Robust Political Economy and Neo-Aristotelianism: Complementary Visions of Freedom and Flourishing

 This is a guest essay by Dr Edward W. Younkins, Professor of Accountancy and Business at Wheeling University, and Executive Director of its Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality. Ed is author of a trilogy of important books on freedom and flourishing: “Capitalism and Commerce”, “Champions of a Free Society”, and “Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society”. He also has numerous other publications, including several published on this site. (Please see the list after the end of this essay.) 

 

Introduction

 Mark Pennington’s Robust Political Economy: Classical Liberalism and the Future of Public Policy (2011) is an ambitious and systematic defense of classical liberalism. The author seeks to provide a comprehensive analytical framework for evaluating political and economic institutions according to their ability to withstand the twin human frailties of limited rationality and limited benevolence. Drawing upon insights from F.A. Hayek, James M. Buchanan, and the broader public choice and Austrian traditions, Pennington constructs a case for classical liberal institutions—private property, the rule of law, competitive markets, and a minimal state—against the three major challenges that have been mounted against them: market-failure economics, communitarianism, and egalitarian social justice. Pennington complements Hayek’s epistemic critique with the motivational critique from public choice theory. Even if governments had perfect information, they would still face: (1) Rent-seeking: Interest groups lobbying for privileges. (2) Bureaucratic incentives: Agencies maximizing budgets rather than serving the public. (3) Political myopia: Politicians prioritizing short-term electoral gains over long-term welfare.

 Pennington's framework rests on a foundation that is predominantly epistemic and evolutionary. He grounds liberty in cultural evolution and the cognitive limits of human beings, arguing that classical liberalism is superior because it copes better with our ignorance and self-interest. What Pennington does not provide, and what his framework implicitly requires, is a robust moral underpinning: a philosophical grounding that tells us why liberty matters, what human beings are for, and what constitutes a well-lived life. This is precisely what the neo-Aristotelian tradition, as articulated in Ayn Rand's Objectivism and Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl's Individualistic Perfectionism, supplies.

 This essay argues that Pennington's robust political economy and neo-Aristotelian perfectionism are complementary. Pennington shows how social cooperation emerges from individuals choosing under specific institutional arrangements; the neo-Aristotelians show what makes those choices meaningful and why the institutional arrangements that facilitate individual flourishing are morally required. Together, they form a powerful framework that addresses different but interconnected aspects of the human condition: the epistemic-institutional and the ethical-teleological. 

The Core Framework: Knowledge and Incentive Problems

 Pennington's central innovation is the concept of "robustness" as applied to political economy. An institution is robust if it can withstand the stresses and strains wrought by human imperfections. Pennington identifies two fundamental human imperfections that any viable political-economic order must confront. The first is the knowledge problem: human beings possess limited cognitive capabilities, operate under conditions of uncertainty, and possess imperfect information. The second is the incentive problem: human beings possess limited benevolence, are usually self-interested, and tend to act opportunistically. Any serious evaluation of institutions must ask: how well do they cope with these realities?

 Pennington's approach represents a deliberate departure from the idealized theorizing that dominates much of mainstream economics and political philosophy. Critics of classical liberalism, he argues, have long maintained that competitive market arrangements and minimal state frameworks could only work effectively under highly idealized conditions. Market-failure economists assume the benchmark of full-information, perfect competition, and complete means-ends rationality. Communitarians and egalitarians assume levels of public-spiritedness and deliberative capacity that are simply not present in real human populations. What Pennington shows is that these critiques are asymmetrical: they hold markets to ideal standards while assuming away the same problems for their preferred alternatives. A truly robust argument must explain how any proposed institutional model will perform under real-world conditions of ignorance and self-interest.

 When these comparisons are made with appropriate symmetry, Pennington contends, classical liberal institutions emerge as more robust than their rivals. Competitive markets facilitate a process of trial-and-error learning that minimizes the consequences of any particular error. If decision-making is dispersed across many agents, mistakes are localized and corrigible; if it is centralized, mistakes are amplified and difficult to reverse. Similarly, the capacity for exit—the ability of individuals to withdraw from relationships with providers of goods and services—provides a disciplinary check on potentially predatory behavior. Where voice (democratic participation) is the only option, individuals are captive to collective decisions; where exit is available, they can vote with their feet.

Responding to the Three Challenges

 Pennington systematically applies his robust political economy framework to three major challenges confronting classical liberalism.

 Market Failure Economics: The neoclassical case for government intervention rests on the identification of market failures—externalities, public goods, monopoly power, and information asymmetries—that supposedly justify corrective state action. Pennington argues that this approach suffers from a fatal asymmetry. It assumes that government actors possess the knowledge and incentives to correct market failures effectively, while ignoring the knowledge and incentive problems that afflict political decision-making. Government regulators face the same cognitive limitations as market participants, and they face additional incentive problems: they are not subject to the profit-and-loss test that disciplines private actors, and they are susceptible to capture by concentrated interests. A robust political economy must compare real markets with real governments, not idealized markets with idealized governments.

 Communitarianism and Deliberative Democracy: Communitarians argue that markets undermine social solidarity, civic virtue, and the conditions for meaningful democratic deliberation. They propose dialogic and deliberative democratic processes as alternatives to market exchange. Pennington responds by pointing to the knowledge and incentive problems that afflict deliberative institutions. Participants possess limited information, conflicting values, and unequal influence. Deliberative democracy assumes that participants can engage in rational, public-spirited dialogue aimed at discovering the common good. But real political deliberation is characterized by strategic behavior, interest-group politics, and the inherent difficulty of aggregating dispersed knowledge. The principle of exit, by contrast, allows individuals to signal their preferences through voluntary choice rather than forcing them to persuade others or be bound by collective decisions. Markets, far from destroying social capital, generate spontaneous cooperation among strangers through the mechanism of voluntary exchange.

 Egalitarianism and Social Justice: Egalitarian critics argue that markets produce unjust inequalities and that the state must redistribute resources to achieve social justice. Pennington argues that the welfare state's social goals cannot be attained by its proposed means. Redistributive programs face severe knowledge problems: central planners cannot know the diverse preferences, circumstances, and trade-offs facing millions of individuals. They also face severe incentive problems: taxes and transfers create disincentives for productive activity and encourage rent-seeking. Moreover, the attempt to achieve distributive justice through political processes generates its own forms of inequality (political inequality), where some groups capture the state apparatus for their own benefit. A classical liberal framework, with its emphasis on private property, rule of law, and competitive markets, is more robust in generating widespread prosperity and enabling individuals to pursue their own conceptions of the good. A robust political economy evaluates social justice proposals according to their actual consequences rather than their stated intentions.

