How can dialectics help us to defend liberty?

 

This guest essay by Dr Edward W. Younkins is a review of Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s book “Total Freedom”, which was published 25 years ago. The epigraph is from page 354 of that book.

Ed Younkins is Professor of Accountancy and Business at Wheeling University, and Executive Director of its Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality. He 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”. Ed has numerous other publications, including an essay reviewing books by David L. Norton, which was published here in January.    

 Ed Younkins’s review was previously published in 2001 in “Le Québécois Libre”. 

There are two reasons why it is appropriate for it to be re-published now.

First,“Total Freedom” deserves more attention, and the 25^th anniversary of its publication is a particularly appropriate time for that to occur.

Second, in the light of declining economic and personal freedom in many parts of the world, the defense of liberty has become more urgent than it was 25 years ago. Ian Vásquez and his colleagues responsible for measurement of human freedom for Cato and the Fraser Institute have noted that on a world-wide basis, and using a population weighted comparison, a high point for freedom occurred in 2005–2007, followed by a steady decline through 2019, and a precipitous descent in 2020 through 2021 associated with government responses to the Covid virus (“The Human Freedom Index 2024, pp. 21-25). The latest data suggest although some recovery has occurred since, human freedom remains lower than in the year 2000.

Younkins ended his review by noting that he was “looking forward to seeing what Sciabarra will offer us next that will contribute toward the development of a comprehensive defense of freedom.” Chris Sciabarra has continued to make important contributions in this field even though illness has somewhat constrained his efforts.

Here is Ed Younkins’s review of:

Sciabarra, Chris Matthew, Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism (Pennsylvania State University Press: 2000).

In Total Freedom, Chris Matthew Sciabarra offers a provocative, scholarly, and original work in social theory for the analysis of society and human liberty. The author aims to reclaim the dialectical method, the art of context keeping, in the name of liberty and from the authoritarian left in order to make it the foundation for a radical (i.e., one that goes to the root) defense of libertarianism.

The necessity of context

Sciabarra is convinced that a successful libertarian project must stress the necessity of context – the totality of systemic and dynamic connections among social problems. More specifically, the libertarian ideal cannot be isolated from the context upon which it depends and freedom cannot be defended successfully when separated from its broader requisite conditions. The author proposes in Total Freedom a metatheoretical foundation upon which to construct a comprehensive libertarian social theory. Rather than making a convincing argument for liberty, he offers a means for structuring the methodology of social inquiry. The book is about how a context-sensitive methodology can be used to defend freedom. In order to think about freedom, people need to grasp the totality of its prerequisites and implications. Emphasizing the indivisible unity of theory and practice, Sciabarra says that any effort to understand or change society requires an analysis of its many related aspects.  

Sciabarra explains that dialectics emphasizes the centrality of context in the intertemporal analysis of systems. It is a thinking style that stresses the contextual analysis of systems across time. Dialectics may be viewed as a method of analysis, a mode of inquiry, or a type of meta-methodological orientation or set of assumptions about how we approach the object of our study. Dialectics is an approach to thinking that attempts to grasp the full context of a philosophy or social problem. Dialectical thinking endeavors to understand the whole through differential vantage points and levels of generality and by a systemic and dynamic extension of analytical units. 

The author emphasizes that dialectical thinking necessitates that we do not engage in context dropping, but instead make every possible effort to see interconnections between seemingly disparate branches of knowledge. Such an approach compels scholars to investigate empirically the potential connections between various spheres in an effort to attain integrated knowledge of the full context. Since people are not omniscient, understanding a complex world thoroughly requires an on-going investigation of its many interrelated facets from shifting vantage points. 

Down to earth dialectics

As a methodological orientation, dialectics has been employed in the analysis of systems of argumentation, philosophy, ethics, linguistics, history, culture, psychology, social theory, political economy, etc. One of Sciabarra's goals is to capture the essence of the many dialectical approaches that have appeared throughout intellectual history. He argues that in its origins dialectics is not an especially Hegelian or Marxian tradition, but rather in its inception it is firmly Aristotelian. 

Sciabarra explains that, although the pre-Socratics and Plato were the earliest practitioners of dialectics, it was Aristotle, the true father (or fountainhead) of dialectical inquiry, who first articulated its theoretical principles and techniques. Plato had connected dialectics to an idealist ontology that entailed the search for comprehensive transcendent truth. Plato's unrealistic epistemological standard was for human beings to somehow attain a synoptic perspective on the whole society. 

Aristotle brought the dialectic down to earth by severing its principles from their Platonic-idealist formulation. The Aristotelian idea of dialectics eliminates cosmology from philosophy and relies on a minimalist metaphysics that states that existence is what it is, that consciousness is our means for understanding it, and that everything that exists is part of one reality. The history of dialectics is filled with battles between the synoptic Platonic idealist conception and the contextual Aristotelian realist understanding. As a dialectical reality, Sciabarra tells us that we should rightfully criticize those who form dialectical abstractions with no regard for their relationship to the facts of reality. 

