WEBVTT NOTE 6. A Crusoe Social Philosophy 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 Part 2. A Theory of Liberty 2 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:09.000 Chapter 6. A Crusoe Social Philosophy 3 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:17.000 One of the most commonly derided constructions of classical economic theory is crusoeconomics, 4 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:22.000 the analysis of an isolated man face to face with nature. 5 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:27.000 And yet, this seemingly unrealistic model, as I have tried to demonstrate elsewhere, 6 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:31.820 elsewhere, has highly important and even indispensable uses. 7 00:00:31.820 --> 00:00:38.020 It serves to isolate man as against nature, thus gaining clarity by abstracting at the 8 00:00:38.020 --> 00:00:41.660 beginning from interpersonal relations. 9 00:00:41.660 --> 00:00:48.260 Later on, this man-nature analysis can be extended and applied to the real world. 10 00:00:48.260 --> 00:00:54.400 The bringing in of Friday, or of one or more other persons, after analysis of strictly 11 00:00:54.400 --> 00:01:00.120 of the Robinsonian Isolation then serves to show how the addition of other persons affects 12 00:01:00.120 --> 00:01:02.040 the discussion. 13 00:01:02.040 --> 00:01:07.120 These conclusions can then also be applied to the contemporary world. 14 00:01:07.120 --> 00:01:14.000 Thus the abstraction of analyzing a few persons interacting on an island enables a clear perception 15 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:17.920 of the basic truths of interpersonal relations. 16 00:01:17.920 --> 00:01:23.200 Truths which remain obscure, if we insist on looking first at the contemporary world 17 00:01:23.200 --> 00:01:27.120 only whole and of a piece. 18 00:01:27.120 --> 00:01:33.340 If Crusoe economics can and does supply the indispensable groundwork for the entire structure 19 00:01:33.340 --> 00:01:40.820 of economics and praxeology, the broad formal analysis of human action, a similar procedure 20 00:01:40.820 --> 00:01:46.620 should be able to do the same thing for social philosophy, for the analysis of the fundamental 21 00:01:46.620 --> 00:01:52.420 truths of the nature of man vis-a-vis the nature of the world into which he is born, 22 00:01:52.420 --> 00:01:55.100 as well as the world of other men. 23 00:01:55.100 --> 00:02:00.820 Specifically, it can aid greatly in solving such problems of political philosophy as the 24 00:02:00.820 --> 00:02:06.220 nature and role of liberty, property and violence. 25 00:02:06.220 --> 00:02:12.700 Such 17th and 18th century constructs as the state of nature or the social contract were 26 00:02:12.700 --> 00:02:18.480 not wholly successful attempts to construct such a logical analysis. 27 00:02:18.480 --> 00:02:23.480 Such attempts were far more important than any actual historical assertions that may 28 00:02:23.480 --> 00:02:28.360 have been made in the course of developing these concepts. 29 00:02:28.360 --> 00:02:33.680 Let us consider Crusoe, who has landed on his island, and, to simplify matters, has 30 00:02:33.680 --> 00:02:36.180 contracted amnesia. 31 00:02:36.180 --> 00:02:40.120 What inescapable facts does Crusoe confront? 32 00:02:40.120 --> 00:02:45.500 He finds, for one thing, himself, with the primordial fact of his own consciousness and 33 00:02:45.500 --> 00:02:47.480 his own body. 34 00:02:47.480 --> 00:02:53.620 He finds, second, the natural world around him, the nature-given habitat and resources 35 00:02:53.620 --> 00:02:58.100 which economists sum up in the term land. 36 00:02:58.100 --> 00:03:04.740 This economic land, including all nature-given resources, does not necessarily mean land 37 00:03:04.740 --> 00:03:10.780 in the popular sense, as it may include parts of the sea, for example, fishing waters, 38 00:03:10.780 --> 00:03:15.160 and excludes man-made improvements on the earth. 