 This is Mises Weekends with your host Jeff Deist. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back once again to Mises Weekends and we're joined this week in studio by David Gordon who's here for a week or two visiting us in Auburn and teaching at the seminar we've got going this week on the book Human Action and since he's our in-house philosophy guru, I decided to bring him up in the studio and talk about just that subject. In other words, what sort of philosophy do Austro-Libertarians need to know? What are the books? What are the people? What should we be reading apart from just libertarian theory and economics, even if that's a small measure of philosophy? So to begin, David, great to see you. Thanks, Jeff. It's great to be here at the Institute. You know, last week I talked to Joe Solerdo and Carl Friedrich Israel about human action a little bit and we were joking that part one of the book where he's dealing more with individual human action and praxeology is considered the more philosophical part of the book. Obviously, he predated, Mises predated the two really big names in philosophy in the 20th century, which would be Rawls and Nozik. Talk to us about some of the philosophers, German or otherwise, who influenced Mises and who come through in this book. Well, Mises had a very broad knowledge of philosophy. He wasn't tied to any one school specifically. A lot of people think based on the first part of the book where Mises has a somewhat Kantian view and he's talking about a priori knowledge and say, oh, well, Mises must be a Kantian. He was certainly a used Kantian concept, but it's interesting in ethics. He wasn't at all a Kantian. He rejected Kantian ethics, what he called absolute ethics. He was in a tradition which he traced to the Greek philosopher Epicurus, which emphasized ethics as based on self-interest and he saw himself as more in the utilitarian tradition of Bentham and Mills. So there in ethics, he was more of an empiricist and he also had a very wide knowledge of other philosophers. One philosopher, his influence on Mises hasn't been studied as much as Spinoza. He quotes Spinoza quite a bit and there are some similarities in this notion of action, what you get in Spinoza. Another philosopher, the French philosopher Henri Bergson, he's very interested in him. Also, he knew he was very interested in some of the ones in the so-called who were interested in the interpretation. It was sometimes neo-Kantians, but not always like he liked the British philosopher R.G. Collingwood, Wilhelm Dilltein. So he had a very broad philosophical knowledge. He read most of the important figures at this time. He knew American philosophy also. He cites Maurice Colling and Ernest Nagel. It would be very hard to get someone who was prominent that he hadn't read really. Well, it's interesting though, you say in the realm of philosophy, he was more of an empiricist. In ethics. In ethics. Speaking with Joe Salerno last week, he cautioned against overstating the case that Mises was a utilitarian, let's say in his political philosophy, saying that he was not a rule utilitarian. Can you elaborate a little bit on this and how Mises saw this? Yes, well, Joe is certainly right that utilitarianism is sometimes a strict system, is a particular view of the ethics is objective. So they're true and false, propositions ethic, and the true what we ought to do where this is something is true what maximizes happiness and pleasure. Now Mises didn't accept ethics in that sense. He didn't think there was an ought that's an absolute ought that's telling us what we ought to do. He thought that it just that as a matter of fact, each individual desires his own happiness. So the way people can achieve that is through cooperation through the free market. So it wasn't a system where you keep trying to calculate the consequence say, well, this policy will produce X amount of utility and this will be X minus Y, so we should do X. It was more that he thought that we can show that the free market will benefit everyone or nearly everyone. So we have interest in the long term interest of everyone to adopt that. So it was really a very simple view of ethics, but it's far reaching in what it implies. So it's more that in ethics, he's more interested in clearing away opposition to the free market. So when he's writing about ethics, what he's mostly doing is trying to refute various theories that go against the free market and arguments that go against the free market. Do you think he was right? Do you think he was correct in his approach, at least for his time? I think he was right in his rejoiners to the critics of the free market, but I would tend myself to think I would place more weight than he did on ethical judgments being true or false in a straightforward sense. Other people like Murray Rothbard, Hans Hoppe have developed views of ethics that are also at least as much free market as Mises that don't have this what you could call instrumental view of ethics where it's just how does the free market help each individual fulfill the ends he happens to have in the same view of Murray Rothbard. There are goals or ends that people ought to have, and then the free market is a way of assisting those. So they come to the same conclusions, but they get there in a somewhat different way. Well, let's talk a little bit about the 20th century. As I mentioned earlier, the two big names are John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Nozick. Summarize briefly for us Rawls' theory of justice and the idea of a veil of ignorance and his overlay of an egalitarian component upon what's philosophically or ethically moral for