Sciabarra explains that Aristotle advocates shifting our viewpoints on any object of study in order to illuminate different aspects of it. In this way, Aristotle keeps the Platonic predilection for organic unity, but acknowledges the central importance of context. Aristotle's principles of inquiry call for us to constantly shift our perspective on any object of study. Each point of view provides a different context of meaning. It is by piecing together the various perspectives that a person can gain a comprehensive understanding of the full context of the object. 

Like Aristotle, the Medieval Scholastics applied dialectical principles to the argumentative arts. Sciabarra observes that they brought dialectics to the consideration of Biblical texts and thus began the centuries-long journey toward the secularization of the human mind because they were brave enough to subject the scriptures to analysis, something that was disapproved of for centuries before.  

Sciabarra argues that Hegel's conception of the dialectic harks back to the Ancient Greek ideal of organic unity and to the Platonic penchant for the divine. In turn, Marx anchored dialectics to investigations of the real world. However, Marx's vision presumed god-like planning and control of many nuances, tacit practices, and unintended consequences of social action. He also presumed a total grasp of history and often attempted to study the present as if from an imagined future. When Marxists suggest that history can lead to a victory over human ignorance, they are implying privileged access to total knowledge of future social conditions. This is inherently utopian and undialectical since it is unbounded by the context that exists and is based on a « synoptic delusion, » a belief that one can live in a world in which every action produces consistent and predictable outcomes.

The art of context keeping

 If dialectics is the art of context keeping, then historical materialism proposes a theory of history that places the theoretician outside the context of the human condition. The problem occurs when Marx steps into the future to evaluate the present. He assumes the information needed by future planners will be available despite the fact that these planners will have destroyed the context (i.e., the price system), which permits such information to be generated and socially traded. By holding this incorrect assumption, Marx is placing himself outside the historical process that he analyzes. Sciabarra observes that it is as though Marx is permitting himself privileged access to information about a future that is ontologically and epistemologically impossible. Such a Utopian way of viewing the world is essentially an a-contextual, a-historical search for human ideals with no understanding of the limits or nature of reason. It is as if people can step outside the bounds of culture and society to re-create the world. 

Sciabarra goes on to explore the manifestations of dialectics among those from the liberal tradition including Herbert Spencer, Carl Menger, Mises, Hayek, Rand, and especially Murray Rothbard. The author's goal here is to show how classical liberal and modern libertarian approaches embody conflicting orientations. He also describes how these thinkers have been richer, more complex, and more context-sensitive than their critics have been willing to acknowledge. Total Freedom documents how a contextual-dialectical approach informed many of the classical liberal, and libertarian thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries. 

A large portion of the second half of Sciabarra's work involves a comprehensive case study of the writings of Murray Rothbard, one of the major libertarian thinkers of the 20th century. Sciabarra attempts to identify the dialectical and undialectical aspects of Rothbard's wide-ranging anarcho-capitalist analytical model. Rothbard's work is used to expose and analyze the dialectical strengths and nondialectical weaknesses that are typical in modern libertarian social theory. 

Sciabarra observes that Rothbard, for most of his life, believed that libertarianism did not require a theory of culture. Rothbard appeared to think that his axiom of non-aggression could resolve social and political problems by itself. Like many other libertarians, he simply dropped the larger context which freedom requires in order to flourish and stressed libertarian goals without considering the problem of meeting them. He insisted that libertarianism was a political philosophy that could accommodate any culture. For example, Rothbard believed that men could simply use their reason to develop a permanently fixed Libertarian Law Code in accordance with anarcho-capitalist principles.  

Sciabarra questions the efficacy of such an imposition because it does not take into account the philosophical, cultural, and historical context upon which libertarian principles depend. The acceptance of a Libertarian Law Code in the real world would require a deeper understanding of personal and cultural factors. Rothbard had abstracted a single principle of non-aggression and created a dualistic tension between theory and reality by declaring that state institutions are at odds with human nature. This led Rothbard to universalize the market as a means of destroying the state.  

Sciabarra points out that later Rothbard realized that proponents of a free society needed a fully articulated theory of culture, since some cultures foster, while others threaten, a free society. Rothbard's later greater dialectical sensibility is exhibited in his theory of structural crisis which was simultaneously historical, political, economic, and sociological and in the foundations of his non-Marxist theory of class struggle. 

In need of an effective strategy

Toward the end of his book, Sciabarra briefly surveys the growing dialectical trend among libertarians such as Peter Boettke, Douglas Den Uyl, Don Lavoie, Douglas Rasmussen, Mario Rizzo, and others. Sciabarra is convinced that libertarianism as a social theory is valuable and offers a valid perspective on the nature of the crisis in modern society and that voluntary social relations, with all their preconditions and effects, are morally and consequentially preferable to the status quo and to statism in all its varieties. However, he does not believe that libertarian theorists have presented the best formulations and arguments in the context of social conditions that exist. Freedom cannot be defended successfully when severed from its broader requisite conditions. Libertarians must pay greater attention to the broader context within which their goals and values can be realized.

