How can Austrian Economics be reconciled with the Neo-Aristotelian philosophy of Freedom and Flourishing?

 This is a guest essay by Dr Edward W. Younkins.

Ed 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”. My review of that trilogy is included among references listed among suggestions for further reading at the end of Ed’s essay.

Ed has numerous other publications, including an essay reviewing books by David L. Norton, which was published here in January and a review of Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s book “Total Freedom” published here in July. 

Ed Younkins writes:  

The pursuit of human flourishing—what Aristotle termed eudaimonia—stands as a central concern of both philosophical inquiry and economic science. At first glance, the Austrian economic tradition, with its emphasis on subjective value and methodological individualism, might appear incompatible with neo-Aristotelian philosophies like Ayn Rand's Objectivism and Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J.  Den Uyl's "individualistic perfectionism," which assert the objectivity of human values. Yet, upon deeper examination, these traditions reveal profound compatibilities and complementary insights that provide a more robust framework for understanding human freedom, social cooperation, and the conditions for prosperity. This synthesis offers a powerful intellectual foundation for what could be termed "flourishing individualism"—the view that individuals possess an objective nature whose perfection requires specific social, political, and economic conditions, most notably freedom.

The Austrian School of economics and the neo-Aristotelian philosophy of freedom and flourishing share profound philosophical and methodological affinities. Both frameworks emphasize individual agency, moral responsibility, and the dynamic process of human flourishing in a world of uncertainty and choice. Although Austrian economists such as Ludwig von Mises typically maintain that values are subjective, and neo-Aristotelians assert that values are objective in a moral sense, these positions are not incompatible when understood as operating on different levels of analysis: the praxeological versus the ethical. Both perspectives converge on the centrality of rational agency, the importance of practical wisdom, and the moral necessity of liberty for human flourishing. This essay explores these convergences, demonstrating that Austrian economics and the neo-Aristotelian ethical framework together form a mutually enriching paradigm of freedom and flourishing.

 The Foundations of Austrian Economics

Austrian economics emerged in the late nineteenth century with Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics (1871), which emphasized methodological individualism, subjectivism, and the causal-realistic method. Menger held that value originates in the human mind’s recognition of the usefulness of goods for achieving desired ends. Later thinkers such as Ludwig von Mises (1949), Friedrich Hayek (1948), and Israel Kirzner (1973) expanded this foundation, emphasizing purposive human action (praxeology), the coordinating role of the price system, and the discovery process of entrepreneurship. Mises’s Human Action presents economics as a deductive science grounded in the axiom that “man acts purposefully” (Mises 1949). Human action, for Mises, is always rational in the instrumental sense—it involves the use of means to achieve chosen ends under conditions of uncertainty.

Israel Kirzner added to this framework by introducing the concept of entrepreneurial alertness. Entrepreneurs notice opportunities for profit that others have overlooked, thereby correcting market errors and coordinating dispersed knowledge. Kirzner’s entrepreneur is a creative, forward-looking agent who exercises alertness, judgment, and initiative—traits that closely parallel the Aristotelian notion of phronesis, or practical wisdom (Kirzner 1973). In both frameworks, knowledge, creativity, and prudence are essential for navigating the complexities of real-world decision-making.

Neo-Aristotelian and Objectivist Ethics of Flourishing

The neo-Aristotelian philosophy of Rasmussen and Den Uyl, articulated in Norms of Liberty (2005), The Perfectionist Turn (2016) and The Realist Turn (2020) seeks to develop a liberal political order grounded in the ethics of individual perfectionism. They argue that moral value is objective and grounded in human nature: flourishing (eudaimonia) is the natural end of human beings as rational and social agents. Moral principles are thus derived from the requirements of human flourishing, not from arbitrary preferences. Rand’s Objectivism similarly holds that reason is man’s means of survival, that values are objective, and that rational self-interest is the proper moral code (Rand 1964).

Rasmussen and Den Uyl distinguish between self-perfection—the moral ideal of living rationally and virtuously—and self-directedness, the political condition that makes self-perfection possible. Rights, in their account, protect the liberty necessary for individuals to pursue their own perfection in diverse ways. Their framework, like Rand’s, integrates metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics to yield a view of human beings as rational, volitional agents who must exercise practical reason to flourish.

 Subjective and Objective Value: Distinct Spheres of Analysis

One of the most frequently discussed issues in relating Austrian economics to neo-Aristotelian ethics concerns the apparent conflict between Misesian subjectivism and Aristotelian or Objectivist views about value. Mises maintains that “value is subjective,” meaning that economic value arises from individual preferences and choices; there are no objective economic values apart from subjective evaluations by acting persons. Rand and Rasmussen and Den Uyl, by contrast, hold that moral values are objective because they are grounded in the requirements of human life and flourishing. However, as Kathleen Touchstone (2015) and I (2011) have argued, these positions refer to different levels of analysis and are not contradictory.

