Theory and History

KNOWLEDGE AND VALUE 33as producer. Moreover all are harmed by the substitu-tion of less efficient for more efficient methods of pro-duction. If one deals with economic policies from the pointof view of this distinction between long- and short-runinterests, there is no ground for charging the economistwith bias. He does not condemn featherbedding of therailroadmen because it benefits the railroadmen at theexpense of other groups whom he likes better. He showsthat the railroadmen cannot prevent featherbeddingfrom becoming a general practice and that then, thatis9 in the long run, it hurts them no less than otherpeople. Of course, the objections the economists advanced tothe plans of the socialists and interventionists carry noweight with those who do not approve of the endswhich the peoples of Western civilization take forgranted. Those who prefer penury and slavery to mate-rial well-being and all that can only develop wherethere is material well-being may deem all these objec-tions irrelevant. But the economists have repeatedlyemphasized that they deal with socialism and interven-tionism from the point of view of the generally ac-cepted values of Western civilization. The socialistsand interventionists not only have not—at least notopenly—denied these values but have emphatically de-clared that the realization of their own program willachieve them much better than will capitalism. It is true that most socialists and many intervention-ists attach value to equalizing the standard of living ofall individuals. But the economists did not question the

34 VALUEvalue judgment implied. All they did was to point outthe inevitable consequences of equalization. They didnot say: The end you are aiming at is bad; they said:Realization of this end will bring effects which youyourselves deem more undesirable than inequality.4. Bias and Intolerance It is obvious that there are many people who let theirreasoning be influenced by judgments of value, and thatbias often corrupts the thinking of men. What is to berejected is the popular doctrine that it is impossible todeal with economic problems without bias and thatmere reference to bias, without unmasking fallacies inthe chain of reasoning, is sufficient to explode a theory. The emergence of the bias doctrine implies in factcategorical acknowledgment of the impregnability ofthe teachings of economics against which the reproachof bias has been leveled. It was the first stage in the re-turn to intolerance and persecution of dissenters whichis one of the main features of our age. As dissenters areguilty of bias, it is right to \"liquidate\" them.

Chapter 3. The Quest for Absolute Values1. The IssueI N DEALING with judgments of value we refer to facts,that is, to the way in which people really choose ulti-mate ends. While the value judgments of many peopleare identical, while it is permissible to speak of certainalmost universally accepted valuations, it would bemanifestly contrary to fact to deny that there is diver-sity in passing judgments of value. From time immemorial an immense majority of menhave agreed in preferring the effects produced bypeaceful cooperation—at least among a limited numberof people—to the effects of a hypothetical isolation ofeach individual and a hypothetical war of all againstall. To the state of nature they have preferred the stateof civilization, for they sought the closest possible at-tainment of certain ends—the preservation of life andhealth—which, as they rightly thought, require socialcooperation. But it is a fact that there have been andare also men who have rejected these values and conse-quently preferred the solitary Me of an anchorite to Wewithin society. It is thus obvious that any scientific treatment of theproblems of value judgments must take into full accountthe fact that these judgments are subjective and chang-ing. Science seeks to know what is, and to formulate 35

36 VALUEexistential propositions describing the universe as it is.With regard to judgments of value it cannot assert morethan that they are uttered by some people, and inquirewhat the effects of action guided by them must be. Anystep beyond these limits is tantamount to substitutinga personal judgment of value for knowledge of reality.Science and our organized body of knowledge teachonly what is, not what ought to be. This distinction between a field of science dealingexclusively with existential propositions and a field ofjudgments of value has been rejected by the doctrinesthat maintain there are eternal absolute values whichit is just as much the task of scientific or philosophicalinquiry to discover as to discover the laws of physics.The supporters of these doctrines contend that there isan absolute hierarchy of values. They tried to definethe supreme good. They said it is permissible and nec-essary to distinguish in the same way between true andfalse, correct and incorrect judgments of value as be-tween true and false, correct and incorrect existentialpropositions.1 Science is not restricted to the descriptionof what is. There is, in their opinion, another fully le-gitimate branch of science, the normative science ofethics, whose task it is to show the true absolute valuesand to set up norms for the correct conduct of men. The plight of our age, according to the supporters ofthis philosophy, is that people no longer acknowledgethese eternal values and do not let their actions beguided by them. Conditions were much better in the 1. Franz Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher ErkenntrUs, 2d ed.Leipzig, 1921.

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 37past, when the peoples of Western civilization wereunanimous in endorsing the values of Christian ethics. In what follows, we will deal with the issues raisedby this philosophy.2. Conflicts within Society Having discussed the fact that men disagree withregard to their judgments of value and their choice ofultimate ends, we must stress that many conflictswhich are commonly considered valuational are ac-tually caused by disagreement concerning the choiceof the best means to attain ends about which the con-flicting parties agree. The problem of the suitability orunsuitability of definite means is to be solved by exis-tential propositions, not by judgments of value. Itstreatment is the main topic of applied science. It is thus necessary to be aware in dealing with con-troversies concerning human conduct whether the dis-agreement refers to the choice of ends or to that ofmeans. This is often a difficult task. For the same thingsare ends to some people, means to others. With the exception of the small, almost negligiblenumber of consistent anchorites, all people agree inconsidering some kind of social cooperation betweenmen the foremost means to attain any ends they mayaim at. This undeniable fact provides a common groundon which political discussions between men becomepossible. The spiritual and intellectual unity of all speci-mens of homo sapiens manifests itself in the fact thatthe immense majority of men consider the same thing

38 VALUE—social cooperation—the best means of satisfying thebiological urge, present in every living being, to pre-serve the life and health of the individual and to propa-gate the species. It is permissible to call this almost universal accept-ance of social cooperation a natural phenomenon. Inresorting to this mode of expression and asserting thatconscious association is in conformity with humannature, one implies that man is characterized as manby reason, is thus enabled to become aware of the greatprinciple of cosmic becoming and evolution, viz., dif-ferentiation and integration, and to make intentionaluse of this principle to improve his condition. But onemust not consider cooperation among the individualsof a biological species a universal natural phenomenon.The means of sustenance are scarce for every species ofliving beings. Hence biological competition prevailsamong the members of all species, an irreconcilableconflict of vital \"interests/' Only a part of those whocome into existence can survive. Some perish becauseothers of their own species have snatched away fromthem the means of sustenance. An implacable strugglefor existence goes on among the members of each spe-cies precisely because they are of the same species andcompete with other members of it for the same scarceopportunities of survival and reproduction. Man aloneby dint of his reason substituted social cooperation forbiological competition. What made social cooperationpossible is, of course, a natural phenomenon, the higherproductivity of labor accomplished under the principleof the division of labor and specialization of tasks. But

THE QUEST TOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 39it was necessary to discover this principle, to compre-hend its bearing upon human affairs, and to employ itconsciously as a means in the struggle for existence. The fundamental facts about social cooperation havebeen misinterpreted by the school of social Darwinismas well as by many of its critics. The former maintainedthat war among men is an inevitable phenomenon andthat all attempts to bring about lasting peace amongnations are contrary to nature. The latter retorted thatthe struggle for existence is not among members of thesame animal species but among the members of variousspecies. As a rule tigers do not attack other tigers but,taking the line of least resistance, weaker animals.Hence, they concluded, war among men, who are speci-mens of the same species, is unnatural.1 Both schools misunderstood the Darwinian conceptof the struggle for survival. It does not refer merely tocombat and blows. It means metaphorically the tena-cious impulse of beings to keep alive in spite of allfactors detrimental to them. As the means of sustenanceare scarce, biological competition prevails among all in-dividuals—whether of the same or different species—which feed on the same stuff. It is immaterial whetheror not tigers fight one another. What makes every speci-men of an animal species a deadly foe of every otherspecimen is the mere fact of their Ltfe-and-death rivalryin their endeavors to snatch a sufficient amount of food.This inexorable rivalry is present also among animalsgregariously roaming in droves and flocks, among ants 1. On this controversy see Paul Barth, Die Philosophie der Ge-schichte ah Soziologie (4th ed. Leipzig, 1922), pp. 289-92.

