Tag: Philosophy

Today’s Extreme Rationalism, F.A. Hayek, and Elite Thinking

Theodore A. Gebhard

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “The Dark Side of the Enlightenment” (April 7-8, Weekend Edition), Yoram Hazony laments the proponents’ of pure reason failure to acknowledge the contributions of tradition, religion, and nationalism to human progress. He identifies Harvard Professor and cognitive psychologist, Steven Pinker, as an especial exemplar of this elevation of the Enlightenment to singular status, a status Mr. Hazony considers to be the height of arrogance. Discussing the significant positive role that tradition, religion, and other human institutions have made to human progress, Mr. Hazony concludes by stating that “[e]nlightenment overconfidence has gone badly wrong often enough to warrant serious doubts about claims made in the name of reason—just as doubt is valuable in approaching other systems of dogma. Such doubts would counsel toleration for different ways of thinking. National and religious institutions may not fit with the Enlightenment, but they may have important things to teach us nonetheless.”

Mr. Hazony’s opinion piece is exceptionally thought provoking and well worth reading. For me, his look at the dark side of the enlightenment brings to mind F. A. Hayek’s distinction between what he called “constructivist rationalism” – the belief that complex social problems, like engineering problems, can be solved by using human reason – and a more limited rationalism grounded in a recognition that no single human mind (or even a group of minds) has the capacity to grasp all of the variables that affect human interactions.  Hence, the more complex the social problem, the less adequate is human reason, properly understood, as a tool to solve the problem without adverse unintended consequences.  Hayek believed that those adverse consequences more often than not outweigh any good results.  Therefore, long-standing existing arrangements whose origins may not be precisely known should be given due respect, as they may be superior to what comes of rationalist intervention.  Regrettably, the elites in Washington, Brussels, and Davos are blind to this lesson.  Instead, these elites see no limitations to human reasoning (at least in their hands), exalt centralized planning, and look to state power (and themselves at the levers of this power) to implement their directives, always to the diminution of human freedom and often with long run results detrimental to the mass of people.

Peter Singer’s Impoverished Ethical Prescriptions

Theodore A. Gebhard

This past weekend in the Wall Street Journal, Alexandra Wolfe wrote about her interview with Princeton professor, Peter Singer. In the article, Ms. Wolfe describes Singer’s views on philanthropy. In this regard, Singer, a professor of moral philosophy, contends that ethics demands that people, especially people of means, donate a substantial portion of their income – as much as one third – to charities. He thinks substantial donations to the developing world are particularly in order.

As concerns the developing world, I found it striking that Singer is wholly silent as to the reasons why poverty is endemic, let alone how existing institutions might be altered so as to encourage a better state of material well-being over the long term. Instead, his “ethical” mandate is simply to donate money and when that runs out, donate still more money.

I have submitted a Letter to Editor laying out my thoughts in this regard. Below I reproduce the letter.

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In her Weekend Confidential piece about Peter Singer (Review, April 4-5, 2015), Alexandra Wolfe quotes the Princeton professor, as saying, “if you’re fortunate enough to be a part of the more affluent billion in the world, to live ethically, you have to do something to help those who are less fortunate, who just happened to have been born in impoverished countries and that’s part of living an ethical life.”  As Ms. Wolfe discusses, what Mr. Singer means is that successful persons — persons who have already created a lot of value for others —  have an ethical obligation to give away a substantial portion of their wealth.  Nowhere, however, is there any indication that Mr. Singer understands or even has thought about why countries are impoverished in the first place.  Instead, Mr. Singer seems self-satisfied with his feel-good ethics based on wealth redistribution regardless of the efficacy of such transfers. 

In point of fact, as the important work of the development economists, the late Peter Bauer and Hernando de Soto, shows, countries are largely poor, not because of resource scarcity, but because of insecure property rights and the absence of rule of law, which prevents the development of vibrant wealth-producing free markets.   Hence, simply pouring money into poor countries does little for long-term sustainable development.  Rather, the proven recipe for bringing billions of people out of poverty consists of establishing necessary legal institutions and fostering capitalism with as few fetters as possible.  So, it would seem that “living an ethical life” might be better judged by the extent to which successful persons teach the principles of free markets than by how many checks they write.  Put another way, you can give a poor man a fish, or you can teach him to fish.  I am sure that the eminent ethics professor’s heart is in the right place, but it would do him well to obtain a modicum of economic knowledge and economic literacy before telling the rest of us how to live ethically.

Theodore A. Gebhard