A Reasoned Ethics

Henry Hazlitt certainly needs no introduction to the readers of national review. In the last decades he has been one of the most consistent and systematic defenders of personal liberty and, above all, of a free economy against all forms of materialism, “fatalism” and collectivism. Not content, however, with an exposition of only the practical advantages of our free (or near-free) economic order, he has felt impelled to probe deeper and to look for its moral foundations. In this search he has developed what could be called not an entire philosophy, but at least a system of morality with its own rational cogency.

This book is an impressive achievement: it is lucidly written in a language any educated person can understand: it avoids the jargon of those scholars who cannot really handle the English language; and it offers us a true panorama of the various efforts to establish a system of morals on a rational foundation. Which morals? Basically those which guided Western civilization during its early pagan phase and, even more, during its Christian phase, and which are now under attack from various quarters: from a materialistic determination stemming from the grandfather of democracy, the Marquis de Sade (so little known as a political thinker); from “biologism,” a solipsistic hedonism; from inroads made by Asian agnostic notions (even if these now seem rooted in “Anglo- Saxon” groves of academe). Mr. Hazlitt’s outlook is, perhaps, deistic— this I feel though I cannot put my finger on it; but in the domain of ethics, deism and theism speak at least an analogous language and they really should make common cause. Hazlitt’s repeated statement that ethics is a means rather than an ultimate end should occasion no quarrel with the theist.

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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Henry Hazlitt certainly needs no introduction to the readers of national review. In the last decades he has been one of the most consistent and systematic defenders of personal liberty and, above all, of a free economy against all forms of materialism, “fatalism” and collectivism. Not content, however, with an exposition of only the practical advantages of our free (or near-free) economic order, he has felt impelled to probe deeper and to look for its moral foundations. In this search he has developed what could be called not an entire philosophy, but at least a system of morality with its own rational cogency.

This book is an impressive achievement: it is lucidly written in a language any educated person can understand: it avoids the jargon of those scholars who cannot really handle the English language; and it offers us a true panorama of the various efforts to establish a system of morals on a rational foundation. Which morals? Basically those which guided Western civilization during its early pagan phase and, even more, during its Christian phase, and which are now under attack from various quarters: from a materialistic determination stemming from the grandfather of democracy, the Marquis de Sade (so little known as a political thinker); from “biologism,” a solipsistic hedonism; from inroads made by Asian agnostic notions (even if these now seem rooted in “Anglo- Saxon” groves of academe). Mr. Hazlitt’s outlook is, perhaps, deistic— this I feel though I cannot put my finger on it; but in the domain of ethics, deism and theism speak at least an analogous language and they really should make common cause. Hazlitt’s repeated statement that ethics is a means rather than an ultimate end should occasion no quarrel with the theist.