. That is one reason we credit him with forging the system of
liberalism and individualism. He made a connection between acting
freely and responsibly as moral agents and having the right to private
property, both to one's person (by which I take to mean one's life) and to
one's estate.

Locke defended the institution of the right to private property as well as

the way that property might be assigned. There are two issues at hand
here. One is whether this system of private property rights is a morally
necessary system. That's the one issue that we have to consider. Is it
morally necessary to have the institution of private property? And I have
thus far argued that it is. Without knowing what in the world is yours and
what is others', the concrete moral decisions you make about the world
will get confused. A tragedy of the commons of a moral kind, not just the
practical kind, will emerge. The good and bad or mediocre deeds of
human beings will not be assignable to one another but become mired in
confusion and ambiguity, except for the cases where property rights
have been de facto respected.
Karl Marx, of course, emphasized the destructive possibilities entailed by the right to private
property. He was trying to discredit the idea by observing, onesidedly but not inaccurately, that if
one has a right to private property- if there are things one has acquired either via one's good
judgment, one's hard work, others' kindness and generosity, or good luck- this implies that no one
may interfere in how one uses what one owns, provided one does not encroach on other people's
rights in the process. Yet clearly, aside from being free to misuse one's property, having a right to
it also makes possible its prudent, productive, and wise use- indeed, as Aristotle suggests, the
right to private property encourages just that.

Now, property rights have to be compossible- each person's right to private property must be
compatible with all other person's similar right. Any system of incompossible rights- rights the
upholding or respect of which is impossible all at once- is a flawed system. It is inconsistent and
leads to internal conflict. Of course, conflicting claims to having rights (to something) can still arise
because if people have free will they are able to either exercise their property rights or violate
those of others, unless they are stopped or somehow prevented from it. So just because rights are
in principle compossible- just because they can co-exist next to each other- it doesn't mean that
people will not violate each others' rights. If, however, they are not compossible that means there
is no way to avoid violating other people's rights.

That is indeed one of the problems with a system that aims to protect
both negative and "positive" rights.

A right to private property is a negative right because all that individuals

need to do to respect them is to abstain from interfering with others.
Positive rights, however, require of persons to provide others with
services or goods. If you have a right, for example, to health care and
the doctor has a right to liberty, you can imagine that to exercise your
right to health care will almost necessarily violate the doctor's right to
liberty. Because the doctor may want to play golf just when you believe
that you have a right to her services, or maybe she wants to attend to
her daughter's graduation exercise in medical school, and you say, "No, I
have a right to your medical care." Those are not compossible rights,
thus not possible to protect consistently.

One of the arguments of Marx against the institution of private property

rights was that it is necessary only for bourgeois society. Not, however,
because it is a just system but because it increases production. It has an
historically important purpose, namely to supply society with a lot of
goods that under socialism will be distributed in an equitable and
sensible way.

Another argument against property rights, advanced by Pierre Joseph

Proudhon (1809-1865), the prominent French anarchist, is that all
property is theft: Even if we could assign private property originally, by
now matters relating to exchange have gotten very confused. No one
knows whether what is currently assigned to someone is in reality his or
hers since it was probably stolen or somebody acquired via conquest
several times over throughout history. By the time it gets down to our
generation, it is so corrupted, so unclean that any claim to it is
insupportable.
Here is another example of a prominent critique. John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), the twentieth
century's most famous defender of the mixed economy, wrote a book called The End of Laissez-
Faire. (Incidentally, that title is presumptuous because there had been no beginning of laissez-
faire. Laissez-faire was never quite established anywhere, not even in the United States The
United States has had all sorts of regulations at the local level, at the state, county, federal levels
of government for as long as it has existed.12)

In The End of Laissez-Faire Keynes argues that capitalism is like the

heartless wilderness: It favors, for example, giraffes, with their long
necks, but animals without such advantages are left to be losers. People
who are helpless in capitalism are supposedly left callously abandoned.
Although some charity or philanthropy may exist, nevertheless the
capitalist system lacks the compassion, generosity, or kindness to take
care of millions of people. Keynes, accordingly, advocated the
interventionist welfare state. He believed that morally speaking, some
intervention, regulation, and redistribution of wealth is necessary.

Even John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), an English political economist and

philosopher who was a very strong supporter of the market system,
yielded to this argument a little. He maintained that although at the stage
of production pure capitalism should prevail, at the distribution level we
need some statism to help the people who are unfortunate.

It seems clear, then, that if one is going to try to defend the system of
consistent, uncompromised private property rights against critics, one
needs more than merely to declare, "Well, in the long run we are all
better off in a system that promotes wealth." Not everybody is here for
the long run. Some people are here for the short run and many do not
think in terms of the long run. They must realize that justice, rights,
dignity, and fair play are all well respected by this system so as to
deserve their support.

Furthermore, if a sound moral case for private property rights does not
exist, then the system, despite its efficiency and productive potential, is
always vulnerable to significant erosion. In legal processes, if no
underlying moral basis can be found for the system, judges will gradually
change the law in the direction of their own moral convictions, since they
must often make discretionary judgments that rest on morality. If people
know well enough that some assignments are unjust and if the law fails
to take notice of this, the system of law will lack moral legitimacy.

Then, also, people generally want to be on the side of morality. Their

loyalty to a system lacking this alliance is likely to be weaker than if they
can be confident about the moral justness of the legal system.
Finally, there is also the issue of seeing members of society treated decently and justly. Without at
least a serious attempt to implement such treatment, the authority of the law will very likely suffer-
why should people not steal if the only objection to stealing is mere economic expediency?
From a purely practical utilitarian point of view whether your property
rights are assigned to one or another is irrelevant. Something may be
given to one we now regard a thief or to one from whom the thief stole
and overall the social gain or loss would (at least for the time being) be
the same. This is one of the insights of Nobel laureate Ronald Coase's
famous "Coase theorem." Regardless of how property rights are
assigned at the moment, the social consequences are unchanged. All
that is important is that some assignment of property rights occurs.

If we want to defend the institution of private property rights, if we want to

defend its concomitant political economy, namely, capitalism, we need
more than a practical defense. We need a morally convincing argument
that shows that this system is right, not just useful. We need to have
some way of assigning private property.

Is there some method whereby a correct assignment of property rights is

possible? What might be such a method? What would be a just
assignment of property rights to various items that can be owned by
people?

John Locke advanced the theory that when one mixes one's labor with
nature, one gains ownership of the part of nature with which the labor
was mixed. While initially nature is a gift from God to us all, once we
individually mix our labor with some portion of it, it becomes ours alone.
Yet this has not carried sufficiently wide conviction partly because the idea of "mixing labor with
nature" is ambiguous. Does discovering an island count? Does exploring it? Does fencing it in?
Does identifying (discovering) a scientific truth count as mixing labor with nature? What about
inventing something? And how about trade- should the act of reaching mutual agreement on terms
of trade count as mixing one's labor with something of value?13

A revised notion has been advanced in current libertarian thought, via the theory of
entrepreneurship. Ayn Rand (1903-1982)- a Russian- born American novelist-philosopher, who
has been one of the modern era's most fervent and influential advocate of pure, laissez-faire
capitalism, based on an theory of the unalienable individual right to life, liberty, and property-
advanced a moral case for the system that emphasizes the moral role of individual judgment and
entrepreneurship. A similar position was developed by Professor Israel Kirzner and by Father
James Sadowsky.14

The notion is that it is the judgment that fixes something as of potential value to oneself or others
that earns oneself the status of a property holder. Judgment, after all, is not automatic, nor need it
involve actual overt physical labor. It is a freely made choice involving the quintessential human
capacity to think, to reason things out, in this case applied to some aspect of reality and its
relationship to one's goals and purposes in life. One makes the choice to identify something as
having potential or actual value. This gives it a practical dimension, something to guide one's
actions in life. One may be right or wrong about this, but in either case the judgment brings the
item under one's jurisdiction on a first-come first- served basis. George selects some hole in the
ground as of potential value, and then George has rightful jurisdiction over it and may explore its
potential for oil, minerals, as a museum, or as a family home. George may have been right or
wrong to make this selection- indeed, the hole may not come to anything at all- it may be dry, so to
speak. But by his selecting it, he has appropriated it.
And the appropriation has moral significance because it exhibits an effort of prudence, of taking
proper care of himself and those he is responsible for. It is also a morally significant (possibly life
enhancing) choice for George to make that does not deprive another of anything another owns
already. Instead, it places George in the position of having to choose how to orient himself in his
life vis-a-vis some aspect of his world- whether yet untouched nature or some opportunity others
make available to him in a market place. George's attempt to act prudently, to exercise the virtue
of prudence, by his judgment and subsequent exploitation of what he has chosen to appropriate, is
potentially morally meritorious. And to live as a moral agent, George must be free to make such
attempts without intrusions by others unless it intrudes on another's prior effort to that effect.

This is the beginning. In complex social contexts, such as industrial society, such acquisition
occurs via thousands of small and large acts of discovery, investment, saving, buying, and selling,
with willing participants who embark upon the same general approach to life. Yet no one is
coerced into one particular approach either- which accounts for what Robert Nozick noted,15
namely, capitalism's hospitality to diversify conceived utopias, to experiments with great varieties
of human conceptions as to the good social life. This is evident in all the experimental
communities, churches, artistic colonies, economic education, and scientific organizations- that
abound in what has come to be perhaps the most closely capitalist, private property-respecting
large society in human history.

Moreover, theoretical defenses of the system of private property rights

do not begin to answer all the questions that arise concerning the best
application of that system vis-à-vis the multitude of complex problems
involving property acquisition and use. While the 1980s have ushered in
the movement toward privatization throughout the globe, including
Eastern Europe's abandonment of the planned economic system, we are
still far from having full confidence in the power of such a system of
individual property rights.
Defenders, however, argue that compared to all other alternatives, the system has proven itself.
And if consistently upheld, then when problems arise the courts adjudicating the difficulties will
arrive at the required answers concerning particular application of the right to private property- in
everything from radio signals to frozen embryos, the air mass, and segments of water. Without
elaborate legal and technical discussion, which will be prevented by the application of alternative
models, the great potential of the system will remain unexploited- for example, regarding
environmental and ecological concerns.

Some skepticism about the right to private property is advanced on the

grounds that although we may be able to show its moral and practical
necessity, nothing about that proves that anyone has the absolute right
to property. Yet this is an entirely spurious objection. The term "absolute"
plays no useful role in designating rights as such. When people say, "Of
course, you are absolutely right," this does not in the least add any
meaning to "You are right." At most it is an emphasis, intimating the
speaker's full assent. It was Ludwig Wittgenstein who made this point
very well, as recounted by Normal Malcolm in his short biography,
Ludwig Wittgenstein. Once during a walk with Malcolm, Wittgenstein
"gave" Malcolm all of the trees they passed by, with the provision that
nothing could be done to the trees. Malcolm recalled this episode for its
potency for illustrating Wittgenstein's way of thinking, his approach to
getting to the meaning of concepts. For me it is the particular case that is
of interest here: Obviously it is absurd to give people some trees they
may not touch. Then they do not own these trees.
However, when one owns something, it does not follow that anything may be done with it. What
may be done with it is anything that does not itself violate other people's rights. And even that
"may" means only that "no one is justified in preventing one's doing this with it." Still, perhaps one
ought not do it anyway, however much one is exercising one's rights. If one owns a huge boulder
standing on the heavily sloped backyard of one's land, with residents living below, the ownership
could involve the responsibility to secure the boulder good and hard, lest it get loose and destroy
property below one's land. This applies to a good deal of ownership, such as when one owns a
bazooka or a nuclear power generator. These cases of ownership involve, in part, not acting so as
to place others at high risk. But having the right to life and liberty- or anything for that matter-
involves abstaining from violating others' rights, which could involve some evasive action. (This is
why the issue of positive versus negative rights needs to be dealt with very carefully! See, for
more, my "Moral Myths and Basic Positive Rights," Tulane Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 33 [1985],
pp. 35-41.)

In conclusion to our discussion of property rights, let me return to the

philosophical foundations for the private property rights system. Two
interrelated justifications for the right to private property are at hand: (1)
Such a system is necessary to the provision of "moral space" and, more
particularly, (2) it makes prudential (i.e., one kind of morally virtuous)
conduct possible vis-à-vis our natural and social world. (Natural in the
case of initial appropriation, social in the case of voluntary trade.) Unless
these are sound reasons, that system and institution are probably
unjustified and will eventually be defeated as a political alternative for the
modern world.
Let me note in closing that there has been much intellectual consternation in our time about just
how strictly a decent society needs to implement and protect a system of private property rights.
Some who are sympathetic have claimed that what needs to be given up is an absolutist approach
to the issue. (See, for example, Jeffrey Friedman, "The New Consensus: The Democratic Welfare
State," Critical Review, Vol. 4 [Fall, 1990], pp. 633-708.) Yet, this is, in the last analysis, a bogus
issue. "Absolute" is used, in most contexts, for purposes of emphasis, not to designate the proper
scope and limits of something. If the system of private property rights is indeed sound, if human
beings ought to live in communities where such a system is established, protected, and
maintained- where courts refer to such rights as basic principles of adjudication and legislation is
not permitted to erode them- then decisions involving conflicting claims will be resolved with
reference to that system instead of, say, a system of public ownership or the distribution of
common goods by democratic means. In human affairs, including politics and law, nothing is
absolute in the way it may be in, say, Euclidean geometry or formal logic, because life is dynamic
and matters yet unknown come to light in time. The issue is not absoluteness but being principled,
living in terms of the rule of law and not the passions and whims of those currently popular and
powerful. A system of private property rights is used to govern in this spirit, so when it is being
evaluated, criticism based on whether it is absolutist or merely limited (by whom?) amounts to a
red herring.

IV.
Morality, Liberalism and The Market Economy
Different philosophers would give different accounts of the connection between markets and
morality even if they supported classical liberalism and free markets. For instance, a utilitarian
would not stress individual rights and moral space but the usefulness of market processes in the
achievement of the general welfare. Pure Kantian deontologists- who are concerend about our
freedom to make principled decisions about our conduct- would, in turn, probably stress the point
about moral space and personal autonomy secured via a free market economic system. There is
no universal agreement on this, but that doesn't have any bearing on the truth. Yet one can
appreciate some skepticism in light of such wide disparity of viewpoints. I'll try to abate this
skepticism with the natural rights approach.

I am no subjectivist- it is ultimately a self-defeating position and thus is paradoxical to even

articulate. There are, let's say, "best answers" to moral questions. The issue in the present
discussion is that when one lives in a certain political economic system- wants to operate and
make oneself at home within that system, and maybe even defend these when they are criticized
from one's neighbors, one's fellow citizens, foreigners, and so forth- one must be reasonably
confident that this system is consistent with certain basic moral values by which all human beings
are obliged to abide. For example, if in a free-market society one had to lie all the time, the system
would be morally intolerable. It would be evident that even though the system might be successful
economically, it would be morally wrong, unfit. If a system inherently conflicts with a basic virtue
such as honesty, justice, or generosity, then most probably it is flawed. One reason that socialism,
fascism, communism, and other systems have a problem with credibility is not only that they are
economically inefficient and cause poverty and misallocation of resources, but also because they
engender ways of living that are morally degrading and make one feel guilty about the kind of life
one is leading. The issue is whether the market economy is such a system. Or is it one that is
even compatible with a moral outlook on life?

There are, of course, competing moral outlooks on human life. With

which is the free market, capitalist political economy compatible, which
gives that system its moral support if any? More importantly than that
question, is such a moral position sound so that we may conclude that
free market capitalism is, therefore, morally well grounded?

While these are the relevant questions to ask, we are not going to be
able to answer them here conclusively. But while they are the most
important questions for a thorough, in-depth inquiry, there is a less
comprehensive yet fruitful way to approach the issue at hand. One can
ask whether our ordinary moral principles and moral ideals are
compatible with and support the free market.
One can be an altruist, egoist, hedonist, Christian, Buddhist, or adhere to any one of a number of
other moral systems, yet most of us see the truth of certain moral ideals. We may not rank them in
importance the same way- that depends on what "ism" is correct; but no one could sensibly claim
that being a coward is an exemplary way to behave or that being a cheat or a liar is morally right.
The same goes for being unjust or cruel. Virtues such as prudence, honesty, courage, generosity,
and justice are part of any bona fide moral system.

In other words, there are some central virtues that (regardless of one's philosophical or religious
orientations) all of us happen to recognize as binding upon human beings. This is somewhat
similar to the way most of us see the physical world, regardless of the physics we subscribe to.
Whether we lived in Newton's, Einstein's or Bohr's scientific reign, rocks were hard in any case
and water liquid and the sky blue. We live in a common physical universe and we tend to live,
unless we are pathological and very deeply disturbed, in a common moral universe and, of course,
in both areas there exists ample disagreement on the fringes.16
So, similarly, while there are very great differences between moral
systems, at a certain level there is only the ordinary human question: "Is
the human community that we would find coexisting with a free market
economy a morally decent one? Would a capitalist economic system be
more or less in accord with the dictates of ordinary human morality than
other political economic options?" That is the question that I want to
address now.
First, let me raise a few issues about morality. Why is there morality at all- what gives rise to this
dimension of reality and human life? The answer lies in the fact that we do not have any automatic
ways of guiding ourselves in life. So human beings everywhere, anytime will have to raise the
question, "How should I live?"

Moral theories and their basic moral principles, such as egoism, altruism,
utilitarianism, and hedonism, are all proposed answers to the question
that gives rise to morality. Are we to live, basically, so as to pursue
pleasure; or so as to maximize well-being throughout society, or to do
ourselves the greatest good, or maybe so as to prepare for everlasting
salvation in an afterlife? That's the sense in which these moral systems
or theories are answers to the basic question, "How should I live?" It is
because we need an answer to that basic question, and because it's
important to act consistently with this basic answer, that when we talk
about human institutions such as marriage, science, business, sports,
and legal or political systems, in the back of our minds it always comes
up whether they accord with morality. Are these institutions morally
proper or do we have to "sell our souls" for them to be tolerable?

One of the most serious problems we face with the market economy and
what goes on in markets, namely, commerce or business, is that many of
the world's moral traditions maintain that the pursuits of prosperity and
morality are either incompatible or in outright conflict. "Jesus said to his
disciples, `I tell you this: a rich man will find it hard to enter the kingdom
of Heaven. I repeat, it is easier for a camel pass through the eye of the
needle than the rich man enter the kingdom of God.'..." (Matthew 19:23-
24) People who want solely to be wealthy are not doing what is morally
proper in the tradition of Christian morality. People who want to be rich or
prosperous are usually disparaged as materialists, decadent, and
greedy.

Even in the United States of America, where business had at least been
given legal protection and flourished so much that the rest of the world
had for some time looked upon the country with some measure of envy
and had relied on its economic assistance, when a political party even
appears to secure certain advantages for business, it is condemned as
fostering avarice and spreading meanness and callousness. Profit-
making is belittled and public service is championed far above private
industry, at least by the society's moral leadership.
It is often claimed, quite plausibly, that a free market economy encourages a hedonistic, decadent
type of life. Clearly one reason that the countries that used to be the Soviet Union have turned
toward perestroika and economic reforms that favor privatization and competition, is that such a
system is admittedly more conducive to generating prosperity for human beings than are
command economies. Yet, at the same time, this is deemed by many to be a mere practical policy
adjustment, not something that can claim strong moral support. Instead a free market is thought to
give rise to frivolity, trivial pursuits, and conspicuous consumption. In many near-capitalist
societies it is widely argued that the concern with wealth is a degrading feature of society. Any
society that encourages people to think about goods and services that will enrich them- going
shopping instead of doing the kinds of works associated with Mother Teresa- is not morally
worthwhile.

