Minor Swing

You Feet's too Big

Readings WWI

History Overview  

In June 1914, Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot by Serbian nationalists in Sarajevo. As a result of the escalation of threats and mobilization orders following the assassination, in mid-August of that same year World War I began. A war which pitted Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) against Great Britain, France, Russia, and Italy (the Allied Powers). The Allies were joined in 1917 by the United States of America. The Great War brought about unprecedented levels of carnage, due to its use of trench warfare and modern weaponry such as machine guns, tanks and mustard gas. By the time World War I ground to a halt in November 1918, approximately nine million soldiers had been killed and 21 million more wounded. The Treaty of Versailles, signed the following year, set post-war borders from Europe to the Middle East, established the League of Nations as an international peace organization, and forced Germany to pay for the war via reparations and the loss of territory.

PREPARE: Read the following excerpt from Woodrow Wilson’s speech (1), given on April 2, 1917, before Congress and the German government’s appeal to America not to enter the war on the Allied side (2):

1.      We are now about to accept…battle with [Germany] and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

2.      We [Germans] are a nation that wishes to lead a quiet and industrious life.  This need hardly be stated to you Americans.  You, of all others, know the temper of the German who lives within your gates. Our love of peace is so strong that it is not regarded by us in the light of a virtue; we simply know it to be an inborn and integral portion of ourselves.  Since the foundation of the German Empire in the year 1871, we, living in the center of Europe, have given an example of tranquility and peace, never once seeking to profit by any momentary difficulties of our neighbors. Everyone is aware that we have produced great philosophers and poets; we have preached the gospel of humanity with impassioned zeal.  America fully appreciates Goethe and Kant, looks upon them as corner-stones of elevated culture.  Do you really believe that we have changed our natures, that our souls can be satisfied with military drill and servile obedience? We and all our soldiers have remained, however, the same lovers of music and lovers of exalted thought.  We have retained our old devotion to peace. Firmly believing in the justice of our cause, all parties, the conservatives and Christians; liberals and the socialists, have joined hands. All disputes are forgotten, one duty exists for all, the duty of defending our country. The war has severed us from the rest of the world; all our cable communications are destroyed.  But the winds will carry the mighty voice of justice even across the ocean.  We trust in God, and have confidence in the judgment of right-minded men. 

PREPARE: After reading through the previous excerpts, compare and contrast the reasoning in each example. What elements of the conflict are highlighted in each excerpt? Which do you find more compelling, and why? Be prepared to share in class. 

Over There

Dada Manifesto

Dada Manifesto

Utilitarianism

                                                        Jeremy Bentham, in his office.

What is Utilitarianism?

In normative ethics, a tradition stemming from the late 18th- and 19th-century English philosophers and economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill that an action is right if it tends to promote happiness and wrong if it tends to produce the reverse of happiness—not just the happiness of the performer of the action but also that of everyone affected by it. Such a theory is in opposition to egoism, the view that a person should pursue his own self-interest, even at the expense of others, and to any ethical theory that regards some acts or types of acts as right or wrong independently of their consequences. Utilitarianism also differs from ethical theories that make the rightness or wrongness of an act dependent upon the motive of the agent; for, according to the Utilitarian, it is possible for the right thing to be done from a bad motive.

The nature of Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is an effort to provide an answer to the practical question “What ought a man to do?” Its answer is that he ought to act so as to produce the best consequences possible.

Basic concepts

In the notion of consequences the Utilitarian includes all of the good and bad produced by the act, whether arising after the act has been performed or during its performance. If the difference in the consequences of alternative acts is not great, some Utilitarians do not regard the choice between them as a moral issue. According to Mill, acts should be classified as morally right or wrong only if the consequences are of such significance that a person would wish to see the agent compelled, not merely persuaded and exhorted, to act in the preferred manner.

