The Task of Political Philosophy(The Ethics of Liberty Ch 5)

Posted on: April 19, 2021 at 08:21:24 CT

https://mises.org/library/introduction-natural-law

01/12/2007
Murray N. Rothbard

[This article is excerpted from the first 5 chapters of The Ethics of Liberty. Audio versions of these chapters, read by Jeff Riggenbach, are now available for podcast or download.]

(Listen to MP3)


5. The Task of Political Philosophy

It is not the intention of this book to expound or defend at length the philosophy of natural law, or to elaborate a natural-law ethic for the personal morality of man. The intention is to set forth a social ethic of liberty i.e., to elaborate that subset of the natural law that develops the concept of natural rights, and that deals with the proper sphere of "politics," i.e., with violence and non-violence as modes of interpersonal relations. In short, to set forth a political philosophy of liberty.

In our view the major task of "political science" or better, "political philosophy" is to construct the edifice of natural law pertinent to the political scene. That this task has been almost completely neglected in this century by political scientists is all too clear. Political science has either pursued a positivistic and scientistic "model building," in vain imitation of the methodology and content of the physical sciences, or it has engaged in purely empirical fact-grubbing. The contemporary political scientist believes that he can avoid the necessity of moral judgments, and that he can help frame public policy without committing himself to any ethical position. And yet as soon as anyone makes any policy suggestion, however narrow or limited, an ethical judgment — sound or unsound — has willy-nilly been made.[55]
"Let us then cast out the hobgoblins of Wertfreiheit, of positivism, of scientism."

The difference between the political scientist and the political philosopher is that the "scientist's" moral judgments are covert and implicit, and therefore not subject to detailed scrutiny, and hence more likely to be unsound. Moreover, the avoidance of explicit ethical judgments leads political scientists to one overriding implicit value judgment — that in favor of the political status quo as it happens to prevail in any given society. At the very least, his lack of a systematic political ethics precludes the political scientist from persuading anyone of the value of any change from the status quo.

In the meanwhile, furthermore, present-day political philosophers generally confine themselves, also in a Wertfrei manner, to antiquarian descriptions and exegeses of the views of other, long-gone political philosophers. In so doing, they are evading the major task of political philosophy, in the words of Thomas Thorson, "the philosophic justification of value positions relevant to politics."[56]

In order to advocate public policy, therefore, a system of social or political ethics must be constructed. In former centuries this was the crucial task of political philosophy. But in the contemporary world, political theory, in the name of a spurious "science," has cast out ethical philosophy, and has itself become barren as a guide to the inquiring citizen. The same course has been taken in each of the disciplines of the social sciences and of philosophy by abandoning the procedures of natural law. Let us then cast out the hobgoblins of Wertfreiheit, of positivism, of scientism. Ignoring the imperious demands of an arbitrary status quo, let us hammer out — hackneyed cliché though it may be — a natural-law and natural-rights standard to which the wise and honest may repair. Specifically, let us seek to establish the political philosophy of liberty and of the proper sphere of law, property rights, and the State.