39 00:03:15.160 --> 00:03:21.800 He finds also that in seeming contrast with animals, he does not possess any innate instinctual 40 00:03:21.800 --> 00:03:28.500 knowledge impelling him into the proper paths for the satisfaction of his needs and desires. 41 00:03:28.500 --> 00:03:34.320 In fact, he begins his life in this world by knowing literally nothing. 42 00:03:34.320 --> 00:03:37.880 All knowledge must be learned by him. 43 00:03:37.880 --> 00:03:43.780 He comes to learn that he has numerous ends, purposes which he desires to achieve, many 44 00:03:43.780 --> 00:03:50.900 Many of which he must achieve to sustain his life, food, shelter, clothing, etc. 45 00:03:50.900 --> 00:03:56.980 After the basic needs are satisfied, he finds more advanced wants for which to aim. 46 00:03:56.980 --> 00:04:02.740 To satisfy any or all of these wants which he evaluates in accordance with their respective 47 00:04:02.740 --> 00:04:08.460 importance to him, Crusoe must also learn how to achieve them. 48 00:04:08.460 --> 00:04:15.260 He must, in short, acquire technological knowledge, or recipes. 49 00:04:15.260 --> 00:04:22.700 Cruso then has manifold wants, which he tries to satisfy, ends that he strives to attain. 50 00:04:22.700 --> 00:04:27.100 Some of these ends may be attained with minimal effort on his part. 51 00:04:27.100 --> 00:04:32.920 If the island is so structured, he may be able to pick edible berries off nearby bushes. 52 00:04:32.920 --> 00:04:38.840 In such cases, his consumption of a good or service may be obtained quickly and almost 53 00:04:38.840 --> 00:04:40.880 instantaneously. 54 00:04:40.880 --> 00:04:46.520 But for almost all of his wants, Crusoe finds that the natural world about him does not 55 00:04:46.520 --> 00:04:50.240 satisfy them immediately and instantaneously. 56 00:04:50.240 --> 00:04:53.920 He is not, in short, in a garden of Eden. 57 00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:59.660 To achieve his ends, he must, as quickly and productively as he can, take the nature-given 58 00:04:59.660 --> 00:05:17.940 In short, he must a, choose his goals, b, learn how to achieve them by using nature 59 00:05:17.940 --> 00:05:25.280 given resources, and then c, exert his labor energy to transform these resources into more 60 00:05:25.280 --> 00:05:33.080 for Useful Shapes and Places, that is, into capital goods, and finally into consumer goods 61 00:05:33.080 --> 00:05:39.520 that he can directly consume. Thus Crusoe may build himself out of the given natural 62 00:05:39.520 --> 00:05:46.440 raw materials an axe, capital good, with which to chop down trees, in order to construct 63 00:05:46.440 --> 00:05:54.120 a cabin, consumer good. Or he may build a net, capital good, with which to catch fish, 64 00:05:54.120 --> 00:06:00.620 Consumer Good. In each case, he employs his learned technological knowledge to exert his 65 00:06:00.620 --> 00:06:08.620 labor effort in transforming land into capital goods, and eventually into consumer goods. 66 00:06:08.620 --> 00:06:16.120 This process of transformation of land resources constitutes his production. In short, Cruso 67 00:06:16.120 --> 00:06:23.840 Man also must produce before he can consume, and so that he may consume, and by this process 68 00:06:23.840 --> 00:06:30.040 of production, of transformation, man shapes and alters his nature-given environment to 69 00:06:30.040 --> 00:06:37.640 his own ends, instead of, animal-like, being simply determined by that environment. 