It is widely maintained, both in the West and in the East, in Africa as well
as in Asia, in the Arab as well as the Christian parts of the world, that a
better, more humane, or morally upright society would worry about
culture and art, spiritual growth, helping the poor, and similar noble
things. Indeed, it is paradoxical that while many of us concern ourselves
a great deal with the poor and how they ought to be helped to become
well off, when people are well off we condemn this as something low and
base. And many of us fail to see that those other noble projects we are
supposed to pursue instead of profit are all very heavily dependent on
the availablity of capital that the profit-motive produces. In short,
everyone seems to depend on good business but no one seems to think
that business has much that is good about it. Indeed, the profit-motive
has been widely regarded either as a private vice that just happens to
lead to public benefits or an innate drive no one can resist without
immense moral vigilance.
So the major problem with capitalism- and this is true whether one comes from the political right or
left, whether one is a conservative or a social democrat- has been that it encourages a
preoccupation with wealth, with living the good life here on earth, with living at least a reasonably
pleasurable and pleasant human life, and not interested in spiritual concerns. Maybe it does not
foster the excellent life of the saint or the hero but it is the kind of life you can at least be content
with and enjoy. Most people in such societies concern themselves with retirement, vacation trips,
and related pleasantries. This is something lowly to think about; one's soul is said to be demeaned
by it.

But is this all true? Granted, it is probably an exaggeration- some of it may come from envy, some
from the fear of loss of power- but some of it comes from an honest worry. Enough people both left
and right are genuinely concerned with the possibility that a fully free market economy would, for
example, commercialize most of the professions. Whether one would be a dentist, an operator of
an art gallery, a museum curator, or a professor of philosophy, it is feared that in a free market
economy all of these would be gobbled up by commerce. Philosophy would be sold on the market
and therefore cheapen itself. We would get corrupt versions of Plato and Aristotle so as to make it
saleable in the marketplace. That we would water down our very complex scholarship because
instead of selling four copies as most serious scholarly books do, if we water it down it will sell 5
million copies. In capitalism we try to get rich and so we don't write complicated and interesting
philosophical texts, we write cheap "accessible" stuff only.
And clearly there is something to all this- we can see the best sellers are not exactly Aristotle's
Metaphysics. They tend to be titled I'm OK, We're All OK, How to Be One's Own Best Buddy?, or
Looking Out for Numero Uno. So it is a serious fear that in a free market one must lower standards
to a common denominator which will make goods and services commercially successful but
otherwise base. These are some of the matters that lead people to consider the market morally
suspect and morally worrisome.

The first thing to be said about this is that part of the reason for finding the market morally suspect
is that there are dominant moral systems, moral outlooks which actually maintain that trying to live
a reasonably successful, happy, and pleasant life here on earth is base, lowly, and beneath the
human soul. Now if any of these moral systems were actually right- if one in fact ought morally to
renounce success, prosperity, good health, etc.; if a life that is enjoyable or satisfactory is a
morally base or defective one- it would therefore be undeniable that a society with a free market is
wrong. If one were to believe that somehow people should live lives of constant, relentless
poverty, asceticism, self-abasement, suffering, etc., then one could not be a supporter of
capitalism. One would then probably support socialism since that system fosters plenty of
suffering, poverty, deprivation and neediness.17

Thus, clearly, we can't avoid getting into a brief discussion of moral

systems, even though ordinary morality does not clearly renounce the
good human life here on earth. The virtue of prudence, for example,
clearly encourages commerce and even the profession or specialty of
business, if not the relentless, obsessive striving for massive wealth.
Unfortunately there are some systems that while accepting the general moral values such as
honesty, generosity, courage, and prudence elevate a virtue such as charity to the top and place
prudence at the bottom or exclude it entirely. If a moral system really maintains that our primary
goal in life is to be charitable and it is only way down the line that we may take care of ourselves-
to be prudent- then we probably could not be a defender of the market. So is that right, does that
make sense? Is that the sound morality?

No, it is wrong. Charity is not the highest moral virtue and in fact
prudence is a more important or higher virtue than most people believe.
One reason for that is that what morality is concerned with ultimately is
how to be good at what we (essentially, naturally, centrally) are. To live a
good life is to live a good life of the kind we have some control over,
some understanding of. Obviously if we lived the good life of a dog and
went around barking excellently it wouldn't be a great human life. If we
did live excellently as angels, then again we wouldn't live a good human
life but a good angelic life. Since, however, we are not angels, it wouldn't
be morally relevant to practice angelic virtues.

So the question of morality is what it is to live a good human life. When

we ask the question, "How should I live?" the "I" is a human being in our
case. Humanity then must come in very directly when answering the
question. We need, first of all to know what is it to be a human being so
that we can answer the question "How to live this kind of life that is my
life, how to live it excellently?"

Thus the issue arises as to what human nature is. What is it that every
human being is, regardless of all the accidentals, and all the incidentals
(race, height, age). What is it simply to be human? That is one of the
central issues that must be considered when we try to answer the
question of morality. For me to answer, "How should I live my life?" I
need to know what kind of being I am.

Now what I am does not exhaust the issue of how to determine what I
should do, but it is the beginning. And what I am is a rational animal, a
biological entity with the facility to think for myself and with a necessity to
guide my life through thinking. In the case of human life there is no
relying on instincts nor on direct communication with God. We are pretty
much left with having to think through what to do. This is our facility; we
have to learn things, we have to use our heads. This is what it is to be a
rational animal.

But it is not to be forgotten that we are not just rational but also animals.
We have to sustain ourselves and indeed flourish as such. We have to
excel as rational biological entities. So the question, "How should I live,
what will human excellence amount to?" is to a large extent answered by
noting that we must rationally govern our own lives. We need, first and
foremost, to govern ourselves with the facts of our lives and the world
around us in mind, including what principles of conduct will guide us to
success in this endeavor. That is what will make us good.

Now such rational self-government can take many different shapes.

When one says that this is the highest good, one can still ask millions of
other questions because that is a very general answer. That is an
answer that has to be true in fifth century B.C., in Mongolia, in South
Africa, Sweden, or anywhere else where human beings ask the question
that gives rise to morality. And if it is going to be a good answer, it
cannot merely apply to North Americans in the twentieth century. There
are human beings everywhere else and in other times and not just in the
twentieth century in North America.

That is why the question is at first answered so generally, and seems

such an empty response, so unsatisfactory: Okay, so I ought to live a
rationally self-governed life. What does that mean, to me, now, here, in
my life? What should I do?
The answer obviously has a lot to do not with just the fact that one is a human being, but with who
one is in particular, with the individual that one is. Here we come face to face with a kind of
individualism I call "classical." It isn't enough to say one is a human being; it is necessary to
remember which human being one is. In order to do well at living it is not only important to excel as
a human but as this or that individual human. This will, of course, bring into focus many differences
amongst human beings. Very many different ways of living the good human life will have to be
considered in morality, not just one. From the most general consideration of one's being a human
being to the most particular one of one's individuality, there will be a very wide range of factors-
concerning one's age, one's family, one's profession, nationality, sex, talents, history, opportunity,
economic circumstance, and so on. Some of these will group a person with innumerable others,
some with only a few. All these matters will be of significance in how one answers the question,
"How should I live my life?"

I don't want to enter into a lengthy discussion of morality, other than ask how it relates to classical
liberalism and the market economy. One would hope that the answer to the proposed question of,
how should I live- namely, to live by rationally governing one's own life- would bring forth some
general principles. These would be the moral virtues that most of us need to guide ourselves in our
lives. Only the classical individualist moral system would rank these moral virtues in a specific
way, namely, so that taking care of oneself- or the virtue of prudence- would be fairly high up the
list.

In other words, to put it bluntly, under classical individualism prudence is

a very high virtue; it may not be the highest virtue, but it is one of the
higher virtues. Generosity would not be the highest virtue though it
wouldn't be the lowest, either. Maybe humility would be the lowest, if a
virtue at all, unles we mean by it no more than honest modesty. (That is
just a suggestion which I am not going to defend.) I simply wanted to
indicate here that this is the way it would probably work out.
When it comes to living in a human community, this classical individualism would regard the
opportunities made possible within a market economy exceedingly important to human life. The
market economy's opportunities for improving one's life here on earth would be most welcome
within the framework of classical individualism. Classical individualism would require most people
to undertake- as one of their major tasks in life- to succeed economically. To be economically
prosperous is a virtue, not a vice, if the classical individualist position I have outlined above is
sound.

To be a successful, rational animal includes being a reasonably prosperous rational animal and
therefore the attempt or effort to reach such prosperity- which is made so hospitable within the
market economy- would not be something immoral or decadent or lowly but morally praiseworthy.
The market economy, in turn, would become not a place where morality would wither but a place
where it would flourish.

Let us consider this in the light of the very plausible yet not so ambitious
insight that prudence is indeed an important moral virtue for everyone to
practice. We have seen now that prudence is part of our common sense
moral system as well as part of a system that makes very good sense as
a sound morality for human beings here on earth.

The virtue of prudence may best be defined as the character trait guiding
one to take care of oneself. If you are indeed a rational animal and
prudence is indeed a moral virtue, then everyone ought to embark upon
taking care of himself or herself. Prudence would guide one to make
sure that one leads a prosperous, successful, healthy life. If one is an
imprudent person, one neglects oneself and one's life. A prudent person
is someone who makes sure that his or her life is reasonably well
planned and taken care of.

It is important that we understand here a very broad sense of prudence

because what prudence is in one's life depends on what and who one is.
For example, if one's essential self is one's everlasting soul, then taking
care of oneself may very well involve a great many more spiritual
concerns in one's life than if that were not the case. Prudence is neutral
on this question. Its scope or reach depends on what the self is.

Classical individualism holds that the human self is a natural being the
flourishing of which must take place on this earth within the limits of a
lifetime. Prudence for a classical individualist would amount to living well,
flourishing as a rational animal here on earth.

Classical liberalism, in turn, is a political economic system that is most

hospitable to rational animals in their effort to live prudently, to prosper in
life, to flourish not just economically but also spiritually. Within this
framework "spiritual" means the life and values of a being with
conceptual consciousness, of self-awareness and of principled self-
understanding. "Spiritual" is understood in psychological ways. Classical
liberalism is the position that one ought to have the needed social
conditions for devoting one's life to improvement or excellence as a
whole person, although this also implies that one may not be prevented
from neglecting this task.

At a more fundamental level, however, under classical liberalism one is

governing one's own life regardless of the moral system that serves as
the guide for such governance. This is why such a system is a more
tolerant one than alternatives because despite its grounding in classical
individualism, it makes room for the practices of different moralities.
People don't govern human lives that are not theirs. So whether one's
moral task is supposed to be an improvement of one's life in this world or
for the sake of another world, under the classical liberal framework one
has the right to do either, regardless of which is correct.

An individual is sovereign, in charge of his or her life, not that of others.

There is no one who is one's natural master and one is no one's natural
master. So this is a kind of moral individualism to take care of one's life
whether long range (even after death into another spiritual realm) or
short range (within this world).
The main point of this normative- natural rights- classical liberalism is that it welcomes the idea
that every person must lead a moral life on his or her own, which includes the selection of the
moral system by which that life is to be governed. That is one of the reasons, as noted above, why
classical liberalism is legally and politically tolerant toward moralities that may not even be
supportive of it. This is because under classical liberalism one has the right- i.e., others may not
prevent one by force- to be wrong. It doesn't necessarily mean that classical liberalism is
compatible with every morality in the sense that it is true regardless of which morality is true. It
means that under a free system, that protects individual sovereignty, one is free to embark on
most projects as guided by some moral system, right or wrong, and indeed one is free- that is
none may stop one- to be immoral as well unless this immorality involves encroaching upon
another's sphere of authority. (This should call to mind our previous discussion of the right to
private property.)
Now there are some moral projects that one could not justifiably embark
on: one could not, in justice, take a slave. If one belonged to a religion
that required its adherents to take a hostage every two years, one could
not do that with impunity. In legal trials in the United States, for example,
when parents who are members of a religious sect have subjected their
children to hazardous rituals, (such as holding up a snake to see if it will
bite the child), the parents have been successfully prosecuted. There is
a serious controversy about whether the right to religion freedom implies
that parents ought to be protected when they subject their children to
such rituals. But in a liberal legal system, despite its greater commitment
to the principle of toleration than others, it is deemed that until one is an
adult one may not be subjected to (potentially) deadly practices, that
ordinary care is due a child from his or her parents.
Classical liberalism or libertarianism is not universally compatible with just any morality, but most
moralities- whether Hindu, Jewish, Atheist, Christian, Buddhist, or Moslem- can be practiced within
its jurisdiction to the extent, especially, that they all stress that one must make choices that are in
accordance with virtue. Of course, as to what the virtues are for these various religions or
philosophies depends on what their conception of human nature is. But within certain limits that is
compatible. Why? Because they secure for people what Robert Nozick calls "moral space."18 This
is an area or sphere or dimension of personal authority over one's life, where others would
trespass if they started to dictated one's actions. If others started to tell one how to live or would
subject one to certain moral edicts, they would not be justified nor allowed to do so. It would be
against the law and thus forbidden. That would be a form of political trespass.

These principles- ones we call a person's individual rights- also protect an individual (more or less)
from moral dumping. If I were a person who lives a slothful and irresponsible life I have to shoulder
that myself. It will not be possible for me to expect that the community will absorb my vices. I have
to live with my own vices. Of course there are some people who might join me in my viciousness
and they will probably have to share the consequences. But so long as they do it voluntarily, they
are equally responsible. So there is nothing problematic here. If I am married to someone who is
equally slothful as I am or tolerates my being a liar or a coward, that's legally her right. It is her vice
to have made such a careless judgment as to marry me. Moral evil is therefore largely contained.
Not fully or exactly, obviously- there are some spillovers. In a market economy if a person is
neglectful and burns down his factory, that may drive the price of some things up for awhile so
other people are affected. But even then, they are affected in a voluntary way, not involuntarily,
because, after all, trade is voluntary.19 And to the extent that one is trading with other people, the
quality of their lives may affect others in a voluntary way, not by being imposed upon, but by
choice. Maybe one didn't think this through when one started to trade with them, but nevertheless
one ought to have done. That is the interesting thing about what's happening in international oil
trade, for example. If we were to look at OPEC as a kind of voluntary association (it requires some
imagination, I know), and it suddenly collapsed from inefficiency or neglect thereby driving up oil
prices, it shouldn't be construed as coercive imposition even if it is the source of serious distress. It
is something that we have accepted from the fact that we are willing to trade with people who
could mismanage their affairs. People are perfectly free to change their way of life and change
from being diligent people to sloppy people. That may affect our relationship to them in the
marketplace. But it is a voluntary relationship, not a case of dumping.

Finally, another popular association with classical liberalism would have to be revised if classical
individualism is the best ethics and serves as the foundation of the just polity. The idea that we
heard elaborated in connection with Bernard Mandeville, Adam Smith, and others in the classical
economic school, captured in the slogan "private vice, public benefit," would have to be revised the
idea of "private virtue, public prosperity." Many people, even back then, regarded selfishness as
something bad, and commercialism as base or low. They only see the overall consequences of it
as good but the personal behavior associated with it morally wrong. But if one is thinking more
along classical individualist ethical lines so that in this world prudence is a significant virtue, then
the kind of selfishness we expect from people in commercial, business, or economic affairs would
not be a vice. The people in the business world, even when considered in light of standards of
individual morality, could be regarded as commendable, honorable people. They, as specialists,
would be acting morally as they attempt to make themselves and their clients prosperous. They
would be improving their lives, including the lives they are attached to, those of their family, their
children, and their friends. There is nothing wrong, indeed there is everything morally proper, with
this kind of intelligent, prudent selfishness. And thus it isn't a paradox to have private
selfishness20 or prudence result in public prosperity. Since it is morally praiseworthy it would also
be practically praiseworthy. There would be no conflict between the practical and the moral.

Much of contemporary moral philosophy- and especially that moral philosophy which underlies
liberalism and is often associated with understanding the market economy- suffers from this
paradox. On the one hand charity is the supreme human virtue, as is self-sacrifice. On the other
hand national prosperity, the wealth of nations is praised. But in private conduct we are praising
the very things that don't create the wealth of nations. And we condemn the practices, such as
selfishness, commercialism, and wealth seeking, that lead to this desirable public result.21

But if classical individualism is true as a moral system for human life, that
paradox disappears because it is perfectly okay to pursue personal
riches and thereby, as a side effect, bring about public prosperity.

Having now shown why morality and liberalism may well be the most
compatible moral and political theories, let us take a brief look at some of
the common questions posed about the moral qualities of free markets. I
have already referred to commercialization as something that bothers
people about the market economy. Another concern is the fate of the
poor if we were to have a totally laissez-faire market economy, if no
coerced transfer of wealth were permitted, if individuals' rights to private
property were protected.

If the system of law that surrounded the market were consistently

protected, it wouldn't be compromised even for evidently hard cases.
This is a strict free market economy or capitalism. It doesn't even cave in
at the public policy level to the handicapped or orphan's cry for help or to
the unfortunates who are the casualties of earthquakes or hurricanes. It
is wrong to sacrifice the integrity of the system.

Well, isn't that cruel? Wouldn't that be a callous system? Wouldn't we

ultimately have condemn it on moral grounds? That is the general
suggestion. Even those people who now want to transfer Eastern Europe
to a largely market economy believe that there should be what is called a
safety net. Many Americans who basically endorse the free market also
favor this safety net, some minimal transfer of wealth. Some minimal
robbery, to use my words for it, for the sake of compassion and charity
and kindness to those who are truly unfortunate.

We are not talking about people who are hangers-on or who are free
riders. We are talking about evident cases of misfortune in life. Any
liberal or any capitalist who wants to deny that there are such cases is
living in a very strange world. There are such cases, and a system of
free enterprise has to contend with the issue: what about that?

In reply, we must ask, compared to what? In back of the question, for

example, "What about the poor?" lies usually a utopian ideal, a world
mentally pictured in which everybody is happy, automatically taken care
of. It is an illusory system in which the poor have somehow disappeared,
as if by waving a magic wand. But there is no way to defend the market
economy against the charge that it might mistreat the poor if the
standard of proper treatment emerges from such a mental picture.
Because, of course, in a free society it is possible, even though it might
not be as likely as in, say, socialism or fascism or mercantilism, that
some unfortunate people will suffer. There is no guarantee against this.
Of course, it is also true no competing system of political life can
guarantee against natural disasters, human immorality, or personal
mismanagement of one's life. And the illusion that we could guarantee
against exigencies is what governs a great deal of political and economic
thinking, especially in the halls of academe.

Whenever questions arise about whether the free system isn't

susceptible to various types of corruption, it rests, conceptually or
philosophically, mostly on this ideal picture of a kind of Platonic, perfect
society where universal prosperity, peace, and contentment are
envisioned. Then people compare the proposed free market system to
this.

In fact, however, political economies should be assessed comparatively.

This may even be a kind of moral principle of normative criticism. And
there is no reasonable doubt that the lot of the poor, on the whole, would
be far better in a robust capitalist, classical liberal political economy than
the lot of the poor even in the welfare state, let alone in socialism or
communism.

Why? For one, there isn't the illusion created in such a system that
things will be somehow taken care of by the system, by "big brother," by
the central and supreme authority. That's an illusion and, often enough
from the lips of some, an outright lie. Most of the people living in the
United States know that they have had a welfare state now going in full
swing for the last hundred years or so. Yet, they are now having a
homeless problem, a health crisis, an enormous national debt, and
constant financial scandals in various areas of government. So the
welfare state is no remedy, where it does deliver on a promise, it
necessarily destroys something in its wake.
Other countries that supposedly tolerated repression and oppression for
the sake of eliminating poverty eliminated hardship by closing down the
presses which reported on it. They didn't actually do away with
indigence, but hid it from view so none knew until the borders finally
opened and people went in and saw that there was poverty in Hungary,
Poland, Bulgaria, and Rumania. So it turns out that the sacrifice of
freedom for the sake of the poor never worked for the poor at all.
But that is only one side of the story. The other is that a free society would be of great moral
benefit because it would make virtue possible as well as encourage it. People would not be able to
say, "Well, I don't have to be charitable or generous toward my neighbor because the government
has already taxed me and it's going to redistribute my wealth to them." Whatever virtue there is to
charity, generosity, kindness, and compassion- and there still clearly is, even if it is not the first
virtue- it would be up to citizens to practice it. It will be up to them to establish institutions which
would promulgate these virtues: philanthropies, service organizations, relief agencies such as the
Salvation Army, and Red Cross, and so on. As a matter of fact historically, the United States,
which is the freest of large societies and the most classical liberal, seems to be where voluntary
philanthropic, and charitable institutions to flourish best. There seems to be some connection
historically between a genuine free society and one that achieves most socially desired objectives.

