WEBVTT NOTE Rothbard vs. Strauss: Libertarianism, Rights, and Reason 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 So I'll read some selections from my paper just to give you a sense of where it comes down. 2 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:13.000 It's compare and contrast, Rothbard and Strauss. 3 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:21.000 Murray Rothbard says that Leo Strauss deserves praise because he is on the forefront of the fight to restore and resurrect political philosophy 4 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:26.000 from the interment given it by modern positivists and adherents of scientism, 5 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:31.400 in short, that he wants to restore values and political ethics to the study of politics. 6 00:00:31.400 --> 00:00:37.000 Nevertheless, Rothbard rejects Strauss' call for a return to the ancients as the only sane 7 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:43.340 step in the face of the crisis of modern subjectivism and relativism. Rothbard will not follow Strauss 8 00:00:43.340 --> 00:00:47.860 in the direction of the classic natural right doctrine in its original form and with it 9 00:00:47.860 --> 00:00:53.520 the doctrine of the best regime. This is the case despite or precisely because Rothbard's 10 00:00:53.520 --> 00:01:09.160 Rothbard thinks that Strauss is at his best on one fundamental point, and that is when 11 00:01:09.160 --> 00:01:16.200 he is criticizing ethical relativism and advocating a grounding of ethics on natural law, as he 12 00:01:16.200 --> 00:01:19.360 Strauss did in his famous paper on relativism. 13 00:01:19.360 --> 00:01:24.360 Nevertheless, Strauss' reservations about the whole philosophical basis of modern liberalism 14 00:01:24.360 --> 00:01:29.480 and the doctrine of modern natural rights, with an S, means for Rothbard that Strauss 15 00:01:29.480 --> 00:01:32.880 takes away with one hand what he giveth on the other. 16 00:01:32.880 --> 00:01:40.200 On more specific topics, Rothbard says, on the detailed content of natural law or historical 17 00:01:40.200 --> 00:01:45.720 discussions of political philosophers, Strauss simply shows himself, quote, to be a fallacious 18 00:02:15.720 --> 00:02:22.800 Let's look further at Rothbard's differences with Strauss, especially on Western thought. 19 00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:28.720 Strauss is at one with Rothbard in emphasizing the individualism of John Locke's philosophy 20 00:02:28.720 --> 00:02:33.880 and the expansion and purification of natural rights theory following on from Locke, although 21 00:02:33.880 --> 00:02:39.320 he pays no attention to Spencer and Spooner as Rothbard does these types. 22 00:02:39.320 --> 00:02:45.680 But unlike Rothbard, Strauss is manifestly unsympathetic to the development of modern 23 00:02:45.680 --> 00:02:47.880 and Natural Rights. 24 00:02:47.880 --> 00:02:53.340 For his part, Strauss defines the ideal of modern civilization as a tendency of a particular 25 00:02:53.340 --> 00:03:00.160 intellectual development, in which in due course, referring to Hunt's paper, exploded 26 00:03:00.160 --> 00:03:07.480 in the French Revolution of 1789, that Locke in due course leads to the guillotine and 27 00:03:07.480 --> 00:03:08.480 all of that. 28 00:03:08.480 --> 00:03:13.000 Strauss sums up this tendency in the following terms, Locke and natural rights. 29 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:18.080 It sought to lower moral standards, the moral claims which previously had been made by all 30 00:03:18.080 --> 00:03:23.040 responsible teachers, but to take better care than those earlier teachers for the putting 31 00:03:23.040 --> 00:03:28.620 into practice, into political and legal practice of the rules of human conduct. 