70 00:06:37.640 --> 00:06:43.760 And so man, not having innate, instinctive, automatically acquired knowledge of his proper 71 00:06:43.760 --> 00:06:49.480 for Ends, or of the means by which they can be achieved, must learn them, and to learn 72 00:06:49.480 --> 00:06:58.000 them he must exercise his powers of observation, abstraction, thought, in short, his reason. 73 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:02.360 Reason is man's instrument of knowledge and of his very survival. 74 00:07:02.360 --> 00:07:08.080 The use and expansion of his mind, the acquisition of knowledge about what is best for him and 75 00:07:08.080 --> 00:07:14.480 And how he can achieve it is the uniquely human method of existence and of achievement. 76 00:07:14.480 --> 00:07:17.360 And this is uniquely man's nature. 77 00:07:17.360 --> 00:07:24.720 Man, as Aristotle pointed out, is the rational animal, or, to be more precise, the rational 78 00:07:24.720 --> 00:07:26.260 being. 79 00:07:26.260 --> 00:07:32.480 Through his reason, the individual man observes both the facts and ways of the external world 80 00:07:32.480 --> 00:07:37.200 and the facts of his own consciousness, including his emotions. 81 00:07:37.200 --> 00:07:41.900 In short, he employs both extrospection and introspection. 82 00:07:41.900 --> 00:07:48.380 Crusoe, as we have said, learns about his ends and how to attain them. 83 00:07:48.380 --> 00:07:54.260 But what specifically does his learning faculty, his reason, do in the process of obtaining 84 00:07:54.260 --> 00:07:56.260 such knowledge? 85 00:07:56.260 --> 00:08:01.700 It learns about the way things work in the world, that is, the natures of the various 86 00:08:01.700 --> 00:08:07.500 specific entities and classes of entities that the man finds in existence. 87 00:08:07.500 --> 00:08:13.340 In short, he learns the natural laws of the way things behave in the world. 88 00:08:13.340 --> 00:08:18.900 He learns that an arrow shot from a bow can bring down a deer, and that a net can catch 89 00:08:18.900 --> 00:08:20.840 an abundance of fish. 90 00:08:20.840 --> 00:08:26.980 Further, he learns about his own nature, about the sort of events and actions that will make 91 00:08:26.980 --> 00:08:29.520 him happy or unhappy. 92 00:08:29.520 --> 00:08:36.520 In short, he learns about the ends he needs to achieve and those he should seek to avoid. 93 00:08:36.520 --> 00:08:42.720 This process, this method necessary to man's survival and prosperity upon the earth, has 94 00:08:42.720 --> 00:08:48.400 often been derided as unduly or exclusively materialistic. 95 00:08:48.400 --> 00:08:53.360 But it should be clear that what has happened in this activity proper to man's nature is 96 00:08:53.360 --> 00:08:56.840 a fusion of spirit and matter. 97 00:08:56.840 --> 00:09:03.600 Man's mind, using the ideas it has learned, directs his energy in transforming and reshaping 98 00:09:03.600 --> 00:09:09.880 matter into ways to sustain and advance his wants and his life. 99 00:09:09.880 --> 00:09:16.360 Behind every produced good, behind every man-made transformation of natural resources, is an 100 00:09:16.360 --> 00:09:22.960 idea directing the effort, a manifestation of man's spirit. 101 00:09:22.960 --> 00:09:28.840 The individual man, in introspecting the fact of his own consciousness, also discovers the 102 00:09:28.840 --> 00:09:35.760 primordial natural fact of his freedom, his freedom to choose, his freedom to use or not 103 00:09:35.760 --> 00:09:43.840 use his reason about any given subject, in short, the natural fact of his free will. 104 00:09:43.840 --> 00:09:50.080 He also discovers the natural fact of his mind's command over his body and its actions, 105 00:09:50.080 --> 00:09:55.480 that is, of his natural ownership over his self. 106 00:09:55.480 --> 00:10:01.760 Cruso then owns his body, and his mind is free to adopt whatever ends it wishes, and 107 00:10:01.760 --> 00:10:07.240 to exercise his reason in order to discover what ends he should choose, and to learn the 108 00:10:07.240 --> 00:10:11.840 recipes for employing the means at hand to attain them. 109 00:10:11.840 --> 00:10:18.280 Indeed, the very fact that the knowledge needed for man's survival and progress is not innately 110 00:10:18.280 --> 00:10:22.400 be given to him or determined by external events. 