Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
On the Origins of Classical Liberalism
Some argue that classical liberalism (now conservatism), as a philosophy, began in the Enlightenment (late 17th century into the 18th century) with the works of thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Smith, Bastiat, and Hume. As Friedrich Hayek categorized it, classical liberalism had a French and British branch.
Conservatism, according to this narrative, was rather a unique and radical idea in comparison to all previous philosophies. In other words, what the English did in the Glorious Revolution was the result of a new Protestant paradigm shift from the old and defunct schools of thought which permeated a still predominantly Catholic Continent.
Usually such a movement in the “Enlightenment” is pitted as rational Protestants in England and the Netherlands, along with more secular French and German thinkers, against the superstitious and ritualistic Catholics from Spain and France. As if such areas were entrenched in some permanent medieval paradigm.
I find such a narrative to be antiquated and lacking in detail or support. The roots of classical liberalism are to be traced (obviously in Judeo-Christian writings, the Bible not being the least) in thought to the works of Aristotle (his Politics) then to Augustine (City of God), to Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica), but they were formulated and codified not in the Enlightenment but rather in early 16th-century Spain, with the School of Salamanca.
The School of Salamanca was a group of Jesuit/Dominican thinkers that more or less followed in the Thomist tradition (Scholastics) and their scholarly focus was generally deployed to understanding the various issues in the context that Spain found itself in as an imperial nation in the early 16th century with the unification of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain and its conquests in the New World.
This meant that they dealt with the issue of the humanity of American Indians (do they have souls?), the value of money (all that bullion), the human condition itself (where does sovereignty come from?), the free market (trade across a vast colonial empire), and international law (just wars and treaties).
From the beginning, with the school’s founder Francisco de Vitoria, this group of thinkers more or less made the argument of classical liberalism. They asserted that even the native Americans were humans worthy of dignity. That government’s legitimacy was founded in the will of those under it in a contractual manner, the opposite of the English theory at the time which posited Divine Right (as the king was also head of the Anglican Church).
Free trade was seen as a moral good, as it was the use of free will to the benefit of yourself and your fellow man (thus increasing the bonds of community among all). Value in goods was also subjective (and relied on scarcity), and this meant that only free allocation of goods and services could create efficient outcomes (and was the natural result of said free will).
The concept of usury was undone by the time theory of value posited by Martín de Azpilcueta. The concept of private property being a right of man was posited by Diego de Covarrubias y Leyva, entailing that one had the right to the fruits of that property. These thinkers also devised the concept of just war. To summarize, their theory was that war was supposed to be used to prevent greater evils.
This meant that war ought to occur in order to prevent a greater war, to depose unjust enemies (a government that represses the natural rights of humans), and when it was possible (as a form of charity) to establish some form of peace in areas without structure. In terms of humanity, the school argued that all humans (Christian and non-Christian) had inherent rights that came with our humanity (Vitoria called it ius gentium, the law of all people), and this was the foundation of international law.
In short, such a school formulated classical liberalism (conservatism as we know it today). All humans have an inherent right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the state is supposed to act in a way that does not impede upon such but rather protects it from foreign and native coercion and fraudulence. Free trade is a natural effect of our free will and is the best means of enriching ourselves and our communities.
Thus conservatism was not some radical break from precedent that occurred in the late 17th century, but rather a philosophical tradition already developing in Europe (and arguably had been developing for many centuries). It was finally given its best example in 1787, with the creation of the US constitution, which better exemplified the promise of the Declaration of Independence (classical liberalism). That all men are created equal in the eyes of their creator, and that they have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Published in General
Indeed, you use FA Hayek as an example of Classical Liberalism. If Classical Liberalism is Conservatism today, then Hayek was a Conservative. Yet he was very clear in his not being conservative.
Read through the entire statement. Not cherry picking what few words you find to your counter narrative’s liking. I stated that Hayek had divined two schools of classical liberal thought. I disagree with him on that distinction. I think there is more and older forms of it.
Classical Liberalism does require virtue, not from the state (which I did not say) but from the individuals which compromise the society (as Thomas Aquinas argued 800 years ago). A strong military is necessary for the defense of the citizenry from foreign coercion, which is ever existing (as history witnesses). The free market is simply the natural setting of man’s economic exchanges.
Government is limited to those few areas of which it is necessary, like national defense and codified law on property ownership and the punishment of those which break the social contract.
I fail to see how modern conservatives (like William F Buckley) can be described as nationalists or nativists. You seem to be using Conservatism in your preferred relative form. I am using Conservatism in a permanent form.
Yes and no. On the matter of separation of powers, for instance, Wikipedia says that bipartite systems existed in Ancient Greece, but that Montesquieu is credited with the first proposal for a tripartite system.
