The defense of a free society has emerged from diverse intellectual traditions. One line of argument, associated with thinkers such as Friedrich A. Hayek, Gerald A. Gaus, Jonathan Haidt, and John Hasnas grounds liberty in cultural evolution, spontaneous order, epistemic limits, and moral psychology. From another direction, Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl have developed a neo-Aristotelian justification of natural rights rooted in individualistic perfectionism, virtue ethics, and the metanormative structure of political morality. These two traditions have often been viewed as distinct and divergent: the former emphasizing emergent social complexity, evolved rules, the limits of reason, and epistemological humility; the latter emphasizing teleological ethics, virtue, and the normative structure of human flourishing.
I have been somewhat hard on Hayek’s approach over the years. This is because I have been a strong proponent of the Aristotelian eudaimonist perspective which I believe is foundational and the soul of the idea of a free society. Whereas I saw Austrian economists like Menger and Rothbard taking a realist natural-law-oriented Aristotelian perspective and road toward objective economics, I viewed Hayek’s emphasis on spontaneous order as implying the relative unimportance and inadequacy of individual rationality. Over the years, under the tutelage of Winton Bates, I have gained greater respect for Hayekian ideas. The bridge between my foundational neo-Aristotelian orientation and Hayek’s evolutionary/emergent order/epistemic perspective is the realization that human nature is both fixed and discovery-oriented. We have a fixed need for agency and flourishing but we live in a world of complexity and ignorance. Whereas one tradition focuses on the teleological requirements of human flourishing, the other tradition focuses on the emergent complexity of social systems. My neo-Aristotelian perspective underpins and complements the cooperation to mutual advantage perspective which incorporates the Hayekian notion that spontaneous order enables individuals to pursue diverse purposes peacefully. Spontaneous order is consistent with individual freedom and human flourishing because it is characterized by voluntary interactions.
This essay argues that these approaches are compatible and complementary. When properly understood, the evolutionary-epistemic arguments of the Hayekian tradition provide the descriptive and explanatory framework for understanding how complex social orders emerge and function, while the neo-Aristotelian perfectionism of Rasmussen and Den Uyl provides the normative foundation for why individual liberty ought to be protected. Together, they offer a comprehensive vision of a free society that is both empirically grounded and ethically justified—a society that emerges spontaneously yet serves the ultimate end of human flourishing.
The Evolutionary and Epistemic Case for a Free Society
At the heart of Hayek's contribution to social theory lies the concept of spontaneous order. Social order, Hayek argues, "is not brought about by human design and concerted agreement; rather, it emerges spontaneously, as the unintended outcome of the actions of many individuals who are separately pursuing their goals”. This insight challenges the constructivist rationalism that has dominated much of Western thought—the presumption that beneficial social institutions must be products of deliberate human design.
The market order exemplifies this spontaneous formation. Coordination is achieved not through central direction but through "a constant readjustment of individual plans in the light of new information encoded in the price system". Prices serve as knowledge-surrogates, allowing individuals to coordinate their activities without possessing more than a sliver of the total information dispersed throughout society. This epistemic function of markets represents one of Hayek's most enduring contributions: the demonstration that decentralized decision-making enables a more efficient use of resources than any centrally planned system could achieve, precisely because knowledge is necessarily dispersed and often tacit.
Gerald Gaus extends this Hayekian insight, arguing that the open society is characterized by a complexity that defies comprehensive moral justification in traditional terms. Drawing on formal models and empirical evidence, Gaus shows that "the Open Society is grounded on the moral foundations of human cooperation originating in the distant evolutionary past, but has built upon them a complex and diverse society that requires rethinking both the nature of moral justification and the meaning of democratic self-governance". Gaus's understanding of evolution makes him more optimistic than Hayek about the ability of modern humans to refrain from adopting a tribal moral outlook. Whereas Hayek suggests that tribal morality makes the open society a precarious achievement, Gaus offers the nuanced view that human social life is characterized by an ongoing tension between a tendency to widen moral obligations and a tendency to pull back to emphasize social proximity.
