About the Author - Paul McLaughlin teaches in the Philosophy Institute, Pedagogical Academy of Zielona Gora, Poland.

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PART TWO: THREE KEY CONCEPTS.

1. The concept of the individual.

We will begin with a statement from Waldron once again. He writes:

The deepest commitment of liberal political philosophy is to individualism, as a fundamental proposition about value. [As such,] liberals believe that the individual person is what matters for the purposes of social and political evaluation. We may be interested in the fate of a culture, a language, a community or a nation, but for a liberal such interest is always secondary or derivative. Ultimate value has to do with how things are for ordinary men and women, considered one by one… Of course, people do care about each other: individualism is not the same as egoism. But individualism excludes social and collective entities from the realm of ultimate goods.[1]

Thus the individual is granted ethical priority by liberals. This prioritization has been grounded in a number of ways within the liberal tradition, as Waldron recognizes. (a) It has been grounded in theological fashion by, e.g., Locke. Man’s relationship to God is represented by Locke as being personal (‘The care of each man’s soul, and of the things of heaven… is left entirely to every man’s self’) and immediate (‘there is no judge upon earth between the supreme magistrate and the people’). According to Locke, this individualistic relationship takes precedence over social or political relationships (‘there is nothing in this world that is of any consideration in comparison with eternity’; ‘obedience is due in the first place to God, and afterwards to the laws’ of ‘political society’ which was ‘instituted for no other end but only to secure every man’s possession of the [comparatively lowly] things of this life’).[2] (b) The ethical prioritization of the individual has also been grounded in utilitarian fashion by, e.g., Mill. Apart from the obvious enough, though objectionable, observation that the basic components of his ethical system – pleasure and pain – are ‘merely’ subjective, Mill’s first ‘proof’ for the ‘principle of utility’ runs as follows: ‘No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness’.[3] It may, with great difficulty, be possible to argue for the generality of Mill’s principle (the next step in his argument, presumably), but his ‘proof’ ultimately rests, it seems, on what Mill regards as an empirically-verifiable claim that happiness (the maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain) is in fact pursued by every individual. (c) A third way in which the ethical prioritization of the individual has been grounded is in Kantian fashion. The Kantian argument has it that the rational individual agent is an end in itself, never a means to any end ‘over and above’ it, a means to any social end; that is to say, Kantians view (in Kant’s words) ‘rational beings as ends in themselves’. More specifically, Kantians observe Kant’s imperative: ‘Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end’.[4]

Hence we encounter theocentrically-grounded individualism in (a) and explicitly anthropocentric individualism in (b) and (c): a Reformation individualism which nominally acknowledges God as the focus of philosophical concern and a more consequent individualism which abandons this dimension, explicitly proclaiming man – as it happens, the individual man – the central concern. In this fundamental sense, the distance between individualism and egoism is not very great. What is more, the difference between individualism – a preoccupation with the disparity of individual human interests – and, for instance, Marxian socialism – a preoccupation with the disparity of human class interests – can be said to be merely numerical: a matter of how many interested parties there are.[5] Interest individuals and interest classes alike seem to be abstractions: arbitrary definitions of species-members (considered atomistically or in groups), divorced from any naturalistic understanding. Accordingly, these agencies are represented as mediators of nature, through the process of industry or production, and in that sense are somehow prioritized.[6]

Needless to say, there have been naturalistic-scientific suggestions of ‘individualism’ too, such as Richard Dawkins’ ‘genetic individualism’. (Dawkins is neither a philosopher – by profession or by inclination - nor a liberal in our sense – since his science is opposed to the idea of individual-personal agency; individuals are ‘vehicles’ for sub-individual elements on Dawkins’ account. Still, perhaps unintentionally, his ideas, or at least the language in which they are expressed, seem to accord with the liberal ideology. Their effect is not to provide liberal individualism with a scientific foundation, but rather to draw liberalism and science into the same ideological orbit.) However, in the case of Dawkins, these suggestions must be considered by any reasonable standard ridiculously anthropomorphic if not blatantly ideological abuses of science. (I take it that ‘good’ science does not consist in either imposing complex and specifically human categories, dubious even as such, on any less complex phenomenon in the natural world, or in even ‘accidentally’ making intimate bedfellows of science and the dominant form of socio-political thought; perhaps an enlightened and self-critical scientist ought to reflect on any such accidents.) There are countless examples of scarcely-scientific statements from Dawkins. Here are a few: ‘A predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness’; ‘We must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature’; ‘In general, associations of mutual benefit will evolve if each partner can get more out than he puts in’.[7]