40 VALUEof the same hill and bees of the same swarm, amongthe brood hatched by common parents and among theseeds ripened by the same plant. Only man has diepower to escape to some extent from the rule of thislaw by intentional cooperation. So long as there is socialcooperation and population has not increased beyondthe optimum size, biological competition is suspended.It is therefore inappropriate to refer to animals andplants in dealing with the social problems of man. Yet man's almost universal acknowledgment of theprinciple of social cooperation did not result in agree-ment regarding all interhuman relations. While almostall men agree in looking upon social cooperation as theforemost means for realizing all human ends, whateverthey may be, they disagree as to the extent to whichpeaceful social cooperation is a suitable means for at-taining their ends and how far it should be resorted to. Those whom we may call the harmonists base theirargument on Ricardo's law of association and onMalthus' principle of population. They do not, as someof their critics believe, assume that all men are bio-logically equal. They take fully into account the factthat there are innate biological differences among var-ious groups of men as well as among individuals belong-ing to the same group. Ricardo's law has shown thatcooperation under the principle of the division of laboris favorable to all participants. It is an advantage forevery man to cooperate with other men, even if theseothers are in every respect—mental and bodily capac-ities and skills, diligence and moral worth—inferior.From Malthus' principle one can deduce that there is,

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 41in any given state of the supply of capital goods andknowledge of how to make the best use of naturalresources, an optimum size of population. So long aspopulation has not increased beyond this size, the addi-tion of newcomers improves rather than impairs theconditions of those already cooperating. In the philosophy of the antiharmonists, the variousschools of nationalism and racism, two different linesof reasoning must be distinguished. One is the doctrineof the irreconcilable antagonism prevailing among var-ious groups, such as nations or races. As the antihar-monists see it, community of interests exists only withinthe group among its members. The interests of eachgroup and of each of its members are implacably op-posed to those of all other groups and of each of theirmembers. So it is \"natural\" there should be perpetualwar among various groups. This natural state of war ofeach group against every other group may sometimesbe interrupted by periods of armistice, falsely labeledperiods of peace. It may also happen that sometimes inwarfare a group cooperates in alliances with othergroups. Such alliances are temporary makeshifts ofpolitics. They do not in the long run affect the inexo-rable natural conflict of interests. Having, in coopera-tion with some allied groups, defeated several of thehostile groups, the leading group in the coalition turnsagainst its previous allies in order to annihilate them tooand to establish its own world supremacy. The second dogma of the nationalist and racist phi-losophies is considered by its supporters a logical con-clusion derived from their first dogma. As they see it,

42 VALUEhuman conditions involve forever irreconcilable con-flicts, first among the various groups fighting one an-other, later, after the final victory of the master group,between the latter and the enslaved rest of mankind.Hence this supreme elite group must always be readyto fight, first to crush the rival groups, then to quell re-bellions of the slaves. The state of perpetual prepared-ness for war enjoins upon it the necessity of organizingsociety after the pattern of an army. The army is notan instrument destined to serve a body politic; it israther the very essence of social cooperation, to whichall other social institutions are subservient. The individ-uals are not citizens of a commonwealth; they are sol-diers of a fighting force and as such bound to obeyunconditionally the orders issued by the supreme com-mander. They have no civil rights, merely militaryduties. Thus even the fact that the immense majority of menlook upon social cooperation as the foremost means toattain all desired ends does not provide a basis for awide-reaching agreement concerning either ends ormeans.3. A Remark on the Alleged Medieval Unanimity In examining the doctrines of eternal absolute valueswe must also ask whether it is true or not that there wasa period of history in which all peoples of the Westwere united in their acceptance of a uniform systemof ethical norms. Until the beginning of the fourth century the Chris-

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 43tian creed was spread by voluntary conversions. Therewere also later voluntary conversions of individuals andof whole peoples. But from the days of Theodosius Ion, the sword began to play a prominent role in the dis-semination of Christianity. Pagans and heretics werecompelled by force of arms to submit to the Christianteachings. For many centuries religious problems weredecided by the outcome of battles and wars. Militarycampaigns determined the religious allegiance of na-tions. Christians of the East were forced to accept thecreed of Mohammed, and pagans in Europe and Amer-ica were forced to accept the Christian faith. Secularpower was instrumental in the struggle between theReformation and the Counter Reformation. There was religious uniformity in Europe of theMiddle Ages as both paganism and heresies were eradi-cated with fire and sword. All of Western and CentralEurope recognized the Pope as the Vicar of Christ. Butthis did not mean that all people agreed in their judg-ments of value and in the principles directing theirconduct. There were few people in medieval Europewho lived according to the precepts of the Gospels.Much has been said and written about the truly Chris-tian spirit of the code of chivalry and about the reli-gious idealism that guided the conduct of the knights.Yet anything less compatible with Luke 6:27-9 thanthe rules of chivalry can hardly be conceived. The gal-lant knights certainly did not love their enemies, theydid not bless those who cursed them, and they did notoffer the left cheek to him who smote them on the rightcheek. The Catholic Church had the power to prevent

44 VALUEscholars and writers from challenging the dogmas asdefined by the Pope and the Councils and to force thesecular rulers to yield to some of its political claims.But it could preserve its position only by condoningconduct on the part of the laity which defied most, ifnot all, of the principles of the Gospels. The values thatdetermined the actions of the ruling classes were en-tirely different from those that the Church preached.Neither did the peasants comply with Matthew 6:25-8.And there were courts and judges in defiance of Mat-thew 7:1: \"Judge not, that you be not judged.\"4. The Idea of Natural Law The most momentous attempt to find an absolute andeternal standard of value is presented by the doctrineof natural law. The term \"natural law\" has been claimed by variousschools of philosophy and jurisprudence. Many doc-trines have appealed to nature in order to provide ajustification for their postulates. Many manifestly spuri-ous theses have been advanced under the label of natu-ral law. It was not difficult to explode the fallacies com-mon to most of these lines of thought. And it is nowonder that many thinkers become suspicious as soonas natural law is referred to. Yet it would be a serious blunder to ignore the factthat all the varieties of the doctrine contained a soundidea which could neither be compromised by connec-tion with untenable vagaries nor discredited by anycriticism. Long before the Classical economists discov-

