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.

What role does political entrepreneurship play in institutional change?

 

One of the reasons I quoted that passage by Douglass North is because it mentions political entrepreneurship. I went looking for a quote from North in Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance because I was particularly impressed by that book when I first read it about 30 years ago. (The quoted sentence appears on page 87.)

As defined by North, institutions are “the rules of the game of society” that shape human interaction. He argued that formal institutions—such as constitutions, laws, and regulations—make up only a small proportion of the sum of constraints that shape choices. Informal constraints include codes of conduct, norms of behavior, conventions, and customs. They may be internalized in personal values, rather than imposed by others.

North acknowledged that political entrepreneurship plays a role in institutional change. He doesn’t have much to say about political entrepreneurship, but his analysis implies that political entrepreneurs may play an important role in reducing transactions costs associated with institutional change.

Path dependence and institutional stickiness

The transactions costs of institutional change are high because of the path dependence of institutions. As institutions evolve, ideologies tend to evolve to support them. Organizations and interest groups that have grown up under existing institutions often have a stake in maintaining them.  

The most important point I had remembered from reading Institutions … is that countries with similar formal institutions – constitutions, property rights etc. – can have vastly different economic performance outcomes if informal institutions (cultural settings) are different. Governments and international agencies that have sought to transplant formal institutions to foreign countries have been slow to recognize that point.

The implications of path dependence have been further explored by Peter Boettke, Christopher Coyne, and Peter Leeson in “Institutional Stickiness and the New Development Economics”, Chapter 6 in Culture of Economic Action, ed. Laura E. Grube and Virgil Henry Storr (2015).  The authors contend that the ability of a new institutional arrangement to take hold when it has been transplanted depends on that institutions status in relations to indigenous agents in the previous time period. They suggest that institutional transplants are unlikely to stick if they are inconsistent with indigenously introduced endogenous institutions.

The analytical framework used by Boettke et al is also relevant to considering the challenges faced by endogenous political entrepreneurs in bringing about institutional change.

Entrepreneurship (political and economic)

As discussed recently on this blog, political entrepreneurship has characteristics that differ from economic entrepreneurship. I suggested that it might be reasonable to assume that political entrepreneurs are motivated largely by the satisfaction they obtain from constructing ideological narratives and selling them, and from exercising the political power required to implement policies.

Nevertheless, there are similarities between political and economic entrepreneurship that become apparent when economic entrepreneurship is considered in a cultural context. In his article, “The discovery and interpretation of profit opportunities and the Kirznerian entrepreneur”, reproduced as Chapter 3 of Culture and Economic Action (cited above), Don Lavoie writes:

“Entrepreneurship necessarily takes place within culture, it is utterly shaped by culture, and it fundamentally consists in interpreting and influencing culture.” (p. 50)

He suggests:

“entrepreneurship is the achievement not so much of the isolated maverick who finds objective profits others overlooked as of the culturally embedded participant who picks up the gist of a conversation.” (p. 51)

Later, he observes:

“Most acts of entrepreneurship are not like an isolated individual finding things on beaches; they require effort of the imagination, skillful judgements of future costs and revenue possibilities, and an ability to read the significance of complex social situations.”

In the following chapter of Culture and Economic Action, Virgil Henry Storr and Arielle John suggest that rather than viewing Lavoie’s contribution as a critique of Kirzner’s theory of entrepreneurship it is more appropriate to view it as a suggestion as to how that theory may be fruitfully amended. The amendments suggested by Lavoie seem to me to make the role of the economic entrepreneur seem similar in some respects to the role of a political entrepreneur.

Max Weber’s understanding of political entrepreneurship

Douglass North seems to have given minimal acknowledgement of Max Weber’s work as a social theorist, even though there was considerable overlap in their areas of interest.  Francesca Trivellato has noted that in one publication North does refer to Weber as a scholar of “the role of belief and values in shaping change”. Weber is, of course, most often remembered for his theory of the Protestant ethic but he also made other important contributions.

