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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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September 19, 2006
by Edward W. Younkins, Ph.D.
Ancient and Medieval Periods Taoist philosopher, Lao Tzu (604-531 B.C.) described general laws of nature that cannot be changed, but that could be employed to achieve one's goals. His naturalistic ethics promoted a doctrine of the liberation of the individual through withdrawal into the wisdom and values of the inner self. Desiring to permit each person as much freedom as possible, Lao Tzu said that inaction was the proper function of the government &endash; the state should control through noninterference. Opposing a multitude of regulations, he taught that codified laws and rules are harmful. He cautioned rulers not to use coercion or to permit others to use force against peaceful individuals. He said that, without law or compulsion, men would live in harmony. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) influenced so many thinkers from Aquinas to Locke to the Founding Fathers, to Menger, Rand, Rothbard, and beyond. The roots of freedom and individualism can be traced back to Aristotle, who acknowledged their moral significance and the value of each individual's life and happiness. He taught that a person gains happiness through the exercise of his realized capacities and that the purpose of life is earthly happiness that can be attained via reason and the acquisition of virtue. In his ethics, Aristotle teaches that a human being uses his rational mind and free will to pursue his well-being and personal happiness (i.e., eudaimonia). Eudaimonia is a state of individual well-being brought about by rationality and characterized by self-actualization and maturation. He sees happiness as the product of a life well-lived and explains that a person's own behavior is the largest single factor determining one's happiness. Aristotle recognizes that moral virtue is inextricably connected to an individual's capacity for initiative-taking, for choice, and for voluntary conduct. For Aristotle, human nature is teleological and that telos is self-perfection. An Aristotelian ethics of naturalism states that morally good conduct is that which enables an individual agent to make the best possible progress toward achieving his self-perfection and happiness. Aristotle did not think that ethics was an exact science. This may be due to his lack of the notion of objective concepts (including concepts such as value or good). He saw essences as metaphysical with universals existing within particulars and he seems, to many philosophers, to have relied on intuitive induction. Other thinkers interpret Aristotle as advocating mental effort in order to discern distinguishing features. Aristotle, like other Greek thinkers, used reason to think systematically about the world. Failing to clearly distinguish between society and the state, Aristotle said that the purpose of the state was to advance the well-being and happiness of the members of political society. For Aristotle and for many other ancient philosophers, political associations exist for the sake of good actions &endash; the state is to promote virtue. The promotion of the good or of virtue is the central goal of the polis &endash; the polis exists for the sake of the good life. After emphasizing that the proper end of government is the promotion of its citizens' happiness. Aristotle goes on to advocate a "mixed regime." This was the beginning of the idea of constitutionalism including the separation of powers and checks and balances. Aristotle also developed the first components of a systematic economic theory. For Aristotle, economics is embedded in politics. The economic component in Greek philosophy, including that of Aristotle, was subordinated to the political and ethical dimensions. He explained that labor has value but that it does not give value. Aristotle also noted that value is assigned by man and is not inherent in goods. In addition, he anticipated the idea of diminishing marginal utility and commented favorably on the merits of private property. For Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) the individual person is the domain of moral endeavor. All values must transpire during a person's life according to Epicurus' atomistic and materialistic theory of nature. He explains that the only intrinsic good is an individual's own pleasure or happiness which consists of the absence of both physical pain and mental disturbances. He says that the pursuit of pleasure should be guided by reason and recommends a rather ascetic life as the most fitting way to attain pleasure. Epicurus identified both kinetic and static pleasures and said that men should aim for a state of contentment or tranquility of mind. He held that free will exists because some random elements exist in the world. Epicurus said that each person should be as free as possible to plan and live his own life and warned people not to get involved in politics because of the problems and worry that accompany it. Epicurus held a contractarian theory of justice and viewed friendships as a means of gaining pleasure. Stoicism was an important philosophical movement from approximately the third century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. The essential idea of the natural law, a law by which even rulers could be judged, was developed in the Roman world by the Stoic philosophers. The Stoic philosophers were the first thinkers to develop and systematize, particularly in the legal realm, the concept and philosophy of natural law. Throughout history, liberal, moral, and political assertions have been grounded in theories of natural law and the later-developed but related concept of natural rights. