Toward a Free and Virtuous Society

It is a telling commentary on our times that the political and ethical cognoscenti associate freedom with licentiousness, antinomianism, atomistic individualism, and a wide array of similar vices antithetical to virtue.¹ Despite this attitude on the part of many professional intellectuals, common sense tells any sane person that a society that is both free and virtuous is the place in which he or she would most want to live, but what exactly would it mean to advocate and work toward the construction of such a society? In what follows, I hope to offer a modest exploration of the notions of virtue and freedom and, to the extent that any limited examination allows, to analyze the ethical, economic, and practical premises upon which these noble notions rest. The purpose of this analysis is to establish a firm defense against the common objection that liberty is incompatible with virtue. Additionally, I will attempt to show that social structures characterized by liberty will best promote human progress and provide the context for the development of virtue.

One frequently hears the comment: "Liberty is fine, but it mustn't be taken to an extreme." According to this line of reasoning, liberty is only one virtue among many and should be balanced with numerous other virtues. The mistake here is that it is assumed that liberty or freedom is a virtue.² Now this is certainly an honest mistake, especially for those of us who live in the United States, where liberty is highly prized and embraced optimistically, but liberty should not be seen as a virtue in itself. Liberty is, rather, the context of actions and social institutions that facilitate or enable virtue. In other words, the requisite condition for a virtuous act is the ability to exercise choice in that action. We can thus say, then, that the predicate for virtue is liberty.

An animal cannot behave virtuously because it lacks the faculty of reason; it is only the human capacity for reflection and purposeful action that enables man to act in a virtuous manner. Indeed, the exact opposite is true as well: No one can be said to be behaving viciously who does not have the capacity of moral reflection toward his actions. If conscious moral action is to have any virtue or vice, then free choice must be presupposed. Freedom therefore is closely linked to the nature of the human person, since free choice depends upon man's ability to reason. Any person who fails to employ his God-given capacity for reason is acting below his human potential. So, an understanding of the nature of the human person is fundamental to any discussion of man's freedom.

Broadly speaking, we might describe the human person as possessing both a physical and spiritual nature. Different religious traditions will describe these aspects of the person divergently, but each description must attempt to account for the tangible material components of the person, such as bones and hair, flesh and blood, and for the spiritual or transcendent reality of the human condition. This fact of transcendence may be expressed as the soul or spirit; that creative impulse that tugs us beyond the corporeality of our existence; that produces art, literature, music, and philosophy; and that, ideally, expresses itself in surrender to the call of God.

The Reverend Edmund Opitz, a Congregationalist minister who has been writing on these themes for many years, puts it this way: "Political theory in our tradition is based on the assumption that men must be free in society because each person has a destiny beyond society which he can work out only under conditions of liberty."³ If it is true that each individual has such a destiny, then he cannot be treated merely as a means to an end, but as an end in himself. And if each individual is an end in himself, then it would be a gross violation of the essential nature and basic dignity that each person possesses to treat him as a means to someone else's ends. In addition to the violation of human dignity that would result, such a treatment of people (as means rather than ends in themselves) would undermine the very foundation of civil organization. No one, not even the perpetrator of human rights violations, ultimately would be safe in such a situation.

The human person is composed of material and spiritual aspects, but this juxtaposition does not imply a metaphysically schizophrenic entity. These two aspects of the human character make up the human reality: Human beings are flesh and spirit. We are not like angels, who just happen to have bodies. We are not like beasts, who have no conscience. We are human beings: corporeal and spiritual.

The spiritual dimension of our character has to do with such things as honor, integrity, and so forth; indeed, many have sacrificed their physicality for the sake of these higher things.⁴ The material dimension of our character pertains to the more mundane aspects of reality: material scarcity, property, economics, and the like. There is an interplay and mutual complementarity between the material and spiritual aspects of human existence. Marriage clearly demonstrates, in a beautiful way, the interplay of the physical and the spiritual; this is most apparent when procreation is the result. Jacques Maritain calls the interplay of these distinct aspects the effort to distinguish in order to unite. This phenomena can also be seen in the social realm when, for example, personal liberty dovetails with economic liberty.

In many circles it is fashionable to defend personal liberties even when these are misconceived. For example, the ultimate right of singers to sing what they wish and of writers to write what they wish is rarely disputed in a liberal society, but when it comes to the right of traders to trade what they wish and buyers to buy what they wish, for some reason many view this as another matter altogether. Nonetheless, the connection between economic and personal liberties ought to be evident; it matters little to the writer to be told that he has the right to think and write as he wishes if he is not permitted to buy a typewriter or a computer, or if he does not have the right to sell his work freely to anyone who will buy it. The freedom to exchange information itself, such as in advertising—and, for that matter, in trading itself, which is really an exchange of information represented by an item's price—illustrates the connectedness of the personal and the economic, or the spiritual and physical realms of ultimate existence.