Weber’s writings on charismatic and demagogic leadership shed some light on the nature of political entrepreneurship in democracies. The following points summarize an article by Xavier Márquez, entitled “Max Weber, demagogy and charismatic representation”, published in the European Journal of Political Theory (2024).

• Weber argued that effective leaders must be able to fight for ‘causes’ beyond the narrow immediate interests of economic groups or party organisations and thus to struggle against the impersonal forces of bureaucratization (the subsumption of politics under bureaucratic and technical imperatives). Effective leaders must therefore have a charismatic form of authority – the only form of authority capable of overcoming the constraints of organisation, legality and tradition.
• The need to appeal to mass publics in modern democratizing societies selects for leaders who have a talent for mobilising large groups of people through rhetorical means. In the context of mass politics, charismatic authority manifests as demagogy. Weber thinks of the masses as unorganized and irrational and argues that even ‘democratically’ elected leadership is a form of ‘dictatorship which rests on the exploitation of the emotionality of the masses.
• Weber's praise for charismatic and demagogic leadership is tempered by the worry that political leaders must also be responsible. This is so in a twofold sense: objectively, a political system must be able to hold leaders accountable for their actions; and subjectively, leaders must display an ethics of responsibility, and thus be able to ‘take responsibility’ for their actions.
• Elections formalize the recognition of charisma. If charismatic leaders capable of mobilizing and representing broad masses will tend to arise in any case, it is better if the recognition of their charisma is subject to periodic formal tests rather than informal, extra-legal events.
• Charismatic authority in the broadest sense tends to appear in moments of deep, even existential crisis, where the charismatic leader performs a ‘miracle’ for a group that feels otherwise impotent and deeply threatened, and can sustain itself only when the leader can provide such ‘miracles.
• The charismatic demagogue produces a wondrous or miraculous representation of the people as a charismatic community but also a ‘wondrous’ representation of himself.
• Weber argues that charismatic leaders must provide evidence of benefiting their charismatic community if they are to retain their authority. The implicit ‘bargain’ between leaders and followers that exists even in cases of strong charismatic authority allows us to speak of a degree of accountability and influence.
• Instead of distinguishing between the ‘mere’ demagogue and its antithesis, the statesman, in terms of whether or not they deceive the demos or act for the common good, Weber stresses the ethical distinction between the politician who is responsible for their cause, and thus capable of intentionally and rationally directing state power towards its achievement (in what is, strictly speaking, a value–rational way), and the politician who is not.
• Lack of objectivity (wishful thinking, extreme overconfidence, ignoring inconvenient information) in assessing a situation leads to irresponsible political action, insofar as it leads to a misunderstanding of the means necessary to achieve particular ends and the physical, social and political constraints on the use of such means. All leaders are susceptible to these vices, but the situation of the charismatic demagogue, surrounded by adoring followers and capable of summoning the adulation of crowds, makes these vices extremely common occupational hazards.
• Weber hoped that training in committee or party work would hone the political judgement of leaders so that they would be more likely to see the consequences of their decisions and to take responsibility for them. 

Márquez argues that Weber's conception of charismatic authority allows some demagogues to play a genuinely democratic role in modern societies when viewed through contemporary theories of representation. He suggests that a Weberian analysis of democracy points to the need for strong accountability mechanisms and for institutions that socialize potential leaders into productive habits of adversarial conduct and responsibility, while preventing easy ‘buck passing’.

Márquez observes that although Weber provides a stronger sense of democratic possibility than did Joseph Schumpeter, he is very much the ancestor of the ‘minimalist’ model of democracy that Schumpeter first articulated explicitly in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. (I wrote about Schumpeter’s model of democracy here in 2012.)

Directions of future research

This essay is the second in a series in which I am attempting to obtain a better understanding of political entrepreneurship. The first essay can be found here.

My next step is to read Robert Faulkner’s book, The Case for Greatness (2007). I am wondering whether the ancients thought it was possible for a charismatic demagog to also be a "great-souled" leader who is keen to promote liberty and opportunities for individuals to flourish. 

After that, I will consider how the concept of political entrepreneurship fits in with modern public choice literature.