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) combined the philosophy of Aristotle with Christianity. It is sometimes said that Aquinas is Aristotle plus Augustine. Viewing philosophy and theology as complementary, Aquinas taught that natural law could be discerned by unaided reason and that positive laws should be derived from natural law. He said that there were two authorities, one spiritual and the other temporal. According to Aquinas, men need a civil authority such as the state and the state was a natural institution. He said that the state had limits being bound by the laws of God's creation. Aquinas thus favored a mixed regime in politics. Aquinas added a supernatural end to Aristotle's naturalistic morality. Like Aristotle, he noted the inexact nature of ethics. Aquinas, the Christian Aristotelian, emphasized the role of virtue as man's telos. He saw virtue in the cultivation and enjoyment of one's earthly life. Perfect happiness may occur later, but in the meantime, a person can experience imperfect happiness on earth in the form of his personal human flourishing. Later, the 16th century Spanish Scholastic thinkers (sometimes referred to as the school of Salamanca) further developed the work of Aquinas to explain theology, natural law, and economics. In doing so, they anticipated theories developed in the future by Adam Smith, the Austrian economists, and others. Early Modern and Renaissance Periods Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was not a liberal himself, but he did provide the philosophical foundations for a materialistic and reductionistic liberalism and for an economic approach to human social life. His radical individualism held that persons seek their own self-satisfaction and are instinctually disposed toward self-preservation. For Hobbes, the original state of nature is a state of atomistic isolation in which every man is against every other man. He observes that people are equal in their unending desires and limitless claims. The state of nature is thus insecure. Hobbes defends liberty against anarchy rather than liberty against oppression &endash; his goal is peace. He explains that when people formed civil society the necessity for developing a legal system came about. Laws had to emerge in order to coordinate behavior. He saw the protection of laws as making self-satisfaction possible and thought that a strong state would best assure peace. It follows that Hobbes was an absolute monarchist in his politics. According to Hobbes, when the social contract was entered into each person forfeited his rights to a monarch or to a civil government so as to improve his self-interest in making progress in his life. Hobbes argued that individuals had "rights" in the state of nature in the sense that they are expected to act because they are determined to behave in a certain way &endash; they are driven by the motive of self-preservation. It follows that Hobbesian rights lack a moral dimension. According to his psychological egoism, everyone pursues his self-interest in the form of some subjectively perceived good. An individual gives up or transfers his power and is obligated to obey the commands of the sovereign. By delegating all of one's authority, protection is made more efficient. Hobbes had no theory of the abuse of power by the absolute state. Spinoza's (1632-1677) monist, deductive, and rationalist philosophy had no ontological hierarchy. He said that individuals are bound by natural laws and exist in order to assert themselves in the world in their unique singularity. Although he envisioned a deterministic universe, Spinoza held that an entity is free that exists by the necessity of its own nature and that is determined in its own actions by itself alone. Like Aristotle, Spinoza values something to the degree to which it realizes its nature. He sees freedom as meaning a person endeavoring to persist in his own being. To be free is to be guided by the law of one's own nature. Spinoza also observes that freedom means that options exist and that people have the ability to make value judgments and decisions. For Spinoza, the heart of virtue is the attempt a person makes to preserve his own being. To act with virtue is to pursue one's being in accordance with reason on the basis of what is of interest and useful to one's self. He cautions people not to be controlled by external forces or by their emotions. According to Spinoza, the free person is not afraid of eternal punishment nor does he expect any rewards in an afterlife. Spinoza makes it clear that the individual maintains his natural rights when he enters civil society. He explains that the purpose of the state is freedom, that the state has no moral foundation, and that the state is without moral principles &endash; morality is excluded from Spinoza's political theory. Politics is not suited for the production of virtue. A good government will provide as much freedom as possible, particularly the freedom to express one's views &endash; people need freedom to philosophize and to hold religious beliefs. Spinoza did not want religion to be an interfering factor in politics. He therefore proposed the subordination of religion to politics in order to protect the state from the diverse proclamations and judgments of those with incommensurable religious beliefs. Spinoza recommended that the state have power over outward observances of devotion and external religious rites but not to inward worship of God. People's freedom of religious diversity would be restricted to private belief and worship. John Locke (1632-1704) was an empiricist who taught that ideas begin with sense experience. Although he said that nature inclines man toward seeking