Some ruminations on human nature/natural law, aesthetics, culture and misc.
In the first chapter of Ethics of Liberty (EoL), Rothbard persuasively presents the case for natural law philosophy:
Here, I want to note a couple distinctions between my view and Rothbard’s. He didn’t quite come out and say it but it is my view that Mises was an Epicurean. So, I see myself as “Misesean” regarding the right ends of man: they are whatever satisfies him, that is, brings him pleasure. There is no other standard of right living.
Rothbard makes the case that there is something which dictates to man his proper ends: right reason. This is very plausible, particularly if you grant (as I do) that man has a nature. However, I think Rothbard has turned the shirt inside-out - it is not the ends of the individual that are dictated by right reason but the ends of the collective.
Let me clarify what I mean by this. If the “proper ends” of the individual are dictated by right reason, then there is something outside of the individuals own desires/pleasure which determines his proper ends and this is made manifest whenever his desires and right reason disagree. However, if we think about human nature not as a constraint on the individual but, rather, as truths about human beings that always or usually hold, then we see that the constraints are not on the ends of the individual but, rather, on the social order itself. That is, human nature is what determines the specific features of the social order not the right ends of the individual.
Given this way of thinking about human nature, there is a direct connection to man’s only end - in the Epicurean view - that is, his pleasure. Specifically, we may draw an analogy between the laws of physics and the “laws of human nature” (I am borrowing from Rothbard, here). Just as an atom moves according to the laws governing the motion of atoms, so the human being acts according to the laws governing human action, which are rooted in human nature. The gross facts of the physical world - such as gravity, or the scarcity of usable energy, etc. - represent limits on the available means by which an individual can attain his ends. Similarly, the gross facts of the social world (human mores, cultural beliefs and attitudes, etc.) represent limits on the available means by which an individual can attain his ends.
When we restrict the ends of man to his only end - satisfaction - a new view emerges. All things - non-living, living, non-human and human - are but means to the individual’s satisfaction (as Stirner argues in The Ego and His Own). The limits on the available means are determined by the physical and social (among other) facts. Right reason is the tool by which the individual can discover these limits and improve over time his choice among the available means.
We can go further and note that the primary body of knowledge concerning the social facts resides within culture itself. You and I have but a few decades to live. The culture is the repository of the lessons learned over as many as a hundred billion lifetimes. It is the most valuable body of knowledge in existence. When you enter the world as a young adult, you have many options in front of you - marry, don’t marry, buy a house, don’t buy a house, travel or settle down, join a monastery, try to start a rock band, etc. etc. But those who went before you have each faced most of these same decisions and it is extremly unlikely that you will succeed where they all failed.
Where did they all fail? Well, check the social norms for things that are absolute taboos (murder, rape, etc.) Then look at things that are seriously frowned upon (having children out of wedlock, barfights, homosexuality (yes, I know it’s un-PC to point this out, but it IS still seriously frowned upon by the vast majority of human beings)) etc. These social norms are not - contrary to modern theories of social norms - just arbitrary “biases” that came about as random fluctuations of otherwise neutral variables. They represent the cumulative success and failure of billions of human beings who have lived before you. The most fringe behavior you can think of has almost certainly been tried by millions of people before you.
This comes full circle to another thread I started a long time ago on the link between aesthetics, morality and the State. Today, I wouldn’t agree with everything I wrote then but I still stand by the essential point - that there is a relationship between aesthetics and social norms (or morality) and that this, in turn, determines the character of law and the State. I have hypothesized that Steven Pinker’s claim that modern elite art simply isn’t art (doesn’t appeal to human beings), made in The Blank Slate, is consistent with the rise of the State and the dominance of central-planning and democratic political theory - all of these began a spectacular rise right around the same time that the elite arts turned a corner and began a spiral into the abyss.
The modern State is founded squarely on the psychological theory of the Blank Slate. According to this theory, human nature is infinitely malleable and readjustable, so decent, civilized society is just a matter of “tuning the dials”, that is, passing and enforcing the right laws. It’s just a matter of punishing crimes and making society “safe” and “comfortable” for the law-abiding. Mises explores what I believe is the related attack on reason in his article The Anti-Capitalist Mentality. Human nature must be sacrificed - along with reason - on the altar of central planning. Nothing is too sacred, it all must go. We look at shit art and listen to shit music because it’s no different than the supposedly “ideal” art of the Renaissance and Classical eras. That art is bourgeois. It’s not “with it”. It doesn’t get the real truth that human beings have no intrinsic nature so beauty is shit and shit is beauty.
Therefore, I believe that preserving the culture - that is, appreciating and preserving the beautiful and reviling and disposing of the disgusting - is the most benefic activity that human beings do, on behalf of the individual. It is the very basis on which the individual is able to navigate the natural and social world in search of his end, pleasure.
Returning to the issue of the relationship between human nature and ethics, my view is that the Epicurean view of human ends (satisfaction/pleasure is the only end) mixed with the idea of human nature as a set of “laws” which restrict the available means for the individual to attain his end (satisfaction/pleasure) provides a powerful picture of how social norms arise and why they have “normative” force. Raiding a police department armed head-to-toe and shooting the place up is morally bad (directly set against your own satisfaction/pleasure) for precisely the same reason that jumping naked off a 300-foot cliff is. Both have absolutely predictable results based on the natural laws governing the social order and physics, respectively.
Finally, I’ll make a note regarding the supposed conflict between right reason and pleasure-as-the-only-proper-end. What is missed in this view is that the two are inherently harmonious by virtue of man’s ability to foresee the consequences of his own behavior. This ability to ponder the future can be thought of as “making the future become the present” - we are able to trade of future states-of-affairs against present states-of-affairs precisely because our brains enable us to foresee the consequences of our actions.
You can balance present pains and pleasures. For example, you might prefer to eat in a quiet restaurant (all things equal) but the food at your favorite (though loud) restaurant is just so much better (pleasure) than any other food in town that you are willing to tolerate the loud music (pain). In your own mind, the present pains and pleasures are traded off (perhaps consciously) and the result is your present choice.
In the same way, the foreseeable consequences of your actions become as though they were present when you presently conceive of them in your mind. And, in the same way, you can trade the pleasure and pains of the present against the respective future pleasure and pains that will result from present courses of action.
The conflict between right reason and pleasure vanishes. Right reason is simply accurate forecasting of the future consequences of your actions. The pursuit of one’s end (pleasure) is simply a matter of choosing among the avilable present and future states-of-affairs that path which is most preferable vis-a-vis all others.
Clayton -