Sciabarra's message is that libertarians need an effective strategy that recognizes the dynamic interrelationships between the personal, political, historical, psychological, ethical, cultural, economic, etc., if they are to be successful in their quest for a free society. He explains that attempts to define and defend a non-aggression axiom in the absence of a broader philosophical and cultural context are doomed to fail. Libertarians must pay greater attention to the broader context within which their goals and values can be realized. The battle against statism is simultaneously structural (political and economic), cultural (with implications for education, race, sex, language, and art) and personal (with connections to individuals' tacit moral beliefs, and psycho-epistemological processes).

The author wants people to understand both the necessity for objective conceptual foundations for a free society and the need for cultural pre-requisites in the battle for the free society. The fight for freedom is multidimensional and takes place on a variety of levels with each level influencing and having reciprocal effects on the other levels. Dialectics require that people take into account and pay attention to all the levels and structures that a politics of freedom depends upon. Sciabarra contends that it is possible to look at society from different angles and on different levels of analytical generality in order to obtain an enriched portrait of its total form. Change must occur on many different levels and cannot be dictated from the realm of politics – it must filter through all the various levels.

The goals of Total Freedom are to defend the need for a dialectical libertarianism that synthesizes multiple disciplines and to reclaim dialectics as a viable methodology for libertarian social theory. The author accomplishes this in his well-documented, innovative, and academic treatise. He offers libertarianism as a valid and valuable perspective that is preferable to the status quo and to statism in all its varieties. However, Sciabarra stops short of developing his own substantive dialectical libertarian social theory. 

His work is primarily methodological and only articulates the view that a dialectical libertarianism is essential to the future of both dialectics and libertarianism. He has taken the first step by offering a metatheoretical structure for social inquiry, rather than a comprehensive argument for liberty. Sciabarra cautions that much work needs to be done to test the validity of various libertarian theories. I am looking forward to seeing what Sciabarra will offer us next that will contribute toward the development of a comprehensive defense of freedom.

What do Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives tell us about Flourishing Individualism?

 

This is a guest essay by Dr Theodore N. (Ted) Pauls.

Ted Pauls holds a Doctorate in Higher Education Administration and serves as a Professor of Business at Bethany College (Bethany, West Virginia). He has 32 years of college teaching experience including Bethany, Wheeling Jesuit University, and West Liberty University. He also currently serves as the President of the Brooke County Board of Education. Prior to entering academe, Ted served as a Marketing Director for a privately held corporation and as a stockbroker.

In my view, the topic of Ted’s essay is highly relevant to people who live in the liberal democracies. I often hear people claim that the priority given to personal freedom in those societies has caused them to become excessively individualistic. How can defenders of individual liberty respond to those who claim that excessive individualism has contributed to narcissistic behaviour, social isolation, and mental illness? We can’t deny that many individuals lack integrity in their dealings with others. We can’t deny that many individuals live lonely lives, lacking positive relationships with others. We can’t deny that many individuals seek to escape from reality and that some of them end up delusional.

However, we can explain that it is wrong to jump to the conclusion that the solution to those problems lies in further restricting opportunities for individual self-direction. We can explain that humans cannot fully flourish unless they have opportunities to exercise the practical wisdom and integrity required to direct their own lives in accordance with goals they choose and values they endorse. And we can also explain that the kind of individualism that we endorse is the flourishing individualism that Ted Pauls writes about in the following essay.

Ted writes:

 Flourishing individualism is a philosophical vision that places the rational, morally responsible individual at the center of ethics, politics, and human life. It is an ideal that affirms the dignity of the person, the objectivity of value, and the necessity of freedom—not merely as a constraint on power, but as the essential condition for human excellence. This article develops a theory of flourishing individualism by integrating key insights from three related and foundational works:

• Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1991),
• Edward W. Younkins’s Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society: Toward a Synthesis of Aristotelianism, Austrian Economics, and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism (2011), and
• Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen’s The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics (2016).

Each of these works contributes to a shared theme: the defense of individual flourishing as the core moral aim and the view that political society exists to enable, not direct, that flourishing. Peikoff articulates Ayn Rand’s Objectivist ethics and politics as a fully integrated philosophical system grounded in reason, egoism, and laissez-faire capitalism. Younkins seeks to synthesize Aristotelian virtue ethics, Austrian economics, and Objectivist principles to argue that human happiness and social cooperation are best achieved in a free society. Den Uyl and Rasmussen develop a metanormative liberalism in which the moral diversity of flourishing individuals is protected by political principles that are themselves ethically grounded but non-perfectionist in character.

The result of their combined perspectives is a powerful moral and political framework that answers the challenge of modern pluralism without surrendering the objectivity of value. It is a theory that preserves the ethical centrality of virtue and the reality of human goods while insisting on the primacy of liberty and individual responsibility. This article unfolds this framework in five parts: (1) the moral foundations of individual flourishing, (2) the structure of virtue and self-perfection, (3) the social context of flourishing, (4) the political principles that protect freedom, and (5) the philosophical implications of flourishing individualism for contemporary thought.