happiness, he is able, with some difficulty, to defend free will in the sense that a person's mind has the power to suspend the execution of satisfactions and desires and is free to consider, examine, and weigh them &endash; men can control their thinking. Locke's key concepts include the state of nature, natural law, natural rights, social contract, consent of the governed, and the right of property ownership. Locke's state of nature includes moral elements. He saw a divinely orchestrated universe into which people are born free, independent, and equal. Locke espoused a natural law ethics which governs the state of nature and which guides a person's conduct prior to the construction of civil law. The state of nature is not a state of license. He said that natural rights exist in the state of nature before the introduction of civil government and that men in the state of nature know the moral law through reason. Locke recognized that the natural right to liberty is necessary for the possibility of moral action. He said that it is a law of nature that each person "owns himself" by which he means that the individual has the final authority for guiding and living his own life. Locke's doctrine of natural rights laid the foundation for the moral space of each person. When men live in accordance with reason in the state of nature and abide by the laws of nature then peace and goodwill will prevail. According to Locke, God wanted happiness and pleasure for his creatures and ordained that there was virtue in pleasure and pleasure in virtue &endash; earthly happiness was seen as an end in itself. God made each person tabula rasa starting from the same initial position. Human nature implies natural rights so that each person be treated in a certain way and be permitted to govern his own life. The law of nature implies negative freedom including the right to private property. Locke explains that God gave property to all men in common, but that people can mix their labor with previously unowned property thereby making it their private property. He says that civil power is derived from the individual right of each person to protect himself and his property. Private property is justified because the survival of each individual requires that he be able to use material objects to sustain his life. Locke's theory of first possession is his fundamental principle of property rights. This is also known as the labor-entitlement theory of property or as the homestead principle of the acquisition of previously unowned property. Locke emphasizes that, when property becomes private, processes emerge that increase and improve that which is left for others. Society and government are founded when a social contract is entered into. Locke distinguishes between society and the state and explains that government is established to protect individual rights. That is the point of government. He states that consent is the source of a just government authority and of its citizens' obligations. Individuals' natural inalienable rights limit the proper sphere of government to the preservation of people's lives, liberties, and estates. If government exceeds that sphere then people can justifiably revolt. Locke thus focuses on the notion of freedom versus oppression when he speaks of the limited and revocable power of government to protect and preserve what the law of nature implies. He wants the power of a representative government to be separated. Consent of the governed is required to legitimize government and to limit its power. A skeptic in his analysis of causation, the empiricist David Hume (1711-1776) did not believe that a person could really know human nature. The human mind could only know of sensory experience. He said that a person can only know his experiences and that the future can differ from the past. Therefore, a stable nature can only be suggested by experience. Aiming his radical empiricism at epistemological rationalists, he denied the possibility of moral, as well as scientific, knowledge. Hume rejects the possibility that a person could ever know what is morally right or wrong. He taught that a man should yield to the sentiments rather than to the judgment of reason. As a determinist, he denied free choice, agent causality, self-initiation, and self-governance. Espousing that no objective ethical standards exist (the is-ought gap), Hume explained that morality is subjective, intuitive, spontaneously-evolved, and conventional. The skeptic and anti-rationalist Hume led to contemporary consequentialism and utilitarian liberalism. Assigning reason a subordinate role, Hume limited reason to the function of evaluating means to subjectively-determined ends. He maintains that a person is free only to the degree that his will chooses from alternatives open to him. The empirically and scientifically-oriented Hume does affirm civil, political, and economic freedom. He contended that noninterference with market processes had instrumental value with respect to the facilitation of progress. Hume accepted the distinction between society and the state and maintained, as a utilitarian, that actions are good if they result in public benefits. He understood the productivity and benevolence of unhampered markets and argued for private property, voluntary contracts, free banking, and the spontaneous order of an open society. Political economy began to become a more distinct area of study with the French physiocrats and Scottish philosophers. The physiocrats embodied economics in a system of political and social philosophy. The Enlightenment-era physiocrats showed an early theoretical awareness of the important function of natural law in economics. The physiocrats assigned priority to agriculture over the mercantile