Where did Carl Schmitt go wrong in his critique of democracy?

 

I first became aware of Carl Schmitt about 30 years ago while reading Friedrich Hayek’s book, Law, Legislation and Liberty. At that stage I was left with the impression that while Schmitt still had influence among German legal philosophers, his views were mainly interest to people wondering how a respected academic could become a Nazi. Over the last year or so, however, I seem to be coming across increasing references to the relevance to contemporary politics of Schmitt’s views about friend-enemy distinctions and the autonomy of the political.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides the following biographical information about Schmitt:

“Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) was a conservative German legal, constitutional, and political theorist. Schmitt is often considered to be one of the most important critics of liberalism, parliamentary democracy, and liberal cosmopolitanism. But the value and significance of Schmitt’s work is subject to controversy, mainly due to his intellectual support for and active involvement with National Socialism.”

My reading of the full entry about Schmitt in the Stanford Encyclopedia (written by Lars Vinx) reinforced the impression I previously had that Schmitt’s political philosophy is inherently authoritarian. However, the conclusion that Peter C. Caldwell reached in his literature review is ambivalent:

“What Schmitt’s real message is remains disputed. Fifty years after the first reflections on his work began to appear, his interpreters still battle over whether he was primarily a brilliant lawyer and theorist of constitutional democracy or a gravedigger of democracy and apologist for authoritarianism; an intellectual adventurer and opportunist or a serious analyst of modernity; a conservative trying to save what could be saved of the European heritage or an antisemite and Nazi.”

(‘Controversies over Carl Schmitt: A Review of Recent Literature’, The Journal of Modern History 77, June 2025)

The focus of this essay has been determined largely by a couple of books that I have read recently. I focus on three aspects of Schmitt’s critique of liberal democracy. First, I consider Adrian Vermeule’s synthesis of Catholic integralism and Carl Schmitt’s view that politics is war. Second, I consider the link between entangled political economy and Carl Schmitt’s concept of the autonomy of the political. Finally, I reconsider Friedrich Hayek’s view of Carl Schmitt’s legal philosophy.

Vermeule’s synthesis of integralism and Schmittian illiberalism

My initial source for the discussion of integralism was Kevin Vallier’s book, All the Kingdom’s of the World (2023). I recently reviewed Vallier's book in an essay entitled, ‘Are integralists opposed to natural rights?’, but neglected to mention Vermeule’s affinity with the political philosophy of Carl Schmitt.

Vallier refers to Vermeule’s article, The Ark of Tradition, which is a review of Schmitt’s book, Roman Catholicism and Political Form. Vermeule writes:

“My suggestion, which is consistent with Schmitt’s vision, but goes beyond what he articulates, is that the Church serves as a kind of ark, whose vocation is to preserve the living tradition of the Verbum Dei amidst the universal deluge of economic-technical decadence, and the eventual self-undermining of the regime.”

He goes on to quote Schmitt:

“Should economic thinking succeed in realizing its utopian goal and in bringing about an absolutely unpolitical condition of human society, the Church would remain the only agency of political thinking and political form. Then the Church would have a stupendous monopoly: its hierarchy would be nearer the political domination of the world than in the Middle Ages.”

My understanding of what Schmitt meant by “an absolutely unpolitical condition of human society”, is a condition in which people would no longer be interested in drawing “friend-enemy distinctions”. Schmitt claimed that life in a completely de-politicized world would be shallow, insignificant, and meaningless.

Such views seem to me to be mistaken and to have potential to cause a great deal of unnecessary misery. In fields of human endeavour such as business and sport, friendly rivalry obviously helps to make life meaningful for many people. However, friendly rivalry does not require friend-enemy distinctions. Opportunities for human flourishing are enhanced in societies where individuals tend to seek mutual benefit from voluntary (and friendly) interactions with other people, rather than seeking to benefit from the friend-enemy distinctions associated with coercive political processes.  

Lars Vinx notes: 

“Some interpreters have explained Schmitt’s hostility towards liberal de-politicization as being grounded in the view that a willingness to distinguish between friend and enemy is a theological duty.”  

That made me wonder, very briefly, whether a theologian could argue that it is necessary for Christians to be able to distinguish between friend and enemy in order to follow Jesus’s exhortation to love one’s enemies. Before wasting too much time, however, I reminded myself of Erasmus’s message about refraining from wars over theology, which seems to me to remain as relevant today as at the time of the Protestant Reformation. (If further explanation is required, please read something I wrote about Erasmus a few years ago.)

Autonomy of the political

In my recent essay entitled “How does entangled political economy help us to understand political entrepreneurship?”, I drew heavily on Richard E. Wagner’s book, Politics as a Peculiar Business,. However, that essay doesn’t discuss the link that Wagner draws between entangled political economy and Carl Schmitt’s concept of the autonomy of the political.

The concept of autonomy of the political describes power relations and the behaviour of those who hold political power in society. The surface impression is that a small number of rulers dominate larger masses of citizens, but power is ever present in society and can be manifested in a variety of different ways. Wagner’s concept of entangled political economy “rests on the twin autonomies of the political and the economic in society, and the interaction between those autonomies being a source of turbulence within society.”   

Wagner writes:

“For Schmitt, the autonomy of the political rested on exceptional circumstances and the friend–enemy distinction. Exceptional circumstances mean that a rule of law cannot be articulated that will cover every possible point of decision that might arise. The presence of exceptions is a point where the autonomy of the political enters into society. The friend–enemy distinction is a feature of the crooked timber of humanity that surely intensifies with increases in societal complexity and the hierarchical ordering in terms of status that comes in the wake of growing complexity.”

Schmitt argued that even if constitutional arrangements are crafted to support private ordering of societal interaction, the autonomy of the political will assert itself in the guise of exceptional circumstances. As the scale of the polity expands, consensual action tends to give way to factional action, wherein some factions gain at the expense of others. For example, whereas application of general rules and principles might require a few pages of tax codes, factional action to achieve concessions generates thousands of pages of tax codes.

To consider Schmitt’s proposed remedies for factional politics, I have looked beyond the references to Schmitt in Wagner’s book. My main source is the Stanford Encyclopedia entry written by Lars Vinx.

