Is cultural backlash a major determinant of political outcomes in the liberal democracies?

 

In recent years, a major transformation has occurred in the politics of many of the liberal democracies as major political parties have increasingly been challenged, or taken over, by populists. What has brought this about? Can it be attributed to some kind of cultural backlash?

My starting point in this essay is the analysis of Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart in their book, Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism (2019). I then consider some problems associated with this analysis, focusing particularly on the authors’ definition of authoritarian values and some critical comments by Armin Schäfer. In the following sections, I consider the relevance of Yasha Mounk’s explanation of Tne Identity Trap, the nature of the backlash to changing economic circumstances, and John Burn-Murdoch’s outline of differences between conservatives in the U.S. and Europe in values and attitudes regarding international cooperation.

The Norris-Inglehart analysis

The book by Norris and Inglehart seemed like a good place to begin considering cultural backlash theory because Ronald Inglehart deserves to be remembered with great respect for his efforts in creating a cultural model which explains a great deal about the reasons why people from different parts of the world often hold widely different views on social and political issues. Inglehart’s cultural model has two dimensions: secular rational values versus traditional values; and self-expression values versus survival values. He documented a shift from materialist values, which emphasize safety and security, to post-materialist values, involving increasing emphasis on individual freedom, occurring as a consequence of ongoing economic growth.

Norris and Inglehart argue that the spread of post-materialist values has induced a backlash among cultural conservatives. The authors do not dismiss explanations of growing support for authoritarian populism which emphasize economic grievances associated with economic globalization, immigration, stagnant real incomes, and perceptions of growing inequality. They find that populist attitudes are strongly influenced by personal experience of economic insecurity and perceptions of the national economy’s performance. However, according to their definition, “authoritarian values” are more common among old people than young people, and are more strongly linked with the respondent’s birth cohort than with economic indicators.

The authors found that anti-immigration attitudes were more strongly linked with authoritarian and populist values than with protecting economic interests. And, even after controlling for a range of attitudes toward immigrants and economic conditions, the respondent’s birth cohort remains the most important predictor of authoritarian values.

Norris and Inglehart believe that “the combination of authoritarian values disguised by populist rhetoric” is “potentially the most dangerous threat to liberal democracy.”

To assess the threat to liberal democracy that may be posed by those values and attitudes it is important to consider how the authors define authoritarian values.

Have authoritarian values been measured correctly?

 The authors conceptualize “authoritarian” values “as a cluster of three related components, emphasizing the importance of (i) conformity (strict adherence to group conventions and traditional customs); (ii) security (safety and protection of the group against risks, justifying strict enforcement and aggression toward outsiders who threaten the security or the accepted group norms); and (iii) loyalty (supporting the group and its leaders).” They view populism “as a style of rhetoric reflecting first-order principles about who should rule, claiming that legitimate power rests with ‘the people’ not the elites.”

The main problem I have with the Norris-Inglehart definition of authoritarian values is that many of the people I know who emphasize conformity to group conventions, group security, and loyalty to the group and its leaders, would be more appropriately labelled as conservatives than as authoritarians. The conventions they seek to uphold are concerned with civility rather than oppression. They emphasize national security because they see it as necessary to avoid becoming the victims of oppression. They display loyalty to the group and elected leaders because they identify as citizens of the nation in which they live.

It seems to me that a more appropriate measure of authoritarian values is implicit in Christian Welzel’s work on emancipative values. The people who hold authoritarian values are those whose values are on the lower end of the scale of emancipative values. Welzel developed the concept of emancipate values to measure the beliefs that people hold about such matters as the importance of personal autonomy, respect for the choices people make in their personal lives, having a say in community decisions, and equality of opportunity. More information about Welzel’s research on emancipative values can be found here.

My understanding is that people who have an authoritarian personality are attracted to the possibility of oppressing others. That is the view of Hans Eysenck, who undertook some pathbreaking work on the personality predictors of political extremism. An important implication of that view is that authoritarian values are not the preserve of either the conservative or progressive side of politics.

That line of reasoning might suggest that the Norris-Inglehart analysis is more relevant to understanding a conservative backlash than the emergence of authoritarian tendencies that might threaten democracies. Nevertheless, as discussed later, there is some evidence that people who identify with the right wing of U.S. politics now have values more akin to Russians and Turks than to the supporters of right wing parties in western Europe.

How much do cultural attitudes vary by age?

In an article entitled “Cultural Backlash? How (Not) to Explain the Rise of Authoritarian Populism”, published in 2021, Armin Schäfer found that, on most issues, people in different age groups have similar cultural attitudes. His analysis suggests that older cohorts are slightly more likely to vote for authoritarian (right wing) parties but less likely to vote for populist ones. His conclusion is that generational replacement is unlikely to attenuate the rise of authoritarian (right wing) populism.

Schäfer does not dismiss cultural explanations of populism. He agrees with Norris and Inglehart that opposition to immigration is linked systematically to authoritarian (conservative) values and a lack of trust in politics.

A backlash to the illiberalism of progressives

 It is common for the spread of post-materialist values to be accompanied by conservative resistance, but much of that resistance seems to dissipate over time. Many cultural conservatives now seem to have accepted, however reluctantly, some of the social changes that they strongly opposed a few decades ago e.g. divorce, pre-marital sex and legalization of homosexuality, and they now also seem to be going through the process of accepting other social changes, such as same sex marriage.

In my view, it is the authoritarian tendencies of many progressives that has promoted a voter backlash, rather than the spread of post-materialist values. The best discussion I have read about the authoritarian tendencies of progressives has been provided by Yascha Mounk in his book, The Identity Trap, published in 2023. Mounk does not refer explicitly to “authoritarian tendencies” but the illiberalism that he discusses amounts to the same thing in my view.

In writing about what he refers to the “identity synthesis”, Mounk recognizes that its advocates are seeking to remedy serious injustices affecting marginalized groups that have historically suffered “terrible forms of discrimination”.  The identity synthesis is concerned with many different kinds of groups including those related to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and disability.  The distinguishing feature of the identity thesis is that its advocates reject neutral rules like equal opportunity and free speech in favour of action to promote the interests of particular groups. According to this thesis, the way the state treats each citizen – and how citizens treat each other – should depend on the identity group to which they belong.