Summary and Conclusions

This essay briefly considers the context in which political entrepreneurship is most relevant, some similarities between economic and political entrepreneurship, and the role of charismatic and demagogic leadership in political entrepreneurship within democracies.

The essay begins by considering the role that Douglas North saw for political entrepreneurship in bringing about institutional change – i.e. change in the rules of the game of society. Political entrepreneurship is required to overcome high transactions costs of change that arise from the path dependent nature of institutions. Building on the concept of path dependency, Peter Boettke, Christopher Coyne and Peter Leeson developed an analytical framework to consider the consequences of institutional stickiness for foreigners engaged in institution building exercises that seek to transplant institutions from one country to another. That framework is also relevant to considering the challenges faced by political entrepreneurs seeking to bring about institutional reforms in their own countries.

The essay then turns to consideration of the relevance to political entrepreneurship of Don Lavoie’s view of economic entrepreneurship. Lavoie suggests that entrepreneurship takes place within culture and is concerned with interpreting and influencing culture. He makes the role of the economic entrepreneur seem similar in some respects to that of the political entrepreneur.

The other major topic considered in the essay is the contribution that Max Weber makes to our understanding of political entrepreneurship through his writings on charismatic and demagogic leadership. Weber makes the case that charismatic and demagogic leadership may be required to overcome the impersonal forces of bureaucratization within democracies. He also sheds light on the circumstances in which demagogic leadership can be consistent with democracy.

North and Weber both add to our understanding of the role of the political entrepreneur in overcoming obstacles to institutional change. However, the fundamental question that both leave aside is how to ensure that institutional change enhances liberty and opportunities for individuals to flourish.  

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.

 

 

 

---

[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.

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

 

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

Comments on the first edition

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

Thick libertarianism

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

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

Possibility of influencing culture

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

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

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

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

Political philosophy versus individual action

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

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

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

Replies by Bates and Sciabarra

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

Winton Bates’s view of culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s view of culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

L1-L2-L3: Focusing on The Cultural

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

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

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

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

L2-L1-L3: Focusing on the Personal

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

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

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

L1-L3-L2: Focusing on the Structural

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

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

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

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

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

**

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

Did Hayek acknowledge the importance of individual self-direction in his vision of spontaneous order?

 

One of the reasons why Friedrich Hayek’s vision of spontaneous order is more attractive than collectivist alternatives is because it offers individuals greater opportunities for self-directed flourishing. However, the question arises of whether Hayek may have undermined the appeal of his vision by presenting a view of the limitations of human reason that leaves little room for individual self-direction.

In exploring this question, I sketch out the importance of self-direction to human flourishing, Hayek’s objections to constructivist rationalism, Hayek’s reverence for tradition and social evolution, Hayek’s attitude to free will, and the role of human agency in Hayek’s account of spontaneous order.

Importance of self-direction

 In helping make the case that “self-direction is the central necessary constituent or ingredient of human flourishing” Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen quote Aristotle and Henry Veatch, a leading neo-Aristotelian of the 20^th century. Veatch writes:

“Is it not evident that not only does a human being not attain his natural end by an automatic process of development and maturity after the manner of a plant or animal? In addition, no human being ever attains his natural end or perfection save by his own personal effort and exertion. No one other than the human individual – no agency of society, of family, of friends, or of whatever can make or determine or program an individual to be a good man, or program him to live the life that a human being ought to live. Instead, attaining one’s natural end as a human person is nothing if not a ‘do-it-yourself’ job.” (The Perfectionist Turn, 51-2)

The errors of constructivist rationalists

Chris Sciabarra makes an important point about Hayek’s anti-rationalistic beliefs:

“His enemy is not reason but the constructivists who have “historically again and again given birth to a revolt against reason”. (Total Freedom, 131)