Schmitt’s views about the problems of democracy and the need for strong political leadership are similar to those of Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter (discussed in earlier essays, here and here). However, while Weber and Schumpeter defend liberty, Schmitt regards constitutionally guaranteed freedoms as concessions of the state to the individual.

Weber and Schumpeter emphasize the importance of constitutional procedures, but Schmitt’s view of constitutions seems ambivalent. Schmitt understands democracy as the self-rule of the people. He argues, however, that since the will of the people is not necessarily reflected in the majority view, representative government is not necessarily any more intimately connected with the principle of democracy than a dictatorship in the name of the people. 

Schmitt denies the possibility of changing the fundamental nature of an established constitution via use of rules contained within it. Nevertheless, he acknowledges the possibility of suspending a constitution through a sovereign decision on the exception. He also acknowledges that a people, in a renewed exercise of their constituent power, might legitimately choose a non-liberal and non-parliamentarian form of democracy. 

Friedrich Hayek’s view

Hayek held similar views to Schmitt concerning the ability of the majority in a representative assembly with unlimited powers “to confine its activities to aims which all members of the majority desire, or even approve of”. The majority can only be kept together by “paying off each of the special groups by which it is composed”. (LLL, V3, 138)

In a footnote to that passage, Hayek suggested that in the 1920s “the weakness of the government of an omnipotent democracy was very clearly seen by the extraordinary German student of politics, Carl Schmitt.” However, Hayek added that “Schmitt regularly came down on what to me appears both morally and intellectually the wrong side.” (LLL, V3, 194-5)

The passage quoted in the epigraph at the top of this essay appears in Volume 1 of Law, Legislation and Liberty (p 71). It is immediately followed by the assertion that “long before Hitler came to power” Carl Schmitt “devoted all his formidable intellectual energies to a fight against liberalism in all its forms”. (Hayek’s perception that Schmitt was so clearly opposed to all forms of liberalism has been disputed. Some of Schmitt’s writings apparently give the impression that he was trying to save Europe’s liberal heritage.)

Later in the same paragraph, Hayek explains that Schmitt’s final formulation of his central belief about the law entailed “concrete order formation”. Schmitt posits that law is fundamentally a form of political and social organisation grounded in a community’s values, and that the state is the embodiment of the community’s legal order. Hayek argues that under that view of law, individuals are “made to serve concrete purposes”.

Hayek contrasts Schmitt’s view of law with his own view that law consists of “abstract rules which make possible the formation of a spontaneous order by the free action of individuals through limiting the range of their actions.”

While Schmitt saw the state as giving expression to the values of the dominant community group, Hayek saw law as consisting of rules of just conduct that have evolved to protect individual liberty.

Conclusions

Carl Schmitt is remembered as a prominent German legal and political theorist who became a Nazi. However, Schmitt’s political affiliations have not prevented frequent reference being made to views about friend-enemy distinctions and the autonomy of the political in contemporary discussions about political institutions.

This essay has focused on three aspects of Schmitt’s critique of liberal democracy: Adrian Vermeule’s synthesis of Catholic integralism and Carl Schmitt’s view that politics is war; the link between Richard Wagner’s concept of entangled political economy and Carl Schmitt’s concept of the autonomy of the political; and Friedrich Hayek’s view of Carl Schmitt’s legal philosophy.

Schmitt argued that if economic liberalism succeeded in bringing about an absolutely unpolitical condition of society – a condition where people were no longer interested in making friend-enemy distinctions – the Catholic church would be able to dominate the world. He reasoned that that this religious organisation would dominate in those circumstances because it would be the only agency still engaged in political thinking. I am puzzled as to why he thought a religious organisation would be last to abandon the habit of making friend-enemy distinctions. It seems to me that criminal organisations would be likely to pose a greater obstacle to establishing an unpolitical utopia because friend-enemy distinctions are more intrinsic to their activities.

Schmitt presented a valid argument that constitutional arrangements crafted to support private ordering are prone to corruption by interest group politics. The autonomy of the political exerts itself as some groups argue for exceptions to general rules to obtain benefits at the expense of others.

Other political theorists have proposed stronger executive government as a remedy for problems that interest groups pose for the functioning of liberal democracies. However, Schmitt proposed more extreme remedies. For example, he suggested that under exceptional circumstances a government could make a “sovereign decision” to suspend a constitution.

Friedrich Hayek acknowledged that Schmitt had clearly seen the weakness of omnipotent democracy in the 1920s, but suggested that he “regularly came down on the wrong side” in proposing remedies.

Hayek argued that under Schmitt’s final formulation of his beliefs about the law, individuals are made to serve concrete purposes determined by the state. By contrast, Hayek viewed law in terms of abstract rules of just conduct that have evolved to protect individual liberty.

In my view Schmitt went wrong in his critique of democracy by seeking authoritarian remedies rather than changes in the rules of the game to address the specific problems that he identified.

Should we expect our political leaders to be great and good?

 

I am writing this during an election campaign in Australia. By international standards, both chief contenders for public office could be aptly described as neither conspicuously great nor notoriously bad.

However, over the last three years, Australians have experienced the worst government that I can remember. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the political alternative on offer would have been much better.

During the current election campaign, both chief contenders for national leadership have seemed oblivious to the decline in productivity growth that caused the good times to stop rolling on in this country. It has apparently not registered with them that vote-buying spending proposals are less appropriate under such circumstances than economic reforms to restore productivity growth. Moreover, the election campaign is being conducted as though nothing that has happened recently in the international economic and political environment might require Australians to prepare for difficult times ahead.

Fortunately, the question that I have posed above does not require me to consider which of the contenders for national leadership is most worthy of being prime minister of Australia.

Before I go any further, however, I should outline my (somewhat complicated) view of party politics in liberal democracies. I have yet to see a system of government that is better than the two-party system at enabling voters to hold governments accountable for their actions. One of the downsides of that system, however, is that it provides a strong incentive for political parties to reward team players who are willing to set aside their own views to support a party line. The insincerity that is often on display in the public performance of politicians makes it is difficult to avoid regarding politics as a disreputable profession. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that democratic political systems sometimes produce leaders who are highly principled and effective in enhancing opportunities for human flourishing.  

