Abstract
This chapter attempts to identify the conditions that make individual freedom of choice possible or impossible. Equality before the law is a product of the recognised ignorance and fallibility of humans. There is not a privileged source of knowledge. We can all compete for the solution to the problems posed by social cohabitation. And we must be able to access the resources to be able to do so. Therefore, in addition to rejecting a “privileged point of view on the world”, we need the institutionalisation of private property.
This chapter rests its analysis above all on the work of Bernard de Mandeville, David Hume and Adam Smith, who accepted the condition of human ignorance and fallibility and, in so doing, have rejected the “myth of the Great Legislator”. Social problems are so complex that they cannot be resolved by a single individual. Actions produce intentional consequences and, above all, unintentional ones, which escape anyone’s control. Consequently, it is not possible to confer to anyone an unlimited amount of power. This is so for two reasons: first, because no single individual can manage the complexity of social problems alone, and, second, because such power stifles individual freedom of choice. This means that we must abandon the “government of men” in favour of the “government of the law”. Law is what must define the border among single individual actions and among governed and governing. If it is true that interindividual relationships place individuals in different social positions, law serves to stop that whoever has greater degrees of freedom can damage another individual. And the same holds in the relation between governed and governing.
What emerges from Montesquieu, from Mandeville and from the main exponents of the Scottish Enlightenment is a theory about the limitation of public and infrasocial power. Law is an abstract order that allows the realisation of a concrete one. As Benjamin Constant later wrote, “the recognition of the sovereignty of the people does not in the least increase the amount of liberty given to individuals. If we attribute to that sovereignty an amplitude which must not have, liberty may be lost notwithstanding that principle, or even through it”.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Chap. 1, note 104.
- 3.
“Struggle for law” is an expression coined by Jhering (1913).
- 4.
On the origins of philosophy, see Ortega y Gasset (1960b, pp. 413–434), Popper (1966, vol. 1, p. 176; 1991, pp. 136–65). Russell (1947, p. 20) stated : “What may be called in a broad sense the Liberal theory of Politics is a recurrent product of commerce. The first known example of this was in the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, which lived by trading with Egypt and Lydia. When Athens […] became commercial, the Athenians became Liberal […]. The reasons for the connection of commerce with Liberalism are obvious. Trade brings men into contact […], and in so doing destroys the dogmatism of the untravelled”. It is significant that Aristotle (A, 1303b) also remarked that in Athens the inhabitants of Piraeus were “more” democratic than “those of the city”.
- 5.
Solon (A), 24.
- 6.
- 7.
Jaeger (1986), vol. 1, p. 99 and 442, note 20.
- 8.
- 9.
Glotz (1929), p. 128.
- 10.
Aristotle (A), 1292a. In Aristotle’s text, there is obviously a foreshadowing of Tocqueville’s “tyranny of the majority”. See also Aristotle (A, 1312b) and Tocqueville (1994), pp. 258–62.
- 11.
Aristotle (A), 1292a.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Op. cit., 1317b.
- 16.
Op. cit., 1319a.
- 17.
Op. cit., 1320a.
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
Polanyi (1977), p. 165.
- 20.
Op. cit., p. 172.
- 21.
Sternberger (1978), vol. 1, p. 409.
- 22.
Ibid., pp. 389–96. See also Arendt (1993).
- 23.
Sternberger (1978), vol. 1, p. 409.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Aristotle (A), 1252a.
- 26.
Sternberger (1978), vol. 1, pp. 92–3. In order to validate his thesis, Sternberger invoked a passage in which Aristotle (A, 1259b) emphasised these points.
- 27.
Aristotle (A), 1261b.
- 28.
Op. cit., 1261a. Which is tantamount to saying that the city is the product of social cooperation, entered into by actors performing different roles.
- 29.
Op. cit., 1263b. The impossibility of structuring a complex society on communist bases was argued by Simmel (1908, p. 48) and is one of the points most forcefully advanced by Mises (1981a, pp. 103–5). For an extensive discussion of the subject, see Infantino (2003a, pp. 25–32). Continuing his opposition to a communist project, Aristotle (ibid.) further asserted: “For in one way the state as its unification proceeds will cease to be a state, and in another way, though it continues a state, yet by coming near to ceasing to be one it will be a worse state, just as if one turned a harmony into unison or a rhythm into a single foot”.
- 30.
Weber (1978, vol. 2, p. 1013), who saw in China “the purest type of patrimonial bureaucracy that is unencumbered (as far as this is possible) by any counterweight” (op. cit., p. 1063).
- 31.
Op. cit., p. 1013.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
Polanyi (1971), pp. 64–94.
- 35.
- 36.
- 37.
- 38.
Cicero (C), 146.
- 39.
Cicero (A), II, I.
- 40.
For a comprehensive discussion of this point, cf. Infantino (2003a), pp. 56–61.
- 41.
- 42.
Jaeger (1947), pp. 360–361.
- 43.
Op. cit., p. 361.
- 44.
Op. cit., p. 365.
- 45.
Hayek (1982, vol. 1, pp. 156–7, note 9) pinpointed two passages in the Politics, where Aristotle presents social order as taxis . A number of others could easily be flagged. There is however a “place” where Aristotle (A, 1252b) stated: the city “comes into existence for the sake of life, it exists for the good life. Hence every city […] exists by nature”. Probably with this passage in mind, Ortega y Gasset (1948, p. 13) wrote that “Aristotle, with his astonishing sensitivity towards facts, deftly perceives that State and society are not the same thing”.
- 46.
If one places the rule of law as the basis of Aristotle’s political theory, one ends up, as Sternberger does, with the model of “conflict regulation”. The origin of that idea, however, precedes Aristotle. And as we have seen in the previous section, Aristotle’s heritage is “varied”.
- 47.
Savigny (1840), vol. 1, pp. 331–2, italics added. Savigny (op. cit. p. 332) also stated: “every individual legal relationship appears to us as a relationship among a number of people, determinated by a legal rule [… and such] determination consists of the fact that to individual will is assigned a field in which it dominates independently of the will of others”.
- 48.
Weber (1978), vol. 2, p. 657.
- 49.
See more extensively Infantino (2008), pp. 46–50.
- 50.
This is why Weber (1978, vol. 2, p. 667) wrote : abstract rules “assert that a factual situation is to have certain legal consequences”. Hayek (1960, p. 208) himself stated: “The general, abstract rules […] are […] essentially long-term measures, referring to yet unknown cases and containing no reference to particular persons, places, or objects”.
- 51.