There is, of course, no guarantee that a free society will be satisfactory

to all. Some people are satisfied only by some rather coercive
institutions. A thief, for example, wants goods and services without
having to work; a person cannot be satisfied if individual rights to liberty
and property are fully protected. But even beyond this, sometimes free
men and women are unwilling to do what is best for them and for those
they should care about. Yet, if that is a common trait in society, nothing
much can be done about it, certainly not by way of coercion. We have, I
believe, learned this lesson well enough from recent history, at least.
A moral community has to be one in which unimpeded human choices have the maximum range
of influence. Otherwise morality itself is void and null- or, at best, extremely confused, by way of all
the dumping and indeterminacy that prevails in a coercive society. So while not having all one's
noble goals guaranteed will incline some to be impatient with a free society, that impatience is
itself a vice and should be contained.

V.
Environmentalism Humanized

It is now time to address one of the more global contemporary problems from the viewpoint of
classical liberalism. This will not only help one grasp the scope and implications of this political
perspective, it will also serve as a kind of test issue. Ethical and political theories are not easily
tested- we should not set up experiments, nor can we, since these would be both very intrusive on
people's lives and amount to nothing decisive. Human beings are not easily experimented with
concerning major values, since under observation they are likely to play for the observer- there is a
kind of Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle at play in such experiments.
As a case of the application of classical liberal principles to contemporary problems, I want to
argue here the case of a certain type of environmental anthropocentrism, the view that human
beings are more important or valuable22 than other aspects of nature, including plants and
animals. I begin with some clarifications of terms I plan to use and then explore whether anything
in my anthropocentric position contradicts the tenets of evolutionary biology. I also consider
whether the ascription of a moral nature to human beings makes sense and how it squares with
certain objections from those who would take animals, for example, to have nearly equal moral
status to human beings. I consider, next, some political implications of what I have discussed,
specifically as they bear on environmental public policy.

First, I do not mean by anthropocentrism the view that human beings- as a collectivity- are the
telos of existence, the ultimate aim or end or the central fact of the universe. All I mean by this
view is that human beings are of the highest value in the known universe.

Let me also note that when I refer to human beings as the highest value in the known universe, I
mean that they are this as individuals of a given kind. There is no concrete universal "human
being," only individual human beings.23 The conception of humanity as a kind of collective whole
entity derives, in the main, from the legacy of Platonic metaphysics that regarded general abstract
ideas or universals, at least in its standard rendition, as concrete albeit intellectual or spiritual
beings. I do not believe that this metaphysics is sound. On the other hand, neither do I hold
nominalism to be correct, the position that there is no rational justification for classifying individuals
as of a specific kind- e.g., human, feline, male, apple. The kind of anthropocentrism I see as
meaningful or cogent is one that sees individual human beings as the most valuable entities in
nature.

I stress this point about the sort of individualist anthropocentrism I will be discussing so as to pre-
empt any objections that may be grounded on the philosophical and moral weaknesses of radical
individualism, the sort derived from Hobbes and carried to its logical implications by the
nineteenth-century German social thinker Max Stirner. The individualism or egoism I am
discussing- which I have dubbed "classical" so as to distinguish it in regards to its philosophical
grounding from the "atomic" or "radical" variety commonly criticized by those who wish to call
attention to the social nature of human beings- recognizes that the human individual is so
classified for good reasons, based on the rational recognition of kinds of beings in nature. This
then renders justified not only personal but several social virtues- generosity, charity,
compassion.24 It is also recognized in this view that a virtue must be practiced by choice and
cannot be coerced.

All in all, the position I will be considering is still a bona fide individualism
since it identifies human nature as essentially individual, in contrast to,
for example, Karl Marx who states that "The human essence is the true
collectivity of man" or Auguste Comte who argues that:
[The] social point of view..cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion rests on
individualism. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors,
to our successors, to our contemporaries. After our birth these obligations increase or
accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service....This ["to live for
others"], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our
instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve]
Humanity, whose we are entirely.25

I take it that if my argument is sound, it will establish in large measure that in discussing
environmental ethics- whether at the level of principles or applied morality- the highest value must
be attributed to measures that enhance the lives of individual human beings on earth. My aim is to
defend the anthropocentric position from within a naturalistic framework- that is, by sticking to
considerations based on our understanding of the natural world, including the nature of living
beings such as plants, animals, and human beings.26
I reject the position, however, that human beings are "uniquely important [or valuable]," one avidly
ridiculed by Stephen R. L. Clark, who claims that "there seems no decent ground in reason or
revelation to suppose that man is uniquely important or significant."27 If human beings were
uniquely important, that would imply that one had no basis for assigning any value to plants or
non-human animals apart from their relationship to human beings. That is not the position I am
defending. I will argue, instead, that there is a scale of values in nature and among all the various
kinds of beings, human beings are the most valuable- even while it is true that some members of
the human species may indeed prove themselves to be the most vile and worthless, as well. I
believe this is all that an anthropocentrism requires.

The Importance of Being Human

How do we establish that something is most valuable? First we must

consider whether the idea of lesser or greater value in nature makes
clear sense and we must apply these considerations to an understanding
of whether human beings or other animals are the most valuable. If it
turns out that ranking things in nature as more or less valuable makes
sense, and if as humans we qualify as more valuable than other animals,
there is at least the beginning of a reason why we may make use of
other animals for our purposes.

Let me make clear that even if it were not the case that human beings
are more valuable than other aspects of nature, it is doubtful that any
conclusions could follow from this warranting policies that favor these
other aspects. It would seem that only if it can be shown that creatures
other than humans qualify as being of supreme importance, based on
arguments that do not draw on esoteric knowledge or intuition but on
commonly accessible evidence and sound theories, would we have to
yield our policies focusing on our welfare in favor of some alternative
objective.
Quite independently of the implicit acknowledgment even by many environmentalists of the
qualitatively hierarchical structure of nature, there is evidence through the natural world of the
existence of beings of greater complexity as well as of higher value. For example, while it makes
no sense to evaluate as good or bad such things as planets or rocks or pebbles- except as they
may relate to goals or purposes of living things- when it comes to plants and animals the process
of evaluation commences very naturally indeed. We can and most of us tend to speak of better or
worse trees (oaks, or redwoods) or animals (zebras, foxes, chimps). Clearly, if we could not do this
rationally, there would be little point to environmental ethics in the first place, a field that
presupposes value differentiation through and through.

Now, while at this stage we confine our evaluations to the condition or

behavior of living beings without any intimation of their responsibility for
being better or worse, when we start discussing human beings our
evaluation takes on an additional, namely, moral component. Indeed,
none are more ready to testify to this than environmental ethicists who,
after all, do not demand any change of behavior on the part of non-
human beings but insist that human beings conform to certain moral
edicts as a matter of their own choice, as what ought or oughtn't be done
but might not or might be done. This means that environmental ethicists
admit outright that to the best of our knowledge it is with human beings
that the idea of at least active moral goodness and active moral
responsibility arises in the universe. Human moral goodness depends on
individual human initiative.

At this point one might object that simply because human beings are
capable of moral responsibility, it does not follow that they are the only
beings of moral worth. But we need to keep in mind what "moral worth"
comes to. To ascribe moral worth or merit to something, or to deny that it
has such worth or merit, amounts to relating it to human action from the
start. A wonderful sunny day has no moral worth, a destructive
earthquake does not lack it. Morality involves beings with the capacity to
make choices. So something can have moral worth or lack it only if some
human (or other rational, choosing) agent produced or destroyed it. Thus
the success of a symphony can have moral worth, just as the failure of a
savings and loan association may lack it (or even have moral disvalue),
because human agency was involved in making it happen.
Accordingly, the agents of moral worth can also have moral worth- thus we consider men and
women who produce morally good actions and results as morally worthwhile. But we do not
consider horses or tidal waves either morally good or evil. It all has to do with the fact that the
concept "moral" or "ethical" arises from circumstances where actions and results come about
through the initiative of the agent.

Does this show a hierarchical structure in nature? What we may note is that some things do not
invite evaluations at all- it is a matter of no significance or of indifference whether some beings are
or are not or what they are or how they behave. Some beings invite evaluation but without implying
any active moral standing with reference to whether they do well or badly. And some things-
namely, human beings or their conduct- invite moral evaluation.

Why is a being that invites moral ranking more valuable in nature than one that invites mere
ranking? Why would the addition of the moral component- one that involves the choosing capacity
of the agent- elevate the being with such a component in the scale of values in nature?

When evaluation- or value- involves beings that are not self-determined, the capacity to contribute
creatively to the values in nature is lacking. What human beings have the capacity to do is to
create value28, not just exhibit it. They can produce a culture of science, art, athletics, and so on,
the diverse features of which can themselves all exhibit value. So while nature's non-human living
beings can have value, human beings can create value as a matter of their own initiative. This
would enable human beings, for example, to replace some lost values in nature, if that turned out
to be the right course for them to take. So the addition of choice- the moral component- to value
clear makes a valuable difference.

It might now be argued, in opposition to the above, that human beings have the capacity to create
value on grounds that they create science, art, etc., all of which have value. Does creating what
has value come to the same thing as creating value? It would seem that this is the only sense we
can make of "creating value"- since value is inherently relational (meaning value is the abstract
category of the relationship of being of value to something). It is not confounding value with having
value to say this, since value and having value differ only from the point of view of greater and
lesser generality. X's having value is, more broadly characterized, the phenomena of value in
nature. Nothing else works- things are not just values, all alone, without making contributions to
something, being pleasing to, or enhancing for, or supportive of, something.
After this brief defense of the superior value of human life, we may note, also, that the level or
degree of value moves from the inanimate to the animate world, culminating, as far as we now
know, with human life. Normal human life involves moral and creative tasks, and that is why we
are, as a species, more valuable than other beings in nature- we are subject to moral appraisal
regarding all our creative activities; it is a matter of our doing whether we succeed or fail in our
lives.29

Now when it comes to our moral task, namely, to succeed as human

beings, we are dependent upon reaching justified conclusions about
what we should do and summoning the will to do it. What we will do, in
turn, often involves the transformation and utilization of the natural world
of which we are a part. We have the moral responsibility to engage in the
needed transformation and utilization in a morally responsible fashion.
We can fail to do this and do so too often. But we can also succeed.
That, indeed, is once again implicit in the field of environmental ethics.
The process that leads to our success involves learning what nature contains that we may use to
achieve our highly varied tasks in life, tasks that share the one common feature to make us good
at living our lives as our nature, including our individuality, requires. Among these highly varied
tasks could be some that makes judicious use of nature's varied living beings, such as plants,
animals, even others people (under certain conditions)- for example, to discover whether some
medicine may cure us of some illness and is safe for our use, we might wish to use animals and
plants.

Why would it be morally proper for us to make such use of nature? Because we are unique in
having to make choices for purposes of doing well at living. We know from our study of the rest of
the living world that doing well at living is what it means, at least predominantly, to be good. Our
evaluations in zoology, botany, biology, and medicine make this clear- the good is what is
conducive and the bad is what is destructive of living, mostly of the individual living being, even if
at times only in a complex fashion that may make it appear that individuals as such do not count
for much.30 So when we come to human life, the same general standard remains in force, namely,
pro-life versus anti-life; only given the specifics of human nature, this will involve now a moral
dimension and whatever is requisite for that, including certain sociopolitical principles. There are
those, of course, who claim that much of what human beings invent to enhance their existence is a
kind of intrusion or trampling upon nature- unnatural or artificial, in fact. But there is no good
reason to suppose this. Human beings emerged in reality alongside all other living things, and their
activities- such as playing football, bowling, holding philosophy conferences in pleasant
surroundings, driving cars from the airport to these surroundings, building tunnels, burning fossil
fuels, cutting down trees- could be just as natural as it is for the bee to make honey, the swallow to
fly south in winter time, or the beaver to dam up creeks. Human life is a form of natural life.
Whatever derives from its consistent development or realization will be in accordance with nature,
whatever subverts or corrupts it will not.

The major difference is, of course, something I have already mentioned, namely, that human
beings can mismanage their lives, can (choose to) subvert their nature. But what would amount to
a subversion of human nature? It would be to conduct oneself irrationally, thoughtlessly, and
imprudently by evading what is most healthy and productive for one's life. That is what amounts to
living a vicious rather than virtuous life. It is to fail to exercising one's unique capacity for coping
with one's life, a capacity that in the case of human beings must be exercised by choice. Thinking
is not automatic- and, indeed, environmental ethicists appear to assume this implicitly when they
criticize failed thinking and the resulting conduct in various areas of private behavior and public
policy. Indeed, ethics itself rests on the view that human beings can choose- "ought implies can"
embodies this point.

Within the parameters of these broad standards, a great deal of the diverse things that human
beings do can be perfectly natural, even when it is destructive or- or rather transforms and utilizes-
certain other aspects of nature. (Notice that the frequently used phrase "domination of nature" has
something suspiciously pejorative about it- it suggests hostility and cruelty toward the rest of
nature. Transformation and use do not have to involve dominance.)

The rational thing for us to do is to make the best use of nature for our success in living our lives.
That does not mean there need be no guidelines involved in how we might make use of plants and
animals- any more than there need be no guidelines involved in how we make use of objects of art
and technology. But it can easily involve managing nature so as to serve our own goals and
aspirations, to make ourselves happy.

Why Individual Human Rights?

At this point I need to make an excursion into the realm of politics and
law. As I have already hinted, the peculiar value dimension of human life,
involving as it does moral choices all individuals will need to make so as
to succeed in living well, has socio-economic-political implications. I have
in mind the emergence of a normative realm known as the domain of
individual human rights.
Why do individual human rights come into this picture? The rights being discussed in connection
with human beings have as their conceptual source the human capacity to make moral choices.
For instance, if (as I would argue and have done so in numerous forums 31), each of us has the
right to life, liberty, and property- as well as more specialized rights connected with politics, the
press, religion- we do so because we have as our central task in life to act morally, and this task
needs to be shielded against intrusive actions from other moral agents. In order to be able to
engage in responsible and sound moral judgment and conduct throughout the scope of our lives,
we require a reasonably clear sphere of personal jurisdiction- a dominion where we are sovereign
and can either succeed or fail to live well, to do right, to act properly.

If we did not have rights, we would not have such a sphere of personal jurisdiction and there could
be no clear idea as to whether we are acting in our own behalf or those of other persons. A kind of
moral tragedy of the commons would ensue, with an indeterminate measure of moral dumping and
sharing without responsibility being assignable to anyone for either.32 We have already noted, in
our more detailed discussion of the right to private property, that no one could be blamed or
praised because we would not know clearly enough whether what the person is doing is in his or
her authority to do or in someone else's. This is precisely the problem that arises in communal
living and, especially, in totalitarian countries where everything is under forced collective
governance. The reason moral distinctions are still possible to make under such circumstances is
that in fact- as distinct from law- there is always some sphere of personal jurisdiction wherein
people may exhibit courage, prudence, justice, honesty, and other virtues. But where collectivism
has been successfully enforced, there is no individual responsibility at play and people's morality
and immorality are submerged within the group.

Indeed the main reason for governments has for some time been recognized to be nothing other
than that our individual human rights should be protected. In the past- and in many places even
today- it was thought that government (or the State) has some kind of leadership role in human
communities. This belief followed the view that human beings differ amongst themselves radically,
some being lower class, some higher class, some possessing divine rights, others lacking them,
some having a personal communion with God, other lacking this special advantage. With such
views in place, it made clear enough sense to argue that government should have a patriarchal
role in human communities- the view against which John Locke argued his theory of natural
individual human rights.33

Is There Room for Non-Human Rights?

A crucial implication of a non-anthropocentric environmental ethics is the view that at least
animals, if not plants, are as valuable as human beings, possibly even to the extent that the law
should acknowledge animal rights and the legal standing of plants.34 There may be other grounds
for rejecting anthropocentrism but this one is certainly a significant aspect of the anti-
anthropocentrist position or ethos.

We have seen that the most sensible and influential doctrine of human
rights rests on the purported fact that human beings are indeed
members of a discernibly different species. Central to what distinguishes
human beings from other animals is that they are moral agents and thus
have as their central objective in life to live morally well, to uphold
principles of right and wrong for them in their personal lives and in
communities.
Quite uncontroversially, there is no valid intellectual place for rights in the non-human world, the
world in which moral responsibility is for all practical purposes absent. Some would want to argue
that some measure of morality can be found within the world of at least higher animals- e.g., dogs.
For example, Bernard Rollin holds that "In actual fact, some animals even seem to exhibit
behavior that bespeaks something like moral agency or moral agreement."35 Rollin maintains that
it is impossible to clearly distinguish between human and non-human animals, including on the
grounds of the former's characteristic as a moral agent. Yet what he does to defend this point is to
invoke borderline cases, imaginary hypothesis, and anecdotes. While such arguments are
suggestive, they are bested by others defending the opposite viewpoint. Clearly, for example, the
fact that environmentalists rationally counsel and expect moral behavior from human beings
toward other animals, not however the reverse, shows that even they find Rollin's contention
baseless.

Perhaps the central point in support of animal rights is the view that no fundamental differences
may be identified between human beings and other animals. I have shown elsewhere that this is a
mistake. Human individuals are indeed members of a distinct species of animals. Their human
nature is a fact, not merely a nominal category.36

No doubt many environmental ethicists sincerely believe that they have found a justification for
opposing anthropocentrism. They seem to hold that anthropocentrism means human beings
exercising random, capricious control over the rest of nature- trampling on the rest of the world as
they desire. Yet many environmentalists might change their perspective if they became convinced
that anthropocentrism does not endorse rapaciousness and is by no means in any inherent conflict
with the rational management of the environment.

Not only does a perspective that favors human life above all appear to
be better justified, as I have tried to indicate in this discussion, as it
happens it also generates the most environmentally sound public policy.
Let me reflect on this in the final section of this discussion.

Environmentalism and Politics

Of late no one can deny that collectivist political economies have fallen into some disrepute.
Theoretically there were hints of this as far back as the fourth century B. C. when in the Politics
Aristotle observed that private ownership of property encourages responsible human behavior
more readily than does collectivism as spelled out in Plato's Republic. Aristotle said, as we've
already noted, "Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only
when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is
more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants
are often less useful than a few."37
In our time the same general observation was advanced in more technical and rigorous terms by
Ludwig von Mises, in 1922 book Socialism,38 although he was mainly concerned with economic
problems of production and allocation of resources for satisfying individual preferences. More
recently, however, Garrett Hardin39 argued that the difficulties first noticed by Aristotle plague us
in the context of our concerns with the quintessentially public realm, namely, the ecological
environment.

These various indictments40 of collectivism, coupled with the few moral arguments against it,
didn't manage to dissuade many intellectuals from the task of attempting to implement the system.
Our own century is filled with enthusiastic, stubborn, visionary, opportunistic but almost always
bloody efforts to implement the collectivist dream. Not until the crumpling of the Soviet attempt, in
the form of its Marxist-Leninist internationalist socialist revolution, did it dawn on most people that
collectivism is simply not going to do the job of enabling people to live a decent human social life.
Although most admit that in small units- convents, kibbutzes, the family- a limited, temporary
collectivist arrangement may be feasible, they no longer look with much hope toward transforming
entire societies into collectivist human organizations.

