The Person and His Society; E. Opitz

Edmund A. Opitz The Person and His Society EVERY PERSON pursues his individ ual goals in the context of some so ciety. The norms, customs, habits and fashions of that society seem at times to hinder him, but at the same time they are a sustaining presence. Likewise the laws of his nation. Man is said to be a political animal, in the sense that society is his native habitat. But he's also a political an imal in one further respect; people create governments in their own im age. This is obvious in a democratic system. It is self-evident that the politi cians elected to public office are men who embody the consensus. The sucThe Reverend Mr. Opitz Is a member of the staff of The Foundation for Economic Education, a seminar lecturer, and author of the book, Religion and Capi talism: Allies, Not Enemies. This article Is adapted from a lecture delivered at The Center for Constructive Alternatives at Hillsdale College In Michigan.

20 cessful candidates are those who most persuasively promise what vot ers believe government should de liver; politicians operate on that slippery spectrum bounded, on the one hand, by what voters expect and _demand of government, and by what they will put up with from govern ment, on the other. A nation tends to get the government it deserves, in the sense that pressure groups will eventually organize to make wrongful demands upon govern ment, unless the nation's ttaristoc racy of virtue and talent" -men with the ability to teach what expecta tions and demands are legitimate are heeded. When educators, philosophers, and men of letters fail to properly nour ish the intellect, the conscience and the imagination of significant seg ments of a society, they betray a saTHE PERSON AND HIS SOCIETY 21 cred trust as teachers of mankind., and in the wake of their defection a secular religiousness becomes the popular faith. Leviathan-the om nipotent State-is the god of this faith. Men serve Leviathan in the confident expectation that he will provide his votaries with ease, com. fort, security, and prosperity. The modern world does indeed provide more of these things for more people than earlier periods, but it also ex acts a toll in the form of perpetual warfare, social unrest, hardening of the arteries, softening of the brain, and a troubled spirit.

We Are the Enemy When we attempt to assess the modern malaise we are tempted to say: (1\n enemy hath done this thing." But the truth of the matter is that we have done it to ourselves-the actively guilty, the passively guilty, the ignorant, the stupid, and all the innocent bystanders-we are all in this thing together. Every society has its character is, tic pecking order, and ours is no ex ception. Certain men, certain ideas, certain life styles are at the top of the pecking order; the masses ad. mire and seek to emulate these men, ideas and life styles. If these ideas and styles are not life enhancin~r, there is frustration and thwarting at the deep levels of human nature and a whole society is sidetracked. The Remnant who keep the faith are superfluous; society has no use for their services. Such a society will necessarily get Leviathan-a gov ernment which matches its warped and ill-favored nature. Edmund Burke puts the matter plainly in a letter to constitutents in Bristol: Believe me, it is a great truth, that there never was, forj any long time, a corrupt representative of a virtuous people; or a mean, sluggish, careless people that ever had a good government of any form.

Civilizations rise and fall, nations come and go. Why this occurs is the subject of learned speculation and debate. There is little unanimity among scholars, who disagree among themsel ves even as to the yardsticks by which decline and progress might be measured. But even though the overall movement of a civilization is difficult to detect, there are two trends in the modern world in all progressive countries, where the facts are clear; the first has to do with politics, the second with eco nomics. The thrust of eighteenth century Whiggery and of Classical Liberal ism was to pry various sectors of life out from under the yoke of the State, to free them from political controls. The aim was to shrink government to a limited, constabulary function. The twentieth century has reversed this trend, with a vengeance. The theory of the free society has come under increasing attack, and totali22 THE FREEMAN January tar ian governments have emerged in nation after nation.