Additionally, the curtailment of economic liberty leads naturally to a curtailment of personal liberty in much the same way that the enhancement of economic liberty may lead to the enhancement of personal liberty.⁵ Indeed, a cogent argument could be made that a significant reason for the collapse of communism in Eastern and Central Europe had to do with the communications revolution. Because devices like computers, facsimile machines, and even photocopiers make the exchange of information easier, it became necessary for totalitarian regimes to either permit a freer exchange of information or become economically stagnant. This, in turn, made it considerably more difficult for totalitarian regimes to effectively control other kinds of information, such as political ideas and dissenting opinions.

Once it is established that liberty is the necessary context for virtue, it is important to delineate the appropriate and legitimate use of violence or coercion—that is, the threat of aggressive force—in society. It is my contention that physical violence of any kind may only be used to defend the rights of people and property, to enforce restitutionary sanctions for damages inflicted to people or property, or to satisfy the demands of justice, i.e., by giving each his due. Everything else is best left to the noncoercive sphere as the first resort where additional and effective norms apply with mechanisms for adjudication and enforcement. The objection to employing violence for the sake of mere aggression stems from the nonaggression axiom, which simply states that physical aggression against person or property is morally wrong. This axiom plays a significant role in the political philosophy I am presenting. One great visionary of this political philosophy, Lord Acton, described it as follows: "Liberty is not a means to a higher political end," he writes. "It is itself the highest political end."⁶ Clearly, Lord Acton did not think that personal liberty is itself the highest end of man, and neither ought we.

The question then arises, "How would social standards be maintained if people were free to disregard them?" In response, let us recall that Lord Acton's emphasis is upon political freedom, which is chiefly concerned with the legal use of aggressive force. Political freedom has nothing to do with "free love" or "free thought," nor does it call for freedom from "social authority" as exercised through the church, workplace, family, and tradition.⁷ Lord Acton's statement can be interpreted in the following manner: Insofar as people are concerned with the maintenance of political order, their primary focus should be upon the limitation of power and the advancement of human liberty. Human rights are first and best protected by strictly limiting the state's power of employing aggressive force; when the state is used for wealth redistribution, unjust wars, inflation, and the general regulation of the economy, such actions violate Lord Acton's dictum about the political order. This is why it is essential to maintain a distinction between society and the state, between voluntary and coercive institutions, and between authority and power.⁸

We want to acknowledge that Acton's claim, "Liberty is the highest political end of man," may appeal to a wide variety of philosophical foundations. For example, it may be grounded in radical skepticism, utilitarianism, hedonism, Kantian a priorism, Aristotelian natural rights, or in the Thomistic concern for the common good. In my thinking, some philosophical frameworks provide a more secure moral foundation for liberty than others. Hedonism, for example, provides no sound basis for a good society or a free market, even if the choice to act in this manner is voluntarily adopted. A free society with free markets does not necessarily result in the kingdom of God on earth. But then again, a free society does not pretend to be utopia. If the advocates of free markets in a free society were to wrongly identify the City of God with the City of Man, they would make the same error that Christian socialists of various stripes—from the social gospel movement through today's recently deceased liberation theology—have committed. Advocates of a free society may not allege, either for it or the free market, more than they are designed to accomplish. On this point, Opitz's analysis is once again helpful: "The market will exhibit every shortcoming men exhibit in their thinking and peaceful acting, for—in the broadest sense—it is nothing else but that … Catalog human shortcomings and you have compiled a list of the weaknesses and limitations of the market."⁹ This is why it is essential to emphasize that the market is necessary but not sufficient, that something more than economic liberty is essential for the establishment of a free and virtuous society, and that an economic calculus does not in itself give us the good.

The fact of scarce resources, human frailty, and the problem of original sin are each part of our existential condition from which only the kingdom of God can deliver us. Freedom alone can make no such claim, but what it can do, indeed, what history attests that the freedom of exchange has accomplished with remarkable proficiency, has been to maximize human resources to the greatest general benefit of humankind. The obligation of the state, then, is to secure, protect, and enforce the rights of individuals to maximize their creative potential. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, "The idea of rights is nothing but the conception of virtue applied to the world of politics."¹⁰ Beyond that, the promotion of virtue is best left to the province of natural society, that is, done within the spheres of authority of the Church, the family, the community, and at the demands of tradition.

The free market, as any entrepreneur knows, can function from time to time as a moral tutor by fostering rule-keeping, honesty, respect for others, and courage.¹¹ To function effectively, markets require a certain moral context and perspective on the part of entrepreneurs who participate in market activities. What business could long exist without a reputation for honesty, quality workmanship, civility, and courtesy? For if a firm establishes a reputation for abusing its customers, people will cease to do their business there; in a market system based upon the principle of voluntary exchange, consumers have the freedom to refuse to do business with such firms.

The practical intelligence displayed in market activity is only its most obvious virtue; this can be seen both in the consumer looking for a good deal, as well as in the businessperson who must take note of others' interest by tending to the needs and desires of the consumer. In this respect, the system in which the entrepreneur must operate promotes what George Gilder has called altruistic behavior.¹² In a free-market system, people succeed not by oppressing their neighbors but by serving them. Though certain unscrupulous individuals do take advantage of others, such behavior is anathema to the principles of the free society, which forbid force and fraud. In a truly free economic system, we do not exploit each other in our economic transactions. Rather, the opposite is true; we are given the opportunity to serve each other.