society. Well, what Rawls was trying to do, you see, in the period before his book Theory of Justice came out in 1971, a lot of writers in ethics thought that ethics was just confined in philosophy, thought ethics was just confined to analyzing the meaning of ethical terms. They tended to be skeptical whether you could have substantive views, philosophy could have substantive views of what is the right or wrong course. So what Rawls proposed in Theory of Justice, he said, one way we might try to find out what just institutions are is we could imagine self-interested people who were deprived of any knowledge of their abilities or position in society if they were bargaining in this condition of ignorance of their own attributes and positions. He called this being behind the veil of ignorance, what they would come up with. And the idea is say if you knew everything about yourself, you're bargaining with someone else on base of self-interest, then you try to come up with something to your own advantage. Like we could imagine LeBron James' bargaining, he would like something that emphasizes great athletic ability. But if we don't know anything, then we could get terms that were fair to everybody. They wouldn't be biased against everybody. So what Rawls came up with in the Theory of Justice, he said, well, people would agree to two principles. One would be equal liberties for everybody. And the second would be the difference principle. And the difference principle has two parts. One is that there have to be the jobs and positions are open to everyone equal opportunities. And then inequalities have to be to the advantage of a least well-off group in society. And the basic idea there is that if some people do much better than others, it isn't because those people deserve that. It's really a matter of luck. They can't say, look, I want my money. I've worked for this. You can't take it away from me. It's a matter of luck. They have to be gifted with certain desirable attributes. So Rawls doesn't say we should have absolute equality because that wouldn't be the advantage of everybody. It's the advantage of everybody that the people with more abilities be able to make more than others because then they'll work more, produce more. But the inequalities have to be to the advantage of everybody else. So what he came up with was really, there's some room for questioning about what exactly the institutions were in favor of. It would be either a form of welfare state capitalism or a kind of market socialism, but it wouldn't be a free market which you'd call the system of natural liberty. It would be one where you have some sort of market, but it's corrected so that people to the advantage of those who are at the bottom. Well, how do you think his theory of justice holds up? It's what, 45 odd years later? I never heard Bernie mention Rawls. Is he still the darling of the left? Well, I would say in academic philosophy, he's still very much the top figure in political philosophy. There have been people who reacted against him. There are some people who criticize him from the left and say, well, he's just trying to come up with certain, just devise certain institutions for society as if he's a member of some sort of superior elite and what we really need to do, have a more popular revolution like Sheldon Mowlin who died recently was a very influential political scientist, takes that line, others do as well. But in political philosophy, I'd say he's still the dominant figure you're either pro Rawls or there's all sorts of variations on various things he said. And then he wrote a later book which stresses what's called Public Reason and their attempts at how does the later Rawls modify the first Rawls. So there's all sorts of debates on him. One leading journal called Philosophy and Public Affairs is very Rawlsian oriented. There are people who do other things, but I'd say definitely still the most influential approach. From the individual liberty side, of course, there was a man you knew personally, Robert Nozick, author of Anarchy, State and Utopia around the same time as Theory of Justice. His philosophy was very different viewing individuals as ends unto themselves. What strikes me about this book is even though it's philosophy, it's very much about the state. So tell us a little bit about Nozick, how you knew him and what he stood for. Well, I met Nozick in April 1980, I'd gone to see him. He was a very unusual person. He was tremendously fast in argument and he wasn't interested in just in political philosophy. He was interested in practically anything he wrote on Theory of Knowledge, metaphysics, he's free will prom, he has all sorts of things. He just could absorb material tremendously fast. You mentioned he writes a lot about the state and one reason he did that is he met Murray Rothbard and he was very impressed by libertarianism, although he actually didn't get along very well with Murray Rothbard personally, but he was very, very impressed by libertarianism. In the first part of Anarchy, State and Utopia, what he's essentially doing, although he just mentions Rothbard very briefly, he's arguing against Rothbard. He's saying his basic argument is, all right, let's start off with an anarcho-capitalist system and he thinks he can show that this would lead to a very limited state. I don't think the argument is successful, but what he comes up with isn't much of a state, but he's really starting from a Rothbard's position. With him, he thinks that people have rights that can't be violated and he believes in acquiring property in a basic Lockean way, but he thinks there are problems that the Lockean theory hasn't been fully