Hayek's theory of cultural evolution provides the mechanism by which spontaneous orders develop. This evolutionary process operates independently of human reason: "rules are not selected because individuals understand their functions; rather, practices which had first been adopted for other reasons, or even purely accidentally, were preserved because they enabled the group in which they had arisen to prevail over others".
Hayek's distinctive contribution lies in applying an evolutionary framework to the problem of socio-economic-political organization. His theory of spontaneous order delivers the crucial insight that "if we want to generate in society any particular order of a certain degree of complexity, we should look for general rules of conduct which, if followed by individuals, would tend to induce that order to form spontaneously". These rules of just conduct exhibit specific structural characteristics: they are negative, purpose-independent, abstract, universal, and permanent.
The evolution of the common law provides a paradigmatic example. Judges, in deciding particular cases, "are consciously trying to give greater coherence to the law," yet each decision "is unintentionally playing a part in the formation of a spontaneous order". Through this process of systematic mutual adjustment of expectations, the law evolves toward greater coherence without any comprehensive design.
Jonathan Haidt's moral foundations theory adds a psychological dimension to this evolutionary account. Drawing on cross-cultural research, Haidt and his collaborators identified innate, modular foundations of human moral reasoning that emerged as adaptive responses to challenges in our evolutionary history. The theory proposes six foundations: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression. This framework explains both the universality of moral concerns and their cultural variation. Haidt argues that moral intuitions precede reasoning and that different cultures emphasize different moral foundations. Morality diverges because different cultures utilize these foundations differently. He explains that liberal societies succeed, not because they eliminate diversity, but because they create institutional frameworks that allow diverse moral psychologies to exist.
In addition, John Hasnas has developed a Hayekian concept of empirical natural rights as pre-political rights that have evolved in the state of nature through human interaction and normatively grounded in social peace. He argues that this pre-political, secular, and practical justification for empirical natural rights can be possessed and enforced in the absence of a centralized state.
The neo-Aristotelian Case for Natural Rights
Rasmussen and Den Uyl identify what they term "Liberalism's Problem": a fundamental tension between ethics and politics. Liberal political principles purport to be universal, applying to all individuals without exception, yet liberalism is not supposed to favor one conception of the good life over another. Moral pluralism is essential to the liberal polity. The challenge, then, is to find "the foundation and structure to deal with this tension between each individual's liberty to pursue his own version of flourishing and the universality of liberalism's tenets".
This problem has led many liberal theorists toward either moral skepticism (denying that we can know what constitutes human flourishing) or moral minimalism (reducing morality to the thinnest possible set of requirements). Rasmussen and Den Uyl reject both approaches. They seek instead to provide a robust ethical foundation for liberalism that nevertheless remains compatible with moral pluralism—a perfectionist basis for non-perfectionist politics.
The solution lies in a crucial distinction between normative and metanormative principles. Normative principles concern what one ought to do or how one ought to be—they guide action and character development. Metanormative principles, by contrast, "regulate the conditions under which [normative] conduct could take place". They do not prescribe particular forms of flourishing but instead establish the framework within which individuals can pursue their own conceptions of the good life.
The linchpin of this argument is the concept of self-direction. Self-direction is characterized as "the act of bringing to bear one's reason and judgment on one's surroundings, making plans to act within or upon them, and conducting oneself accordingly". Crucially, Rasmussen and Den Uyl argue that "self-direction is both a necessary condition for, and an operating condition of, the pursuit and achievement of human flourishing".
This claim has profound implications. One cannot flourish unless one has acted, and acting requires reasoning practically and acting on one's best judgment. Flourishing is not something that happens to a passive recipient; it is an achievement of an active agent. Yet at the same time, "self-direction does not imply any particular form of flourishing". One self-directed person may pursue a religiously influenced conception of flourishing, while another equally self-directed individual pursues a secular form. Self-direction is universal and compatible with pluralism. It is required of all moral agents regardless of their normative viewpoint.