The most recent admission of the failure of economic collectivism- in the wake of the collapse of
the Soviet bloc economy (something most enthusiasts would not expect based on the kind of
predictions advanced by Mises and F. A. Hayek)- comes from Professor Robert Heilbroner, one of
socialism's most intelligent and loyal champions for the last several decades. As he puts it in his
recent essay, "After Communism": "...Ludwig von Mises...had written of the 'impossibility' of
socialism, arguing that no Central Planning Board could ever gather the enormous amount of
information needed to create a workable economic system....It turns out, of course, that Mises was
right...."41

But, not unlike previous thinkers who have seen various examples of the failure of some kind of
perfectionist, idealist normative moral or political scheme, Heilbroner cannot quite say good-bye to
his utopia. He notes that there are two ways it may remain something of a handy concept. First, it
may leave us piecemeal social objectives to strive for- but these have always come in the context
of essentially capitalist economics systems. Secondly, it may re-emerge as the adjunct of the
ecological movement. As Heilbroner puts it:

[If] there is any single problem that will have to be faced by any socioeconomic order over
the coming decades it is the problem of making our economic peace with the demands of
the environment. Making that peace means insuring that the vital processes of material
provisioning do not contaminate the green-blue film on which life itself depends. This
imperative need not affect all social formations, but none so profoundly as capitalism.42

What is one to say about this new fear, a new problem allegedly too
complicated for free men and women to handle? Has Heilbroner not
heard of the "tragedy of the commons" so that he could imagine the
environmental difficulties that face the collectivist social systems? Here
is how Heilbroner issues the "new" warning:
It is, perhaps, possible that some of the institutions of capitalism- markets, dual realms of
power, even private ownership of some kind of production- may be adapted to that new
state of ecological vigilance, but, if so, they must be monitored, regulated, and contained
to such a degree that it would be difficult to call the final social order capitalism.43

This somewhat new spin on what is but essentially old- fashioned skepticism about free market
capitalism needs to be addressed. The first response is that there is no justification for any of this
distrust of "the market," as opposed to trusting some scientific bureaucracy that is to do the
monitoring, regulating, and containing Heilbroner and so many other champions of regimentation
are calling for. Such distrust tends to arise from comparing the market system to some ideal and
static construct developed in the mind of a theorist. But since human community life is dynamic,
the most we can hope for in improving it is the establishment of certain basic principles of law, or a
constitution, that will keep the dynamics of the community within certain bounds.44

Accordingly, put plainly, if men and women acting in the market place, guided by the rule of law
based on their natural individual rights to life, liberty and property, were incapable of standing up to
the ecological challenges Heilbroner and many others in the environmentalist movement have in
mind, there is no reasonable doubt that those could not be met better by some new statist
means.45 Why should ecologically minded bureaucrats be better motivated, more competent, and
more virtuous than those motivated by a concern for the hungry, the unjustly treated, the poor, the
artistically deprived, the uneducated masses or the workers of the world? There is no reason to
attribute to the members of any ecological politburo or central committee more noble
characteristics than to the rest of those individuals who have made a try at coercing people into
good behavior throughout human history.

As I have suggested already, lamentations about capitalism tend to rest on a kind of idealism that
is ill suited to the formation of public policy for a dynamic human community. One might be able to
imagine- in a Platonic sort of fashion, vis-à-vis the ideal state- a perfectly functioning ecological
order. It is doubtful that even this much is possible. It is another thing entirely to attempt to
implement policies that will produce such an idealized order in the actual world. What we actually
face in our various human communities is a choice between what we may call live options, such as
capitalism, socialism, the welfare state, or fascism. No ideal system is a contender and it is folly to
compare any of the live options to such an ideal. In the actual contest, in turn, it seems the
capitalist alternative is superior for reasons I have alluded to already and have discussed
elsewhere.46 Yet it will help to sketch some central aspects of that alternative.

In the first place, if human beings have the right to private property, not
to mention their lives and liberty, a just legal system would prohibit any
kind of dumping by one person on another. This would include all
environmental assaults such as transmitting toxic substances on to
unsuspecting victims, seepage, and polluting public realms. Beyond a
harmless level of waste disposal, no pollution would be legal, no matter
whether jobs or the achievement of any other laudable purpose
depended on it. Just as slavery may not be practiced regardless of how it
might facilitate certain valued objectives, just as rape is impermissible no
matter how desperate or enraged one may be or how satisfied one may
feel upon its perpetration, so too may pollution and other forms of
environmental offenses not be carried out regardless of the various
valued objectives it may be in pursuit of. To put the matter into the
language of the economists, if one cannot internalize the negative
externalities associated with some production or transportation process,
one will simply have to stop it.

There are, of course, technical problems associated with measuring how

much waste disposal constitutes reaching the threshold of tolerance. But
this is in principle no different from determining how much of some food
substance or medicine constitutes poison. Just as the criminal law
employs forensic science to determine who is guilty of what degree of
homicide, so various branches of environmental science would be
utilized so as to establish culpability in environmental crime.
The worry that industrial civilization would be slowed to a dead halt by
the above approach is unfounded. Alternative technologies to those that
involve environmental assault will certainly emerge and are already on
the way. Past errors, of course, cannot be fully remedied, yet some of
what has been wrought upon us by way of the highly subsidized internal
combustion engine could be mitigated by imposing full cost on
transportation, not permitting owners of vehicles to dump on those
whose permission they do not have or cannot obtain.
In general, then, clearly the anthropocentric- i.e., individual rights- oriented environmental ethics
and law is more radical and just than anything offered within standard environmental ethics
literature.

If free men and women will not manage the environment, neither will
anyone else. In any case, more optimism about the capacity of free
citizens to deal with this issue is warranted when we examine just what
are the sources of our ecological troubles. Given, especially, the fact of
collectivism's far greater mismanagement of the environment than that of
the mixed economies we loosely label capitalist, there is already some
suggestion implicit here about what the problem comes to, namely, too
little free market capitalism. Given the comparatively worse
environmental situation evident in political economies that rely on
collective ownership and management, and given the natural
individualism of human life, free markets appear to be more suited to
solving the tragedy of the commons. What Heilbroner and friends fail to
realize is that the environmental problems most people are concerned
about are due to the tragedy of the commons, not due to the privatization
of resources and the implementation of the principles that prohibit
dumping and other kinds of trespassing. With more attention to
protecting individual rights to life, liberty, and property, solutions to our
problems are more likely, period.

The best defense of the free market approach to environmentalism in

matters of public policy begins with the realization that it is the nature of
human beings to be essentially individual. This can be put alternatively
by saying that the individual rights approach is the most natural; it most
readily accommodates nature and, therefore, the ecology.
If there is a crisis here, it amounts to the history of human action that has been out of line with
ecological well-being and health. But how do we know what kinds of human action might have
been more or less conducive to ecological well-being? It will not do to speculate on some ideal
configuration of the living world, apart from considering what is best for human individuals. There
simply is no standard of a right pattern to which the world should be made to conform- it is a
dynamic system of living entities, with no discernible pattern in it to which the current configuration
should be adjusted. Indeed, if there is something we have learned about environmental wisdom, it
is that the environment's health, so to speak, emerges spontaneously, reflecting something of an
unpredictable chaotic development.47
We need first of all to know about human nature- what it is that human beings are and what this
implies for their conduct within the natural world. If, as the natural rights (classical liberal) tradition,
human beings are individuals with basic rights to life, liberty, and property, that also implies that
this is how they are best fitted within the natural world, within the rest of nature. Environmental
conscientiousness is most effectively promoted if we trust free men and women with the task of
choosing the best relevant policies, not relying on governments to determine the most suitable
relationship various individuals and organizations should cultivate with the rest of nature. Not that
this will serve to avoid all failings vis-à-vis this area of human concern- anymore than leaving
human beings free to choose in other spheres creates utopia. Nevertheless, when we consider
that governments are administered by persons with no greater claim to innate virtue and wisdom
than any others, and if we also consider that officials of the government make their mistakes,
without the chance of full accountability and with the benefit of the legal use of force, it is not at all
unreasonable to suppose that when problems need solutions, governments are not going to be the
most useful for this purpose unless their particular means of dealing with persons, force, is
required.

Last Reflections
The fact is that with human nature a problem arose in nature that had not been there before- basic
choices had to be confronted, which other animals do not have to confront. The question "How
should I live?" faces each human being, but not other living things- not to mention inanimate
nature. And that is what makes it unavoidable for human beings to dwell on moral issues as well
as to see other human beings as having the same problem to solve, the same question to dwell
on. For this reason we are very different from other living beings, plants and animals- we also do
terrible, horrible, awful things to each other as well as to the rest of nature, but we can also do
much, much better and achieve incredible feats nothing else in nature can come close to.

Yet, merely because we do have a moral dimension in our lives, it does

not follow that we must agonize about everything in nature, as if we had
the moral capacity to remake the entire universe.
Indeed, then, the moral life is the exclusive province of human beings, so far as we can tell for
now. Other, lower- i.e., less important or valuable- animals simply cannot be accorded, because
they have no requirement for, the kind of treatment that such a moral life demands, namely,
respect for and protection of basic rights.

As such, we must, rationally considered, attribute the greatest value in the universe to human life.
And since human life is essentially individual, not collective- which does not preclude its vital social
yet largely voluntary dimension- the individual rights approach, that protects each person as a
moral agent and provides for him or her a sphere of privacy or exclusive jurisdiction, is the most
sensible environmentalist public policy.

VI.
Does The Coercive State Have Moral Standing?

All governments use force. Most, however are also coercive, although it isn't self-evident that they
must be. Governments persistently and inexcusably violate the rights of their citizens, as well as
those of many foreigners. Throughout recorded history no government has managed to remain
untarnished by coercion. Some, however, have approached giving full official recognition and
protection to individual rights. Others have not even given lip service to the idea.
Why do governments appear to have the right to be coercive? Clearly many think that they do.
What is there in morality that appears to give governments permission to do what private persons
may not- e.g., to conscript us, to tax us, to regulate us?

The most widespread coercion by governments is taxation. There are

other, more specific forms of coercion, such as military conscription,
mandatory licensing of professions, and government regulation of
business. Anyone aware of current socio-political life knows about these
intrusions and probably has had personal experiences with them.

But aren't governments in the business of solving problems through the

use of legitimate force? So why would their actions be questionable?
Why would anyone suppose that conscription, taxation, and professional
licensing are wrong?

Not every kind of force is coercive. Only aggression, namely, the

violation of individual rights, can be so construed. I may use force to
regain my possessions or to evict someone from my land and that would
not involve coercion. Some force is retaliatory, some defensive, and
some punitive. Coercive force, however, is inherently aggressive. It
involves violation of basic or derivative rights.

Most governments do not simply make use of force but also engage in
aggressive force, which is coercive. They make people give up their
liberty for goals over which they have no say. They make people work for
projects which the people would rather not support. They send people
into war when these are not supported by the conscripts. And they tax,
tax, and tax people for innumerable purposes that lack even democratic
support.
Many think that government must involve itself in coercion. Some even regard it not just a
necessary evil but a moral requirement. They view the coercive state as a good thing, For some
folks this is entirely incongruous. That government would be morally justified doing what other
people can go to jail for- theft, kidnapping, assault, extortion- seems entirely perverse. And it may
well be. But when a practice has been going on for ages and millions of people accept it not just as
unavoidable but perhaps praiseworthy, it behooves us to ask why they might think so. This is akin
to asking why are there people who believe in palmistry or astrology when these are entirely bogus
practices. Something must be at the bottom of these beliefs, lest we give up on human beings as
hopelessly and incorrigibly gullible. Thus it will help to explore why it is so palatable for many
people to regard governmental coercion morally acceptable and right.

America's Politics and the Coercive State

We should note from the start that most people in the United States find the coerciveness of the
state somewhat lamentable. In short, they feel sorry about it, and wish it didn't have to be. But
there are others who think differently and indeed see it as a virtue of governments to be coercive.
They are quite forthright about their support of "statecraft as soulcraft"- to use that soothing phrase
by which George Will entitled one of his books- and believe that soulcraft requires a good measure
of coercion.
Others try to smuggle coercion into our culture by labeling it something else, such as "justice." Still
others believe that government coercion is really the use of force in behalf of a certain kind of
freedom- they call in positive freedom or respect for welfare rights, provisions to help us make
something of our lives. Here it is difficult to spot the doctrine of coercion because it is obscured by
conceptual muddles.

Most people know that the American political tradition rests on ideals
which morally prohibit coercion. So in order to make room for it in our
moral consciousness, it has to be re christened in an Orwellian
"newspeak" fashion. Governmental coercion had been the nemesis of
not just the Founding Fathers but especially the Founding Grandfather,
John Locke, whose views back up American political ideology.

Locke's main reason for opposing coercion of one person by another had
been that he regarded individual human beings as morally free,
independent, and equal by nature. This means that as adults he
regarded us all as responsible for making our own decisions or choices
in life. So none of us is inherently subject to the authority of another. This
also means that we were all regarded as politically equal. That, indeed,
is the only egalitarianism inherent in the American political tradition.
From this basic frame of reference a conception of government arose which regards the state as
an institution of laws administered by a group of "elected" (hired) persons who are essentially
"employed" by those who hire them, the people. The authority to make use of force on the citizens
comes, roughly, the way the authority of a referee at a tennis game or on a basketball court does-
through the consent of the participants. The courts, the police, the legislature, the armed forces,
and so forth are seen to be agents of the people.

The precise way in which the use of force can be authorized is a

complicated matter. In any case, for Locke and many of the founders of
this political society, government should use force only if the citizens
consented to its use and only to the extent that the citizens themselves
are justified in using it. That is what "due process of law" really means,
namely, that government is justified in the use of force only if it adheres
to specific standards.
Aggressive use of force, or coercion, is not sanctioned by the political philosophy which supported
the American system of government, even if subsequent practice has diverged from it. (Indeed,
the U.S. Constitution is itself a compromised document as far as the principles spelled out in the
Declaration of Independence are concerned.) Before this revolutionary idea took hold on a large
enough population so as to make a political difference, the coercive state had been looked upon
with great favor by those who wielded the power of the pen. Locke himself forged his own views
against paternalistic political ideals that flourished- indeed, were nearly taken for granted by most-
in his day.

Sadly, however, not long after Locke's ideas flourished, once again the
coercive state appeared to gain the support of morality. So the career of
the free society, whereby government was to have been restricted to
non- coercive use of force, was short lived, not only in practice (where it
had never been complete), but also as a respectable idea.
What are the features of moral systems which so insistently seem to not
just sanction or tolerate but eagerly to endorse government coercion?
Why does the use of aggressive force appear to have the support of
morality?

A Few Words About Morality

Why morality? We need to know a bit about this so as to understand why

our question is really very important. If one were to regard morality as
quite dispensable, then one would not need to be very disturbed if many
moral systems give credence to coercion. One could simply reject
morality through and through, as indeed have some who take an
exclusively social scientific (e.g., economic) view of human life.

Persons, unlike other beings, must choose what they will do and they
can choose badly or well. Morality is the most basic code of standards by
which one can determined whether a choice is a good or a bad one.
However much we might wish to dispense with morality, so long as
human beings lack innate guidance to their conduct, it will be in vain to
try. The economist's attempt to reduce everything to "workability,"
"usefulness," "practicality," or "efficiency" just won't work, since each of
these invite the question, "For what purpose?" Thus something can only
be judged workable if we know the purpose it is to serve. When it comes
to assessing the merits of goals or purposes, it cannot be sufficient to
talk of workability or efficiency. Something else is required, namely, "Is it
a good, just, virtuous purpose we are talking about or is it something
morally questionable?"

One could embark on lengthy discussions about the reasons for all this.
For example, what is it about human nature, and reality in general, that
gives choice such a basic role in our lives, how compatible is having to
make choices with science and other disciplines? But that would take us
too far afield.

What we now need to do is to see something of various moral systems

so that we can tell why so many of them support coercion. In the end
when we concern ourselves with public policy, the most serious issue is
whether it meets standards of morality. Much else may be important,
especially in a democracy. But in the end any public policy that is
approved of morally will have a far greater likelihood of success with
policy makers than one which goes against the moral grain.

Morality and Coercion

Most of us know a bit about how much controversy there exists about
moral systems. Moral skepticism has indeed done very well because so
little firm agreement can be found in this area. I will not try to refute moral
skepticism here. I would like to suggest, however, that when we deal
with a field in which one's very own quality as a person is at stake, and
given the wide variety that exists in the quality of human beings, there
should be no wonder about all the controversy. We are all inclined to
paint ourselves pretty, morally speaking. It is understandable that
sometimes we would even stoop to adjusting morality itself so as to
make ourselves and our own chosen goals seem morally justified. As a
last resort we may even deny that there is any moral truth, just so that
we escape having wrath fall upon us.

In any case, what is crucial to note is that within moral systems certain
components tend to give rise to coercion. In brief, it is a value
component of moral systems that gives rise to coercion.

You might gasp at this, and understandably so. Doesn't every moral
system have a value component? Then wouldn't every moral system
support coercion?

Actually, only those moral systems support coercion which fail to place
their value components in the proper human context. Let me explain.
Every moral system requires a theory of the good. Even before we can talk about what human
beings ought to do- which is the main concern of any morality- the question has to be answered:
"What is our goal?" And a theory of the good will provide our answer to this.

If our goal is the collective happiness of humankind, then when we wish

to know what we ought to do, we need only to answer the technical or
practical question: "Whatever will promote the collective happiness of
humankind?" If it's God's will, then again we ought to obey it. If it is our
self-interest, then again we need to know and follow it, and so forth. In
short, a moral system presupposes a theory of the good which
determines our proper goal in life.
Now, whenever a moral system lays extensive emphasis on its theory of good- forgetting
something else, to which I'll turn in a moment- that is vital to it, it is likely to encourage coercion. In
utilitarian morality, for example, extreme stress can be placed on the greatest happiness of the
greatest number (with happiness usually understood as well- being or pleasure or wealth). The
good is seen as the overall well-being of humanity or members of a society. In most religious
moralities various forms of behavior are seen as the manifestation of goodness and the realization
of such behavior is then regarded as the goal moral conduct must pursue.

Let me note here that although Soviet Marxism supposedly gained much
of its support from science, in fact a basic theory about values was most
crucial to it, as it is to every political outlook. In the Marxist-socialist
conception of the state, the most powerful underlying justification relied
on a vital evaluative component, namely the supreme good of labor.
Now, any morality can lay extreme stress on its ultimate goal, at the
expense of another crucial feature morality must possess. And this can
be transferred to public policy within any human community.

Morality and Coercive Public Policy

If, as far as personal ethics is concerned a moral system gives primary

emphasis on goals, it is also likely to stress goals as far as public policy
is concerned. Suppose that the members of a society morally prize
helping the poor (or social harmony or economic stability or prosperity or
spiritual and military superiority). In each case, public policy will very
likely be geared toward the attainment of these ends, regardless of (or at
least with little regard for) the means this is to be brought about.
A good example is ecological purity. It is prized highly by many, indeed regarded by them to be a
supreme moral goal. So all forms of coercion are seen to be justified in that light. Because
coercion seems such an efficient method for certain limited purposes- after all, force is the primary
instrument of efficiency in classical mechanics and in much of modern technology- such an
emphasis on achieving ends will promote its use.

To summarize my points thus far: first we need to appreciate the vital role morality has in human
life and in the justification of public policy; second we need to note that the theory of the good
which every moral system presupposes can be emphasized in a way that lays primary stress on
the achievement of goals- or, to use a term employed by Robert Nozick, end-states. This, then,
gives support to the instrument of coercion in the attainment of various public purposes.

What we now need to see is why this is all a very serious mistake and
why it is indeed a distortion of morality. Once I have explained this, it will
be clear that morality does not support the use of coercion but, on the
contrary, requires its abolition.

Freedom of Choice and Morality

As distinct from the theory of the good within every moral system,
morality must also be concerned with the specifically human mode of the
good. What is this?

To answer, let us remember that there is goodness in connection with all

life. Botanists, zoologists, and biologists are all involved in evaluations,
judging things to be good or bad. This is because the best theory of the
good links goodness to the phenomenon of life. It is the perishable
nature of life that gives goodness a role in existence.