This subjectivism is epistemological and economic, not moral. Mises did not claim that values are morally relative; rather, he argued that economics must remain value-free to maintain scientific rigor. Mises’s subjectivism pertains to the preferences individuals express in their actions, not to the truth or falsity of moral claims. Austrian economics thus provides a descriptive account of human behavior, focusing on how individuals allocate scarce resources to achieve their goals.

In the praxeological sense, subjectivity refers to the agent-relative nature of preference: each individual chooses based on his or her own hierarchy of ends. In the ethical sense, objectivity refers to the fact that some ends are objectively better than others for human flourishing. Austrian economists do not deny that there may be objective criteria for human well-being; rather, economics as a value-free science abstains from ethical judgments. Thus, Austrian subjectivism is methodological, not moral. Neo-Aristotelian philosophies,  in turn, concern moral evaluation, not economic explanation. The two frameworks, therefore, are compatible and complementary.

In contrast to the Austrian position, Rand's Objectivism maintains that values are objective, meaning they are "determined by the nature of reality, but to be discovered by man's mind."  Values are not created by whim or social convention but are discovered through rational inquiry into the requirements of human life. As Peikoff (1991) explains Rand's ethics, "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."  From this perspective, something is objectively valuable if it genuinely promotes human life and flourishing according to man's nature as a rational being.

Similarly, Rasmussen and Den Uyl's individualistic perfectionism, while acknowledging the diversity of flourishing paths, maintains that human flourishing serves as an objective standard for ethics. They 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.  The objectivity resides in the factual requirements for human flourishing, while the specific instantiation varies according to individual circumstances, talents, and choices.

The resolution to this apparent contradiction lies in recognizing that these theories operate at different levels of analysis. The Austrian subjective theory of value explains how economic calculation and market prices emerge from individual preferences in the context of scarcity. The neo-Aristotelian objective theory of value explains how certain goods, virtues, and institutions reliably promote human flourishing given human nature. The neo-Aristotelian sense of value-objectivity complements the Austrian sense of value-subjectivity because personal flourishing on an objective level transcends subjective value preferences.

 Entrepreneurship, Practical Wisdom, and Eudaimonia

The Austrian entrepreneur and the Aristotelian practically wise person share deep conceptual similarities. Kirzner’s entrepreneur acts under uncertainty, perceives opportunities, and exercises judgment and creativity—traits essential to human flourishing. Likewise, Aristotelian phronesis involves rational deliberation about means and ends in the pursuit of eudaimonia. Both require sensitivity to context, adaptability, and the courage to act amidst uncertainty.

Rasmussen and Den Uyl (2005) describe flourishing as a self-directed activity of reason, while Kirzner (1973) and Mises (1949) describe the market process as an open-ended discovery procedure. Both perspectives view human action as purposive and guided by reason. The Austrian view of entrepreneurship provides a dynamic understanding of how individuals realize their plans within institutional frameworks, which aligns with the Aristotelian conception of practical wisdom as context-sensitive, agent-centered reasoning.

Rasmussen and Den Uyl’s Individualistic Perfectionism builds on Aristotelian ethics to defend a liberal political order. They argue that human flourishing (eudaimonia) is agent-relative and pluralistic, requiring liberty for individuals to pursue their own good. Their philosophy emphasizes practical wisdom (phronesis), the capacity to deliberate well about how to live.

Rand’s rational egoism and Rasmussen and Den Uyl’s agent-relative flourishing both affirm the moral legitimacy of self-interest. Austrian economics shows how self-interest, when channeled through markets, leads to mutual benefit. As Kathleen Touchstone argues, “Practical reason can be aligned with self-interest in a way that promotes both personal and social good.” This alignment reinforces the idea that liberty is not only economically efficient but morally justifiable.

This aligns closely with Austrian economists’ view of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs exercise alertness and judgment in navigating uncertainty and making context-sensitive decisions. As Benjamin Powell and Rosolino Candela (2014) have shown, entrepreneurial action is a form of practical reasoning, akin to Aristotelian phronesis. Both traditions recognize that flourishing requires freedom, creativity, and contextual judgment.

In both frameworks, success depends on alertness to opportunity—economic or moral. The morally flourishing individual, like the entrepreneur, must remain open to new information, creatively respond to change, and act on rational insight. This parallel suggests that the Aristotelian notion of practical wisdom and the Austrian idea of entrepreneurial alertness describe complementary dimensions of human rationality: moral and economic.

Both traditions recognize that practical wisdom and entrepreneurial judgment are necessary precisely because human beings face genuine uncertainty and operate with limited knowledge. The Austrian emphasis on the market as a discovery procedure for mobilizing dispersed knowledge complements the neo-Aristotelian recognition that human flourishing requires practical wisdom precisely because we cannot have algorithmic certainty about how to live well. As Kathleen Touchstone observes in her comparison of Rand and the Austrians, the recognition of death's inevitability plays a crucial role in establishing life as the ultimate value, highlighting the finitude that makes choice meaningful.  Our limited time and knowledge make both economic and ethical judgment necessary and meaningful.