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 45ered that a regularity in the sequence of phenomenaprevails in the field of human action, the champions ofnatural law were dimly aware of this inescapable fact.From the bewildering diversity of doctrines presentedunder the rubric of natural law there finally emerged aset of theorems which no caviling can ever invalidate.There is first the idea that a nature-given order ofthings exists to which man must adjust his actions if hewants to succeed. Second: the only means available toman for the cognizance of this order is thinking andreasoning, and no existing social institution is exemptfrom being examined and appraised by discursive rea-soning. Third: there is no standard available for ap-praising any mode of acting either of individuals or ofgroups of individuals but that of the effects producedby such action. Carried to its ultimate logical conse-quences, the idea of natural law led eventually to ra-tionalism and utilitarianism. The march of social philosophy toward this ines-capable conclusion was slowed down by many obstacleswhich could not be removed easily. There were nu-merous pitfalls on the way, and many inhibitions ham-pered the philosophers. To deal with the vicissitudes ofthe evolution of these doctrines is a task of the historyof philosophy. In the context of our investigation it isenough to mention only two of these problems. There was the antagonism between the teachings ofreason and the dogmas of the Church. Some philoso-phers were prepared to ascribe unconditional suprem-acy to the latter. Truth and certainty, they declared,are to be found only in revelation. Man's reason can

46 VALUEerr, and man can never be sure that his speculationswere not led astray by Satan. Other thinkers did notaccept this solution of the antagonism. To reject reasonbeforehand was in their opinion preposterous. Reasontoo stems from God, who endowed man with it, so therecan be no genuine contradiction between dogma andthe correct teachings of reason. It is the task of philoso-phy to show that ultimately both agree. The centralproblem of Scholastic philosophy was to demonstratethat human reason, unaided by revelation and HolyWrit, taking recourse only to its proper methods ofratiocination, is capable of proving the apodictic truthof the revealed dogmas.1 A genuine conflict of faith andreason does not exist. Natural law and divine law donot disagree. However, this way of dealing with the matter doesnot remove the antagonism; it merely shifts it to an-other field. The conflict is no longer a conflict betweenfaith and reason but between Thomist philosophy andother modes of philosophizing. We may leave aside thegenuine dogmas such as Creation, Incarnation, theTrinity, as they have no direct bearing on the problemsof interhuman relations. But many issues remain withregard to which most, if not all, Christian churches anddenominations are not prepared to yield to secular rea-soning and an evaluation from the point of view ofsocial utility. Thus the recognition of natural law on thepart of Christian theology was only conditional. Itreferred to a definite type of natural law, not opposed 1. Louis Rougier, La Scholastique et le Thomisme (Paris, 1925),pp. 102-5, 116-17, 460-562.

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 47to the teachings of Christ as each of these churches anddenominations interpreted them. It did not acknowl-edge the supremacy of reason. It was incompatible withthe principles of utilitarian philosophy. A second factor that obstructed the evolution ofnatural law toward a consistent and comprehensivesystem of human action was the erroneous theory ofthe biological equality of all men. In repudiating argu-ments advanced in favor of legal discrimination amongmen and of a status society, many advocates of equalitybefore the law overstepped the mark. To hold that \"atbirth human infants, regardless of their heredity, areas equal as Fords\" 2 is to deny facts so obvious that itbrought the whole philosophy of natural law into dis-repute. In insisting on biological equality the naturallaw doctrine pushed aside all the sound arguments ad-vanced in favor of the principle of equality before thelaw. It thus opened the way for the spread of theoriesadvocating all sorts of legal discrimination against in-dividuals and groups of individuals. It supplanted theteachings of liberal social philosophy. Stirring up hatredand violence, foreign wars and domestic revolutions, itprepared mankind for the acceptance of aggressive na-tionalism and racism. The chief accomplishment of the natural law ideawas its rejection of the doctrine (sometimes called legalpositivism) according to which the ultimate source ofstatute law is to be seen in the superior military powerof the legislator who is in a position to beat into sub- 2. Horace M. Kallen, \"Behaviorism,\" Encyclopaedia of the SocialSciences (Macmillan, 1930-35), 3, 498.

48 VALUEmission all those defying his ordinances. Natural lawtaught that statutory laws can be bad laws, and itcontrasted with the bad laws the good laws to whichit ascribed divine or natural origin. But it was an illu-sion to deny that the best system of laws cannot beput into practice unless supported and enforced bymilitary supremacy. The philosophers shut their eyesto manifest historical facts. They refused to admit thatthe causes they considered just made progress onlybecause their partisans defeated the defenders of thebad causes. The Christian faith owes it success to along series of victorious battles and campaigns, fromvarious battles between rival Roman imperators andcaesars down to the campaigns that opened the Orientto the activities of missionaries. The cause of Americanindependence triumphed because the British forceswere defeated by the insurgents and the French. Itis a sad truth that Mars is for the big battalions, notfor the good causes. To maintain the opposite opinionimplies the belief that the outcome of an armed con-flict is an ordeal by combat in which God always grantsvictory to the champions of the just cause. But such anassumption would annul all the essentials of the doc-trine of natural law, whose basic idea was to contrast tothe positive laws, promulgated and enforced by thosein power, a \"higher\" law grounded in the innermost na-ture of man. Yet all these deficiencies and contradictions of thedoctrine of natural law must not prevent us from rec-ognizing its sound nucleus. Hidden in a heap of illusionsand quite arbitrary prepossessions was the idea that

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 49every valid law of a country was open to critical exam-ination by reason. About the standard to be appliedin such an examination the older representatives of theschool had only vague notions. They referred to natureand were reluctant to admit that the ultimate standardof good and bad must be found in the effects producedby a law. Utilitarianism finally completed the intellec-tual evolution inaugurated by the Greek Sophists. But neither utilitarianism nor any of the varieties ofthe doctrine of natural law could or did find a way toeliminate the conflict of antagonistic judgments ofvalue. It is useless to emphasize that nature is the ulti-mate arbiter of what is right and what is wrong. Naturedoes not clearly reveal its plans and intentions to man.Thus the appeal to natural law does not settle the dis-pute. It merely substitutes dissent concerning the inter-pretation of natural law for dissenting judgments ofvalue. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, does not dealat all with ultimate ends and judgments of value. Itinvariably refers only to means.5. Revelation Revealed religion derives its authority and authen-ticity from the communication to man of the SupremeBeing's will. It gives the faithful indisputable certainty. However, people disagree widely about the contentof revealed truth as well as about its correct—orthodox—interpretation. For all the grandeur, majesty, and sub-limity of religious feeling, irreconcilable conflict existsamong various faiths and creeds. Even if unanimity

50 VALUEcould be attained in matters of the historical authentic-ity and reliability of revelation, the problem of the ve-racity of various exegetic interpretations would stillremain. Every faith claims to possess absolute certainty. Butno religious faction knows of any peaceful means thatwill invariably induce dissenters to divest themselvesvoluntarily of their error and to adopt the true creed. If people of different faiths meet for peaceful discus-sion of their differences, they can find no common basisfor their colloquy but the statement: by their fruits yeshall know them. Yet this utilitarian device is of no useso long as men disagree about the standard to be ap-plied in judging the effects. The religious appeal to absolute eternal values didnot do away with conflicting judgments of value. Itmerely resulted in religious wars.6. Atheistic Intuition Other attempts to discover an absolute standard ofvalues were made without reference to a divine real-ity. Emphatically rejecting all traditional religions andclaiming for their teachings the epithet \"scientific,\"various writers tried to substitute a new faith for theold ones. They claimed to know precisely what themysterious power that directs all cosmic becoming hasin store for mankind. They proclaimed an absolutestandard of values. Good is what works along the linesthat this power wants mankind to follow; everythingelse is bad. In their vocabulary \"progressive\" is a