The liberal individualist will doubtless respond to the above by saying that there is no shame in individualism lacking a naturalistic footing. After all, liberal individualism is an ethical rather than, say, an ontological position. The liberal might add that it is mistaken to think that one can derive any ethical content from a fact about the natural world, any ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. However, naturalists believe that the supposed ‘naturalistic fallacy’ is itself fallacious, resting on an unwarranted assumption that there is a contradiction between the social and the natural. For the naturalist all social phenomena, including ethical phenomena, are natural phenomena, albeit complex ones. Furthermore, the burden of justification in this dispute is, according to the naturalist, on the non-naturalist, who must justify the belief that ethical concepts are somehow ‘supernatural’. It would appear, from the naturalist’s perspective, then, that though his opponent claims to evade ontological foundations in his ethical speculations, he implicitly bases his non-naturalistic contention on some theologico-metaphysical belief that something other than and fundamentally distinct from the natural can be said to ‘exist’.[8]

Aside from the continuity between liberal and socialist thinking that we have just mentioned, something remains to be said for socialism in relative terms: that is to say, a good deal of socialist thought is critically convincing if nothing else. In an age of consumerism, undoubtedly a product of liberalism in some form, it is nigh impossible to maintain that individual interests take precedence over (superficial) ‘social’ interests. Perhaps they should (over bogus, ‘marketed’ social interests at any rate); but it seems absurd to proclaim the dignity of the liberally-conceived individual in the face of a culture ‘produced’ by liberal conceptions. The allegedly ethical objections to liberal economy hardly seem heartfelt anyhow: the private comforts ‘within’ liberal society (premised, in large part, on the discomfort of those ‘outside’) are a sufficient payoff for most high-minded liberals; beyond such payoffs, tax-related acts of ‘philanthropy’, socialite and celebrity charity events, and, at best, piecemeal reform – all, conceivably, for the sake of an eased-conscience - generally suffice.

The fundamentals of liberalism are economistic, not ethical; liberal individualism is generally an economistic individualism. Marxian socialism achieved this recognition, but, coming to some degree from the same theoretical stable, failed to overcome it, remaining at the level of an economistic anthropocentrism – which holds that the arbitrarily designated productive mediator of all things, now socialized and placed in class context, is the central theoretical and practical concern. That is to say, Marxian socialism took issue with the individualistic component of liberalism’s economistic individualism, but not with economism, let alone anthropocentrism, as such.

Waldron tries to mount a defense of liberalism against the charge that it overvalues the economic side as opposed to the political, ethical or cultural side of individual affairs: he insists that liberal individualism is not merely economistic. ‘Critics’, he begins, ‘commonly associate liberal individualism with an egoistic and acquisitive view of human nature. They say the classical liberals all gave pride of place, among human motivations, to the desire for power, pleasure, and material possessions. Humanity, they argue, is reduced in liberal theory to nothing more than a competitive mass of market individuals – voracious consumers with unlimited appetites, hostile or indifferent to the well-being of others, and requiring no more of their political and legal institutions than that they secure the conditions for market activity’. A pretty good summary of the opposing viewpoint, which is, as Waldron is forced to concede in light of the blindingly obvious, ‘not entirely a distortion’. Waldron argues, however, that ‘To say… purposes are individual is not necessarily to say that they are economic or materialistic in their content. It is surprising, in fact, how few liberal theorists have actually held the economically acquisitive picture of human nature… [Many] in the liberal tradition see material motives as means to individual ends that may well be ethical, even spiritual in their content’.[9] One might respond that here, as was the case with the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat on the Marxist model, the means tend to transform into the very end. In any case, acquisitive activity justified as a means to a ‘higher’ end (most frequently these days, the well-being of ‘the economy’, an abstract, super-individual concern which, despite liberal rhetoric, overrides any concern for the well-being of the concrete individual, who in many cases – when unemployed, for instance – is apparently disposable or whose misery is a price worth paying) is familiar enough to those who, for all their toil and talent and for all the wonders of the market, have nothing and are so insolent as to ask why. Additionally, the socio-economic value of cultural and spiritual ends (leisure time, religious practice, etc.) has been pretty well argued for by now (by, for example, Horkheimer and Adorno in the former case[10], and Bakunin in the latter[11]).

Wilhelm von Humboldt, for instance, may be an exception to the rule of economism. Humboldt conceives man in terms of his ‘sublimity’ rather than, say, his industriousness; and of individual pursuits in terms of excellence rather than simple material gain, which (together with ‘every other object which is false or less worthy of humanity’) seems almost antithetical to excellence on his account. Indeed, Humboldt’s individualism is moderated by an acknowledgment that society is ‘formative of individual character’, and that it is essential to the ‘cultivation’ of individuality. (Mill, though highly influenced by Humboldt, is much less favorable toward social ‘formation’, which he suspects of being potentially ‘tyrannic’ – not to say detrimental toward those as clever as himself.) Nevertheless, despite the sense of there being a dialectical interrelationship between society and the individual, Humboldt stresses the individual aspect and suggests that society is instrumental, a mere means for individual ends (even if these ends are non-material): ‘The highest ideal… of the co-existence of human beings seems to me to consist in a union in which each strives to develop himself from his own inmost nature, and for his own sake’.[12] Therefore, if Humboldt is not as open to criticism of economism, he remains open to criticism of individualism itself.