Exit versus Voice

 

One of the book’s most distinctive themes is the superiority of exit over voice. Many democratic theorists emphasize “voice,” meaning participation in collective decision-making. They argue that citizens should shape public policies through deliberation and democratic discussion. Pennington does not reject democratic participation entirely. However, he argues that the ability to exit unsatisfactory arrangements is often more effective than political voice. In markets, consumers can choose alternative suppliers. Workers can seek different employers. Individuals can form new organizations. Entrepreneurs can introduce innovative alternatives. Exit generates powerful feedback mechanisms. Organizations that fail to satisfy people lose customers, members, or resources.

 

Political systems rely primarily upon voice. Yet, voting provides weak and indirect feedback. Individual votes rarely affect outcomes, and dissatisfied citizens often cannot escape policies imposed upon them. Voice is a majoritarian, zero-sum game. The freedom to exit therefore frequently produces greater responsiveness and adaptability than collective decision-making alone. 

Policy Applications

In the second part of the book, Pennington applies his framework to three concrete policy domains: poverty relief, international development, and environmental protection.

 On poverty, Pennington argues that the welfare state's approach to poverty relief—redistributive transfers and publicly provided services—is undermined by the knowledge and incentive problems that plague centralized provision. The traditional welfare state exacerbates poverty by destroying the informational signals and incentives necessary for social mobility. By providing monopolized, tax-funded services, the state crowds out mutual-aid societies, charities, and private low-cost providers who are culturally and geographically closer to the problems.  A classical liberal approach, emphasizing economic growth, property rights, and competitive provision of services, is more robust in generating the conditions for lasting poverty reduction.

 On international development, Pennington challenges the global governance paradigm that dominates development policy. The top-down, aid-based approach favored by international institutions suffers from the same knowledge and incentive problems that afflict domestic welfare states. This approach fails because it ignores local knowledge and incentives, fuels corruption, and props up predatory regimes in developing nations, Development, Pennington argues, is more likely to emerge from spontaneous processes of institutional adaptation, competitive experimentation, and the protection of property rights. True development is an evolutionary, bottom-up process requiring secure property rights, the rule of law, and free trade thus permitting local entrepreneurs to experiment, integrate into global value chains, and discover their own comparative advantages.

 On environmental protection, Pennington challenges the assumption that environmental problems require centralized regulatory solutions. He argues that private property rights, market mechanisms, and common-law remedies can address environmental challenges more robustly than centralized command-and-control regulation, because they harness dispersed knowledge and align incentives with ecological stewardship. Pennington calls for  a “free-market environmentalist” framework where property rights can be extended to land, water basins, and wildlife, giving private owners a financial incentive to preserve resources for the future. Decentralized tort law and liability rules are more robust than centralized command-and-control regulations because they allow local courts to evaluate specific harms based on local evidence rather than imposing rigid national standards.

The Missing Moral Anchor

 Pennington's robust political economy is a remarkable achievement in comparative institutional analysis. Yet, it suffers from a significant deficiency: it lacks a substantive moral foundation. Pennington grounds his defense of classical liberalism in epistemic humility and institutional pragmatism. Liberty is valuable because it works better—it is more robust in coping with our cognitive limitations and moral imperfections. But this leaves unanswered a series of deeper questions.

 Why is robustness valuable? For what are institutions robust? If the goal is merely the survival of the system or the maximization of material output, robustness might be instrumentally valuable. But Pennington's framework does not tell us what human beings are for, what constitutes a flourishing human life, or why liberty is not merely instrumentally but intrinsically valuable. The framework is, in this sense, incomplete. It tells us that classical liberal institutions are the best means to some unspecified end, but it does not articulate the end itself. Pennington's framework provides a powerful case for liberty as a practical matter, but it does not provide a case for liberty as a moral imperative.

The neo-Aristotelian Alternative

 The neo-Aristotelian tradition supplies the moral anchor that Pennington's framework lacks. This tradition, as articulated in Ayn Rand's Objectivism and in the work of Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, places moral agency and human flourishing at the center of inquiry.

 Ayn Rand's Objectivism: Rand's philosophy offers a systematic ethical framework grounded in the nature of human beings as living organisms whose survival and flourishing depend on the exercise of reason and the pursuit of productive achievement. For Rand, the fundamental moral question is: what does human life require? The answer is a morality of rational self-interest, in which the individual's own life and flourishing are the ultimate standard of value. Freedom—the absence of physical coercion from others—is the necessary condition for the exercise of reason and the pursuit of productive achievement. Rand's Objectivism provides a normative foundation for liberty that complements the epistemic and institutional arguments of robust political economy.

 Rasmussen and Den Uyl's Individualistic Perfectionism is a neo-Aristotelian ethical framework that identifies the good for human beings with the development or flourishing of natural human capacities. Unlike traditional perfectionist theories, which often lead to statist conclusions, Rasmussen and Den Uyl argue that individualistic perfectionism supports a liberal, non-perfectionist political theory. The key insight is that the flourishing of individuals is self-directed: each person must discover and pursue their own flourishing through their own choices and actions. The political order's role is not to dictate what flourishing consists in, but to establish the conditions—private property, rule of law, freedom of association—under which individuals can pursue their own flourishing in their own way. This is the institutional framework that Pennington's robust political economy defends, but Rasmussen and Den Uyl provide the ethical justification that Pennington's framework lacks.

Complementarity

 The complementarity between Pennington's robust political economy and neo-Aristotelian perfectionism is striking. They address different but interconnected aspects of the human condition.

 Pennington's framework addresses the epistemic-institutional dimension. It asks: given that human beings are cognitively limited and morally imperfect, what institutional arrangements best enable them to coordinate their activities, generate knowledge, and produce prosperity? The answer is classical liberalism: private property, competitive markets, rule of law, and a minimal state. Pennington shows how these institutions work—how they harness dispersed knowledge, align incentives, enable trial-and-error learning, and provide for peaceful cooperation among strangers.

 The neo-Aristotelian tradition addresses the ethical-teleological dimension. It asks: what is human flourishing, and what does it require? The answer is that human flourishing consists in the exercise of reason, the pursuit of productive achievement, and the development of one's capacities through self-directed action. Freedom is not merely instrumentally valuable as a means to prosperity; it is valuable as the condition for the exercise of moral agency. The neo-Aristotelians show why liberty matters—why it is not merely a useful institutional arrangement but a moral imperative grounded in the nature of human beings.

 The two approaches are not competitors; they are complements. Pennington shows that classical liberal institutions are the means to human flourishing—that they are the most robust way of organizing social cooperation given human limitations. The neo-Aristotelians show that human flourishing is the end that these institutions serve—that liberty is valuable because it enables individuals to live well. Together, they provide a complete framework: a defense of liberty that is both institutionally grounded and morally anchored.