Leoni (1991), p. 4. See also Pollock (1912), p. 124. It is significant that Simmel, as we have already seen (cf. the text at note 165 in Chap. 1), wrote that “exchange and regulated exchange” are the same thing. Böhm-Bawerk (1962, p. 160) in turn argued: “in every civilized community, there must always exist some social order which will apply when two members of that society get into contact with each other”. Consequently, there cannot be a market without law. And yet the notion put forth here does not overlap with the one elaborated by Ordoliberalism, where we find the legislator performing a role that the Austrian School representatives and their followers oppose. Cf. Mises 1978a, p. 16). For an extensive treatment of Ordoliberalism, see Böhmler (1998); for a succinct treatment, see Vatiero (2015, pp. 294–296).
- 52.
On the concept of “abstract society”, see Popper (1966), vol. 1, pp. 174–5.
- 53.
Hayek (1960), p. 210.
- 54.
Weber (1946, p. 148), who also wrote: “The fate of an epoch which has eaten of the tree of knowledge is that it must know that we cannot learn the meaning of the world from the results of its analysis […]. It must recognize that general views of life and the universe can never be the product of increasing empirical knowledge” (Weber 1949, p. 52).
- 55.
- 56.
We are therefore very distant from the “religious police” invoked by Plato. See note 59 in Chap. 2 and the corresponding text.
- 57.
See Hayek (1982, vol. 2, pp. 38–42), who also specified: “It is significant that there exists a close parallel between this treatment of rules of justice as prohibitions and as subject to a negative test and the modern development in the philosophy of science, especially by Karl Popper, which treats the laws of nature as prohibitions and regards as their test the failure of persistent efforts of falsification, a test which, in the last resort, also proves to be a test of internal consistency of the whole system. The positions in the two fields are analogous also in that we can always only endeavour to approach truth, or justice, by persistently eliminating the false or unjust, but can never be sure that we have achieved final truth or justice” (ibid., p. 43).
- 58.
See Solon (A), 16. Cf. also Plutarch (A), 2, 2e.
- 59.
Hayek (1982), vol. 2, p. 114–5. See also Nozick (1974), p. 314. This does not rule out that the possibility of anyone “privately” seeing in every moment of social life the manifestation of some type of goal in gestation. But this belongs to the intangible sphere of individual choice, which in any case cannot be imposed on others.
- 60.
Hayek (1978), pp. 179–90.
- 61.
Huizinga (1945), p. 95.
- 62.
Acton (1985), p. 34.
- 63.
Op. cit., p. 35.
- 64.
Aquinas (1978), p. 77.
- 65.
Ibid.
- 66.
To give just an example, one can quote the passage which opens On Princely Government: “Whenever a certain end has been decided upon, but the means for arriving thereat are still open to choice, some one must provide direction if that end is to be expeditiously attained. A ship, for instance, will sail first on one course and then on another, according to the winds it encounters, and it would never reach its destination but for the skill of the helmsman who steers it to port” (op. cit., p. 3).
- 67.
Marsilius (1975), p. 207.
- 68.
- 69.
Acton (1985), p. 41.
- 70.
Op. cit., p. 43.
- 71.
Hayek (1960), p. 162. It may be useful here to read the following passage by Hume (1903, pp. 79–80): “We learn from English history that, during the civil wars, the Independents and Deists, though the most opposite in their religious principles, yet were united in their political ones, and were alike passionate for a commonwealth. And since the origin of Whig and Tory, the leaders of the Whigs have either been Deists or professed Latitudinaries in their principles; that is, friends to toleration, and indifferent to any particular sect of Christians: while the sectaries, who have all a strong tincture of enthusiasm, have always, without exception, concurred with that party in defence of civil liberty. The resemblance in their superstition long united the High-Church Tories and the Roman Catholics, in support of prerogative and kingly power; though experience of the tolerating spirit of the Whigs seems of late to have reconciled the Catholics to that party”.
- 72.
Hayek (1960), p. 163.
- 73.
Op. cit., pp. 162–3.
- 74.
As soon as one looks into the writing from that period, their Greco-Roman inspiration is glaringly clear. And not because of any desire to flaunt erudition. The ideal was provided by “mixed” or limited government, examples of which were sought in Classical Antiquity. See Fink’s (1962) wide-ranging discussion, which focuses in particular on Milton, Harrington and Sydney . In the Aeropagitica, one finds a fully-fledged exaltation of Greco-Roman culture. One must however point out that, in Milton, Renaissance and Reformation co-exist.
- 75.
Hobbes (1651), p. 201.
- 76.
Op. cit., p. 427.
- 77.
Op. cit., p. 163.
- 78.
It may be worthwhile at this point to quote a significant passage from Hobbes (op. cit., p. 200): “There is a […] doctrine, plainly and directly against the essence of a Commonwealth, and it is this: that the sovereign power may be divided. For what is it to divide the power of a Commonwealth, but to dissolve it; for powers divided mutually destroy each other”.
- 79.
Op. cit., p. 162.
- 80.
Op. cit., p. 163.
- 81.
Op. cit., p. 225.
- 82.
Hobbes was one of the major exponents of what Hayek (1978) termed “constructivism”, the conception, that is, which assumes it can mould institutions according to its whim. Bayle (1697, vol. 1, p. 100) had remarked, in relation to Hobbes’s system, that even the ideas which have been thought through most carefully “run into a thousand snags”, when “we put them into contact with the tremendous chaos of passions which reigns among men”.
- 83.
- 84.
Hayek (1960), pp. 164.
- 85.
For Milton, see Fink (1962), p. 107; for Harrington, cf. op. cit., pp. 83–84; for Sydney, see op. cit., p. 171. Harrington, in particular, followed Machiavelli (1883, pp. 42–5), who extolled Romulus and Lycurgus. Machiavelli had written: “we must take it as a rule to which there are very few or any exceptions, that no commonwealth or kingdom ever has salutary institutions […] in an entirely new mould, unless a single person. On the contrary, it must be from one man that it receive its institutions at first, and upon one man that all similar institutions must depend” (op. cit., p. 42). Harrington spent some time in Italy. He showed particular interest in the Venetian political system and got hold of Machiavelli’s works. On this, as well as Fink (1962), see also Schiavone (2004), p. XXI. As far as Sparta is concerned, it was necessary to wait for Constant’s speech on La liberté des anciens comparée à celle des modernes to find a clear condemnation of that city’s political system and history. Constant considered Athens to be, among “all the ancient states”, the one which “most resemble to modern states” (Constant, 1988b, p. 312). Yet it is paradoxical to see how misunderstood that “speech” was, often invoked to claim that the whole of Antiquity, including Athens, never knew individual liberty; on this issue, see Pellicani (2012, pp. 62–63). This misappreciation also applies to the work of Fustel de Coulange (1877, p. 352–3). But authors like Glotz, Jaeger, Pohlenz and Ehrenberg, to quote only a few, saw in Athens the place where individual freedom of choice made its first appearance. For more extensive references, see Infantino (2004).