Mounk’s main point is that the identity synthesis will ultimately prove counterproductive: 

“Despite the good intentions of its proponents, it undermines progress toward genuine equality between members of different groups. In the process, it also subverts other goals we all have reasons to care about, like the stability of diverse democracies.”

The identity synthesis subverts the stability of democracies because it makes it harder for people to broaden their allegiances beyond a particular identity. It is a political trap because it makes it harder to sustain diverse societies whose citizens trust and respect each other. It “pits rigid identity groups against each other in a zero-sum battle for resources and recognition.”

Much of Mounk’s book is devoted to a philosophical discussion of how the identity synthesis evolved. The story he tells is of a short march through the institutions, associated with postmodernism, rather than the long march of cultural Marxism. He suggests that since the identity synthesis is inherently about ongoing tension between different identity groups it lacks Marxism’s utopian promise of eventually abolishing all class distinctions.

There has also been a backlash to the authoritarian tendencies within the environmental movement. Although environmental activism is not part of the identity synthesis discussed by Mounk, he makes the interesting observation that in embracing “intersectionality” many voluntary organisations have broadened their missions in line with the idea that all forms of oppression are connected. He gives the Sierra Club as an example.

What about the economy?

The analysis in the preceding essay on this blog leads me to suspect that the longer-term slowdown in economic growth in the liberal democracies might be more important in generating support for populist policies than are grievances that can be related directly to import competition or immigration. Import competition and immigration may just be convenient scapegoats.

The preceding essay shows:

• The perception of having a lower standard of living than parents at a comparable age has a substantial adverse impact on life satisfaction ratings.
• Perceptions of standard of living relative to parents are positively related to past economic growth experience of the countries in which people live.
• In the high-income countries, low growth has a greater adverse impact on young peoples’ perceptions of their standard of living relative to parents than on the corresponding perceptions of old people.

A backlash to internationalism?

John Burn-Murdoch, a researcher who works for the Financial Times, recently made an international comparison of the values of people associated with different political parties in article entitled ‘Why the Maga mindset is different’ (March 7, 2025). His analysis, using data from the World Values Survey, suggests that in many respects (including attitudes to international cooperation) the values of people who identify with the U.S. right wing are closer to the values of people in Turkey, Russia, and China than to those who identify with right wing parties in Europe, or with the U.S. left. His analysis also suggests, however, that “the US Republicans of 20 years ago were no keener on autocracy than the average Canadian or Western European – and just as supportive of international co-operation.”

Perhaps that change of attitudes reflects a cultural backlash that can be partly attributed to 9/11 and the outcomes of the Iraq and Afghan wars. It may also be partly attributable to increasing dissatisfaction with the performance of international organisations, and a perception that U.S. taxpayers have been making excessive contributions to those organisations.

It is important to note that even where a substantial proportion of the population of a country endorses authoritarian values, that does not necessarily result in authoritarian political institutions. That finding emerges from some analysis published on my blog in 2023 in an essay entitled:  “To what extent do international differences in personal freedom reflect people’s values?”  The analysis uses Christian Welzel’s emancipative values data from the World Values Survey and personal freedom data from Cato. It indicates that international differences in personal freedom do broadly reflect the prevalence of emancipative values (the opposite of authoritarian values). However, there are many outliers. For example, personal freedom in China and Iran is lower than might be predicted solely on the basis of the prevalence of emancipative values, whereas personal freedom in Armenia, Georgia, Cyprus and Taiwan is higher than might be predicted on that basis.

Personal freedom in the U.S. seems broadly consistent with the overall prevalence of emancipative values in that country (including both the left and right wings). The current U.S. government is clearly seeking to implement a major change in the direction of many government policies. I am not yet persuaded, however, that its actions will have a substantial adverse impact on the institutions of liberal democracy. 

Conclusions

Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart argue that the spread of post-materialist values has induced a cultural backlash among cultural conservatives. On that basis they suggest that the combination of authoritarianism and populist rhetoric is a threat to liberal democracy.

In my view, Norris and Inglehart were mistaken in attributing cultural backlash to the spread of post-materialist values. It would be more correct to attribute cultural backlash to the illiberalism of progressives who have been advocating what Yascha Mounk has described as the identity synthesis. The identity synthesis has provoked a backlash because it rejects neutral rules like equal opportunity and free speech in favour of action to promote the interests of particular groups that have suffered from discrimination in the past.

Economic grievances play an important role in encouraging people to support policy remedies proposed by populists. My previous research has highlighted the adverse impact that slower economic growth may have on life satisfaction. I suspect that the longer-term slowdown in economic growth in the liberal democracies might be more important in generating support for populist policies than are grievances that can be related directly to the impact of import competition or immigration.

Some recent research has suggested that over the last 20 years the values held by people who identify with the right wing of U.S. politics has moved closer to the values of people in Turkey, Russia and China than to people who identify with the right wing of politics in Europe. It remains to be seen what impact, if any, this apparent retreat from classical liberal values will have on the institutions of liberal democracy in the United States.

What Contribution did David L. Norton Make to our Understanding of Ethical Individualism?

 

The purpose of this post is to publish a review essay by Edward W. Younkins, author of among other things a wonderful trilogy of books on freedom and flourishing: Capitalism and Commerce, Champions of a Free Society, and Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society. (I have written a review of Ed’s trilogy, which was published on The Savvy Street last year. I published an earlier essay on Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society on this blog in 2019.)

David L. Norton, whose books are the subject of Ed’s review essay was an American philosopher who made an important contribution to the modern understanding of human flourishing. I read his book, Personal Destinies, last year, and wrote a couple of posts on this blog (here and here) on issues that were of particular interest to me.

Norton’s major books deserve a more comprehensive review. I am pleased to have the opportunity to publish on Freedom and Flourishing the following review essay by Ed Younkins.

A Review Essay of David L. Norton’s Books on Ethical Individualism

By

Edward W. Younkins

 

The purpose of this review essay is to introduce and evaluate the essential ideas that appear in David L. Norton’s two major books: his 1976 Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (PD) and his 1991 Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue (DMD). PD is a thorough, philosophically astute, visionary, and enduring contribution to contemporary moral philosophy in the tradition of classical Greek thinkers in which Norton offers a compelling view of human flourishing grounded in the idea that ethical life is rooted in the realization of unique personal potentialities. Norton’s philosophy will resonate with those seeking to reconcile individual freedom with moral responsibility. Then in DMD Norton attempts to extend his ethical individualism into the realm of political philosophy. In this work he advances politics that embraces ethical education. Although thought-provoking and ambitious, DMD falls short of meeting his goal and of having the impact of PD. In addition, its expanded role of the state and communitarian leanings are problematic, in tension with, and in opposition to, the individual freedom advocated in PD.