A Powerful Interdisciplinary Vision

 The integration of robust political economy and neo-Aristotelian perfectionism offers a powerful vision. It combines insights from economics, political science, philosophy, and ethics into a coherent framework for understanding and defending a free society. From economics, it draws on Austrian market-process theory and public-choice theory to understand how markets generate and transmit knowledge, how incentives shape behavior, and how institutions channel self-interest into socially beneficial outcomes. From political science, it draws on comparative institutional analysis to evaluate how different regime types perform under real-world conditions of imperfect knowledge and imperfect incentives. From philosophy, it draws on the neo-Aristotelian tradition to articulate a conception of human flourishing, to ground liberty in the nature of human beings, and to provide a moral justification for classical liberal institutions. From ethics, it draws on the tradition of individualistic perfectionism to explain why freedom is not merely instrumentally but ethically valuable, and why the political order should be oriented toward enabling individuals to pursue their own flourishing.

 This interdisciplinary vision addresses the full range of questions that a complete political philosophy must answer. It answers the institutional question: what arrangements best enable human cooperation? It answers the epistemic question: how do we know what works? It answers the ethical question: what is human flourishing, and what does it require? And it answers the political question: what should the state do, and what should it leave to individuals?

 Moral Agency

 One of the most powerful points of connection between Pennington's framework and the neo-Aristotelian tradition is their shared emphasis on the individual as a choosing agent. Pennington shows how social cooperation emerges from individuals choosing under specific institutional arrangements. Markets are not mechanisms that produce outcomes independently of human choice; they are frameworks within which millions of individuals make choices, learn from their mistakes, and coordinate their activities through voluntary exchange. The capacity for exit—the ability to choose among alternative providers, employers, and communities—is central to the robustness of classical liberal institutions. Choice is not an afterthought in Pennington's framework; it is the engine of the entire system.

 The neo-Aristotelians deepen this insight by explaining what makes choice meaningful. They identify the good for human beings with the development or flourishing of natural human capacities. But this flourishing cannot be imposed from above; it must be achieved through the individual's own choices and actions. Each person must discover what constitutes flourishing for them, pursue it through their own efforts, and take responsibility for their own life. The political order's role is to establish the conditions under which this self-directed pursuit of flourishing is possible. This is the role that Pennington assigns to classical liberal institutions: they provide the framework within which individuals can make choices, learn from their mistakes, and pursue their own conception of the good.

 The complementarity here is profound. Pennington provides the institutional analysis of how choice works under different arrangements; the neo-Aristotelians provide the ethical analysis of why choice matters and what it is for. Together, they offer a vision of human beings as moral agents whose capacity for self-directed flourishing is both the foundation and the purpose of a free society.

Conclusion

 Mark Pennington's Robust Political Economy is an important contribution to classical liberal thought. It provides a systematic, rigorous, and empirically grounded defense of classical liberal institutions against the major challenges of contemporary political economy. By focusing on robustness—the ability of institutions to cope with limited rationality and limited benevolence—Pennington shows that classical liberalism is not a utopian ideal but a practical necessity. It is the political-economic framework that best enables human beings to cooperate, learn, and prosper despite their cognitive limitations and moral imperfections.

Yet, Pennington's framework is incomplete. It lacks a moral anchor—a philosophical grounding that tells us why liberty matters, what human flourishing consists in, and why the institutions Pennington defends are not merely useful but morally required. This is where the neo-Aristotelian tradition supplies what is missing. The neo-Aristotelians restore moral agency and human flourishing to the center of inquiry. They provide the ethical foundation that Pennington's epistemic and institutional arguments require.

 Together, robust political economy and neo-Aristotelian perfectionism form a powerful framework. Pennington shows how classical liberal institutions work and why they are the most robust means of organizing social cooperation. The neo-Aristotelians show what human flourishing consists in and why liberty is the necessary condition for its pursuit. The first addresses the institutional-epistemic dimension of the human condition; the second addresses the ethical-teleological dimension. They are not competitors but complements, each supplying what the other lacks.

 The vision that emerges from this integration is one of human beings as choosing agents, capable of reason and self-directed action, whose flourishing depends on the freedom to pursue their own conception of the good within a framework of private property, rule of law, and competitive markets. It is a vision that is both realistic and aspirational—realistic in its acknowledgment of human limitations, aspirational in its affirmation of human potential. It is a vision that deserves the attention of anyone who seeks to understand and defend a free society.

References

 Buchanan, James M. and Tullock, Gordon. 1962. The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Den Uyl, Douglas J.  and Rasmussen, Douglas B. 2016. The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Hayek, F.A. 1960. The Constitution of Liberty Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

Hayek, F.A. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. 1988. Edited by W.W. Bartley III, Chicago :University of Chicago Press.

 Pennington, Mark. 2011. Robust Political Economy: Classical Liberalism and the Future of Public Policy. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

 Pennington, Mark. "Robust Political Economy Revisited: Response to Critics." Critical Review 28, no. 3-4 (2016).

 Pennington, Mark. "Robust Political Economy." Policy 27, no. 4 (Summer 2011-12): 3-9.

 Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: New American Library, 1964.

 Rasmussen, Douglas B. and Den Uyl, Douglas J. 2005. Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State Universitty Press

Other essays by Ed Younkins on this site:

Younkins, Edward W. “What Contribution did David L. Norton Make to our Understanding of Ethical Individualism?” Freedom and Flourishing. January 18, 2025.

----------------------------“How can dialectics help us to defend liberty?” Freedom and Flourishing. July 8, 2025.

---------------------------“How can Austrian Economics be reconciled with the Neo-Aristotelian philosophy of Freedom and Flourishing?” Freedom and Flourishing. October 2, 2025.

----------------------------- “Can Polarized Moral Politics be Bridged by a Neo-Aristotelian Philosophy of Freedom and Flourishing?” Freedom and Flourishing. December 13, 2025.

----------------------------- “Does Humanomics Need a Moral Anchor?” Freedom and Flourishing. January 22, 2026.

----------------------------- “Is Character Education Compatible With Individualistic Perfectionism?” Freedom and Flourishing. February 27, 2026.

 ----------------------------- “Are Spontaneous Order and neo-Aristotelian Arguments for a Free Society Compatible?” Freedom and Flourishing. March 19, 2026.

----------------------------- “Are Spinoza’s Philosophy and Neo-Aristotelian Philosophies of Freedom and Flourishing Compatible?” Freedom and Flourishing. June 4, 2026. 

----------------------------- “The Architecture of Freedom: Randy Barnett’s Natural Law Case for a Free Society” Freedom and Flourishing. June 26, 2026.

Can reliable international comparisons of human flourishing be made using subjective survey data?