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 51synonym of good and \"reactionary\" a synonym of bad.Inevitably progress will triumph over reaction becauseit is impossible for men to divert the course of historyfrom the direction prescribed by the plan of the mys-terious prime mover. Such is the metaphysics of KarlMarx, the faith of contemporary self-styled progres-sivism. Marxism is a revolutionary doctrine. It expresslydeclares that the design of the prime mover will beaccomplished by civil war. It implies that ultimatelyin the battles of these campaigns the just cause, thatis, the cause of progress, must conquer. Then all con-flicts concerning judgments of value will disappear. Theliquidation of all dissenters will establish the undis-puted supremacy of the absolute eternal values. This formula for the solution of conflicts of valuejudgments is certainly not new. It is a device knownand practiced from time immemorial. Kill the infidels!Burn the heretics! What is new is merely the fact thattoday it is sold to the public under the label of \"science.\"7. The Idea of Justice One of the motives that impel men to search for anabsolute and immutable standard of value is the pre-sumption that peaceful cooperation is possible onlyamong people guided by the same judgments of value. It is obvious that social cooperation would not haveevolved and could not be preserved if the immensemajority were not to consider it as the means for theattainment of all their ends. Striving after the preserva-

52 VALUEtion of his own life and health and after the best pos-sible removal of felt uneasiness, the individual looksupon society as a means, not as an end. There is noperfect unanimity even with regard to this point. Butwe may neglect the dissent of the ascetics and the an-chorites, not because they are few, but because theirplans are not affected if other people, in the pursuit oftheir plans, cooperate in society. There prevails among the members of society dis-agreement with regard to the best method for itsorganization. But this is a dissent concerning means,not ultimate ends. The problems involved can be dis-cussed without any reference to judgments of value. Of course, almost all people, guided by the tradi-tional manner of dealing with ethical precepts, peremp-torily repudiate such an explanation of the issue. Socialinstitutions, they assert, must be just. It is base to judgethem merely according to their fitness to attain definiteends, however desirable these ends may be from anyother point of view. What matters first is justice. Theextreme formulation of this idea is to be found in thefamous phrase: fiat justitia, pereat mundus. Let justicebe done, even if it destroys the world. Most supportersof the postulate of justice will reject this maxim as ex-travagant, absurd, and paradoxical. But it is not moreabsurd, merely more shocking, than any other referenceto an arbitrary notion of absolute justice. It clearlyshows the fallacies of the methods applied in the dis-cipline of intuitive ethics. The procedure of this normative quasi science is toderive certain precepts from intuition and to deal with

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 53them as if their adoption as a guide to action would notaffect the attainment of any other ends considered de-sirable. The moralists do not bother about the necessaryconsequences of the realization of their postulates. Weneed not discuss the attitudes of people for whom theappeal to justice is manifestly a pretext, consciously orsubconsciously chosen, to disguise their short-run in-terests, nor expose the hypocrisy of such makeshiftnotions of justice as those involved in the popular con-cepts of just prices and fair wages.1 The philosopherswho in their treatises of ethics assigned supreme valueto justice and applied the yardstick of justice to allsocial institutions were not guilty of such deceit. Theydid not support selfish group concerns by declaringthem alone just, fair, and good, and smear all dissentersby depicting them as the apologists of unfair causes.They were Platonists who believed that a perennialidea of absolute justice exists and that it is the duty ofman to organize all human institutions in conformitywith this ideal. Cognition of justice is imparted to manby an inner voice, i.e., by intuition. The champions ofthis doctrine did not ask what the consequences ofrealizing the schemes they called just would be. Theysilently assumed either that these consequences will bebeneficial or that mankind is bound to put up even withvery painful consequences of justice. Still less did theseteachers of morality pay attention to the fact that peo-ple can and really do disagree with regard to the inter-pretation of the inner voice and that no method ofpeacefully settling such disagreements can be found.1. See Mises, Human Action, pp. 71&-25.

54 VALUE All these ethical doctrines have failed to comprehendthat there is, outside of social bonds and preceding,temporally or logically, the existence of society, nothingto which the epithet \"just\" can be given. A hypotheticalisolated individual must under the pressure of biolog-ical competition look upon all other people as deadlyfoes. His only concern is to preserve his own life andhealth; he does not need to heed the consequenceswhich his own survival has for other men; he has no usefor justice. His only solicitudes are hygiene and defense.But in social cooperation with other men the individualis forced to abstain from conduct incompatible withlife in society. Only then does the distinction betweenwhat is just and what is unjust emerge. It invariablyrefers to interhuman social relations. What is beneficialto the individual without affecting his fellows, such asthe observance of certain rules in the use of some drugs,remains hygiene. The ultimate yardstick of justice is conduciveness tothe preservation of social cooperation. Conduct suitedto preserve social cooperation is just, conduct detri-mental to the preservation of society is unjust. Therecannot be any question of organizing society accordingto the postulates of an arbitrary preconceived idea ofjustice. The problem is to organize society for the bestpossible realization of those ends which men want toattain by social cooperation. Social utility is the onlystandard of justice. It is the sole guide of legislation. Thus there are no irreconcilable conflicts betweenselfishness and altruism, between economics and ethics,between the concerns of the individual and those of so-

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 55ciety. Utilitarian philosophy and its finest product, eco-nomics, reduced these apparent antagonisms to theopposition of short-run and long-run interests. Societycould not have come into existence or been preservedwithout a harmony of the rightly understood interestsof all its members. There is only one way of dealing with all problemsof social organization and the conduct of the membersof society, viz., the method applied by praxeology andeconomics. No other method can contribute anything tothe elucidation of these matters. The concept of justice as employed by jurisprudencerefers to legality, that is, to legitimacy from the pointof view of the valid statutes of a country. It means jus-tice de lege lata. The science of law has nothing to sayde lege ferenda, i.e., about the laws as they ought to be.To enact new laws and to repeal old laws is the task ofthe legislature, whose sole criterion is social utility. Theassistance the legislator can expect from lawyers refersonly to matters of legal technique, not to the gist ofthe statutes and decrees. There is no such thing as a normative science, a sci-ence of what ought to be.8. The Utilitarian Doctrine Restated The essential teachings of utilitarian philosophy asapplied to the problems of society cam be restated asfollows: Human effort exerted under the principle of the divi-sion of labor in social cooperation achieves, other things

56 VALUEremaining equal, a greater output per unit of inputthan the isolated efforts of solitary individuals. Man'sreason is capable of recognizing this fact and of adapt-ing his conduct accordingly. Thus social cooperationbecomes for almost every man the great means for theattainment of all ends. An eminently human commoninterest, the preservation and intensification of socialbonds, is substituted for pitiless biological competition,the significant mark of animal and plant life. Man be-comes a social being. He is no longer forced by the in-evitable laws of nature to look upon all other specimensof his animal species as deadly foes. Other people be-come his fellows. For animals the generation of everynew member of the species means the appearance of anew rival in the struggle for life. For man, until theoptimum size of population is reached, it means ratheran improvement than a deterioration in his quest formaterial well-being. Notwithstanding all his social achievements manremains in biological structure a mammal. His mosturgent needs are nourishment, warmth, and shelter.Only when these wants are satisfied can he concernhimself with other needs, peculiar to the human speciesand therefore called specifically human or higher needs.Also the satisfaction of these depends as a rule, at leastto some extent, on the availability of various materialtangible things. As social cooperation is for acting man a means andnot an end, no unanimity with regard to value judg-ments is required to make it work. It is a fact that almostall men agree in aiming at certain ends, at those pleas-