32 00:03:28.620 --> 00:03:33.000 And how was such a massive reorientation of the Western mind made possible? 33 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:38.180 It was most effectively achieved, Strauss says, by the identification of morality with 34 00:03:38.180 --> 00:03:44.820 with an attitude of claiming one's rights or with enlightened self-interest or the reduction 35 00:03:44.820 --> 00:03:50.540 of honesty to the best policy or the solution of the common interest and private interest 36 00:03:50.540 --> 00:03:53.500 by means of industry and trade. 37 00:03:53.500 --> 00:03:59.500 Here Strauss quotes Locke's claim that where there is no property, there is no justice. 38 00:03:59.500 --> 00:04:02.660 At this point, Strauss allows himself a little editorializing. 39 00:04:02.660 --> 00:04:08.580 He says that his own country, Germany, the thought of Germany stood up against Lockeanism 40 00:04:08.580 --> 00:04:13.620 and its debasement of morality and against the concomitant decline of a truly philosophic 41 00:04:13.620 --> 00:04:19.480 spirit and such a negative stance towards this new ideal of civilization as represented 42 00:04:19.480 --> 00:04:23.500 by Locke was to the everlasting honor of Germany. 43 00:04:23.500 --> 00:04:29.140 It was Schelling, in fact, who said, je méprise, Locke, I hate Locke, Schelling, the great 44 00:04:29.140 --> 00:04:31.740 idealist philosopher. 45 00:04:31.740 --> 00:04:38.740 Not surprisingly, given Rothbard-Strauss contrast on Locke, we see Rothbard focusing on Hume 46 00:04:38.940 --> 00:04:44.460 and not on Locke as the thinker supposed by modern philosophers to have effectively demolished 47 00:04:44.460 --> 00:04:50.940 the theory of natural law. This supposed demolition of natural law was based on Hume's view that 48 00:04:50.940 --> 00:04:56.820 reason is and only can be a slave to the passions. It is not in modern posthumian philosophy 49 00:04:56.820 --> 00:05:03.620 In this philosophy we see reason bound to be a mere slave to the passions. 50 00:05:03.620 --> 00:05:09.180 It is in this human philosophy that reason is a slave to the passions, cranking out the 51 00:05:09.180 --> 00:05:13.820 discovery of the means to the end sought by those passions. 52 00:05:13.820 --> 00:05:17.940 Man's reason can discover the proper ends for man to follow. 53 00:05:17.940 --> 00:05:18.940 That's possible. 54 00:05:18.940 --> 00:05:42.380 Rothbard, Thomas Hobbs of Momsbury, For the thoughts are the desires of scouts and spies 55 00:05:42.380 --> 00:05:55.580 In other words, it's Hobbes who reduces reason to a passion or the tool of the passions. 56 00:05:55.580 --> 00:06:01.740 So what Rothbard describes as posthumian philosophy is in fact posthobzian philosophy. 57 00:06:01.740 --> 00:06:06.440 It all goes back to Hobbes, everything, especially if you take Strauss' view. 58 00:06:06.440 --> 00:06:10.660 It was Hobbes who first stressed the point Rothbard associates with Hume, that reason 59 00:06:10.660 --> 00:06:15.020 is but the tool of the passions. But what explains this oversight in the history of 60 00:06:15.020 --> 00:06:20.940 thought on Rothbard's part? I think the explanation is somewhat obvious. It is to do with the 61 00:06:20.940 --> 00:06:25.780 fact that between Thomas Hobbes and David Hume, there is one pivotal philosophical figure 62 00:06:25.780 --> 00:06:31.060 and that is none other than America's philosopher, John Locke, the father of life liberty and 63 00:06:31.060 --> 00:06:36.380 property liberalism. If Rothbard dates the rise of anti-rational 64 00:06:36.380 --> 00:06:43.780 National Passionism to Hume, then Locke cannot be implicated in it. But if it started back 65 00:06:43.780 --> 00:06:48.940 with none other than Hobbes, then Locke is very clearly implicated in the rise of passionism 66 00:06:48.940 --> 00:06:53.780 to the extent that the two thinkers share certain fundamental assumptions. The