The Moral Foundations of Flourishing

At the heart of flourishing individualism is the idea that human life has an objective standard of value and that each individual must discover and pursue their own good through rational action. This view stands in opposition to both subjectivist relativism and collectivist moralities that subordinate the individual to external purposes.

Peikoff Explains Rand on Reason and on Life as the Standard of Value

Leonard Peikoff, in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand presents a moral framework that begins with the facts of human nature. This book is the first comprehensive statement of Rand’s philosophy. Peikoff discusses Rand’s views on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. Rand’s philosophy asserts that existence exists independently of consciousness, that reason is the primary means of understanding the world and one’s place in it, and that individuals should act in pursuit of their own self-interest. Ayn Rand’s ethics, as he explains, holds that value is that which one acts to gain or keep, and that the fundamental alternative at the base of value is life versus death. Since human beings do not survive automatically, but by the use of reason, the standard of value is not mere survival, but rational flourishing—living as the kind of being one is.

This leads to a morality of rational egoism. The purpose of morality is not to sacrifice the self for others, nor others for the self, but to guide each individual in achieving their own happiness through the use of reason. Moral principles are principles of self-perfection, of the kind of character and action required to live a fully human life.

Objectivist ethics is thus neither altruistic nor hedonistic. It affirms the individual as an end in himself and views the pursuit of one’s own rational interests as both morally right and practically necessary. It calls for independence, integrity, productivity, and pride—virtues that are both personally fulfilling and socially beneficial.

Rand’s Objectivism holds that an individual’s choice to live is required for ethical obligations to exist. On the other hand, Younkins, Den Uyl, and Rasmussen all maintain that there is an ethical obligation to choose life because life is one’s natural end and good and therefore choiceworthy.

Younkins on Flourishing and Human Nature

Edward W. Younkins, in Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society, expands on this foundation by situating it within the broader tradition of Aristotelian eudaimonism. He argues that human beings have a nature with specific potentials and that morality consists in actualizing these potentials over the course of a lifetime. Flourishing (or eudaimonia) is an activity of the soul in accordance with reason and virtue.

Younkins draws on Aristotle, Rand, contemporary neo-Aristotelian philosophers, Austrian economists, and others to argue that flourishing is not reducible to pleasure, wealth, or external success. It is a state of integrated self-realization involving rationality, moral character, purposeful work, and meaningful relationships. It requires that individuals make choices consistent with their nature and long-term well-being.

Crucially, flourishing cannot be given or imposed—it must be chosen and achieved. This emphasis on agency echoes Objectivism’s moral individualism while adding a richer account of the variety and depth of human goods. The good life is not a fixed pattern but a dynamic process of self-perfection.

He also explains that Objectivist claims of value objectivity and claims of Austrian economists are compatible because that involve different levels of analysis. Rand’s sense of value-objectivity complements the Austrian sense of value-subjectivity because personal flourishing on an objective level transcends subjective value preferences.

Younkins’s book presents the essentials of a potential paradigm or conceptual framework for individual human flourishing in a free society. It is an attempt to forge an understanding from various disciplines and to integrate them into consistent, coherent, and systematic whole. His goal is to have a paradigm in which the views of reality, human nature, knowledge, values, action, and society make up an integrated whole. He recognizes that his potential framework will grow and evolve as scholars engage and extend its ideas.

Den Uyl and Rasmussen on Individualistic Perfectionism

Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, in ThePerfectionist Turn, argue that ethical theory must return to a teleological and perfectionist framework that recognizes the centrality of human flourishing. Against dominant trends in analytic philosophy that treat ethics as a matter of rules, duties, or utility, they insist that the good life is the ultimate standard of evaluation.

Their contribution lies in developing a concept of “individualistic perfectionism”: the view that the good is self-perfection, but that this perfection takes diverse forms based on individual contexts, capacities, and choices. Flourishing is not a single ideal life but a framework in which many legitimate variations of the good life are possible.

Den Uyl and Rasmussen define human flourishing as objective, inclusive, individualized, agent-relative, self-directed, and social. A person’s flourishing is desired because it is desirable and choice-worthy.

This view preserves the objectivity of morality while respecting the uniqueness of persons. It sees ethics as aspirational, not prohibitive—as a guide to excellence rather than a list of constraints. And it affirms the value of individual agency, creativity, and responsibility in moral development.

 Den Uyl and Rasmussen defend a template of responsibility, rather than a template of respect, as a framework within which to based one’s self-perfection. This agent-centered template recognizes the existential condition that each responsible and choosing individual must make a life for himself. Under this template self-direction and integrity are central to morality because personal responsibility for one’s life is primary.

Den Uyl and Rasmussen explain that political philosophy is unavoidably tethered to deeper, more foundational. and comprehensive perspectives and frameworks regarding reality, human nature, and ethics, Championing the tethered character of political philosophy, Den Uyl  and Rasmussen advocate individualistic perfectionism and the template of responsibility for a person’s self-perfection.

The Virtues of Flourishing: Self-Perfection in Practice

Flourishing individualism depends not only on abstract principles but on the cultivation of character. Virtue is the bridge between human nature and human flourishing: it is the habitual excellence of the soul in action.