Personal Destinies

In this book Norton explains that for each person there is a particular unique way of living (his daimon) and there is a foundational ethical imperative to live in that manner. Each individual is morally obligated to know and live the truth according to his daimon, thus progressively actualizing an excellence that is innately and potentially his. His ethical responsibility and priority is to bring this inner self to outward actuality. Each of us is a unique irreplaceable being who has his own destiny in need of discovery and actualization.

What is the source of one’s daimon? Norton explains that the immediate source of one’s genetic inheritance is the person’s parents and that, as human beings, they represent the same category of being as the individual himself. This involves the consideration of both human nature and the specific unique identity of each individual.

The conclusion to be drawn is that each individual is the heir of the unrestricted humanity of which his parents are in his particular case the agents. Heteronomy does not obtain here because the individual is humanity in a particular instance. And genetic inheritance is fully capable of accounting for the individuation of daimons… (PD p.25)

Norton links the ancient concept of eudaimonia to Abraham Maslow’s idea of self-actualization. He also interchangeably uses the terms eudaimonism, perfectionism, self-actualization ethics, and normative individualism which stresses the quality of life of the agent. In addition, he distinguishes between self-actualization and self-realization because the inward self is real even if it is not actualized,

The eudaimonic individual experiences the whole of his life in every act, and he experiences parts and wholes together as necessary such that he can will that nothing be changed. But the necessity introduced here is moral necessity, deriving from his choice. Hence, we may say of him interchangeably, “He is where he wants to be, doing what he wants to do,” or “He is where he wants to be, doing what he must do.” (PD p.222)  

According to Norton, eudaimonia is both a feeling and a condition dependent upon right desire and is an objective value that is not imputed but recognized. It is the condition of living in truth to one’s daimon. The prerequisite of eudaimonia is the unique irreplaceable worth of each individual. Eudaimonia involves wholehearted commitment to one’s flourishing as a human being.

According to Norton, one’s aim is not to imitate the “worthy man” but to emulate him:

To emulate a worthy man is not to re-live his individual life, but to utilize the principle of worthy living, exemplified by him, toward the qualitative improvement of our individual life. (PD, p.13)

Norton informs us that it is Plato, rather than Aristotle, who supplies the underpinning support for individualistic metaphysics via his principle of the self-differentiation of the Forms and his idea of ultimate reality as a system of interrelated and intercommunicating Forms.  Because there are fewer Forms than existing things they serve as principles of intelligibility regarding the actual world.

Norton then builds on Leibniz’s principle of incompossibility that recognizes that not all possibilities are capable of co-existence. Stripping away Leibniz’s theology that states that actualization of pure possibilities is solely the work of God, Norton explains that distinct from actuality are infinite possibilities that are possible actualities and that, under certain conditions, these alternatives become available to existing beings. Between actuality and free possibility only total exchange can occur. Alternative worlds cannot exist simultaneously but can exist as possible worlds via the agency of world exchange. Whatever exists is susceptible to lapsing into the status of unactualized possibility.

Norton devotes three chapters to criticizing recent eudaimonisms from existentialist thinkers from Kierkgaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre none of whom has an unswerving commitment to reason. Norton dismisses Sartre’s characterization of freedom as freedom to do whatever one freely wants to do and criticizes Sartre’s denial of human nature in his efforts to affirm individuality.

Each person has his own irreplaceable and unique potential worth and innate distinct particularity which is his self. Norton’s notion of humankind is as “perfectible finitude”. Each unique person faces possibilities from which to choose. One’s unique flourishing can be progressively approached by living in truth to one’s daimon. Through an individual’s self-knowledge, self-discovery, and efforts he can progressively actualize the particularities that comprise his own essential identity. Human beings possess volition, can initiate action, and can make responsible decisions in accordance with who and what one is.

Norton maintains that each person is a universal particular and that the universal humanity that subsists within each person makes the possibility of a broad range of alternatives a component of every individual’s existence. Of course, this does not mean that every option is equally appropriate for each person. It only means that choices from among alternatives are those to be made correctly or incorrectly.

Confine your aspirations to the possibilities of your own nature; to desire to be more than a human being is to become less, for extra-human aims betray humankind and produce blindness to the values human life affords…. Extra-human happiness and desires are impediments to the appreciation and participation in human worth. (PD p.357)

The virtue of integrity is Norton’s fundamental principle of the life of a mature human being. Living one’s own truth comprises integrity, the primary virtue. Norton explains that flourishing is inextricably tied to the actuality of an integrated self. He speaks of “personal truth” and makes clear that the great threat to integrity is not falsehood, but rather the attractiveness of foreign truths—the truths that belong to others.

Our consideration of “personal truth” reveals that the great enemy of integrity is not falsehood but—ironically—the attractiveness of foreign truths, the truths that belong to others. (PD p.9)

One excellent chapter is devoted to the stages of life—childhood (dependence), adolescence (creative exploration of potentialities), maturation (adulthood), and old age. There are distinguishing incommensurable principles of behavior that pertain to each stage. Norton calls the passage between these stages “world exchange”. There is a succession of stages of which normativity exacts its modes of actualization. The author then devotes a follow-up chapter titled “Eudaimonia: The Quality of Moral Life in the Stage of Maturation”.

Norton views the self as a self of a particular kind (i.e., the self of a human being). He explains that a human being becomes conscious of himself as a self only in social interaction with others. A person’s knowledge of his selfhood thus develops concurrently with the knowledge of others as selves.

Each individual has continuous access to minds different from his own. Norton explains that the presence of another human being is an invitation to enter a perspectival world different from our own. Through a process of participatory enactment each of us can recognize a world of possibilities in ourselves, only one of which is made real in our own existence. This range of possibilities permits us to see those possibilities within other people that are being actualized or that can potentially be actualized.