debate 67 00:06:53.780 --> 00:06:59.900 over the relation between Hobbes' monarchical absolutism and Locke's parliamentary Whiggism 68 00:06:59.900 --> 00:07:04.860 goes on, but the affinity between the two thinkers has long been noted and it has been 69 00:07:04.860 --> 00:07:09.420 and strongly argued that Locke took his basic principles from Hobbes and sanded down their 70 00:07:09.420 --> 00:07:15.500 rough edges in order to make them more palatable to a wider audience. Rothbard himself says 71 00:07:15.500 --> 00:07:20.340 at one point that current scholars ranging from Marxists to Straussians considered Thomas 72 00:07:20.340 --> 00:07:26.140 Hobbes rather than John Locke as the founder of systematic individualist natural rights 73 00:07:26.140 --> 00:07:34.140 theory. On the nature of Hobbes' thought then, the whole disagreement between Rothbard and 74 00:07:34.140 --> 00:07:44.140 This is because if Rothbard is right, then the man who Strauss insists is the founder of the doctrine of natural rights is in fact their biggest enemy. 75 00:07:44.140 --> 00:07:56.140 On the other hand, if Strauss is right, then Rothbard will not be able to account for liberal society's dependence on statism, which for Rothbard is what Hobbesianism represents. 76 00:07:56.140 --> 00:08:02.140 Rothbard considers the refutation of the view that Hobbes is the father of liberalism to be final. 77 00:08:02.140 --> 00:08:07.660 to be final. Indeed, he says that the older view of Hobbes as the statist and totalitarian 78 00:08:07.660 --> 00:08:13.420 has been vindicated by Williamson M. Evers. Rothbard also considers the sympathy which 79 00:08:13.420 --> 00:08:19.420 the pro-Nazi German political theorist, Karl Schmidt, expressed for Hobbes' absolutism as 80 00:08:19.420 --> 00:08:25.580 indicative of the latter's illiberalism. But Strauss argued in effect that Schmidt had 81 00:08:25.580 --> 00:08:31.740 gotten Hobbes backwards in his famous critique of the Nazi theorist. Schmidt thought Hobbes 82 00:08:31.740 --> 00:08:36.380 Rothbard pointed the way to a solution to the problem of liberalism, but Strauss insists 83 00:08:36.380 --> 00:08:42.020 that Hobbes is in fact the source of the problem. Rothbard, however, fails to consider Strauss's 84 00:08:42.020 --> 00:08:48.500 critique of Schmitt as relevant to the whole Hobbes debate, distracted as he was by Professor 85 00:08:48.500 --> 00:08:54.180 Evers' account. Strauss's case then is that Schmitt had made a mistake similar to the 86 00:08:54.180 --> 00:09:01.620 one we later see in Rothbard, i.e. taking Hobbes to be an intensely anti-liberal statist. 87 00:09:01.620 --> 00:09:07.340 Thus Hobbes is attractive to Schmidt for the same reason he is an anathema to Rothbard. 88 00:09:07.340 --> 00:09:12.180 Hobbes represents to Schmidt an alternative to classical liberalism, which liberalism 89 00:09:12.180 --> 00:09:16.460 by contrast is eminently defensible in the view of Rothbard. 90 00:09:16.460 --> 00:09:21.420 In arguing with Schmidt and by implication Rothbard, Strauss asserts that Hobbes is to 91 00:09:21.420 --> 00:09:28.260 a very high degree the originator of the ideal of civilization and it is by this very fact 92 00:09:28.260 --> 00:09:37.500 So, if we follow Strauss's path, we must conclude that the philosophical source of modern individualism 93 00:09:37.500 --> 00:09:44.260 so beloved by Rothbard is not by Rothbard himself acknowledged, rather this founder of modern 94 00:09:44.260 --> 00:09:49.340 Anglo-American individualism is maligned by him as being a statist. 