None of the above should be read as a blanket rejection of philosophy which has developed a sense of individuality and which insists on the need to respect and even nurture individuality in society while warding-off excessive social control; such thinking has had important and beneficial historical results. For such achievements, figures such as Humboldt and Mill in particular (that is, those who have sought to develop individualism along genuinely ethical rather than crude economistic lines) are to be commended.[13] However, the sense of achievement should not save liberals from criticism of the anthropocentric abstraction and ideological one-sidedness of their theory. A more adequate ethical position demands the dialectical integration of social-istic insight – not so as to replace one partiality with its counterpart, but in order to reach an understanding of the mutuality of the individual and the collective in their natural context. Practically, in any event, the liberal alternative, the overstatement of individuality, leads not only to a diminution of social collectivity, but also to a perversion of the individual whose development, as at least Humboldt admits, is dependent on the well-being of this very collectivity.

[1] op. cit., §3; emphasis in original.

[2] A Letter Concerning Toleration, Political Writings, pp. 421-24.

[3] Utilitarianism (London: Everyman, 1984), p. 36; emphasis added.

[4] Quoted in Paul Guyer, ‘Kant’, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, §9; emphasis removed.

[5] Bookchin writes of this relationship: ‘Our bourgeois society has carried its own ideological baggage, filled with notions of self-interest, into the mental world of its opponents. As a result, traditional radicalism in nearly all its forms has become the alter ego of traditional capitalism… The power of self-interest, whether we choose to call it “class interest” or private interest, becomes so much a part of the received wisdom of our period that it unconciously shapes all our ideological premises’ [The Modern Crisis, pp. 2-3].

[6] We have already referred to Marx’s notion that ‘Nature [is] simply an object for mankind’ or ‘a matter of utility’ [see Part One, note 13]. This strain in his thinking owes as much (arguably more) to the influence of liberal theory (philosophical and economic) as Hegel’s thought. Within the liberal tradition, Locke is the most striking advocate of the ‘mediation’ view. He speaks of this process as the industrial ‘appropriation’ (by individuals rather than classes) of nature, which, in itself, is basically worthless: ‘labor makes the far greater part of the value of things we enjoy in this world; and the ground which produces the materials is scarcely to be reckoned in as any, or at most but a very small part, of it. So little, that even amongst us land that is left wholly to nature… is called, as indeed it is, waste; and we shall find the benefit of it to amount to little more than nothing’. Locke suggests that what is involved here is something like an industrial imperative: ‘God and his reason commanded [man] to subdue the earth… [God] gave it to the use of the industrious and rational’ [The Second Treatise of Government, pp. 280, 282, 277; emphasis added]. The ecological consequences of this view are self-evident. (Bookchin, however, has emphasized the subtler point about the connection between the subduction of nature by man (the ecological aspect of social ecology) and the subduction of man by man (the social aspect of social ecology).) That the industrial imperative, so characteristic of liberalism, should be theologically-rooted at its origins should not be overlooked; it demonstrates the gulf between this ideology and naturalistic thought that I am seeking to draw attention to.

[7] The Selfish Gene, Second Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 2, 139, 183; emphasis added.

[8] Likewise, ‘anti-foundationalists’ in general seem guilty of making some onto-foundational assumption of a distinction between the natural and the social (in its linguistic, conceptual, or cultural form, for example), the former being determined by the latter, which thereby appears to be, if it can be put this way, ‘supernatural’. The supernatural in this sense is either an ontological category (difficult to support as such) or an entirely empty category (which nevertheless underpins the entire ‘anti-foundationalist’ position). That is to say, ‘anti-foundationalists’ do in fact require onto-foundations (theologico-metaphysical at that) or else engage in vacuous, ‘non-ontological’ speculation.

[9] op. cit., §4.

[10] See Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972).

[11] See God and the State, ed. Paul Avrich (New York: Dover, 1970).

[12] The Sphere and Duties of Government, trans. Joseph Coulthard (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996), pp. 14, 44, 12, 15; emphasis added.

[13] The ethical form of liberalism, as represented by Mill, has been attacked by the most vulgar of economistic liberals, Ludwig von Mises, whose basic belief is that ‘The program of liberalism… if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production’ [Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, Chapter 1, §1]. For von Mises, then, liberalism equals capitalism. Anyone who expresses the slightest ethical doubt about capitalism and its consequences (from the point of view of the principles of individuality and social justice, both of which receive attention in Mill, the latter less so) is therefore un-liberal or, what amounts to the same thing for von Mises, socialist. Hence Mill is criticized as follows: ‘John Stuart Mill is an epigone of classical liberalism and, especially in his later years, under the influence of his wife [!], full of feeble compromises. He slips slowly into socialism and is the originator of the thoughtless confounding of liberal and socialist ideas that led to the decline of English liberalism and to the undermining of the living standards of the English people’. Furthermore, ‘Mill is the great advocate of socialism. All the arguments that could be advanced in favor of socialism are elaborated by him with loving care. In comparison with Mill all other socialist writers – even Marx, Engels, and Lassalle – are scarcely of any importance’ [ibid., Appendix I].

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