Natural Morality

Miscellaneous General
1

Natural Morality

There is a moral code written in our nature. When we take up an unused piece of nature and begin to use it, we instinctively think of it as our property. We take instinctive affront when our person or our property is assaulted by others. We feel instinctive outrage when we see the person or property of others assaulted. And we feel instinctive guilt when, or at least after, we assault the person or property of others. This instinctive moral code is only shoved aside when we enter conditions of extremity, in which circumstances have forced the human community to devolve into a war of all against all. In those cases, we instinctively cast aside our communal moral feelings for the sake of extreme short-term selfishness. We morally allow ourselves “necessary evils”.

The state has deceived the bulk of humanity into believing that society is inherently in perpetual extremity (an ever-present “lifeboat situation”), and that its own acts of murder, plunder, and enslavement are necessary evils. This is a lie. Society does not require for its survival, or even for its flowering, that certain men be above natural morality. Far from it; the murderers, plunderers, enslavers, and liars who comprise the state are simply parasites who cripple society and threaten to destroy it.

2

The Role of the Libertarian Intellectual

On the excellent Mises Institute boards, somebody asked the interesting question, “Who is the founding father of libertarianism?” Board members responded with an nice mix of usual suspects and surprising ones. My first thought was John Locke. But then I reconsidered, and wrote (basically) the following:

John Locke’s property theory was absolutely essential for libertarianism as an intellectual stance. But, it doesn’t take philosophy to recognize natural property rights on a gut level. Therefore, I nominate the very first human. Such an individual, who, long before the false legitimacy of state theft and murder, knew all he needed to know about libertarianism.

Property-based libertarianism is written in our nature. It’s a moral axiom that is present in the heart of any man who isn’t mixed up by the sophistries of the state. A man doesn’t need to understand the politics of war to know that murder is wrong; neither need he understand how markets work to know that stealing is wrong. If it weren’t for state propaganda, there would be no need for libertarian intellectualism. Unfortunately the state, through its false economics and false political philosophy, has convinced mankind that the world is in a constant state of extremity, such that, without some men being given the power to murder, steal, and enslave with impunity, civilization will descend into chaos. False theory can only be fought effectively with true theory. The role of a libertarian intellectual therefore is not to weave intricate theories to justify justice itself (there is no need for that); rather it is to UNWEAVE the tangled fabric of state lies. That is why we need economics and political philosophy: to show exactly how the state’s purported necessary evils are simply evils, and thereby reveal to people their inner libertarian.

3

Normative Natural Law

Edwin Patterson, as quoted by Murray Rothbard, defines natural law as:

“Principles of human conduct that are discoverable by “reason” from the basic inclinations of human nature, and that are absolute, immutable and of universal validity for all times and places. This is the basic conception of scholastic natural law . . . and most natural law philosophers.”1

The word “principles” here might mean descriptive truths: for example that, “if you financially support your son into adulthood, then he will likely become lazy”; or that, “the best way to feed the world is through free markets.” This may be termed “positive natural law.” “Principles” could also mean moral principles:, whether it is simply wrong to let your son become lazy or to let people go hungry. Call this “normative natural law”.

Individuals, then, would use positive natural law to rationally choose the best means to an end. Normative natural law would be used to rationally choose the ends themselves.

Does normative natural law exist?
Few doubt the truth of there being such a thing as positive natural law. Skepticism of normative natural law, however, goes back to the cultural relativism of the Ancient Greek sophists. The skeptic who is supposed to have buried normative natural law is that king of skeptics, David Hume. According to Hume, reasoning from natural law can only be used to choose practical means, and that moral ends are only chosen via emotions.

“This is the second part of our argument; and if it can be made evident, we may conclude, that morality is not an object of reason. But can there be any difficulty in proving, that vice and virtue are not matters of fact, whose existence we can infer by reason? Take any action allow’d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but `tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it.”2

As discussed and concurred with by Rothbard, A. Kenneth Hesselberg countered that Hume, in his own writings, inconsistently resorts to normative natural law. Hume states that man’s happiness depends on a social order. Hesselberg notes that the way a social order can be attained and preserved can only be found through contemplation of natural law. Therefore, according to Hume’s own theory, concludes Hesselberg and Rothbard, reasoning from natural law is needed for choosing ends.

While Rothbard is my hero, I must here differ with him. In Hume’s construction, the social order is a means to the end of human happiness. And, as Rothbard himself states, Hume recognizes the value of natural law in choosing means. And, nowhere in his construction, does Hume ever promote the use of natural law to choose the end of human happiness; it is only promoted for choosing the means of social order.

The establishment of moral axioms through reason alone also suffers from the problem of “progress ad infinitum”. A moral stance can be justified by another moral stance, which in turn is justified by yet another, and so on. Eventually there must be a principle of “unjustified justice” --a moral equivalent of Agrippa the Skeptic’s “unreasoned reason” and Aristotle’s “unmoved mover”–, and that can only be established by our emotions.

So I don’t subscribe to Rothbard’s “reason-only” conception of normative natural law. We can’t be said to rationally choose our moral ends. But neither am I convinced by Hume that there is no such thing as natural morality. I believe there are certain emotionally-based moral feelings which all men have in common, and which are hard-wired in our nature. These include, among others, promotion of our genetic posterity, individual self-interest, respect for property, and fellow feeling. Such natural morality can be termed “law” by virtue of it being universal and constant, if not for being discoverable by reason.

1Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, Chapter 2: Natural Law as “Science”
2David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Book 3: Of Morals

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Reminds me again of G.E.Moore and the open question argument…This was the subject of my dissertation, the naturalisation of ethics and all that fun stuff.

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The State is Anti-Human

The state is inherently anti-human. Humans are characterized by the fact that they act. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out, we are just as much homo agens as homo sapiens. To act is to behave with purpose: that is, to deliberate upon and choose between means to achieve our ends. That part of us which deliberates is called our reason. That part of us which chooses is called our will.

Dead things don’t reason, choose, or act. They just react. They are mindless assemblages of particles which only respond slavishly to the impulses given them.

Dumb animals don’t reason, choose, or act. They just behave. They are non-rational expressions of genes which only serve reflexively the end of propagating those genes.

Humans and any other animals who have evolved reason are also assemblages of particles; and we are also expressions of genes. But crowning all of this, we also have reason, will, and action.

The raison d’être of the state is to crush action by supplanting individual ends with its own, to crush the will by supplanting individual choice with its own, and to crush reason by supplanting individual thought with its own. The necessary corollary to the rise of the state is the fall of humanity: for man to effectively devolve into dumb animals (livestock) and finally into dead machines (tools). Since the state is all about destroying all that is human, it is inherently anti-human. For humans, therefore, the state is inherently evil.

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It is also part of our nature to do whatever we can to stay alive when starving.

7

Yes, and I do believe all deuces are wild in such “lifeboat situations” (like I say in my Natural Morality post above). The problem, as I see it, is the state has convinced most people of the lie that humanity is in a perpetual lifeboat situation, and thereby gets them to abandon morality on a regular basis.