The Foundations of Morality

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Introduction to Utilitarianism
Review: Hazlitt's tremendously good "Economics in One Lesson" (the audio version is swell!) is better known, and indeed, has become a true classic of political literature. The 50th anniversary edition even advertises an introduction by Steve Forbes. But this book is equally good, and unjustly neglected.

Henry Hazlitt was the two things Charles Dickens hated: a utilitarian and a classical (laissez-faire capitalist) liberal.

This book makes a great introduction to utilitarianism, very well-written and quite suitable for college freshmen. For the jaded expert, it offers a refreshingly different political perspective, and also includes material crucial to the intellectual history of liberal thought, but neglected elsewhere.

It is also one of only very few philosophy books which combine utilitarianism with a "libertarian" or classical (laissez-faire) liberal political philosophy. Such a view is usually to be found only in books which are perceived as being about economics rather than political, social, or moral philosophy. (The thing is, for any utilitarian, political philosophy quickly defers to the empirical sciences, especially economics.)

Like his friend, the great classical liberal economist Ludwig von Mises, Hazlitt argued for the free market not on the basis of rights, but on the basis of consequences. For these utilitarians, capitalism is good (the best available political system) precisely because it works better than any alternative to maximize human well-being. Every other political system, as Mises showed (in "Human Action" etc.) must tend to lead to impoverishment, whether relative or absolute.

It bears remembering that utilitarianism was once considered to be of a piece with laissez-faire liberalism. And so it truly is, as Hazlitt and Mises have shown. Socialism, on the other hand, was rightly understood----before Marx----to be more in line with the sentiments of romantic religious reactionaries like Dickens, Ruskin, Carlyle, Doestoyevsky, and Tolstoy. These men did not refute the arguments of economics, but instead denounced it as "the dismal science." Before Marx, socialism in its early days was called "Practical Christianity" in the New World, and "Nouveau Christianisme" in France. (See George Watson's sensational "Lost Literature of Socialism.")

Now that socialism has killed nearly 100 million innocent men, women, and children worldwide, and subjected a third of mankind to a completely unnecessary grinding poverty and deprivation for the better part of a century, it's high time its pretentions to being morally superior are unmasked.

The non-utilitarian rival to this book would be Rothbard's "Ethics of Liberty," which, contrary to Mises and Hazlitt, bases the case for private property on natural rights. The problem with that Lockean-Randian approach is twofold. First, that it says we have a right to own property because we NEED it. (So, do we have a absolute natural right to anything and everything we need?) And second, because, it is nearly impossible to make anyone believe that any system based on natural rights, or anything else, could really be good if it had awful consequences. If it were true that a political system based on deontological rights would lead to terrible poverty and suffering, then that system would not be good. It would be bad.

Rating:
Summary: The Ethics of Cooperation
Review: Henry Hazlitt was the author of 17 books. He is best known in libertarian and conservative circles for his outstanding, ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON. He also wrote a fascinating book on ethics entitles, THE FOUNDATIONS OF MORALITY.

This is a comprehensive work on the foundations of ethics. According to Hazlitt, the foundation of morality is social cooperation and from this principle he develops a variation of rule utilitarianism. Drawing upon the free enterprise tradition in general and the economic theory of von Mises in particular, Hazlitt argues that actions are good that promote social happiness, and the best way to achieve this is through the free enterprise system. Hazlit therefore rejects other approaches to ethics, such as natural law or religious based morality.

The best portion of this work is how Hazlitt relates utilitarianism and self-interest. One argument against utilitarianism is that by making the social good the basis of morality, all self-interest and initiative is destroyed. But as Hazlitt shows, those acts that are in our own self-interest tend to increase the overall happiness of society. If all my acts had to motivated by a desire to save starving people in the four corners of the world, neither they nor I would be likely be any better off as a result.

After he describes the foundations of ethics, he takes up some practical issues. For example, there are two outstanding chapters which discuss the relative morality of capitalism and socialism.

This book contains a brief introduction by Prof. Leland Yeager, who has written a book on ethics from a similar perspective entitled, ETHICS AS A SOCIAL SCIENCE: THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL COOPERATION. For a different view on ethics from a libertarian perspective, check out Murray Rothbard's, THE ETHICS OF LIBERTY.

Rating:
Summary: The Ethics of Cooperation
Review: Henry Hazlitt was the author of 17 books. He is best known in libertarian and conservative circles for his outstanding, ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON. He also wrote a fascinating book on ethics entitles, THE FOUNDATIONS OF MORALITY.

This is a comprehensive work on the foundations of ethics. According to Hazlitt, the foundation of morality is social cooperation and from this principle he develops a variation of rule utilitarianism. Drawing upon the free enterprise tradition in general and the economic theory of von Mises in particular, Hazlitt argues that actions are good that promote social happiness, and the best way to achieve this is through the free enterprise system. Hazlit therefore rejects other approaches to ethics, such as natural law or religious based morality.

The best portion of this work is how Hazlitt relates utilitarianism and self-interest. One argument against utilitarianism is that by making the social good the basis of morality, all self-interest and initiative is destroyed. But as Hazlitt shows, those acts that are in our own self-interest tend to increase the overall happiness of society. If all my acts had to motivated by a desire to save starving people in the four corners of the world, neither they nor I would be likely be any better off as a result.

After he describes the foundations of ethics, he takes up some practical issues. For example, there are two outstanding chapters which discuss the relative morality of capitalism and socialism.

This book contains a brief introduction by Prof. Leland Yeager, who has written a book on ethics from a similar perspective entitled, ETHICS AS A SOCIAL SCIENCE: THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL COOPERATION. For a different view on ethics from a libertarian perspective, check out Murray Rothbard's, THE ETHICS OF LIBERTY.