Objectivism, Existentialism, Nietzsche and the Law

[Guest Anya]

I have been working lately on developing a eudaemonian ethic which retains a healthy respect for the work of the existentialists (particularly Nietzsche and Walter Kaufmann) and the nihilists (particularly Max Stirner), while not throwing the whole concept of virtue out the window. Of course, Nietzsche never did this – he believed in an ethic of self-created values, developed from our body and mind. Rand shares this view with Nietzsche, and in a more rationalistic sense the Epicureans did, too. Stirner never touched on the concept of virtues or principles of behavior, despite his provocative language Stirner was dealing primarily with the consequences of teleology and ontological individualism. My own view is that defenders of Eudaemonistic or strong-normative claims – such as Rand or Roderick Long – simply go to far on what can be defended as ‘man’s nature’ and the exact role reason per se plays in valuation and purposiveness. Yet much of the gist and specifics of what these proponents of ‘ethical individualism’ or ‘virtue ethics’ argue really is plausible, and many specific points seem convincing. For example, David Kelley on the purposeful selection of facts and use of means/ends reasoning to assign value or disvalue to them is teleology more than moral philosophy.

In order to construct some image out of disparate convincing and plausible social and ethical (in the sense of ethos) views I’ve been delving deeper into various branches of Objectivist/Post-Objectivist moral philosophy, as well as work like Cieters’ Nietzschean Libertarianism. One important point I’d like to make is that I think extensive elements of capitalism (private property, free contract, presumption of liberty) can be defended on procedural-rational grounds as Anthony de Jasay and Lon L. Fuller have. This approach is not the same one Rand took (it’s closer to Rothbard or Hoppe, though de Jasay is a moral non-cognitivist) and he makes a point of emphasizing that jurisprudence and law are not morality. I think this is simply true, and that law can not be strictly derived from any plausible ethic or instrumental rationality. It has to do with epistemic coherence and the nature of contract as agreement, however, and while I remain an ethical non-cognitivist I am a believer in a sort of ‘natural law’. If men do not respect these logical grounds what they are doing simply does not count as justice, any more than nonsense counts as a thought.

I think Objectivists should be able to appreciate points like this: liberty’s enemies have always been hallmarked by their profound attachment to gibberish. Though the ethical argument is the most popular among libertarian radicals today, and the practical the second, I think a more general philosophic argument as to the systemic nonsensicality of totalitarian and collectivist creeds might be the most convincing on argumentative grounds. Of course, Rand made points like this all the time, even her ethical works contain attempts like this: to show that non-Objective ethics were incoherent. I think that the premises of moral arguments require a little more traction and have a bit less principle than ‘life or death?’, but by parsing morality, virtue and jurisprudence into their appropriate places we might be able to show that anti-libertarian creeds are intrinsically anti-social . Keep in mind that society is harmony among various individuals pursuing their ends. A state of pervasive civil war (or its equivalent, communism) is the abolition of society.

It may not be possible to prove that there is no conceivable motivation that could cause a diligent, informed person to violate liberties but I am not sure why that would be necessary or relevant; now as ever it is a matter of imposing our values on the world. Are you a diamond, or are you a coal?

[Guyau]

Hello and welcome, Anya. Delighted by what you have shared here. Delighted by your notice of Lon Fuller, whose book The Morality of Law I have long treasured alongside H. L. A. Hart's The Concept of Law. On my shelf is a 2007 book I've not yet read and which you might find profitable: Objectivity and the Rule of Law by Matthew Kramer.

You have very informed and very interesting philosophy projects underway. Hope philosophy continues with you on and on.

Did you find Stirner overly nominalisitic?

[Guest Anya]

Hello and welcome, Anya. Delighted by what you have shared here. Delighted by your notice of Lon Fuller, whose book The Morality of Law I have long treasured alongside H. L. A. Hart's The Concept of Law. On my shelf is a 2007 book I've not yet read and which you might find profitable: Objectivity and the Rule of Law by Matthew Kramer.

You have very informed and very interesting philosophy projects underway. Hope philosophy continues with you on and on.

Did you find Stirner overly nominalisitic?

I find him faux-Hegelian, I do not think that he had a clearly worked out theory of how abstract objects and universals related. Given his views on not throwing away culture and his witty remarks on realism and abstraction in his essays I would guess that he takes a pretty 'commonsense' realist view, i.e. there are real objects, my body is an object, and conscious activity of myself and others is not illusiory. His description of the self sometimes falls into a sort of black hole because he's so at pains to avoid tying it to any particular property; yet I don't think you'd have too much problem tying it together with Mises' view of subjective intentionality and a realist ontology.

[Guyau]

Thanks. I was wondering about your impression because of what I read about Stirner in Rudiger Safranski's Nietzsche – A Philosophical Biography (2002).

In the philosophy of the nineteenth century prior to Nietzsche, Stirner was without doubt the most radical nominalist. The consistency with which he pursued nominalist destruction might appear foolish even today, particularly to the philosophical establishment, but is was nothing short of brilliant. Stirner concurred with medieval nominalists who designated general concepts, especially those pertaining to God, as nothing more than breath devoid of reality. He discovered a creative power in the essence of man that creates phantoms, then winds up oppressed by its own creations.

. . .

Although acknowledging that man had destroyed the "other world outside us"—namely God and the morality based on God, thereby achieving the project of the Enlightenment—Stirner contended that the evaporation of the "other world outside of us" had done nothing to undermine the "other world in us" . . .

"The other world in us" . . . . connotes the reign of general concepts such as "mankind," "humanity," and "freedom," which are erected within us. The self that has been awakened into consciousness finds itself trapped in a network of such concepts, which have normative power. The self uses these concepts to interpret its nameless, nonconceptual existence. Stirner affirmed the existential principle that existence comes before essence. It was his impetus to bring the individual back to nameless existence and to liberate people from essentialist prisons. (127–28)

This smacks of secular mysticism to me. Be that as it may, I think contrary Herr Stirner that those concepts, their referents, and our own identities under them, are not rightly to be disowned, but loved.