In assessing the consequences of actions, Utilitarianism relies upon some theory of intrinsic value: something is held to be good in itself, apart from further consequences, and all other values are believed to derive their worth from their relation to this intrinsic good as a means to an end. Bentham and Mill were hedonists; i.e., they analyzed happiness as a balance of pleasure over pain and believed that these feelings alone are of intrinsic value and disvalue. Utilitarians also assume that it is possible to compare the intrinsic values produced by two alternative actions and to estimate which would have better consequences. Bentham believed that a hedonic calculus is theoretically possible. A moralist, he maintained, could sum up the units of pleasure and the units of pain for everyone likely to be affected, immediately and in the future, and could take the balance as a measure of the overall good or evil tendency of an action. Such precise measurement as Bentham envisioned is perhaps not essential, but it is nonetheless necessary for the Utilitarian to make some interpersonal comparisons of the values of the effects of alternative courses of action.

Methodologies

As a normative system providing a standard by which an individual ought to act and by which the existing practices of society, including its moral code, ought to be evaluated and improved, Utilitarianism cannot be verified or confirmed in the way in which a descriptive theory can; but it is not regarded by its exponents as simply arbitrary. Bentham believed that only in terms of a Utilitarian interpretation do words such as “ought,” “right,” and “wrong” have meaning and that whenever anyone attempts to combat the principle of utility, he does so with reasons drawn from the principle itself. Bentham and Mill both believed that human actions are motivated entirely by pleasure and pain; and Mill saw that motivation as a basis for the argument that, since happiness is the sole end of human action, the promotion of happiness is the test by which to judge all human conduct.

One of the leading Utilitarians of the late 19th century, a Cambridge philosopher, Henry Sidgwick, rejected their theories of motivation as well as Bentham's theory of the meaning of moral terms and sought to support Utilitarianism by showing that it follows from systematic reflection on the morality of “common sense.” Most of the requirements of commonsense morality, he argued, could be based upon Utilitarian considerations. In addition, he reasoned that Utilitarianism could solve the difficulties and perplexities that arise from the vagueness and inconsistencies of commonsense doctrines.

Most opponents of Utilitarianism have held that it has implications contrary to their moral intuitions—that considerations of utility, for example, might sometimes sanction the breaking of a promise. Much of the defense of Utilitarian ethics has consisted in answering these objections, either by showing that Utilitarianism does not have the implications that they claim it has or by arguing against the moral intuitions of its opponents. Some Utilitarians, however, have sought to modify the Utilitarian theory to account for the objections.

Criticisms

One such criticism is that, although the widespread practice of lying and stealing would have bad consequences, resulting in a loss of trustworthiness and security, it is not certain that an occasional lie to avoid embarrassment or an occasional theft from a rich man would not have good consequences, and thus be permissible or even required by Utilitarianism. But the Utilitarian readily answers that the widespread practice of such acts would result in a loss of trustworthiness and security. To meet the objection to not permitting an occasional lie or theft, some philosophers have defended a modification labelled “rule” Utilitarianism. It permits a particular act on a particular occasion to be adjudged right or wrong according to whether it is in accordance with or in violation of a useful rule; and a rule is judged useful or not by the consequences of its general practice. Mill has sometimes been interpreted as a “rule” Utilitarian, whereas Bentham and Sidgwick were “act” Utilitarians.

Another objection, often posed against the hedonistic value theory held by Bentham, holds that the value of life is more than a balance of pleasure over pain. Mill, in contrast to Bentham, discerned differences in the quality of pleasures that made some intrinsically preferable to others independently of intensity and duration (the quantitative dimensions recognized by Bentham). Some philosophers in the Utilitarian tradition have recognized certain wholly nonhedonistic values without losing their Utilitarian credentials. A British philosopher, G.E. Moore, a pioneer of 20th-century Analysis, regarded many kinds of consciousness—including love, knowledge, and the experience of beauty—as intrinsically valuable independently of pleasure, a position labelled “ideal” Utilitarianism. Even in limiting the recognition of intrinsic value and disvalue to happiness and unhappiness, some philosophers have argued that those feelings cannot adequately be further broken down into terms of pleasure and pain and have thus preferred to defend the theory in terms of maximizing happiness and minimizing unhappiness. It is important to note, however, that even for the hedonistic Utilitarians, pleasure and pain are not thought of in purely sensual terms; pleasure and pain for them can be components of experiences of all sorts. Their claim is that, if an experience is neither pleasurable nor painful, then it is a matter of indifference and has no intrinsic value.