- 86.
Harrington (1924, p. 15) wrote : “If one man be sole Lanlord of a Territory, or overballance the people, for example, three parts in four he is Grand Seignor: for so the Turk is called from his Property; and his Empire is absolute Monarchy”. One cannot recognise the importance of private property and adopt Spartan collectivism as a model of reference. In slightly later period to Harrington’s , Bernier (1914, p. 242) wrote: “Those three countries, Turkey, Persia, and Hindoustan, have no idea of the principle of meum and tuum, relatively to land or other real possessions; and having lost that respect for the right of property, which is basis of all that is good and useful in the world, necessarily resemble each other in essential points: they fall into the same pernicious errors, and must, sooner or later, experience the natural consequences of those errors – tyranny, ruin and misery”. See also the comment in note 67 of the previous chapter. The clearest formulation of Harrington and Bernier’s theorem is found in Hayek (1972, p. 92): “Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served”. In other words, by marking out resources, private property marks out the spheres of autonomy of individual actors.
- 87.
Hume (1983, vol. 5, pp. 329–330) wrote: “it has hitherto been found that, though some sensible inconveniences arise from the maxim of adhering strictly to law, yet the advantages overbalance them, and should render the English grateful to the memory of their ancestors, who, after repeated contests, at last established that noble […] principle”. Hume (op. cit., vol. 6, p. 531) added: “By deciding many important questions in favour of liberty, and still more, by that great precedent of depositing one king, and establishing a new family, it gave such an ascendant to popular principle, as has put the nature of the English constitution beyond all controversy. And it may justly be affirmed, without any danger of exaggeration, that we, in this Island, have ever since enjoyed, if not the best system of government, at least the most entire system of liberty, that ever was known amongst mankind”. Previously, Hume (1903, p. 252) had stated: “A Tory, therefore, since the [Glorious] Revolution, may be defined, in a few words, to be a lover of monarchy, though without abandoning liberty […]: as a Whig may be defined to be a lover of liberty, though without renouncing monarchy”.
- 88.
- 89.
Locke (1821), p. 295.
- 90.
Op. cit., p. 299.
- 91.
Hobbes (1651, p. 79) wrote : “The passions that incline men to peace are: fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them”.
- 92.
The term “geographer of human reason” was used by Kant (1922, p. 761) in reference to Hume. Locke (1825, p. 4) did in fact set out to map the outlines of the territory of knowledge: “Whereas, were the capacity of our understanding well considered, the extent of our knowledge once discovered, and the horizon found, which sets the bounds between the enlightened and dark part of things; between what is, and what is not, comprehensible by us; men would perhaps, with less scruple, acquiesce in the avowed ignorance of the one, and employ their thoughts and discourse, with more advantage and satisfaction of the other”.
- 93.
Locke (2002), p. 147.
- 94.
Hayek (1952, pp. 174–5). Hayek (op. cit., p. 166) specified: “Every sensation, even the ‘purest’, must […] be regarded as an interpretation of an event in the light of the past experience […]. The process of experience thus does not begin with sensations or perceptions, but necessarily precedes them: it operates on physiological events and arranges them into a structure or order which becomes the basis of their ‘mental’ significance; and the distinction between the sensory quality, in terms of which alone the conscious mind can learn about anything in the external world, is the result of such pre-sensory experience”. The consequence is that “John Locke’s famous fundamental maxim of empiricism that nihil est in intellectu quod non antea fuerit in sensu is […] not correct if meant to refer to conscious sense experience” (op. cit.. p. 177).
- 95.
Bartley (1984), pp. 108–9.
- 96.
Ibid.
- 97.
This is what Popper (1991, p. 15) states in general with regard to those who, despite their intentions, failed to free themselves from the doctrine of “manifest truth”. And yet, taking as his reference certain passages from the Essay Concerning Human Understanding and the writings on tolerance, Popper (op. cit., p. 16) himself numbered Locke among the authors who turned their backs on that doctrine. It is a point we shall return to later in the text. Here, however, it is important to have clearly in mind that Locke’s idea of attaining everything through “reflection and reasoning” has no relationship with fallibilism. It is very much related to the Cartesian conceit of being able to achieve self-evident truth (cf. note 157, and the text it relates to in Chap. 2). Sabine (1961, p. 530) wrote that Locke’s philosophy presented “the anomaly” of a theory of knowledge which is in obvious contrast with his political doctrine.
- 98.
Popper (1991), p. 16.
- 99.
Op. cit., p. 25. Popper (1992, p. 20) also specified that our aim should not be to “to save the lives of untenable systems but, on the contrary, to select the one which is by comparison the fittest, by exposing them all to the fiercest struggle for survival”. See also Bartley (1984), p. 243; Infantino (2008), pp. 56–61.
- 100.
Locke (1821), p. 189.
- 101.
Op. cit., p. 191.
- 102.
Op. cit., p. 296; see also p. 197.
- 103.
- 104.
Cf. Pollock (1922), p. 86.
- 105.
Locke (1821, p. 232) actually stated: “Though I have said […] that all men are by nature equal, I cannot be supposed to understand all sort of equality: age or virtue may give men a just precedency: excellency of parts and merit may place others above the common level: birth may subject some, and alliance or benefits others, to pay an observance to those whom nature, gratitude, or other respects may have made it due”.
- 106.
Here I am borrowing an expression used by Hayek (1949, p. 95) in a broader context.
- 107.
I am making use of something Popper (1991, p. 5) formulated in general terms.
- 108.
- 109.
Hayek (1982, vol. 2, p. 127) wrote : “freedom and justice are values that can prevail only among men with limited knowledge and would have no meaning in a society of omniscient men”. Hayek (op. cit., p. 20) also stated that we cannot proceed on “a factual assumption of omniscience which is never satisfied in real life and which, if it were ever true, would make the existence of those bodies of rules which we call morals and law not only superfluous but unaccountable and contrary to the assumption”. It should be added that the conceit of being able to evade human ignorance and fallibility is a philosophical vice which equally afflicts conceptions inspired by jusnaturalism and conceptions inspired by juspositivism.