As Classical Liberalism expanded the voluntary sector of society the economic controls of the Mercantil ist era were removed from business, industry, and agriculture. Adam Smith demonstrated that-within the framework of the Rule of Law, which Liberalism supplied-the economic order was subtly regu lated by the buying habits of con sumers; and the free economy began to emerge within western nations. Freedom in economic transactions was never fully achieved in any na tion, but we made greater progress in that direction in the United States than elsewhere, and we paid lip ser vice to the ideal of the market econ omy. But ideals change. National Planning The new freedom did not bring about utopia, or a paradise on earth, and in the aftermath of this disap pointment, a new scheme captured the imagination of the intellec tuals-nation-wide planning for the achievement of national purposes and goals. The New Deal marked a major change in the popular atti tude toward the free economy; ef forts to frame the rules necessary for attaining competition in the marketplace gave way to the urge to put the marketplace under bureau cratic regulation. The free economy was to be phased out, step by step.

I am a believer in the free society and in the free economy. The free society is to my taste because I like its variety, I like the diversity it en courages, I like the spontaneity it permits. I also like the free economy. I like it because it is more produc tive than any alternative; people eat better, have more things, are more secure in their possessions. Free dom works, and therefore I resist the collectivizing trends of the twentieth century which would transform people into creatures of the State. But my belief in freedom is grounded, ultimately, on my read ing of the nature of the human per son. Man, I believe, is a created being; there is a sacred essence in him. Man is on this planet in conse quence of a mighty plan-of whose outlines we may gain faint intima tions-and his life is used to further a vast purpose-of which we are given an occasional clue. If man is indeed a created being, and the members of a society act upon their belief that such is their nature, they will begin to frame political theories consonant with their convictions.

They will erect political structures designed to safeguard the sacred es sence in each person; the law will attempt to maximize each person's opportunity to realize his earthly goals. Believing that God wills men to be free, such a society will regard 1981 THE PERSON AND HIS SOCIETY 23 any trespass on the true liberty of even the lowliest individual to be a thwarting of some intent of the Cre ator. The deep conviction that each human being is a person and not a thing will generate ideas of equall, inherent rights; and this central dogma will exert pressure on per sonal attitude and conduct, on gov ernment and law, on every level of the free society, to bring all into har mony with the key belief that man is a created being. But suppose man is not a created being. Suppose the human being is not a person, but a thing. If the uni verse is simply brute fact, mindless and meaningless; reducible in the final analysis to mass and motion-then man is a thing just like any other item in the catalogue of the planet's inhabitants.

The Materialistic Concept of Human Beings Suppose we assume-as do many of our contemporaries-that man is the chance product of the randorln movement of material particles. Man's haphazard appearance on a fifth rate planet is, then, a fluke; he just happened to occur, as the acci dental by-product of physical and chemical forces. He's merely a part of nature, like every other species on the planet. Except that the human species is more foolish than the rest, loves to be bamboozled, and, has such a gift for make-believe tha.t its continued existence is problem atic! When we confront a strange ob ject we try to size it up, so we'll know better how to deal with it. If it's a person we get onto a person-to-per son basis; but if it's a thing we treat it like a thing. We make a crucial decision here, and the way we de cide depends upon our basic philos ophy, our understanding of the fun damental nature of the universe.

If we have embraced some variety of Materialism as our philosophy then we must eventually come to the logical conclusion that human beings are things, 'and once we con clude this we'll begin to treat people as things. People then come to be regarded as units of the State, as ob jects to be manipulated, as pawns in a political game to be used up in some national plan, as guinea pigs for experiments in genetic engineer ing, as robots programmed for uto pia. Shades of 1984! I am prepared to argue that we get the free society only after the consensus has firm convictions about the sacredness of persons, and that we get the free economy only after we have the free society. Now, when we reflect on the nature of persons we involve ourselves in some pretty deep philosophical and theological questions, and some of our contem poraries are impatient with such speculation. They believe that the intellectual opponents of the free 24 THE ·FREEMAN January market can be devastated by straightforward economic argu ments, and once we have the free market everybody will be doing his own thing and we'll get the free so ciety as a matter of course. Things are not this simple; if they were, freedom in human affairs would be the rule; voluntary transactions and .unhampered exchange would then mark the economic life of all na tions. The reverse is true: freedom has always been in jeopardy, and the liberties which expanded during the Classical Liberal Era are now contracting everywhere.