From the individuation of possibilities it follows that the goal of the human individual is the perfection of his own unique finitude, and the goal of humanity is the community of complementary, perfected individuals. (PD pp. 142-43)

Norton discusses the inherent sociality of human beings based on mutual appreciation rather than on conflict when he speaks of “the complementarity of the excellences” or what Plato termed “congeniality of the excellences”. Through social interaction one’s knowledge of his own selfhood emerges concurrently with the knowledge of others as selves. In addition, these contacts enable individuals to recognize and affirm values different from their own. Through specialization people benefit from what others create by fulfilling their innate destinies. This personal interdependence is manifested in love, labor, and justice.

For Norton, a self-actualizing individual takes an interest in the self-actualization of others and an ideal society is one of complementary perfected individuals. His idea of “consequent sociality” thus emphasizes the individualist significance of human community life and politics. Norton’s eudaimonism clearly recognizes that a human being is not an isolated entity.

Regarding justice as the paramount virtue of society, Norton states that:

…the foundation of justice is the presupposition of the unique, irreplaceable, potential worth of every person, and forms of sociality that neglect or contradict this presupposition…deal justice a mortal wound at the outset. (PD p.310)

Norton views justice as a type of entitlement in which an individual is only entitled to possess as much of anything as he can use in actualizing himself. His theory holds that at the lower limit (or floor) each person is entitled to what is necessary for self-actualization including food, shelter, and decent treatment by others. Then at the upper limit (or ceiling) a person is entitled to the commensurate goods whose potential worth he can maximally actualize in accordance with his destiny, his meaningful work. The point of this upper limit is that not everything is appropriate with what one is. A person is only entitled to those goods that are right and proper to his self-development.  In Norton’s view, how a person acquires something to which he is “entitled” in order to actualize himself is irrelevant. The door is opened to the notion of distributive justice in a society that disregards the manner in which a person acquires what he is ‘entitled” to.

The unfortunate designation “entitlement” is used by Norton in connection with what individuals should do in a social context. He discusses what a person is morally entitled to and deserves in virtue of his own distinctive potential achievements. He contends that not every person is entitled to all goods, but that every person is entitled to those goods that will help them with their self-actualization. The knowledge of other people’s entitlements leads him to entertain the idea of distributive justice.

Norton thinks that his eudaimonism can be employed to demonstrate which distribution of goods is just and which is not. He begins by saying that it is each individual who will decide whether a good is or is not commensurate with the pursuit of his self-actualization. However, he qualifies his answer by stating that others can specify what one is entitled to if the person has not yet reached a stage of true individuation. His theory of entitlement leaves room for a theory of rights that would inspire political control in the realm of social justice.

Under normative individualism the final ground of the distinction between true and false desires is the nature of the individual himself, and he himself is the final authority. But by the emergent nature of individualism the exercise of this final authority by the individual is deferred until true individuation is attained, and meanwhile others must share with him the responsibility for the determination of his true interests. (PD pp.323-24)

Norton declares that public corroboration of claims of entitlement is needed because self-love and the knowledge it provides are imperfect. Although he suggests others who know and love the person, and thereafter, acquaintances as corroborators with respect to which goods are consistent with person’s unique calling, there remains the possibility that a political authority would step in when peer pressure and persuasion are insufficient. He has opened the door for huge amounts of control, and this unfortunately comes to fruition in his later book, Democracy and Moral Development.

 

Democracy and Moral Development

This 1991 book can be viewed as an extension of Norton’s earlier work, Personal Destinies. In it he aims to philosophically connect ideas from democratic theory, virtue (or character) ethics, moral development, and social and political justice. Norton praises democratic thinkers like Mill and Dewey for teaching that democratic institutions advance individuals pursuit of their chosen way of life. Holding a developmental notion of the individual, he makes a case for a greater than a minimal role for government in the life of each individual human being.

Norton explains the need to disclaim the closed teleology of Plato and Aristotle for an open-ended teleology. He views eudaimonia as an inclusive end that permits a multiplicity of types of self-actualizing lives aimed at a multiplicity of ends.

Arguing for an expanded notion of self-interest that includes the interests of others, Norton states that, because eudaimonia is of objective worth, one individual’s self-actualization is of value to another individual, and vice-versa. He claims that his eudaimonistic perspective transcends the altruist-egoist bifurcation.

Arguing that eudaimonism is not a form of egoism, he explains that:

The worth that is aspired to is objective worth, which is to say, it is of worth, not solely or primarily to the individual who actualizes it, but also to (some) other persons--specifically to such others as can recognize, appreciate, and utilize the distinctive kind of worth that the given individual manifests. (DMD p.7)

Norton explains that human beings are alike in seeking values but individuated by the differences of the types of values that they desire. It follows that his contention that one person’s actualization is of value to another person may be problematic because objective value for one person is not the same for every individual. Unlike Ayn Rand, he fails to realize that it is important to describe for whom and for what purpose something is of value.

Like Plato, Norton argues that self-love does not inhibit the love of others, but rather is the precondition of it:

…love is not exclusively or primarily interpersonal; it is first of all the right relationship of each person with himself or herself. The self to which love is the first instance directed is the ideal self that is aspired to and by which random change is transformed into the directed development we term growth, When the ideal of the individual is rightly chosen, it realizes objective values that subsisted within the individual as innate possibilities, thereby achieving in the individual as innate possibilities the self-identity that is termed “integrity” and that constitutes the foundation of other virtues. (DMD p.40)

According to Norton, there exists a kind of positive right to what every individual requires in order to exercise the central moral responsibility to discern and develop his personal potential moral excellence. He argues that a person is only entitled to what is commensurate with what is needed for his own self-development. Therefore, a worthy individual who has self-knowledge and lives by it, recognizes goods to which he is not entitled as distractions from the proper course of his life. Such a person manifests justice by not claiming goods that he cannot utilize and by actively willing them to those who can employ them toward their personal flourishing. A worthy person’s aspirations do not exceed the parameters of his own finitude. Recognizing these boundaries permits the potential augmentation of the finite excellences of qualitatively differentiated others.