 

The idea that human flourishing is the proper measure of a good society goes back to Aristotle, but modern attempts to compare flourishing internationally using subjective survey data raise difficult questions. That is illustrated in the scatter chart shown above - which compares the degree of human flourishing in different countries as measured by the new Global Flourishing Study (GFS) with average life evaluation data for those countries using the methodology of the World Happiness Report (WHR). The GFS flourishing index is based on surveys covering various aspects of human flourishing, while the WHR data derives from the Cantril Ladder approach: a single question asking people to rate their lives on a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 representing the worst possible life and 10 representing the best possible life.

One would expect people who give a relatively low rating to their lives under the WHR approach to be assessed as having a relatively low degree of flourishing under the GFS approach, and vice versa for those who give their lives a relatively high rating. Surprisingly, the chart suggests little correlation between the two indexes. People in Tanzania, Egypt and Kenya, for example, have lower average life evaluation ratings than people in Sweden, the U.S. and Australia, yet are assessed under GFS methodology to have higher average levels of flourishing.

This divergence raises three questions which the following sections of this essay address:

• Does the methodology of the GFS incorporate more reliable standards for international comparisons than the WHR/Cantril approach?
• Is the GFS approach to measuring human flourishing consistent with Aristotelian ideas about the nature of flourishing?
• Do composite indexes provide a more reliable basis for international comparisons of opportunities to flourish?

Reliability of GFS Methodology

The Global Flourishing Study includes over 200,000 survey participants in 22 countries. The countries were selected to maximize coverage of the world’s population and to ensure geographic, cultural and religious diversity. It is a longitudinal panel study with intended annual survey data collection for 5 years. The domains of flourishing covered in the study encompass health, happiness, meaning, character, relationships and financial security.

More confidence can be placed on analyses using subjective data for individual countries than on cross-country comparisons because the former pose fewer problems in interpretation of survey questions. (Recent trends in indicators of subjective wellbeing in some wealthy countries are suggesting that young people are experiencing greater difficulty flourishing in those countries. I strongly support research directed toward improving understanding of why this is occurring and have made a personal contribution to this work.)

My main concern in this essay is with excessive reliance on subjective data in making international comparisons. The authors of the GFS note that caution is needed in interpreting cross-national differences (VanderWeele, 2025, p.647) but that has not prevented attention being drawn to  country rankings.

The scatter charts shown below suggest that at a national level there is more correlation between GFS flourishing and “happiness” and “life satisfaction” indicators than between GFS flourishing and WHR life evaluation. Nevertheless, the GFS index suggests that people in some countries are flourishing despite relatively low average scores for happiness and life satisfaction.

 

The happiness question is: “In general, how happy or unhappy do you usually feel?” The life satisfaction question: “Overall, how satisfied are you with life as a whole these days?” There has been extensive research related to the question of what standard of comparison people use in responding to such questions. Some research has suggested that people compare their current state to an adaptation level — a running average of past experience when asked to rate their happiness or life satisfaction. A large body of work suggests that relative income often matters as much as or more than absolute income for self-reports on wellbeing. Cross-cultural research has found that the implicit comparison standard vary by culture. Moreover, seemingly trivial contextual factors can dramatically shift happiness and life satisfaction reports.

In some ways, the GFS is more susceptible to standard of comparison problems than a simple life satisfaction or happiness survey:

• Self-rated health is known to be heavily reference dependent. People assess their health relative to age peers, to their own past health, or to an idealized standard. Which reference point dominates varies by culture and age.
• Questions relating to meaning and purpose are especially vulnerable to context effects, because "meaning" is a highly abstract judgment with no obvious natural metric. Whatever has been made salient by preceding questions — religious identity, family, work — is likely to dominate the response.
• Questions about honesty, generosity, self-control and so on invite comparison to either an ideal standard or a perceived social norm. Those standards can diverge sharply.

The Cantril ladder approach used in the WHR was designed to be self-anchoring to address some of those problems. By asking respondents to define "best possible life" and "worst possible life" for themselves, this approach sidesteps the problem of imposing a culturally specific conception of flourishing.

However, the perceptions that respondents have of the best possible and worst possible life depend on the reference group they use as a basis for comparison. That would not pose a problem if there is broad agreement among people throughout the world on what constitutes the best possible and worst possible life. Perhaps such broad agreement exists, but I am not aware of definitive research findings about that.

Aristotelian perspectives

Modern researchers who seek to quantify the extent to which people are flourishing often refer to Aristotle as a source of inspiration for their focus on a broad concept of human flourishing rather than on happiness as an emotional state. That raises the question of whether the GFS approach is consistent with Aristotelian perspectives.

The GFS view of human flourishing as multi-dimensional is certainly consistent with Aristotle’s approach. The domains identified in the overview of the GFS seem to be broadly consistent with Aristotle’s understanding of the basic goods of a flourishing human (VanderWeele, 2025).

However, from an Aristotelian perspective, it is disappointing that the study does not acknowledge the central importance of practical wisdom (phronesis) to individual flourishing. Practical wisdom is the intelligent management of one’s life with a view to attaining the goods necessary to one’s own flourishing. The exercise of practical wisdom is so intimately related to actualization of unique potentialities in the context of available opportunities that it makes sense to view flourishing as synonymous with “the exercise of one’s own practical wisdom” (Den Uyl and Rasmussen, 2016, p. 33). 

Some research associated with the GFS has focused on mastery which is assessed by asking: “How often do you feel very capable in most things you do in life?” (Kim, 2025). There is some overlap between mastery and practical wisdom: the exercise of practical wisdom involves more than theoretical knowledge – it requires development of skills necessary to navigate real circumstances toward genuine flourishing. The mastery concept captures something of this efficacy dimension — the sense that one can actually direct one's life rather than being at the mercy of circumstances.

An important difference between mastery and practical wisdom is evident in the measurement of mastery in the GFS. Self-reported mastery ranges from 90% of the population in Mexico to 39% in Japan. Do such divergent responses reflect differences in the exercise of practical wisdom or differences in the incidence of hubris and modesty in different populations? There is no way of knowing. Responses to the mastery question capture a subjective sense of control which may have little to do with wisdom. Genuinely wise people with accurate perception of their own limitations do not necessarily score highly in their responses to the mastery question.

My point is that the exercise of practical wisdom – an activity integral to human flourishing – defies measurement using subjective survey data. There would be no point in including survey questions about the exercise of practical wisdom because the perceptions people have about the quality of decisions they make is often a poor guide to actual decision quality. A person of deficient character or limited understanding may feel entirely satisfied with their choices while lacking the practical wisdom required to make good choices.