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 57ures which ivory-tower moralists disdain as base andshabby. But it is no less a fact that even the most sub-lime ends cannot be sought by people who have not firstsatisfied the wants of their animal body. The loftiestexploits of philosophy, art, and literature would neverhave been performed by men living outside of society. Moralists praise the nobility of people who seek athing for its own sake. \"Deutsch sein heisst eine Sacheum ihrer selbst willen tun,\" declared Richard Wagner,1and the Nazis, of all people, adopted the dictum as afundamental principle of their creed. Now what issought as an ultimate end is valued according to the im-mediate satisfaction to be derived from its attainment.There is no harm in declaring elliptically that it issought for its own sake. Then Wagner's phrase is re-duced to the truism: Ultimate ends are ends and notmeans for the attainment of other ends. Moralists furthermore level against utilitarianism thecharge of (ethical) materialism. Here too they miscon-strue the utilitarian doctrine. Its gist is the cognitionthat action pursues definite chosen ends and that conse-quently there can be no other standard for appraisingconduct but the desirability or undesirability of itseffects. The precepts of ethics are designed to preserve,not to destroy, the \"world.\" They may call upon peopleto put up with undesirable short-run effects in orderto avoid producing still more undesirable long-runeffects. But they must never recommend actions whoseeffects they themselves deem undesirable for the sole 1. In Deutsche Kunst und Deutsche Politik, Samtliche Werke (6thed. Leipzig, Breitkopf and Hartel), 8, 96.

58 VALUEpurpose of not defying an arbitrary rule derived fromintuition. The formula fiat justitia, pereat mundus isexploded as sheer nonsense. An ethical doctrine thatdoes not take into full account the effects of action ismere fancy. Utilitarianism does not teach that people shouldstrive only after sensuous pleasure (though it recog-nizes that most or at least many people behave in thisway). Neither does it indulge in judgments of value. Byits recognition that social cooperation is for the im-mense majority a means for attaining all their ends, itdispels the notion that society, the state, the nation, orany other social entity is an ultimate end and that in-dividual men are the slaves of that entity. It rejects thephilosophies of universalism, collectivism, and totali-tarianism. In this sense it is meaningful to call utili-tarianism a philosophy of individualism. The collectivist doctrine fails to recognize that socialcooperation is for man a means for the attainment of allhis ends. It assumes that irreconcilable conflict prevailsbetween the interests of the collective and those of in-dividuals, and in this conflict it sides unconditionallywith the collective entity. The collective alone has realexistence; the individuals' existence is conditioned bythat of the collective. The collective is perfect and cando no wrong. Individuals are wretched and refractory;their obstinacy must be curbed by the authority towhich God or nature has entrusted the conduct ofsociety's affairs. The powers that be, says the ApostlePaul, are ordained of God.2 They are ordained by nature 2. Epistle to the Romans 13:1.

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 59or by the superhuman factor that directs the course ofall cosmic events, says the atheist collectivist. Two questions immediately arise. First: If it weretrue that the interests of the collective and those of in-dividuals are implacably opposed to one another, howcould society function? One may assume that the in-dividuals would be prevented by force of arms from re-sorting to open rebellion. But it cannot be assumed thattheir active cooperation could be secured by mere com-pulsion. A system of production in which the only in-centive to work is the fear of punishment cannot last.It was this fact that made slavery disappear as a sys-tem of managing production. Second: If the collective is not a means by which in-dividuals may achieve their ends, if the collective'sflowering requires sacrifices by the individuals whichare not outweighed by advantages derived from socialcooperation, what prompts the advocate of collectivismto assign to the concerns of the collective precedenceover the personal wishes of the individuals? Can anyargument be advanced for such exaltation of the collec-tive but personal judgments of value? Of course, everybody's judgments of value are per-sonal. If a man assigns a higher value to the concernsof a collective than to his other concerns, and acts ac-cordingly, that is his affair. So long as the collectivistphilosophers proceed in this way, no objection can beraised. But they argue differently. They elevate theirpersonal judgments of value to the dignity of an absolutestandard of value. They urge other people to stop valu-ing according to their own will and to adopt uncondi-

60 VALUEtionally the precepts to which collectivism has assignedabsolute eternal validity. The futility and arbitrariness of the collectivist pointof view become still more evident when one recalls thatvarious collectivist parties compete for the exclusiveallegiance of the individuals. Even if they employ thesame word for their collectivist ideal, various writersand leaders disagree on the essential features of thething they have in mind. The state which FerdinandLassalle called god and to which he assigned para-mountcy was not precisely the collectivist idol of Hegeland Stahl, the state of the Hohenzollern. Is mankind asa whole the sole legitimate collective or is each of thevarious nations? Is the collective to which the German-speaking Swiss owe exclusive allegiance the Swiss Con-federacy or the Volksgemeinschaft comprising all Ger-man-speaking men? All major social entities such asnations, linguistic groups, religious communities, partyorganizations have been elevated to the dignity of thesupreme collective that overshadows all other collec-tives and claims the submission of the whole personalityof all right-thinking men. But an individual can re-nounce autonomous action and unconditionally sur-render his self only in favor of one collective. Whichcollective this ought to be can be determined only bya quite arbitrary decision. The collective creed is bynecessity exclusive and totalitarian. It craves the wholeman and does not want to share him with any other col-lective. It seeks to establish the exclusive supremevalidity of only one system of values. There is, of course, but one way to make one's own

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 61judgments of value supreme. One must beat into sub-mission all those dissenting. This is what all representa-tives of the various collectivist doctrines are striving for.They ultimately recommend the use of violence andpitiless annihilation of all those whom they condemn asheretics. Collectivism is a doctrine of war, intolerance,and persecution. If any of the collectivist creeds shouldsucceed in its endeavors, all people but the great dicta-tor would be deprived of their essential human quality.They would become mere soulless pawns in the handsof a monster. The characteristic feature of a free society is that itcan function in spite of the fact that its members dis-agree in many judgments of value. In the marketeconomy business serves not only the majority but alsovarious minorities, provided they are not too small inrespect of the economic goods which satisfying theirspecial wishes would require. Philosophical treatisesare published—though few people read them, and themasses prefer other books or none—if enough readersare foreseen to recover the costs.9. On Aesthetic Values The quest for absolute standards of value was notlimited to the field of ethics. It concerned aestheticvalues as well. In ethics a common ground for the choice of rules ofconduct is given so far as people agree in consideringthe preservation of social cooperation the foremostmeans for attaining all their ends. Thus virtually any

62 VALUEcontroversy concerning the rules of conduct refers tomeans and not to ends. It is consequently possible toappraise these rules from the point of view of theiradequacy for the peaceful functioning of society. Evenrigid supporters of an intuitionist ethics could not helpeventually resorting to an appraisal of conduct from thepoint of view of its effects upon human happiness.1 It is different with aesthetic judgments of value. Inthis field there is no such agreement as prevails withregard to the insight that social cooperation is the fore-most means for the attainment of all ends. All disagree-ment here invariably concerns judgments of value, nonethe choice of means for the realization of an end agreedupon. There is no way to reconcile conflicting judg-ments. There is no standard by which a verdict of \"itpleases me\" or \"it does not please me\" can be rectified. The unfortunate propensity to hypostatize variousaspects of human thinking and acting has led to at-tempts to provide a definition of beauty and then toapply this arbitrary concept as a measure. Howeverthere is no acceptable definition of beauty but \"thatwhich pleases.\" There are no norms of beauty, and thereis no such thing as a normative discipline of aesthetics.All that a professional critic of art and literature can sayapart from historical and technical observations is thathe likes or dislikes a work. The work may stir him toprofound commentaries and disquisitions. But his judg-ments of value remain personal and subjective and do 1. Even Kant. See Kritik der prakHschen Vernunft, Pt. I, Bk. II,Sec. I (Insel-Ausgabe, 5, 240-1). Compare Friedrich Jodl, Geschichteder Ethik (2d ed. Stuttgart, 1912), 2, 35-6.

