Excuse me for interfering, but we sometimes overcomplicate or even mystify things which are complicated by itself (contradiction…). What can we say of human nature? Some things it seems are quite obvious. We are egoists in the sense that we have our desires, which we want to satisfy and there is nothing to blame in that. We also need cooperation of other people without which we can do very little. These people are even elements of our plans and objects of our desires. Considering that we need maximum freedom for ourselves. Another thing is that for successful realization of our plans we need maximum predictability of our partners. So walking in the street for instance or going shopping we expect of our potential partners (drivers, pedestrians, salesmen…) to behave according to certain rules… And we have mechanisms of keeping them in these frames: encouragement (smiling…) and punishment (refusing to cooperate, frowning, imposing fines, imprisoning…). Are these two main impulses enough to explain all our behaviour as social beings? I think yes, in the main. To function successfully as social beings we need reputation of good partners, and to acquire such reputation we are ready to do many things… These two impulses are mainly opposite so we can explain by them anything we do. One more thing of the similar importance regulates our behaviour. It’s property, which has direct relation to our need in predictability of the world. The things that belong to us are predictable. They will not let us down in realization of our plans. Of the same origin is also our desire of controlling things (to be sure that they will fulfill their functions in due time and in due place), which if it concerns people we can do by making them love us or dread us (technically these are just different forms of control)… Then we must say several words of love and hate. The guiding thing for us in that I think must be the circumstance that there is a strange coincidence between what we love and what is conducive (what we consider somehow as such and what we explain, or try at least to do so then rationally) to our plans and vice versa – we hate what threatens them etc. etc. But it will take us too far…
There isn’t any one libertarian view of human nature, although there might be some commonalities. My own view is that of Aristotelian libertarianism, which you can learn more about by reading the writings of the following thinkers: Henry Veatch, Roderick Long, Fred D. Miller, Jr., Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl, Chris Sciabarra, Ayn Rand, and some others.
I was not certain whether or no there was consensus on a libertarian view of human nature, but it looks like the consensus is there is no consensus, which is an adequate answer for me.
Just to throw in a thought on an earlier point, I don’t think I like Mises’ definition of rationality. If all active choices are rational, then it seems like we destroy any significance the word might have. It becomes an empty, almost redundant term. That’s not to say that I disagree with the underlying point that Mises is making, but I think that definining rationality as something more like “responding properly to reason” allows us to call someone “irrational” if they respond “improperly” to reason, which seems like a useful distinction that Mises’ definition doesn’t allow us to make.
It’s sort of like how “voluntary” loses a significant part of its meaning when you say that “all actions are voluntary,” even though under some definitions of the word, that would be true.
I would tend to agree with Danny. It renders the term tautological. I wonder why Mises chose to use it in that way - perhaps to distinguish the Austrian approach from neoclassical ‘homo oeconomicus’?
Perhaps it was a response to people who were using the term “irrational” to critique ends, rather than means?
It was probably an attempt to ward off psychologism and polylogism.
Roderick has an interesting article that discusses how Mises’s Kantian impositionism fails to do so.