Another objection to Utilitarianism is that the prevention or elimination of suffering should take precedence over any alternative act that would only increase the happiness of someone already happy. Some recent Utilitarians have modified their theory to require this focus or even to limit moral obligation to the prevention or elimination of suffering—a view labelled “negative” Utilitarianism.

Historical survey

The ingredients of Utilitarianism are found in the history of thought long before Bentham.

Antecedents of Utilitarianism among the ancients

A hedonistic theory of the value of life is found in the early 5th century BC in the ethics of Aristippus of Cyrene, founder of the Cyrenaic school, and 100 years later in that of Epicurus, founder of an ethic of retirement, and their followers in ancient Greece. The seeds of ethical universalism are found in the doctrines of the rival ethical school of Stoicism and in Christianity.

Growth of classical English Utilitarianism

In the history of English philosophy, some historians have identified Bishop Richard Cumberland, a 17th-century moral philosopher, as the first to have a Utilitarian philosophy. A generation later, however, Francis Hutcheson, a British “moral sense” theorist, more clearly held a Utilitarian view. He not only analyzed that action as best that “procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers” but proposed a form of “moral arithmetic” for calculating the best consequences. The Skeptic David Hume, Scotland's foremost philosopher and historian, attempted to analyze the origin of the virtues in terms of their contribution to utility. Bentham himself said that he discovered the principle of utility in the 18th-century writings of various thinkers: of Joseph Priestley, a dissenting clergyman famous for his discovery of oxygen; of the Frenchman Claude-Adrien Helvétius, author of a philosophy of mere sensation; of Cesare Beccaria, an Italian legal theorist; and of Hume. Helvétius probably drew from Hume, and Beccaria from Helvétius.

Another strand of Utilitarian thought took the form of a theological ethics. John Gay, a biblical scholar and philosopher, held the will of God to be the criterion of virtue; but from God's goodness he inferred that God willed that men promote human happiness.

Bentham, who apparently believed that an individual in governing his own actions would always seek to maximize his own pleasure and minimize his own pain, found in pleasure and pain both the cause of human action and the basis for a normative criterion of action. The art of governing one's own actions Bentham called “private ethics.” The happiness of the agent is the determining factor; the happiness of others governs only to the extent that the agent is motivated by sympathy, benevolence, or interest in the good will and good opinion of others. For Bentham, the greatest happiness of the greatest number would play a role primarily in the art of legislation, in which the legislator would seek to maximize the happiness of the entire community by creating an identity of interests between each individual and his fellows. By laying down penalties for mischievous acts, the legislator would make it unprofitable for a man to harm his neighbour. Bentham's major philosophical work, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), was designed as an introduction to a plan of a penal code.

With Bentham, Utilitarianism became the ideological foundation of a reform movement, later known as “philosophical radicalism,” that would test all institutions and policies by the principle of utility. Bentham attracted as his disciples a number of younger (earlier 19th-century) men. They included David Ricardo, who gave classical form to the science of economics; John Stuart Mill's father, James Mill; and John Austin, a legal theorist. James Mill argued for representative government and universal male suffrage on Utilitarian grounds; he and other followers of Bentham were advocates of parliamentary reform in England in the early 19th century. John Stuart Mill was a spokesman for women's suffrage, state-supported education for all, and other proposals that were considered radical in their day. He argued on Utilitarian grounds for freedom of speech and expression and for the noninterference of government or society in individual behaviour that did not harm anyone else. Mill's essay “Utilitarianism,” published in Fraser's Magazine (1861), is an elegant defense of the general Utilitarian doctrine and perhaps remains the best introduction to the subject. In it Utilitarianism is viewed as an ethics for ordinary individual behaviour as well as for legislation.