Comparing opportunities using composite indexes

In deciding what to measure, it seems to me to be particularly important to understand the purposes for which measurements are being made. The overview of the GFS states:

“What we measure shapes what we discuss, what we know, what we aim for and the policies put in place to achieve those aims. We hope that the GFS itself, and the understandings that arise from it, will shift discussion and policy toward the promotion of flourishing” (VanderWeele, 2025, p.647).

That may be true, but it may also be a recipe for futile or counterproductive government interventions.

It seems to me that the central importance of practical wisdom to individual flourishing provides a strong reason to be modest about the ability of governments to promote human flourishing. The most governments can do is to influence opportunities available. The way individuals respond to those opportunities rests in their own hands.

 It is important to recognize that governments can have a profound impact on the opportunities for human flourishing. One of the most important contributions they can make is to reduce the negative impacts of their policies.

In Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, I identified five basic goods of a flourishing human:

·        Wise and well-informed self-direction

·        Health and longevity

·        Positive relationships

·        Living in harmony with nature

·        Psychological well-being (Bates, 2021).

I noted that it is possible to teach people about the virtues of wise and well-informed self-direction, but it is doubtful that anyone has ever learned to exercise much practical wisdom in the management of their lives without having to accept responsibility for the choices they make. From a public policy perspective, it makes more sense to focus on the opportunities of people to exercise self-direction than to attempt to measure the quality of choices that they make. That is why I focused on objective measures of liberty in discussing opportunities for self-direction (Bates, 2021, pp. 65-6).

In considering opportunities for health and longevity, I argued that objective data on healthy life expectancy is a better indicator than self-reported health of differing prospects for individuals a long and healthy life in different countries (Bates, 2021, pp. 67-8).

Subjective data on levels of trust were suggested to measure differing opportunities for people to have positive relationships with others (Bates, 2021, pp. 68-9).

I discussed the complex relationships between economic growth and opportunities to live in harmony with nature (Bates, 2021, pp. 70-73).

Subjective data (WHR life evaluation) was used to indicate differing opportunities for people to enjoy psychological wellbeing (Bates, 2021, pp. 74-5).

Other researchers have also seen merit in using a mixture of subjective and objective indicators in making international comparisons of opportunities to flourish. The OECD’s Better Life Index is an example of a composite index that incorporates both objective and subjective components.

Conclusion

The scatter chart that opens this essay poses a genuine puzzle: why do country rankings of the Global Flourishing Study and World Happiness Report diverge so sharply? This essay has argued that the divergence reflects real limitations in both instruments rather than a straightforward vindication of either. Subjective survey data is susceptible to comparison-basis problems — the implicit standards people use when evaluating their lives vary by culture, context, and the framing of preceding questions — and these problems are considerably more serious for international comparisons than for within-country research. The Cantril ladder's self-anchoring design offers some protection against the imposition of culturally specific conceptions of flourishing, and its results have reasonable face validity when set alongside objective indicators of living standards and liberty. But whether people in different countries anchor the ladder's endpoints in comparable ways remains an open empirical question.

The more fundamental difficulty is philosophical. Both the GFS and the WHR treat subjective self-assessment as the primary evidence of flourishing. Aristotle, whose conception of eudaimonia inspired modern flourishing research, would have been skeptical of this. Flourishing in the Aristotelian sense is not simply a matter of feeling satisfied with one's life; it requires the exercise of practical wisdom — the intelligent, well-informed management of one's life in pursuit of genuine goods. People's perceptions of the quality of their choices are often unreliable guides to whether they are actually exercising such wisdom. This is not a limitation that better survey design can overcome; it reflects something important about the nature of flourishing itself.

These considerations point toward a more modest and pluralistic approach to international comparisons. Objective indicators — of liberty, healthy life expectancy, trust, and material security — can identify the opportunities available to people in different countries to lead flourishing lives. Subjective data retains value, particularly for tracking trends within countries over time. What neither approach can do is measure the quality of the choices individuals make within the opportunities available to them. That, in the end, is for individuals themselves to determine — which is precisely why the central policy implication of an Aristotelian perspective is not the promotion of flourishing by governments, but the protection and expansion of the conditions under which people can flourish for themselves.

References

Bates, Winton Russell, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing (Hamilton Books, 2021).

Den Uyl, Douglas J. and Douglas B. Rasmussen, The Perfectionist Turn (Edinburgh University Press, 2016).

Kim, Eric S. et. al. “Mapping demographic variations in sense of mastery across the world a cross-national analysis of 22 countries in the global flourishing study”, Scientific Reports, 15 (2025).

Lomas, T. et. al. “Exploring associations of three evaluative subjective wellbeing measures (Cantril's ladder, life satisfaction, happiness) with 15 childhood and demographic factors across 22 countries”, Scientific Reports, 16, (2026).

VanderWeele, T. J. et. al. “The Global Flourishing Study: Study profile and initial results on flourishing”, Nature Mental Health, 3(6) (2025) pp. 636–653.

The Architecture of Freedom: Randy Barnett’s Natural Law Case for a Free Society

This is a guest essay by Dr Edward W. Younkins, Professor of Accountancy and Business at Wheeling University, and Executive Director of its Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality. Ed is author of a trilogy of important books on freedom and flourishing: “Capitalism and Commerce”, “Champions of a Free Society”, and “Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society”. He also has numerous other publications, including several published on this site. (Please see the list after the end of this essay.) 

 

Randy E. Barnett is one of our most important contemporary defenders of a free society. Trained as a legal scholar but working at the intersection of law, political philosophy, constitutional theory, and economics, Barnett has developed a comprehensive moral and institutional justification for liberty that draws upon natural law, natural rights, individual sovereignty, and the evolutionary benefits of social order. Unlike many economists who defend capitalism primarily on grounds of efficiency, or philosophers who rely exclusively on consequentialist arguments, Barnett seeks to demonstrate that a free society is both morally justified and practically necessary because it provides the legal and institutional framework within which persons can pursue flourishing lives according to their own judgments.

 

His most systematic statement of this position appears in The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (1998 and 2014), supplemented by numerous articles and essays, additional books, and by the collection, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist (2024). This recent memoir reveals how his thinking has evolved, particularly his insistence that libertarianism must incorporate a robust natural law ethics alongside its familiar natural rights framework. Across these works, Barnett develops a theory of justice rooted in natural law and natural rights, while simultaneously explaining how decentralized social institutions, private property, voluntary exchange, and constitutional limits on government create the conditions necessary for peaceful social cooperation. In his writings he has developed an architectural, function-based paradigm for a free society.

