Well, I'd like to begin by apologizing to three of the panelists.
Stephen Crowe sent me his paper last week, so I had a chance to read it in some detail.
And I only saw Huntouli's paper yesterday, and the other two papers I just glanced at,
so I have to apologize to three of the people.
Well, I haven't really had time to study your papers very much in detail.
Now, on Stephen Crowe's paper, I thought it was an excellent paper, but the basic difference
I have with him is that he gives what I consider an excellent argument for anarchism.
He said, well, people in a state of nature could establish certain rules of governance
Among Themselves, and this wouldn't require having one person or one group, a sort of
sovereign ruling over them. Now, as a follower of Murray Rothbard, I of course find this
a very good argument, but I don't see at all that this is a Hobbesian anarchism. Now, he
said it fulfills his three conditions, but one of the, I mean, his third condition was
something like you have a sovereignism man or a group of men and it isn't if you
have an anarchist system it's just system governance if you want to say well
something would fulfill the conditions of what it would do what Hobbes wants
much better than the idea Hobbes has that's fine but then you're not giving a
Hobbesian solution you're rejecting what Hobbes is doing so I don't see in what
What senses is a Hobbesian anarchism? It's taking Hobbes's starting point and saying
that Hobbes was wrong about things. Now, on the criticism of Levin, I'm not sure the two
points were right. Now, the first of his criticisms was, well, if people surrendered their swords
to the sovereign, then this doesn't change human nature. People would still want to fight,
the propensity to fight each other just as they had this state of nature they
wouldn't have changed their nature now that's certainly right I don't think
Levin is assuming the contrary it's not that he thinks people would all be
converted into pacifists it's just that he's thinking that in the state of
nature there would be somewhat of an arms race you want you want to have a
sword because the other person has one then if he has a better sword you'd want
have more of that, so you could kind of avoid this arms race by giving all your weapons
as sovereign.
Of course, again, the difficulty, well, then we're all having to rely on the sovereign,
the person with all the swords, doesn't seem like a very good deal.
And then on the second criticism was that, well, if you did that, in what sense would
the state be minimal, you know, then the state would be, the sovereign would be having enormous
amount of power.
Well, I think that's certainly right, but I think what Levin means by minimal would
would just be minimal functions, not minimal power, but it would just be not having other
functions. Of course, you'd have a problem how you could stop the sovereign from doing
other things, but I think that's what he means by minimal. Now, turning to Huntouli's paper,
as I said, I didn't have a chance to study this. I just saw it yesterday. The only suggestion
I'd have for him is, there is a very good book, an interesting book that came out around
1921 by Nesta Webster called The French Revolution, a study of democracy that has a very much
detailed study of Philippe Gallet's role in the early stages of the French Revolution.
She stresses that very much.
She of course was very controversial because some of her later works on conspiracy theories,
I mean, when she stuck to French Revolution, she was quite good, in fact, in A. J. P. Taylor,
a great British historian, in a review of her two-volume book, Louis XVI and Ruy Antoinette,
said in Manchester Guardian around 1937, this was one of the outstanding books on French history.
So I think he should, I would suggest that that book, the French Revolution,
is studying democracies worth adding to. Now, the only criticism I had of his paper
is one, sadly for me, he rectified in the later part of his paper. In the first part, he referred
to Louis Philippe as King of France, and it's correctly, as he had later correctly,
as King of the French, not King of France. He's very important because he was indicating that
his power came from the people, you know, just like Napoleon was crowned French emperor, not
not Emperor of France, so unlike Louis XVIII and Charles X, Louis-Philippe was, as Hunt
said, a citizen king.
I want to turn now to the paper by Colin Pearce, again an excellent paper, but it sounds like
I'd want to study this in detail, sounds like this is the one of the papers I'd have the
most to disagree with.
Now what Professor Pierce is indicating, he said, well, Rothbard was criticizing modern
philosophy, particularly saying that Hume's dichotomy, saying this is a mistake, but that
in fact the real dichotomy between classical and modern philosophy came about with Hobbes
And the reason this gets Rothbard into trouble is not just that he's made a mistake in saying while we have,
he's talking about Hume as the division when he should have said Hobbes, but this really strikes at the heart of his system.
It isn't just a historical mistake because Rothbard is relying in his views on natural rights on Locke,
Locke and Locke has really taken over Hobbes' view, sort of a passionate view that says
that there isn't really a classical reason, but they're sort of reducing reason to the
passions.
And I think a problem with this view, it depends very much on the interpretation that Strauss
Strauss in Natural Writing History gives of Locke where he thinks Locke is really somewhat
of a Hobbesian, but he's just trying to conceal this, that according to the way Strauss views
things, Locke is someone who is kind of a hedonist, he just reduces morality to self-interest
and he doesn't really recognize an objective morality.
