Lincoln-Douglas Debate
Philosophy 1 on 1
by James R. Otteson
[James
Otteson teaches in the department of philosophy at the University
of Alabama. The following article is from the March, 1999
issue of The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, published by the Foundation
for Economic Education.]
It is
no secret that classical liberalism receives little attention
in American academic philosophy, and then generally only as
a historical artifact. What one hears is something like this:
"No serious philosopher today believes that people can get
on without substantial, organized help from the government.
The only issues are in what way the government should help
and to what extent; the issue of whether the government should
help can no longer be seriously entertained."
There
are of course exceptions&emdash;Robert Nozick, David Schmidtz,
and Eric Mack come to mind&emdash;but they are a decided minority
and, in my experience at least, are often not considered to
be within the philosophical mainstream. I have thus faced
considerable difficulty convincing my colleagues that classical
liberalism is worth thinking about at all, let alone worth
careful examination. But a free society is worth the effort,
and so I have explored many methods of opening the closed
intellectual doors I have encountered, believing that if I
can get others to think about classical liberalism for just
a few minutes, I will find some place where it matches up
with&emdash;or, if I am lucky, accounts for&emdash;a deep
moral or political intuition they already have. When that
happens, I have found that classical liberalism suddenly gains
a footing as a position that has at least the possibility
of plausibility. And that is a start.
Connecting
to Intuition
In my
experience arguments for classical liberalism rarely get off
the ground unless they can first make this connection to intuition.
Hence the method I have settled on for extending liberty's
cause in my discipline of philosophy is one that, first, seizes
on a few of the adversary's deeply held intuitions and then
uses those intuitions as bases on which arguments can be built.
I think three intuitions in particular combine to make an
initial case for the free society that almost any person,
regardless of his political position, will find formidable.
Here's
how I propose going about it.
Begin
by asking whether there is anything wrong with rape. Now of
course such a question may well shock its hearer, but a shock
is sometimes necessary to get people to think hard about a
different way of looking at the world. Ask your adversary
to answer the question seriously. So: yes, there is something
wrong with rape. Well, what is it exactly? It does not suffice
to say that rape is self-evidently wrong because it might
not be self-evidently wrong to everyone. The rapist, for example,
might not think so.
To bring
the matter into sharper focus, ask this next: Is rape always
wrong&emdash;or might there be occasions when it is acceptable?
What if raping a person would lead to some greater good? For
example, should we consider whether the rapist might not receive
such a degree of pleasure from the rape that it effectively
[p. 48] cancels out the pain and suffering the victim
experiences? On that ground, then, should we judge each rape
on a case-by-case basis, asking in each instance whether the
act in question led to a net increase or decrease in welfare?
This question is typically met with horror: of course rape
is always wrong and of course its wrongness is not subject
to any utilitarian calculation. It is wrong absolutely and
simply so. The following suggestion will now seem quite apt
and will almost always meet with approval: rape is wrong always
and everywhere because a person's body is inviolable; a person
has an absolute right to his (or her) body, and anyone who
breaches that right is acting immorally regardless of his
reasons. A person is, as it were, the owner of his own body,
and as such he has absolute say over what gets done to it.
At this
point the case for a free society has already begun to be
built, though one's adversary probably does not see it. It
is time to call up the second intuition, again by asking a
question whose answer will seem obvious. Is there anything
wrong with slavery? Well, what exactly? Again we must not
allow "self-evidence" to justify our belief that slavery is
wrong because many people evidently have believed and continue
to believe that slavery is at least in some circumstances
acceptable. Might slavery be wrong because it violates the
dignity of the enslaved by treating him as a means to someone
else's end? Might it be wrong because it dehumanizes the enslaved,
treats him as if he were the moral equivalent of a pack animal?
Yes, that
is it: slavery is wrong because it treats a man as if he were
not a man; it fails to respect his inherent dignity, his inherent
worth as a human being. But suppose that Congress&emdash;and
congressmen, note, are popularly elected&emdash;passed legislation
requiring the enslavement of some minority of the population.
Suppose that to supply vital industries with much-needed cheap
labor, the majority of us decided to enslave all, let us say,
Irishmen. This would be democracy in action; the whole process
would be strictly according to protocol in a democratic country.
That would be acceptable, would it not?
Of course
not! the reply will come. Slavery can never be justified,
no matter how many people voted for it. And now one's adversary
will believe what has already been said with almost unshakable
conviction: slavery disrespects the inherent dignity in a
human being and is therefore always wrong. A person may not
in any way be used against his will for the sake of another
person, and his sovereignty over his own life is immune from
democratic (or any other) lawmaking.