What makes Barnett especially significant is that he bridges several intellectual traditions that are often viewed as distinct: classical liberalism, natural rights theory, constitutional originalism, Austrian and public choice economics, and evolutionary accounts of social order. His work also bears important similarities to the neo-Aristotelian liberalism of Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl that they call Individualistic Perfectionism. Although Barnett’s theoretical foundations differ in important respects from their perfectionist ethics, both approaches ultimately converge in their defense of liberty, limited government, and the moral significance of individual self-direction. This essay explores Barnett’s philosophical case for a free society, examining his diagnosis of the “three problems” of knowledge, interest, and power, his proposed “liberal conception of justice,” and his provocative argument for a polycentric constitutional order. It then considers the compatibility between Barnett’s natural law libertarianism and the ideas of Rasmussen and Den Uyl, a compatibility that suggests a promising convergence between two of the best contemporary defenses of liberty.

The Natural Law Foundation

What distinguishes Barnett’s project from much libertarian writing is his explicit and systematic appeal to natural law. While many libertarians take individual rights as given axioms or derive them from Kantian or utilitarian premises, Barnett follows a different path. He adopts a “given‑if‑then” method: “Given that the nature of human beings and the world in which they live is X, if we want them to achieve Y, then we ought to do Z”. The “X” here is the empirical reality of human nature and the scarcity and uncertainty of the external world; the “Y” is the pursuit of “happiness, peace, and prosperity” in social life. On this foundation, Barnett builds a normative edifice that aims to be both objective and practical.

Barnett is careful to distinguish between natural law ethics and natural rights. “Whereas natural law ethics assesses the propriety of individual conduct,” he writes, “natural rights assesses the propriety or justice of the use of force or coercion by others”. Ethics tells us how to live a good life; rights tell us what we may rightfully do to one another—and what we may not do. This distinction is central to Barnett’s political theory, for it allows him to defend a legal order that protects negative liberty without prescribing any particular conception of the good life. The state’s proper role is to secure the conditions under which individuals can peacefully pursue their own happiness, not to enforce the moral perfection of its citizens.

The Three Problems of Social Interaction

 Barnett’s argument for a free society proceeds by identifying three pervasive problems that arise when human beings interact under conditions of scarcity and uncertainty. These problems, he contends, must be solved for any society to enable its members to pursue happiness in peace.

The problem of knowledge is the first and most fundamental. Each individual possesses unique, local, and personal knowledge about his own situation, needs, and opportunities. No central planner—and no judge or legislator—can ever acquire all the information necessary to allocate resources efficiently or to direct individual conduct. The only social order that can harness this dispersed knowledge is one that respects freedom of contract and private property, allowing individuals to act on their own information and adjust to changing circumstances through market prices and voluntary exchange.

The problem of interest acknowledges that each person is primarily self‑interested. While this self‑interest can be a source of social cooperation, it also creates conflicts. Barnett argues that decentralized property rights coordinate self‑interested behavior by channeling it into productive, mutually beneficial exchanges. When individuals own the fruits of their labor, they have a powerful incentive to use resources efficiently and to respect the similar rights of others.

The problem of power is the most directly political. Whoever holds the authority to enforce the law—to punish wrongdoers and compel restitution—will be tempted to abuse that power for his own benefit. As Barnett puts it, “given that those with the power to impose punishments will be partial to their own interests, the power to punish or to use force to compel restitution is likely to be abused”. This problem is acute in any legal system, but it is especially dangerous when the state enjoys a monopoly on coercion. Barnett’s solution is not simply to limit government through written constitutions and separation of powers, but to question the necessity of any centralized, monopolistic enforcement institution at all.

The Liberal Conception of Justice

 From these three problems, Barnett derives five elements of what he calls the liberal conception of justice:

1. Property rights – rights to acquire, possess, use, and dispose of scarce physical resources.

2. The right to first possession – the rule that property is initially acquired by the first occupant or user, subject to the equal rights of others.

3. Freedom of contract – consent is both necessary (freedom from contract) and sufficient (freedom to contract) to transfer alienable property rights.

4. Restitution – one who violates the rights of another must compensate the victim.

5. Self‑defense – the right to use proportionate force to protect one’s person or property against imminent violation.

These five rights, Barnett argues, are not arbitrary constructs but are required by the very logic of social cooperation under the conditions of knowledge, interest, and power. They provide a structure for liberty that distinguishes it from mere license—that is, from the unconstrained freedom to do whatever one pleases regardless of its impact on others.

Liberty, Natural Rights, and Individual Sovereignty

 

At the core of Barnett’s philosophy lies the idea of individual sovereignty. Every person possesses moral jurisdiction over his or her own life. Human beings are not resources to be used for collective ends, nor are they merely instruments of social welfare. Rather, they are autonomous agents capable of reasoning, choosing, and pursuing purposes of their own.

 

Barnett’s natural rights theory begins with a practical problem: how can social cooperation occur among millions of diverse persons who possess different goals, values, beliefs, and aspirations? Human beings inevitably come into conflict because resources are scarce and because individuals seek to pursue different projects. The fundamental purpose of rights is to solve this problem by establishing jurisdictional boundaries that identify what each person may control and what others must respect.

 

Natural rights therefore function as moral and legal boundaries. They identify domains within which individuals may exercise discretion without interference from others. Rights to life, liberty, property, and contract are not arbitrary social conventions; they emerge from the need to facilitate peaceful coexistence among free and equal persons.

 

For Barnett, rights are not primarily instruments for achieving collective welfare. Rather, they establish a framework within which people can pursue their own conceptions of the good life. This emphasis distinguishes his theory from utilitarian approaches that justify liberty merely because it produces desirable consequences.

 

Barnett argues that a society that systematically violates individual rights cannot be morally justified, even if government officials claim to act in pursuit of beneficial social outcomes. Respect for rights reflects respect for persons as self-governing agents.

 

The Problem of Knowledge and Social Coordination

 

A central theme in Barnett’s work is the problem of knowledge. Like classical liberals such as Friedrich A. Hayek, Barnett emphasizes that knowledge is dispersed throughout society. No single person or institution possesses enough information to direct economic and social life effectively.

 

Each individual possesses unique knowledge about his or her circumstances, preferences, opportunities, talents, and goals. Social systems that rely upon centralized planning inevitably fail because decision-makers lack access to the information necessary for rational coordination.

 

Barnett therefore views liberty not merely as a moral principle but also as an epistemic necessity. Freedom allows individuals to act upon local knowledge and to discover new opportunities through experimentation. Markets, civil associations, and voluntary institutions function as mechanisms for coordinating dispersed information.

 

This insight helps explain why Barnett defends private property and contractual freedom. Property rights establish stable expectations about resource ownership. Contract law allows individuals to coordinate plans and exchange information through voluntary agreements. Market prices communicate information that no central planner could ever fully possess. The free society thus emerges not merely as a morally attractive ideal but as a practical solution to the problem of social knowledge.