Now, I tend to think this interpretation of Locke is quite questionable. I mean, that
Locke talks about a natural, I mean, does think there's a natural law ethics in a pretty
standard sense. I don't think that he's making this up. I find some of the arguments that
Strauss and Barry Strauss has given in support of that reading of Locke are wrong. My opinion,
For example, Strauss and other Straussians like Michael Zuckert have said, well, according
to law, natural law would depend on proving that, on thinking that the soul is immortal,
but Locke admits he has no proof for that.
But I don't find that argument convincing.
I mean, you could just take that as an argument, that's what his argument is, that the soul
was immortal, that morality depends on it, somewhat of like an argument that Kant gives
in the critique of practical reason, you see. So, I mean, I don't find that at all a convincing
line of attack. I don't think it's been shown that Locke just reduces morality to the passions
in the way that Strauss and his followers have suggested. One could also raise criticism,
well, is this correct interpretation of Hobbes? I think here probably the Straussian argument
is stronger, but still there are arguments to the contrary, for example, as you find
in Howard Warander's book on Hobbes or Francis, who had defined politics of Hobbes, take a
very different view of Hobbes.
So I think that questionable view, somewhat questionable view of Hobbes and much more
questionable view of Locke.
So I don't think it's right that Rothbard would get into trouble because taking over
or a Lockean view of rights, he's sort of reducing morality of the passion.
I think what's actually involved here is Strauss was very much influenced in his views by the
British socialist R.H. Taney, who was his great friend when he was in England in the
1930s.
So he was taking over essentially certain anti-capitalist assumptions that Taney had
about the development of modern world. I think you find this sort of that sort of
there there's been a decline of virtue from the medieval and ancient world to
the modern acquisitive world. This is exactly the view of Tawny, you know, his
famous book, The Acquisitive Society and the English title of Sickness, the
Acquisitive Society. So I think Strauss really took that over from Tawny and it's
That's my view, great question of view. Now, on the separation of personal morality from
political philosophy, I think the thing for Rothbard is key, that he has a very restricted
conception of what political philosophy is, just when is it justifiable to use force.
So he isn't saying that you couldn't have, say, people like torture to people, we couldn't
have social disapproval of this, but he asked the question, when would it be legitimate
to use force to suppress agreements among people?
And I think if one said, well, well, one just to return to the class, I think inequality
of the class, I think difficulty in that view is it would be very difficult to come up with
with a Good Argument Against Slavery, if you accepted this classical view.
And then just one minor point, I think Professor Pierce said that something that Strauss had
refuted and really refuted Carl Schmitt's conception of Hobbes before, but I mean Schmitt's
book on Hobbes really came out, although of course he talked about Hobbes before, his
book on Schmitt, the Levinathan State Theory, Thomas Hobbes came out in around 37 or 38,
and that was after Hobbes' famous review of Schmitt in 32, I think, so I mean it wasn't
that Strauss had refuted Schmidt on Hobbes in a way that Schmidt hadn't responded to.
Schmidt came on real stuff on Hobbes was later, not before.
Now, the last paper by Mr. Bielen, I thought was an excellent paper I agreed with most
Professor, but I find myself a little bit in the uncomfortable position of having to
defend Hegel.
Now the title of his paper was something like, is history going anywhere?
But what Hegel seems to be saying is not predicting that history is going somewhere, he's trying
to sum up where history has come to now.
Now, you know, he says in the preface of the philosophy of right, you know, that the famous
passage where he says the owl of Minerva takes flight only with the coming of dusk, meaning
that philosophy will start talking only after events have happened. It's an interpretation
of the past, not an attempt to predict what's going to happen. And there was one point in
the paper, again, I'd want to study the written paper, they seem questionably, Mr. Buhlen
The reason seems to be suggesting that ideas or logic applies only to other ideas, not to the real world.
Well, I mean, supposing that only if you had a view that everything is composed of ideas, would you have the...
could you say that the reason would apply to the real world?
Well, I mean, supposing you take just the simple syllogism.
Socrates' men are mortal, Socrates' men, therefore Socrates is mortal.
Well, that seems to me quite a valid conclusion about Socrates, the real person who existed
in the past, not an idea of Socrates, it's actually using reason, we're talking about
the real person.
So I don't see any reason, I'm not seeing why one would have to have some sort of odd
and a view of metaphysics to think that logic applies to the world.
But again, I want to study these papers in much more detail,
so don't take my comments very seriously, I certainly won't.