Self-Interest and Social Order in Classical Liberalism: The Essays of George H. Smith

CONTENTS

1. Political Philosophy and Justice

2. David Hume

3. David Hume on Justice

4. Thomas Hobbes

5. The Selfish System

6. Joseph Butler

7. Joseph Butler, Continued

8. Bernard Mandeville

9. Mandeville on the Benefits of Vice

10. Bernard Mandeville vs. Francis Hutcheson

Notes

1

Political Philosophy and Justice

Political philosophy is a systematic inquiry into the nature of a good society and its preconditions, implications, and corollaries. The political philosopher, in framing his conception of a good society, must engage in two kinds of investigation: normative (or prescriptive) and positive (or descriptive). The normative part of political philosophy is concerned with the nature of justice, whereas the positive part is concerned with the nature of social order. What is justice? What is social order? These fundamental questions, when considered in tandem, establish the field of inquiry for that discipline known as political philosophy. (Another descriptive feature of political philosophy is its theory of human nature, which is the ultimate foundation for everything else. I discuss this issue in later chapters.)

We sometimes think of political philosophy as essentially prescriptive while neglecting its descriptive features. This is an understandable oversight, for justice has traditionally been regarded as the core concept of this discipline. But no theory of justice can be (or ever has been) defended without a corresponding theory of social order. This latter may be tacitly assumed or implicitly contained within a theory of justice, but it is there nonetheless. A philosopher may be unaware of these descriptive elements, he may not have clearly formulated his theory of social order or worked out its implications, but he cannot avoid the fact that justice is a social concept. A theory of justice expresses an ideal relationship—that is, a relationship that ought to exist—between two or more individuals. We can act unjustly only toward others, never toward ourselves.

Thus, in formulating a theory of justice, the philosopher must consider what would probably happen if his moral ideal were accepted and acted upon in the real world. Would his ideal of justice promote cooperation or conflict, harmony or chaos, abundance or poverty, happiness or misery? No philosopher, of course, will endorse the negative side of these dichotomies. No philosopher will claim that his theory of justice, if implemented, would result in perpetual conflict, chaos, poverty, or misery. We may therefore ask the philosopher how he knows all this. On what basis does he presume that his theory of justice is at least consistent with a minimal degree of social order—that it would not, for example, plunge society into that Hobbesian nightmare, that state of perpetual war of every man against every man where life is nasty, brutish, and short?

It is when answering such questions that the political philosopher must rely upon a theory of social order. And this is where the philosopher must venture beyond his native domain of ethics into the foreign territories of sociology, economics, social psychology, and other human sciences.

Political philosophies may be divided into two broad categories, or ideal types. The first assigns to political theory the limited task of determining those general conditions that are necessary for a good society. The second assigns to political theory the more expansive task of determining, not only those conditions that are necessary for a good society, but those that are sufficient as well.

By necessary, I mean those conditions without which a good society cannot exist. Such conditions are essential but minimal; they establish general principles of justice and social order without prescribing in detail how these principles should be implemented in particular cases. Political philosophy, thus conceived, can lay down general rules while leaving considerable room for social and cultural variations, the specifics of which will often depend on historical circumstances that are unique to a given society.

By sufficient, I mean those conditions that will result in the best of all possible societies. In contrast to a theory of necessary conditions, which specifies the preconditions of a good society, a theory of sufficient conditions attempts to draft a social blueprint, in effect, often in considerable detail. Or, to use more familiar terms, a theory of sufficient conditions is a theory of social planning.

A theory of necessary conditions will tend to generate a model of the open society, whereas a theory of necessary and sufficient conditions will tend to generate a model of the closed society. These conflicting models result from the inner logic of ideas. To offer a sketch of what is minimally necessary for a good society is to leave considerable room for diversity, variation, and change. But the available space for individuality will progressively decrease as additional details transform what had been a sketch into a veritable blueprint for the good society.

To enumerate the particular details—the sufficient conditions—of a good society is effectively to prohibit individuality and social change. A planned society, a society in which sufficient conditions are politically determined and coercively imposed, is closed to the spontaneous innovations of free association. We see this in the utopian writings of Plato and his many admirers. A utopian society is a perfect society, one that has been carefully designed by a wise and beneficent lawgiver. Any deviation from perfection must necessarily be for the worse, so social change—which in this scheme is but another name for social degeneration—must be arrested at all costs. And this, in turn, requires the suppression of individuality. The individual’s pursuit of happiness—that powerful and unpredictable agent of social change—must be subordinated for the sake of a good society, as specified in the utopian blueprint of sufficient conditions.

The difference between these models of political philosophy is reflected historically in two different meanings of the word political. The Greek polis, from which our word political is derived, referred to many aspects of the ancient Greek city-state in addition to its government—to its religious, familial, and educational institutions, for example. Most Greek philosophers, most notably Aristotle, did not distinguish between the political and the social but used political to denote all kinds of institutions, whether coercive or voluntary. Thus, where Aristotle said that man is naturally a political animal, later Aristotelians would sometimes substitute social animal or social and political animal.

The older, more expansive meaning of political, which included every kind of institution, tended to generate a theory of sufficient conditions. Over time,