Is
Theft Wrong?
Now the
foundations of the free society are almost entirely laid.
Only one more element is required. Is there anything wrong
with stealing? This matter can be a bit tricky, because there
will be those who think that stealing is justified in the
case of a poor man stealing from a rich man. Put that possibility
off for a moment and ask the hearer to answer whether theft
as a general practice is acceptable. Is it all right for anyone
who wants something simply to take it regardless of who owns
the thing in question? To this question the answer will be
"no." But once again, why is it not all right?
Although
the intuition that stealing is wrong is strong, people are
often not quite sure what to say about why it is wrong. Proceed,
then, with this question. Suppose Congress took a vote, and
the majority, which carried the day, passed legislation licensing
local police authorities to take anyone's property whenever
in their judgment, and in their judgment alone, they saw fit
to do so. Would there be anything wrong with that? Would the
fact that such a practice had been signed into law thereby
make the practice morally acceptable? Odds are that the answer
to this will be "no" as well.
Make,
then, this suggestion. People have a right to what they own&emdash;that
is, to what they have legitimately acquired (through labor,
trade, or gift); stealing violates that right and for that
reason is wrong. To return to the case of the poor man stealing
from the rich man: how wealthy a person is does not seem relevant
to our explanation of why theft is wrong. Theft violates a
right, and hence it is wrong regardless of whose right is
in question. If one's [p. 49] adversary wavers on
this point, remind him that there is always someone poorer
than oneself, and thus everyone is a "rich man" relative to
someone else&emdash;so if he is willing to allow an exception
for a "poor man" to steal from a "rich man," he is effectively
licensing not only everyone else but also himself to be robbed.
Is he still willing to make this exception?
Government
Violates Rights
One can
now move in for the coup de grâce: one's adversary,
whether he realizes it or not, is a classical liberal. Everything
the state does beyond protecting these basic, negative rights
of individuals is a violation of these same rights. Conscription,
for example, is a use of your body to which you did not assent.
The income tax and the staggering national debt are nothing
but obligations on you to labor for the benefit of someone
else. Wealth transfers to the poor, subsidies to farmers,
support for the arts, and Social Security are all the forcible
seizure of some people's property in order to give it to others.
And however noble the cause, however good the intentions,
however many people voted in favor&emdash;rape, slavery, and
theft are still wrong. And hence all the government programs
that are merely particular instances of the principles underlying
the immorality of rape, slavery, and theft are wrong as well.
One concrete
example will show that the strong language of rape, slavery,
and theft is justified in the case of government action. Estimated
projections are that an average American born in 1999 will
face an effective income tax rate of one hundred percent of
his lifetime earnings simply to pay off the financial obligations
that the American federal government will have incurred&emdash;and
that is assuming that no more government programs are created.
One hundred percent of lifetime earnings to make good on debts
that these people played no part in creating and from which
they will receive no benefit. How do you define slavery?
My genuine
suspicion is that virtually all people are libertarians in
their personal, everyday lives. In practice they regard anything
that violates the sanctity of a person acting privately to
be wrong. Certainly among my colleagues in philosophy I have
met no one who would bodily assault another person (except
perhaps in self-defense), who would enslave another person,
or who would steal from another person. The challenge for
the supporter of a free society, then, is threefold. First,
he must get his adversaries to see that these three principles&emdash;the
right to one's body, the right to one's labor, and the right
to one's belongings&emdash;are the fundamental organizing
principles of classical liberalism. Second, he must show his
adversaries that they already subscribe to these principles,
a fact demonstrated by their reaction to the series of questions
raised above. And, finally, he must bring his adversaries
to understand that these principles are binding on everyone,
including those who work for the government.
This last
point is especially difficult since many people are inclined
to believe that the government has an authority all its own.
That is, they think that if the government says something,
it must be right; and if the government tells one to do something,
one's sole duty is to obey. But one can summon a strong impulse
to reconsider this thinking by pointing out that the government
is nothing more than other people. If one would expect one's
neighbors to live by the three principles of respecting others'
lives, liberty, and property, then one should expect government
employees to live by them as well. A person gains no special
knowledge and earns no exemption from the requirements of
morality merely by becoming an employee of the government.
Now I
have not demonstrated that the free society is the only morally
acceptable society (though I believe that it is). A philosophically
sophisticated person will demand further argument for the
principles underlying each of these intuitions, even if he
shares them. It does not follow from the fact that one has
a certain intuition about a moral matter, or even from the
fact that many people have the same intuitions, that the matter
is thereby settled. One's intuitions might after all be wrong.