All of these thinkers agree that virtues are not mere social conventions or rules of obedience but rational habits that support an individual’s life and happiness. While they differ in terminology and emphasis, they converge on a core set of traits that enable a flourishing life.

Objectivist Virtue Theory

Peikoff identifies seven cardinal virtues in Ayn Rand’s ethics: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, and pride. Each of these is a rational requirement of life, rooted in the objective needs of human survival and flourishing.

• Rationality is the primary virtue: it is the commitment to reason as one’s only source of knowledge and guide to action.
• Independence follows from rationality: it is the reliance on one’s own judgment rather than on the beliefs or authority of others.
• Integrity is fidelity to one’s rational principles.
• Honesty is the refusal to fake reality.
• Justice is the principle of judging others objectively and giving them what they deserve.
• Productiveness is the creation of material values.
• Pride is moral ambitiousness—a commitment to achieving one’s moral worth.

These virtues are not sacrifices but achievements. They are the means by which an individual shapes a life worth living.

Younkins on Integrated Living

Younkins expands this list by emphasizing the integration of mind, body, and character. He argues that flourishing involves not just isolated traits but the harmonious development of the whole person. This includes intellectual virtues like wisdom and understanding, moral virtues like courage and benevolence, and practical virtues like industry and perseverance.

He also stresses the importance of purposeful work and the creation of value. Echoing Rand and the Austrians, Younkins sees economic activity not as a separate sphere but as an expression of human creativity and agency. Work is not a mere means to leisure; it is part of the good life.

Den Uyl and Rasmussen on the Diversity of Excellence

Den Uyl and Rasmussen agree that virtue is central but emphasize that virtue must be contextualized. Because flourishing is individualized, the specific content of virtue can vary with personal identity, role, and situation. What prudence or courage demands may differ between a soldier, a scholar, and an entrepreneur.

They resist reducing virtue to rule-following or to a fixed ideal life. Instead, they see it as a dynamic and developmental concept: excellence in the use of practical reason to navigate the world in pursuit of self-perfection. This view aligns with Aristotle’s emphasis on phronesis (practical wisdom) as the master virtue guiding others.

Den Uyl and Rasmussen add practical wisdom (prudence) to the Objectivist list of virtues. They explain that reason is a self-directing activity and that practical wisdom is the excellent use of practical reason and the central integrating virtue of a flourishing life.

The Social Context of Flourishing

Flourishing is personal, but it is not solitary. Human beings are social by nature, and many goods—friendship, love, trade, knowledge—require the presence of others. The moral vision of flourishing individualism recognizes this fact without collapsing the individual into the collective.

The Role of Trade and Civil Society

Peikoff emphasizes that trade—both economic and spiritual—is the proper mode of human interaction. In a society of rational individuals, people deal with one another by mutual consent for mutual benefit. Force, fraud, and parasitism are morally and practically incompatible with a flourishing life.

Younkins adds that civil society—the network of voluntary institutions, markets, and communities—is the natural habitat for human flourishing. Drawing on Austrian economics, he shows how spontaneous order arises from the free choices of individuals pursuing their own goals. Markets are not chaotic or amoral but forms of cooperation that reflect human values.

Younkins explains that an entrepreneur attains wealth and his other objectives by providing people with goods and services that further flourishing on earth. He views entrepreneurs as specialists in prudence—the virtue of applying one’s talents to the goal of living well. In turn, Den Uyl and Rasmussen see a parallel between entrepreneurship and moral conduct. They discuss the creativity of human beings both in producing wealth and in building moral character, two enterprises that require alertness, insight, and evaluation and are parts of a flourishing life. They explain that both ethical wealth and economic wealth are a function of one’s actions taken to produce a good life.

Virtue and Community

While the state must not impose virtue, communities and relationships play an essential role in cultivating it. Younkins, Den Uyl, and Rasmussen all stress the importance of cultural norms, moral education, and social practices that support character development. Families, friendships, institutions of learning, and the arts all contribute to the conditions of flourishing.

But these institutions must be voluntary and diverse. The ethical pluralism of flourishing individualism requires a social order that permits experimentation, innovation, and personal growth.

Political Philosophy and the Framework for Flourishing

Ethics identifies the good life for the individual; political philosophy identifies the kind of social order that makes the pursuit of that life possible.

Peikoff, Rand, and Objectivism: Rights as Moral Principles

Peikoff and Rand emphasize that because human beings survive by reason, and because reason is a volitional faculty, freedom is the political condition required for moral agency. Rights are objective principles that protect the individual’s freedom to act.

The proper political system, therefore, is laissez-faire capitalism: a system that protects rights and bans the initiation of force. It is not morally neutral but grounded in the recognition that each individual has a moral right to live for their own sake.

Younkins: Natural Law, Natural Rights, and Civil Society

Younkins explains that the natural negative right to liberty is concerned with regulating conditions for human flourishing They are not directly concerned with promoting the attainment of flourishing. He agrees with Den Uyl and Rasmussen’s long held view that rights are metanormative principles that protect self-directedness, a universal requirement to all manifestations of human flourishing.