According to Norton:

…no life can be said to be fulfilled whose worth is not recognized and utilized by (some) other person in their own self-actualizing enterprise. Correspondingly every well-lived life must utilize values produced by (some) other well-lived lives. And this is to say that within a society, every person has a legitimate interest in the essential personhood of every other. (DMD p.124)

Norton contends the switch from “some others” to “every other” is legitimated because all those upon you and I rely have need of values produced by others, who, in turn, have need of values produced by others, and so on. He states that this is the foundation for a “community of true individuals”.

Norton attempts to distinguish his views from those of contemporary communitarians. He does this by differentiating between “received” community and tradition and “chosen” community and tradition. He emphasizes choosing the right community and tradition as necessary to individuality as conceived of eudaimonistically. In the end, however, his worldview comes close to the communitarian worldview from which he wants to distinguish himself.

Norton argues that rights must be derived from responsibilities (not vice-versa}, that rights are not inherently adversarial, and that rights should be founded upon what a person requires in order to develop properly. He thus emphasizes responsibilities, the value of other people’s flourishing in one’s own self-interest, and the necessity of developing one’s latent powers.

Norton’s idea of a just society is “obligations primitive” rather than “rights primitive”. For him, rights are derived from the primary moral obligation of individuals to discern and actualize their innate potential excellences. This moral obligation produces both negative and positive rights that government will protect and help to implement.

Norton failed to understand that rights are an ethical concept that is not directly concerned with attaining the self-perfection of individuals but rather, as explained by Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl, are metanorms that establish the conditions for protecting the possibility of the pursuit of a person’s interests but not the achievement of flourishing itself. His philosophical individualism could have been improved if he had realized that ethics are not all at the same level. A two-level ethical system consists of metanorms (i.e., political norms) and personal ethical norms. Whereas metanorms are both legally and morally binding, personal ethical norms are only morally binding. Metanorms establish the conditions for the exercise of personal moral norms. [1]

Norton explicitly rejects moral minimalism and suggests a role for government in moral development. Taking a rather communitarian view of a person’s view of society, Norton contends that government should focus on helping people to realize their potential. For Norton, a just society is one in which an individual would be able to actualize his potential personal excellences. From his revisionist Platonist perspective, government should supply the preconditions for self-development that the individual is unable to supply and to which he is morally entitled. Among these necessary conditions are guaranteed subsistence, basic healthcare, and provision of appropriate education for children and adolescents in a variety of life-forming situations. An integrated self-actualized life requires both formal education and life-forming experiences that permit individuals the opportunity to explore life’s possibilities. The life choices one makes are founded on self-knowledge attained through exploration and experimentation as an adolescent in non-academic situations in a variety of youth service programs including apprenticeships, work study, community service programs, and a National Youth Service. Like Dewey, Norton suggests restructuring education by alternating academic courses and practical experiences and supporting youth public service.

As Norton puts it:

…the paramount function of government is to provide the necessary but non-self-suppliable conditions for optimizing opportunities for individual self-discovery and self-development. (DMD p.80)

Norton considers some implications of Plato’s The Republic for contemporary government and organizational management. One is that managers are distinct class of individuals including politicians whose vocation it is to manage. Others are that to be a good manager requires that a person know the good of the social organization as a whole that one manages and that he identifies his own good with the good of the whole organization. The result of the natural division of labor by individual excellences produces a type of management class who would be trustees of the public interest. Of course, this class would be the result of autonomous choices made during the progression of self-development through education especially at the stage of adolescence.

Norton argues that:

If we term both social engineering and the welfare state “maximal government” and the night-watchman state “minimal government”, then good government, eudaimonistically conceived, lies intermediate between them, as conducive government. (DMD p.166)   

Conclusion

Whereas PD explored the ethical and psychological dimensions of individual flourishing, DMD examined how political and social institutions and practices can support or impede the cultivation of moral virtues in individuals. DMD expands Norton’s analysis to include the role of the state and community in fostering moral development. It builds on the ideas introduced in PD but moves toward the view that political systems have a moral purpose beyond the protection of an individual’s negative rights and toward the notion that the state should be an active participant in moral education, shaping the conditions under which a person can develop virtues. DMD’s more communitarian focus is in tension with the ethical individualism of PD. PD offers a profound, original, and nearly flawless contribution to ethical thought by developing a solid foundation for understanding personal moral development and flourishing. However, Norton’s flawed theory of entitlement in PD leads him to go far off-track in DMD.

His entitlement theory opened the door for recurrent intrusion in people’s lives. Norton argues in DMD for people’s rights to things that cannot be self-provided. These are essentially claims to the positive performance of others. People have positive rights only at the expense of someone else’s negative rights. No political or social system can replace a person’s own responsibility for the character of his life. Norton’s view of the state as a moral educator risks imposing a state-sanctioned notion of virtue that could infringe on individual autonomy. This could be seen as paternalistic and undermining of the very autonomy that he seeks to promote in PD. Freedom is a prerequisite for the development of virtue. Any expansion of the role of the state beyond minimal government is undesirable. Norton’s case that both negative and positive rights must be derived from responsibilities is untenable.

Despite the above flaws, Norton’s work, primarily in PD, advances a metaphysics of authentic possibilities and an ethical individualism that is applicable to each person’s personal and social circumstances. His eudaimonistic view of the moral life in terms of perfecting one’s nature thereby attaining a state of flourishing provokes serious thought. His ideas deserve to be studied along with the ideas of contemporary thinkers writing from a neo-Aristotelian perspective including, but not limited to, Ayn Rand, Henry B. Veatch, Tibor R. Machan, Fred D. Miller, Lester Hunt, Douglas B. Rasmussen, and Douglas J. Den Uyl.

 

Note

{1} See Rasmussen and Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty, pp. 257-264.

Works Cited

Norton, David L. 1976. Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

______. 1991. Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Rasmussen, Douglas B. and Douglas J. Den Uyl. 2005. Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics. University Park. PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

…….

A shorter version of this essay, focusing on Personal Destinies, has been published on The Savvy Street.

 

 

Why has "Norms of Liberty" made a lasting impression on me?

 

Norms of Liberty is a work of political philosophy written by Douglas B Rasmussen and Douglas J Den Uyl, and published in 2005.

The blurb on Amazon provides a good description of what the book is about:

“How can we establish a political/legal order that in principle does not require the human flourishing of any person or group to be given structured preference over that of any other? Addressing this question as the central problem of political philosophy, Norms of Liberty offers a new conceptual foundation for political liberalism that takes protecting liberty, understood in terms of individual negative rights, as the primary aim of the political/legal order.” 