-continued-
Another Salamcan Scholastic was Diego de Covarubias y Leyva, archibishop of Cuenca who wrote Variarum resolutionum ex jure pontificio regio et cæsareo libri IV and also helped write the reforms at the Council of Trent. His work was predominantly towards restitution, oaths, marriage, and other contractual agreements. His work predominantly dealt with the rights of the individual to his/her property and that s/he had the right to solely derive the fruits of that property.
Giovanni Botero who was from Italy and wrote the counter to Machiavelli’s The Prince and the work of Jean Bodin with his own The Reason of State. Botero’s book more or less reaffirmed the work of Thomas Aquinas that God gives all humans natural rights of our existence and that we consent freely together in union to create communities and governments and thus when a government acts tyrannical and against these natural rights of said citizens they can undo said government. Thus the prince (which Machiavelli’s book was focused on) had to always act in consent with his subjects, not as he saw fit.
Botero’s book, however, went even further than that and argued against (just as Suarez had) the Divine Right of Kings and against the interventionist economic policies of Bodin. Botero went so far as to argue that economic intervention is unbecoming of a prince (he outlined 3 exceptions to this though). His work was credited by even Englishmen like Thomas Mun in economic papers.
-continued-
Conservatism in its permanent form can be placed in the Classical Liberal category. But that category itself is in no way a synonym for Conservatism. As Conservatism cannot be totally split from its relative meaning. There is a reason that populists cling to the name “conservative”, because Conservatism also values the preservation of traditional institutions, like marriage. Using the state as a defender of tradition is in no way Classically Liberal, even if a Classical Liberal favors those institutions.
Permanent Conservatives can fit into the Classical Liberal category by virtue of their general principals being more related to Liberty than Tradition. But the instances where they favor Tradition over Liberty (Marriage and the Drug War) must be seen as exceptions to their Classical Liberalism.
Libertarians, on the other hand, put Liberty first in all those situations. So one would be hard pressed to claim they don’t even qualify as Classical Liberals.
And I am not saying William F Buckley was a nativist or nationalist. However he was Socially Conservative, and believed in state roles in culture. I would call Buckley a Classical Liberal, since he believed in Drug Legalization and for the most part valued Liberty. However he isn’t a paradigm of Classical Liberalism.
-continued-
So I have now mentioned multiple Salamancan Scholastics (and even Thomas Aquinas) and their works and how these relate to classical liberalism. I have also mentioned how their works were cited by several “Enlightenment Thinkers” like Rene Descartes and Hugo Grotius.
Now let me discuss with you the university system of Europe leading into 1500 AD. There were approximately 80 universities at that time and it was these Catholic Institutions that created the modern university system (debates, critiques to opposing papers, and master’s degrees and all that other jazz). A great example of this being Thomas Aquinas who was educated in Paris France but was from Sicily and moved back and forth through central and southern Europe a bit (showing a degree of mobility).
Now consider how at this time the printing press has been invented. Europe had already been Christian (predominantly Catholic in the period) for 1,000 years. The work, tradition, paradigm, was thoroughly Catholic. That is not to diminish the actions taken to remove this (by secular and protestant groups) but such actions were mostly in Scandinavia and England. Across the Continent the work of Catholic Clergy was widespread.
The works of Suarez and Botero were well known by the time of Hugo Grotius and Rene Descartes and even Rober Filmer (who had to work on refuting such anti-Divine Rights of King thought).
-continued-
These are late, not early, & no, they are not natural law philosophers. Socrates starts from the distinction between nomos & physis, convention or law & nature, or that which does not depend on human things. The question is, is there a way of life that is right for human beings by nature–is there a nature to human beings. Aristotle ended up famously saying all natural right in the sense of politics is changeable.
I take it this is not your favored subject–but for a man who’s all too willing to contest the old narratives on one side, you’re remarkably willing to affirm them on the other!
It is precisely virtue that is under attack in Hobbes & his followers, who say that only fear is the political motor.
Anyway, Aristotle said that a well-ordered regime & virtuous citizens presuppose each others. All modern political philosophers deny that, though only Kant the moral said, even a nation of devils can be run well, if but they be shrewd.
That’s just bad reading. I didn’t say vacuum, I said enmity.
If only there was perfect candidate.
My critique of libertarians as being classical liberals is in their disdain for the military and in their ambiguousness as many of them also like the terms of anarcho-capitalist and various other terms. At one moment they have absolute hatred of the state and the next minute and I think that classical liberals do not hate nor love the state. We (or at least I) see it as a tool for a limited purpose.
Populists cling to the term as a means of virtue signalling. Rarely do they mean to preserve tradition but rather empower their group (which they always misleading claim is “the people”).