The Conditions of Freedom There is a deep-rooted urge in each person to be unhampered in the pur suit of his own life goals, but this individual instinct for freedom has only rarely in history been institu tionalized as the free society. Like wise, each person has a deeply rooted desire to conserve his energy and improve his material well-being; trade and barter are as old as man kind. But despite the economizing urge the free economy seldom ap pears on this planet. The free society and the free econ omy did emerge in the eighteenth century and freedom expanded dur ing the nineteenth. An excellent lit erature came into being to expound and defend political and economic freedom, despite which freedom re treated during the twentieth century because there was a leak at the philosophical level, where we deal with the nature of personhood and the meaning of life. The economizing spirit is con cerned to save energy and resources; it strives ceaselessly to diminish in puts and maximize outputs. Which is to say that economics is the drive to get more for less. Now, unless this more-for-Iess impulse is counterbal anced by noneconomic forces it de velops into a something-for-nothing mentality. And when the some thing-for-nothing mentality takes over the free economy dies of auto intoxication.

The advice to ((do your own thing" has been repeated so often as to be an incantation, and if freedom could be had by casting a spell then the free society would be a shoo-in. But the free society cannot be sustained by magic, and lacking a philosophy of personhood, the advice to ((do your own thing" is an invitation to disas ter. The weak doing their thing are at the mercy of the strong doing theirs, and the unscrupulous have the upper hand over the rest. I belong to a bicycle club and have two friends with whom I ride. Joe is a weightlifter, a powerful man, and a ((square." Fred is a middle-aged re tiree with strong affinities for the youthful life styles of today. We three were in a resort town for a bike rally, and in addition to cyclists there were many young people whose sar1981 THE PERSON AND HIS SOCIETY 25 torial and tonsorial disarray pro-, claimed their devotion to individual liberty. The three of us stopped for refreshments at a soft drink stand.

and watched the passers-by. A pair of especially unkempt and un washed young men strolled by, and. Joe-the muscular Usquare"-mut-· tered, half under his breath, ~~I'd like to wring their necks!" Fred, a gent1e~ and sympathetic soul, said, ~~But,. Joe, they're only doing their thing." To which my obvious retort was,. ~~Yes, Fred, but Joe's thing is wring·· ing hippies' necks!" which has prevailed during the past two centuries, has many facets and some undeniable strengths. But it has one glaring defect, it has no ad equate doctrine of personhood. This ideology is reductionist in tendency, whenever it contemplates the Self. It reduces men to animals and ani mals to machines. It defines thought as subvocal activity, dismisses rea son as rationalization, explains mind as a mere reflex of activity among the brain cells, and invokes the con ditioned reflex to account for every variety of behavior.

I am painting with a broad brush The Rule of Law in order to highlight a drift or tenClassical Liberalism was built dency in modern thought, ~~a mean, around the idea of the Rule of Law, sluggish, careless" streak in the equal justice for all, and thus it realm of ideas. When a thinker uses erected certain guidelines and stan-a finely tuned .instrument-his dards, whose observation maxi-mind-to reach the conclusion that mized each man's liberty in society. thought cannot be trusted, we have And it framed these rules because evidence of corruption in philo so each person is a sacrosanct individ-phy. Let me illustrate., ual, free in virtue of his very nature. When convictions about the Philosopher Kings sacredness and mystery of person-There are philosophers of consid hood are energized, then men will erable and deserved reputation who seek to erect institutional safe-have dreamed up world views in guards around each individual, and which human beings figure as erea we move toward the free society. But. tures of a lesser stature than per if the prevailing philosophy has a sons. Be it noted, however, that the faulty doctrine of personhood, then philosopher guilty of devaluating people lose that sense of their true personhood generously exempts humanness which would lead them himself from the strictures he ap to strive for an ordered liberty, and plies to others! Given his blind spot, we lapse into the closed society. he concludes that it is only other Modern thought, the ideology people, the mass of mankind, who 26 THE FREEMAN January fall within the scheme of manipula ble objects; the philosopher who re gards us as unpersons finds another category for himself. He's the philos opher king!