95 00:09:49.340 --> 00:09:54.380 But Strauss's Hobbes is the philosopher of the individual or the classic exponent of 96 00:09:54.380 --> 00:10:02.720 Anarcho-Capitalism to speak anachronistically, it is Hobbes who announced that in all kinds 97 00:10:02.720 --> 00:10:07.440 of actions, by the laws pretermited, men have the liberty of doing what their own reason 98 00:10:07.440 --> 00:10:14.060 shall suggest for the most profitable to themselves, such as liberty to buy, sell and otherwise 99 00:10:14.060 --> 00:10:18.480 contract with one another to choose their own abode, their own diet, their own trade 100 00:10:18.480 --> 00:10:24.480 of Life and to Institute their Children as they themselves think fit. 101 00:10:24.480 --> 00:10:28.320 Rothbard is very clear in his argument that contrary to modern thought as Strauss presents 102 00:10:28.320 --> 00:10:32.520 it at least, man definitely has a nature. 103 00:10:32.520 --> 00:10:36.640 He is certain that we can say with absolute assurance not only that certain methods and 104 00:10:36.640 --> 00:10:40.820 means are irrational, but also that certain ends are irrational. 105 00:10:40.820 --> 00:10:44.920 But he does not interpret this to mean that there is a metaphysically transcendent or 106 00:10:44.920 --> 00:10:51.560 or Sacred Canopy under which man must live and of which the political order should be 107 00:10:51.560 --> 00:10:53.520 a reflection. 108 00:10:53.520 --> 00:10:57.520 Nowhere do we see in Rothbard the kind of eschewing of modern thought's fundamental 109 00:10:57.520 --> 00:11:03.320 principles under the attraction of the classical alternative that we do see in Strauss. 110 00:11:03.320 --> 00:11:08.920 It is the claim of this paper that Rothbard elides what in Strauss is a fundamental opposition. 111 00:11:08.920 --> 00:11:14.360 For Strauss it is not possible to have the modern notion of rights rooted as it is in 112 00:11:14.360 --> 00:11:19.080 and the subjectivism of modern philosophy, together with the classical idea of a given 113 00:11:19.080 --> 00:11:23.480 nature or human pattern following at the same time. 114 00:11:23.480 --> 00:11:27.840 Either one sees the human will as the origin of that pattern, or one sees this pattern 115 00:11:27.840 --> 00:11:32.280 as existing outside and independent of the human will and as something with which we 116 00:11:32.280 --> 00:11:36.040 need to comply if we are to have the good life. 117 00:11:36.040 --> 00:11:40.560 Rothbard's version of the objective order comes down to the notion of absolute rights 118 00:11:40.560 --> 00:11:52.840 In other words, what Strauss sees as the problem, the rights of the individual against all claims, 119 00:11:52.840 --> 00:11:57.880 is seen as the solution by Rothbard, who says, stand on your individual rights against the 120 00:11:57.880 --> 00:12:00.640 collectivists and the statists. 121 00:12:00.640 --> 00:12:06.240 Rothbard not realizing that both individual rights and the collectivist state are two 122 00:12:06.240 --> 00:12:18.240 The two boats which, while repeatedly bumping into each other, nevertheless launched their respective journeys in the same headwaters and ever since have been sailing down the same stream. 123 00:12:18.240 --> 00:12:35.240 Rothbard is still prepared to assert, even though he insists on the radical primacy of rights, with absolute assurance that torture and love of torture is contrary to the nature of man and to what is required by that nature for man's true happiness. 124 00:12:35.240 --> 00:12:42.320 Rothbard can be demonstrated that such perversions of man's nature are profoundly irrational. 125 00:12:42.320 --> 00:12:47.320 Such a conclusion, he says, is not just my or your subjective point of view, but is the 126 00:12:47.320 --> 00:12:52.640 product of an objective absolute insight into the discoverable nature of man. 127 00:12:52.640 --> 00:12:57.160 Surely such a statement brings Rothbard close to the naturalism of Strauss. 