I don’t think he was mugging for a place in an encyclopedia. He was claiming he was part of the revolution in political philosophy that created the modern regimes, which apparently scholars now try to prove, are not even modern.
The creepiest thing about all this is how it fulfills to the letter the orders of the revolutionary philosophers. Famously, Descartes said that he & those like him were the true ancients: Now, there are scholars there to prove that Descartes had no reason to fear his being original–despite his pointing to what happens to revolutionary thinkers by pointing to Galilee. He was lying or deluded, apparently, unlike banal scholars…
Famously, d’Alembert wrote about Descartes in the introductory essay of the original Encyclopedie that he was the leader of a conspiracy called Enlightenment. But don’t believe the people who made the revolution in thought & public sentiment & were thrown in jail for it. Believe the people who have no idea what it would mean to be involved in such a thing. Already, d’Alembert’s boast of the successful conspiracy points out, Descartes is thought of as banal…
You can claim Libertarians disdain the Military as much as I can claim you are a Trigger-Happy Nuclear Warlord.
But if you’re claim is that Libertarians are ambiguous, as there are divisions in Libertarianism. You must also account for how Conservatism manages to claimed by Donald Trump and Charles CW Cooke simultaneously; and how that does not therefore discredit Conservatism as Classically Liberal. Conservatism is just as diverse, but skewed much more illiberally.
I think you are failing to understand the difference between natural and positive law. The law posited by the populace can change and whether it acknowledges natural law (but that doesn’t change natural law).
I guess you and I have different versions of the word “affirm”.
You assumed that faith opposed classical liberalism (call it a vacuum or enmity I don’t care) and I disagree.
I am not saying that there is a perfect paradigm of Classical Liberalism. But Libertarianism is certainly the most direct decedent of Classical Liberalism. Unless you choose to radically change definitions of those movements beyond their conventional meaning.
You have to take your quarrel up with Aristotle. Read the Politics & give me the passages where he talks about natural law. If you don’t get what a weird thing it is to say of a Socratic philosopher that he stood for natural law, you’re probably in need of studying at least history: All the Greek Socratic schools except for Aristotle’s, which you might not even consider Socratic, were skeptical.
Natural law is not a category in Plato & Aristotle. Nor in any Greek writer of their age or previous. Divine law, sure; law, yeah. Natural law is a contradiction in terms. If you want to understand the Socratic teaching & are in a hurry, read the brief Minos, which is the introduction to the Laws: Socrates says: Law wishes to be the discovery of being.
In a way I could concede that issue with “who is a conservative” but it is far less occurrence than with Libertarianism. Conservative generally have the issue of dealing with populist scum like trump. Libertarianism (at least from when I read into it) is split a thousand times with those that follow Rand, Rothbard, or the anarcho-capitalists, or the anarchists, or some other group.
Not to attack Libertarianism as bad for that, but it makes it hard trying to distinguish which is which. Conservatism at least has some paradigm to look at universally with William F. Buckley Jr.
My two issues I would name are for Libertarian strands which trash talk the military in terms of being isolationists and those which follow the concept of liberty to the point of eliminating life through abortion and other similar means.
I say this because the right to life is fundamental to all other rights (I obviously support abortion in the case of it threatening the mother’s life but otherwise no).
William F Buckley is hardly followed as a paradigm of Conservatism. If he were, Conservatives would have ended the Drug War by now. Indeed, WFB had debated many fellow Conservatives in his life time. He debated Ronald Reagan on the Panamal Canal Treaties and debated Jerry Falwell on Drug Legalization. If WFB is a paradigm of Conservatism, he is a paradigm of its diverse nature by virtue of his debates with many other Conservatives. Not to mention his fight with JBS, though we both agree they weren’t permanent conservatives.
That diversity is not necessarily bad. But it is not particularly more extreme than Libertarian diversity. In fact, Libertarians can mostly agree on a direction the country should go, their debate is just on how far. Conservatives can’t seem to agree on either.
Furthermore, Libertarianism is not necessarily Pro-Choice or Pro-Life. That ultimately comes down to a belief that precedes political philosophy. The question of whether an unborn human is a rights-endowed entity.
As neither a student of history nor philosophy, I hesitate to wade in. But, I’ll make an observation which I think distinguishes modern libertarians from modern conservatives. It seems the significant difference between the two is what I’ve heard Bishop Barron term “the liberty of indifference” versus the “liberty for excellence.” The latter would seem what John Adams meant when he said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” And to which Ben Franklin was referring when he said, “[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
In light of that, it seems more than a stretch to say that 18th century “classical liberal” Founders would have favored same-sex marriage (if they could even fathom the idea) or widespread acceptance of pot use.