For things which cannot perish, the idea of good is inapplicable. But for
living things there can be conditions and processes that are good, and
ones that are bad. It depends on how they further or thwart life.
But regarding all life other than human life, to the best of our knowledge
there can be no concern about moral goodness. The reason is that all
such life lacks the unique volitional element, or the feature which we
have come to know by the terms "freedom of the will."
Since the time of Aristotle it should have been understood very clearly that as far as morality is
concerned, freedom of choice is essential. Human nature is such that the human good is
inseparable from each individual's having to choose what constitutes his or her good conduct. If
some goal or purpose is indeed right for us, it is morally right for us to pursue it strictly speaking
only if we see the point of its value and choose it. Our own moral character, which is our highest
good- our very excellence as persons- flourishes if and only if the good behavior we engage in, the
good ends we promote, the good states of affairs we bring about, are all a matter of choice. (A
very good further discussion of exactly this point may be found in Douglas J. Den Uyl, "Freedom
and Virtue," in T. R. Machan, ed., The Libertarian Reader [Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield,
1982], pp. 211-225.)

Without this element of choice, our type of involvement with values is no

different from that of other living things that behave from instinct or
innate drives. Dogs, plants, birds, forests, and so forth are not moral
agents. How they behave is a matter open for evaluation, but not for
moral praise or blame. The reason is that such living things are
incapable of choice. It is irrelevant to their goodness whether their
behavior is chosen. And this is precisely what sets us apart from them,
first and foremost.

Accordingly, those moralities which fail to pay sufficient heed to this are
not just wrong but fundamentally askewed. When choice is taken away
from a moral system's conception of human goodness, it ceases to be a
moral system proper. It can still be a system of values, of course, but not
of human values as such.

No Moral Coercion Possible

The basic moral support for the coercive state then is the failure to
remember that morality is a system of principles serving a basic human
purpose, namely, to enable human individuals to be good as human
individuals. To even approach being a successful moral theory, this
feature must be included within a moral system. For instance., if
utilitarianism becomes overly concerned with the general welfare or if
any religious ethics sees some rituals or forms of behavior as prior to the
importance of stressing that these rituals and forms of behavior must be
chosen for them to give merit to human individuals, then these systems
are actually pseudo-moralities.

The coercive state is not then founded on any bona fide moral system
but on systems which try but fail to be moral systems. Their failure to
embody not just values but also free choice that must be involved in
seeking these makes bad candidates for moral systems.
No public policy can live long if it loses its moral standing. The coercive
state has lost it from the start.

VII.
Individualism, Naughty or Nice?

"Here we go again," as Ronald Reagan used to say. No sooner does the image of one form of
collectivism suffer certain blemishes, than another version is ready to take its place. Indeed,
centrally planned or command economic systems, such as those closely approximated in the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, have now been taken off the agenda of collectivism but not
without some new candidates, such as market socialism, social democracy, and
communitarianism. In the case of the former two the problems of socialism cannot be easily
hidden. Market socialism is still socialism and thus faces the problem of how to manage the
determination of what people need and want in those areas where planning prevails. This has
never been solved by socialists, not without the sacrifice of paying heed to individual happiness
and liberty in a society, and thus without allowing the system merely to serve the goals of some
elite group. Democratic socialism, also, is still socialism and cannot escape the problem of
discovering what people need or want. The problem in both cases is that there really is no such
being as the collective society (or nation or species) and thus serving needs and wants requires a
free market, with private property rights, where prices reflect aggregate individual judgments and
thus serve to inform producers and consumers as to how to allocate resources most effectively.

Communitarianism, however, drops the alarmist term "socialism" entirely and advances itself as a
rational alternative, one that keeps a focus on the community without sacrificing freedom. The
details are not important here- there is plenty of literature on this available aplenty. What is
interesting is that in nearly every attempt to advance the communitarian alternative as a sensible,
rational option, a great many things are said against individualism. This makes sense because the
most common and meaningful alternative to socialism is individualism. Marx made this evident in
his "On the Jewish Question," and so have numerous others who have sympathized with him. And
like Marx, most of those who wish to affirm some kind of collectivism have to discredit
individualism. Communitarians are no different.

But with collectivism, as with individualism, there are several versions on

record. To discredit the view, however, only one version is being talked
about, one that features prominently in the works of neo-classical
political economists. It is to this version of individualism that critics refer
when they talk of "atomistic" or "radical" individualism. And they do so
because this version of individualism has features that are vulnerable to
both technical criticism and disparagement. The story should not,
however, end there.

Individualism and Liberalism

A serious problem has always plagued liberal societies, classical or modern.48 Whether we have
in mind the system conceived of by John Locke, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, or the type of
revised liberal order favored more recently by John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith, and
John Rawls, liberalism has had a problem with morality. Put bluntly, many from both right and left
have accused the system of fostering licentiousness, libertinism, hedonism, or moral subjectivism.
Critics- such as Leo Strauss, and George Will at the more journalistic level, from the right, and
Herbert Marcuse, and Christopher Lasch from the left- have made the point (virtually in unison)
that liberalism lacks a moral base and purpose.49 In its insistence on the primary public good of
individual liberty, liberalism has not paid sufficient attention to morality, ethics or the virtues people
ought to abide by or practice. This concentration on individual liberty has led to, what Quinten
Skinner calls "the privatization of virtue." In other words, anything is acceptable personal behavior
so long as the right to liberty or personal sovereignty is not violated.

I wish to recall, first of all, the most influential version of individualism in Western liberal political
thought, one that dominates the discipline of economics and thus the economic defense of
liberalism. I will also point to some of the failings of this view, including how it tends to weaken
liberalism itself.50 Then I move on to offer a revised individualism, one that avoids many of the
problems of the first and yet leaves intact individualism itself, thus providing liberalism with the
moral support it is often thought to lack.

Throughout the history of Western political philosophy individualism and liberalism have been
closely associated. Clearly there is a very strong tradition of thinking in classical liberalism that
argues that if a society is organized in such a way that individuals may pursue their chosen goals-
if, indeed, they have the opportunity to act selfishly- this will produce the greatest good. Even
when an individualist ethics is not embraced, the position is characterized- maybe only ironically-
as the doctrine of "private vice, public benefit." Thus Bernard Mandeville argued in the eighteenth
century in his Fable of the Bees, that while it may not be most morally commendable to act
selfishly and self-interestedly, paradoxically it is by doing this that the common good will be
secured. Sometimes it is argued, mostly by economists, classical and neoclassical, that it is by
way of the unimpeded necessarily self-interested or, more recently, utility maximizing actions of
agents in the marketplace that the overall social good is most efficiently promoted. Whether from
an ethical or psychological individualism, clearly many liberals have defended their type of social
order.

Even when liberalism became more communitarian, starting with the Fabian movement at the turn
of this century, the arguments for the value of the system retained their earlier flavor of
individualism. Thus, in John Rawls' A Theory of Justice,51 which in the last analysis favors a
welfare state, we find that the initial terms of a just society emerge from a hypothetical agreement
reached by self-interested individuals "behind the veil of ignorance." Robert Nozick, who followed
Rawls with a sort of counterpoint by favoring a laissez-faire system in his Anarchy, State, and
Utopia,52 started out from nearly the same methodological assumptions. That is one reason, we
may suppose, that so many communitarians find the effort to incorporate their ideas within the
liberal framework rather forced.53

Hobbesian Individualism

There is, of course, a distinct tradition of individualism from which this

idea of the compatibility of selfishness and the public good emerges. It
has a very specific conception of the human individual, one that is not
constitutive of all individualist thinking. This is the individualism or
egoism of the seventeenth century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
Hobbes was the first major materialist philosopher in modern philosophy. One crucial doctrine that
distinguishes him from earlier philosophical thinkers is his forthright nominalism. Accordingly,
human nature, the nature of a tree, the nature of a dog, the nature of an apple, the nature of
justice have only a nominal reality- none of these exists in any independent way and therefore
cannot be known objectively- that is, those things as things of a specific kind exist only because
we have decided to group them as we (albeit gradually, over the length of human history) prefer.

In the epistemology of human social life this view is now called constructivism. Sometimes it is
also simply called anti-realism and has made its appearance on the cultural scene recently by way
of the phenomenon of multiculturalism- meaning that each culture's way of understanding the
world is equally valid. Underlying it we find a metaphysics of a kind of raw, barren- radical or
"atomic"- individualism, the idea that only pure particular things exist in reality and these can be
used to construct all kinds of different systems of thought. And any classification of these particular
things is merely nominal, as just indicated.

What is crucial for appreciating the problems of liberalism, in view of its

relationship to this general outlook, is that by the tenets of this view each
individual human being is entirely unique. There is no class to which a
human being naturally, objectively belongs. Every human being is a pure
individual ultimately, in reality.

Liabilities of Hobbesian Individualism

The Hobbesian position, however, has numerous fairly clear-cut

problems. First, it's a bit odd that human beings are the only ones who
do the naming of groups of things. So there does appear to be
something distinctive about them by nature, not only by convention. But
other problems are present as well, not the least of which is what most of
the critics have noted, namely, that entirely unique individuals have no
natural need for society, nor any natural ethical or moral system which
morally obligates them to conduct themselves in certain, including
socially responsible, ways. For example, it has always been a problem of
this individualism, and the accompanying liberalism, to justify political
authority. The supposed social contract that gives rise to politics has
never been a very convincing approach to solving this problem: what if
some individuals happen to desire to violate that contract? Nothing in
nature seems to speak against this kind of behavior, nothing convincing
can be said to morally object to it.
Yet some features always have been, and still remain, attractive about this approach. It has
promised to provide us with a very handy analytic tool for understanding and possibly changing
human social and political affairs. By understanding how people behave, governed by the
principles of mechanical motion that drives them- as it drives all matter in the universe- social
engineering seems to be made possible. This is, furthermore, compatible with world views based
on the success of what was then understood to be the scientific method, such as materialism,
empiricism, and mechanism, as well as reductionism: the attempt to understand everything in
terms of a simple idea or a few simple principles. Since radical individualism was seen to be
compatible with the principle of the universal laws of mechanical motion, it was seen as consistent
with the doctrine that nature consists of matter-in-motion being governed by stable laws universally
applicable throughout existence, including in the sphere of human existence.

In the last analysis the individualism of Hobbes- as generally understood (for of course scholarly
debates continue about how we should read him)- amounted to little more than the application of
these laws of motion to human life. Each human being was seen to be a collection of matter-in-
motion. The advancing movement of people would, in turn, continue most efficiently and
successfully if left unimpeded. This is the simple mechanistic principle of classical physics. When
applied to human social life, Hobbes believed that, beyond a certain rudimentary state of nature,
the laws of motion governing social live would be destructive and would lead to a great deal of
collision. As populations increased, people would experience conflict.

Now, by Hobbes' analysis, in populous regions of human habitation

human intelligence would devise general rules and improve on the state
of nature wherein everyone is motivated by the sheer force of matter in
motion (i.e., self-interest). Intelligent social conventions or rules would
emerge because human reason would guard against the prospects of
self-destruction in a crowded state of nature. Individuals would then
behave in an orderly fashion.
Hobbes even favored the institution of an absolute monarch who would have all power delegated
to him so as to guide society to safety, prosperity, and efficiency. But absolute monarchy is a
detail. Later thinkers who followed Hobbes dropped it. What they retained is the idea that societies
made up of these unique individuals striving to aggrandize themselves- to seek their own
advantage in every way possible- would only agree to rules of social conduct that would guarantee
the enhancement of their own subjective self- interest.

For example, in Adam Smith's case it was perceived- through the analysis of mercantilist
economic systems- that the attempt to organize society through the absolute power of a leader
was not very efficient after all. Smith went back to the more basic aspect of Hobbes and
maintained that, if you just adopt a few rules to which everyone will agree and let people pursue
their self-interest, this will enhance the overall prosperity and general success of the society.

Now, classical and especially neoclassical economics, both of which tend to embrace liberalism,
start from the assumption that human beings seek, always, to fulfill their desires. As the late
George Stigler put it so plainly, each persons is "essentially a utility maximizer- in his home, in his
office (be it public or private), in his church, in his scientific work- in short, everywhere."54 This is
how the idea has reached our era, given expression here by the Nobel laureate economist who
was a strong champion of the unregulated market economy, a crucial feature of classical
liberalism. Yet even those who would rather embrace a welfare state instead have tended to
remain loyal to the subjectivism underlying the liberal polity. We have seen this in Rawls, already.
And Nozick, who has recently abandoned his libertarianism- in his book The Examined Life55- in
favor of some version of the welfare state, still defends a substantially subjectivist individualist
ethics where the greatest good is for every individual to give meaning to is or her life as he or she
sees it.

Even if one were to find this radical individualist view ultimately unsound, it may often be
analytically fruitful, at least in limited contexts. Some, such as Milton Friedman, even treat its
principles as postulates that need not be true, only useful- in his case, for purposes of economic
analysis at both the micro- and macro- economic levels. For, as a matter of plain fact, most people
do try to satisfy their subjective desires when "they go to market." That is what markets are for: to
enable both buyer and seller to become satisfied, to advance in a certain respect. No wonder the
analytical model derived from such radical individualism works in economic science.

But the economist's assumption is often much broader, as Stigler clearly

indicates above. Liberalism in general, not just neoclassical economics
within the broader political framework of liberalism, has embraced the
radical individualist outlook and resulting methodology. That, in turn, had
led to certain liabilities for the approach. Some of them are philosophical
liabilities, while others concern public relations.

First, a word on the philosophical liabilities. A problem of radical

individualism is that it leads to a belief in moral subjectivism, even
concerning its own cherished political principles. A radical individualist
accepts political principles only so as to promote mutual self-interest
understood in a purely subjective sense. There are expedient reasons
for having these rules but nothing else. And they really aren't necessary
to human life and cooperation. They are not required by the nature of
human life as such, the way in which fighting an oil fire requires certain
specific methods as a matter of the nature of the case.

So liberalism's political values are what we have come to agree upon as

useful for our subjective purposes. (Actually, for Hobbes an element of
objectivism remained by way of his endorsement of self-preservation as
having ultimate value. But liberalism cannot go even that far.) Any
judgment as to what is good or what is bad, as well as what is right and
what is wrong morally or politically, comes to no more than a preference
by the agent who expresses or puts into practice that judgment. It
amounts to a positive or negative feeling of the agent and nothing
objectively binding that he or she has the moral responsibility to act on.

These values may indeed be rather temporary and unstable, depending

on the agent's personality, although some classical liberal economists
have maintained that there are some reasonably stable preferences. Yet
they haven't claimed that this is in view an underlying and stable human
nature.

As a result, the favorite political principle of classical liberals is itself, of

course, ultimately a mere subjective value. This despite the fact that the
right to individual liberty at first impression seems to be well supported
by this radical individualism. To put the problem another way, the right to
liberty is not by the nature of things required for human social life. It is a
matter of convenience and agreement. It is something we have adopted
but might just as easily not have; we might with equal justifiability have
adopted something else, say the right to equality or security.

Radical subjectivism, which emerges from radical individualism, thus

tends to make optional one of the major values of the classical liberal
tradition itself. Many of us do indeed declare our adherence to it but if we
are pressed about why we do so, and whether we adhere to this radical
individualist, radical subjectivist point of view, we are not able to respond
except to say, "This is something we want," or "This is something we
like," or again "This is something we prefer." There is thus nothing
necessary about the right to liberty and its derivative principles, such as
free trade, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and so forth,
according to this frame of reference.

Now, of course if that is the case, some people, who at the moment
happen to prefer playing golf rather than defending liberty, do nothing
wrong by acting accordingly. More significantly, for the critics of
liberalism, if someone ignores the plight of the hapless or unjustly
treated, there is nothing to be criticized about this choice. Feelings
toward one's community or fellow human beings are in no way superior
to feelings toward another visit to Las Vegas, or playing cards, or Trivial
Pursuit. Since there are no objective goods or objective values, neither
the defense of liberty nor any other course of conduct is no more
objectively valuable than any alternative course of action.
Now this is a serious paradox. If a social philosophy cannot defend itself in terms dictated by its
own tenets- that is, if from a classical liberal point of view it is equal whether you defend liberty or
squander it- that is a serious flaw of the position. There is, furthermore, no way to inspire with good
arguments adherents of the system to defend it.

In the summer of 1971 I attended a conference of classical liberals

where Professor Armen Alchian, a prominent free market economist who
then taught at UCLA, was lecturing. He was advancing this subjectivist
theory of value which emerges from this radical individualist approach
and I asked him (he is a very, very enthusiastic golfer) whether there is
any better reason for one to stand up and argue the case for liberty or to
play golf. He told me that there isn't, not from his point of view. That, I
submit, is a serious deficiency for this viewpoint.

There are other problems, as well. For example, very often people are
pleased that this classical liberal tradition based on this radical
individualism advances a subjective theory of value. Many liberal
economists, both of the Austrian and neoclassical schools, tend to
welcome this, often in the belief that if values are subjective then no one
can justify making us do anything they believe is the right thing for us to
do. After all, what they believe is merely subjectively the right thing to do,
so what justification would they have for making us do it? None. This
sounds like a wonderful way to fend off authoritarianism, tyranny,
regimentation, regulation, and other forms of interventionism. But there is
a problem here.
Suppose the person says, "I don't need any justification to interfere with you, I just desire to do it."
Now how is one going to respond? Not by claiming, truly, that the aggressor should not do what he
desires to do- after all, that claim will be no more than a subjective preference as well. So now we
have two clashing subjective preferences, neither more defensible than the other. The tyrant wants
to oppress you and you want to be free. But neither is an objective value, so it then comes down to
a matter of might makes right. There is no way to resolve the matter intellectually, or
philosophically.

So this alleged benefit of subjective (radical individualist) value theory,

championed by many classical liberals so as to defend liberty and fend
off oppressor and tyrant, is no defense at all. It is indeed an entirely
impotent weapon against tyrants, regimenters, regulators, prohibitionists,
and oppressors. Indeed, from ignorance of what is right nothing follows,
not even the objection to acting on such ignorance.
There is, furthermore, the public relations problem of liberalism which
rests, in fact, on an additional philosophical issue. Here what liberalism
faces is the problem of explaining its moral position vis-à-vis alternative
systems, some of which have not much appeal of their own except their
self-proclaimed moral high ground. I have in mind such systems as
Marxism-Leninism, Marxist national liberationism, and fundamentalist
theocracies such as those we find in Iran and elsewhere in the world.

It is nearly impossible to market or advocate a system wedded to radical

individualism. Most people do not accept that values are subjective.
Whether some institution is just or unjust is not for them a matter of
personal preference. And this belief rests not merely on prejudice but on
the fact that human beings are well aware of moral values, even while
they may not be able to explain them clearly and convincingly to skeptics
or even organize them for themselves.
This is not unlike the point we can raise against some physicists, such as Erwin Schrödinger, who
misguidedly concluded that there are no solid objects around us since at the subatomic level
everything is composed of a great deal of empty space. Yet it is not our conviction that solid
objects exist that will be given up by us but the physicist's viewpoint, and rightly so. The concept of
"solid object" is perfectly sound within the context of ordinary discourse and anyone who denies
this, regardless of how fancy an argument is adduced to do so, will simply be disbelieved- and
rightly so. Theories cannot argue reality away, they can only make clearer and deeper sense of it
for us. The same goes with theories about ethics and morality. Skepticism can look good but it
simply has no power to convince us about something as obviously true as that there are good and
bad things, right and wrong ways of acting.

So, it is understandably troublesome to promote a system wedded to

radical individualism since most people, quite sensibly, do not accept
that values are subjective. Thus it is difficult to make political headway
with a political-economic-legal outlook, such as liberalism, that is too
closely associated with radical individualism.

Individualism's Bad Image

Clearly, in light of these and related considerations- and, of course, what critics see as the kind of
world such a view promotes, namely, callousness toward those whom we ought, from a moral
point of view, care about- individualism as such has become a target not only of criticism but even
moral outrage. Perhaps the best example is Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in
America, a work by sociologist Robert Ballah and his colleagues at the University of California,
Berkeley.56 Some have argued against individualism on simple moral grounds- the view
engenders selfishness and social isolationism and alienation. Others, such as the philosopher
Alasdair MacIntyre, have noted, following Karl Marx, that while individualism may have had some
uses as an ideology during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it has lost its
value in our post-modern era. We are no longer- or at least should not be- concerned with
amassing great material wealth but more with the quality of our lives, its spiritual dimensions. And
here radical individualism is not just useless but a disvalue.

