How can one examine the sources of people's beliefs, tastes, and preferences without falling into the self‐refuting determinism that has so often characterized the most systematic theory of preferences, Marxism? Cultural Theory's attempt to do so posits five anthropologically derived, competing “ways of life"— individualism, egalitarianism, hierarchism, fatalism, and withdrawal from social life—that are intended to apply to all forms of culture and, therefore, to provide a universal framework for explaining people's preferential biases. Richard Ellis's defense of Cultural Theory, however, (...) does not adequately address the concerns expressed in my critique of it. Ellis fails to instance a single case of a premodern culture containing the five ways of life; he does not show that exclusivist premodern versions of “individualism” and “egalitarianism” are more than superficially comparable to the inclusive modern variants of these alleged universals; and he adds new evidence to support my claim that in modern societies, people's preferences are largely unlinked to the particular social relations identified by Cultural Theory. While Ellis overtly denies that Cultural Theory is deterministic, his search for links between preferences and social relations shows that this denial cannot be sustained.Cultural Theory's reductionism stems from its neglect of historically contingent cultural traditions that thwart a priori attempts to predict culture. This ahistori‐cism transforms a myopic view of American politics as a battle of egalitarianism against individualism into a timeless truth, providing ideological self‐affirmation for “individualists” but diminishing the prospects for being able to explain or criticize individualism—or any other political preference. (shrink)

Deviance is esteemed in the art world, and all great artists have broken with the traditions that preceded them and rebelled against their contemporaries. Yet in society deviance is more often than not condemned. Our apparently contradictory attitudes toward artistic and social deviance are explicable in light of the conservative nature of institutions and the nature of comprehensibility and psychiatry.

Jeffrey Friedman presents positive libertarianism as consisting of an objective morality, autonomy, and moral totalism. He then defines postlibertarianism as a consequentialist positive libertarianism. However, Friedman's claim that the choice of moral axioms is unjustifiable, and an equivocation in his use of the term “moral,” makes his presentation of positive libertarianism incoherent. Nor is Friedman successful in grafting consequentialism onto positive libertarianism. The autonomy of positive libertarianism renders consequentialism superfluous, and the ends of the two systems conflict, for positive libertarianism (...) judges people, while the consequentialism of postlibertarianism judges actions. (shrink)

Arguments for and against liberalism are vitiated by failing to distinguish between states (which have millions of citizens) and communities (which have only a few thousand citizens). The state should be liberal or minimal, but the community should not. The state is an alliance of communities for mutual defense and is concerned with matters of defense alone. Two reasons are given for this conclusion, one from Aristotle and one from Hobbes (though Hobbes's argument has to be corrected in two important (...) respects). The community, by contrast, is a moral community and should not be liberal. Two arguments are also given for this conclusion, one from the naturalness of the family and one from the need for moral education. Once state and community have been thus distinguished and described, standard arguments both for and against the liberal state are seen to be correct but misdirected. (shrink)

The cognitive theory of emotion (also called the rational?emotive theory) clarifies the notion of aesthetic emotion and evaluation, and when combined with Dewey's humanism and a naturalistic theory of valuation provides a basis for a holistic theory of aesthetics. From the holistic perspective, no act is moral unless it is also aesthetic. On this view, the aesthetic is no longer reduced to atomistic or quantitative perspectives, but becomes a part of our total purposive life experience. It expresses itself in gentleness (...) and joie de vivre. (shrink)

The ill?named debate between postmodernists and postlibertarians should be transcended; this requires the abandonment of both foundationalism and its converse, without abandoning common sense as well (which is no mean trick). Similarly, the debate over ?minimal statism? versus the planned economy is outdated. Instead of claiming to be in possession of foundations of our scientific?cum?political knowledge in broad terms, and instead of severely limiting our knowledge to given proofs, we offer the putative heuristics of critique in general and the critical (...) evaluations of contexts in particular. (shrink)