Voluntary institutions and the market are more trustworthy and effective than the state in the promotion of traditions, manners, ethics, and virtue. Michael Novak superbly describes the manner in which the market encourages effective laws and traditions that bolster virtue and social cohesion. He writes,

These matters are too important to be entrusted to bureaucrats and politicians. It is not social authority to which I object but to coercive power, especially when it becomes centralized, as it has a tendency to do. No, authority ought to rest instead in a society's intermediary institutions—those social arrangements of authority that provide a buffer between the individual and the state. Furthermore, to the extent that the state intervenes into these institutions, society's moral fabric is weakened. The noted sociologist Robert Nisbet writes, "Only because of the restraining and guiding effects of such authority does it become possible for human beings to sustain so liberal a political government as that which the Founding Fathers designed in this country."¹⁴

It might be argued that it is counterintuitive to believe that human beings left free of constraint to follow their own choices and goals will cooperate with one another in such a way as to produce a cohesive social system. Some will no doubt argue that when such "individualism" is given free reign, the ties of the community will weaken and social structures will wane. The very word individualism is laden with such negative connotations, we would do well to explore why this is so.

Each human person maintains an individual and distinct identity. Thoughts and emotions are experienced by the individual human mind. We are, even from the moment of conception, biologically distinct entities; though we abide within our mothers, we are not part of our mothers. Yet, to say that humans are individuals and in some sense autonomous, is not to contend that individuals are atomistic and isolated from the rest of the human family. We use language, which is a manifestly social behavior, and we come from families.

The insight of the French statesman Frederic Bastiat can help us grasp the fundamental unity between the social and individual dimensions of the human person. According to Bastiat, "Action flows from individuality, while the consequences overlap onto communities."¹⁵ Moreover, "The whole of human society is made up of intertwined solidarities" that flow "from the communicating nature of intelligence."¹⁶ Bastiat, virtually unknown to our contemporary culture, brings to the discussion of the relation between groups and individuals a keen and common-sensical approach. His most famous essay, The Law, anticipates some of the great economic questions we grapple with today, and I believe that a renewed consideration of Bastiat's thought will enable us to clear away many popular misunderstandings. On the question of human community, or what a good nineteenth-century Frenchman would call "fraternity," Bastiat says, "It is impossible for me to separate the word fraternity from the word voluntary. I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed, and thus justice being legally trampled underfoot."17

Bastiat saw how the various restrictions on human liberty resulted in hampering the development of community, what he called "human solidarity." This is most apparent in those restrictions affecting free trade, despite the moral intent of the legislators; such interventions interrupt the "diffusion of knowledge" that is essential if human resources are to be widely distributed and brought to the use of the human community. The advantages of a free society, Bastiat contended, "are hampered by the restricted system which tends to isolate peoples."¹⁸ Thus, for Bastiat, it is liberty that most effectively promotes authentic human community, whereas "restriction," or what we today call interventionism, isolates people by dividing them into warring factions.

Our primary concern must not be whether people will become radically isolated from each other and turn into the much-denounced "atomistic individual," but rather, which community will people choose to join? Once this is answered, we may investigate the extent to which people will invest in any given community, and whether or not authentic solidarity will emerge from such relationships.

So the question turns on the kind of community that is appropriate to free, rational human beings. The alternatives are manifold: There is the community of the hive, in which individual dignity and rights are not given proper consideration. Alternatively, there is the community of the prison, in which human freedom, right of association—or nonassociation, for that matter—and individual creativity are not important. However, a community suitable for free individuals, which is progressive in the best and truest sense, and which encourages economically productive cooperation among its members, dramatically differs from the communities of the hive and the prison—it is what we call civilization.

In conclusion, I would like to note something that has become so apparent that to state it almost makes it redundant. Consider for a moment the events of the past few years. The colossal wreck of collectivism in Eastern and Central Europe—and, we pray, one day soon in China and Cuba—as well as the decay and imminent collapse of the Western welfare states have permanently and irrevocably indicated the practical uselessness and moral bankruptcy of statism, that was and is, in Hayek's apt phrase, a "fatal conceit." The work that remains to be done is to clarify in our minds and in our spheres of influence that the choice of totalitarianism with virtue or liberty with vice represents a false dichotomy.

Liberty is indeed, as Lord Acton so elegantly puts it, "the delicate fruit of a mature civilization."¹⁹ We can build, we must strive for, we cannot accept anything less than a society that is both free and virtuous.

Robert A. Sirico is president and co-founder of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. Holding a master’s degree in Divinity from the Catholic University of America, Father Sirico is the author of numerous journal and newspaper articles on public policy, economics, and theology. He is also a full-time parish priest, a member of the Mount Pelerin Society, and an international lecturer on economics and religion.