Hayek observes that constructivist rationalists - enthusiasts for a deliberately planned society - tend to base their case on the synoptic delusion, “the fiction that all the relevant facts are known to some one mind, and that it is possible to construct from this knowledge of the particulars a desirable social order”. (LLL, v1, 14) Hayek argues that by over-estimating the powers of reason, constructivist rationalism has given birth to a revolt against the wisdom embodied in abstract rules, including rules of just conduct, which tell us what not to do. (LLL, V1, 31-34) The abstract rules protect individuals from arbitrary violence by others and enable them to try to build for themselves a protected domain with which nobody else is allowed to interfere and within which they can use their own knowledge for their own purposes. (LLL, V3, 163)

Hayek’s reverence for tradition and social evolution

In my view, Hayek sometimes went too far in downplaying the ability of humans to understand the significance of abstract rules. For example, in one instance he claimed that “submission to undesigned rules and conventions whose significance we largely do not understand, this reverence for the traditional, that the rationalistic mind finds so uncongenial, … is indispensable for the working of a free society”. (COL, 63) It seems to me that most people are capable of understanding the purposes served by rules of just conduct. It makes more sense to explain those purposes than to suggest that reverence for the traditional should be sufficient reason for compliance.

The emphasis which Hayek placed on group selection in the evolutionary process also downplays the potential role of reason. Hayek argues that rules of just conduct evolved because the groups which practiced them were more successful and displaced others. (LLL, V1, 18) James Buchanan pointed out that there is no reason to believe that group survival will always lead to a more beneficial state of affairs. Chris Sciabarra makes the same point, also noting that Hayek does not provide an objective standard by which to judge as desirable or undesirable the consequences of spontaneous orders. (Total Freedom, 131)

Buchanan suggests that Hayek’s skepticism about the ability of humans to rationally design social institutions, including constitutions, precludes any attempt at reform. In their excellent discussion of this point, Peter Boettke and Scott King suggest that the issue has been confused by conflating the question of the origin of institutions with questions relating to the development and improvement of institutions. They note that Hayek is open to attempts to improve spontaneous orders through small revisions in the overall rules. (I refer to the chapter entitled ‘Hayek and the Hayekians on the Political Order of a Free People’, in Hayek’s Tensions: Reexamining the Political Economy and Philosophy of F. A. Hayek, edited by Stefanie Haeffele, Solomon M. Stein, and Virgil Henry Storr.)

Hayek’s attitude to free will

Discussions of Hayek’s attitude to free will often begins with his venture into theoretical psychology in The Sensory Order, published in 1952. When I read the ‘Philosophical Consequences’ chapter of that book, about 30 years ago, I gained the impression that Hayek was an advocate of free will. Hayek certainly rejects the idea that it is possible to explain why people hold particular views, at particular moments, from knowledge of their material circumstances. Immediately afterwards, in discussing free will more explicitly, Hayek asserts:

“To us human decisions must always appear as the result of the whole human personality – that means the whole of the persons mind – which, as we have seen, we cannot reduce to something else.” (See page 250 of “The Essence of Hayek”, 1984 by W. Glenn Campbell (Foreword), Kurt R. Leube (Editor), Chiaki Nishiyama (Editor).

Hayek based his argument against microphysical reductionism on the belief that the human brain can never fully explain its own operations. Paul Lewis has suggested that if Hayek had relied more fully on the ideas of organismic biologists he would have been able to develop an emergentist argument against microphysical reductionism, thus providing a stronger basis for use of concepts such as goals and purposes. (See Lewis’s chapter entitled ‘Tensions and Ambiguities in Hayek’s Social Theory’ in Hayek’s Tensions, cited above. Those who are interested in reading a philosophical emergentist argument for free will can find one in the The Metaphysics of Emergence, by Richard Campbell. I reviewed the book here.)

In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek offers a potted summary of the free will debate. He notes that the concept of universal determinism that dominated 19th century science seemed to eliminate the possibility of free will. He also notes that physicists have now abandoned universal determinism but doubts that this affects “the puzzle about the freedom of the will”. He then states:

“It appears that the assertion that the will is free has as little meaning as its denial and that the whole issue is a phantom problem, a dispute about words in which the contestants have not made clear what an affirmative or negative answer would imply.”