- 110.
Locke (1821), p. 296. As we know, Descartes (see note 97 in this chapter and note 157 in the previous one) had stated: “from the fact that the will, being much ampler and more extended than the understanding, I do not confine it within the same limits, but extend it also to things which I do not understand; and being itself indifferent to these, it is very easily led astray, and chooses the false for the true, and evil for good. In this way I deceive myself, and sin”. As Popper (1991, p. 8) pointed out, all theories which are based on the doctrine of “manifest truth” need to state that, if that truth does not prevail, it “must have been maliciously suppressed” or through some kind of negligence. The manifest truth, which should be known to all, in this way becomes the privileged source of knowledge of the few who are able to escape the errors, the deceptions and the degeneration of the existent.
- 111.
Locke (1821), p. 216.
- 112.
Op. cit., p. 296.
- 113.
Op. cit., p. 263.
- 114.
Op. cit., p. 260.
- 115.
Pollock (1922), p. 100, italics added.
- 116.
Locke (1821), pp. 263–4.
- 117.
Op. cit., p. 265.
- 118.
Locke (1988), p. 7.
- 119.
Op. cit., pp. 17–8.
- 120.
Op. cit., pp. 37–8.
- 121.
Op. cit., p. 22. This quote is taken from A Letter Concerning Toleration and obviously collides with the doctrine of “manifest truth”. See note 97 in this chapter.
- 122.
Locke (1825), p. 157.
- 123.
- 124.
Referring to Locke, Parsons (1949, p. 101) wrote : “Since no more adequate conceptual scheme than the utilitarian was available at the time, it was a fortunate error that the gap was filled by what, it is now evident, was an untenable ‘metaphysical’ postulate, that the identity of interests was ‘in the nature of things’ and that never under any circumstances was there occasion to question the stability of such order”. For the sake of completeness, it should be added that in a paragraph in which he dwelt on money, Locke (1821, p. 226) provided a glimpse of a theory of social cooperation, based on voluntary exchange understood as a positive-sum game. In order to have a comprehensive formulation of this theory, one has to wait for the appearance of “sceptical Whiggism”.
- 125.
Durkheim (1980), p. 11. The paradox is represented by the fact that Durkheim, while viewing the Great Legislator as a genuine “superstition”, never accepted the idea of unintended order . See Infantino (1998), pp. 57–99 throughout.
- 126.
Durkheim (1980), p. 12. The same author (op. cit., p. 40–1) included Montesquieu as one of the victims of the Great Legislator’s myth. The passages which can be quoted in support of Durkheim’s judgement are numerous. And one can also recall the indulgent treatment Montesquieu accorded Sparta (1900, p. 35). He was however critical of Venice: “the legislative power is in the council, the executive in the pregadi, and the judiciary in the quarantine. But the mischief is that those different tribunals are composed of magistrates all belonging to the same body; which constitutes almost one and the same power” (op. cit., p. 153).
- 127.
Even though not entirely felicitous in his phrasing, Durkheim (1980, p. 12) wrote that anyone who accepts the idea of the Great Legislator must “deny the existence of any determinate order in human societies for, if it were true, laws, customs, and institutions would depend not on the constant nature of the state, but on the accident that brought forth one lawgiver rather than another”. See also Simmel (1908, p. 3, a page already referred to in Chap. 1, note 27). Consequently, it happens that, as in the world of the epic, the protagonists are “unique beings”, whose existential statute is “made up of a single article: Adventure is permitted ” (Ortega y Gasset 1914, pp. 374–377). Mises (1978a, p. 89) stated: “the radiant hero, enlightened by the Spirit of the world, shall lead the people and the State to salvation. The greatest reproach the statalist makes against modern sociology and historiography is that of having destroyed faith in the superhuman capabilities of great men. For the statalist dreams of a saviour, a Führer, a dictator”.
- 128.
This makes it possible to say summarily that the presence of the Great Legislator prevents secularisation. While the “privileged point of view on the world” is legitimated through religious belief, everything “is inexorably linked to the will of God, the sole and decisive reality. Whatever happens […] depends on the divine discretion, the inscrutable and inescapable decrees of God”. In such a situation, what can a man do when confronted by a problem? “Reason, analyse, compare, infer, verify, conclude? Not at all: the first thing [… he must] do is pray, address a prayer to God, in order that he be enlightened”. There is no other solution apart from “beseeching God to grant the revelation of his decrees”. If God condescends to reveal himself, he deprives his believers of any personal idea and turns them into “mouths of the Highest”. Their language “will in no way be like the logos of the reasoner […], but will consist of expressing today what God has decided and decreed will happen tomorrow, what [… they] say will be foresaying under the influence of God, it will be prophesying” (Ortega y Gasset 1940, pp. 535–536). One should also add that, if in the place of religious belief there is some kind of finalistic conception of history, things do not change: because, as we have already emphasised, in this case too, what prevails is the monopoly of truth, which underpins any teleocratic order. Strauss (1965, p. 84) wrote—and it is of interest to underscore it—that “philosophy cannot emerge, or nature cannot be discovered, if authority as such is not doubted or as long as at least any general statement of any being whatsoever is accepted on trust”. All this is true, but it did not prevent Strauss himself from falling victim to an inextinguishable Platonism.
- 129.
And yet Durkheim made very broad concessions towards Rousseau. Cf. Infantino (1998), pp. 67–76.
- 130.
Sombart (1923), p. 9. See Jonas (1968, vol. 4, p. 153–4), Mongardini (1970, pp. 77–132); Infantino (1998, pp. 2–4). However , for the sake of completeness, it should be also added that Sombart accepted the idea of a terrible Legislator. He believed that the Führer took orders “only from God”, the “supreme” Führer of the universe, and that Führertum was a “progressive revelation” (Sombart 1937, p. 194). See more extensively Mises (1978a), pp. 102–3; Mises (1978b), pp. 33–4.
- 131.
Strauss (1965, p. 81 wrote: “a political life that does not know of the idea of natural right is necessarily unaware of the possibility of science as such”. Some clarification is needed: Jaeger (1947, p. 357) rightly stressed that the “so-called philosophers” of Ionia, the “first thinkers”, “are not concerned with human life and society, but with the external world and the ceaseless process of coming” which “they called physis [… what] we usually translate by nature”. Science was born from the opposition between “nature”, thus understood, and “tradition”. This point of view was fully supported by Strauss (1965, p. 91). However, he did not take into account that the Presocratic theory of knowledge was different from the Platonic one: the Presocratics were fallibilists, Plato was an absolutist (cf. Popper 1991, vol. 1, pp. 148–54). Very aptly, Ortega y Gasset (1960b, p. 413) stressed that philosophy originated at a moment in which peoples entered into an “age of freedom”; and was a “colonial” product, born in the Ionian colonies and then imported into Athens: Thales was the first “figure of a ‘scientific’ thinker to exist on the planet” (op. cit., pp. 410–411). Unlike Thales, Plato was not aiming at critical discussion, but at the reaffirmation of a “privileged point of view on the world”. And no science can originate from an absolutist conception of natural law.