and industrial sectors of the economy. They did not equate wealth with money and explained that nature in its economic manifestation is the source of value. Land, as the ultimate producer of the necessities for human existence, is what should bear the tax burden. The physiocrats wanted to reduce taxes, have a more equitable distribution of the tax burden, and eliminate mercantilist and other trade restrictions. The physiocrats also espoused the idea of a spontaneously self-equilibrating economic system that was later made part of the classical tradition by Adam Smith. An associate of the physiocrats, A.R.J. Turgot (1727-1781) viewed human progress as based on human capacities, free will, and natural law. He said that progress was both the inexorable result of historical development and as the product of human will and rationality. This progress depended upon the ongoing accretion, inheritance, and communication of the inventory of knowledge. Like the physiocrats, Turgot advocated free trade and a single tax on the net product of land. He explained the mutual benefits of free exchange and that value was subjective (i.e., personal) and could only be measured ordinally. Turgot also held an early idea of diminishing marginal productivity and saw the relationship between saving and capital accumulation. Viewing money as a commodity, he explained interest in terms of time preference. For Adam Smith (1723-1790) political economy grew out of moral philosophy. A deist who subscribed to the Stoic worldview, Smith said that the world is designed by God so as to maximize human happiness. The universe was seen by Smith as a rationally-ordered system in which God had endowed men with capacities and propensities. The world was one of natural law and teleological design in which men were endowed with principles of their nature. Smith endeavored to outline a complete social philosophy in his Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations that were meant to be compatible with one another. These works explain what Smith calls the system of natural liberty. Smith viewed philosophy as the science of the connecting principles of nature. In ethics he said that sympathy was the connecting principle and that it was self-interest (or commercial ambition) in economics. He saw two types of appropriate human behavior &endash; beneficence and self-interest. Smith envisioned an invisible hand inclining human action toward the public good. He spoke of God's liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice. Smith went on to describe two levels of virtue &endash; the primary (nobler) ones and the commercial ones. According to Smith, man is a social being who acquires a moral code through experience &endash; there is an evolutionary process by which moral sentiments and virtues develop. He says that each person has an innate desire for mutual sympathy &endash; sympathy arises because of one's natural feeling for others' well-being. Smith explains that the process is aided by the use of what he calls the impartial spectator procedure. He states that the motive for one's virtuousness is the love of what is noble and honorable and of the dignity and superiority of one's own character. Smith holds that each person is naturally disposed to serve his own well-being. Commercial man pursues his own well-beings and performs his proper role when he seeks fundamental goods. Commercial ambition aimed at one's private interests secures public benefits in Smith's system of natural liberty. He says that deception by nature leads men to think they will gain great happiness when they seek their own self-interest. When each person is able to strive for his own good such efforts would best secure public wealth. He explains that the less government there is the better the system works for prosperity. Smith's The Wealth of Nations laid the foundation for the modern science of economics. Although he does not emphasize individual rights, Smith acknowledges that such a system would underpin his system of free enterprise. He also explains that governments are valued only to the extent to which they promote the happiness of the citizens living under them. Smith also developed the idea that order in human affairs arises spontaneously. Unfortunately, Smith, at best, developed only a constricted and weak form of free will in his writings. For Smith, man is merely a Humean slave of the passions who can only select from among the various sentiments he experiences. Smith explains that a man can control and exercise his emotions and actions through what he calls self-command. |
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The
origins of theoretical arguments for a free society
make up a long and distinguished tradition which
stretches back at least to the 6th Century B.C. and
spans writers until the present day. Elements of
the liberal outlook have been discovered in the
ancient world. Many individuals have attempted to
find the best case for a classical political
liberal order and their philosophies have been
varied and numerous. The study of the classical
liberal heritage is instructive for its
philosophical insights &endash; much can be learned
by studying the efforts of others. This survey of
the ideas of major liberal philosophers and
economists in recorded thought will demonstrate
that, to a great extent, modern thinkers restate
and build up on the ideas of the great thinkers of
the past. What are seen as "new" theories are
oftentimes the result of a mixture of past
theories. It has taken a great deal of time and
thought to reach the current stage in the
development of the philosophy of freedom as
numerous individuals have contributed to its
development.
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