Liberty as the Political Prerequisite for Flourishing

Both Austrian economists and neo-Aristotelians maintain that liberty is the indispensable precondition for human flourishing. For Mises and Hayek, economic freedom allows individuals to coordinate dispersed knowledge and discover better ways to achieve their goals. For Rand, Rasmussen, and Den Uyl, moral self-perfection requires the freedom to act on one’s rational judgment without coercion. The rule of law and private property thus provide the institutional context within which individuals can exercise moral and entrepreneurial agency.

Many economists have shown that economic liberty correlates strongly with prosperity and well-being, but beyond material benefits, liberty also enables moral growth, Freedom is valuable not only as a means but also as a necessary condition for self-responsibility and virtue. The Austrian and neo-Aristotelian perspectives converge in seeing liberty as both an epistemic and a moral requirement—a framework that respects the dignity of human choice and the moral significance of self-directedness.

The Austrian understanding of the market as a spontaneous order—an emergent pattern of cooperation that results from human action but not human design—provides an economic justification for the political framework defended by neo-Aristotelian philosophers. The result of these 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.

 Human Action, Rational Agency, and the Unity of Knowledge

Austrian economics and the neo-Aristotelian philosophy share a common anthropological foundation: human beings as rational, purposive agents. Mises’s praxeology and Aristotle’s practical philosophy both begin from the recognition that action is purposeful and intelligible. Barry Smith (1990) has argued that Mises’s praxeological categories correspond closely to Aristotelian metaphysical concepts: means, ends, causality, and teleology. This correspondence suggests that Austrian economics, though methodologically individualist, is compatible with a broader realist metaphysics of human nature.

Rand’s Objectivism likewise rests on a realist ontology and a teleological conception of life. Human reason is a means of survival, and moral virtue is the consistent choice to act in accordance with reason. Rasmussen and Den Uyl (2016) extend this insight by emphasizing that the moral self is a “self-perfecting agent” whose flourishing requires both internal rational order and external social liberty. The Austrian theory of the market as a spontaneous order complements this moral vision: both rely on the creative, adaptive rationality of individuals operating within an open-ended, complex world.

Self-Interest, Practical Reason, and Moral Responsibility

In both Austrian and neo-Aristotelian thought, self-interest is rational and morally legitimate. For Mises, self-interest is inherent in human action: individuals act to remove felt uneasiness and improve their conditions. For Rand, self-interest is the moral expression of the objective requirements of human life. Rasmussen and Den Uyl reinterpret self-interest in terms of self-perfection: the pursuit of moral virtue and excellence as expressions of one’s nature as a rational being.

Practical reason (phronesis) guides this pursuit by integrating knowledge, experience, and judgment in concrete circumstances. Similarly, the Austrian entrepreneur uses reason to identify and pursue profit opportunities, which represent the coordination of subjective values through voluntary exchange. This coordination process can be seen as a form of social learning in which individual discovery contributes to mutual benefit. Both frameworks thus ground moral and economic order in the creative, purposive activity of rational agents.

 Harmony Between Ethics and Economics

Austrian economics and neo-Aristotelian ethics are not separate silos but complementary aspects of a unified understanding of human life. Economic science explains how individuals interact within markets to achieve their diverse ends, while ethical philosophy clarifies which ends are worthy of pursuit. Together they yield a comprehensive view of the human person as a self-responsible, rational being whose flourishing depends on freedom, virtue, and creativity.

It could be argued that integrating these perspectives results in a “humanomics” of flourishing—a science of man that recognizes the inseparability of moral and economic dimensions of action. (Rasmussen 2024-25) Freedom provides the institutional framework; virtue provides the moral compass; entrepreneurship provides the practical engine of progress. Each reinforces the others in a mutually supportive system.

Conclusion: Toward a Paradigm of Freedom and Flourishing

The intellectual convergence between Austrian economics and neo-Aristotelian philosophy represents more than an academic curiosity. It offers a comprehensive framework for understanding human flourishing under conditions of freedom that integrates insights from ethics, economics, and political theory. Their complementarity arises from addressing different but interconnected aspects of the human condition: the Austrian tradition explaining how social cooperation emerges from individual choices under specific institutional arrangements, and the neo-Aristotelian tradition explaining what constitutes a well-lived life for the individual choosing agent.

Rand admired Mises and the Austrian school, praising their defense of capitalism and critique of central planning. She ranked Mises among history’s intellectual giants and featured favorable reviews of his works in her publications. However, she rejected Mises’s value subjectivism, insisting that values must be grounded in objective reality. For Rand, values are not arbitrary preferences but facts of reality that reflect the requirements of human life.

Yet, as scholars like Robert Tarr have noted, this apparent conflict dissolves when we recognize that Mises and Rand operate at different levels of analysis. Mises’s subjectivism pertains to economic behavior, while Rand’s objectivism addresses moral philosophy. As Tarr puts it, “The Austrian and Objectivist views of value are not contradictory but complementary when properly contextualized.” Austrian economics describes how individuals act; Objectivism prescribes how they ought to act.