- 132.
Among those who blame the action of the “wicked” for the blindness which prevents everyone from knowing everything, one needs to make specific mention of Rousseau and Marx. Rousseau compared a supposed state of nature with the situation brought about through a fraudulent pact, by means of which the “rich man” resorting to “specious reasons” brought others over to his own “cause” (see Infantino 1998, pp. 67–76 and the references provided there). Marx made use of the jusnaturalist theory of labour value to “explain” the exploitation of workers. The fraudulent pact and exploitation were made possible by the blinding of the many by the few. One therefore needs to recover the situation in which everyone knows everything. This, in the case of Rousseau, allows a new social pact to be subscribed, and, in the case of Marx, brings an end to the economy. On Marx’s indebtedness to jusnaturalism, cf. Lindsay (1925), pp. 109–125.
- 133.
Popper (1966, vol. 2, p. 93) defined it as a “desperate position”.
- 134.
Ibid. See also Chap. 1, note 22.
- 135.
Rousseau (1997b, p. 125) himself , had no hesitation, in a moment of sincerity, in writing that the state of nature “perhaps never did exist, […] probably never will exist”.
- 136.
Popper (1966), vol. 2, p. 93.
- 137.
This is why Hayek (1949) rightly spoke of “true” individualism and “false” individualism.
- 138.
Taken to its logical consequences, contractualism contributes to fuelling what Hayek called “fatal conceit” (see note 159 in the previous chapter) or also “constructivism” (cf. note 82 in this chapter).
- 139.
Bobbio (1990, p. 116) wrote : “Eliminate an individualistic conception of society, you will no longer be able to justify democracy as a form of government. What better definition of democracy than that which states that in it individuals, all individuals, have a share of sovereignty. And how can this concept have been made irreversibly tight without reversing the relationship between power and freedom, making freedom precede power?”. We shall see later that, in order to place the issue in the right light, there is an indispensable intermediary; which is liberalism. Bobbio’s comments are in any case useful because they show that anti-individualism underpins all “reactionary doctrines” (op. cit., p. 117). And this confirms that the situation represented by the state of nature, from which Hobbes proceeded to posit the need for Leviathan, is not individualistic. It is pure psychologism.
- 140.
Sombart (1923), p. 7.
- 141.
Forbes (1966), p. XXIV.
- 142.
- 143.
- 144.
Mandeville (1924), vol. 1, p. 333.
- 145.
Hume (1930), vol. 2, p. 177.
- 146.
Ibid.
- 147.
Smith (1976a), p. 320.
- 148.
Passerin d’Entrèves (1980), p. 196. The quotation is taken from the foreword to the Spanish edition of Passerin’s work. This foreword is contained as an appendix in the Italian translation of Passerin’s book.
- 149.
Smith (1976b), vol. 1, p. 456.
- 150.
Ibid. Mindful of Smith’s passage, Burke (1951, p. 153) subsequently wrote: “I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases”. And further: “Though you were to join the commission all the directors of […] academies to the directors of the Caisse d’Escompte, one old experienced peasant is worth them all. I have got more information, upon a curious and interesting branch of husbandry, in a short conversation with a Carthusian monk, than I have derived from all the Bank directors that I have ever conversed with” (op. cit., p. 188). Therefore, we need to act “under a strong impression of the ignorance and fallibility of mankind” (op. cit., pp. 243–4, italics added).
- 151.
Hayek (1949), p. 80.
- 152.
It may be worthwhile quoting the following passage by Ferguson (1966, p. 124): “it is probable that the government of [… some great] states took its rise from the situation and genius of the people, not from the projects of a single man; that the celebrated warrior and statesman, who are considered the founders of those nations, only acted a superior part among numbers who were disposed to the same institutions; and they left to posterity a renown, pointing them out as the inventors of many practices which had been already in use, and which helped to form their own manners and genius, as well as those of their countrymen”.
- 153.
Mandeville (1924), vol. 1, p. 168.
- 154.
Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 335.
- 155.
Ibid.
- 156.
Cf. note 150 in this chapter.
- 157.
- 158.
Strauss (1965, p. 180) highlighted that this was something which took place after Machiavelli and Hobbes. His comment is true. However, it should be pointed out that not all those who exclude the idea of “human perfection” from their theories move in the same direction. Duo, si idem dicunt, non est idem. Machiavelli remained attached to the myth of foundation and sought the “new prince”; Hobbes proposed the Leviathan. But Mandeville, Hume and Smith theorised individual freedom of choice. The fact is that, if we have already acknowledged ourselves as being ignorant and fallible, we must relinquish the idea of “human perfection”. We shall soon see how the solution outlined by Mandeville, Hume and Smith is structured.
- 159.
Mandeville (1924), vol. 2, p. 349.
- 160.
Hume (1930), vol. 2, p. 199.
- 161.
Smith (1976c), p. 487.
- 162.
Hume (1930), vol. 2, p. 200.
- 163.
Op. cit., pp. 200–1. Smith himself was obviously aware of “Harrington and Bernier’s theorem” (cf. note 86 in this chapter). Smith (1976b, vol. 2, pp. 729–30) also analysed Bernier at length. He owned an edition of the Voyages, published in Amsterdam in 1710.
- 164.
Smith (1976a), p. 86. Therefore, the Scottish moralists knew that state organisation originated as a means of “political exploitation”.
- 165.
Smith (1976c), p. 224.
- 166.
Mandeville (1924), vol. 1, p. 107.
- 167.
Op. cit., p. 123.
- 168.
Op. cit., p. 185.
- 169.
Op. cit., p. 184. Mandeville (ibid.) also added: “While they lie dormant, and there is nothing to raise them, his excellence and abilities will be for ever undiscover’d, and the lumpish machine, without the influence of his passions, may be justly compar’d to a huge wind-mill without a breath of air”.
- 170.
Op. cit., p. 37.
- 171.