Self-direction is thwarted when others can direct an individual without consent—primarily through the initiation of force. Thus, metanormative principles in the form of individual rights protect the conditions for self-direction by prohibiting the initiation of force. This protection does not favor any particular account of flourishing; it simply ensures that each individual has the space to pursue his or her chosen path.
Rasmussen and Den Uyl characterize their position as Individualistic Perfectionism. This formulation captures both elements of their view: it is perfectionist in affirming that human flourishing is the ultimate standard of value, but it is individualistic in recognizing that flourishing is necessarily achieved by particular persons in their own unique circumstances. There is no single template for human excellence; rather, "human flourishing is something each individual must achieve in his or her own way".
Thus, individualistic perfectionism grounds a natural rights doctrine. Because flourishing requires self-direction, and self-direction requires freedom from coercion, individuals possess natural rights to the conditions of their flourishing. These rights are not derived from social convention or utilitarian calculation but from the very nature of human beings as rational agents capable of directing their own lives toward flourishing ends.
Building a Bridge—Complementarity and
Integration
The first and most fundamental complementarity between these traditions lies in their respective contributions to descriptive explanation and normative justification. The Hayekian tradition excels at explaining how complex social orders emerge, function, and evolve. It demonstrates that market orders, legal systems, and other institutions can coordinate millions of individuals without any central direction, precisely because they operate through abstract rules that allow for local adaptation and knowledge utilization. It shows that cultural evolution selects rules and practices that enable groups to prosper without requiring that individuals understand why these rules work.
What the Hayekian tradition does less well is provide a normative foundation for why these orders ought to be respected and protected. Hayek's own instrumentalism—his emphasis on the prosperity and coordination that spontaneous orders produce—invites the response that if some other arrangement could produce more prosperity, it would be justified. Moreover, evolutionary arguments alone cannot bridge the is-ought gap. The fact that certain rules have evolved does not, without more, establish that they are morally binding.
This is precisely where the neo-Aristotelian framework supplies what is missing. Rasmussen and Den Uyl's individualistic perfectionism provides a normative grounding for individual rights that does not depend on the outcomes of evolutionary processes. The right to self-direction is not justified because it produces good consequences (though it does), but because self-direction is a necessary condition for human flourishing, and human flourishing is the ultimate standard of value. The rights to life, liberty, and property are not merely useful conventions but moral requirements rooted in the nature of human agency.
Yet these normative requirements are not, as some critics of liberalism have charged, impositions of a particular conception of the good on those who do not share it. Because the metanormative framework protects only the conditions for self-direction, it is compatible with a wide range of substantive conceptions of flourishing. It does not tell one individual how to flourish; it only ensures that he has the freedom to pursue his own vision while respecting the equal freedom of another person to pursue his.
The second complementarity concerns the relationship between social orders and individual flourishing. The Hayekian tradition demonstrates that spontaneous orders generate conditions of prosperity, peace, and coordination that no central planner could replicate. The price system, evolved legal rules, and other spontaneous institutions create a framework within which individuals can pursue their diverse ends more effectively than they could in any deliberately constructed alternative.
The neo-Aristotelian tradition, by contrast, focuses on what individuals do within that framework. Flourishing is not something that society produces for individuals. It is something that individuals must achieve for themselves through their own choices and actions. However, flourishing requires certain enabling conditions—most notably, freedom from coercion and the ability to direct one's own life. These conditions are precisely what spontaneous orders, when properly constrained by metanormative principles, provide.
Here we see a deep harmony. The spontaneous order of the market does not guarantee that anyone will flourish. It merely creates the space within which flourishing is possible. As Rasmussen and Den Uyl emphasize, rights "do not guarantee success or even provide the conditions of successful action. All they do is provide the conditions that make such action possible". This is exactly what spontaneous orders do. They establish a framework of general rules that allows individuals to pursue their own purposes without promising that those purposes will be achieved. The rules of a free society—property rights, contract enforcement, prohibitions on force and fraud—do not ensure flourishing, they merely make flourishing possible. The actual achievement of flourishing depends on the virtues, judgments, and efforts of individuals themselves.