The resolution of the apparent conflict between subjective and objective value through different levels of analysis enriches both traditions, allowing economists to acknowledge the purpose-serving nature of market activity while enabling philosophers to recognize the institutional prerequisites for virtue. The connection between entrepreneurial judgment and practical wisdom highlights the moral dimension of economic creativity while acknowledging the cognitive demands of both economic and ethical excellence. The defense of political and economic freedom as essential for human flourishing provides a shared normative foundation for evaluating social institutions.

This synthesis finds eloquent expression in the work of scholars who explicitly aim to forge an understanding from various disciplines and to integrate them into consistent, coherent, and systematic whole. The goal is to have a paradigm in which the views of reality, human nature, knowledge, values, action, and society make up an integrated whole. This integrated perspective acknowledges what Rasmussen and Den Uyl (2016) identify as the "tethered character of political philosophy" to deeper metaphysical and ethical frameworks.

Perhaps most importantly, this integrated perspective reminds us that economics and philosophy ultimately serve the same end: understanding and promoting the conditions for human flourishing. The economic creativity unleashed by markets and the ethical excellence cultivated through virtue represent complementary aspects of what can be identified as flourishing and happiness in a free society.  By recognizing their compatibility and complementarity, we can move closer to an integrated understanding of human freedom that enables individuals to realize their highest potential through reason, practical wisdom, and voluntary cooperation.

The convergence of Austrian economics and neo-Aristotelian perfectionism reveals a coherent philosophical paradigm that integrates economics, ethics, and politics around the concept of rational human agency. Austrian economics contributes a dynamic, subjectivist understanding of market coordination and entrepreneurial discovery. Neo-Aristotelian and Objectivist ethics provide an objective, normative account of human flourishing and moral responsibility. Far from being incompatible, the subjective and objective dimensions of value illuminate different aspects of the same reality: human beings as valuers and choosers in a world of possibilities.

By recognizing their compatibility, scholars can move toward a richer, interdisciplinary synthesis—one that unites Misesian praxeology with Aristotelian virtue ethics, Kirznerian entrepreneurship with practical wisdom, and Randian self-interest with moral responsibility. This synthesis provides a powerful conceptual framework for understanding human life as a process of rational self-direction within a free society. It is, ultimately, a paradigm of freedom and flourishing.

 Recommended Reading

Bates, Winton. 2024. “The Vision of Ed Younkins’s Trilogy on Freedom and Flourishing” The Savvy Street.  (May 15).

Block, Walter. 2005. “Ayn Rand and Austrian Economists: Two Peas in a Pod” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol.6 No 2; 259-269.

Boettke, Peter J. 2019. “Mises, Rand, and the Twentieth Century” in Gregory Salmieri and Robert Mayhew, Foundations of a Free Society: Reflections on Ayn Rand’s Political Philosophy.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Candela, Rosolino A. 2018. “The Socialist Calculation Debate and its Normative Implications in Austrian Economics” The Next Generation: 29-44

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

Ebeling, Richard M. 2021. “The Case for Freedom in Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Ayn Rand”.  Future of Freedom (January).

Johnsson, Richard C. B..2005. “Subjectivism, Intrinsicism and Apriorism: Rand Among the Austrians”. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol.6 No.2: 317-335.

Kirzner, Israel M. 1973. Competition and Entrepreneurship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Menger, Carl. 1871. Principles of Economics. Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller.

Mises, Ludwig von. 1949. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Pauls, Theodore N. 2025 “What Do Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives tell us about Flourishing Individualism?” Freedom and Flourishing (June 24).

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

Powell, Benjamin and Rosolino Candela. 2014. “Markets as Processes of Moral Discovery” Studies in Emergent Order. Vol.7: 258-272.

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

Rasmussen, Douglas B. 2024-25 “Homo Agens and Homo Moralis in Humanomics”. The Independent Review. (Winter).

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

Rasmussen, Douglas B. and Douglas J. Den Uyl. 2020, The Realist Turn: Repositioning Liberalism Palgrave Macmillan.

Smith, Barry. 1990. “Aristotle, Menger, Mises: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Economics.” History of Political Economy 22 (3): 683–706.

Tarr, Robert. 2019."Economic Theory and the Conceptions of Value: Rand and the Austrians versus the Mainstream”. In Gregory Salmieri and Robert Mayhew, Foundations of a Free Society: Reflections on Ayn Rand’s Political Philosophy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 327-380.

Touchstone, Kathleen. 2015. “Rand and the Austrians: The Ultimate Value and the Non-interference Principle”. Libertarian Papers. 7 No.2, 169-204.

Touchstone, Kathleen. 2020.  Freedom, Eudaemonia, and Risk: An Inquiry into the Ethics of Risk-Taking.  Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Younkins, Edward W. 2005. ‘Menger, Mises, Rand, and Beyond” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 6 no.2 Spring: 337-74.

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

What does Gerald Gaus tell us about the implications of the knowledge problem for political entrepreneurship?