Op. cit., p. 185. Referring to the Spartans, Mandeville (op. cit., p. 245) had no hesitation in stating: “there never was a Nation whose greatness was more empty than their […] the only thing they could be proud of was that they enjoy’d nothing”. A position which was the exact opposite of Mandeville’s was expounded by Rousseau (cf. Sect. 2.5 in the previous chapter). As we have already indicated, Rousseau was influenced by Fénelon (1847), who had extolled Minos’s Crete and Lycurgus’s Sparta . Rousseau (1997a, p. 45) believed that “the rich and the learned only corrupt one another” and openly criticised (op. cit., p. 25) Mandeville and (as already mentioned) commented ironically on Voltaire (op. cit., pp. 19–20). Voltaire, concurring with the positions expressed on the issue by Mandeville and Jean-François Melon, celebrated luxury on many occasions, starting with his poem Le Mondain and the later Défence du Mondain. Voltaire (1876, p. 454) truly struck home when he stated: “the luxury of Athens gave rise to great men of every kind. Sparta had some good commanders, and yet not so many as the other cities”. The debate on luxury is thus one aspect of the opposition between the Spartan and the Athenian ways of life. Referring to the “virtuous” vision of Rousseau , d’Alembert (1893, p. 128) aptly wrote that “vices would remain and in addition we would have ignorance”. Pocock pointed out that Montesquieu (1900, p. 243) defined the idea that trade and luxury could entail the corruption of manners as “Plato’s complaints” (“la plainte de Platon”). Pocock (1985, p. 122) himself renamed the concern as “la plainte de Rousseau” (“Rousseau’s complaints”). Whenever a market society advances, there is always a reaction against it, based on gnoseological absolutism and the myth of virtue. For an overall vision of the debate on luxury during the Eighteenth Century in France, see Borghero (1974).
- 172.
Referring to Mandeville, Hume (1903, p. 276) wrote : “men of libertine principles bestow praises even on vicious luxury, and represent it as highly advantageous to society”.
- 173.
Op. cit., p. 275.
- 174.
Ibid.
- 175.
Ibid.
- 176.
Op. cit., p. 277. Hume (op. cit., p. 287) concluded: “He cannot cure every vice by substituting a virtue in its place. Very often he can only cure one vice by another; and in that case he ought to prefer what is least pernicious to society”. Hume (op. cit., p. 268 and p. 326) was a severe critic of society, understood in the Spartan manner, as a “fortified camp”. Therefore, one must “govern men by other passions, and animate them with a spirit of avarice and industry, art and luxury” (op. cit., p. 269).
- 177.
Smith (1976a), pp. 183–184.
- 178.
Rawson (1969), p. 350.
- 179.
Overturning Fénelon’s position (Borghero 1974, p. XVI), Bayle (1966a, vol. 2, p. 279b) had written: “Do you not realize that the counsels of Jesus Christ lead to the ruin of the passions and occupations without which human society cannot survive? Do you not see that if all men were to scrupulously abide by the evangelical counsels, the whole world would become a Trappist abbey?” Therefore, it is not inappropriate to quote the following passage by Swift (2004, p. 3): “I hope no reader imagines me so weak to stand up in the defence of real Christianity, such as used in primitive times (if we may believe the authors of those ages) to have an influence upon men’s belief and actions. To offer at the restoring of that, would indeed be a wild project: it would be to dig up foundations; to destroy at one blow all the wit, and half the learning of the kingdom; to break the entire frame and constitution of things; to ruin trade, extinguish arts and sciences, with the professors of them; in short, to turn our courts, exchanges, and shops into deserts”.
- 180.
I am making use of an expression from Ortega y Gasset (1960a), p. 138.
- 181.
Ibid.
- 182.
Ortega y Gasset (1939), p. 327.
- 183.
Op. cit., p. 338.
- 184.
Ortega y Gasset (1960b), pp. 413–414.
- 185.
Ortega y Gasset (1939), p. 330.
- 186.
Op. cit., p. 415.
- 187.
Hayek (1982), vol. 3, p. 176.
- 188.
See Chap. 1, note 139.
- 189.
Mandeville (1924), vol. 2, p. 350.
- 190.
Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 221.
- 191.
Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 349.
- 192.
Ibid.
- 193.
Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 60.
- 194.
Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 349. Bayle (1966b, vol. 3, p. 174a) had already spoken of the “joys of mutual exchange”. Among the founding fathers of sociology, it was later Simmel (1908, pp. 40–1) who laid most emphasis on the idea of social “commerce” and placed actors in the “dual role” of providers and beneficiaries of services. We have already pointed out (cf. Chap. 1, note 69) that, following Simmel , Ortega y Gasset (1957, p. 146) saw in social relationship a genuine “double entry” system.
- 195.
Hume (1930), vol. 2, p. 231.
- 196.
Smith (1976b), vol. 1, p. 26. Previously to Smith, Montesquieu (1900, p. 25) had already written: “each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest”. And Tucker (1931, p. 92) had formulated the same concept, arguing that “those efforts” made towards pursuing personal advantage “promote public interest”.
- 197.
Cf. Infantino (2008), p. 311.
- 198.
Furthermore, “if social phenomena showed no order except insofar as they were consciously designed, there would indeed be no room for theoretical sciences of society and there would be, as often argued, only problems of psychology” (see Chap. 1, note 18).
- 199.
Smith (1976b), vol. 1, p. 456.
- 200.
Improving the situation of a party does not therefore require worsening the situation of the Other. The exchange is a positive sum game, since each participant, on his own scale of preferences, attributes greater importance to what he receives in comparison with what he gives. This is why Comte (1970, p. 220) stated that economists have freed us from the “lamentable and immoral prejudice” which presents the “improvement of the material condition of some as if this could only be derived from a corresponding deterioration of others”. Mandeville (1924, vol. 1, pp. 108–116), Hume (1903, pp. 316–38) and Smith (1976a, pp. 228–229; 1976b, vol. 1, pp. 473–498) extended the logic of domestic exchange to international trade. According to Viner (1960, p. 292), “in so far as the classical theory of international trade had one definite originator, it was David Hume”. As we know, this theoretical construction was perfected by Ricardo (2001, pp. 85–103). Mises (1966, pp. 157–170) gave Ricardo’s theory the name of “law of association”, by which he wished precisely to indicate that cooperation is successful because it is a positive sum game.
- 201.
Cf. Hayek (1982, vol. 2), p. 110, where the author adds: “So long as collaboration presupposes common purposes, people with different aims are necessarily enemies who may fight each other for the same means”.
- 202.
Smith (1976b), vol. 1, p. 26.
- 203.