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 63not necessarily affect the judgments of other people. Adiscerning person will note with interest what a thought-ful writer says about the impression a work of art madeupon him. But it depends upon a man's own discretionwhether or not he will let his own judgment be influ-enced by that of other men, however excellent they maybe. The enjoyment of art and literature presupposes acertain disposition and susceptibility on the part of thepublic. Taste is inborn to only a few. Others must culti-vate their aptitude for enjoyment. There are manythings a man must learn and experience in order to be-come a connoisseur. But however a man may shine asa well-informed expert, his judgments of value remainpersonal and subjective. The most eminent critics and,for that matter, also the most noted writers, poets andartists widely disagreed in their appreciation of the mostfamous masterpieces. Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that thereare absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what isnot. They try to derive from the works of the past a codeof rules with which, as they fancy, the writers andartists of the future should comply. But the genius doesnot cooperate with the pundit.10. The Historical Significance of the Quest for Absolute Values The value controversy is not a scholastic quarrel ofinterest only to hair-splitting dons. It touches upon thevital issues of human life.

64 VALUE The world view that was displaced by modern ration-alism did not tolerate dissenting judgments of value.The mere fact of dissent was considered an insolentprovocation, a mortal outrage to one's own feelings. Pro-tracted religious wars resulted. Although some intolerance, bigotry, and lust for per-secution is still left in religious matters, it is unlikelythat religious passion will kindle wars in the near future.The aggressive spirit of our age stems from anothersource, from endeavors to make the state totalitarianand to deprive the individual of autonomy. It is true that the supporters of socialist and inter-ventionist programs recommend them only as means toattain ends which they have in common with all othermembers of society. They hold that a society organizedaccording to their principles will best supply peoplewith those material goods they toil to acquire. Whatmore desirable societal state of affairs can be thoughtof than that \"higher phase of communist society\" inwhich, as Marx told us, society will give \"to each ac-cording to his needs\"? However, the socialists failed entirely in attempts toprove their case. Marx was at a loss to refute the well-founded objections that were raised even in his timeabout the minor difficulties of the socialist schemes. Itwas his helplessness in this regard that prompted him todevelop the three fundamental doctrines of his dog-matism.1 When economics later demonstrated why asocialist order, necessarily lacking any method of eco- 1. Mises, Socialism (new ed, New Haven, Yale University Press,1951), pp. 15-16.

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 65nomic calculation, could never function as an economicsystem, all arguments advanced in favor of the greatreform collapsed. From that time on socialists no longerbased their hopes upon the power of their argumentsbut upon the resentment, envy, and hatred of themasses. Today even the adepts of \"scientific\" socialismrely exclusively upon these emotional factors. The basisof contemporary socialism and interventionism is judg-ments of value. Socialism is praised as the only fair va-riety of society's economic organization. All socialists,Marxians as well as non-Marxians, advocate socialismas the only system consonant with a scale of arbitrarilyestablished absolute values. These values, they claim,are the only values that are valid for all decent people,foremost among them the workers, the majority in amodern industrial society. They are considered absolutebecause they are supported by the majority—and themajority is always right. A rather superficial and shallow view of the problemsof government saw the distinction between freedomand despotism in an outward feature of the system ofrule and administration, viz., in the number of peopleexercising direct control of the social apparatus of coer-cion and compulsion. Such a numerical standard is thebasis of Aristotle's famous classification of the variousforms of government. The concepts of monarchy, oli-garchy, and democracy still preserve this way of dealingwith the matter. Yet its inadequacy is so obvious thatno philosopher could avoid referring to facts which didnot agree with it and therefore were considered para-doxical. There was for instance the fact, already well

66 VALUErecognized by Greek authors, that tyranny was often,or even regularly, supported by the masses and was inthis sense popular government. Modern writers haveemployed the term \"Caesarism* for this type of govern-ment and have continued to look upon it as an excep-tional case conditioned by peculiar circumstances; butthey have been at a loss to explain satisfactorily whatmade the conditions exceptional. Yet, fascinated by thetraditional classification, people acquiesced in thissuperficial interpretation as long as it seemed that ithad to explain only one case in modern European his-tory, that of the second French Empire. The final col-lapse of the Aristotelian doctrine came only when ithad to face the \"dictatorship of the proletariat\" and theautocracy of Hitler, Mussolini, Peron, and other modernsuccessors of the Greek tyrants. The way toward a realistic distinction between free-dom and bondage was opened, two hundred years ago,by David Hume's immortal essay, On the First Prin-ciples of Government Government, taught Hume, isalways government of the many by the few. Power istherefore always ultimately on the side of the governed,and the governors have nothing to support them butopinion. This cognition, logically followed to its conclu-sion, completely changed the discussion concerningliberty. The mechanical and arithmetical point of viewwas abandoned. If public opinion is ultimately respon-sible for the structure of government, it is also theagency that determines whether there is freedom orbondage. There is virtually only one factor that has thepower to make people unfree—tyrannical public opin-ion. The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance

THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE VALUES 67to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotismof public opinion. It is not the struggle of the manyagainst the few but of minorities—sometimes of a mi-nority of but one man—against the majority. The worstand most dangerous form of absolutist rule is that of anintolerant majority. Such is the conclusion arrived atby Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill. In his essay on Bentham, Mill pointed out why thiseminent philosopher failed to see the real issue and whyhis doctrine found acceptance with some of the noblestspirits. Bentham, he says, lived \"in a time of reactionagainst the aristocratic governments of modern Europe.\"The reformers of his age \"have been accustomed to seethe numerical majority everywhere unjustly depressed,everywhere trampled upon, or at the best overlooked, bygovernments.\" In such an age one could easily forgetthat \"all countries which have long continued progres-sive, or been durably great, have been so because therehas been an organized opposition to the ruling power,of whatever kind that power was. . . . Almost all thegreatest men who ever lived have formed part of suchan opposition. Wherever some such quarrel has not beengoing on—wherever it has been terminated by thecomplete victory of one of the contending principles,and no new contest has taken the place of the old—society has either hardened into Chinese stationariness,or fallen into dissolution.\" 2 Much of what was sound in Bentham's political doc-trines was slighted by his contemporaries, was denied by 2. John Stuart Mill on Bentham, ed. by F. R. Leavis under thetitle Mill on Bentham and Coleridge (New York, Stewart, 1950),pp. 85-7.