111 00:10:22.400 --> 00:10:27.960 The very fact that he must use his mind to learn this knowledge demonstrates that he 112 00:10:27.960 --> 00:10:33.400 is by nature free to employ or not to employ that reason. 113 00:10:33.400 --> 00:10:37.040 That is, that he has free will. 114 00:10:37.040 --> 00:10:42.160 Surely there is nothing outre or mystical about the fact that men differ from stones, 115 00:10:42.160 --> 00:10:48.400 and that the above are crucial differences between them. 116 00:10:48.400 --> 00:10:54.500 The critical and unique facts about man and the ways in which he must live to survive, 117 00:10:54.500 --> 00:11:00.160 his consciousness, his free will and free choice, his faculty of reason, his necessity 118 00:11:00.160 --> 00:11:06.680 for learning the natural laws of the external world and of himself, his self-ownership, 119 00:11:06.680 --> 00:11:13.200 These need to produce by transforming nature-given matter into consumable forms. 120 00:11:13.200 --> 00:11:21.040 All these are wrapped up in what man's nature is and how man may survive and flourish. 121 00:11:21.040 --> 00:11:25.460 Suppose now that Crusoe is confronted with a choice of either picking berries or picking 122 00:11:25.460 --> 00:11:31.640 some mushrooms for food, and he decides upon the pleasantly tasting mushrooms, when suddenly 123 00:11:31.640 --> 00:11:37.680 A previously shipwrecked inhabitant, coming upon Crusoe, shouts, don't do that, those 124 00:11:37.680 --> 00:11:40.680 mushrooms are poisonous. 125 00:11:40.680 --> 00:11:44.840 There is no mystery in Crusoe's subsequent shift to berries. 126 00:11:44.840 --> 00:11:46.720 What has happened here? 127 00:11:46.720 --> 00:11:52.680 Both men have operated on an assumption so strong that it remained tacit, an assumption 128 00:11:52.680 --> 00:11:59.800 that poison is bad, bad for the health and even for the survival of the human organism. 129 00:11:59.800 --> 00:12:05.640 In short, bad for the continuation and the quality of a man's life. 130 00:12:05.640 --> 00:12:10.920 In this implicit agreement on the value of life and health for the person and on the 131 00:12:10.920 --> 00:12:17.800 evils of pain and death, the two men have clearly arrived at the basis of an ethic grounded 132 00:12:17.800 --> 00:12:23.480 on reality and on the natural laws of the human organism. 133 00:12:23.480 --> 00:12:28.320 If Crusoe had eaten the mushrooms without learning of their poisonous effects, then 134 00:12:28.320 --> 00:12:34.320 Then his decision would have been incorrect, a possibly tragic error, based on the fact 135 00:12:34.320 --> 00:12:40.960 that man is scarcely automatically determined to make correct decisions at all times, hence 136 00:12:40.960 --> 00:12:45.640 his lack of omniscience and his liability to error. 137 00:12:45.640 --> 00:12:51.080 If Crusoe, on the other hand, had known of the poison and eaten the mushrooms anyway, 138 00:12:51.080 --> 00:12:56.560 perhaps for kicks or from a very high time preference, then his decision would have been 139 00:12:56.560 --> 00:13:03.840 Objectively Immoral and Act Deliberately Set Against His Life and Health. 140 00:13:03.840 --> 00:13:10.440 It may well be asked why life should be an objective ultimate value, why man should opt 141 00:13:10.440 --> 00:13:13.940 for life in duration and quality. 