Rasmussen and Den Uyl argue for construing individual rights as metanormative principles. These principles establish the political/ legal conditions under which full moral conduct can take place.

The authors distinguish metanormative principles from normative principles that provide guidance for moral conduct within the ambit of normative ethics. This crucial distinction allows them to develop liberalism as a metanormative theory rather than as a guide for moral conduct.

The authors show that the moral universe can support liberalism without either being minimized or requiring morality to be grounded in sentiment or contracts. Rather, liberalism can be supported, and many of its internal tensions avoided, with an ethical framework of Aristotelian inspiration―one that understands human flourishing to be an objective, inclusive, individualized, agent-relative, social, and self-directed activity.

Readers who are looking for a more expansive synopsis should read Ed Younkins’s essay, ‘Rasmussen and Den Uyl’s Trilogy of Freedom and Flourishing’, published on The Savvy Street.

Some explanation of the authors’ use of the term ‘liberalism’ might be helpful at this point. As well as defending classical liberalism and libertarianism, the authors seek to defend other types of political liberalism (as the term is used in the United States) which still subscribe to some of the tenets of classical liberalism e.g. that people should be free to pursue their own conceptions of the good life.   

My purpose here is not to review the book but to explain why the book has made a lasting impression on me. First, I will explain why I thought the book made an important contribution when I first read it in 2007. Then, I will explain why I still think the book provides the most appropriate framework in which to consider the rights of individuals.

My initial impression

Rasmussen and Den Uyl advanced their argument for construing individual rights as metanormative principles in large part as a response to communitarian and conservative critics who claimed that liberalism had undermined its own principles.

I had read some communitarian literature prior to reading Norms of Liberty but I was more concerned about the threat to individual rights posed by people who wanted to make happiness a goal of national economic policy. The people concerned wanted to use survey data on average life satisfaction to monitor achievement of that goal. I was concerned that responses to life satisfaction surveys don’t give appropriate weight to everything that is important to people and that using such surveys to pursue a national happiness goal would interfere with individual choice. (I wrote an article about such matters in 2004. It can be found here.)

I read Norms of Liberty at a time when I was ready to move beyond utilitarianism. The welfare economics that I had been imbued with decades earlier seemed to imply that it would be good for governments to adopt aggregate welfare as an over-arching policy goal if only it was possible to measure individual utility in a manner suitable to be aggregated (or averaged) in some way. However, after some economists began to claim that life satisfaction surveys provided a way to do that, the potential conflict with individual liberty could not be ignored. It seemed wrong for liberty to be viewed as just an element in an individual’s utility function. But how could one avoid viewing liberty in that way if the sole goal of individuals is to maximize utility functions?

The answer that Norms of Liberty provided to me was that I needed to step aside from a framework in which all goals of individuals could be summarised neatly in terms of maximizing a nebulous concept referred to as “utility”. I needed to think more broadly in terms of individual flourishing as a multidimensional process. Liberty is integral to individual flourishing because individual flourishing is an inherently self-directed process.

I began blogging soon after reading Norms of Liberty. Some of my initial posts reflect the favourable impression the book had on me soon after I had read it. For example:  What does flourishing mean? , and Is Freedom and necessary condition for human flourishing?

 Later views

Over the years, I have discussed many different things on this blog.  Blogging has been a learning process. I cannot claim that the views I have expressed have always been philosophically coherent.  

Nevertheless, I claim a degree of consistency in advocating for a political/legal order which protects the possibility of individual self-direction, and ensures that the flourishing of any person or group is not given structural preference over any other. I also claim consistent optimism about the potential for the vast majority of individuals to flourish – with help from family and friends – if governments protect their natural rights and refrain from interfering with the manner of their flourishing. (I don’t deny that government assistance has helped some people to flourish but I observe that government assistance is often offered in a manner that encourages people to languish.)

Those ideas are also themes of my book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, as well as being reflected in many of the essays on this blog.

While re-reading Norms of Liberty a few days ago, I was struck by its relevance to recent political developments in many of the countries often referred to as western liberal democracies. When I first read the book, I had the impression that groups who sought to have their modes of flourishing given structural preference over others lacked the political power to implement their policies. At that time, the main threat to individual self-direction seemed to come from well-meaning paternalists who wanted to use the coercive powers of the state to make people happy.

More recently, it seems to me that some groups are increasingly seeking to use the coercive powers of the state to have their modes of flourishing given structural preference over others. I don’t see this tendency as being confined to any one religious or political group, although some are more prone than others to advocate restrictions on liberty.

One development that seems to me to be of particular concern is the increasing prevalence of the idea that freedom of speech should be restricted to protect people from being offended by what others may say about their ethnicity, religious views etc. If the legal system gives people greater incentives to take offence at what others say, it is reasonable to predict an increase in the extent to which people take offence, leading to demands for further restriction of freedom of speech. Threats of violence should be prohibited because they are incompatible with peaceful coexistence. Beyond that, however, restriction of freedom of speech is a slippery slope that is likely to increase, rather than lessen, conflict between different community groups.

Conclusion

My purpose in writing this essay has been to explain why Norms of Liberty, by Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl, has made a lasting impression on me.

At the time I first read Norms of Liberty, in 2007, I was particularly concerned about threats to liberty posed by the proposals of some utilitarians who want to make happiness a goal of national economic policy and to use survey measures of average life satisfaction to monitor achievement of that goal. I was concerned that average life satisfaction doesn’t adequately account for liberty. That provided the context in which I was ready to step aside from the idea that all the goals of individuals could be summarized in terms of utility maximization. It made more sense to think of individual flourishing as a multidimensional process which is largely self-directed and to think of liberty as the metanormative principle that protects the possibility of individual self-direction.

I still think the best defence of liberty is to view it as the means of protecting the possibility of individual self-direction, and ensuring that the flourishing of any person or group is not given structural preference over any other. While re-reading Norms of Liberty it struck me that since the book was written, groups seeking to have their modes of flourishing given structural preference over others have come to pose an increasing threat to liberty in the western liberal democracies. Peaceful coexistence among different groups is likely to break down if norms of liberty are not adequately defended.