He also demonstrates that political freedom enables the emergence of complex, adaptive systems—markets, associations, cultural norms—that support flourishing. He draws on Austrian insights to argue that no central planner can substitute for the decentralized knowledge and creativity of individuals.

This view also entails limits on political authority. The state must be constrained by rule of law and dedicated to protecting liberty—not managing outcomes or mandating virtues.

Den Uyl and Rasmussen: The Metanormative Structure of Liberalism

Unlike Rand, Den Uyl and Rasmussen (as well as Younkins) distinguish between normative and metanormative principles. Ethics is normative: it guides individuals in living well. Politics is metanormative: it defines the conditions under which individuals can peacefully pursue diverse goods.

This leads to a perfectionist yet non-perfectionist liberalism: one that values flourishing and virtues but refrains from legislating them. The liberal order is justified not by neutrality but by its compatibility with ethical pluralism and moral agency.

Philosophical Implications and the Future of Flourishing Individualism

Flourishing individualism reconciles objectivity with freedom, pluralism with virtue, and individuality with community.

It offers:

• Objectivity without authoritarianism: Morality is real, but political authority is limited.
• Pluralism without relativism: There are many good lives, but not all lives are equally good.
• Agency in a world of systems: Individuals are not products of structures but shapers of their own destiny.
• A humanistic ideal: The individual is not a cog in the machine but a creator of values.

In a time of cultural fragmentation and political overreach, this philosophy offers a bold and humane alternative. It calls on us to build a society that respects liberty, cultivates virtue, and honors the rationality and free will of each person.

Together, these books by Peikoff, Younkins, and Den Uyl and Rasmussen provide essential  ideas for a robust framework for understanding flourishing individualism—a life of rational self-interest, virtue, and freedom.

---

References

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

Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton, 1991.

Younkins, Edward W. Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society: Toward a Synthesis of Aristotelianism, Austrian Economics, and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2011.

Should Libertarians be Attempting to Influence Culture: A Discussion with Winton Bates and Chris Matthew Sciabarra (II)

 

As the graphic might suggest, the focus of the second edition of our collaborative efforts is Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s view of the role of culture in the relations of power in modern societies. However, before Chris presents his view on that topic, it is appropriate to review comments on the first edition that have been left on our respective Facebook pages: Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Winton Bates.

Comments on the first edition

We are pleased that our efforts have attracted interest and perceptive comments from people who have visited our Facebook pages. The comments fall into three broad categories: differing views of thick libertarianism; whether it is possible to influence culture directly; and the distinction between the question of whether libertarianism (as a political philosophy) should be attempting to change culture and the question of whether libertarians (as individuals) should be attempting to influence culture.

Thick libertarianism

Roderick Tracy Long: I'm recalling an exchange I had with Walter Block over "thick libertarianism," the idea that libertarians should think of the struggle for liberty as bound up with the promotion of other values not strictly entailed by libertarian principles but entangled with them either causally or conceptually (locus classicus is Charles Johnson's piece). Walter said that thick libertarianism was dangerous because the attention to other values might distract or tempt libertarians away from libertarian consistency. I said: "So you think opposition to thick libertarianism is itself an additional value, not strictly entailed by libertarian principle, that libertarians qua libertarians nevertheless ought to embrace because of its causal connection with the libertarian goal?" He said yes! I thought I'd trapped him in a reductio, but for him my reductio was merely a modus ponens.

Jim Peron: I don't see how one can achieve a libertarian society without the wider range of values that underpin it. One indication is how utterly unlibertarian evangelicals are compared to others. I should say that it's been years since I read it but the Edward Banifeld books "The Heavenly City" and "The Heavenly City Revisited” were influential in this regard, as were my basic psychology classes in university. Also of influence was "Under Development is a State of Mind" by Lawrence Harrison. [This is the first paragraph of Jim’s comment. Please see Chris’s Facebook page for the remainder.]

Possibility of influencing culture

Boris Karpa: There are, of course, two issues:

1. It's very difficult to come up with a strategy to deliberately influence a culture (and to what extent some progressives have succeeded it was because they already had large institutional inertia).

2. It's not entirely clear how this is going to work even on the basic level. Either of us can name any number of libertarian or semi-libertarian writers, for example, who are reasonably talented, or at least as talented as any published mass-market writer. But writing is an 'industry' with a low barrier of entry. Of these many libertarian and semi-libertarian writers, how many of these writers have had a movie or a show made out of their works? Or a PC game? How are these writers treated by literary awards, etc.?

It's not that I'm suggesting that it's impossible to influence culture, it's that I'm suggesting that I'm not sure how it is possible to influence it in a *deliberate manner* beyond just 'create art that reflects your values and hope for the best'.

Political philosophy versus individual action

Douglas B. Rasmussen: Is there not a difference between saying libertarianism qua political philosophy should attempt to change culture and saying that a libertarian concerned in advancing libertarianism should attempt to change culture? The former concerns what the political/legal order should do, and the latter concerns what individuals should do.