128 00:12:57.160 --> 00:13:02.940 But the question remains, should this objective absolute insight into the discoverable nature 129 00:13:02.940 --> 00:13:09.300 of Man be enforced in the sphere of personal ethics? Should the fact that a practice is 130 00:13:09.300 --> 00:13:14.880 contra naturum be warrant for breaking down the wall between personal ethics and political 131 00:13:14.880 --> 00:13:20.460 philosophy? Should nature be supported in the sphere of personal ethics by the authority 132 00:13:20.460 --> 00:13:26.340 of political philosophy? Surely there is a legitimate question as to whether or not love 133 00:13:26.340 --> 00:13:31.880 of torture, as distinct from actually torturing somebody, is a matter of personal ethics or 134 00:13:31.880 --> 00:13:36.000 or one on the one hand or of political philosophy on the other. 135 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:40.840 If indeed the love of torture was a matter of right, it would come under the aegis of 136 00:13:40.840 --> 00:13:44.200 political philosophy and so could be refereed. 137 00:13:44.200 --> 00:13:49.520 But how on Rothbard's showing can two consenting adults wishing to inflict pain on each other 138 00:13:49.520 --> 00:13:54.440 come under the aegis of political philosophy unless one abandons the distinction between 139 00:13:54.440 --> 00:13:58.080 political philosophy and personal ethics? 140 00:13:58.080 --> 00:14:01.480 Rothbard's crucial distinction breaks down in the crunch. 141 00:14:01.480 --> 00:14:10.560 Rothbard's conclusion that there is in fact a sphere of personal ethics within which moral 142 00:14:10.560 --> 00:14:19.000 judgment may apply but upon which the law must above all avoid imposing external principles 143 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:23.000 involves him in the difficulty of insisting that we can definitely know what is good for 144 00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:27.880 man but that society must refrain from promoting this good where it most likely would count 145 00:14:27.880 --> 00:14:53.640 In contrast to Rothbard, Strauss is clearly dubious about the special claims made for 146 00:14:53.640 --> 00:14:56.360 a sphere of personal ethics. 147 00:14:56.360 --> 00:15:01.320 The principles of any particular regime, he says, pervade the societies throughout, in 148 00:15:01.320 --> 00:15:07.320 the sense that there are no recesses of privacy which are simply impervious to that pervasion. 149 00:15:07.320 --> 00:15:11.240 If there were such recesses of privacy in modern society, then there would be much less 150 00:15:11.240 --> 00:15:15.720 talk about democratic personality, to say the least. 151 00:15:15.720 --> 00:15:19.960 Contrary to Rothbard, Strauss suggests that the notion of a sovereign sphere of personal 152 00:15:19.960 --> 00:15:25.600 ethics, free from what we might call regime pressure, is a myth. 153 00:15:25.600 --> 00:15:30.720 At the end of the day there can be no shelter from the regime, or in Rothbard's terms from 154 00:15:30.720 --> 00:15:36.280 political philosophy, and thus a widespread belief in the right to life, liberty and property 155 00:15:36.280 --> 00:15:41.120 is in fact evidence of, in this case, the liberal regime's dominance over the private 156 00:15:41.120 --> 00:15:44.080 sphere rather than a sign of its limitation. 157 00:15:44.080 --> 00:15:49.540 For Strauss there is no way the ordinary citizen will not be fundamentally shaped by the regime 158 00:15:49.540 --> 00:15:52.320 whatever his or her private rights. 159 00:15:52.320 --> 00:15:57.040 The moral pressure from the outside world is final in some sense, but it should not 160 00:15:57.040 --> 00:16:01.480 be concluded for a minute here that because Strauss was skeptical of the capacity of personal 161 00:16:01.480 --> 00:16:08.840 ethics to withstand the pressure of the surrounding regime that he was indifferent to its importance. 162 00:16:08.840 --> 00:16:12.040 For Strauss there can be no doubt that the private sphere should be protected against 163 00:16:12.040 --> 00:16:17.960 the outside regime in certain decisive respects, but his reasoning here is indeed for private 164 00:16:17.960 --> 00:16:25.440 Life to be protected from succumbing to the forces unleashed by external freedom. 