Is Alexander Hamilton's ideal of a modern commercial republic still relevant today?

 

Alexander Hamilton was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He served as secretary to the Treasury from 1789 to 1795 during the presidency of George Washington.

I knew little about Alexander Hamilton’s contribution to American economic policy before reading Samuel Gregg’s book, The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World, 2022. Gregg suggests that America faces a choice between a form of state capitalism – top-down interventionism focused on achieving political objectives such as greater economic security for specific groups and “national security” – and a free market economy. He argues that in making the case for free markets it is helpful to take another look at the ideal of a modern commercial republic as espoused by Alexander Hamilton.

Centralization of powers

Prior to reading Gregg’s book, I knew that Hamilton had argued successfully for greater centralization of government powers than prevailed in the original confederation. On that basis, I had entertained the idea that he might possibly have been responsible for much that is wrong with the U.S. today.

Gregg presents a more positive view of Hamilton’s contribution. He suggests that integration of the states into a more unified commercial republic made it easier for Hamilton to apply principles of free trade among the states and between the U.S. and other countries.

Gregg’s line of reasoning poses a challenge both to libertarian globalists, who see national governments as the source of barriers to the functioning of free markets, and to economic nationalists who want governments to prevent foreign economic competition because they see it as a threat to national sovereignty. He challenges libertarian globalists by suggesting that “failure by the government to smooth the economic ups and downs which are part of life in a market economy risks opening the door to political movements that have no particular regard for human freedom”. He challenges economic nationalists by suggesting that tariffs and other measures that protect of American industry from foreign competition are harmful to Americans.

 It isn’t necessary for libertarian globalists, like myself, to abandon utopian thinking in order to see merit in effective unilateral action by national governments to promote free trade. At a national level, the case for free trade rests on it providing individual citizens and their descendants with the prospect of better opportunities than would otherwise be available to them.

To eliminate the excesses of statism, it is necessary for political leaders to exercise statecraft (or what Adam Smith and David Hume referred to as “the science of the legislator”. As Gregg puts it Smith and Hume recognized that:

 “the knowledge furnished by … integration of moral, political, and economic inquiry needed to be brought to bear upon society by statesmen and governments in the interests of its improvement”.

Gregg notes that although Edmund Burke’s involvement in economic policy was “attuned to political realities” he leaned strongly towards promoting greater commercial freedom within Britain’s empire and between Britain and other nations.

America’s Founding Fathers, including Alexander Hamilton, were also influenced by Adam Smith and David Hume.

Hamilton’s vision of a commercial republic

Samuel Gregg explains how Hamilton advanced his vision of a commercial republic in his contributions to the Federalist Papers and in his role as secretary to the Treasury. Hamilton’s vision of a modern civilized nation combined republican government and a private enterprise economy, with merchants subject to the discipline of competitive markets. He hints that character traits that make for commercial success – industry, innovation, economy, self-restraint, honesty, prudence – are also republican virtues.

Hamilton argued for free trade between the states and for revenue tariffs only on international trade. He suggested that tariffs “force industry out of its more natural channels into others in which it flows with less advantage”. He maintained that trade policy should be driven by national interest and was adamantly opposed to use of trade sanctions as an instrument of foreign policy.

What next?

Samuel Gregg ends his book by acknowledging that he doesn’t know whether there is a real possibility that an American commercial republic could emerge to shape America’s future. He hopes that it could on the basis that he can “see no reason why America cannot embrace the habits, incentives, and disciplines associated with markets while also grounding them in the language, norms, and virtues of the American experiment”.

Since 2022, when Gregg’s book was published, it has become clearer that the U.S. is likely to continue, for a few more years at least, down the path towards greater international trade protectionism.  The choice that the two major political parties are offering voters in the 2024 presidential election certainly does not include a candidate offering an alternative to higher trade barriers.

Unfortunately, the adverse impacts of increased trade protectionism in the U.S. cannot be guaranteed to result in a strong impetus for policy reversal. The U.S. economy is sufficiently large and diverse that increased barriers to international trade are likely to have relatively minor adverse impacts by comparison with those that would occur in most other countries if they followed similar policies.

It looks to me as though trade liberalisation is unlikely to occur in the U.S. until influential politicians come to see merit, from a foreign policy perspective, in supporting multilateral efforts to encourage trade among countries that have more than minimal regard for free market principles.

Meanwhile, Samuel Gregg’s book will hopefully be widely read in other countries where some current political leaders may be more receptive to Alexander Hamilton’s vision of a commercial republic based on free market principles.

Conclusion

Samuel Gregg’s book, The Next American Economy, urges Americans to adopt the ideal of a modern commercial republic, as originally espoused by Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton argued for the U.S. to adopt, unilaterally, the principle of free international trade on the grounds that this would serve the economic interests of Americans and promote republican virtues.

Unfortunately, American political leaders do not currently seem to be in the mood to re-endorse Hamilton’s vision of a modern commercial republic.

Hopefully, Gregg’s book will be widely read in other countries where some political leaders may be receptive to messages about the contemporary relevance of the role that free market polices played at an early stage in the economic and social development of the United States.

Do clinical delusions have anything in common with a mythology mindset?

 

In my discussion of Steven Pinker’s book, Rationality, I referred to his observation that people tend to have a reality mindset in the world of immediate experience and a mythology mindset when discussing issues in the public sphere. Although that is an accurate observation about a general tendency, delusions are also fairly common in the world of immediate experience.

The delusions that most of us experience are fairly harmless. For example, it may not do you much harm to believe that you are happier than average, even if you aren’t. That common delusion may help to explain why so many people walk around with smiles on their faces.

For some unfortunate people, however, the world of immediate experience includes delusional beliefs that are symptomatic of mental ill-health. These are referred to as clinical delusions.

The question I ask above has been prompted by my reading of Lisa Bortolotti’s recent book, Why Delusions Matter. Lisa Bortolotti is a philosopher who specializes in the philosophy of the cognitive sciences, including issues relating to mental illness. She observes that there is a strong overlap between clinical and non-clinical delusional beliefs. The non-clinical delusional beliefs that she discusses include beliefs that Pinker would associate with a mythology mindset.