 

This essay is the latest in a series that I have been writing about political entrepreneurship. It is the second that I have written on the implications of the knowledge problem for the plans of entrepreneurs who seek to improve economic and social outcomes. The first essay discussed Don Lavoie’s contribution to our understanding of the implications of the knowledge problem in that context.

The Complexities of the Open Society

This essay is based on my reading of Gerry Gaus’s final book, The Open Society and its Complexities. Gaus was a prolific author. This book, published in 2021, has been described by Chandran Kukathas as “his most ambitious work”. Gaus adopted an interdisciplinary approach to political philosophy and saw himself as being in “the truth business” rather than a proponent of any ideology. Nevertheless, it is obvious from the book that he valued the norms of liberty of the Open Society and detested authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

Like Don Lavoie, Gerry Gaus was strongly influenced by F. A. Hayek. In The Open Society, Gaus re-considers some of Hayek’s views in the light of developments over the last 20 years in theories of evolution and analyses of societies as complex systems. He focuses on the following three challenges based on his interpretation of Hayek’s views:

• First, do “our evolved moral sentiments constantly cause us to rebel against the Open Society and resort to a “tribal” moral outlook”?
• Second, given that “an evolved complex culture requires fidelity to … evolved norms, what type of justification” of the norms of the Open Society is open to us”?
• Third, has the Open Society “evolved beyond our governance”?

I will provide here just the briefest possible summary of Gaus’s responses to the first two questions.

First, humans “are certainly not inherently groupish creatures”. Humans are “fit for the Open Society”. However, they have not been optimized for it or any other social order, including tribal society.

Second, because the diversity of moral perspectives is fundamental to the moral life of the Open Society, the existence of increasingly diverse moral perspectives can enhance justification of the Open Society. The Open Society is characterized by self-organized social morality, entailing moral rules that lead toward extended cooperation rather than conflict and division. Public justifications of those moral rules must be as accommodating to diversity as possible. Effective governance requires widely justified norms and policies.

Knowledge required for governance

In this essay I focus on the Gaus’s view of the knowledge problem in his discussion of the question of whether the Open Society has evolved beyond “our” governance. He alludes to the knowledge problem when he observes that “we seek to devise policies to improve” the functioning of the Open Society. However, “we do not have the knowledge and competency to do so, hence we are constantly disappointed by the last round of interventions and we blame the last government for its failures and broken promises” (p. 13).

The passage quoted in the epigraph is from page 244, a point in the book where Gaus was summing up his argument. After noting that the passive population model often supposed that people would act against their own judgments, Gaus adds:

“Unfortunately, this view has been resurrected by those elites who continue to believe that the public is too ignorant to make its own decisions, and so should submit to “epistocracy,” or rule by those who know (aka, them). Not only, however, is such expertise essentially nonexistent in complex systems, but most actual agents in the Open Society are anything but passive materials to be guided by the elite: they are active, reflexive agents who make their own choices. When citizens do not endorse a policy, many will employ their resources to evade it.”

In considering whether the Open Society has evolved beyond our governance, Gaus introduces the concept of “self-governance”.  Self-governance is not the same as spontaneous self-organization, although Gaus suggests that the two concepts are not necessarily incompatible.

Self-governance requires that there be a “controller” who collects information at the system level and then uses that information to fuel a decision procedure that plays a role in guiding the systems behaviour.

Gaus refers to those aspiring to be controllers as governors. The roles that governors seek to perform may include the functions of political entrepreneurs. As I have discussed elsewhere, that function includes listening to the discourse of potential customers (supporters) to sense what they are likely to find attractive, and on that basis producing new products (policy proposals) and selling them persuasively.

Gaus considers three levels of governance – macro, meso, and micro- and three dimensions of governance – goal directed, strategic, and rules-focused. A goal-directed governor identifies preferred states and seeks to move society toward them. A strategic governor seeks to solve strategic dilemmas to assist citizens to secure outcomes they all want. A rules-focused governor seeks to structure some of the rules of self-organization.

Gaus’s analysis leads to the following conclusions:

• There is little prospect for a governor to successfully pursue macro-level goals in a complex society. For example, efforts to promote development in particular societies are often unsuccessful because institutions cannot readily be transferred from on society to another.
• Attempts to structure the “rules of the game” at a macro level are more promising. In cooperation with the self-organized normative framework of society a governor may effectively shape the rules of self-organization e.g. via civil rights legislation.
• Goal pursuit at the meso level is a dubious enterprise. Pursuit of environmental, economic and welfare-targeted variables is a hit-and-miss affair because our social world is a complex system. It is not linear and determinate, as is often assumed. Successful goal pursuit in a complex world is usually a matter of “muddling through” (sometimes described as learning-based governance).
• Polycentric governance studies show that a focus on problem-solving tends to facilitate effective governance when publics share pressing strategic dilemmas.
• There may be grounds for more optimism about the prospect for micro governance than governance at other levels.