Should we expect our political leaders to be great and good? That question has arisen from previous research that I have undertaken about the roles of culture, ideology, and political entrepreneurship as factors influencing levels of economic and personal freedom in different countries. I will briefly outline some points emerging from that research before discussing Robert Faulkner’s book, The Case for Greatness: Honorable Ambition and its Critics (2007).

Points emerging from previous research

• Cultural values do not fully explain levels of economic and personal freedom in different countries. Suppression of liberty in countries with relatively low levels of economic and personal freedom, e.g. China, Iran and Venezuela, is a product of the ideologies of the governments concerned rather than the cultural values of the peoples. Similarly, a substantial number of countries with relatively high personal and economic freedom are performing better in that regard than can readily be explained on the basis of prevailing cultural values.
• It is not difficult to identify political entrepreneurs who have historically been major players determining outcomes in many jurisdictions where economic and personal freedom seems substantially at variance with underlying cultural values. There are good reasons for that. Media coverage tends to focus on political leaders, the challenges they face and the policies they adopt.
• Douglas North saw political entrepreneurship as being required to overcome high transactions costs involved in changing institutions – the rules of the game of society. There are high transactions costs associated with institutional change because institutions are path dependent, e.g. embedded in culture.
• Political entrepreneurship takes place within culture and is concerned with interpreting and influencing culture as well as formal rules (constitutions, laws and regulations). Some research suggests that successful political entrepreneurs tend to advance their ambitions by focusing on niches in the marketplace of ideas that established parties do not satisfy. They win support by emphasizing the problem-solving capacities of their ideas.
• Max Weber argued that charismatic and demagogic leadership may be required to overcome the impersonal forces of bureaucratization within democracies. Demagogic leaders are responsible for their cause, and thus capable of intentionally and rationally directing state power towards its achievement.  
• Weber suggested that demagogic leadership can be consistent with democracy, but he seems to have left aside the question of whether a demagogic leader can be both good and great.

The essays from which those points were abstracted can be found here and here.

 The Case for Greatness

 In making the case for greatness Robert Faulkner observes that thoughtful citizens and appreciative historians have no difficulty in acknowledging the greatness of people like George Washington, Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela. By contrast, many of those who generalize about human affairs display a doubting cynicism about such greatness. He notes that “social scientists speak much of rational maximizing, power seeking, self-interest, and popular voice, but not much of extraordinary judiciousness, honorable aims, and knowing justice” and that “influential professors of philosophy and literature talk confidently of autonomy and equal dignity, while deprecating ambition for office and accomplishment as elitist domineering or a remnant of repressive culture”.

The author’s key contention is that the accounts of political greatness by Aristotle, Plato, and Xenophon “illuminate our experiences of a Mandela or a Margaret Thatcher far better than the critical and doctrinal theorizing that is more familiar and has been in the works for three or four centuries”.

 The book begins by considering Aristotle’s account of an honorable and just form of grand ambition. It then considers the political dangers and psychological dynamics of the less bounded and less just forms of ambition, using Alcibiades and Cyrus as examples of individuals who seek to rule empires. That is followed by a chapter discussing George Washington as an example of a gentleman-statesman. Along the way, the author notes the role of Niccolo Machiavelli in turning the orientation of much thinking about human affairs from what men should do “from duty and the best life” to what men do to advance themselves and their followers in wealth and power. The final chapters discuss modern theories that obscure the moral-political phenomenon of political greatness and make it “peculiarly alien to our apprehension and sensibilities”. One of the final chapters is devoted to discussion of the egalitarian theories of John Rawls and Hannah Arendt. The other discusses the theories of Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche.

In what follows, I focus mainly on what the author has to say about Aristotle. Readers who are looking for a more comprehensive summary of The Case for Greatness should read the review by Paul A. Rahe.

Faulkner observes that Aristotle ranks greatness of soul as the "crown" needed to perfect all the virtues, including justice. He writes:

 “Aristotle does not mince words on this topic, and neither should we. No greatness without goodness, yes, but also no true goodness without greatness. The great-souled human being, in claiming a worthy stage, claims for human excellence the prominence and tasks it deserves. Accordingly, while greatness of soul "cannot exist without" such other virtues as moderation and justice, it also "enhances their goodness." A man of such virtue is too noble to stoop, or to accept the second best, especially in his own conduct. Aristotle calls greatness of soul a kosmos. It is an ornament of good character that is also an exalting order: an ordering heightened by an awareness of the grand activities such a soul calls for and is owed.”

Aristotle views the great-souled man as having a disposition to claim great honours because he considers himself worthy of them. The great-souled man has a true estimate of his own worth. He claims tasks that no-one else can do, or do as well. The great-souled man disdains the offices commonly sought by other ambitious people; he seeks the tribute and high offices that are “great things.

Aristotle equates greatness of the soul with magnanimity - which he also equates with excellence and justice. However, the great-souled man’s disposition is complicated because he seeks great positions and honours from others as well as virtue of soul for himself. Aristotle suggests that the great-souled man holds that nothing is greater than his own virtue and seems to regard any honour as less than what is due a soul of such worth.

The great-souled man’s desire for superiority may harbour a despotic impulse, but his virtue gives this impulse something of an honorable and just direction. Faulkner writes:

“It is the priority of virtue and honor, so understood, that largely distinguishes Aristotelian greatness of soul and a Washington.”

Later, he explains more fully:

“Knowledge of his virtue helps uphold the great man amidst changing fortune. Unlike Machiavelli's great man, his measure is not ambitious mastery of fortune, but living well amidst fortune's gifts and trials. It is after this purification of grand ambition that Aristotle sharply separates true pride from the all-too-common arrogance of the privileged. "In truth," "rightly," "justly," only the good should be honored.”

Faulkner concludes:

“Aristotle's diagnosis comes to this: the great-souled man is at once drawn above humanity and drawn to humanity. He exhibits his superiority by aiding his fellows, and yet his wish is less to aid them than to avoid being or appearing dependent on them.”