A conversation context

Bortolotti notes that in any discussion between two people, you have a speaker and an interpreter swapping roles as the conversation proceeds. The speaker says something and the interpreter listens, making inferences about the speaker’s beliefs, desires, feelings, hopes and intentions on the basis of the speaker’s words, facial expression, tone of voice, previous behaviour and so on.

Interpretation becomes challenging when the interpreter suspects that the speaker may be delusional. The interpreter rarely has the information needed to assess that the speaker’s beliefs are false, so falsity cannot be a necessary condition for attribution of delusionality.

Three elements are often involved when the interpreter judges the speaker to be delusional:

• Implausibility: The interpreter finds the speaker’s beliefs to be implausible.
• Unshakeability: Speakers do not give up their beliefs in the face of counterarguments and counterevidence.
• Identity: The beliefs seem important to the image that speakers have of themselves.

Clinical delusions

Bortolotti offers what she describes as an “agency-in-context” model to explain clinical delusions. She explains:

“The adoption and maintenance of delusional beliefs are due to many factors combining aspects of who you are and what your story is (your genes, reasoning biases, personality, lack of scientific literacy, etc.) and aspects of how epistemic practices operate in the society where you live.”

The epistemic practices she refers to include what we learn at school about knowledge acquisition, and the stigma that makes it difficult for people with delusional beliefs to participate fully in public life.

There is no doubt that persecutory delusions are harmful to the speaker and others. They undermine the ability of speakers to respond appropriately to events, and often erode their relationships with others.

However, Lisa Bortolotti suggests that it is important for interpreters to understand that most delusions offer some benefits for speakers. Delusions “let speakers see the world as they want the world to be; make speakers feel important and interesting; or give meaning to speakers’ lives, configuring exciting missions for them to accomplish”.

Interpreters also need to understand that the underlying problems of speakers don’t disappear when they obtain insight about their delusions. They may become depressed when they approach reality without the filter of their delusional beliefs.

There is not much to be gained by attempting to reason with people whose beliefs are unshakeable. Bortolotti suggests that it is probably more productive for the interpreter and speaker to share stories rather than exchanging reasons for beliefs. Exchanging stories can show how delusional beliefs emerged as reactions to situations that were difficult to manage. While sharing stories, interpreters have opportunities “to practice curiosity and empathy in finding out more” about underlying problems.

Conspiracy delusions

From an interpreter’s viewpoint, a speaker’s beliefs about the existence of conspiracies often have similar characteristics to clinical delusions. They are implausible, unshakeable, and closely tied to the speaker’s self-image.

Bortolotti emphasizes that those who hold conspiracy delusions often claim to have special knowledge of events – they claim to be experts, or to know who the real experts are. Identifying as a member of a group is often also important. Non-members often refer to members of such groups in a derogatory way e.g. QAnon supporters and anti-vaxxers. However, people are often attracted to conspiracy delusions promoted by like-minded people whom they trust. The act of sharing a delusional story can be a signal of commitment to a particular group.

Comments

Lisa Bortolotti’s book has improved my understanding of delusions in a couple of different ways. First, it has given me a better appreciation that delusions offer some benefits to the people who hold them, and those benefits help to explain the unshakeability of delusional beliefs.

Second, viewing delusions within the context of a conversation between a speaker and an interpreter is helpful in drawing attention to the value judgements involved in assessing whether the speaker’s beliefs are delusional.

My main criticism of the book is that the author seems to me to be biased in favour of “the official version” of events, even though she acknowledges that contrary beliefs are sometimes vindicated. The most obvious example bias is her apparent reluctance to give credence to the possibility that Covid19 may have originated in a lab in Wuhan.

I am pleased that my reading of the book did not leave me with the impression that the author believes that it is delusional to have an unshakeable belief in the importance of the search for truth. In emphasizing that value judgements are involved in assessing whether beliefs are delusional, Lisa Bortolotti seems to me to be providing readers with a better understanding of the meaning attached to the concept of delusion in clinical and non-clinical settings, rather than casting doubt on the existence of reality.

How authoritarian are American political leaders?

 

A few days ago, I took the Political Compass test for a second time. The test, devised by politicalcompass.org , requires individuals to respond to questions which indicate where their views place them on scales labelled Authoritarian - Libertarian and Left - Right. My position had not changed since I last took the test 7 years ago (see below) but as I looked around the site, I noticed the chart (reproduced above) which suggests that the main contenders in the U.S. 2020 election held relatively authoritarian and right wing views (with Biden somewhat less authoritarian than Trump).

Does the political compass make sense?  The horizonal axis measures economic freedom, with people at the right end favoring more economic freedom. That corresponds, more or less, to the conventional left-right spectrum. The vertical axis measures personal freedom, with people whose views place them at the top end favoring greater restriction of personal freedom. It seems to me that the positioning of a person on a political compass incorporating a personal freedom axis is much more informative than attempting to position them on only one axis.  However, the labelling adopted is not ideal. To be considered a libertarian, in my view it is necessary to advocate economic freedom as well as personal freedom.

I was somewhat surprised by the placement of both Biden and Trump as favoring a relatively high level of restrictions on personal freedom. I don’t follow American politics closely enough to dispute how accurate that placement might be within that context.

However, by international standards, it would make little sense to view Biden or Trump as advocates of authoritarian policies. The policies they have advocated in their efforts to win votes have not been greatly different from those currently prevailing in the United States. By international standards, people in the U.S. have relatively high levels of personal and economic freedom.

The results of the latest Human Freedom Index, published by Cato and the Fraser Institute, can be used to illustrate the point. The Human Freedom Index is the result of painstaking efforts to compile a vast amount of data relating to economic freedom and personal freedom in 165 countries.

It is interesting to see the relative position of various countries in a comparable scatter diagram showing economic freedom and the x axis and personal freedom on the y axis. In the diagram below, which I have labelled “Ideological Map of the World”, the values on the personal freedom axis are in reverse order to make it comparable to the political compass. The horizontal and vertical lines drawn on the diagram are positioned at median levels of economic and personal freedom.

The position of the U.S. is clear from the chart. The levels of both personal freedom and economic freedom in the U.S. are comparable to those of other liberal democracies, and far greater than in China or Russia.

My libertarian friends in the U.S. may have good reasons to view their national political leaders as excessively authoritarian, but they are competing for the votes of people who, by international standards, enjoy relatively high levels of personal and economic freedom.