So individualism as such comes under fire both in sophisticated

intellectual circles as well as in the more popular culture which is, after
all, under the influence of educators, pundits, and other moral
spokespersons of our culture.

Should Individualism be Abandoned?

Need we, then, conclude that classical liberalism and its evident ties to individualism simply must
be given up as hopeless, both philosophically and as a matter of marketability or potential
popularity? Do we have to become collectivists or that more modified version of it,
communitarians, in order to have something substantial to offer in favor of the value of, say, the
right to liberty? I don't believe that is the best response, yet it is the one urged upon us by many
critics of the free society, even following the evident demise of many forms of collectivism as far as
their suitability as workable social systems- see, for example, Kenneth Lux, Adam Smith's Mistake
or Amitai Etzioni's The Moral Dimension, two works offering that suggestion. They essential take
us back to a different philosophy, a form of collectivist or communitarian humanism, that echoes
Karl Marx, who noted in one of his early works, prior to his becoming a scientific socialist, that "the
human essence is the true collectivity of man."57 And they nearly agree with Auguste Comte,
whom we already saw objecting to individual rights because, "[The] social point of view...cannot
tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion rests on individualism."

I don't think, however, that individualism has had a full hearing simply
because radical individualism has been found wanting both theoretically
and practically. There are forms of individualism not of the type that
much of the classical liberal tradition inherited.
The particular type of individualism I have in mind focuses on individual human beings. This form
of human or classical individualism recognizes that there is in nature a distinct class of beings we
call human. They are justifiably designated as a distinct class, not simply arbitrarily named, as
nominalism would have it. In other words, there are indeed good reasons to classify human beings
as a distinct class of entities in nature. Yet there is also good reason to regard their individuality as
one of their essential, central features. So on the one hand we must abandon radical individualism
but on the other hand we can firm up the foundation for individualism by noting that in the nature of
the case- by a study of human nature, by a careful examination of what it is to be a human being-
we arrive at the conclusion that one of the crucial factors about being a human being is that human
being are individuals. In response to this, instead of saying, with Hobbes, that there is no human
essence, we can say in opposition to both Marx and Hobbes that- the human essence is the true
individuality of man.

The Case for Classical Individualism

But of course saying all this is not quite proving it. Does what I dub classical individualism have
anything going for it? Just how difficult it is to answer this might be appreciate from the fact that the
very idea of "the nature of something"- an idea vitally important to classical individualism as well as
to most natural law defenses of classical liberalism- has been under attack for several centuries. I
have already mentioned Hobbes' dissatisfaction with classical naturalism, the view that there are
natures of things in reality. To this day the dominant philosophical systems and positions have
rejected the possibility of identifying the nature of human, or for that matter any other beings, as
objectively real, a fact of independent reality. Indeed, one reason such doctrines as
deconstructionism and relativism have fared well in our academic communities is that these simply
extend the anti-naturalist, skeptical viewpoint to special areas- to wit, literary interpretation and
ethics. I have already noted how the multicultural movement owes a good deal to the rejection of
classical naturalism.

Platonism Rejected. One of the major objections to the idea of an

objective or real nature of something has to do with Platonism. It was
Plato's form of naturalism that had been most widely developed,
embraced and utilized in, for example, natural law theory. Even in the
tradition of natural rights there is often an allusion to a Platonist
conception of the nature of something. But there is a very serious
problem with this view of "the nature of something."
We need first to remember that for Plato the nature of anything was to be a timeless, unchanging,
perfect form in another, timeless dimension of reality. We do have some plausible examples of this
when we study geometry- we can, perhaps usefully enough, think of the perfect circle as being in
this timeless, perfect, unchanging realm however we might actually understand the precise status
of being of the figures geometers define. Euclidean geometry is a formal field, so at least there is a
plausible case here.

Yet when we consider the nature of trees, or cats, or human beings, or justice, or governments for
us to know such a thing- what the nature of, e.g., a human being is- can we expect that we have to
know something that is timeless, perfect, unchanging, eternal? Hardly. It is an impossible request.
No human being could know such a thing simply because we are actual, temporal beings. We
have only so many years to discover what's what. We are not in a position to ever demonstrate the
truth of some claim as to what something is timelessly, perfectly, and finally.

Out of this Platonic tradition of naturalism arises a skepticism, a belief that if that is what we have
got to come up with to know the nature of man, we simply reach an impasse. No wonder Hobbes
did just that by concluding that skepticism concerning whether things have a nature- that is,
whether in reality different beings really are different by virtue of certain features or attributes they
possess- is the sensible conclusion. So instead of naturalism, the alternative of nominalism
seemed the best we could ask for. Thus, human nature might be one thing in this epoch and
another in that epoch, one thing for this society, another for another society, depending on how it
all suits us. That this makes it impossible to rest any sort of stable social or political order or
conception of a good society on human nature, natural law, or natural rights was managed by a
great deal of artificial theorizing involving social contracts, conventionalism, pragmatism and so on.
All of these views try to reinvent the stability that we lost when the Platonic tradition of naturalism
had to be abandoned because it lead to skepticism.

So we were left with two extremes: the radical skeptical idea which
issues in nominalism and radical individualism, à la Hobbes, and the
Platonic alternative of an unattainable, hopelessly utopian and ideal
conception of human nature. Both imply skepticism in the end.
Rethinking Naturalism. We should rethink naturalism, not abandon it. When we talk about the
nature of something we are most sensibly talking about what is reasonably justifiable given what
we know to be so beyond a reasonable doubt. The classification that we are entitled to make- on
the basis of evidence we have gathered (limited to the context of our present knowledge as that
may be provided that we are consistent and reasonably historically complete) to form our
conception of what the nature of something is- is going to be stable enough. It can be stable
enough to guide us in our political and even perhaps in our personal lives. It can be just as stable
as we can expect the world to be, just from our knowledge of history and from our common sense.
Actual aspects of the world, its substance, cannot be thought of in the same fashion as we think
about formal features, for example, as we address mathematics and geometry. The material of
these fields is capable of being handled by constructing final definitions- although some dispute
even that- because these definitions concern measurement devices, not actual objects. But human
beings, cats, zebras, or just actions are not mere measurements- they actually exist and can
undergo gradual change which our theory of understanding them must also accommodate. We
need an approach to understanding the nature of things that both gives us stability as well as
makes room for gradual change. The world itself demands that, by every indication. We can
experience this, learn it from history, from science, from everything that we are aware of: Nature is
stable as well as changing!
The Stability of Human Nature. Now, when we study homo sapiens from the 92,000 years on that
they have been on this earth,58 we can conclude that human beings do, indeed, have a stable
nature as thinking animals- biological entities that have the distinctive facility to think and seem to
distinctively depend upon exercising this facility in order to make their way through and do well in
life. Moreover this thinking capacity of human beings doesn't seem to be something that just
happens to go into motion. It is one feature of conceptual consciousness that individuals must
initiate it- they must themselves start this process, otherwise they perish.

We can compare this human characteristic to what we know of other animals. They behave as
they need to so as to survive without any need for individual effort. Mistakes come about in the
rest of the animal world through "acts of nature," not through failure or neglect. Human beings
seem to always be confronted with the possibility of mishaps through their own agency, ergo
criticism! They can be wrong as well as right in what they do, unlike others animals, and it is often
up to them. The characteristic we have just identified as distinctive of human life introduces an
inescapable individuality into their nature. It is by their own particular initiative, circumscribed by
their family backgrounds, traditions, habits, customs, environment, opportunities, climate, and so
forth, that they must confront the task of living their lives. So they face the task of implementing or
establishing their individuality every moment of their lives. But it also quickly points to the social
nature of human life- the very fact that they are thinking animals points to the fact that flourishing in
their lives is utterly interwoven with their fellow human beings from whom they must learn, with
whom they will find enjoyment and love, with whom they will trade and play and produce and carry
on all the most exciting aspects of their humanity.

Individualism Humanized
Now how does all this help us out of some of the problems and paradoxes of individualism that I
have described earlier? For one, since we have now a viable, sound, or feasible conception of
human nature- one that need not be timeless and yet has the stability one expects of what the
nature of something is- we can identify some general principles we could count on to guide our
lives. These principles are going to be general enough to apply over time to succeeding
generations even if they will not be guaranteed to hold for eternity as earlier naturalists had hoped.

Of course, as Aristotle already recognized, the precise application of the

general principles that rest on our knowledge of human nature may not
be exactly identical in different situations, at different times. Being honest
in the twentieth century probably requires applying the principles to
telephones, call waiting, fax machines, and computers. Two hundred
years ago people didn't have the responsibility to be honest in just this
way. So honesty, although it may well be a very general human virtue
that we all ought to practice, will also have its very individual, regional,
temporal, and culturally related manifestations. And so, too, with other
virtues such as courage, prudence, or justice.

There can be very many general human traits of character that make for
human excellence that we ought to practice. That these must be applied
in particular circumstances does not imply at all that they have to be
subjective, mere preferences or choices that we invent at a given
moment. These could well be human virtues, so that, for example, trans-
historically we could consider a person 400 years ago and if we discover
that he is a liar we could say that he did something objectively, morally
wrong.
Classical versus Radical Individualism

Let's take some of the more interesting areas where many of the more
imperialist neoclassical economists advance claims and see how this
classical type individualism would approach them. One such claims is
that in free exchange both parties necessarily benefit. Consider what
Murray Rothbard reports on this subject when he criticizes those who
lament some of the economic inequalities in a free market:
There is no distributional process apart from the production and exchange processes of
the market; hence the very concept of "distribution" becomes meaningless on the free
market. Since "distribution" is simply the result of the free exchange process, and since
this process benefits all participants on the market and increases social utility, it follows
directly that the "distributional" results of the free market also increase social utility.59

This line of thinking rests on a theory of pure subjective utility as characterized by Don Bellante in
the following passage: "with the values and motives of individuals being entirely subjective it is
impossible for an analysts to pass judgment on the optimality of the individual's chosen actions."60

Classical individualism rejects this understanding of market exchange. For the classical
individualist it is quite possible that even a perfectly free exchange will not benefit both parties,
perhaps even neither party. Both could be making a mistake- for instance, when one trades good
money for some harmful narcotics or when two traders exchange something that would benefit
them for something that would not or not so much. Impulse buying or similarly thoughtless
purchases would illustrate this clearly enough. (Nor will it do to say, "it seems to be of benefit to
them," since what seems to be would, on occasions, have to be possible.)61

Now many classical liberal economists are concerned with this

implication because if it were true, they think they would have to admit
that some central or collective planner might have second guessed one
or both trading parties and ordered them to behave differently "for their
own best interest." If it were possible to know (objectively) what would
benefit people in trade, even when they themselves do not, it may be
possible to admit to the legitimacy of paternalism and authoritarianism.
That would, of course, tend to undermine the merits of the fully free
market. Or so many classical liberal economists seem to think.
Does paternalism or authoritarianism follow from classical individualism, simply because it rejects
the theory of subjective value? No, not at all. That is because a central feature of an objective
moral value judgment and objectively moral conduct that individuals ought to engage in is that a
person must be able to choose. Since the time of Aristotle's ethical writings, down to our own time,
bona fide moral theorists have understood that one cannot make others behave morally- moral
conduct must be of the agent's own choosing. This does not mean that what is right is a matter of
choice, but doing it is morally right only if it has been chosen by the agent. The choice is, of
course, of something that is of value or benefit, but it becomes morally relevant only if it is pursued
voluntarily.

In short, a central feature of morally relevant- good or evil, right or wrong- conduct is that it has to
be chosen conduct. For one to gain credit or blame for what one does, he or she must choose to
do the act being evaluated. If it is imposed or regimented behavior, its moral significance
completely vanishes. If one is a good little girl or boy only because one is deadly scared of one's
parents, one is not really a good little girl or boy but, at most, well behaved. And included in the
range of choices with which every individual is confronted is the entire array of issues concerned
with much of community life. Whether to marry or not; whether to work in one or another
profession; whether to seek wealth or fame or honor or some combination of these; whether to pay
heed to the needs of other persons near or afar, or to indulge in play, or to pursue some artistic or
scientific project or some combination of these- all of that is what the moral nature of human life
demands of the individual to manage and from which each will gain either moral credit or moral
blame. This sort of individualism also places before us certain stable-enough principles of
community life that are indispensable, ones that are necessary for us to even embark upon a
morally independent or sovereign social existence.

This aspect of the moral nature of human life, namely, the right in a
social context to individual liberty, is a clear and valid distinction. If one
behaved as a good citizen or a charitable person simply because one is
dreadfully scared of the state placing one in jail, that doesn't make one a
good citizen or a good person, only a terrified citizen. So it is wrong to
confuse conduct one should have engaged in of one's own free will with
behavior that is imposed upon one by some planning authority, politburo,
or regulatory agency. There is, in short, no such thing as coerced morally
right conduct. Those aspects of the classical liberal polity that concerned
individual rights, never mind whether they had been founded on the right
philosophical groundings, have validity here as well.

Moral Objectivism

Although it is not my task here to establish the objectivity of any

particular moral judgment, value or principle, it may help to take a stab at
the task briefly so as to make the overall thesis of this essay more
convincing. I want to argue, therefore, that the institution of the right to
liberty is an objective value for human beings in their community
existence.
Earlier it was noted that human nature can be identified because there is objective evidence of
similarities and differences in reality and human beings are capable of identifying these by means
of their reasoning faculties- their senses and their minds. Reality gives evidence of certain facts
about human beings such as that what makes them human is their ability to reason. But their
reasoning is an activity that must be initiated by them, at least in their adult years. The process of
thinking is not something that can be understood without appreciating that it is volitional; without
this factor, the impossible prospect of being rational automatically, determined by forces outside
us, would face us. It is impossible since a hallmark of reasoning or thinking is the possibility of
making a mistake, of failing to do it right; of, in short, malpractice. Human beings are rational but
must actualize this capacity by their own initiative, lest the very idea of thinking be rendered
incoherent. For thinking is a normative process- there are right and wrong ways of doing it. One
ought to be consistent and ought not to entertain contradictions; one ought to follow logic and not
be illogical; one ought to argue properly and avoid arguing fallaciously. But if one ought to do
something, it follows, also, that one is free to fail to do it. For example, one is free to fail to think
rationally, to observe the principles of sound thinking. If one were determined to think as one does,
there would be nothing wrong with thinking badly, nothing right with thinking well. And that is
obviously an intellectual dead end- no discussion on any topic could make progress if that were
the case, since anything said about anything would simply had to have been said about it,
including whether a fallacy was committed or not.

It is, then, an objective fact of human nature that people (who are not crucially incapacitated, i.e.,
essentially deficient) are choosing thinking biological entities. This means, in part, that they are
best off when their nature is enhanced, when they flourish as the things they are. This is simply an
application of the general truth that it is by fulfilling its nature that something flourishes- whether it
be a tomato, zebra, heart, onion, or tennis match. By being most completely and consistently
whole as the kind of being it is, a being does its best as a certain kind of being.

We know this to be so from experience and from the fact that no

alternative account of what it is to be good makes as much sense. We
know it when we shop for a home, when we look for flowers or a
racehorse, when we judge the functioning of the kidneys or heart of any
living being, when we appraise the quality of a redwood tree or a certain
kind of endangered animal.
In judging human beings and their conduct, we need also to consider, first, their nature and then
assess how well a given person or some given conduct accords with human nature- whether it is
rational. But since human beings are also unique individuals, not carbon copies of one another,
what will be rational for one may not be rational for another. Both the fact that a person is a human
being and that he or she is a given individual must be considered in evaluating that person and his
or her conduct. And the same applies to human institutions.

Human Nature, Choice, and Objectivity

Yet, because of the fundamentality of rationality in human life, and because rationality
presupposes freedom of thought- that is, that thinking needs to be initiated and might not be- it is
evident that the right to freedom is proper for human beings in a social context. Since others can
choose to intrude or abstain from intrusion, a community ought to be so organized that such
abstention is secured to the highest possible degree, leaving all to make responsible choices,
including about what communities they will belong to.

The objectivity of the value of the right to liberty is, then, established by
reference to the place of reason and freedom in human life. Given that
these are essential and indispensable for the functioning of anyone's life
as a human being, they are proper to secure for them in a community.
They are just.

Now, because of the essential role individuality plays in the

determination of the objective goods for human beings, and because of
the essential role that choosing what is good for them has for the moral
goodness of any person, the market economy is right for human
community life. It is a just system of economic affairs. And this also
indicates why the analytic approach of neoclassical and Austrian
economics, which invokes the essential individuality of most values to be
realized in commercial exchanges, is perfectly consistent with the basic
principles of a just society. Although it is not the task of analytical
economics to establish that the economic system it invokes as its model
for understanding commerce is compatible with justice, it is good to know
that it is. Just as it is well for an engineer to know that the structure he or
she is constructing not only will hold up but ought to be constructed, so
the economic analyst benefits from knowing that the mode of
understanding it uses to understanding economic affairs is helpful toward
the appreciation of the nature and constitution of a just human
community.

Classical Individualism and Liberalism

What seems to be disturbing to some defenders of classical liberalism is

that under this form of individualism sometimes what one does in the
free market one morally shouldn't do. (Of course, when classical liberals
lament the fact of coercive state or criminal activities, they too commit
themselves to morally chiding people.)
But let us notice an enormous theoretical gain from classical individualism concerning many
aspects of contemporary society. For example, this position allows for moral criticism of
commerce- including the behavior of commercial agents from used car sellers to corporate
magnates- without sanctioning the regulation of commerce. Business ethics, for example, would
be an entirely sensible subbranch of ethics. It would allow us to say, with full justice, that some
individuals in the marketplace- some persons or entire firms- are behaving badly and shouldn't.
They might have chosen to do otherwise. And we can with perfect theoretical justification write
articles about this and send letters, protest sometimes by way of boycotts and ostracism, or maybe
even attend a stockholders' meeting and argue a company's management out of their current
wrongheaded policy.

With radical- as distinct from classical- individualism, whatever people do in the marketplace has
to be accepted as what they ought to do. That is because the only clue as to what they ought to do
is their doing it. I have already indicated what kind of difficulties that produces.

Yet classical individualism recognizes, as common sense does indeed recognize, that individual
market agents might misbehave. They might behave either in a morally praiseworthy or in a
morally blameworthy fashion and yet it has to be their choice whether they do one or the other.
That is the only way in which a socioeconomic system avoids becoming demoralized. Within
certain "rules of market conduct" that identify for us the borders around us- which is where natural
rights theory comes into the picture- individuals must be left free. Because that is the only way that
their human dignity is preserved in a commercial setting, namely, if they are free to misbehave.

All this makes sense because it could now be said that objectively speaking, some of what these
people do in the market they shouldn't be doing. But since it is a matter of free choice whether
someone ought to do something or ought not to do something, it follows that they may not be
regimented to do otherwise except if their morally wrong conduct infringes on the rights of others-
that is, obstructs other people's liberty to make moral choices. The only avenue toward influencing
others is to persuade them to do otherwise.

Classical Individualism and Market Failures

Of course, classical individualism and its resulting polity would not turn a
blind eye toward behavior associated with commerce that has adverse
impact in the form of violating individual rights. The entire sphere of
corporate behavior vis-à-vis the environment could still be seen, as it is
by anti-individualists, as public wrongs that need to have legal sanctions
applied. But these would be construed not in the murky fashion of the
environmentalist ethics movement, as assaults upon nature or intrinsic
values but as dumping on and intrusions upon individuals, violations of
their rights. The remedy would also shift from the more communitarian
approach of social cost- benefit analysis to the individualist approach to
giving full protection to those who might be dumped on or assaulted by
means of toxic side-effects of production or transportation processes.

In short, classical individualism gives every sign of satisfying the concern

expressed by many anti-individualist, namely, with the amoralism and
recklessness of the radical individualist-based liberal social order. But
this view, unlike others such as socialism and even communitarianism,
retains a principled adherence to the ultimate value of individual
sovereignty based on the moral nature (that is, the requirement of self-
governance) of human individuals for the bulk of their lives.