However, Hayek’s subsequent discussion of the conclusions generally drawn by determinists and voluntarists about their respective positions leaves little doubt about where he stands:

“The determinists usually argue that, because men’s actions are completely determined by natural causes, there can be no justification for holding them responsible or praising or blaming their actions. The voluntarists, on the other hand, contend that, because there exists in man some agent standing outside the chain of cause or effect, this agent is the bearer of responsibility and the legitimate object of praise and blame. Now there can be little doubt that, so far as these practical conclusions are concerned, the voluntarists are more nearly right, while the determinists are merely confused.” (COL, 72-73)

In discussing the difference between “inner freedom” and the absence of coercion, Hayek had already made clear his belief that it is possible for a person to be guided by “considered will”, “reason or lasting conviction, rather than by momentary impulse or circumstance”. He adds:

“If a person does not succeed in doing what, after sober reflection, he decides to do, if his intentions or strength desert him at the decisive moment and he fails to do what he somehow wishes to do, we may say that he is ‘unfree,’ the slave of his passions.” (COL, 15)

Later, Hayek asserts:

“The recognition that each person has his own scale of values which we ought to respect, even if we do not approve of it, is part of the conception of the value of the individual personality. (COL, 79)

The role of individual human agency

In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek wrote:

“Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily re-created in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.” (231-2)

That statement seems to me to be broadly consistent with the do-it-yourself job of being a good person, as described by Henry Veatch. However, some of the things that Hayek wrote later give a different impression. In The Constitution of Liberty, he advocated submission to rules and conventions, quoting David Hume’s assertion that “the rules of morality are not the conclusions of our reason”. (63) In Law, Legislation and Liberty, Hayek writes:

“Man is as much a rule-following animal as a purpose-seeking one.”

Mario Rizzo has suggests (in a paper entitled, ‘F.A. Hayek and the Rationality of Individual Choice’) that Hayek’s mature views about rationality should be understood in terms of a general framework acknowledging that humans are both purposeful agents and rule-followers. In emphasizing the importance of rule-following behaviour, Hayek didn’t abandon individual rationality. Even at the purely individual level, leaving aside the need to coordinate plans with others, rule-following makes sense because we live in a world of uncertainty and because our minds have limited capacities to know and compute.

Hayek seems to have rarely considered individual agency apart from the spontaneous order. The following paragraph provides a good summary of his perspective:

“What makes men members of the same civilization and enables them to live and work together in peace is that in the pursuit of their individual ends the particular monetary impulses which impel their efforts towards concrete results are guided and restrained by the same abstract rules. If emotion and impulse tells them what they want, the conventional rules tell them how they will be able and be allowed to achieve it.”

Personal perspective

Did Friedrich Hayek undermine the appeal of his vision by presenting a view of the limitations of human reason that leaves little room for individual self-direction? In his efforts to counter constructivist rationalism, I think Hayek inadvertently understated the role of human reason in individual flourishing. However, if individuals have greater potential for self-directed flourishing than Hayek thought possible, that makes spontaneous order a more attractive option.

In assessing Hayek’s views on the role of self-direction in individual flourishing it is important to recognize that advising individuals how best they could flourish was incidental to his main purpose. One way to illustrate that is by reference to my book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing. I draw fairly extensively upon Hayek’s wisdom in the first part of that book in discussing topics such as the definition of liberty, rules of just conduct, transmission of ancient law to the modern world, and evolution of social norms.

I only mention Hayek’s contribution once in the chapter discussing the challenge of self-direction. His views are referred to in that context not to emphasize the difficulty of self-direction but to counter the view that we (humans) are prone systematically to make serious mistakes in the individualized pursuit of happiness. I draw attention to the fact that Hayek urged respect for social norms that embody the experience of generations in advocating a legal and social order consistent with pursuit of happiness by individuals. (150-1)

In retrospect, I could also possibly have drawn on Hayek to point out implications of the fact that reasoning is cognitively demanding. In pursuing our personal goals it often makes more to sense for us to choose rules (norms) to follow, based on our own previous experience and the experience of others, than to attempt to reason our way through life by treating every issue that arises as though nothing similar has ever previously been encountered in human history.