Late 19th- and 20th-century Utilitarianism

By the time Sidgwick wrote, Utilitarianism had become one of the foremost ethical theories of the day. His Methods of Ethics (1874), a comparative examination of egoism, the ethics of common sense, and Utilitarianism, contains the most careful discussion to be found of the implications of Utilitarianism as a principle of individual moral action.

The 20th century has seen the development of various modifications and complications of the Utilitarian theory. G.E. Moore argued for a set of ideals extending beyond hedonism by proposing that one imaginatively compare universes in which there are equal quantities of pleasure but different amounts of knowledge and other such combinations. He felt that he could not be indifferent toward such differences. The recognition of “act” Utilitarianism and “rule” Utilitarianism as explicit alternatives was stimulated by the analysis of moral reasoning in “rule” Utilitarian terms by Stephen Toulmin, a British philosopher of science and moralist, and by Patrick Nowell-Smith, a moralist of the Oxford linguistic school; by the interpretation of Mill as a “rule” Utilitarian by another Oxford Analyst, J.O. Urmson; and by the analysis by John Rawls, a Harvard moral philosopher, of the significance for Utilitarianism of two different conceptions of moral rules. “Act” Utilitarianism, on the other hand, has been defended by J.J.C. Smart, a British-Australian philosopher.

Effects of Utilitarianism in other fields

The influence of Utilitarianism has been widespread, permeating the intellectual life of the last two centuries. Its significance in law, politics, and economics is especially notable.

The Utilitarian theory of the justification of punishment stands in opposition to the “retributive” theory, according to which punishment is intended to make the criminal “pay” for his crime. According to the Utilitarian, the rationale of punishment is entirely to prevent further crime by either reforming the criminal or protecting society from him and to deter others from crime through fear of punishment.

In its political philosophy Utilitarianism bases the authority of government and the sanctity of individual rights upon their utility, thus providing an alternative to theories of natural law, natural rights, or social contract. What kind of government is best thus becomes a question of what kind of government has the best consequences—an assessment that requires factual premises regarding human nature and behaviour.

Generally, Utilitarians have supported democracy as a way of making the interest of government coincide with the general interest; they have argued for the greatest individual liberty compatible with an equal liberty for others on the ground that each individual is generally the best judge of his own welfare; and they have believed in the possibility and the desirability of progressive social change through peaceful political processes.

With different factual assumptions, however, Utilitarian arguments can lead to different conclusions. If the inquirer assumes that a strong government is required to check man's basically selfish interests and that any change may threaten the stability of the political order, he may be led by Utilitarian arguments to an authoritarian or conservative position. On the other hand, William Godwin, an early 19th-century political philosopher, assumed the basic goodness of human nature and argued that the greatest happiness would follow from a radical alteration of society in the direction of anarchistic Communism.

Classical economics received some of its most important statements from Utilitarian writers, especially Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. Ironically, its theory of economic value was framed primarily in terms of the cost of labour in production rather than in terms of the use value, or utility, of commodities. Later developments more clearly reflected the Utilitarian philosophy. William Jevons, one of the founders of the marginal utility school of analysis, derived many of his ideas from Bentham; and “welfare economics,” while substituting comparative preferences for comparative utilities, reflected the basic spirit of the Utilitarian philosophy. In economic policy, the early Utilitarians had tended to oppose governmental interference in trade and industry on the assumption that the economy would regulate itself for the greatest welfare if left alone; later Utilitarians, however, lost confidence in the social efficiency of private enterprise and were willing to see governmental power and administration used to correct its abuses.

As a movement for the reform of social institutions, 19th-century Utilitarianism was remarkably successful in the long run. Most of their recommendations have since been implemented unless abandoned by the reformers themselves; and, equally important, Utilitarian arguments are now commonly employed to advocate institutional or policy changes.