A third complementarity concerns the nature of knowledge and practical reasoning. Hayek's evolutionary epistemology emphasizes the limits of explicit, articulable knowledge. Much of what we know is tacit, embedded in practices and habits that we cannot fully explain. The rules that have survived cultural evolution embody a wisdom that exceeds the comprehension of any individual—a theme Hayek developed in his critique of constructivist rationalism.
This epistemological humility resonates with the Aristotelian emphasis on practical wisdom (phronesis). For Aristotle, ethical knowledge is not like mathematical knowledge; it cannot be reduced to general rules that can be applied mechanically. Practical wisdom involves perception, judgment, and the ability to discern what a particular situation requires. The virtuous person does not simply apply pre-existing rules but sees what is called for in concrete circumstances.
The metanormative framework of rights respects this structure of practical knowledge. By protecting the space for individual judgment rather than prescribing substantive outcomes, it allows each person to exercise practical wisdom in directing his or her own life. The general rules of just conduct—negative, abstract, universal—provide a framework within which individuals can exercise judgment without attempting to substitute for that judgment.
This suggests that the spontaneous order of rules and the teleological structure of human action are not opposed, but mutually supporting. The evolved rules of a free society do not replace individual judgment. Rather, they create the conditions under which individual judgment can operate effectively. They protect the sphere within which practical wisdom is exercised while also providing the general expectations that make coordinated action possible.
Haidt's moral foundations theory provides yet another point of connection. The identification of liberty as a distinct moral foundation suggests that concern for freedom from oppression is not merely a preference or a cultural artifact but a deep feature of human moral psychology. This foundation resonates with the emphasis on self-direction in the neo-Aristotelian framework. Both recognize that individuals have a moral stake in being able to direct their own lives without external domination.
The neo-Aristotelian framework, by grounding rights in the nature of human flourishing rather than in any particular configuration of moral sentiments, provides a normative anchor that can withstand shifts in moral psychology. Even if the Liberty foundation is not universally salient, the requirement of self-direction for flourishing remains. The metanormative framework protects the conditions for flourishing regardless of whether individuals are psychologically attuned to the importance of liberty.
Another point of complementarity has been pointed out by Winton Bates. Whereas Hasnas argues that empirical natural rights have instrumental moral value regardless of the moral theory one adopts, Bates explains that it makes more sense to argue that empirical natural rights provide the metanormative conditions that allow moral conduct to occur. This metanormative perspective concurs with Rasmussen and Den Uyl’s more foundational theory of Individualistic Perfectionism
A final point of complementarity
concerns the relationship between complexity and pluralism. Gaus emphasizes
that the open society generates "autocatalytic diversity"—diversity
that feeds on itself, producing ever more complex patterns of belief, value,
and practice. This complexity defies traditional modes of moral justification
and democratic governance. We cannot, from any single vantage point, comprehend
the full range of goods that individuals pursue or the full consequences of our
institutional arrangements.
Rasmussen and Den Uyl's individualistic perfectionism embraces this pluralism while avoiding relativism. Because flourishing is achieved by individuals in their own unique circumstances, we should expect a diversity of flourishing lives. There is no single template for human excellence. Different temperaments, talents, and circumstances call forth different configurations of virtue and achievement. Yet this pluralism does not entail that anything goes—flourishing remains a normative standard, and some ways of life fail to realize it.
The metanormative framework of rights accommodates this pluralism by protecting the conditions for self-direction without prescribing substantive outcomes. It does not require that we agree on what flourishing consists in. It only requires that we agree on the framework within which we pursue our diverse conceptions. This is precisely the kind of agreement that Gaus, drawing on social contract theory and public reason liberalism, seeks to articulate: an agreement on the rules of the game rather than on the goals to be pursued within it.
