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Jason Kuznicki on mores

Here, using Montesquieu (and me, but me channeling Montesquieu) as a point of departure for his own very lively thoughts about classical liberalism and modern libertarianism:

We can of course elaborate on the distinction between coercion and voluntarism, and its implications in a complex society, and on what it means for our laws and our politics, while also recognizing that mores matter in all kinds of ways for the implementation of a good society. Mores delineate which policies appear reasonable for essentially all individuals in a polity. Mores explain why some societies appear to tolerate, or even demand, various forms of coercion more readily than others, and if that’s not important to implementing libertarianism, then nothing is. […]

Do note that this concern for mores does not necessarily entail any ideological softening on the distinction between free and coerced action, between voluntary and unrequited transfers. The two dimensions are completely orthogonal to one another. But I don’t think one should be indifferent to either of them.

I strongly agree with most of this. It gets at my discomfort with the debates about “thick or thin” libertarianism that have sometimes cropped up around here. I’m roughly a “political” [classical] liberal in Rawls’ sense, but that doesn’t make me normatively indifferent to the kind of social world that liberalism depends upon, or might generate.

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Author: Jacob T. Levy
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