Hayek (1982, vol. 2, p. 109) wrote : “The Great Society arose through the discovery that men can live together in peace and mutually benefiting each other without agreeing on the particular aims which they severally pursue”.
- 204.
See Wolin (2006), pp. 273–6.
- 205.
Mandeville (1732), p. 34.
- 206.
Hayek (1949), p. 11.
- 207.
Ibid.
- 208.
Ferguson (1792, vol. 2, p. 458) rightly wrote: “Liberty or freedom is not, as the origin of the name may seem to imply, an exemption from all restraint, but rather the most effectual application of every just restraint to all the member of a free state, whether they be magistrates or subjects. It is under a just restraint only that every person is safe, and cannot be invaded, either the freedom of his person, his property, or innocent action”. Millar (1803, vol. 4, p. 267) stated that justice requires me to “pay my debts, or perform the services, which by my contracts, or by the course of my behaviour, I have given [my neighbour] reason to expect from me”. Obviously, behind Ferguson and Millar lies the lesson of Hume (1930, vol. 2, pp. 219–42) on “translation by consent” and “performance of promises”.
- 209.
For Mandeville, Hume and Smith, all this is a turning point. “For unhappy is the people, and their Constitution will be very precarious, whose welfare must depend upon virtues and consciences of Ministers and Politicians” (Mandeville 1924, vol. 1, p. 190). And this is the reason why “political writers have established it as a maxim that, in contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have other end, in all his action, than private interest ” (Hume 1903, p. 40). Smith (1976b, vol. 1, p. 468) himself opposed the “rule of law ” to the activity of “that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs”.
- 210.
Smith (1976a), p. 218.
- 211.
Smith (1976a), p. 82, cf. also p. 218. Millar (1803, vol. 4, p. 267) himself wrote: “justice requires no more than that I should abstain from hurting my neighbour, in his person, his property, or his reputation”. Millar then added: “the line of duty suggested by this mere negative virtue, can be clearly marked, and its boundaries distinctly ascertained”.
- 212.
Hume (1930), vol. 2, p. 201. Meinecke (1936, vol. 1, p. 234) appropriately stressed that for Hume the “the sense English history” is to be seen in the “passage from a government of men to a government of laws”. Hayek (1967, p. 109) wrote that Hume “gives us probably the only comprehensive statement of the legal and political philosophy which later became known as liberalism”.
- 213.
Stewart (1859), p. 184.
- 214.
Ibid.
- 215.
Ibid.
- 216.
See note 157 in this chapter.
- 217.
Hume (1930, vol. 2, p. 191–2) wrote that, when decisions are entrusted to a single person or to a restricted group, the “least failure” must be “attended with inevitable ruin and misery”; and he added that, when instead there is “mutual support, we are less exposed to fortune and accidents” and that it is “by this additional force, ability, and security, that society becomes advantageous”. Ferguson (1792, vol. 2, p. 510) himself argued: “wherever men are free to think and to act, errors will be incurred, and wrongs will be committed: but the error that results from the freedom of one person is best corrected by the concurring freedom of many”.
- 218.
Hayek (1949), pp. 19–22.
- 219.
F. Pollock (1908), p. 42.
- 220.
- 221.
Hayek (1949), p. 13.
- 222.
Strauss (1959, p. 49) saw in liberalism the “solution of the political problem by economic means”. On the contrary, the lesson of Mandeville, Hume and Smith shows that liberalism is the solution to the economic problem through social cooperation and the limitation of the action of public power. In his judgement, Strauss was to a large extent led astray by his failure to recognise the condition of scarcity as the root of the problem of order, namely of compatibility of individual actions. This is confirmed by the fact that he did not see economic activity as a product of scarcity, but rather as the outcome of the “acquisitiveness” (ibid.). His approach is thus essentially psychologistic. On Strauss, see Cubeddu (2010).
- 223.
Schmitt (1996), p. 57.
- 224.
Mandeville (1924), vol. 2, p. 189.
- 225.
Hume (1930), vol. 2, p. 198.
- 226.
Smith (1976a), p. 110.
- 227.
Ferguson (1792), vol. 1, p. 262.
- 228.
Hayek (1960), p. 60.
- 229.
Smith actually wanted to write a work on the philosophy of law (Smith 1976a, p. 342). And yet, seeing that his old age prevented him from completing the project, he stated that his main ideas on the subject are to be found in The Wealth of Nations (op. cit., p. 3), in which work, as we already know, Smith derived from law individual freedom of choice, mobilisation of knowledge and economic growth. This is a good opportunity to add that Smith also provided an extremely appropriate explanation of the origins of capitalism. Cities, which were the places where the certainty of law was first established, became “the only sanctuaries in which it could be secure to the person that acquired it” (Smith 1976b, vol. 1, p. 405). According to Smith, this all had as its necessary condition “feudal anarchy”, the lack, that is, of a strong central political power (op. cit., p. 386). Therefore, market society was originated unintentionally, without prior planning (op. cit., p. 418). Smith’s idea was taken up by Ferguson (1792, vol. 1, p. 314): “the Barons of England […] knew not that the charters which they extorted from their sovereign, were to become foundations of freedom to the people over whom they themselves wished to tyrannize”. The same thesis was later developed by Millar (1803), vol. 2, pp. 80–81. For a more specific analysis of the three authors, see Infantino (2004), pp. 94–8. For a more recent use of “feudal anarchy” as a pre-condition for the birth of capitalism, cf. Baechler (1971), Pellicani (1988).
- 230.
Hayek (1960), p. 60.
- 231.
Hume (1930), vol. 2, p. 240.
- 232.
Op. cit., p. 241–2. These same ideas were expressed by Smith (1976b), vol. 2, p. 910.
- 233.
Hume (1930), vol. 2, p. 242.
- 234.
Hume (1903), p. 39.
- 235.
Smith (1976b), vol. 2, p. 687.
- 236.
Smith (1976a), p. 187.
- 237.
Another great exponent of the Whig tradition, Edmund Burke (1791, p. 97), wrote: “It is not necessary to teach men to thirst after power. But it is very expedient that, by moral instruction, they should be taught, and by their civil constitution they should be compelled, to put many restrictions upon the immoderate exercise of it, and the inordinate desire”.
- 238.
Hayek (1978), p. 133.
- 239.
Constant (1988a), p. 175.
- 240.
Ibid.
- 241.
Ortega y Gasset (1926, pp. 424–425; 1930, pp. 191–192). In times closer to ours, Popper (1966, vol. 1, p. 174) argued that the old question of “who should command?” should be replaced by the new question: “How can we organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?”