Faulkner suggests that while Nicomachean Ethics seems to imply that greatness of the soul is a desirable attribute of political leaders, Aristotle moderates that view in the Politics and Ethics. In Politics, he doesn’t forget the best man’s claims but presents them “only after defending at length the more common and political claimants to rule”. At one point he even praises “the decent and equitable man” over the great man. In Ethics, Aristotle suggests that greatness, especially great power, is overrated: “it is possible for one who is not a ruler of land and sea to perform noble action.”

Faulkner writes:

“Given the likelihood of war, the difficulties of preserving any regime, and the extreme rarity of the best regime, there will be opportunities enough for noble deeds, great things, and superiority over others. A great-souled man will have his opportunities; he will be often needed. But such a force, if a blind force, may also harm itself and those whom it would rule, including the most thoughtful. Whatever else Aristotle's Ethics and Politics may be, whatever the defects, his is surely a model effort to supply comprehensive light to the grandly ambitious and to those who depend on them.”

Faulkner ends his book with a discussion of Nietzsche, who “unlike Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Kant, trumpets an animus against ordinary people”. Faulkner’s final comment:

“Nietzsche's proposals and diagnoses alike invite us to look to more moderate accounts, whether in examples such as a Washington or in the historians and philosophers who took seriously what is good and true as well as what is strong and great. To encourage such looking is what this book is about.”

My assessment

I think Robert Faulkner has made a stronger case for goodness than greatness as a desirable attribute in political leaders. Greatness is required in times of crisis, but competence will suffice most of the time. It is important to recognize, however, that winning an election doesn’t make a person competent in dealing with public policy issues. People can acquire skills relevant to statecraft in a variety of different ways but, as in other professions, on-the-job experience seems indispensable to high-level performance.

The case that Faulkner makes for goodness leads to the question of what we mean by goodness as applied to political leaders. As I see it, there are two different aspects to this question.

The first concerns personal ethics. Should citizens expect the holders of high office in a democracy to conform to widely accepted norms of ethical behaviour? If we expect our sporting heroes to confirm to such norms in their off-field behavior, there is perhaps an even stronger case for the similar standards to be applied to politicians. Since politicians regularly ask voters to trust them to implement policies, it seems appropriate for voters to expect them to demonstrate trustworthiness in their personal behavior. (Of course, the personal ethics of candidates is only one of the matters that voters should consider, and other matters may well be more important in particular instances.)

The second aspect concerns confusion of soulcraft and statecraft. Soulcraft, the means by which individuals flourish and find fulfillment in life, is a matter that is best left for individuals to pursue in the manner they choose for themselves. Since self-direction is fundamental to individual flourishing, it is a mistake to believe that it can be advanced via government action to promote particular views of moral excellence. Aristotle may have had reason to believe that was possible in a polis in the ancient world, but it is certainly not possible in modern societies which are characterised by much greater diversity of cultural and religious influences.

Some Neo-Aristotelian philosophers have drawn a clear distinction between soulcraft and statecraft. In their book Norms of Liberty, Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl imply that the main role of statecraft is to restore or construct a political/ legal order in which “it might be possible for different individuals to flourish and to do so in different ways (in different communities and cultures) without creating inherent ethical conflict in the overall structure of their social/ political context.” (p 83)

In my view, we should judge our political leaders to be very good if they can manage to move the political/legal order toward achieving that outcome.

What Contribution did David L. Norton Make to our Understanding of Ethical Individualism?

 

The purpose of this post is to publish a review essay by Edward W. Younkins, author of among other things a wonderful trilogy of books on freedom and flourishing: Capitalism and Commerce, Champions of a Free Society, and Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society. (I have written a review of Ed’s trilogy, which was published on The Savvy Street last year. I published an earlier essay on Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society on this blog in 2019.)

David L. Norton, whose books are the subject of Ed’s review essay was an American philosopher who made an important contribution to the modern understanding of human flourishing. I read his book, Personal Destinies, last year, and wrote a couple of posts on this blog (here and here) on issues that were of particular interest to me.

Norton’s major books deserve a more comprehensive review. I am pleased to have the opportunity to publish on Freedom and Flourishing the following review essay by Ed Younkins.

A Review Essay of David L. Norton’s Books on Ethical Individualism

By

Edward W. Younkins

 

The purpose of this review essay is to introduce and evaluate the essential ideas that appear in David L. Norton’s two major books: his 1976 Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (PD) and his 1991 Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue (DMD). PD is a thorough, philosophically astute, visionary, and enduring contribution to contemporary moral philosophy in the tradition of classical Greek thinkers in which Norton offers a compelling view of human flourishing grounded in the idea that ethical life is rooted in the realization of unique personal potentialities. Norton’s philosophy will resonate with those seeking to reconcile individual freedom with moral responsibility. Then in DMD Norton attempts to extend his ethical individualism into the realm of political philosophy. In this work he advances politics that embraces ethical education. Although thought-provoking and ambitious, DMD falls short of meeting his goal and of having the impact of PD. In addition, its expanded role of the state and communitarian leanings are problematic, in tension with, and in opposition to, the individual freedom advocated in PD.

Personal Destinies

In this book Norton explains that for each person there is a particular unique way of living (his daimon) and there is a foundational ethical imperative to live in that manner. Each individual is morally obligated to know and live the truth according to his daimon, thus progressively actualizing an excellence that is innately and potentially his. His ethical responsibility and priority is to bring this inner self to outward actuality. Each of us is a unique irreplaceable being who has his own destiny in need of discovery and actualization.

What is the source of one’s daimon? Norton explains that the immediate source of one’s genetic inheritance is the person’s parents and that, as human beings, they represent the same category of being as the individual himself. This involves the consideration of both human nature and the specific unique identity of each individual.