Summary and evaluation

As an abstract ethical doctrine, Utilitarianism has established itself as one of the small number of live options that must be taken into account and either refuted or accepted by any philosopher taking a position in normative ethics. In contemporary discussion it has been divorced from adventitious involvements with the analysis of ethical language and with the psychological theory with which it was presented by Bentham. Utilitarianism now appears in various modified and complicated formulations. Bentham's ideal of a hedonic calculus is usually considered a practical if not a theoretical impossibility. Present-day philosophers have noticed further problems in the Utilitarian procedures. One of them, for example, is with the process of identifying the consequences of an act—a process that raises conceptual as well as practical problems as to what are to be counted as consequences, even without precisely quantifying the value of those consequences. The question may arise whether the outcome of an election is a consequence of each and every vote cast for the winning candidate if he receives more than the number necessary for election; and in estimating the value of the consequences, one may ask whether the entire value or only a part of the value of the outcome of the election is to be assigned to each vote. There is also difficulty in the procedure of comparing alternative acts. If one act requires a longer period of time for its performance than another, one may ask whether they can be considered alternatives. Even what is to count as an act is not a matter of philosophical consensus.

These problems, however, are common to almost all normative ethical theories since most of them recognize the consequences—including the hedonic—of an act as being relevant ethical considerations. The central insight of Utilitarianism, that one ought to promote happiness and prevent unhappiness whenever possible, seems undeniable. The critical question, however, is whether the whole of normative ethics can be analyzed in terms of this simple formula.

After the Ball

After the Ball, published in 1892 became the first song to sell over a million copies and began an era in which popular music increasingly came to be differentiated from the classical art music tradition.

Adam Smith

Excerpts from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations 

Book I, Chapter 1. Of the Division of Labor: THE greatest improvement in the productive powers of
labor, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or
applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labor....To take an example, therefore, the
trade of the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business, nor acquainted with the use of the
machinery employed in it, could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part
are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth
points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving, the head; to make the head requires two or three
distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade
by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner,
divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some factories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them.

I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of
them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and
therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they
exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound
upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among
them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of
forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day.
But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been
educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps
not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper
division and combination of their different operations....

The division of labor, so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase
of the productive powers of labor. The separation of different trades and employments from one
another seems to have taken place in consequence of this advantage. This separation, too, is generally called furthest in those countries which enjoy the highest degree of industry and improvement; what is the work of one man in a rude state of society being generally that of several in an improved one.....This great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of labor, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labor, and enable one man to do the work of many....

It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division
of labor, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to
the lowest ranks of the people. Every workman has a great quantity of his own work to dispose of
beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every other workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity, or, what comes to the same thing, for the price of a great quantity of theirs. He supplies them abundantly with what they have occasion for, and they accommodate him as amply with what he has occasion for, and a general plenty diffuses itself through all the different ranks of the society....

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By restraining, either by high duties, or by absolute prohibitions, the importation of such goods from
foreign countries as can be produced at home, the monopoly of the home-market is more or less
secured to the domestic industry employed in producing them. Thus the . . . high duties upon the
importation of corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, give a like advantage to the growers of that commodity. The prohibition of the importation of foreign woolens is equally
favorable to the woolen manufacturers. The silk manufacture, though altogether employed upon foreign materials, has lately obtained the same advantage. The linen manufacture has not yet obtained it, but is making great strides towards it. Many other sorts of manufacturers have, in the same manner, obtained in Great Britain, either altogether, or very nearly a monopoly against their countrymen. . . .

That this monopoly of the home-market frequently gives great encouragement to that particular
species of industry which enjoys it . . . cannot be doubted. But whether it tends either to increase the
general industry of the society, or to give it the most advantageous direction, is not, perhaps,
altogether so evident. . . .

