Hey guys, I was wondering if any of you knew why Rothbard had such a disdain for “classical” thinkers (Adam Smith, David Hume, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, ect). Now I can understand Adam Smith, seeing that he was not as pro-free market as many believe, and also that he was a main theorist of the labor theory of value, but why the hate for other thinkes of Smith’s time such as David Hume, whom Rothbard denouced his (Hume’s) Treatsie of Human Nature as “disasterous”. I am going to read Hume’s Treatsie, seeing that there is a consensus from people that I have talked to that it is an excellent introduction into philosophy, but maybe I should hear the Rothbardian arguement about why this epoch of ideas was so fruitless and counter-productive, and which sections and topics on Hume’s treatsie that I should skeptical and read with a critical mind.
In case you haven’t seen this, you’ll soon be able to find the answer to that question.
Also, I just stumbled across this and this,
You should read them, I skimmed them and the former seems to have some important things to say. It claims that Hume is a skeptic and Rothbard’s dislike of him followed from there.
It seems from both articles that Rothbard’s disdain stems from their economic thought and it’s effect, and not so much on the epoch’s philosophic contributions. Except, of course, with Hume’s skepticism, but this is to be expected seeing that Rothbard believed in absolute scientific truth.
Rothbard didn’t like the limited nature of Smith’s free market conclusions. But his biggest beef was the fallacious theory Smith used to reach those conclusions. Smith’s value theory was way off (which I discuss on my blog here and here). He blamed Smith’s value theory for setting economics back generations (continental economists had a much better handle on value for hundreds of years before Smith) and leading ultimately to the labour theory of value which Marx used as justification for proletarian expropriation.
Rousseau was the father of “general will” collectivism which has been the basis of totalitarian democracy ever since.
Rothbard actually credited Hume with helping to develop sound business cycle theory. However, it is in ethics where Rothbard thought Hume was disastrous. Rothbard believed fervently in natural law in morality, and Hume played the biggest role in completely sundering the two. (I have a fairly in-depth post on this as well, actually taking Hume’s side to some extent.) Also, Rothbard didn’t like skeptics in general (he also took a dim view of Montaigne), because they historically tended to side with the state and the status quo.
Rothbard saw a general tendency in Aristotelean scholastic thought toward freedom and sound economics. He saw in many of the “modern” age (often rabidly anti-scholastic) thinkers a tendency toward (1) state-worship (Machiavelli, Hobbes, etc) due to the rise in power of the absolute monarchs and the weakening of their rival in power, the church and (2) economic fallacy (Smith, Malthus, etc) due to snobbish neglect of Aristotelean clear thinking and important scholastic advances in economics.
Of course it wasn’t all bad. Rothbard also saw John Locke and the 17th century Levelers as key figures in libertarian political theory, and Richard Cantillon, A.R.J Turgot, J.B. Say and others as key figures in sound economics.
Excellent, thank you Daniel J. Sanchez, this answers my main question and was elegantly put. If I may ask you, would you say that Hume’s Treatsie of Human Nature is a good text to introduce me into general philosophy? As always, thanks in advance. [:D]
Happy to help. I’ve only read parts of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, so I couldn’t say. I do know that almost every passage I read by Hume is startling in its insight and clarity, so that’s a good sign. John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government would also be good, if you wanted a more libertarian start to your philosophical studies.
Well I am comfortable enough with political philosophy, in fact I am finishing Gasset’s Revolt of the Masses and will read Nozick’s ASU subsequently. However I wish to learn more about general philosophy such as meta-physics and epytimology (forgive me if I misspelled that) and wondered if Hume’s Treatsie was a good introductory text.
I wouldn’t say it’s a good introduction into philosophy, no, but it’d help you to understand Hume’s thought better.
What would you reccomend?
I guess Martin Hollis’s An Invitation to Philosophy. I don’t believe in introductions to the topic though, it’s too huge for such things.
I would actually recommend reading a history of philosophy instead, to give a flavor of the various schools. I liked the Dream of Reason by Anthony Gottlieb: VERY readable, and a good survey (except that it gives ridiculously cursory treatment to scholastic thought). I also heard Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy is good.
Also, studying Aristotle will take you a long way toward understanding ALL of western philosophy. He himself surveyed those who came before him, and he enormously influenced almost all who came after (even many who pretended to be uninfluenced by him). Aristotle’s Children by Richard Rubenstein is a great introduction to his thought and influence (it also treats of the fascinating philosophy of the scholastics MUCH more extensively than Gottlieb). If you read Aristotle’s own writings, start with book 2 of his Physics. If you can understand his conception of what the nature (phusis) of a thing is and how one can know it, then you can understand how he draws his conclusions about the natures of the soul, humanity, the state, and the world.
I personally have all of aristotle’s writings but I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemies because his writing is soooo bad! One can clearly understand the books “On Categories” and “On Interepretation” but if you read “Prior Analytics” which is the first half of aristotle’s treatise of logic -basically the very foundation of his thought -you will find it impossible to read and this is coming from someone who has already completed a course in syllogistic logic!
Yet this should not come as a surprise to you. Apparently the keen observer will note that in Plutarch’s Lives, the entry on alexander the great has an interesting passage wherein it is revealed in correspondence between aristotle and that king that the former had intentionally written his works in such a way as to make it accessable only to the enlightened!
So to close this rant, read a good translation of thomas aquinas and the middle ages commentors and you’ll learn more about aristotle than you could from him.
His “nature books” (Physics, On the Soul, On the Heavens) and his non-treatise tracts (Politics, Nicomachean Ethics) are much easier to read than his wholly abstract formal logic treatises.
Plutarch is a great read, but he himself notes that many of the stories he reports are likely to be apocryphal. Most scholars think the extant works of Aristotle were not intended for publication, but rather were the great man’s lecture notes: thus their exhaustive, but decidedly non-pithy style.
It’s not really libertarian per se, but The Open Society and Its Enemies is a fairly classic epistemological text, and worth a read IMO. It provides an excellent history of the methodology of totalitarian thought, at any rate.