Classical Individualism and Neoclassical Economics

Yet there is no important loss in this to classical liberalism and neoclassical economics. Diversity
of values still holds- not, however, because of subjectivity but because of enormous individual
variations among people. The price system remains the best means by which to communicate
human choices, although at times this means that wrong choices will also be communicated and
responded to by market agents (for example, choices that may produce the production of harmful
drugs or pornography). Still, the point made by public choice theorists still holds: any attempt to
remedy market failures by means of political intervention involves the far greater risk of enshrining
the errors of politicians into the much less flexible aspect of a culture than its market, namely, its
legal system. In addition, the point about trying to make people good by means of coercion must
also be recalled. Both of these points count against any interventionist policies, so the free market
remains intact, despite its somewhat altered philosophical foundations.

Hobbesian Monkey off Liberalism's Back

This then is the crucial alteration that needs to be made on the standard classical liberal doctrine
of individualism. We must abandon the Hobbesian view, which states, in Hobbes' own words, "But
whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth
good: and the object of his hate and aversion, evil.....For these words of good and evil...are ever
used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor
any common rule of good and evil...."62

Instead we must recognize that "good" and "bad" have objective meaning for individual human
beings, based on their humanity and the individual persons they are. There are very general moral
principles that apply to human life, based on human nature, as well as particular moral judgments
based on the special or unique circumstances of the individual. While this preserves the full range
of diversity that most classical liberals wish to call attention to in socio-economic situations- ergo
the stress of the value of the price system that communicates all these diverse value judgments- it
does not embrace the flawed and self-defeating idea of subjective value theory whereby what is
morally right or wrong is merely a matter of what a persons happens to feel about some course of
conduct.

The public relations aspect of this alternative to radical individualism amounts to the fact that no
longer will there be an unbelievable, unpalatable doctrine of moral subjectivism attached to the
defense of the free society. Individualism is true, but subjectivism is false. Most people realize this
as they conduct their lives- it is clear to them, for example, that male chauvinism is wrong, that
slavery is evil, that racism is vile, etc. It is clear to them that kindness, generosity, courage, and
honesty are virtues. To claim, as radical individualism does, that all of that is a matter of personal
preference simply makes the socioeconomic system derived from individualism an incredible
system.

Give Mature Individualism a Chance

All of this is especially important now, in the light of the recent economic and cultural demise of the
planned economic systems of Eastern Europe. That their system has collapsed does not
necessarily mean that one that embraces freedom is going to be successfully sold to them. There
is competition here- Western social democrats, or democratic socialists, are only too willing to
rework their system, call it communitarianism, and sell it to the victims of Stalinist socialism.
Unless individualism can be shown to be a sound position, it will not be successful in capturing the
minds and hearts of those who have found its opposite, collectivism, practically impossible. One
can always claim, after all, that collectivism has not failed but was merely misunderstood,
misplayed, and it will now have to be tried again, the right way. With all its failings, the American
system can provide a model for the rest of the world.

In conclusion, one may say that one of America's most important gifts to
the world was the political philosophy of individualism. The central tenet
of this idea is that every human being is important, especially from the
point of view of law and politics, as a sovereign individual, not living by
the permission of the government or some master or lord. That is the
basic idea underpinning not only the democratic process, the First
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and the various prohibitions
addressed to the government concerning how to treat the citizenry, but
the free market economic system as well.

Individualism and Capitalism

The free market system or capitalism is founded on the doctrine that each person has a basic right
to private property in his or her labor and what he or she creates and earns freely and honestly.
The economic idea of freedom of trade- in labor, skill, goods, services, etc.- rests squarely on
individualism. No one is anyone else's master or servant. No involuntary servitude except as
punishment for crime is permitted. Thus everyone has the basic right to engage in free trade- as in
any other kind of peaceful action, even when his or her particular decision may not be the wisest
or even morally exemplary.

In an individualist society the law upholds the idea that everyone is free to choose to associate
with others on his or her own terms- whether for economic, artistic, religious, or romantic
purposes. Not that all the choices people make will be good. Not that individuals are infallible. Not
that they cannot abuse their freedoms. All of that is granted. But none of that justifies making
others their masters, however smart those others may be. To quote Abraham Lincoln, ``No man is
good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent.''

But today the political philosophy under the most severe attack in many intellectual circles is
individualism. From leftover Marxists to newly emergent communitarians, and all the way to
democratic pragmatists- in the fields of political economy, sociology, and philosophy- everyone is
bad-mouthing individualism. It picked up several years ago with the publication of Bellah & Co.'s
earlier mentioned Habits of the Heart, Individualism and Commitment in American Life, and
continues with a string of related efforts, including the launching of the journal The Responsive
Community and the publication of a new book by Bellah, The Good Society, as well as Amitai
Etzioni's The Spirit of Community (New York: Crown Publishing Co., 1993).63 (There has also
emerged something of a raction, via Stephen Holme's The Anatomy of Antiliberalism [Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1993].)
These and many other efforts constitute a concerted attack against the
individual's unique importance as an individual and, in consequence,
against individual rights. Perhaps predictably, the efforts involve gross
distortions of what individualism actually is. It is supposed to foster
disloyalty to family, friends, and country. It is supposedly hedonistic and
instills anti-social sentiments in people. It is allegedly purely materialistic,
lacking any spiritual and cultural values.
But such distortion is accomplished by focusing selectively on a very limited area of individualist
philosophy, one employed mostly in technical economic analysis and serving merely as a model
by which to understand strictly commercial events in free market economies. An exclusively
economic conception of the human individual is admittedly barren- it treats everyone as nothing
other than a bundle of desires. But this is not very different from the way every science employs
models, taking a very simple idea to make sense of a limited area of the world.

Individualism, True versus False

The anti-individualists do not look at individualism as it is developed by

social thinkers such as Frank Chodorov, F. A. Hayek, or Ayn Rand, let
alone by some of their contemporary students who are developing these
ideas and showing how vibrant a political system and culture can be
when human beings are understood as individuals. The sheer creative
power of human beings should make clear that their individuality is
undeniable, crucial to every facet of human living, good or bad. Yet, this
essential individuality of every person by no means takes away the vital
role various social affiliations play for them; human individuals are social
beings.
The kind of community worthy of human life is intimately tied to individualism; such a community,
even if the most suitable setting for human living, must be chosen by the individuals who occupy it.
If this is subverted by forcing individuals into communities, those involuntary communities will not
be genuine communities at all. Individual choice and responsibility are - essential to human
flourishing.

Indeed, in America, where individualism has flourished more than elsewhere, there are millions of
different communities to which individuals belong, often simultaneously, and this is possible
because individuals have their right to choose reasonably well protected. Not only do all
individuals join a wide array of communitiesfamily, church, profession, clubs, civic associations,
and political parties- but there are vastly different approaches to living that also draw around them
large segments of the population who join freely, without any coercion and regimentation. But
instead of appreciating the robust nature of individualism, including its support for the healthiest
form of communitarianism, its opponents are trying to discredit it in any way they can. Why?

Well, some of their motives may be decent enough- some may indeed fear the impact of narrow
economic individualism and thus carp against all individualism. But sometimes their motivations
cannot be understood as anything else but a hunger for power over other people's lives.
Otherwise, why would the critics ignore perfectly sensible versions of individualism and insist on
the caricatures? Over and over again they invoke the caricature even when other, well developed
versions are available.

Something like this seems to be the best explanation for wishing to

destroy the most significant American discovery, namely, the vital
contribution of individuality to human culture. Why would such attacks be
launched but to reintroduce subjugation, involuntary servitude, and the
demeaning of individuals as individuals in favor of some elite?

No doubt those clamoring for power rationalize their actions with the
thought of certain worthy goals: They want a cooperative, harmonious,
mutually enhancing community. They often believe that individuals as
individuals are dangerous but as members of a community they are
wonderful. As the Russian author Tatyana Tolstaya observes, in an
essay written for The New Republic magazine shortly after the fall of the
Soviet Union, according to collectivism,
Taken individually...everyone is not good. Perhaps this is true, but then how did all these
scoundrels manage to constitute a good people? The answer is that "the people'' is not
"constituted of.'' According to [collectivists] "the people'' is a living organism, not a "mere
mechanical conglomeration of disparate individuals.'' This, of course, is the old, inevitable
trick of totalitarian thinking: "the people'' is posited as unified and whole in its multiplicity. It
is a sphere, a swarm, an anthill, a beehive, a body. And a body should strive for
perfection; everything in it should be smooth, sleek, and harmonious. Every organ should
have its place and its function: the heart and brain are more important than the nails and
the hair, and so on. If your eye tempts you, then tear it out and throw it away; cut off sickly
members, curb those limbs that will not obey, and fortify your spirit with abstinence and
prayer.64

That is why they should be in power: They are the head of the organism,
of the community; they know what is good; and they ought to be making
the decisions as to who remains part of it and who must be cut off or
reconstructed.

Members of society do have different roles; the economists speak

convincingly of the benefits of the division of labor. The errors of the
collectivists include that (1) the individual human being is not whole and
irreplaceably important, (2) they, the collectivists, are in a position to
know better than the rest of individuals in the community which members
are more or less important in any given situation, and (3) they, the
collectivists, have the right to reconstruct or even liquidate (purge) those
members. But individuals are ends in themselves, not offerings to be
sacrificed on the altar of the collectivist state.

There are those who would go along with much of this individualism but
claim that one must not take it to extremes. So they would not simply
grant that human beings ought to strive to live their lives successfully in
the voluntary company of others. They would have it that on at least
some levels we ought to be coerced to behave properly. It does not
matter that this involves violating our rights, so long as it does not
happen extensively, too often.
Some want to apply this sort of thinking to the control of dangerous or
addictive drugs, others to pronography, yet others to the cleaning up of
the environment. "It's always something," as the saying goes, never
letting freedom reign supreme, for fear that individuals who are free will
do too much damage, as if those who might control them, regiment them
would not likely to more damage by far as they wield legally protected
physical power over others.

Community Efforts by Choice

Let me end this work, then, by noting, with some sadness, how one of
the people most responsible for placing the ideals of libertarian justice on
the academic and public agendas, Professor Robert Nozick of Harvard
University, has recently decided no longer to accept these ideals.
Instead, Nozick states his belief that the welfare state in more just since
it gives expression, in needed collective fashion, to the principle of
charity or compassion. Without doing this, a system stressing only liberty
of opinion and conduct would betray something essential, vital to human
community life. It would in some sense be barren, spiritually empty.
The libertarian position I once propounded now seems to me seriously inadequate, in part
because it did not fully knit the human considerations and joint cooperative activities it left
room for more closely into its fabric. It neglected the symbolic importance of an official
political concern with issues or problems, as a way of marking their importance or
urgency, and hence of expressing, intensifying, channeling, encouraging, and validating
our private actions and concerns toward them. Joint goals that the government ignore
completely- it is different with private or family goals- tend to appear unworthy of our joint
attention and hence to receive little....65

This is a sad mistake. Nozick seems to lack the confidence that free men and women would forge
a culture that gave clear enough expression to all human virtues, including generosity and
benevolence- in the shape of wide scale philanthropy and provisions for emergency through
charity and insurance- in the name of which the coercive powers of the welfare state are
established and defended. Yet if he were right to doubt the predominant goodness of free men and
women, it is perplexing, to say the least, why he has hope for the same from government, i.e.,
armed bureaucrats.

For one, the evidence is overwhelming that bureaucrats are ill chosen as champions of any of the
virtues other than certain narrow ones, such as fairness and punctuality, required from them at
their administrative jobs. The growth of the welfare state has been accompanied at every step with
scandals at every level of governance. The moral tragedy of the commons has manifest itself more
and more with the enlargement of the commons. That is, fewer and fewer people see themselves
as individually responsible for what occurs in our society, which leads to widespread
demoralization at every level of human community life. Second, when governments take over the
task of addressing major problems in health care, unemployment, catastrophic aid, and the like,
the job is usually done willy nilly, since bureaucrats are generally reluctant to work at these tasks
with the determination that a professional, well paid body of men and women would. All the
bureaucrat has to sustain his or her interest is a feeling of duty which, sadly, wanes rather rapidly
once the job becomes routine. One need but recall the expression on the faces of most
bureaucrats when one turns to them for support- say, at the postal, urban development and social
service offices. In the main bureaucrats tend to find it a bother to come to the assistance of
people- naturally enough, since there is very little in it for them, even in the sense of satisfying
some urge toward noble service. Rather they tend to see their work as mostly a chore they aren't
well enough paid to perform and the efficient, enthusiastic performance of which brings them little
reward. There are, of course, some exceptions, but hardly enough to fulfill the sort of expectations
on which the welfare state is founded.

Nozick's modulated Platonic hopes, to the effect that some guardian

class will bring forth the best of the community, is difficult to explain other
than, perhaps, by reference to the age old propensity of philosophers to
believe about themselves and those whom they befriend that they have
a better handle on human virtues than do others and if only those who
feel as they do were in charge, matters would be significantly improved.

It's a myth. We are all equally capable of good and evil and thus the free
society in which no power is monopolized by any class is more likely to
bear just fruit than one where some elite assumes even moderate
measures of control over the rest.

In one of his works, on classical liberalism, Ludwig von Mises hailed the
free system for lacking any pomp, all the trappings of passion and
feeling, leaving it with no more than the endorsement of science or
dispassionate reason. Actually, however, he was only half right.

The free society is indeed recommended by reason, but not at the

expense of the recognition of as well as enthusiasm for its supreme
value. As Henry Hazlitt, another champion of liberty, put it:
The superior freedom of the capitalist system, its superior justice, and its superior
productivity are not three superiorities, but one. The justice follows from the freedom and
the productivity follows from the freedom and the justice.66

ENDNOTES:

1. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985). For
an explanation of how one should understand the development of ethical and political ideals, see
Hanna F. Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1972).

2. Some of these issues are developed extensively in an unpublished

paper by Jan Narveson of the University of Waterloo. I will myself return
to some of these matters in Chapter III of this work.
3. I have discussed this in "Prima Facia versus Natural (Human) Rights," The Journal of Value
Inquiry, Vol. 10 (July 1976).

4. In our time this kind of liberty may also be designated as personal

freedom and can involve economic, religious, and related civil liberties.
The reason for this is that political liberty is nowadays taken to mean not
being kept from participating in decision-making regarding the affairs of
state.
5. Sometimes the Hayekian idea of a spontaneous order suggests that what is being talked about
came about unintentionally. This is not correct. Human actions are intentional- this is what
distinguishes them from the familiar type of animal behavior which is instinctual, not guided by
conceptual thinking. What Hayek has in mind, I believe, is that such conduct or action is not
deliberate, reflected upon or monitored (the way theorizing is carried on and the kind of thinking
and action associated with macroeconomic government planning). Nor is it clear that the order that
is produced by such non-deliberative conduct had been entirely unanticipated- there is no way to
tell that no one had thought of the order, say, of the monetary system at the inception of the use of
money for exchange. Suffice it to underline the Hayekian notion that many of the sensible, natural
guiding notions of human conduct are more likely to result in useful systems when thought of as a
matter of creativity and personal initiative than if they had been regimented or coerced. Exactly
why this is so is probably due to the fact that the creative energies of individuals function more
productively, efficiently when the person is left to initiate his or her actions, to do what he or she is
doing for self-understood reasons rather than for reasons others think up.

6. Her position was spelled out in Nathaniel Branden, The Psychology of

Self-Esteem (New York: Bantam Books, 1969). I myself have elaborate
this view in my The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner (New Rochelle,
N.Y.: Arlington House, 1974).

7. See Roger W. Sperry, Science and Moral Priority (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1983). See for more on this, Dennis
Senchuk, "Consciousness Naturalized," American Philosophical
Quarterly, Vol. 28 (January 1991).

8. See, in this connection, Vitaly Shevoroshkin, "The Mother Tongue,"

The Sciences (May/June 1990), pp. 20-27. Shevoroshkin traces all
languages to the one original sub-Saharan African tongue that
developed circa 92,000 years ago.
9. Of course, classical liberals also grapple with such issues as the universalizability of the
principles they identify as sound and binding on human communities. Yet those concerns are not
unique to classical liberalism's champions- any moral and political theory has to come to terms
with the kind of objections they face from Pyrrhonists, skeptics, Feyerabendians, and the like. In
the case of classical liberalism (in its purest, namely, libertarian, incarnation), John Gray, in
Liberalisms (London: Routledge, 1989), has offered the most sustained challenge to it at this
metaethical, metapolitical level, arguing, in essence, that no common human nature exists from
which to justify universal moral and political ideas; a teleological conception of human action is
obsolete; empiricism has shown that natural law and rights have no basis in philosophy, etc. I
attempt to answer some of these concerns in my forthcoming paper, "Justice, Self and Natural
Rights," to be included in a volume of papers on justice, edited by James Sterba, for Rowman and
Littlefield.

10. This is not to say that these criticisms are always just or fair, let alone
accurate. Quite the contrary, when we compare bourgeois societies to
others. All in all, the more sensible values of humanity find themselves
better realized in bourgeois society than in competing systems. As an
example of a serious attack, see Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of
Paradise (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1990), in which the author argues that
the pre-colonial natives of North America exhibited a much better
community life than what the Europeans achieved. He is especially
critical of the bourgeois principles of individual rights and argues that a
community guided by these rights fails in being "harmonious, peaceful,
benign and content."

It is, of course, arguable that these values are by no means the most
vital or sound ones and that a system of individual rights make room for
a wider variety of possible lives of human goodness than merely
stressing the principles that govern, well, a cemetery. Furthermore, there
is considerable evidence showing that pre-colonial natives of the
Amercas were a varied collection of people, exhibiting as much diversity
as people do everywhere, so lumping them all together is to distort their
history considerably.

11. It is assumed here that the problem of ethics is conceptually prior to

that of politics and the best solution to that problem will have conceptual
priority, dictating the political solutions, not the other way around. Of
course, some dispute this, mostly on the grounds that social or political
principles are have greater priority in light of the essential social nature
of human life. This is, in the last analysis, a question of metaphysics and
I have dealt with it in my Individuals and Their Rights as well as in
Marxism: A Bourgeois Critique (Bradford, England: MCB University
Press, 1988).

12. See Jonathan R. T. Hughes, The Governmental Habit (New York:

Basic Books, 1972). It is a book that chronicles the American system of
economic interventionism from the 1600s through our own time.

13. George Mavrodes, in his "Property," offers some of the most

poignant challenges along these lines. See his essay in Samuel I.
Blumenfeld, ed., Property in a Humane Society (La Salle, Ill.: Open
Court, 1974).

14. For Rand rationality is the highest virtue, comparable to Aristotle's

right reason and Locke's Reason (with which one has the power to
consult the Law of Nature). See, Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, A
New Concept of Egoism (New York: New American Library, 1961). See,
also, some unpublished papers by Jan Narveson concerning the
problem of first acquisition and the Lockean proviso. Most of all,
however, see the work of James Sadowsky, "Private Property and
Collective Ownership," in Tibor R. Machan, ed., The Libertarian
Alternative (Chicago: Nelson- Hall, 1974). See, also, Israel Kirzner,
Capitalism and Entrepreneurship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1975), for a somewhat similar approach to what I present here.
The "selfishness" in Randian ethics concerns the fact that the nature of a human being is to be a
rational or conceptually and volitionally conscious biological entity, and by acting in accordance
with one's self- i.e., one's nature as the individual human being one is- one becomes excellent and
happy. One's focusing one's rational mind in a sustained and uncompromising fashion amounts to
doing the best one can for oneself as a human being. Randian selfishness has nothing to do with
the homo economicus idea in which one is selfish by indulging all of one's desires. As Rand so
colorfully puts it, this amounts to whim worshiping, not rationality.

15. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974).

16. No doubt the moral features of the universe are not at all the same
as the physical features of it. That a piece of rock is physically different
from water is not the same fact as that a lie is morally different from the
telling of truth. But in their respective ways, these are both clearly
evident to most who simply care to notice.