In writing about micro governance, Gaus makes a favourable reference to the work of Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Gaus justifies his optimism about micro governance as follows:

 “When changes come up from the more micro levels, not only are they apt to garner the moral endorsement of actual citizens, but the Open Society will possess a diversity of normative networks. Because what works today may be dysfunctional tomorrow, a diversity of approaches is always critical. This itself upsets the moralist, who believes she speaks for the truth about justice, and sees most deviations from her plan as shades of immorality. But many of the diverse publics will not take up her solutions—many citizens will see different problems and possibilities, and their normative beliefs will lead them to different solutions. (p. 240)

Summing up

In The Open Society and its Complexities, Gerry Gaus provided insights about the circumstances in which political entrepreneurs may be successful in pursuing goals.

Gaus was highly critical of the passive population model which assumes that people will follow policies dictated by governments rather than acting as self-governing agents. Such considerations made him highly skeptical about pursuit of goals at a macro level in a complex society.

He viewed pursuit of environmental, economic and welfare goals as problematic but acknowledged that some success may be achieved by “muddling through” i.e. adjusting policies in response to outcomes.

He was more optimistic about cooperative efforts to modify the “rules of the game” in which self-organization occurs. He also acknowledged that a focus on problem-solving tends to facilitate effective governance when people are confronted by pressing strategic dilemmas.

Gaus seems to have been most optimistic about micro-level governance that is able to garner the endorsement of “actual citizens”.

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.

Did Robert Nozick hold a view of the evolution of natural rights that is similar to that held by John Hasnas?

 

This question came to mind while I was reading Chapter 4 of John Hasnas’s recently published book, Common Law Liberalism: A New Theory of the Libertarian Society. Chapter 4 was originally published in 2005 in Social Philosophy and Policy (22, 111-147) but I hadn’t previously read it.

In this chapter, entitled ‘Empirical Natural Rights’, Hasnas suggests that neither John Locke nor Robert Nozick offered adequate arguments for the existence of natural rights. (His discussion of Nozick focuses on Anarchy, State, and Utopia.) He 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 the negative rights to life, liberty and property on which Locke and Nozick rest their arguments, and that ENR have instrumental moral value.

In the first part of this essay, I outline Nozick’s evolutionary explanation for emergence of the ethics of respect. Following that, I compare the evolutionary accounts offered by Hasnas and Nozick, and finish the essay considering the normative status of ENRs.

Nozick’s evolutionary explanation for the ethics of respect

As far as I know, Nozick never claimed to have provided an account of the evolution of natural rights, but I believe that he did so in Chapter 5 of Invariances (published in 2001). Since I outlined Nozick’s speculations about evolution of the ethics of respect in Chapter 2 of Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, I will reproduce some relevant paragraphs below:

“Nozick’s account of the evolution of the ethics of respect, draws upon biological evolution as well as cultural evolution. He suggests that the higher capacities of humans, including capacities for conscious thought, control of impulses and planning, have been selected for by evolution because of the benefits they bring, for example in enabling adherence to ethical norms.^[i] Evolution may have shaped humans to enjoy the benefits of cooperative activity. A reputation for adhering to norms of cooperative behavior brings rewards by attracting further cooperation, and may have conferred reproductive advantages.^[ii] A capacity for evaluating objects and desires might have been selected for, or exist as a beneficial side-effect of a combination of capacities.^[iii] Conscious self-awareness may have been selected for because it makes humans capable of norm-guided behavior to mutual benefit.^[iv]

Nozick suggests that internalization of norms brings ethics into play. Something other than (or in addition to) punishment by other people must support rules if they are to become ethical principles or values. The internalization of norms enables people to follow them when no-one is watching who can sanction deviations.^[v]

The norm of social coordination and cooperation proposed by Nozick has these characteristics:

“It makes mandatory the widest voluntary cooperation to mutual benefit; it makes only that mandatory; and it (in general) prohibits interactions that are not to mutual benefit, unless they are entered into voluntarily by all parties, or unless these interactions (such as the act of punishing another) are in response to previous violation of the principle or to preparations to violate it”.^[vi]

Moral progress, Nozick suggests, incorporates, among other things, shrinkage of the domain of mandatory morality to enable a domain of liberty and personal autonomy to be established, and for the ethics of respect to emerge.^[vii] 

Nozick acknowledges that someone could agree that ethics originates in mutually beneficial coordinating activity and yet claim that conscious self-awareness is valuable for reasons other than norm following. He sums up:

“Still, if conscious self-awareness was selected for because it makes us capable of ethical behavior, then ethics, even the very first layer of the ethics of respect, truly is what makes us human. A satisfying conclusion. And one with some normative force”.^[viii]

Since the ethics of respect entails recognition of Lockean rights, Nozick’s naturalistic explanation implicitly recognizes that such rights are natural.”