worked out. His basic answer to Rawls, which is in one chapter that's on Distributive Justice where he responds to Rawls, he says Rawls is wrong to, when he says, well, look, we don't deserve our abilities, Rawls is wrong to think that in order to show we should get wealth or income, we have to show that what we get stems from moral attributes that we deserve. It's enough that we can show they come from a just system of property acquisition. Nozick favors what he calls a historical theory, which is people acquire their property on a historical process. You get the property because you justly appropriated or acquired it in gift or exchange from someone who has some chain of transactions. The thing I think is very interesting about Nozick, although he's in the book he has, as I mentioned, he's extremely fast, extremely sharp in argument. It's a very spectacular book but the basic framework is Rothbardian in the way he's arguing for property rights and it's just a limited deviation from Rothbard in that he favors this very minimal state as opposed to the state. So he's basically taken over a lot of Rothbard's framework but just dressed it up a little and put in very arguments that would appeal to other analytic philosophers. It was a very influential book, not nearly as influential as Rawls because it's so alien to the political views of most philosophers who were quite left-wing but a lot of people were in contemporary philosophy and became aware of libertarianism through his book. I should say, surprisingly, it hasn't been as influential, especially after the first few years it came out among libertarians. I think many libertarians today don't read Nozick or don't study him much. I think this is a mistake because he was an extraordinarily smart person. One story if I can give you, there is one of the greatest libertarian American philosophy days, Saul Kripke, who's considered a real genius. Everybody looks up to Kripke. Nathan Sam, a leading philosopher of language, once told me that Kripke had said to him, Nozick is the smartest person I've ever met. I thought, oh, I'll tell Nozick as he'd be happy to hear this. I told him that. He said to me, that's why he's trying to destroy me. You said he's also a charismatic and handsome guy, right? Yes, he was. I remember Philippa Foote, who was a British philosopher, was telling me she was the Stanford, I think, visiting, and he came to see her. She said, there he was standing like a Greek god. What kind of events would you have interacted with him? Where were you when you met him? I had just gone up to see him in his office at Harvard. I stayed in touch with him. I would sometimes visit him when I was on trips. I knew him pretty well over 20 years. I remember one funny story. There was a conference put on by the Mises Institute in, I think around 1986 or so, or 1987, on Marxism. It was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During that conference, I had lunch with Nozick. He walked me back to the conference center where we were having our conference. I wanted him to come down and say hello to people. He was hesitating at the top of the stairs, and he didn't come down. He and Murray Rothbard didn't get on so well, but I can see the picture of him standing in the stairs wondering, should he go down or not. It's, again, 40-odd years on since he wrote the book. Apart from anarchy state in Utopia, what other, just a couple of one or two key books that you might suggest to Austro-libertarians who aren't going to read much philosophy, but need to read something? One, of course, is one who's very much associated with the Institute. I like very much is Hans Hoppe, Ethics of Capitalism and Socialism. It's a very good book. I think Hans is someone who, like Mason Rothbard, has a very broad knowledge of philosophy. He's emphasized philosophical foundations, and he has a lot of original ideas and interesting ideas. There was a couple of philosophers, Doug Rasmussen and Doug Denial, who've written books from basically Aristotelian, Randian, somewhat Randian perspective. One is Norms of Liberty. I think they're very good to read. One thing that Doug Rasmussen is very much stressed to me, and he's critical of some newer libertarian things, younger libertarian philosophers, is he thinks, and I think he makes good case with this, a lot of the younger people neglect the basic foundational work in metaphysics, theory of knowledge that you need to establish rights. They'll just jump in and try to deal with the contemporary controversies, but they're the basic foundational work that they really have to do. Now, one philosopher I like very much, but he's very much not a libertarian, but I think if you're interested in some of the other areas of philosophy besides political philosophy is Thomas Nagel. I think very highly of him. He's one called The View. One book I like is View From Nowhere, and he has a collection, Mortal Questions. Very good to read. Elizabeth Anscombe is a very good philosopher. She was a British philosopher. Philippa Foote is very good in ethics. I mean, basically, aside from Anscombe, whom I just heard lecture a couple times, I'm really recommending people I know, but those would be some I think would be good for people to read. Well, let's fast forward a little bit to today. I can't imagine what things are like in a philosophy department at a typical state university. I don't know what they teach. I don't know what they talk about. But maybe we get a glimpse of this from Jordan Peterson. If you know that name, the University of Toronto professor. He's actually a psychology professor, but he talks a lot. He's like the other day I heard him bring up