142 00:13:13.940 --> 00:13:19.920 In reply we may note that a proposition rises to the status of an axiom when he who denies 143 00:13:19.920 --> 00:13:26.200 it may be shown to be using it in the very course of the supposed refutation. 144 00:13:26.200 --> 00:13:32.400 Now any person participating in any sort of discussion, including one on values, is, by 145 00:13:32.400 --> 00:13:37.160 virtue of so participating, alive and affirming life. 146 00:13:37.160 --> 00:13:42.040 For if he were really opposed to life, he would have no business in such a discussion. 147 00:13:42.040 --> 00:13:46.400 Indeed, he would have no business continuing to be alive. 148 00:13:46.400 --> 00:13:53.020 Hence the supposed opponent of life is really affirming it in the very process of his discussion, 149 00:13:53.020 --> 00:13:57.820 and hence the preservation and furtherance of one's life takes on the stature of an 150 00:13:57.820 --> 00:14:01.420 incontestable axiom. 151 00:14:01.420 --> 00:14:06.900 We have seen that Crusoe, as in the case of any man, has freedom of will, freedom to 152 00:14:06.900 --> 00:14:10.820 choose the course of his life and his actions. 153 00:14:10.820 --> 00:14:15.900 Some critics have charged that this freedom is illusory because man is bound by natural 154 00:14:15.900 --> 00:14:17.500 laws. 155 00:14:17.500 --> 00:14:22.980 This, however, is a misrepresentation, one of the many examples of the persistent modern 156 00:14:22.980 --> 00:14:27.220 confusion between freedom and power. 157 00:14:27.220 --> 00:14:32.900 Man is free to adopt values and to choose his actions, but this does not at all mean 158 00:14:32.900 --> 00:14:38.700 that he may violate natural laws with impunity, that he may, for example, leap oceans at a 159 00:14:38.700 --> 00:14:40.700 single bound. 160 00:14:40.700 --> 00:14:46.540 In short, when we say that man is not free to leap the ocean, we are really discussing 161 00:14:46.540 --> 00:15:03.240 Cruceau's freedom to adopt ideas, to choose his ends, is inviolable and inalienable. 162 00:15:03.240 --> 00:15:09.940 On the other hand, man, not being omnipotent as well as not being omniscient, always finds 163 00:15:09.940 --> 00:15:15.100 his power limited for doing all the things that he would like to do. 164 00:15:15.100 --> 00:15:22.640 In short, his power is necessarily limited by natural laws, but not his freedom of will. 165 00:15:22.640 --> 00:15:28.340 To put the case another way, it is patently absurd to define the freedom of an entity 166 00:15:28.340 --> 00:15:33.600 as its power to perform an act impossible for its nature. 167 00:15:33.600 --> 00:15:40.820 If a man's free will to adopt ideas and values is inalienable, his freedom of action, his 168 00:15:40.820 --> 00:15:47.500 Man's freedom to put these ideas into effect in the world is not in such a fortunate condition. 169 00:15:47.500 --> 00:15:53.940 Again, we are not talking about the limitations on man's power inherent in the laws of his 170 00:15:53.940 --> 00:15:57.820 own nature and of the natures of other entities. 171 00:15:57.820 --> 00:16:04.140 What we are talking about now is interference with his sphere of action by other people. 172 00:16:04.140 --> 00:16:09.340 But here we are getting a bit ahead of Robinson Crusoe and our discussion. 173 00:16:09.340 --> 00:16:16.060 Suffice it to say now that in the sense of social freedom, of freedom as absence of molestation 174 00:16:16.060 --> 00:16:24.460 by other persons, Crusoe is absolutely free, but that a world of more than one person requires 175 00:16:24.460 --> 00:16:27.860 our further investigation. 