68 VALUElater generations, and had little practical influence. Buthis failure to distinguish correctly between despotismand liberty was accepted without qualms by most nine-teenth-century writers. In their eyes true liberty meantthe unbridled despotism of the majority. Lacking the power to think logically, and ignorantof history as well as of theory, the much admired \"pro-gressive\" writers gave up the essential idea of the En-lightenment: freedom of thought, speech, and com-munication. Not all of them were so outspoken asComte and Lenin; but they all, in declaring that free-dom means only the right to say the correct things, notalso the right to say the wrong things, virtually con-verted the ideas of freedom of thought and conscienceinto their opposite. It was not the Syllabus of Pope PiusIX that paved the way for the return of intolerance andthe persecution of dissenters. It was the writings of thesocialists. After a short-lived triumph of the idea offreedom, bondage made a comeback disguised as aconsummation and completion of the philosophy offreedom, as the finishing of the unfinished revolution,as the final emancipation of the individual. The concept of absolute and eternal values is an in-dispensable element in this totalitarian ideology. A newnotion of truth was established. Truth is what those inpower declare to be true. The dissenting minority isundemocratic because it refuses to accept as true theopinion of the majority. All means to \"liquidate\" suchrebellious scoundrels are \"democratic\" and thereforemorally good.

Chapter 4. The Negation of ValuationI N DEALING with judgments of value we have lookedupon them as ultimate data not liable to any reductionto other data. We do not contend that judgments ofvalue as they are uttered by men and used as guides toaction are primary facts independent of all the otherconditions of the universe. Such an assumption wouldbe preposterous. Man is a part of the universe, he is theproduct of the forces operating in it, and all his thoughtsand actions are, like the stars, the atoms, and the ani-mals, elements of nature. They are embedded in the in-exorable concatenation of all phenomena and events. Saying that judgments of value are ultimately givenfacts means that the human mind is unable to tracethem back to those facts and happenings with whichthe natural sciences deal. We do not know why and howdefinite conditions of the external world arouse in ahuman mind a definite reaction. We do not know whydifferent people and the same people at various in-stants of their lives react differently to the same ex-ternal stimuli. We cannot discover the necessary con-nection between an external event and the ideas it pro-duces within the human mind. To clarify this issue we must now analyze the doc-trines supporting the contrary opinion. We must dealwith all varieties of materialism.



PART TWO. DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM



Chapter 5. Determinism and Its Critics1. DeterminismWHATEVER the true nature of the universe and ofreality may be, man can learn about it only what thelogical structure of his mind makes comprehensible tohim. Reason, the sole instrument of human science andphilosophy, does not convey absolute knowledge andfinal wisdom. It is vain to speculate about ultimatethings. What appears to man's inquiry as an ultimategiven, defying further analysis and reduction to some-thing more fundamental, may or may not appear suchto a more perfect intellect. We do not know. Man cannot grasp either the concept of absolutenothingness or that of the genesis of something outof nothing. The very idea of creation transcends hiscomprehension. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,whom Pascal in his Memorial opposed to that of the\"philosophes et savants,\" is a living image and has aclear and definite meaning for the faithful believer. Butthe philosophers in their endeavors to construct a con-cept of Cod, his attributes, and his conduct of worldaffairs, became involved in insoluble contradictions andparadoxes. A God whose essence and ways of actingmortal man could neatly circumscribe and define wouldnot resemble the God of the prophets, the saints, andthe mystics. 73

74 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM The logical structure of his mind enjoins upon mandeterminism and the category of causality. As man seesit, whatever happens in the universe is the necessaryevolution of forces, powers, and qualities which werealready present in the initial stage of the X out of whichall things stem. All things in the universe are intercon-nected, and all changes are the effects of powers in-herent in things. No change occurs that would not bethe necessary consequence of the preceding state. Allfacts are dependent upon and conditioned by theircauses. No deviation from the necessary course of af-fairs is possible. Eternal law regulates everything. In this sense determinism is the epistemological basisof the human search for knowledge1 Man cannot evenconceive the image of an undetermined universe. Insuch a world there could not be any awareness of ma-terial things and their changes. It would appear a sense-less chaos. Nothing could be identified and distin-guished from anything else. Nothing could be expectedand predicted. In the midst of such an environmentman would be as helpless as if spoken to in an unknownlanguage. No action could be designed, still less putinto execution. Man is what he is because he lives ina world of regularity and has the mental power to con-ceive the relation of cause and effect. Any epistemological speculation must lead towarddeterminism. But the acceptance of determinism raisessome theoretical difficulties that have seemed to be in- 1. \"La science est d&erministe; elle Test a priori; elle postule ledeterminisme, parce que sans lui elle ne pourrait etre.\" Henri Poin-care, Derniirea pensies (Paris, Flammarion, 1913), p. 244.

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 75soluble. While no philosophy has disproved determin-ism, there are some ideas that people have not beenable to bring into agreement with it. Passionate attackshave been directed against it because people believedthat it must ultimately result in absurdity.2. The Negation of Ideological Factors Many authors have assumed that determinism, fullyimplying consistent materialism, strictly denies thatmental acts play any role in the course of events. Causa-tion, in the context of the doctrine so understood, meansmechanical causation. All changes are brought about bymaterial entities, processes, and events. Ideas are justintermediary stages in the process through which a ma-terial factor produces a definite material effect. Theyhave no autonomous existence. They merely mirror thestate of the material entities that begot them. There isno history of ideas and of actions directed by them, onlya history of the evolution of the real factors that en-gender ideas. From the point of view of this integral materialism,the only consistent materialist doctrine, the customarymethods of historians and biographers are to be rejectedas idealistic nonsense. It is vain to search for the de-velopment of certain ideas out of other previously heldideas. For example, it is \"unscientific\" to describe howthe philosophical ideas of the seventeenth and eight-eenth centuries evolved out of those of the sixteenthcentury. \"Scientific\" history would have to describe howout of the real—physical and biological—conditions

76 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISMof each age its philosophical tenets necessarily spring.It is \"unscientific\" to describe as a mental process theevolution of Saint Augustine's ideas that led him fromCicero to Manichaeus and from Manichaeism to Ca-tholicism. The \"scientific\" biographer would have toreveal the physiological processes that necessarily re-sulted in the corresponding philosophical doctrines. The examination of materialism is a task to be leftto the following chapters. At this point it is enough toestablish the fact that determinism in itself does notimply any concessions to the materialist standpoint. Itdoes not negate the obvious truth that ideas have anexistence of their own, contribute to the emergence ofother ideas, and influence one another. It does not denymental causation and does not reject history as a meta-physical and idealistic illusion.3. The Free-Will Controversy Man chooses between modes of action incompatiblewith one another. Such decisions, says the free-will doc-trine, are basically undetermined and uncaused; theyare not the inevitable outcome of antecedent conditions.They are rather the display of man's inmost disposition,the manifestation of his indelible moral freedom. Thismoral liberty is the essential characteristic of man, rais-ing him to a unique position in the universe. Determinists reject this doctrine as illusory. Man,they say, deceives himself in believing that he chooses.Something unknown to the individual directs his will.He thinks that he weighs in his mind the pros and cons

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 77of the alternatives left to his choice and then makes adecision. He fails to realize that the antecedent state ofthings enjoins on him a definite line of conduct and thatthere is no means to elude this pressure. Man does notact, he is acted upon. Both doctrines neglect to pay due attention to the roleof ideas. The choices a man makes are determined bythe ideas that he adopts. The determinists are right in asserting that every-thing that happens is the necessary sequel of the pre-ceding state of things. What a man does at any instantof his life is entirely dependent on his past, that is, onhis physiological inheritance as well as of all he wentthrough in his previous days. Yet the significance of thisthesis is considerably weakened by the fact that nothingis known about the way in which ideas arise. Deter-minism is untenable if based upon or connected withthe materialist dogma.1 If advanced without the sup-port of materialism, it says little indeed and certainlydoes not sustain the determinists' rejection of themethods of history. The free-will doctrine is correct in pointing out thefundamental difference between human action and ani-mal behavior. While the animal cannot help yieldingto the physiological impulse which prevails at the mo-ment, man chooses between alternative modes of con-duct. Man has the power to choose even between yield-ing to the most imperative instinct, that of self-preserva-tion, and the aiming at other ends. All the sarcasms andsneers of the positivists cannot annul the fact that ideas1. See below, pp. 94-9.