Jeffrey Friedman broaches a number of criticisms of Libertarianism as a conceptual basis for opposing the extensive modern welfare state, examining several variants and concluding that they are fundamentally unsupported. He opts for a “consequentialist” view of foundations. Nevertheless, he thinks that the modem welfare state is subject to effective critique along such lines. But rational contractarian individualism works and does provide foundations for libertarianism, while “consequentialism” is an ill‐defined theory.that is quite unpromising for the proposed critique; nevertheless, Friedman's empirical (...) and economic critique of the welfare state is valid. (shrink)

In his Farewell to Reason, Paul Feyerabend advocates radical pluralism in all intellectual endeavors and disputes the widely held belief that all issues can and should be resolved rationally. For Feyerabend, it is desirable that mutually incompatible approaches to scientific and scholarly research proliferate. Even an approach that one's favored school of thought dismisses as loony is likely to yield ideas and factual observations that its derogators will find of value and would otherwise have missed. To derive intellectual benefit from (...) an alternative tradition, one need not accept its premises and values; likewise, to ignore uncongenial ideas, one is not obliged to construct a refutation of than, which is just as well, since such a refutation usually can be constructed only by stacking the cards against adversaries about whom one is grossly ignorant. (shrink)

Friedman misunderstands postmodernism?or, as it could better be called, metamodernism. Metamodernism is the common sense beyond the lunatic formulas of the Vienna Circle and conventional statistics. It has little to do with the anxieties of Continental intellectuals. It therefore is necessary for serious empirical work on the role of the state.

This paper attempts to delineate some of the principal features and tasks of a politics of postmodernity. An attempt is made in the first part of the paper to reflect on the democratic revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe and to discern what lessons they might have to offer. What is called for, it is maintained, is a renewed theory of democracy and, more particularly, a reformulation of traditional liberalism. In the second part of the paper the author seeks to (...) suggest how such traditional liberal concepts as the individual, reason, universality, and freedom can be reformulated in a genuinely postmetaphysical, postmodern fashion. (shrink)

F.A.Hayek is generally considered to be a representative of what, in regard to the methodology of the human sciences, is commonly referred to as ?methodological individualism?; (MI). This paper is an attempt to determine the exact nature and significance of Hayek's own particular brand of ?individualism.?; In particular, it attempts to show that Hayek's MI is grossly misinterpreted when it is viewed as being merely another instance of the atomistic or analytic individualism characteristic of much modern thinking. The ?true?; individualism (...) that Hayek argues for is in fact one which highlights the irremediably social nature of human being that recent hermeneutical and postmodern writers have stressed. (shrink)

In a departure from traditional Western political theory that is reminiscent of left?wing anarchism, contemporary libertarianism rejects the necessity of making political choices based on a value hierarchy, instead claiming that it is possible for all individuals to pursue their divergent values simultaneously?as long as each respects the equal rights of others to do the same. The caveat, however, hides a conflict of loyalties that would plague a libertarian society: on the one hand are the particular loyalties of one's preferred (...) Utopian community; on the other hand, loyalty to the larger ?framework for utopias?; within which one's utopia exists. The second loyalty implies a value relativism incompatible with the first one, meaning either that loyalty to the libertarian framework will undermine the utopias within it, or that the particular values of the utopias will destabilize the libertarian framework. The durability of a libertarian society, then, requires a mentality best characterized as nihilistic. In this, libertarianism differs from liberalism but is surprisingly similar to the cultural diversity movement. The thesis is illustrated by examining John Gray's attempt to eschew both a hierarchy of values and moral relativism. (shrink)

An argument is made for the relevance of phenomenological hermeneutics to economics, with special attention to recent debates on hermeneutics among economists of the Austrian school of Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek. Hermeneutics is explicated in the context of Husserlian phenomenology, with special attention to phenomenology's Aristotelian roots. Naive and methodological forms of ?objectivism?; are contrasted with hermeneutics, which recovers the horizons of scientific knowledge: the whole, and the activities of the human knower. Finally, the charges that hermeneutics (...) entails pernicious forms of relativism and historicism are confronted. (shrink)