Ed Younkins: The legitimation or justification of a minimal state that protects and defends freedom does not depend upon the existence of a particular type of moral-cultural order. Such a political order is objectively based on the nature of human beings who need a protected moral sphere for the possibility of self-direction.

Although a political order of metanorms is not necessarily coincidental with, nor dependent upon, a particular moral-cultural system, the establishment and support of such a political order would be easier to bring about if there were widely shared beliefs and articulations with respect to its underpinning political principles as well with certain moral principles. It follows that we should work as individuals, and in concert with others, to build a freedom-friendly culture of moral and virtuous people who strive to create a good life, to flourish, and to be happy.

Replies by Bates and Sciabarra

Please see our Facebook pages for our immediate responses to those comments and to additional exchanges. Our views on power relations in the cultural context of individual flourishing are presented below.

Winton Bates’s view of culture

My book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, contains a brief discussion of cultural change in Chapter Nine, “The Evolving Context of Human Flourishing” (pp 184-190). As the chapter title suggests, my focus was primarily on the nature of changes that individuals have to contend with rather than on what individuals might do, in concert with others, to influence the cultural context. Nevertheless, readers would have no difficulty in discerning that I strongly support what Steven Pinker has described as Enlightenment humanism:

“Emancipative values can also be viewed as an outcome of Enlightenment humanism, a term used by Steven Pinker, to encompass the ideas of thinkers like Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Astell, Kant, Beccaria, Smith, Wollstonecraft, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton and Mill. As I see it, a stronger case can be made for the emergence of a general consensus supporting Enlightenment humanism among leaders of political opinion, than for the existence of a coherent philosophy shared by a group of intellectuals. While the classical liberals would probably have seen little merit in the political views of rationalistic thinkers, and vice versa, many conservative and progressive political leaders have seen varying degrees of merit in different viewpoints and have sought to reconcile and assimilate them in developing their own views.

“Over time, it seems that Enlightenment humanist values have approached the status of a coherent world view, which is broadly supported by public opinion in the democracies, despite large differences between conservative and progressives on some important issues.  The process seems to be one in which disparate political philosophies, often going back centuries, act as tributaries to the broad streams of thought that flow into the rivers of public opinion. Enlightenment humanism is one of those broad streams of thought. The color of the water in the streams and the rivers changes over time, depending on relative contributions from the different tributaries.

“Such a picture is complicated by the existence of postmodernism, as a competing stream of thought, which has origins traceable to some of those Enlightenment thinkers. Whilst Enlightenment humanism has a preoccupation with reason and reality, postmodernism has a preoccupation with the use of power. Postmodernism’s disrespect for truth is often associated with the narratives presented by radical progressives but it is also present in the narratives of unprincipled populists of a more conservative disposition. Fortunately, persuasive rhetoric that influences the views of some people in ways contrary to reason and reality tends to provoke widespread opposition.” (p 186)

In retrospect, my view that Enlightenment humanist values are broadly supported by public opinion may have been too optimistic. I should also make clear that the problem I have with power relations has to do with preoccupation with the use of power, rather than with attempts to understand power relations in society.

Chris has made an important contribution to the understanding of power relations.

 

Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s view of culture

I greatly appreciate the comments that Winton and I received from our first installment in this series of discussions. In this section, I’ll discuss the Tri-level Model of Power Relations, which was first derived from my reconstruction of Ayn Rand’s critical analyses of social problems, outlined in Part Three of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. The model focuses our attention on the various reciprocally related levels of generality through which social relations of power are manifested. It is a model that I have adopted in my own analysis of various social problems and the systemic and historical contexts within which they are embedded.

Winton suggests that Enlightenment humanism has been preoccupied with reason and reality, while postmodernism has been preoccupied with the use of power. Hence, it is startling that Rand, who most certainly placed herself in the reason and reality camp, also emerged with a critique of power relations. Rand criticized modernism for its crippling dualities. She rejected the modernist dichotomies of mind and body, reason and emotion, fact and value, the moral and the practical, and so forth. Ironically, she developed a multidimensional critique of social relations of power that echoes many of the themes found in postmodernism.

The full case for this can’t possibly be presented in this installment, so I’ll do my best to summarize the implications of the Tri-Level Model illustrated above. This summary comes not from Russian Radical but from Chapter Nine of Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism, “The Dialectical Libertarian Turn” (pp. 379-383).

The model provides different levels of generality by which to interpret social relations. The personal, the cultural, and the structural can only be abstracted and isolated for the purposes of analysis, but never reified as wholes unto themselves. They are preconditions and effects of one another.

On Level 1 (LI), the personal level of analysis, social relations are examined from the vantage point of personal ethical practices and implicit or tacit methods of awareness (what Rand called “psycho-epistemological” practices). On Level 2 (L2), the cultural level of analysis, social relations are examined from the vantage point of language, education, ideology, and art. On Level 3 (L3), the structural level of analysis, social relations are examined from the vantage point of political and economic structures, processes, and institutions.