78 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISMhave a real existence and are genuine factors in shapingthe course of events. The offshoots of human mental efforts, the ideas andthe judgments of value that direct the individuals' ac-tions, cannot be traced back to their causes, and are inthis sense ultimate data. In dealing with them we referto the concept of individuality. But in resorting to thisnotion we by no means imply that ideas and judgmentsof value spring out of nothing by a sort of spontaneousgeneration and are in no way connected and related towhat was already in the universe before their appear-ance. We merely establish the fact that we do not knowanything about the mental process which produceswithin a human being the thoughts that respond to thestate of his physical and ideological environment. This cognition is the grain of truth in the free-willdoctrine. However, the passionate attempts to refute de-terminism and to salvage the notion of free will didnot concern the problem of individuality. They wereprompted by the practical consequences to which, aspeople believed, determinism inevitably leads: fatalistquietism and absolution from moral responsibility.4. Foreordination and Fatalism As theologians teach, God in his omniscience knowsin advance all the things that will happen in the uni-verse for all time to come. His foresight is unlimited andis not merely the result of his knowledge of the laws ofbecoming that determine all events. Even in a universein which there is free will, whatever this may be, his

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 79precognition is perfect. He anticipates fully and cor-rectly all the arbitrary decisions any individual willever make. Laplace proudly declared that his system does notneed to resort to the hypothesis of God's existence. Buthe constructed his own image of a quasi God and calledit superhuman intelligence. This hypothetical mindknows all things and events beforehand, but only be-cause it is familiar with all the immutable and eternallaws regulating all occurrences, mental as well as phys-ical. The idea of God's omniscience has been popularlypictured as a book in which all future things are re-corded. No deviation from the lines described in thisregister is possible. All things will turn out precisely aswritten in it. What must happen will happen no matterwhat mortal man may undertake to bring about a differ-ent result. Hence, consistent fatalism concluded, it isuseless for man to act. Why bother if everything mustfinally come to a preordained end? Fatalism is so contrary to human nature that few peo-ple were prepared to draw all the conclusions to whichit leads and to adjust their conduct accordingly. It isa fable that the victories of the Arabian conquerors inthe first centuries of Islam were due to the fatalistteachings of Mohammed. The leaders of the Moslemarmies which within an unbelievably short time con-quered a great part of the Mediterranean area did notput a fatalistic confidence in Allah. Rather they believedthat their God was for the big, well-equipped, and skill-fully led battalions. Other reasons than blind trust in

80 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISMfate account for the courage of the Saracen warriors;and the Christians in the forces of Charles Martel andLeo the Isaurian who stopped their advance were noless courageous than the Moslems although fatalism hadno hold on their minds. Nor was the lethargy whichspread later among the Islamitic peoples caused by thefatalism of their religion. It was despotism that para-lyzed the initiative of the subjects. The harsh tyrantswho oppressed the masses were certainly not lethargicand apathetic. They were indefatigable in their questfor power, riches, and pleasures. Soothsayers have claimed to have reliable knowledgeof some pages at least of the great book in which allcoming events are recorded. But none of these prophetswas consistent enough to reject activism and to advisehis disciples to wait quietly for the day of fulfillment. The best illustration is provided by Marxism. Itteaches perfect foreordination, yet still aims to inflamepeople with revolutionary spirit. What is the use ofrevolutionary action if events must inevitably turn outaccording to a preordained plan, whatever men maydo? Why are the Marxians so busy organizing socialistparties and sabotaging the operation of the marketeconomy if socialism is bound to come anyway \"withthe inexorability of a law of nature\"? It is a lame excuseindeed to declare that the task of a socialist party is notto bring about socialism but merely to provide obstet-rical assistance at its birth. The obstetrician too divertsthe course of events from the way they would run with-out his intervention. Otherwise expectant motherswould not request his aid. Yet the essential teaching of

DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS 81Marxian dialectic materialism precludes the assumptionthat any political or ideological fact could influence thecourse of historical events, since the latter are sub-stantially determined by the evolution of the materialproductive forces. What brings about socialism is the\"operation of the immanent laws of capitalistic produc-tion itself.\"* Ideas, political parties, and revolutionaryactions are merely superstructural; they can neither de-lay nor accelerate the march of history. Socialism willcome when the material conditions for its appearancehave matured in the womb of capitalist society, neithersooner nor later.2 If Marx had been consistent, he wouldnot have embarked upon any political activity.3 Hewould have quietly waited for die day on which the\"knell of private capitalist property sounds.\" 4 In dealing with fatalism we may ignore the claims ofsoothsayers. Determinism has nothing at all to do withthe art of fortune tellers, crystal gazers, and astrologersor with the more pretentious effusions of the authors of\"philosophies of history.\" It does not predict futureevents. It asserts that there is regularity in the universein the concatenation of all phenomena. Those theologians who thought that in order to refutefatalism they must adopt the free-will doctrine were 1. Marx, Das Kapital (7th ed. Hamburg, 1914), 2, 728. 2. Cf. below pp. 107 and 128. 3. Neither would he have written the often quoted eleventh aphor-ism on Feuerbach: \"The philosophers have only provided differentinterpretations of the world, but what matters is to change it.\" Ac-cording to the teachings of dialectical materialism only the evolu-tion of the material productive forces, not the philosophers, canchange the world. 4. Marx, Das Kapital, as quoted above.

82 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISMbadly mistaken. They had a very defective image ofGod's omniscience. Their God would know only whatis in perfect textbooks of the natural sciences; he wouldnot know what is going on in human minds. He wouldnot anticipate that some people might endorse the doc-trine of fatalism and, sitting with clasped hands, in-dolently await the events which God, erroneously as-suming that they would not indulge in inactivity, hadmeted out to them.5. Determinism and Penology A factor that often entered the controversies concern-ing determinism was misapprehension as to its practicalconsequences. All nonutilitarian systems of ethics look upon themoral law as something outside the nexus of means andends. The moral code has no reference to human well-being and happiness, to expediency, and to the mun-dane striving after ends. It is heteronomous, i.e., en-joined upon man by an agency that does not depend onhuman ideas and does not bother about human con-cerns. Some believe that this agency is God, others thatit is the wisdom of the forefathers, some that it is amystical inner voice alive in every decent man's con-science. He who violates the precepts of this code com-mits a sin, and his guilt makes him liable to punishment.Punishment does not serve human ends. In punishingoffenders, the secular or theocratic authorities acquitthemselves of a duty entrusted to them by the moralcode and its author. They are bound to punish sin and