The Moral Status Quo

Bleeding heart libertarianism (BHL) suggests a new research agenda. As I mentioned in my previous posting, I see that BHL agenda as having two main parts. One invites bleeding heart libertarians to develop a rival normative vision of what free societies owe the poor; the other invites libertarians to defend economic liberty in new ways. I shall address both those points but first some stage setting.

BHL, as I understand it, represents a fundamental challenge to the moral status quo. That moral status quo is the frozen conceptual sea I mentioned in my previous post. I describe the conceptual sea as frozen because defenders of various ideological positions have long found themselves locked into familiar and more or less immovable positions. Here’s a quick topographical map of this frozen terrain.

Off one coast, we have the two camps of the defenders of private economic liberty: the libertarians and the classical liberals. By classical liberals I have in mind a run of free market thinkers including Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek and Richard Epstein. The distinctive political commitment of classical liberalism is to private economic liberty—though classical liberals allow taxation to support a limited range of government provided social goods (education vouchers, a safety net). Some thinkers in this tradition argue from natural rights, but most employ consequentialist or ends-directed forms of reasoning. The philosophical base of this position is a conception of the person as a seeker of happiness or utility.

Hunkered down on the ice next to the classical liberals are the libertarians. Nozick is the paradigm here, though anarcho-capitalist such as Murray Rothbard roll out their blankets on the edges of this same camp. The distinctive political commitment of libertarians is also to private economic liberty—though libertarians tend to treat economic liberties as even more weighty than the classical liberals do (“taxation is theft”). Libertarians can be consequentialists, but they more often employ what we might call naturalistic forms of justification. They find their philosophical base in the idea of the person as a self-owner.

On the opposite coast, we have the modern or high liberals. This is the comfortable, academically dominant camp. John Rawls is the paradigmatic figure her, though if you throw a snowball down the hallway of most any major philosophy department these days you could close your eyes confident that you will hit a high liberal. The distinctive political commitment of high liberals is not to private economic liberty but to social justice: social institutions should be arranged so as to benefit all members of society, including the poor. High liberals minimize or deny the importance of private economic liberty. After all, such liberties limit the power of government to “spread the wealth around,” a strategy that high liberals see as plainly required by their commitment to social justice. Rather than a consequentialist or naturalist form of reasoning, high liberals characteristically employ deliberative forms of justification. A set of institutions is just and legitimate only if it is acceptable in principle to the citizens who are to live there. The philosophical base of high liberalism is not a utility seeker or a self-owner but an idea of the person as a democratic citizen. This is a person committed to living with his fellow citizens on terms that all can endorse, regardless of the particular social or economic position each inhabits.

Even this quick sketch can help us understand why the sea between these two coasts thickened and froze. Graduate students attracted to the idea of private economic liberties (wide and powerful rights of private ownership and contract, for example) soon find themselves on dogsleds heading over toward the camps of Hayek and Nozick. As they approach that coast they get to choose whether then are more comfortable with Hayekian ends-directed reasoning or the Nozickian naturalist form. But whichever camp they choose, “social justice” is a phrase they are told they must not speak.

Other students, attracted to the ideal of deliberative justification, find themselves whisked off in the other direction by high-powered snowmobile. Up, up to the high liberal camp. There they can join the Rawlsians and luck egalitarians such as Ronald Dworkin and the democratic theorists such as Amy Gutmann in warm discussions about the precise nature and requirements of social justice. But in this camp, “private economic liberty” is a phrase only rarely and dismissively heard.

For decades, the residents of these camps have stared at each other across an icy, windswept divide. Occasionally, the defenders of private economic liberty call out to their opponents to abandon the ideal of social justice and come over to join them in affirming one another as self-owners (or utility maximizers). But the advocates of social justice are just as firmly committed to the moral ideal of persons as democratic citizens, committed to living among institutions that all might endorse. Each group is anchored to a very different view about the nature of moral personhood, and each knows that the anchors on the other coast are as firmly set too. So for the most part they just go about their business, and let the wind between howl, lonely and wild.

But bleeding heart libertarians now come onto the scene. As I think of it, the BHLs are riding an icebreaker, the full power of which they have only begun themselves to understand. But what in what direction does this icebreaker run? And precisely what message do those riding in it carry? I have some ideas. More on that soon.