Conclusion
The evolutionary and neo-Aristotelian defenses of a free society, far from being rivals, emerge as complementary accounts of the same phenomenon from different perspectives. The Hayekian tradition, enriched by Gaus's formal modeling and Haidt's moral psychology, explains how free societies emerge, how they function, and why they are fragile. It demonstrates that complex orders can arise spontaneously, that cultural evolution selects for rules that enable coordination and prosperity, and that human moral psychology provides both resources and obstacles for sustaining such orders.
The neo-Aristotelian tradition, as developed by Rasmussen and Den Uyl, explains why such orders are worth defending. It grounds individual rights in the nature of human flourishing, showing that self-direction is both necessary for and an operating condition of the pursuit of excellence. The metanormative framework of rights protects the conditions under which individuals can exercise practical wisdom and achieve flourishing in their own unique ways.
Together, these traditions offer a comprehensive vision: a free society is an emergent order that creates the conditions for human flourishing, and human flourishing is the ultimate end that justifies and limits the exercise of political power. The rules that evolve spontaneously are not arbitrary conventions but embodiments of practical wisdom. The rights that protect individual liberty are not mere constraints but enabling conditions for the good life.
This synthesis has implications beyond academic philosophy. In an age of political polarization and skepticism about liberal institutions, it offers a defense of freedom that is both empirically grounded and ethically correct. It acknowledges the complexity of modern societies while affirming that this complexity serves human purposes. It embraces pluralism without falling into relativism, and it defends universal principles without imposing a single conception of the good.
The bridge between evolutionary and neo-Aristotelian arguments reveals that liberty and flourishing are not opposed but interdependent. Liberty is the political condition for flourishing, and flourishing is the moral purpose of liberty. In protecting the former, we enable the latter; in pursuing the latter, we justify the former. The free society, understood in this integrated way, is both our evolutionary inheritance and our highest aspiration—a precarious achievement that deserves our understanding and our defense.
References
Bates, Winton. 2024. “Did Hayek Acknowledge the Importance of Individual Self-Direction in His Vision of Spontaneous Order?”. Freedom and Flourishing. May, 21.
Bates, Winton, 2024. “Did Robert Nozick Hold a View of the Evolution of Natural Rights that is Similar to that Held by John Hasnas?’ Freedom and Flourishing. Nov. 11
Bates, Winton. 2024.’ Can Empirical Natural Rights be Viewed as Metanormative Principles?’ Freedom and Flourishing. Dec. 10.
Bates, Winton. 2025. “How Can the Study of Human Nature Help us to Reach Normative Conclusions in Political Philosophy?”. Freedom and Flourishing. October, 31.
Bates, Winton. 2026 (forthcoming). “How do the Concepts of Spontaneous Order and Social Evolution Relate to Individual Flourishing?’. In Edward W. Younkins, (ed.) From Politics to Morality: Implications of Rasmussen and Den Uyl’s Norms of Liberty. London: Bloomsbury.
Den Uyl, Douglas J. and Rasmussen, Douglas B. 2016. The Perfectionist Turn. Edinburgh University Press.
Gaus, Gerald. 2011. The Order of Public Reason. Cambridge university Press.
Gaus, Gerald. 2016. The Tyranny of the Ideal. Princeton University Press.
Gaus, Gerald. 2021. The Open Society and Its Complexities. New York: Oxford University Press.
Haidt, Jonathan. 2012. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Vintage Books,
Hasnas, John. 2024. Common Law Liberalism: A New Theory of the Libertarian Society. Oxford; Oxford University Press.
Hayek, Friedrich A., 1960. The Constitution of Liberty, University of Cambridge Press.
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1967. Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. University of Chicago Press.
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1973-79. Law, Legislation and Liberty, 3 volumes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rasmussen, Douglas B. and Den Uyl., Douglas J. 2005. Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005.
Rasmussen, Douglas B. and Den Uyl., Douglas J. The Realist Turn: Repositioning Liberalism. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Younkins, Edward W. 2024. “Is a Free
Society a Multiple Paradigm Ideal?” The
Savvy Street. April 14.
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.
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