The natural advantages which one country has over another in producing particular commodities are
sometimes so great, that it is acknowledged by all the world to be in vain to struggle with them. By
means of glasses, hotbeds, and hotwalls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine too can be made of them at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland? But if there would be a
manifest absurdity in turning towards any employment, thirty times more of the capital and industry of the country, than would be necessary to purchase from foreign countries an equal quantity of the
commodities wanted, there must be an absurdity, though not altogether so glaring, yet exactly of the
same kind, in turning towards any such employment a thirtieth, or even a three hundredth part more of either. . . . As long as the one country has those advantages, and the other wants (them, it will always be more advantageous for the latter, rather to buy of the former than to make. It is an acquired advantage only, which one artificer has over his neighbor, who exercises another trade; and yet they
both find it more advantageous to buy of one another, than to make what does not belong to their
particular trades. Merchants and manufacturers are the people who derive the greatest advantage from this monopoly of the home market. The prohibition of the importation of foreign cattle, and of salt provisions, together with the high duties upon foreign corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, are not near so advantageous to the graziers and farmers of Great Britain, as other regulations of the same kind are to its merchants and manufacturers. Manufacturers, those of the finer kind especially, are more easily transported from one country to another than corn or cattle. It is in the fetching and carrying manufacturers, accordingly, that foreign trade is chiefly employed. In manufactures, a very small advantage will enable foreigners to undersell our own workmen, even in the home market. It will require a very great one to enable them to do so in the rude produce of the soil. If the free importation of foreign manufacturers were permitted, several of the home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them, perhaps, go to ruin altogether, and a considerable part of the stock and industry at present employed in them, would be forced to find out some other employment. But the freest importation of the rude produce of the soil could have no such effect upon the agriculture of the country.

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Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for
whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which
he has in view. But the study of his own advantage, naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society….

….As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value, every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in m any other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for
the public good….

….The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ
their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and
which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it….

It is thus that every system which endeavors, either by extraordinary encouragements to draw
towards a particular species of industry a greater share of the capital of the society than would
naturally go to it, or, by extraordinary restraints, force from a particular species of industry some
share of the capital which would otherwise be employed in it, is in reality subversive to the great
purpose which it means to promote. It retards, instead of accelerating, the progress of the society
towards real wealth and greatness; and diminishes, instead of increasing, the real value of the annual
produce of its land and labor.

All systems either of preference of of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the
obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way,
and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of
men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society. According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society….

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It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner,
but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their
self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.

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The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the
toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. What is bought with money or with goods is
purchased by labor as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body. That money or those goods indeed save us this toil. They contain the value of a certain quantity of labor which we exchange for what is supposed at the time to contain the value of an equal quantity. Labor was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labor which it can enable them to purchase or command.

Rousseau and Burke

Jean-Jacque Rousseau has been remembered as the philosopher behind the ideals of the French Revolution; however, this is not exactly true. Rousseau believed in the popular will, in other words, he wanted something like universal suffrage and an elected aristocracy. Rousseau believed that society’s laws were rooted in the social contract. According to his theory, authority is granted by the people in return for goods from those in power. As a result, if the government does not provide those goods, then its authority may be reduced or eliminated. In addition to these thoughts, Rousseau also argued for a simple, rural lifestyle governed by simplicity and reason.  

Edmund Burke, on the other hand, has been remembered as the first person to predict the eventual violence of the French Revolution.  Burke believed that political systems shouldn’t be governed by reason, as reason cannot be trusted. Instead, Burke believed that tradition is the best way to organize our lives. By following older models, Burke believed we could ensure gradual change. Gradual change is much safer, and more respectful towards human nature than radical shifts, even if they are governed by reasonable theories. An interesting aspect of Burke’s thought is his argument that while the French Revolution was wrong, because it was rooted in rational thought, the American Revolution was correct, because it simply asked to be given back its old traditional rights.

Please be prepared to share in class.

• 1.       Do you believe that we can trust our own rational thoughts? Explain.
• 2.       Can tradition be rational? Explain.
• 3.       Whose (Rousseau’s or Burke’s) opinions resonate more with your own? Explain.

Waterloo