 

The Structure of Liberty and the Problem of Social Order

 

Barnett’s most influential contribution appears in The Structure of Liberty. The book begins with a fundamental question: what legal and political institutions are necessary to enable people to coexist peacefully while pursuing their diverse ends?

 

Barnett rejects the assumption that society requires extensive centralized control. Instead, he argues that social order can emerge spontaneously when appropriate legal rules exist.

 

His analysis draws upon insights from economics, evolutionary theory, and legal philosophy. Human beings continuously face coordination problems. Institutions evolve because they help solve these problems. Rules concerning property, contract, torts, and criminal law develop because they facilitate cooperation and reduce conflict.

 

Barnett describes a free society as a framework of rules rather than a blueprint for outcomes. Justice does not require that government produce particular patterns of wealth, happiness, or equality. Rather, justice requires the maintenance of legal institutions that enable individuals to pursue their own goals peacefully. The legal order should therefore focus on protecting rights and enforcing voluntary agreements rather than directing economic activity or redistributing resources.

 

The Presumption of Liberty

 

Perhaps Barnett’s most famous contribution is the concept of the “presumption of liberty.” According to this principle, individual freedom should be regarded as the default condition. Government restrictions on liberty require justification rather than liberty requiring justification. This reverses a common assumption in modern political discourse. Too often, government action is presumed legitimate unless citizens can prove otherwise. Barnett argues that the burden of proof should operate in the opposite direction.

 

Because individuals possess natural rights, coercive restrictions on their actions require compelling justification. Government officials must demonstrate why limitations on liberty are necessary and consistent with the protection of rights. The presumption of liberty serves both moral and practical purposes. Morally, it reflects respect for individual sovereignty. Practically, it recognizes the limitations of governmental knowledge and the dangers of concentrated power. This principle has become influential in constitutional scholarship, particularly regarding judicial review and the interpretation of constitutional rights.

 

He elevates the Ninth Amendment, which states that the enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people, as explicit constitutional proof that individual liberties are expansive and pre-political, whereas government powers are strictly enumerated and limited. For Barnett, constitutional originalism is not an exercise in historical antiquarianism; it is the practical, institutional technology required to enforce the very principles of justice and property needed to solve the problems of knowledge, interest, and power.

 

Natural Law without Perfectionism

 

Barnett’s natural law theory differs significantly from traditional Thomistic approaches. He does not attempt to derive detailed moral obligations from a comprehensive account of human flourishing. Instead, he develops what might be called a procedural natural law. The purpose of legal institutions is not to ensure that people live virtuously. Rather, it is to create conditions within which individuals may pursue their own visions of the good.

 

Barnett recognizes that citizens will disagree about religion, morality, lifestyle, and personal aspirations. Political institutions must therefore remain neutral among competing conceptions of the good life while protecting the rights of all persons. This emphasis distinguishes Barnett from many classical natural law theorists who seek to ground political institutions directly in substantive moral ideals.

 

Yet, Barnett does not embrace moral relativism. He continues to maintain that objective moral principles exist and that rights derive from human nature and the requirements of social cooperation.

 

A Life for Liberty and the Evolution of Barnett’s Thought

 Barnett’s recent memoir, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, offers a more personal window into his intellectual journey. But the memoir is more than autobiography. Barnett uses it to lay out five ways that libertarianism needs to be updated, a program that he has already begun to articulate in his scholarly writings. First, and most relevant for our purposes, is the need for natural law ethics in addition to natural rights. Barnett recognizes that a purely negative, rights‑based libertarianism is incomplete. It tells us what we may not do to each other, but it offers little guidance on how we should live our own lives. A fully developed libertarian theory, he now argues, must rest on a thicker ethical foundation—one that grounds rights in a conception of human flourishing while still respecting the limits of political authority. Second, is the need to distinguish between libertarian ideal theory and second-best libertarianism in a world of governments and competing nations. Third, is the need for a libertarian theory of citizenship and civil rights. Fourth, is the need to separate the public-private binary from the government-nongovernment binary. Fifth, is the need for a more refined theory of corporate power and corporate rights.

Constitutionalism and the Protection of Liberty

 

Barnett’s defense of liberty extends beyond moral philosophy into constitutional law. He argues that constitutional limits on governmental power are essential for preserving freedom. The Constitution should be understood as a mechanism for constraining political actors rather than empowering them to pursue expansive social objectives. His theory of originalism seeks to recover the Constitution’s role as a protector of liberty. Constitutional interpretation should focus on the original public meaning of legal texts because stable rules reduce opportunities for arbitrary governmental power.

 

Barnett frequently argues that modern constitutional jurisprudence has allowed excessive expansion of state authority. Judicial deference to legislative action has weakened protections for individual rights and economic liberty. A proper constitutional order, in his view, should reestablish meaningful limits on governmental power while strengthening protections for individual freedom.

 

The Polycentric Constitutional Order

 

The most radical, and most controversial, aspect of Barnett’s Structure of Liberty is his defense of what he calls a “polycentric constitutional order.” In such an order, the traditional state monopoly on law enforcement is replaced by a competitive market in legal services. Private courts and private police agencies would operate alongside one another, their decisions enforced through a network of contractual agreements and a background system of restitution. Barnett is not an anarchist in the sense of rejecting all rules or all coercion. Rather, he believes that a market‑based, decentralized system of legal provision is the only one that can adequately address the problem of power. Constitutional constraints on government have repeatedly failed to prevent “enforcement abuse”—the use of power for improper purposes. A polycentric order, by contrast, would harness competitive pressures to keep legal services responsive, efficient, and rights‑respecting.

 Not all readers have been persuaded. Many classical liberals and libertarians remain “minarchists’, insisting that a minimal state is both necessary and legitimate. But even critics acknowledge the power of Barnett’s analysis. The debate over polycentricism continues, but Barnett’s formulation of the problem of power has permanently altered the terms of that debate.

 Compatibility with Neo‑Aristotelian Liberalism

 Barnett’s project intersects with the work of two prominent neo‑Aristotelian philosophers, Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl. In their influential book Norms of Liberty, Rasmussen and Den Uyl advance a defense of liberalism that is explicitly grounded in an Aristotelian ethics of human flourishing. They argue for construing individual rights as “metanormative principles”—principles that establish the political and legal conditions under which moral conduct can take place, without themselves dictating the content of that conduct. The state’s proper role is to protect the “right to liberty” understood as the right to be self‑directed, to pursue one’s own flourishing in one’s own way, provided one respects the equal rights of others.