I’m sure someone on this thread will let me know just how wrong I am.
Julius Caesar and King Louis XIV also believed in a “liberty of excellence”. That people should have liberty, so long as they follow the virtues which the government commands of them.
The Liberty you describe is the Liberty of people to do what they want, so long as what they want is also what you want. If that is what Classical Liberals believed in, how were they at all distinguishable from the paternalists that preceded them?
The virtue that the founders talked about was virtue in the sense of respecting the rights of others. If people presume they have a right to impose on eachother’s liberty, than a Classical Liberal society will fall apart, regardless of the Constitution’s diction. Essentially, the people have to believe that what the Constitution sets forth as the proper role of government is the proper role of government, or they will simply neglect the Constitution.
Pretty wrong. But I’ve gotten used to the idea that many conservatives often do not distinguish between “wrong” and “must be outlawed.” In some areas, at least – drugs, SSM, and abortion among them. Progressives, of course, do not make this distinction in any area. The progressive approach is that whatever is not mandatory, must be prohibited.
The irritating thing about your critique, Larry, is that social conservatives were not in the “must be outlawed” camp on marriage. Libertarians wish to make us the aggressors, but we were definitely on the side of “leave well-enough alone.”
You all were the ones who brought government into same-sex relationships while also living the left-wing fantasy denying the biological realities of family formation as a fundamental social purpose of marriage.
Obviously, you’ve never read John Adams & Thomas Jefferson talking about the natural aristoi. Or is it that you think Mr. Declaration & both original parties were deluded–but you are far their superior? They were worried about public mores, about the necessity of establishing universities, & others like them included the education clause of the NW Ordinance in American Constitutional law–but you think they were clowning? Or that they were instead serious & just deadly wrong? Tyrants–telling you & everyone what to do? No better than that fellow George?
Maybe you’re right, bringing God’s gift to America, freeing people from the delusions of the Founders. But when did this become as easy as saying it? How is it so easy to say, the Founders, no, they had no use for the differences between human beings in relation to nature.
You read Jefferson saying immigrants would be a threat to America because they lack the political education inherent in American life–the mean between servility & license–& you think, clown or crazy? Or do these things not even matter?
They were in the “must be specially established” camp. Which is still a clear form of Social Engineering; of trying to say “we believe Gay Marriage to be wrong, and so we will use the government which gays are just as subject to as straights, to make an official status that Gays cannot attain.”
If the Founders were not interested in Real Liberty, but rather interested in the Liberty of people to do the right thing, and that the government should declare what the right thing is. How were they any different than Caesar, Louis XIV or Modern Progressives?
The Caesars believed in Liberty of Excellence. The People of Rome were to have liberty, so long as they were virtuous. Virtue, of course, meant worshiping the Emperor as a deity. And so Christians did not meet the standards need to have Liberty.
King Louis XIV believed in Liberty of Excellence too. The Liberty of everyone in France to do what ever they want, so long as they do the virtuous task of paying enormous taxes to a Monarch that spent 50% of that money on a Palace for himself.
Progressives also believe in Liberty of Excellence. They believe we all ought to be free to explore our own pursuits, so long as we are virtuous. Virtue, of course means servicing Gay Weddings. And because many Christians do not therefore qualify as virtuous, they don’t get to have Liberty.
Nonsense. Gays were perfectly capable of attaining married status (and often did in the past) by marrying someone of the opposite sex, just like every other married citizen.
This victim complex in the gay rights community is singularly unattractive. As if the social institution of marriage was devised to shame them instead of as a means of attaching heterosexual men to the women they have the potential to impregnate and the children they produce. It’s pathologically narcissistic when you think about it.
Should marriage then be only limited to the Fertile, so as to secure marriage as an institution meant to encourage child-bearing?
If a married couple finds that one of them is infertile, should they be mandated to divorce so that the fertile one can find a new mate?
If marriage is an institution strictly for child bearing, these clearly must be the laws of marriage.
Straw man. No SoCon is arguing this level of intrusiveness by the state. Four boundaries for marriage: opposite sex, two, age of consent, and separation of consanguinity. That’s it.
Opposite sex is actually the least arbitrary of the standards imposed by the state. Which is why SoCons believe the other barriers must certainly fall now that complementarity is of no legal/social consideration.
It should be noted that (permanent) Conservatism’s usual lineage is traced back to Edmund Burke.
Burke does fit in as a Classical Liberal. He supported the American Revolution, and was a Whig. However he was not the embodiment of Classical Liberalism in his time or today, having his differences, primarily in a preference towards not dramatically changing the status quo.
To everything Stoicous has said on this thread:
But it is a natural and logical progression from the premise.