The conclusion to be drawn is that each individual is the heir of the unrestricted humanity of which his parents are in his particular case the agents. Heteronomy does not obtain here because the individual is humanity in a particular instance. And genetic inheritance is fully capable of accounting for the individuation of daimons… (PD p.25)

Norton links the ancient concept of eudaimonia to Abraham Maslow’s idea of self-actualization. He also interchangeably uses the terms eudaimonism, perfectionism, self-actualization ethics, and normative individualism which stresses the quality of life of the agent. In addition, he distinguishes between self-actualization and self-realization because the inward self is real even if it is not actualized,

The eudaimonic individual experiences the whole of his life in every act, and he experiences parts and wholes together as necessary such that he can will that nothing be changed. But the necessity introduced here is moral necessity, deriving from his choice. Hence, we may say of him interchangeably, “He is where he wants to be, doing what he wants to do,” or “He is where he wants to be, doing what he must do.” (PD p.222)  

According to Norton, eudaimonia is both a feeling and a condition dependent upon right desire and is an objective value that is not imputed but recognized. It is the condition of living in truth to one’s daimon. The prerequisite of eudaimonia is the unique irreplaceable worth of each individual. Eudaimonia involves wholehearted commitment to one’s flourishing as a human being.

According to Norton, one’s aim is not to imitate the “worthy man” but to emulate him:

To emulate a worthy man is not to re-live his individual life, but to utilize the principle of worthy living, exemplified by him, toward the qualitative improvement of our individual life. (PD, p.13)

Norton informs us that it is Plato, rather than Aristotle, who supplies the underpinning support for individualistic metaphysics via his principle of the self-differentiation of the Forms and his idea of ultimate reality as a system of interrelated and intercommunicating Forms.  Because there are fewer Forms than existing things they serve as principles of intelligibility regarding the actual world.

Norton then builds on Leibniz’s principle of incompossibility that recognizes that not all possibilities are capable of co-existence. Stripping away Leibniz’s theology that states that actualization of pure possibilities is solely the work of God, Norton explains that distinct from actuality are infinite possibilities that are possible actualities and that, under certain conditions, these alternatives become available to existing beings. Between actuality and free possibility only total exchange can occur. Alternative worlds cannot exist simultaneously but can exist as possible worlds via the agency of world exchange. Whatever exists is susceptible to lapsing into the status of unactualized possibility.

Norton devotes three chapters to criticizing recent eudaimonisms from existentialist thinkers from Kierkgaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre none of whom has an unswerving commitment to reason. Norton dismisses Sartre’s characterization of freedom as freedom to do whatever one freely wants to do and criticizes Sartre’s denial of human nature in his efforts to affirm individuality.

Each person has his own irreplaceable and unique potential worth and innate distinct particularity which is his self. Norton’s notion of humankind is as “perfectible finitude”. Each unique person faces possibilities from which to choose. One’s unique flourishing can be progressively approached by living in truth to one’s daimon. Through an individual’s self-knowledge, self-discovery, and efforts he can progressively actualize the particularities that comprise his own essential identity. Human beings possess volition, can initiate action, and can make responsible decisions in accordance with who and what one is.

Norton maintains that each person is a universal particular and that the universal humanity that subsists within each person makes the possibility of a broad range of alternatives a component of every individual’s existence. Of course, this does not mean that every option is equally appropriate for each person. It only means that choices from among alternatives are those to be made correctly or incorrectly.

Confine your aspirations to the possibilities of your own nature; to desire to be more than a human being is to become less, for extra-human aims betray humankind and produce blindness to the values human life affords…. Extra-human happiness and desires are impediments to the appreciation and participation in human worth. (PD p.357)

The virtue of integrity is Norton’s fundamental principle of the life of a mature human being. Living one’s own truth comprises integrity, the primary virtue. Norton explains that flourishing is inextricably tied to the actuality of an integrated self. He speaks of “personal truth” and makes clear that the great threat to integrity is not falsehood, but rather the attractiveness of foreign truths—the truths that belong to others.

Our consideration of “personal truth” reveals that the great enemy of integrity is not falsehood but—ironically—the attractiveness of foreign truths, the truths that belong to others. (PD p.9)

One excellent chapter is devoted to the stages of life—childhood (dependence), adolescence (creative exploration of potentialities), maturation (adulthood), and old age. There are distinguishing incommensurable principles of behavior that pertain to each stage. Norton calls the passage between these stages “world exchange”. There is a succession of stages of which normativity exacts its modes of actualization. The author then devotes a follow-up chapter titled “Eudaimonia: The Quality of Moral Life in the Stage of Maturation”.

Norton views the self as a self of a particular kind (i.e., the self of a human being). He explains that a human being becomes conscious of himself as a self only in social interaction with others. A person’s knowledge of his selfhood thus develops concurrently with the knowledge of others as selves.

Each individual has continuous access to minds different from his own. Norton explains that the presence of another human being is an invitation to enter a perspectival world different from our own. Through a process of participatory enactment each of us can recognize a world of possibilities in ourselves, only one of which is made real in our own existence. This range of possibilities permits us to see those possibilities within other people that are being actualized or that can potentially be actualized.

From the individuation of possibilities it follows that the goal of the human individual is the perfection of his own unique finitude, and the goal of humanity is the community of complementary, perfected individuals. (PD pp. 142-43)

Norton discusses the inherent sociality of human beings based on mutual appreciation rather than on conflict when he speaks of “the complementarity of the excellences” or what Plato termed “congeniality of the excellences”. Through social interaction one’s knowledge of his own selfhood emerges concurrently with the knowledge of others as selves. In addition, these contacts enable individuals to recognize and affirm values different from their own. Through specialization people benefit from what others create by fulfilling their innate destinies. This personal interdependence is manifested in love, labor, and justice.

For Norton, a self-actualizing individual takes an interest in the self-actualization of others and an ideal society is one of complementary perfected individuals. His idea of “consequent sociality” thus emphasizes the individualist significance of human community life and politics. Norton’s eudaimonism clearly recognizes that a human being is not an isolated entity.