165 00:16:25.440 --> 00:16:31.440 In other words, the outside regime is pushing in on the private sphere and that's the problem 166 00:16:31.440 --> 00:16:34.920 Strauss is addressing. 167 00:16:34.920 --> 00:16:41.280 If the outside regime was dedicated to the primacy of virtue and was pro the rational 168 00:16:41.280 --> 00:16:46.960 ends of man, a pious wish at all times one might say, then the strengthening of the walls 169 00:16:46.960 --> 00:17:00.720 Privacy is a bad thing in a good regime and a good thing in a bad regime, but if the prevailing 170 00:17:00.720 --> 00:17:06.380 regime has no concept of the rational ends of man, a good bet most of the time, and represents 171 00:17:06.380 --> 00:17:10.700 only such values as life, liberty and property, then the protection of the private sphere 172 00:17:10.700 --> 00:17:15.760 as a possible haven for higher values, values higher at least than those of life, liberty 173 00:17:15.760 --> 00:17:20.600 and Property would be a definite good, however this might be Strauss certainly leaves us 174 00:17:20.600 --> 00:17:27.680 with the impression of the regime as the central term of his political science. 175 00:17:27.680 --> 00:17:33.600 In conclusion, the answer to the question of individual privacy versus regime pressure 176 00:17:33.600 --> 00:17:36.480 is very much tied to the problem of equality. 177 00:17:36.480 --> 00:17:41.800 Rothbard, committed to the equality of rights as he is, sees the threat of the outside regime 178 00:17:41.800 --> 00:17:45.280 pressure as equally present to all citizens. 179 00:17:45.280 --> 00:17:49.280 It follows naturally enough from this starting point that each citizen should have an equal 180 00:17:49.280 --> 00:17:54.120 right to be free of this outside pressure determining them. 181 00:17:54.120 --> 00:17:58.240 For freedom's sake, I would close my door tightly against the outside world in the hope 182 00:17:58.240 --> 00:18:03.560 that the outside world will have no impact on my willing of my preferred lifestyle or 183 00:18:03.560 --> 00:18:05.480 value choices. 184 00:18:05.480 --> 00:18:09.840 But for Strauss, the possibility that there is a nature of man, if anything, suggests 185 00:18:09.840 --> 00:18:14.080 a hierarchy of human types rather than natural equality. 186 00:18:14.080 --> 00:18:19.280 Strauss is not an egalitarian, that's clear. For Strauss natural right is about inequality 187 00:18:19.280 --> 00:18:24.040 and this means that the pressure exerted by the dominant regime or political philosophy 188 00:18:24.040 --> 00:18:29.080 as Rothbard calls it on the individual citizen will have a varying impact according to the 189 00:18:29.080 --> 00:18:35.320 intelligence and capacities of that individual. So from Strauss' point of view to the extent 190 00:18:35.320 --> 00:18:40.660 that we opt for the modern doctrine of natural rights we must assume the irrelevance for 191 00:18:40.660 --> 00:18:44.860 for Natural Right of Men's Natural Inequality. 192 00:18:44.860 --> 00:18:50.060 To be sure, Rothbard, like all decent men, wishes to advance the cause of natural right 193 00:18:50.060 --> 00:18:56.220 or basic human justice, but from Strauss's perspective, Rothbard is implicitly defeating 194 00:18:56.220 --> 00:19:02.140 his own purpose by adhering to the modern version of natural right, which is premised 195 00:19:02.140 --> 00:19:09.280 above all on the notion of pre-civil natural rights with an S. For Strauss, it must never 196 00:19:09.280 --> 00:19:16.640 Never be forgotten that the modern, egalitarian, natural rights version of natural right is 197 00:19:16.640 --> 00:19:24.680 strictly at odds with the older, inegalitarian, natural right version of natural right.