We can trace the implications of this model by grouping the levels into three distinct forms, in which the level placed at the center provides a specific analytical and strategic focus. Because these levels are abstractions from the whole, each reveals key dynamics even as it obscures others.

L1-L2-L3: Focusing on The Cultural

From this point of view, the cultural level is brought to the foreground of our analysis. This perspective allows us to investigate and evaluate the various cultural traditions, institutions, and practices that help to sustain the existing social system.

How does culture perpetuate existing social conditions? This is achieved through linguistic, educational, and ideological means, among others. Distortions in language—through the use of anti-concepts, for example—will tend to undermine rational discourse, while serving the needs of the powerful. Certain educational institutions and pedagogical practices will tend to undermine autonomy, perpetuate conformity, inculcate obedience to authority, and subvert the development of critical thinking. Stultifying, rigid, intolerant, racist, sexist, or tribalist ideologies or belief systems (including dogmatic religious beliefs) will tend to foster exclusionary “thinking within a square.” Such cultural practices can undermine those humanist, cosmopolitan characteristics consistent with the development of human freedom and personal flourishing.

But a sole focus on dominant cultural traditions and practices tends to lessen our regard for people’s abilities to alter their ethical or psycho-epistemological habits (LI). Additionally, this focus minimizes the importance of the political and economic structures (L3) that both perpetuate and require a certain constellation of cultural practices.

Cultural contextualism—that is, paying attention to the importance of cultural context in the struggle for social change—is important. Indeed, as Hegel once declared: "No one can escape from the substance of his time any more than he can jump out of his skin” (Introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 112). That said, cultural contextualism is not cultural determinism. Though we are situated in a particular context of time and place, we are also creative, efficacious social beings capable of shifting that context over time.

L2-L1-L3: Focusing on the Personal

From this point of view, the personal level is brought to the foreground. This analytical focus emphasizes the importance of personal ethical and psycho-epistemological practices, which tend to perpetuate the dominant cultural and structural institutions.

Remember that even though this level is called personal, it is still a means of viewing social relations through a particular prism. Rand’s inspiring maxim—"Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today”—carries enormous weight here, as each person adapts certain virtues in pursuit of certain values, given their own unique and dynamic social context. Even if our struggle for autonomy and authenticity takes place within authoritarian social systems that are “airtight,” there is still a need for self-engagement and self-fulfillment. Living authentically requires introspection, the ability to articulate our thoughts, to accept our emotions, to experience psychological visibility and various degrees of intimacy in our engagement with others, to comprehend the nature of our actions, and to take personal responsibility for the social consequences generated by those actions.

But an exclusive focus on the personal level tends to diminish the importance of cultural and structural factors, which provide the context for, and have a powerful effect on, people’s abilities to achieve autonomy and authenticity. Certain cultural attitudes and tacit practices are so deeply embedded in our lives that it is extremely difficult—if not practically impossible—to call these into question. Likewise, any given set of political and economic realities will tend to constrain our ability to act autonomously. Folks who repeat the mantra, “free your mind and the rest will follow” (with apologies to En Vogue), fall victim to Level 1 thinking, divorced from Levels 2 and 3.

L1-L3-L2: Focusing on the Structural

From this point of view, the personal (LI) and cultural (L2) levels of analysis recede to the background, and the political and economic structures, institutions, and processes become the primary focus. This perspective makes transparent the dominant political and economic practices—the regulations, prohibitions, or guns—that constrain us. But exclusive attention to oppressive structural policies and practices tends to reduce the importance of, and need for, people to alter their ethical or psycho-epistemological habits. It also tends to obscure the importance of culture, which has a powerful effect on the kinds of politics and economics that are practiced.

Those who believe that it is possible to enact a nonaggression principle by edict are reifying a Level 3 analysis. An attack centered solely on the state in the absence of a supporting edifice of personal and cultural practices is doomed to fail. It will likely replace one form of tyranny with another.

With the aid of this Tri Level Model, our shifting points of view help to reveal the depth and breadth of the problems we face. By filtering virtually every social problem through the same multidimensional analysis and tracing the interconnections among social problems, we will be led to reject one-sided resolutions as partial and incomplete.

A couple of additional points must be kept in mind, however. All systems are mixed to some degree and no set of power relations is monolithic. Even within totalitarian systems, pockets of resistance and parallel institutions exist. Hence, each level of our analysis focuses attention on dominant tendencies within any given social system. Moreover, no social system is hermetically sealed from the rest of the world. The Tri Level model is one that must be adapted to different systemic and historical contexts. And it requires sensitivity to differences within cultures and among cultures—especially when we are faced with such an abundance of illiberal tendencies in our own society and across the globe.

I should add too that there is no “One Size Fits All” strategic approach to social change. Considering the unique conditions of any given context, it takes effort to investigate and examine the kinds of cultural formations that may nourish—or impede—both personal flourishing and an emancipative politics.

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The authors welcome comments on the relevance of the Tri Level model in considering current illiberal tendencies in the cultures of the liberal democracies. We have in mind that the next instalment of this exchange will focus on that topic.