176 00:16:27.860 --> 00:16:33.100 Since in this book we are interested in social and political philosophy rather than in philosophy 177 00:16:33.100 --> 00:16:50.180 Let us now return to our analysis of Crusoe's purposeful transformation of nature-given data 178 00:16:50.180 --> 00:16:54.140 through the understanding of natural laws. 179 00:16:54.140 --> 00:17:00.860 Crusoe finds virgin unused land on the island, land, in short, unused and uncontrolled by 180 00:17:00.860 --> 00:17:04.900 by anyone, and hence, unowned. 181 00:17:04.900 --> 00:17:10.860 By finding land resources, by learning how to use them, and, in particular, by actually 182 00:17:10.860 --> 00:17:16.900 transforming them into a more useful shape, Crusoe has, in the memorable phrase of John 183 00:17:16.900 --> 00:17:20.740 Locke, mixed his labor with the soil. 184 00:17:20.740 --> 00:17:27.180 In doing so, in stamping the imprint of his personality and his energy on the land, he 185 00:17:27.180 --> 00:17:32.580 has naturally converted the land and its fruits into his property. 186 00:17:32.580 --> 00:17:37.860 Hence the isolated man owns what he uses and transforms. 187 00:17:37.860 --> 00:17:43.900 Therefore, in his case, there is no problem of what should be A's property as against 188 00:17:43.900 --> 00:17:45.700 B's. 189 00:17:45.700 --> 00:17:52.740 Any man's property is, ipso facto, what he produces, that is, what he transforms into 190 00:17:52.740 --> 00:17:55.580 use by his own effort. 191 00:17:55.580 --> 00:18:01.700 His property in land and capital goods continues down the various stages of production until 192 00:18:01.700 --> 00:18:08.620 Crusoe comes to own the consumer goods which he has produced, until they finally disappear 193 00:18:08.620 --> 00:18:11.820 through his consumption of them. 194 00:18:11.820 --> 00:18:17.340 As long as an individual remains isolated then, there is no problem whatever about how 195 00:18:17.340 --> 00:18:21.940 far his property, his ownership, extends. 196 00:18:21.940 --> 00:18:27.580 As a rational being with free will, it extends over his own body, and it extends further 197 00:18:27.580 --> 00:18:32.860 over the material goods which he transforms with his labor. 198 00:18:32.860 --> 00:18:38.780 Suppose that Crusoe had landed not on a small island, but on a new and virgin continent, 199 00:18:38.780 --> 00:18:44.420 and that standing on the shore he had claimed ownership of the entire new continent by virtue 200 00:18:44.420 --> 00:18:47.260 of his prior discovery. 201 00:18:47.260 --> 00:18:54.140 This assertion would be sheer empty vainglory, so long as no one else came upon the continent. 202 00:18:54.140 --> 00:19:01.380 For the natural fact is that his true property, his actual control over material goods, would 203 00:19:01.380 --> 00:19:07.180 extend only so far as his actual labor brought them into production. 204 00:19:07.180 --> 00:19:13.580 His true ownership could not extend beyond the power of his own reach. 205 00:19:13.580 --> 00:19:19.220 Later on, when other people arrived on the continent, they too, in natural fact, would 206 00:19:19.220 --> 00:19:23.580 own the lands which they transformed by their labor. 207 00:19:23.580 --> 00:19:28.980 The first man could only obtain ownership of them by the use of invasive force against 208 00:19:28.980 --> 00:19:36.700 their natural property, or by receiving them from the newcomers in voluntary gift or exchange. 209 00:19:36.700 --> 00:19:43.140 Similarly, it would be empty and meaningless for Crusoe to trumpet that he does not really 210 00:19:43.140 --> 00:19:47.460 Only own some or all of what he has produced. 211 00:19:47.460 --> 00:19:53.300 Perhaps this crusoe happens to be a romantic opponent of the property concept, for in fact 212 00:19:53.300 --> 00:19:59.100 the use and therefore the ownership has already been his. 213 00:19:59.100 --> 00:20:05.300 Crusoe in natural fact owns his own self and the extension of his self into the material 214 00:20:05.300 --> 00:20:08.300 and the World, neither more nor less.