Regarding justice as the paramount virtue of society, Norton states that:

…the foundation of justice is the presupposition of the unique, irreplaceable, potential worth of every person, and forms of sociality that neglect or contradict this presupposition…deal justice a mortal wound at the outset. (PD p.310)

Norton views justice as a type of entitlement in which an individual is only entitled to possess as much of anything as he can use in actualizing himself. His theory holds that at the lower limit (or floor) each person is entitled to what is necessary for self-actualization including food, shelter, and decent treatment by others. Then at the upper limit (or ceiling) a person is entitled to the commensurate goods whose potential worth he can maximally actualize in accordance with his destiny, his meaningful work. The point of this upper limit is that not everything is appropriate with what one is. A person is only entitled to those goods that are right and proper to his self-development.  In Norton’s view, how a person acquires something to which he is “entitled” in order to actualize himself is irrelevant. The door is opened to the notion of distributive justice in a society that disregards the manner in which a person acquires what he is ‘entitled” to.

The unfortunate designation “entitlement” is used by Norton in connection with what individuals should do in a social context. He discusses what a person is morally entitled to and deserves in virtue of his own distinctive potential achievements. He contends that not every person is entitled to all goods, but that every person is entitled to those goods that will help them with their self-actualization. The knowledge of other people’s entitlements leads him to entertain the idea of distributive justice.

Norton thinks that his eudaimonism can be employed to demonstrate which distribution of goods is just and which is not. He begins by saying that it is each individual who will decide whether a good is or is not commensurate with the pursuit of his self-actualization. However, he qualifies his answer by stating that others can specify what one is entitled to if the person has not yet reached a stage of true individuation. His theory of entitlement leaves room for a theory of rights that would inspire political control in the realm of social justice.

Under normative individualism the final ground of the distinction between true and false desires is the nature of the individual himself, and he himself is the final authority. But by the emergent nature of individualism the exercise of this final authority by the individual is deferred until true individuation is attained, and meanwhile others must share with him the responsibility for the determination of his true interests. (PD pp.323-24)

Norton declares that public corroboration of claims of entitlement is needed because self-love and the knowledge it provides are imperfect. Although he suggests others who know and love the person, and thereafter, acquaintances as corroborators with respect to which goods are consistent with person’s unique calling, there remains the possibility that a political authority would step in when peer pressure and persuasion are insufficient. He has opened the door for huge amounts of control, and this unfortunately comes to fruition in his later book, Democracy and Moral Development.

 

Democracy and Moral Development

This 1991 book can be viewed as an extension of Norton’s earlier work, Personal Destinies. In it he aims to philosophically connect ideas from democratic theory, virtue (or character) ethics, moral development, and social and political justice. Norton praises democratic thinkers like Mill and Dewey for teaching that democratic institutions advance individuals pursuit of their chosen way of life. Holding a developmental notion of the individual, he makes a case for a greater than a minimal role for government in the life of each individual human being.

Norton explains the need to disclaim the closed teleology of Plato and Aristotle for an open-ended teleology. He views eudaimonia as an inclusive end that permits a multiplicity of types of self-actualizing lives aimed at a multiplicity of ends.

Arguing for an expanded notion of self-interest that includes the interests of others, Norton states that, because eudaimonia is of objective worth, one individual’s self-actualization is of value to another individual, and vice-versa. He claims that his eudaimonistic perspective transcends the altruist-egoist bifurcation.

Arguing that eudaimonism is not a form of egoism, he explains that:

The worth that is aspired to is objective worth, which is to say, it is of worth, not solely or primarily to the individual who actualizes it, but also to (some) other persons--specifically to such others as can recognize, appreciate, and utilize the distinctive kind of worth that the given individual manifests. (DMD p.7)

Norton explains that human beings are alike in seeking values but individuated by the differences of the types of values that they desire. It follows that his contention that one person’s actualization is of value to another person may be problematic because objective value for one person is not the same for every individual. Unlike Ayn Rand, he fails to realize that it is important to describe for whom and for what purpose something is of value.

Like Plato, Norton argues that self-love does not inhibit the love of others, but rather is the precondition of it:

…love is not exclusively or primarily interpersonal; it is first of all the right relationship of each person with himself or herself. The self to which love is the first instance directed is the ideal self that is aspired to and by which random change is transformed into the directed development we term growth, When the ideal of the individual is rightly chosen, it realizes objective values that subsisted within the individual as innate possibilities, thereby achieving in the individual as innate possibilities the self-identity that is termed “integrity” and that constitutes the foundation of other virtues. (DMD p.40)

According to Norton, there exists a kind of positive right to what every individual requires in order to exercise the central moral responsibility to discern and develop his personal potential moral excellence. He argues that a person is only entitled to what is commensurate with what is needed for his own self-development. Therefore, a worthy individual who has self-knowledge and lives by it, recognizes goods to which he is not entitled as distractions from the proper course of his life. Such a person manifests justice by not claiming goods that he cannot utilize and by actively willing them to those who can employ them toward their personal flourishing. A worthy person’s aspirations do not exceed the parameters of his own finitude. Recognizing these boundaries permits the potential augmentation of the finite excellences of qualitatively differentiated others.

According to Norton:

…no life can be said to be fulfilled whose worth is not recognized and utilized by (some) other person in their own self-actualizing enterprise. Correspondingly every well-lived life must utilize values produced by (some) other well-lived lives. And this is to say that within a society, every person has a legitimate interest in the essential personhood of every other. (DMD p.124)

Norton contends the switch from “some others” to “every other” is legitimated because all those upon you and I rely have need of values produced by others, who, in turn, have need of values produced by others, and so on. He states that this is the foundation for a “community of true individuals”.

Norton attempts to distinguish his views from those of contemporary communitarians. He does this by differentiating between “received” community and tradition and “chosen” community and tradition. He emphasizes choosing the right community and tradition as necessary to individuality as conceived of eudaimonistically. In the end, however, his worldview comes close to the communitarian worldview from which he wants to distinguish himself.

Norton argues that rights must be derived from responsibilities (not vice-versa}, that rights are not inherently adversarial, and that rights should be founded upon what a person requires in order to develop properly. He thus emphasizes responsibilities, the value of other people’s flourishing in one’s own self-interest, and the necessity of developing one’s latent powers.

Norton’s idea of a just society is “obligations primitive” rather than “rights primitive”. For him, rights are derived from the primary moral obligation of individuals to discern and actualize their innate potential excellences. This moral obligation produces both negative and positive rights that government will protect and help to implement.