17. I am thinking here of the moral systems that see, when consistently
worked out, the good life as manifest in how St. Ignatius of Loyola and
St. Francis of Assisi conceived of it. It is the kind of life often deemed by
many religions as ultimately good, albeit hardly attainable for most
human beings. This kind of idealism that points out of this world is surely
not going to give support to a life sustaining polity.
18. Op. cit., Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 154. See, also, Tibor R. Machan, "Conditions
for Rights: Sphere of Authority," Journal of Human Relations, Vol. 19 (1971), pp. 184-187. In this
piece I argue that to be able to maintain a internally consistent structure of legal rights, there
needs, first of all, be a right to a sphere of authority wherein human beings may carry on as they
choose. The problem with public spheres is that no such sphere of personal authority is made
available by them- ergo, we find the problems of conflicts of rights in public parks, beaches, etc.

19. Critics of the free market economy often argue that many participants
in such a system are far from enjoying the right to freedom because they
are restricted by, e.g., property rights. If I own a large piece of land,
another person lacks the right to liberty to enter it. But this is just the kind
of objection that is answered in the discussion of the moral foundation of
the right to private property. In essence, no one has forced someone to
be without by acquiring something in unowned nature or by means of
voluntary exchange. No one is stealing the air by breathing it, unless it is
someone else's air already.

20. Den Uyl, The Virtue of Prudence (New York: Peter Lang, 1991).
21. Some illumination of these points may be found in Edwin Curley, "Good Man is Hard to Find,"
Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association (Newark, Del.: The
American Philosophical Association, 1991), pp. 29-45. Curley shows how Machiavelli, Hobbes,
and Spinoza all had a very uncomplimentary view of human nature- but by the standards of
Christian morality. How would these philosophers have judged human nature, had they not held it
up to the standards of a Christian ideal, one that demands of us saintliness, not human
excellence?

22. No distinction will be made here between "important" and "valuable." In some other context the
difference between the meanings of these two terms may be significant but it is not for present
purposes. Both terms are used to mean making a positive or advantageous difference to
something or someone- e.g., the sun is important for the plant or the house is one of John's
valuable possessions.

23. "Individual" does not have to translate to "atomistic, isolated, anti-

social, asocial." Such a translation begs the question as to what kind of
individual we are faced with. For a detailed discussion of the type of
individual a human being is, see Tibor R. Machan, Capitalism and
Individualism, Reframing the Argument for the Free Society (New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1990).

A different sort of defense of anthropocentrism is advanced in Thomas

Palmer, "The Case for Human Beings," The Atlantic, Vol. 269 (January
1992), pp. 83-88. Palmer notes that "in fact Homo sapiens is the crown
of creation, if by creation we mean the explosion of earthly vitality and
particularity long ago ignited by a weak solution of amino acids mixing in
sunlit waters" (p. 88). Unfortunately, Palmer does not emphasize enough
this feature of particularity in his defense and, thus, ignores the bulk of
the important political and policy issues that arise in environmentalism.

24. Here a point needs to be raised concerning the perfectly sensible

Aristotelian understanding of human beings as essentially social
animals. Ecologists tend to stress this point often when individualism is
presented to them as a sociopolitical alternative to their widely embraced
collectivism (whether in a socialist, welfare statist, or communitarian
version).
Being essentially an individual does not preclude having also an essential social dimension to
one's life. Briefly, although one makes for oneself a given, particular but human life, given that
such a life has much to benefit from social involvement, it could well be "in one's nature" to be
social as well as a matter of one's individual decision to embark on a rich social, community and
political life. It may well be one's moral responsibility as an individual to connect with other human
beings- unless, of course, the available others are real dangers to one's life, which in the case of
human beings is a clear possibility.

25. The source of this remark has eluded me since originally located in
one of Comte's works.

26. There are many who believe that when one construes human beings
as essentially individual, this means that they are "individual through and
through." For more on this vital issue, see the final chapter of this work,
"Individualism, Naughty and Nice?" as well as note 63, below.
27. Stephen R. L. Clark, The Moral Status of Animals (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1977),
p. 13. "Uniquely important" means that the being in question is unique in its being important,
whereas saying "most important or valuable" does not preclude the value of other beings not just
in their relationship to what is uniquely important- i.e., derivatively- but to themselves, in terms of
their own nature.
28. It might be argued that this point assumes anthropocentrism but it does not- we are not just
talking about human beings creating values for themselves but values as such. For example,
human beings breed animals and plants, they create provisions for the same, they protect or
enhance the lives of non-human beings. They create values more abundantly than does anything
else, although, of course, they also destroy values aplenty.

29. It might be objected here that this line of argumentation assumes

away the troublesome "is/ought" gap, moving illegitimately from fact to
value, etc. It isn't possible to deal with the matter here but see Tibor R.
Machan, Individuals and Their Rights (LaSalle, Ill: Open Court
Publishing, Co., Inc., 1989), Chapter 2. The central point is that value is
a type of fact attending to living beings for whom the alternative between
flourishing and perishing is natural. What is value contributes to
flourishing and what is of disvalue contributes to perishing, to put it into
very general terms. I draw here on an idea developed in Ayn Rand, "The
Objectivist Ethics," The Virtue of Selfishness, A New Concept of Egoism
(New York: New American Library, 1961). See, also, Karl Popper,
Unending Quest (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1974), p. 194: "I think that
values enter the world with life; and if there is life without consciousness
(as I think there may well be, even in animals and man, for there appears
to be such a thing as dreamless sleep) then, I suggest, there will also be
objective values, even without consciousness."

30. The case for "altruism" in the animal world is widely debated but by
no means settled. I rest my own reflections on this on the view that
whatever version of "altruism" may be accepted, in the last analysis it is
individual living beings that would benefit from it, aside from their
species. For more on this, see James G. Lennox, "Philosophy of
Biology," in Members of the Department of History and Philosophy of
Science, University of Pittsburgh, Introduction to the Philosophy of
Science (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1992), p. 295.

31. Tibor R. Machan, Human Rights and Human Liberties (Chicago, Ill.:
Nelson-Hall Co., 1975) and Individuals and Their Rights. See, also,
Machan, "A Reconsideration of Natural Rights Theory," American
Philosophical Quarterly, 17 (1982), pp. 61-72, and "Towards a Theory of
Natural Individual Human Rights," New Scholasticism, 61 (Winter 1987),
pp. 33-78, "Are Human Rights Real?" Review Journal of Philosophy and
Social Science, 13 (1988), pp. 1-22, and "Natural Rights Liberalism,"
Philosophy & Theology, 4 (Spring 1990), pp. 253-65.
32. See for more, Garrett Hardin, "Tragedy of the Commons," Science, 162 (December 13, 1968),
pp. 1243-48. Hardin's point had been advanced, much earlier, by Aristotle, with more explicit
normative, albeit utilitarian, punch. The point is that unless some sphere of personal jurisdiction is
identified, individual and thus effective responsibility- in the case of Aristotle and Hardin, vis-à-vis
the consumption of and care for resources- will be obscured, leading to confusion and
indeterminacy.
33. John Locke, Two Treatises of Civil Government (New York: New
American Library, 1965).

34. A good example of the view on plants is Christopher Stone's Should

Trees Have Standing (Palo Alto, Calif.: William Kaufmann, 1975). The
animal rights case is presented most thoroughly by Tom Regan, The
Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
1984). Not all anti-anthropocentricists are animal rights advocates but
most probably because they eschew the concept of rights altogether, not
because they would draw a fundamental (morally and politically
significant) distinction between other animals and human beings. Some
of the points discussed in the next several paragraphs form portions of
previously published essays in Public Affairs Quarterly and Journal des
Economistes et des Etudes Humaines concerned with whether animal
rights exists and the handling of pollution under capitalism, respectively.

35. Bernard E. Rollin, Animal Rights and Human Morality (Buffalo, N.Y.:
Prometheus Books, 1981), p. 14.

36. For more on this, see Mortimer Adler, The Differences of Man and
the Difference it Makes (New York: World Publishing Co., 1968), and,
op. cit., Machan, Individuals and Their Rights. The former work concerns
the issue of whether the human species is fundamentally distinct, the
latter whether talk about "the nature of X" can have an objective
foundation or must be nominal. For more on this, see Joel Wallman,
Aping Language (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Wallman argues that language is a uniquely human attribute and that
these attempts establish nothing to contradict that fact. Cf., Donald R.
Griffin, Animal Minds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
Griffin, on the other hand, argues that higher mentality is not unique to
human beings, although he does not establish that any other animal
aside from human beings is uniquely dependent on higher mental
functions for the sustenance and flourishing of its life.

37. Aristotle, Politics, Bk.II, Ch. 3; 1262a 30-40.

38. Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1951).

39. Op cit., Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons."

40. I should note here that some of these are still in dispute and it would
be rash to treat them as proven. Nevertheless, it is also fair to say that
arguments made against the possibility of rational allocation of economic
resources, the prudent use of the commons, etc., are widely admitted to
be telling. This is certainly not the place where we could decided the
matter once and for all. I will assume, however, that enough trouble
faces collectivist political systems, at least as far as fostering human
productivity while avoiding having to conscript labor power are
concerned, that drastic revisions would need to be made in order for
them to become feasible. For example, the recent effort to develop what
is called a market socialism has run into serious theoretical difficulties.
See, e.g., David Schweickard, Capitalism or Worker Control (New York:
Preager, 1980), Julian Le Grand and Saul Estrin, eds., Market Socialism
(New York: Clarendon Press, 1989); Ian Forbes, Market Socialism
(London: Fabian Society, 1986); David Miller, Market, State, and
Community: Theoretical Foundations of Market Socialism (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1989); James A. Yunker, Socialism Revised
and Modernized: The Case for Pragmatic Market Socialism (New York:
Preager, 1992); Anders Aslund, Market Socialism or the Restoration of
Capitalism? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). See,
however, Anthony De Jasay, Market Socialism: A Scrutiny "This Square
Circle" (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1990), N. Scott Arnold,
The Political Philosophy of Market Socialism (London: Oxford University
Press, 1994).

41. Robert Heilbroner,"After Communism," The New Yorker, September

10, 1990, p. 92.

42. Ibid., p. 99.

43. Ibid., p. 100.

44. In other words, a feasible political system must focus on prohibitions, enforced by officers of
the law, rather than on outcomes. For a good discussion of this point- contrasting end-state and
procedural features of a political order- see, op cit., Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

45. For a more detailed discussion of the natural rights libertarian

approach to environmental problems, see Tibor R. Machan, "Pollution
and Political Theory," in T. Regan, ed., Earthbound (New York: Random
House, 1984). A more developed versions of the argument showing that
the dumping of externalities is to be treated as a crime (assault,
trespassing, etc.) may be found in Tibor R. Machan, Private Rights,
Public Illusions (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1994).
The essence of this approach is that if one is unable to conduct one's activities- productive,
recreational, etc.- in a fashion that does not impose uninvited burdens on third parties- i.e., to use
the economist's jargon, if one is unable to internalize one's negative externalities- one simply may
not carry forth with them. Full cost of such production must lie with the agent and no unwelcome
"free" rides may be taken. In contrast to standard approaches to solving environmental problems
caused by human beings, namely, via the establishment of government regulatory agencies
(which are beset with all the "public choice" and "tragedy of the commons" problems, especially in
democratic welfare states), here the issue of one of criminal law and dumpers, just as trespassers,
assaulters, rapists, arsonists, and the like, would be prosecuted. If someone with AIDS negligently
or intentionally infects another who has not had the chance to exercise free choice in the matter,
the perpetrator is prosecuted under the criminal law. Anyone with a serious contagious disease
exposing others to his or her illness would suffer the same fate. There is no government
regulation- that is, rationing- involved here, only prohibition and the conviction of violators. No
doubt, complexities attend all of this, yet there seems to be nothing extraordinarily difficult about
determination of threshold levels and prosecution of those who dump once the threshold has been
reached. The individual rights approach is simply stricter than the utilitarian, social (risk) cost-
benefit approach, yet the same science and technology can be employed in administering both
systems.

46. See op. cit., Machan, Individuals and Their Rights. See, also, Tibor
Machan, Private Rights, Public Illusions (New Brusnwick, N.J.:
Transaction Books, forthcoming).

47. See Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life (New York: W. W. Norton,
1989).
48. See also J. Goldthorpe, "The Current Inflation: Toward a Sociological Account," in J.
Goldthorpe and F. Hirsch, eds., The Political Economy of Inflation (Martin Robertson, 1978). As
Goldthorpe notes, "Capitalism's lack of a moral basis of its own and its reliance on the- weakening-
morality of an earlier era, have of late been taken up in a remarkably similar fashion by both
Marxists and economic liberals" (p. 213). For more scholarly laments such as these, see Edward
Andrew, Shylock's Rights, A Grammar of Lockean Claims (Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto
Press, 1988), Ian Shapiro, The Evoluntion of Rights in Liberal Theory (Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), John R. Wilkse, About Possession, The Self as Private
Property (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977).

49. I should note here that unlike some, mainly sociological and
economic theorists who discuss these matters, I do not view morality as
a kind of impersonal social force that has its impact on society by a sort
of behavior modification. Rather, I see morality as the sphere of
individual responsibility to do what is right and avoid doing what is
wrong. So the ultimate cause of the demoralization or moral vitality of a
society must be the individuals who comprise it. Of course, the past
conduct of individuals can leave its mark on current institutions, which in
turn can have either an enhancing or thwarting impact on the scope of
personal moral responsibility.

50. I have discussed this in several other places, including my

Individuals and Their Rights and Capitalism and Individualism.

51. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1971.

52. Op. cit., Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

53. Richard Farr, "The Political Economy of Community," Journal of

Social Philosophy, Vol. 23 (Winter 1992), pp. 118-139.
The essence of the classical liberal critique of communitarianism is, of
course, that liberals insist that adults ought to be free to choose the
community to which they will belong, regardless of what their best choice
comes to. The crux of the critique is not what most lament, namely, that
whether community is proper for human beings is subjective or arbitrary
from the moral point of view. Rather, whether subjective or objective, the
adult individual human being is a sovereign moral agent, not to be made
subject to others' will and, thus, must not be coerced into joining even
the best community.
It is a bogus issue to press against individualists that they are against community- some may be
but most clearly aren't either practically or theoretically. (Their behavior clearly demonstrate that
much.) Yet both conservative and socialist communitarians keep ignoring this point, making it
appear that the classical liberal or libertarian is some fool who presumes human beings are best
off isolated from one another. See, e.g., Etzioni, op. cit., The Spirit of Community and Spragens,
"The Limitations of Libertarianism."

54. George Stigler, "Tanner Lectures #2."

55. Robert Nozick, The Examined Life (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1989).

56. Harper & Row, 1983. Along somewhat similar lines, Richard
Cornuelle, in his essay "New work for invisible hands," The Times
Literary Supplement, April 5, 1991, claims that "there is no very distinct
libertarian vision of community."(p. 4) Now this is patently absurd. Nozick
himself, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Part III, advanced such an idea, a
framework for innumerable experiments in more or elss exemplary ways
of living. Indeed, even the very imperfectly libertarian countries of the
West demonstrate just how multifaceted community life can be, how
many different, overlapping, independent and/or interconnected
communities can be formed and, indeed, exist, in near-liberal societies.

The entire notion of "community" is muddled, actually, since no stable,

homogenous, finite grouping of human beings has ever managed to exist
except under severe coercive threats and for the purposes of fulfilling
some individual's or elite group's vision, not as a natural outgrowth of
human association.

57. Karl Marx, Selected Writings ed., David McLellan (London, England:
Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 126.

58. Op. cit., Shevoroshkin, "The Mother Tongue."

59. Murray N. Rothbard, "Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare

Economics," On Freedom and Free Enterprise, Mary Sennholz, ed.
(Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1956), p. 251.
60. Don Bellante, "Subjective value theory and government intervention
in the Labor Market," Austrian Economics Newsletter, Spring/Summer
1989, pp. 1-2.

61. For more on this, see Tibor R. Machan, Capitalism and Individualism,
Reframing the Argument for the Free Society (New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1990). For a very good discussion of some of the ontological
issues raised by Hume's skeptical concerns about making inferences
based on the nature of something, or the kind of being something is, see
John O. Nelson, "Induction, A Non-Sceptical Humean Solution,"
Philosophy, Vol. 67 (1992), pp. 307-27.

62. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 6, "Good," p. 48. Interpretations

of this passage differ, although there is considerable consensus that
Hobbes presents a subjectivist conception of human goodness. Clearly
that is how much of the neo-classical school of political economy has
interpreted his views.

63. Etzioni, in his book, identifies me as a "radical individualist," even

though he has read what is argued here when a paper on the topic was
submitted to The Responsive Community and, after extensively cut and
revised at his instructions, rejected by him. It appears that some
communitarians, I note later in this work, are simply afraid of a viable
version of individualism and need the caricature version against which to
keep pitting their arguments.

64. Tatyana Tolstaya, "The Grand Inquisitor," The New Republic, June
29, 1992, p. 33. Efforts to demean individualism in favor of some version
of collectivism wherein the right to individual liberty may be violated or
abridged abound, both in popular and scholarly works. I have already
mentioned a number of books by Bellah & Co., and by Etzioni. See, also,
Susan Mendus, "Liberal Man," in G. M. K. Hunt, ed., Philosophy and
Politics (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp.
45-57. "Liberal man is a private and retiring man." (p. 46). See, also,
Thomas A. Spragens, Jr., "The Limitations of Libertarianism, Parts 1 &
2," The Responsive Community, Vol. 2 (Winter and Spring, 1992), pp.
27-37 & 43-53. "[L]ibertarian theory fails to 'see' the legitimate role that
moral equality, fellow feeling, and obligation play in good democratic
society." (p. 43)
Yet something that is essentially individual- that is, the nature of which is such that its individuality
cannot be omitted from understanding it- can also be elaborately and essentially involved with
community, society, family, and other groups of individuals.

It is, furthermore, an exaggeration indeed to say that, to cite an anonymous critic, "life as studied
by the life sciences is thoroughly social in nature with individual organisms embedded in
interconnected supporting webs on which they are entirely dependent." To start with, being
dependent on "supporting webs" does not render some being "thoroughly social"- so that, for
example, the mere dependence of a Rembrandt, Liszt, Brontë, Rand, Chekhov, or Keats on
innumerable social webs (economic, manufacturing, political, familiar, artistic, etc.) by no means
deprives him or her of the capacity to inject into art a decisive individuality. See, for more on this,
Conway Zirkle, "Some Biological Aspects of Individualism," in F. Morley, ed., Essays on
Individualism (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Press, 1977), pp. 53-86. See, also, Theodosus
Dobzhansky, The Biological Basis of Human Freedom (New York: Columbia University Press,
1956). Add to this, as has been argued by Roger W. Sperry, Science and Moral Priority (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1983), that human beings have a naturally grounded capacity for
self-determination- i.e., free will- and it makes eminently good sense that they should become
individuated depending on the extent and intensity of their choice to exercise their will. Their
choices are then indeed sovereign in a crucial respect, namely, they make them on their own
initiative and are thus not explainable without remainder by other aspects of their nature, including
their social entanglements.

Another point in support of the species being or uniquely social nature of

human beings is that language is a social system and thus even thinking
in concepts must involve social engtanglement. (This point is often
defended by reference to Ludwig Wittgenstein's famous private language
argument, in Philosophical Investigations [Oxford, England: Blackwell,
1953] I, p. 207, which holds that no one can invent ideas or words.)
Yet, here, too, a serious confusion exists. The fact that language is social and that, therefore,
conceptual or propositional knowledge of the world- e.g., that "Haley's comit returns approximately
every 75 years" or that "Presidents of the U.S. cannot serve longer than 8 years as the law stands
now"- does not by any means preclude the firm link between such knowledge with what is supplied
by individual awareness, namely, evidence obtained by the senses. See, for more on this, David
Kelley, The Evidence of the Senses, A Realist Theory of Perception (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana
State University Press, 1986). See, also, Tibor R. Machan, "Some Reflections on Richard Rorty's
Philosophy," Metaphilosophy, Vol. 24 (January/April 1993), pp. 123-135, and "Evidence of
Necessary Existence," Objectivity, Vol. (Fall, 1992), pp. 31-62.

65. Op. cit., Nozick, The Examined Life, pp. 286-7.

66. Henry Hazlitt, quoted in The Freeman, June 1993, p. 225.