Comparison of Hasnas and Nozick

The differences between the evolutionary accounts offered by Hasnas and Nozick seem to me to amount to differences of emphasis. Nozick emphasized the link between conscious self-awareness and ethical behaviour, whereas Hasnas’s account seems to have a more Hayekian emphasis on evolution of rules that are not the result of deliberate human design. Hasnas emphasizes dispute settlement:

“Various methods for composing disputes are tried. Those that leave the parties unsatisfied and likely to again resort to violence are abandoned. Those that effectively resolve the disputes with the minimal disturbance to the peace of the community continue to be used and are accompanied by ever-increasing social pressure for disputants to employ them.

Over time, security arrangements and dispute settlement procedures that are well-enough adapted to social and material circumstances to reduce violence to generally acceptable levels become regularized.” (130)

 Hasnas acknowledges the normative significance of the rules that evolve:

“Over time, these rules become invested with normative significance and the members of the community come to regard the ways in which the rules permit them to act at their pleasure as their rights. Thus, in the state of nature, rights evolve out of human beings’ efforts to address the inconveniences of that state. In the state of nature, rights are solved problems.” (131)

The rules presumably came to have normative significance because people thought about them and recognized they had merit (aided by the persuasive efforts of Moses and other community leaders).

Hasnas does not claim that ENR fit the definition of natural rights as moral entitlements that humans possess simply by virtue of their humanity. He suggests that ENR are natural in the sense of having evolved in the state of nature and pre-date the formation of civil government.

I am not entirely persuaded that the distinction between ENR and natural rights is necessary. As far as I am aware, humanity didn’t exist prior to the biological and social evolution that resulted in the emergence of modern humans about 100,000 years ago.

Nevertheless, the question arises of whether it is possible to provide a normative justification for natural rights purely based on speculation about the evolutionary origins of ethical intuitions about rights to life, liberty and property.

The Normative Status of ENR

 Hasnas argues 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.”

The author spends a few pages making this point. He has no difficulty persuading me of the importance of peace to the moral theory that I subscribe to. However, I see some groups of people in the world who claim to hold moral theories that support activities directed towards plundering, murdering, and enslaving others.

It seems to me that those of us who believe that peace is a pre-eminent moral value should be willing to provide explicit normative reasons why we consider peace to be so important.

 

 

 

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[i] Nozick, Invariances, 243.

[ii] Nozick, Invariances, 246.

[iii] Nozick, Invariances, 276.

[iv] Nozick, Invariances, 299. Conscious self-awareness also enables each of us to recognize the existential responsibility of making a life for oneself. See: Den Uyl and Rasmussen, Perfectionist Turn, 7.

[v] Nozick, Invariances, 247-8.

[vi] Nozick, Invariances, 259.

[vii] Nozick, Invariances, 265.

[viii] Nozick, Invariances, 300.

Can discourse ethics help us to assess ideas about justice?

This essay focuses mainly on the discourse ethics of Jürgen Habermas.

Habermas, who will be 95 years old tomorrow, developed a theory of communicative rationality based on the argument that all speech has an inherent goal of mutual understanding and that humans possess the communicative competence to bring about such understanding.

Habermas is a public intellectual, but I haven’t followed his contributions to discussion of topical issues closely enough to judge whether they exemplify the discourse ethics that he advocates. My main reason for interest in Habermas’s discourse ethics is the apparent influence he has had on other philosophers, including Hilary Putnam and Amartya Sen.

In this essay I briefly outline the principles of Habermas’s discourse ethics, the ideological background and motive for his focus on communication, and similarities and differences between his communication ethics and those of Michael Polanyi and Ayn Rand, before briefly discussing whether his discourse ethics offers a normative basis to assess ideas about justice.

Principles

Habermas’s two principles of discourse ethics relate to the philosophical justification of a moral standpoint. The first concerns consensus (or possible consensus):

Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.

The second is a generalizability rule, or principle of universalization:

All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone’s interests (and these consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities).  

(For references, please see the entry on Habermas in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)

Ideological background and motive

The context in which Habermas developed his ideas about communication has been explained by Chris Sciabarra in Marx, Hayek, and Utopia. Sciabarra explains Habermas’s project as an outgrowth of the Frankfurt school, which “attempted to recapture the dialectical method of Marx, while maintaining a Marxist faith in the human triumph over unintended consequences” (Chapter 7)

Friedrich Hayek argued that any attempt by an individual or group of individuals to produce social change would inevitably have unintended consequences. Hayek argued that achievement of Karl Marx’s historical projection of a communist utopia would require a different kind of species capable of total knowledge of the consequences of their actions, rather than humans who are only capable of partial knowledge.

Sciabarra presents Habermas’s ideas about communication as a reconstruction of Marx’s project to focus on empirical conditions under which people could engage in practical, transformative social action. Habermas’s ideal society is one based on non-exploitative social relations. He views all social systems as networks of communicative actions, and argues that the institutions of power depend on and perpetuate a distorted form of social communication.