Norton failed to understand that rights are an ethical concept that is not directly concerned with attaining the self-perfection of individuals but rather, as explained by Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl, are metanorms that establish the conditions for protecting the possibility of the pursuit of a person’s interests but not the achievement of flourishing itself. His philosophical individualism could have been improved if he had realized that ethics are not all at the same level. A two-level ethical system consists of metanorms (i.e., political norms) and personal ethical norms. Whereas metanorms are both legally and morally binding, personal ethical norms are only morally binding. Metanorms establish the conditions for the exercise of personal moral norms. [1]

Norton explicitly rejects moral minimalism and suggests a role for government in moral development. Taking a rather communitarian view of a person’s view of society, Norton contends that government should focus on helping people to realize their potential. For Norton, a just society is one in which an individual would be able to actualize his potential personal excellences. From his revisionist Platonist perspective, government should supply the preconditions for self-development that the individual is unable to supply and to which he is morally entitled. Among these necessary conditions are guaranteed subsistence, basic healthcare, and provision of appropriate education for children and adolescents in a variety of life-forming situations. An integrated self-actualized life requires both formal education and life-forming experiences that permit individuals the opportunity to explore life’s possibilities. The life choices one makes are founded on self-knowledge attained through exploration and experimentation as an adolescent in non-academic situations in a variety of youth service programs including apprenticeships, work study, community service programs, and a National Youth Service. Like Dewey, Norton suggests restructuring education by alternating academic courses and practical experiences and supporting youth public service.

As Norton puts it:

…the paramount function of government is to provide the necessary but non-self-suppliable conditions for optimizing opportunities for individual self-discovery and self-development. (DMD p.80)

Norton considers some implications of Plato’s The Republic for contemporary government and organizational management. One is that managers are distinct class of individuals including politicians whose vocation it is to manage. Others are that to be a good manager requires that a person know the good of the social organization as a whole that one manages and that he identifies his own good with the good of the whole organization. The result of the natural division of labor by individual excellences produces a type of management class who would be trustees of the public interest. Of course, this class would be the result of autonomous choices made during the progression of self-development through education especially at the stage of adolescence.

Norton argues that:

If we term both social engineering and the welfare state “maximal government” and the night-watchman state “minimal government”, then good government, eudaimonistically conceived, lies intermediate between them, as conducive government. (DMD p.166)   

Conclusion

Whereas PD explored the ethical and psychological dimensions of individual flourishing, DMD examined how political and social institutions and practices can support or impede the cultivation of moral virtues in individuals. DMD expands Norton’s analysis to include the role of the state and community in fostering moral development. It builds on the ideas introduced in PD but moves toward the view that political systems have a moral purpose beyond the protection of an individual’s negative rights and toward the notion that the state should be an active participant in moral education, shaping the conditions under which a person can develop virtues. DMD’s more communitarian focus is in tension with the ethical individualism of PD. PD offers a profound, original, and nearly flawless contribution to ethical thought by developing a solid foundation for understanding personal moral development and flourishing. However, Norton’s flawed theory of entitlement in PD leads him to go far off-track in DMD.

His entitlement theory opened the door for recurrent intrusion in people’s lives. Norton argues in DMD for people’s rights to things that cannot be self-provided. These are essentially claims to the positive performance of others. People have positive rights only at the expense of someone else’s negative rights. No political or social system can replace a person’s own responsibility for the character of his life. Norton’s view of the state as a moral educator risks imposing a state-sanctioned notion of virtue that could infringe on individual autonomy. This could be seen as paternalistic and undermining of the very autonomy that he seeks to promote in PD. Freedom is a prerequisite for the development of virtue. Any expansion of the role of the state beyond minimal government is undesirable. Norton’s case that both negative and positive rights must be derived from responsibilities is untenable.

Despite the above flaws, Norton’s work, primarily in PD, advances a metaphysics of authentic possibilities and an ethical individualism that is applicable to each person’s personal and social circumstances. His eudaimonistic view of the moral life in terms of perfecting one’s nature thereby attaining a state of flourishing provokes serious thought. His ideas deserve to be studied along with the ideas of contemporary thinkers writing from a neo-Aristotelian perspective including, but not limited to, Ayn Rand, Henry B. Veatch, Tibor R. Machan, Fred D. Miller, Lester Hunt, Douglas B. Rasmussen, and Douglas J. Den Uyl.

 

Note

{1} See Rasmussen and Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty, pp. 257-264.

Works Cited

Norton, David L. 1976. Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

______. 1991. Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

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

…….

A shorter version of this essay, focusing on Personal Destinies, has been published on The Savvy Street.

 

 

Can Empirical Natural Rights be viewed as metanormative principles?

 

Prior to attempting to answer the question posed above I briefly outline the concept of individual rights as metanormative principles - as discussed by Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl - and consider the alternative approach that John Hasnas has adopted in his discussion of empirical natural rights.

Rights as metanormative principles

In their book, Norms of Liberty (published in 2005) Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl note that a rule qualifies as metanormative if it “seeks not to guide individual conduct in moral activity, but rather to regulate conduct so that conditions might be obtained where moral action can take place”. (p. 34) They argue that, as metanormative principles, individual rights solve a problem that is uniquely social, political, and legal. They describe the problem as follows:

“How do we allow for the possibility that individuals might flourish in different ways (in different communities and cultures) without creating inherent moral conflict in the overall structure of the social/political context—that is the structure that is provided by the political/legal order? How do we find a political/legal order that will in principle not require that the human flourishing of any person or group be given structural preference over others? How do we protect the possibility that each may flourish while at the same time provide principles that regulate the conduct of all?” (p. 78)

Recognition of individual rights solves the problem because it protects individual self-direction and enables individuals to flourish in different ways, provided they do not interfere with the rights of others.

The “instrumental moral value” of empirical natural rights

I was prompted to ask myself the question posed above as I was re-reading part of John Hasnas’s book, Common Law Liberalism (2024).