Jeffrey Friedman's claim that arbitrariness is the inevitable result of the rejection of objectivist notions of truth misses its mark because it is based on a sense of ?agreement? that is radically at odds with the concept of agreement at work in hermeneutical practice. The rationalist notion of truth Friedman upholds cannot escape the need for agreement any more than the hermeneutical notion; the central distinction between the two senses of ?agreement? is the distinction between coercion and consent. Hermeneutical practice (...) integrally links the rational procedure and universalizing consent, which together constitute a rigorous existential standard that challenges any rationalist discipline. (shrink)

Jeffrey Friedman's claim that arbitrariness is the inevitable result of the rejection of objectivist notions of truth misses its mark because it is based on a sense of “agreement” that is radically at odds with the concept of agreement at work in hermeneutical practice. The rationalist notion of truth Friedman upholds cannot escape the need for agreement any more than the hermeneutical notion; the central distinction between the two senses of “agreement” is the distinction between coercion and consent. Hermeneutical practice (...) integrally links the rational procedure and universalizing consent, which together constitute a rigorous existential standard that challenges any rationalist discipline. (shrink)

The goal of the left has been predominantly libertarian: the realization of equal individual freedom. But now, with the demise of leftist hope for radical change that has followed the collapse of ?really existing?; socialism, the world is converging on a compromise between capitalism and the leftist impulse. This compromise is the democratic, interventionist welfare state, which has gained new legitimacy by virtue of combining a ?realistic?; acceptance of the unfortunate need for the market with an attempt to libertarianize capitalism (...) as much as possible, by intervening in its operation and redistributing the wealth it produces. Since the neoliberal economic critique of socialism seems to have been borne out by the events of 1989, neoliberal economists might now be expected to provide a similar critique of the new interventionist consensus. Yet there are few signs of their interest in doing so. This might be due to their acceptance of an erroneous interpretation of liberty which equates it with capitalist property relations, and which, they believe, provides an overarching moral justification for their opposition to state intervention in the market. Acceptance of this moralistic, ?libertarian?; version of neoliberalism may obscure the need for a synthetic critique of the new consensus which would integrate the many extant consequentialist arguments against it. Before reviewing the libertarian motives behind both socialism and intervention?ism, criticisms of moralistic neoliberal ?libertarianism?; are offered. These are intended to clear the way for a consequentialist critique of the interventionist welfare state. Finally, it is suggested that the problems with such a critique point toward a different project: a critique of the culture that gives rise to interventionism. (shrink)

Postlibertarianism means abandoning defenses of the intrinsic justice of laissez?faire capitalism, the better to investigate whether the systemic consequences of interfering with capitalism are severe enough to justify laissez?faire. Any sound case for laissez?faire is likely to build on postlibertarian research, for the conviction that laissez?faire is intrinsically just rests upon unsound philosophical assumptions. Conversely, these assumptions, if sound, would make empirical studies of capitalism by libertarian scholars superfluous. Moreover, postmodern approaches to ?libertarianism? perpetuate the same assumptions, in the guise (...) of a critique of the rationalist hubris that has supposedly led to the tragedies of the twentieth century. The ?libertarian? and postmodernist critics of postlibertarianism either ignore the assumptions undergirding their views, or they contend that these assumptions are not necessary when ?freedom? and ?morality? are properly defined. The latter contention amounts to an attempt to define the challenge to ?libertarianism? out of existence. (shrink)

This is a rejoinder to some of the contentions of Part II of Jeffrey Friedman's monster article (or mini?book?) about ?The New Consensus.? After questioning his supposedly ?non?tendentious understanding of Marx,? it proceeds to deny that what Friedman calls Positive Libertarianism is any more a sort of libertarianism than imaginary or non?existent cows are a kind of cows; and to insist that what Friedman calls morality is light years removed from the dutiful, domestic decencies of what would normally be considered (...) moral conduct. Next it examines Friedman's misunderstandings of option rights, which actually presuppose only the weakest possible claims to equality. Finally it concludes with criticism of his bizarre and perverse assumption that concern about the consequences of our actions has little or nothing rather than almost everything to do with their morality. (shrink)