Jacques Derrida. In other words, this sort of postmodernism deconstruction. Talk a little bit about modern present day philosophy, the state of it. Well, in strict analytic philosophy, things are better than in some other departments, although there's what's happened in some of the other departments. And to some extent that's penetrated in philosophy. Is there a certain movement such as certain versions of feminism or studies of variant types of sexuality or ethnic studies? And these groups have definite views on what's appropriate or not appropriate. It's not only that they advance certain views that those who don't agree with them might find strange. It's that they insist that no one differ with them. That if say you didn't think that there was massive discrimination against various women in the academy, it's not only that your view is wrong, but you shouldn't be allowed to express that view. And if you did, they would try to shut you down and prevent you from speaking. So now to some extent this is penetrated into philosophy. For example, there's a philosophy of language. Jason Stanley was a very influential figure. He's done very good work in philosophy of language. But he's published a book where he seems to suggest that certain words, if you use certain words in discourse that shows you're trying to unfairly influence other people, it's been carried to such an extent say that Sally Haslanger's another philosophy said, if people speak of mother, this is bad because it suggests that people who have given birth say through some nonstandard biological way aren't as good as natural mothers. So it's an insistence that people have to use a particular, not only express certain opinions, but have to use a certain vocabulary. And if you don't, it's not only that they think you're mistaken, but they'll try to stop you from saying what they think you shouldn't say. But this is across all academic disciplines at this point. Let me ask you this. What do you think of and have you read much Jason Brennan? He has a book titled, I Believe Against Democracy, which I like the sound of it. I haven't read it, but I have read a review of it in the Claremont Review of Books. Any thoughts on Jason Brennan? Oh, yes, well. George Town Professor for those who don't know. Yes. He's a very productive person. He got his degree under David Schmitz, who's a classical liberal philosopher at University of Arizona and who runs the top-rated political philosophy department in the U.S. He's very productive. He's written a number of books. He's quite libertarian in his views. I think he's quite smart and writes well, but he tends, in my view, he's very much underestimate Murray Rothbard. He'll publish sometimes attacks on Murray Rothbard. He completely misinterprets Rothbard because the way he has it, something like Rothbard just deduces very odd ideas just from some rigid understanding of what the non-aggression principle. He'll come up with cases like this. He says, well, supposing somebody just you're running from a wild animal and needs to jump over your fence would Rothbard say, you can't do that because you're violating the person's property. Of course, Rothbard was just writing about what is the appropriate legal framework. He wasn't trying to say what are the principles you should use in deciding individual cases, how we should react in individual situations. He fully recognized in individual situations how you might apply the rules would vary. The point was just to establish a framework. In Brennan's own work, he tends to stress in my opinion a bit too much, how do you win an argument or how do you persuade someone else to adopt the conclusions you want? What he says, you have to start with certain premises. Premises everyone, the person will accept and then draw conclusions from it. They'll find surprising. It would seem more like that becomes more important in establishing whether your premises are true in the first place. It's more emphasizing more of a rhetorical way of proceeding. Whether the listener accepts them as true. Yes. He will say something like, and there's another philosophy, Michael Humer is very good, has a similar approach. One thing they would say is something like this. Supposing there are certain drugs you think people shouldn't use, you think it's wrong say for people to use heroin, would you think you have the right to lock people up in a cage because they're using those drugs and then say, well, if you say no, then why would you think the state can do that? I think that's a good argument except a problem with it is if you say that people might say, oh no, I wouldn't have the right to do that because that's the job of the state to do that. If you say a problem with that way of proceeding just by individual cases, is somebody could just not come up with the same judgments about the cases as they do, or another problem is somebody could say, okay, these are the conclusions you draw from the cases, so I'll go back and revise my views to be initial judge. They're aware of that problem, but I don't think they really solve it as much. I tend to think that while there's certainly people like Brennan is certainly worth reading, it shouldn't be to the extent of neglecting the really outstanding figures like Rothbard. I think even Nozick, I mean, Brennan respects Nozick, but I mean Nozick really was one of the outstanding philosophers and I think that's the people you need to be concentrating on sort of these are more figures who are not, in my view, as significant as the previous generation. Well, David, with that, we are out of time. Thanks so much for joining us, and ladies and gentlemen, have a great week.