As I noted in an earlier essay published here, Hasnas offers an alternative conception of natural rights – empirical natural rights (ENR) – that evolve in the state of nature. He then proceeds to argue that ENR form a good approximation to individual rights as propounded John Locke.

Hasnas claims that he “can offer no argument that empirical natural rights have any intrinsic moral value.” He then goes on to argue that ENR have “instrumental moral value regardless of the moral theory and general approach to ethics one adopts”:

“This is because empirical natural rights facilitate peaceful human interaction and peace is an important, if not pre-eminent moral value in virtually all moral theories.” (p. 150)

Hasnas then proceeds to discuss why peaceful human interaction is necessary for the realization of deontological, consequentialist, and Aristotelian moral theories.

I think I can understand why Hasnas has adopted that approach. If you want moral theorists from a variety of different traditions to see merit in a new concept that you espouse, it is helpful to be able to argue that the concept is in harmony with their traditions.

However, it would be preferable, it seems to me, to be able to argue that recognition of ENR provides the metanormative conditions that enable moral conduct to take place, and that individual rights over-ride other moral claims.

Would Hasnas have grounds for concern that Kantians and Utilitarians might reject ENR as a metanormative concept?

My first thought was that their reactions might depend on how the metanormative principle was stated. Kantians and Utilitarians would have no obvious grounds to object to ENR being recognized as metanormative principles on the grounds that they protect individual self-direction and enable individuals to “to use their knowledge for their purposes”, provided they do not interfere with the rights of others.

The quoted words are from the Friedrich Hayek quote in the epigraph. (Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 1, p. 55.) It seems to me that use of one’s knowledge for one’s purposes comes close to the idea that human flourishing is best understood as “the exercise of one’s own practical wisdom.” As far as I can see, ENR are identical to the “rules of just conduct” referred to by Hayek.

Nevertheless, I think it is preferable to acknowledge the activity of flourishing explicitly because that is the best way to describe the human telos.

Would Kantians and Utilitarians object to a metanormative principle which recognizes that people seek to flourish in different ways?

I asked Chat GPT whether a person who subscribes to Kantian deontology would have grounds to object to my observation that they use their own practical wisdom to flourish. Here is part of her reply:

“They could argue that flourishing may occur as a byproduct of acting morally, but it is not the guiding principle. True moral worth arises when actions are performed out of respect for the moral law, not for the sake of achieving personal flourishing.”

When I think about it, I don’t think many Neo-Aristotelians would claim personal flourishing as their motive for acting with integrity toward others, even though they would view such behaviour as integral to their flourishing. People pursue the goods of a flourishing human because they perceive them to be good. The activity of flourishing is not about doing things that might raise one’s score in an imaginary index of individual flourishing.

From my reading, I don’t think many Utilitarians would raise strong objections to being told that they are seeking to flourish. At one point in On Liberty, J. S. Mill refers to “the judicious utilitarianism of Aristotle”, so it seems unlikely that he would have raised objections. Referring specifically to arguments for individual rights to be given an Aristotelian grounding, Leland Yeager suggests: “Such ‘Aristotelian’ arguments diverge from utilitarianism less in substance than in rhetoric.” (Leland B Yeager, Ethics as Social Science (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2001) p. 222.

Conclusion

In discussing the normative significance of his concept of empirical natural rights (ENR) John Hasnas suggests that because they facilitate “peaceful human interaction” they have “instrumental moral value regardless of the moral theory and general approach to ethics one adopts.” I suggest that it would be preferable to be able to argue that recognition of ENR provides the metanormative conditions that enable moral conduct to take place, and that individual rights override other moral claims.

In exploring whether Kantians and Utilitarians might object to an argument for ENR to be viewed as metanormative principles I first suggested that they could have no objection to them being justified in Hayekian terms - recognizing that ENR protect individual self-direction and enable individuals to “to use their knowledge for their purposes”, provided they do not interfere with the rights of others.

It is possible that some Kantians and Utilitarians might object to a metanormative justification of ENR being framed in terms of allowing for “the possibility that individuals might flourish in different ways” on the grounds that they don’t recognize flourishing as a prime motivation for moral conduct. However, Neo-Aristotelians also pursue the goods of a flourishing human because they perceive them to be good rather than to raise their score in some imaginary index of personal flourishing.

 It seems to me that it would be very difficult for anyone who supports individual rights to object to them being viewed as metanormative principles. It would be almost as difficult to object to them being justified on the grounds that, among other things, they enable individuals to flourish in different ways.

Addendum

I have been thinking further about the question of whether there are reasons for anyone to object to a metanormative principle which recognizes that humans seek to flourish. It seems to me that to do that one would need to reject a description of human life that recognizes that it has inherent potentiality. For example:

“Humans, like all living things are teleological beings and have an inherent potentiality for their mature state – which is to say, they have what could be broadly called natural inclinations or desires to engage in activities that constitute their completion or fulfillment. They have a natural desire for their good.” (Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, The Perfectionist Turn, p 237)

That observation owes a lot to Aristotle but is it not still consistent with what we know about humans from the findings of biology, neurology, and psychology?

Second Addendum

This is what ended up in the first draft of the article I am writing:

The idea that it is natural for humans to seek to flourish should not be controversial.[1] It follows from a description of human life that recognizes that “like all living things … [humans] have what could be broadly called natural inclinations or desires to engage in activities that constitute their completion or fulfillment.”[2] Nevertheless, it may be worth adding that recognition of individual rights as a metanormative principle also protects the choices of those who wish to follow the directions of religious leaders rather than to be self-directed, and even of those who are motivated to behave in ways that might detract from their individual flourishing - provided they do not interfere with the rights of others.

---

[1] I raise the issue because Hasnas seems to imply that Kantians and Utilitarians might have reason to object to the concept of flourishing because it is associated with Aristotelian moral theory. He argues that peace is consistent with deontological moral standards and makes the realization of the ends of consequentialist moral theory more likely, as well as well as being necessary for human flourishing. See: Common Law Liberalism, p. 150.

[2] Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, The Perfectionist Turn (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), p. 237. The authors note that knowing that a particular activity is good for you will not necessarily provide you with a reason or motivation to engage in it.