 The parallels with Barnett’s framework are striking. Both start from a naturalistic ethical foundation: Barnett from a “given‑if‑then” analysis of human nature, Rasmussen and Den Uyl from an Aristotelian conception of the human good as an objective, inclusive, individualized, agent-relative, self‑directed, and social activity. Both distinguish sharply between the normative principles that guide individual conduct (ethics) and the metanormative principles that structure the legal order (rights). And both conclude that the political‑legal order must be non‑perfectionist—it must not attempt to promote or enforce any particular conception of human flourishing, even though such a conception underpins the theory itself.

 The compatibility is not merely theoretical. Barnett and Rasmussen have co‑authored an article titled “The Right to Liberty in a Good Society,” in which they explore how a “Constitution of Civic Virtue” might contribute to a flourishing social order. The very existence of this collaboration suggests that Barnett finds the neo‑Aristotelian framework congenial to his own natural law libertarianism. When Barnett urges libertarians to embrace natural‑law foundations, the one he recommends is that developed by Rasmussen and Den Uyl.

 One important potential point of tension is that Barnett’s polycentric constitutional order is more radical than the minimal state that Rasmussen and Den Uyl defend. There are some additional differences. Barnett begins with the problem of social order and develops rights as solutions to coordination problems among diverse individuals. His emphasis is institutional and jurisprudential. Rasmussen and Den Uyl begin with a richer neo-Aristotelian account of ethics and human flourishing. Their theory is explicitly perfectionist in the sense that it seeks to identify the characteristics of an objectively flourishing human life. Barnett’s natural law is more procedural and political. Rasmussen and Den Uyl’s framework is more ethical and philosophical.

Yet, both sides share a commitment to the priority of liberty as a political value, a rejection of state perfectionism, and a belief that a naturalistic ethical foundation is compatible with, and indeed necessary for, a robust defense of individual freedom. Like Barnett, they reject utilitarianism, collectivism, and political paternalism. They also defend natural rights, limited government, and the moral significance of individual self-direction. Both approaches recognize that human flourishing is highly individualized. There is no single blueprint for the good life. People pursue flourishing through diverse projects, relationships, careers, and commitments. 

Barnett provides a powerful account of why liberty is necessary for social cooperation and legal order. Rasmussen and Den Uyl provide a deeper account of why liberty matters for human flourishing and moral development. Taken together, the theories offer both institutional and ethical justifications for a free society. Barnett explains how liberty works and Rasmussen and Den Uyl explain why liberty is valuable for the flourishing person.

 

Conclusion

 Randy Barnett’s case for a free society is one of the most ambitious and intellectually rigorous contributions to contemporary libertarian thought. By grounding his theory in natural law and focusing on the practical problems of knowledge, interest, and power, he has provided a framework that is both principled and realistic. His distinction between natural law ethics and natural rights allows him to defend a legal order that protects negative liberty without collapsing into moral skepticism. And his recent call for a fuller integration of natural law ethics suggests an ongoing evolution that may bring his work even closer to the neo‑Aristotelian liberalism of thinkers like Rasmussen and Den Uyl.

 The compatibility between Barnett and the neo‑Aristotelian tradition is more than a footnote to contemporary theory. It points toward a possible synthesis that could strengthen the defense of liberty against its critics on both the left and the right. By drawing on the resources of natural law, classical liberalism, and Aristotelian ethics, such a synthesis would offer a unified vision of human flourishing and political justice—one that respects the diversity of individual pursuits while insisting on the universal principles that make peaceful cooperation possible. In an age of increasing political polarization and ideological fragmentation, that vision is more needed than ever.

 Randy Barnett has developed one of the most complete contemporary defenses of a free society. Grounded in natural law, natural rights, and individual sovereignty, his philosophy presents liberty as both a moral imperative and a practical necessity. Through his theory of the presumption of liberty, his analysis of social coordination, and his defense of constitutional constraints on governmental power, Barnett offers a comprehensive framework for understanding the institutions of a free society.

 

His work demonstrates that liberty is not merely an economic arrangement or a political preference. It is a moral and legal framework that enables individuals to pursue their own purposes while cooperating peacefully with others. Rights, property, markets, and constitutional limits emerge as interconnected institutions that facilitate social order among diverse persons.

 

Moreover, Barnett’s theory is highly compatible with the Individualistic Perfectionism of Rasmussen and Den Uyl. Although they begin from different philosophical starting points, these three thinkers converge on the conclusion that human beings flourish best within a social order characterized by liberty, voluntary cooperation, secure rights, and limited government. Together, their work represents a compelling contemporary statement of the classical liberal ideal: a society in which free and responsible persons are able to direct their own lives within a framework of justice and mutual respect.

 

References

 

Barnett, Randy E.  1998 and 2014. The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law. Oxford University Press.

Barnett, Randy E. and Rasmussen, Douglas B. 2001. “The Right to Liberty in a Good Society”. Fordham Law Review.

 

Barnett, Randy E.  2004. Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty. Princeton University Press.

 

Barnett, Randy E.  2016. Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People. Broadside Books.

 

Barnett, Randy E.  2024. A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist. Encounter Books.

 

Benson, Bruce L. 2000.  “Review of The Structure of Liberty”.  Cato Journal 20(2), 271-275.

 

Den Uyl, Douglas J.  and Rasmussen, Douglas B. 2016. The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics. Edinburgh University Press.

Hayek, Friedrich A. 1973-1979. Law, Legislation and Liberty. University of Chicago Press,

Rasmussen, Douglas B., and Den Uyl, Douglas J. 2005. Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics. Pennsylvania State University Press.

 

Other essays by Ed Younkins on this site:

Younkins, Edward W. (2025) “What Contribution did David L. Norton Make to our Understanding of Ethical Individualism?” Freedom and Flourishing. January 18, 2025.

Younkins, Edward W. (2025) “How can dialectics help us to defend liberty?” Freedom and Flourishing. July 8, 2025.

Younkins, Edward W. (2025) “How can Austrian Economics be reconciled with the Neo-Aristotelian philosophy of Freedom and Flourishing?” Freedom and Flourishing. October 24, 2025.

Younkins, Edward W. (2025) “Can Polarized Moral Politics be Bridged by a Neo-Aristotelian Philosophy of Freedom and Flourishing?” Freedom and Flourishing. December 13, 2025.

Younkins, Edward W. (2026) “Does Humanomics Need a Moral Anchor?” Freedom and Flourishing. January 22, 2026.

Younkins, Edward W. (2026) “Is Character Education Compatible With Individualistic Perfectionism?” Freedom and Flourishing. February 27, 2026.

Younkins, Edward W. (2026) “Are Spontaneous Order and neo-Aristotelian Arguments for a Free Society Compatible?” Freedom and Flourishing. March 19, 2026.

Younkins, Edward W. (2026) “Are Spinoza’s Philosophy and Neo-Aristotelian Philosophies of Freedom and Flourishing Compatible?” Freedom and Flourishing. June 4, 2026.