Habermas argues that if people could master ideal speech they would move towards the goals of truth, freedom and justice. One of the important characteristics of ideal speech is that the speaker must want to express his intentions truthfully so that the hearer can believe in (or trust) the utterance of the speaker. Participants learn to trust one another and share value orientations when speech is free from deception and other forms of communicative distortion. Habermas suggests that social consensus will emerge as people achieve communicative competence. (My intention is to convey the gist of Habermas’s argument without distorting it but my account has all the limitations of a summary of a summary.)

Comparison with Polanyi and Rand

Michael Polanyi was a polymath whose understanding of the importance of tacit knowledge was largely endorsed by Hayek. Sciabarra presents a quote from Polanyi which suggests that his position on communication differs little from that of Habermas. Both emphasised the importance of trust in communication and the potential for shared values to emerge from dialogue. However, Sciabarra also notes a crucial difference between them. While Habermas argued that the tacit component of dialogue could be fully articulated, Polanyi held that this was not possible.

Habermas argues that depth hermeneutics, a form of psychoanalysis, could make explicit the tacit causal connections that take place in an individual’s subconscious, overcoming blocks to consciousness, and enabling a reintegration to occur. One goal of this process is intersubjectivity – enabling participants in discussions to exchange roles with one another in expressing their needs and interests.

Sciabarra discusses the similarity and differences between Ayn Rand’s communication ethics and those of Habermas in Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Rand recognized that honesty is an essential component of rational human relations and fully understood the exploitive nature of strategic forms of communication. Rand’s followers emphasize that self-deception is distortive of an individual’s efficacy and communicative competence.

Sciabarra suggests that an “emphasis on communicative truthfulness, self-awareness, and “de-repression” is as crucial to the Randian project as it is to Habermasian discourse theory”. (293) He suggests that “she sustained a belief in a conflict-free society of individuals united by their common love for the same values” (355). However, Rand’s values differed from those of Habermas: She “would have vehemently rejected Habermas’s emphasis on “intersubjectivity” and the social consensus of norms”. (291)

Relevance to ideas about justice

If we are seeking to reach agreement with others it seems obvious that we should seek to understand the basis for their points of view. For example, if a person is engaged in a discussion with his or her spouse about who should cook dinner, agreement is more likely if each party understands why the other might or might not want to cook on a particular day.

In the example I have just given, both parties have a strong incentive to reach agreement to enable a harmonious relationship to continue. It is also possible to think of contexts at a societal level where people have a strong incentive to reach agreement and are willing to set aside differences in current interests in making collective decisions. James Buchanan and Gordon Tulloch suggested that when individuals are considering constitutional rules that they expect to be in place for a long time, they may be able to set aside current interests because they are uncertain about what their interests will be in any of the long chain of collective choices made according to those rules. (The Calculus of Consent) I wonder if Habermas would approve if the participants in a constitutional convention agreed to rules protecting individual rights to property ownership.

This brings me to a fundamental problem with Habermas’s generalizability rule. Douglas Rasmussen pointed this out. (‘Political legitimacy and discourse ethics’, International Philosophical Quarterly, March 1992) According to Habermas, the “moral point of view” requires one to consider the satisfaction of one’s own needs and interests from an impersonal point of view – from a point of view which treats the fact that some needs and interests are uniquely yours as being of no consequence. Rasmussen points out that this so called “moral point of view” is not compatible with the moral reasoning of real people in real situations:

“One cannot even recognize his own life as his and his own reasoning as his very own if in order to play the moral game one must forgo all special attachments to ends that are uniquely one’s own.” (30)

Rasmussen concludes by noting that values associated with modernity, including recognition of the inherent worth of the individual human being, are inconsistent with Habermas’s “moral view”:

“Such a modern view, then, does not call for theoretical attempts to paper over the real and legitimate differences among the values and projects of individuals by attempting artificially to induce consensus through a generalizability of interests rule or by appealing to the so called “moral point of view”. Rather, it requires that one accept the moral propriety of pluralism and individualism, and from this starting point attempt the difficult task of constructing a theory of justice.” (34)

Conclusions

Jürgen Habermas has proposed that principles of discourse ethics can provide a normative basis to assess ideas about justice.

Habermas developed his principles of discourse ethics while reconstructing Marx’s project. He envisaged that the potential for “ideal speech” could enable a social consensus to emerge for movement towards the goals of truth, freedom, and justice.

Habermas’s discourse ethics is similar in some respects to the views of communication ethics advocated by Michael Polanyi and Ayn Rand. However, unlike Polanyi, Habermas argued that the tacit component of dialogue could be fully articulated. Unlike Rand, Habermas argued for intersubjectivity, which amounts to adoption of an impersonal point of view.

There is a fundamental problem in applying Habermas’s principles of discourse ethics to assess ideas about justice. Habermas’s generalizability rule seeks to artificially induce consensus by papering over legitimate differences among values held by individuals. 

Addendum

Readers may also be interested in Chris Sciabarra's discussion of possible libertarian applications of Habermas's view in a section on "Dialogical Models" in libertarian thought, in Chapter 9 of "Total Freedom". That section surveys various thinkers in Austrian and libertarian traditions.