- 242.
See Chap. 1, note 187.
- 243.
- 244.
Hayek (1978), pp. 137–8.
- 245.
Op. cit. p. 138.
- 246.
Op. cit., p. 133. Mises (1981a, pp. 45–6, b, c) wrote: “People often fail to perceive the fundamental differences between the liberal and the anarchist idea. Anarchism rejects all coercive social organizations, and repudiates coercion as a social technique. It wishes in fact to abolish the State and the legal order, because it believes that society could do better without them. It does not fear anarchical disorder because it believes that without compulsion would unite for social co-operation and would behave in the manner that social life demands”. Mises 1978a, p. 71) also wrote: “Liberalism differs radically from anarchism and has nothing in common with the improbable ideas of the anarchists”.
- 247.
Taylor (1967), pp. 78–99. Viner (1960, pp. 99), who was one of the most widely accepted interpreters of Mandeville, believed that the position of the author of The Fable of the Bees could be considered the same as that of laissez-faire. In the light of what we know today, this thesis is indefensible. Mandeville’s evolutionism is in stark opposition to jusnaturalism. It is true: Mandeville’s exaltation of “private vices” needs to be trimmed of the excesses of his rhetoric. But one should not forget that Mandeville (1924, vol. 1, p. 37) wrote that “vice is beneficial” only when it is “by justice lopt and bound”. He also specified (op. cit., vol. 2, p. 335) that, for securing and perpetuating “to nations their establishment, and whatever they value there is no better method than with wise laws to guard and entrench their Constitution, and contrive such forms of administration that the common-weal can receive no great detriment from the want of knowledge or probity”. We are very far from the laissez faire theories which, when imported into Britain, led Bentham (1840, p. 66) to say that “every law is an evil for every law is an infraction of liberty”.
- 248.
- 249.
Hayek (1960), p. 61.
- 250.
Ibid.
- 251.
It may be useful at this point to quote a brief passage from Robbins (1965, p. 57): “It is necessary to emphasize […] the contrast between the Classical and other libertarian systems - the anarchical system which assumes no need for law and order at all and the naturrechtlick systems which indeed assume the necessity for some such apparatus, but assume it to be so simple that it can be deduced from revelation or the principles of pure reason and written on half a sheet of notepaper”. One can only object to Robbins that not all classical economists were evolutionists, so that the expression “classical economics”, as the later “neo-classical economics”, encompasses two distinct cultural approaches: one of which is evolutionist and the other rationalist. See extensively Infantino (2010, pp. 159–177). With reference to the common classifications in Italy, one might say that the term “liberismo” was introduced to refer to laissez-faire. And yet it is right to point out that some Italian authors, even though in general they were followed classical liberalism, did not hesitate to call themselves “liberisti”, wishing with this only to indicate that they were in favour of free trade. This is perfectly correct (cf. also Cubeddu 1997, pp. 113–124). It is not however correct to believe that there can be liberalism without economic freedom, i.e. without private property. This was the very serious mistake which Croce made: see Infantino (2003b, pp. 93–96).
- 252.
Cubeddu (1997), p. 103.
- 253.
Lottieri (2001), p. 37.
- 254.
Jacobson (1965), p. 108. Cato’s Letters, which came out in England between November 1720 and July 1723, were written by Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard. The output of these two authors was made use of by the American proponents of independence, in the period preceding the revolution of 1776.
- 255.
Jacobson (1965), p. 108.
- 256.
And yet, speaking from an evolutionary position, Smith (1976d, pp. 377–385) never hesitated in defending the rights of the colonies.
- 257.
For a collection of some significant texts of the American theorists of anarchism, the reader is referred to Iannello (2004).
- 258.
Lottieri (2001), p. 42. See also Holcombe (2004), pp. 325–342. The anarchist position was criticised by Olson (2000, p. 55) in the following terms: “Anarchy not only involves loss of human life but also increases the incentives to steal and to defend against theft, and thereby reduces the incentive to produce”.
- 259.
- 260.
See Iannello (2004), p. 52.
- 261.
Rothbard (1996b), p. 221.
- 262.
Rothbard bound himself to rigid jusnaturalism. And he had no hesitation in stating (1998, p. 148) that his position “toss out of court all variants of ‘social contract’ as a justification for the State […], whether it be the Hobbesian surrender of all one’s rights, [or] the Lockean surrender of the right of self-defence”. This is why Bassani (1996, p. XXXV) wrote that Rothbard’s is a “theory of natural rights in opposition to political society”. Rothbard used the evolutionistically inspired theory of the Austrian School of Economics in the field of economics. But his political philosophy is hyper-rationalist, so much so that he was a severe critic of the theory of unintended consequences and understood order as voluntarily constructed. In the theory of Mandeville, Hume and Smith, actors intentionally exchange means; and they cooperate unintentionally in the pursuit of their respective ends. For a criticism of Rothbard from an evolutionary point of view, see Fallocco (2011).
- 263.
Schmitt (1996), p. 26, italics added.
- 264.
Op. cit., p. 34.
- 265.
Op. cit., p. 28.
- 266.
Schmitt (op. cit., p. 55) equates “liberalism” with the “natural law and liberal-individualistic doctrines”. This is undoubtedly too generic as a statement; and in any case it prevents a more in-depth discussion.
- 267.
Voltaire (1741), p. 61.
- 268.
Huizinga (1949), p. 209. Panebianco (2004, p. 9) wrote that “Schmitt’s theories were exaggerated and biased”. And he added that liberal thinkers “have always correctly seen in politics a possible threat to freedom. But the causes of this – in part (but only in part) for the reasons indicated by Carl Schmitt – mostly remain obscure and unexplored in liberal thought”. The positions expressed in this book look in a completely different direction.
- 269.
This was done by Gray (2004, p. 14), who levels this accusation against thinkers of very different persuasion, such as Rawls, Dworkin, Hayek and Nozick.
- 270.
I am borrowing the term “claim” from Leoni, who planned to develop a theory of power on individualistic bases. He was not aware of Simmel’s work. He intended to refer mostly to Hume. As we know, Leoni did not have time to complete his project. Indications of what he wanted to write can be found in his lectures to his students. See in particular Leoni (2003, p. 78), where, among other things, it is stated that the “idea of power” is at the “root of the idea of [legal] claim”, so that the “field of law” cannot “be separated from the field of power”.
- 271.
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Infantino, L. (2020). The Conditions Enabling Individual Choice and the Limitation of Power. In: Infrasocial Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45081-6_3
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