Moreover,
I have not yet shown that the moral principles that I have
suggested underlie these intuitions are in fact the principles
that underlie them. It is possible to construct [p. 50]
moral condemnations of rape, slavery, and theft&emdash;and
thus justifications for the respect of life, liberty, and
property&emdash;without appeal to natural rights. It might
be possible, for example, to give a utilitarian or consequentialist
rationale for these principles, although the sense that these
principles deserve absolute recognition will be difficult
to preserve within a utilitarian moral framework. It is also
quite possible that one either has these intuitions or embraces
these principles because one subscribes to Austrian economic
thought. A follower of Ludwig von Mises or F.A. Hayek may
well adhere to the sanctity of these moral principles without
thereby thinking that they are made sacred because of their
reliance on natural rights. Mises himself thought that the
notion of natural rights was an intellectual fiction. Or one
might subscribe to these principles because one is a Christian
who believes that each of us, as a child of God, is sacred.
A follower of Father Robert Sirico will believe that it is
a violation of God's will to treat another human being as
anything other than inherently valuable and inviolable, and
that one cannot fulfill one's Christian duty to others unless
one is radically free to choose to do so. Or, finally, one
might think that man's rational autonomy presupposes allegiance
to certain universal rules, among which are the principles
under consideration here. A Kantian will believe he is categorically
commanded to treat others as ends in themselves and never
merely as means, and he might for that reason believe that
the free, classical liberal society is just the Kantian "kingdom
of ends."
I would
not presume to resolve here which of these foundations for
believing in the principles of the free society, if any, is
correct. But that is not my intent. My belief is that substantially
all of us share the intuitions that suggest these principles,
regardless of the specific set of background beliefs we hold
that lead us to accept them. My purpose rather is to galvanize
adherents to a wide array of beliefs to fight for the free
society by showing them that anything beyond the minimal,
libertarian state violates moral principles they already hold&emdash;whatever
the basis on which they hold them.
The
Virtue of Consistency
All that
would remain is to remind one's adversaries of the importance
of consistency in applying these principles generally. The
classical liberal society is not alien or extreme or licentious
or bizarre or naïve. It is simply our own moral principles
writ large; it is the manifestation and reflection of the
person of dignity each of us believes himself to be.
Many years
ago Hayek called on classical liberals to "make the building
of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed
of courage" and to develop a program that would at once inspire
us and serve as a blueprint for us to realize freedom under
law. I think that such a program must begin by appealing to
our deeply held intuitions, our pre-theoretical sense of right
and wrong.
It is
frequently remarked in America today that voters have a deep
distrust for politicians and for politics; they are cynical
about the whole political system, a fact that is regularly
evinced by their exceedingly low interest in finding anything
out about the people running for office. One will probably
not understand this distrust and cynicism until one sees the
constitutional, if perhaps unconscious, libertarianism that
runs through many Americans. I suspect they distrust politicians
and dislike politics because they are aware on some level
that almost everything that goes on in politics is a violation
of moral propriety. When the government bestows largess on
them, they are by and large happy to receive it; but I suspect
that most of them nevertheless harbor the perhaps vague sense
that there is something wrong with this state of affairs.
Even if
they think that they cannot but take advantage of the government's
"free money" before someone else does, they would, if they
were candid and forced themselves to reflect on the matter,
admit that these are dishonorable actions. This, in part,
is what stands behind Americans' general belief that politics
is a sordid affair (and that politicians are little better
than moral reprobates). What is required, then, is to bring
into the open exactly what makes these actions sordid and
dishonorable, and to discover explicitly the close connection
between people's notions of [p. 51] impropriety and
the libertarian principles that give rise to them.
One way
to begin this process of discovery is to get people who spend
their time thinking about moral and political issues on a
philosophical level&emdash;like philosophy professors&emdash;to
begin to focus their mental energy on the philosophical underpinnings
of the free society. The hope is that more and more of them
will come to see the classical liberal conception of society
as a compelling manifestation of some of their own fundamental
moral beliefs, and, further, that they will then teach it
to their students. In this way one might get people who are
already prone to intellectual investigations to become intrigued
with the strong intellectual appeal of the free society and
to replace their perhaps present desire for a socialist utopia
with a desire for a classical liberal utopia.
The free
society is worth fighting for, and even a person in a tiny
corner of human life&emdash;a person in academic philosophy,
for example&emdash;can take up the cause of liberty and make
a difference. The strategy I have outlined here can be an
effective way to make people within academic philosophy open
to the power of classical liberalism, but it can also, I believe,
bear fruit with people outside philosophy. It can thus be
a first step toward answering Hayek's call. I commend it to
you. [p. 52]
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