Bertrand Russell, in a celebrated essay entitled (~ Free Man's Wor ship," declares that ((Man is the product of causes which had no pre vision of the end they were achiev ing; his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves, and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms." In short, we are-along with our beliefs-merely the end result of a chance arrange ment of material particles. It follows, on Lord Russell's own showing, that his opinion that such is the case is itself only a reflex of an ((accidental collocation of atoms." What point is there in publishing this opinion unless its author re gards it as being closer to the truth than alternative views? But can the designation true or false be applied to an ((accidental collocation of atoms" or any product thereof? By the internal showing of Russell's statement, his own beliefs are below the idea level; they are subreason.

Furthermore, the publishing of these words bespeaks a wish on the au thor's part to persuade ·other people of the validity of his position. Bu.t why bother to offer enlightenment to creatures whose beliefs are noth ing but the chance result of blind forces? Bertrand Russell was immensely gifted as a philosopher and mathe matician, but his philosophy is defi cient in its attempts to account for self-hood; it has no adequate place for persons. And if Russell is defi cient here, how much more deficient are the lesser men who instruct us in the meaning of life! Philosophical Entrapment The widespread irrationalism of the present day represents the dead end of a philosophy which developed a world view wherein was no proper niche for the creator of that world view-the philosopher himself! It takes a brilliant and ingenious mind to arrive at such a paradoxical con clusion which so blatantly denied the obvious. Any fool knows that white is white and black, black; so does the wise man. But in between the fool and the wise man are those who are able to argue with perverse brilliance that white is a kind of black.

C. A. Campbell, emeritus profes sor of philosophy at Glasgow Uni versity, makes a sound observation: (~s history amply testifies, it is from powerful, original and ingenious thinkers that the queerest aberra tions of philosophic theory often em anate. Indeed it may be said to re quire a thinker exceptionally endowed in these respects if the more paradoxical type of theory is to be expounded in a way which will make 1981 THE PERSON AND HIS SOCIETY 27 it seem tenable even to its author-let alone to the general philosophic public." To be a man is to search for mean·· ing. Philosophy begins in wonder, and we can't help wondering what life is all about, and how human lifE~ fits into the total scheme of things. We try to decipher the mysteries of the universe, hoping to obtain a feV\r clues to help us play our roles in life with zest and joy. We wonder if human values and ideals find rein·· forcement in the nature of things, and if the values that concern us most deeply-love and honor, truth, beauty and goodness-are realities.

Or are they merely illusions we cling to for comfort in an otherwise cheer·· less existence? We consult the philosophers, and all too many of them are mired in the cults of unreason, meaningless-· ness, and absurdity. Man is a cosmie accident, they assure us; the uni·· verse is a moral and aesthetic blank, completely alien to us. We cannot trust our own thought processes, they say, as they simultaneously downgrade mind and insist that we accept their theories! Well, they can't have it both ways! Of course, if mat ter is the ultimate reality, mind is discredited. But if this discredited instrument is all we have to rely on, how can we put any confidence in its findings? If untrustworthy reason tells us that we cannot trust reason, then we have no logical ground for accepting the conclusion that rea son is untrustworthy! Well, I don't trust the reasoning of people who champion the irrational, and I do know that our reasoning powers may be-like anything else misused. But when human thought is guided by the rules of logic, un dertaken in good faith, and tested by experience and tradition, it is an instrument capable of expanding the domain of truth. Reason is not infal lible, but it is infinitely more to be trusted than nonreason!

A Religious World View Deep down within us we know with solid assurance that we really do belong on this planet; that we are the key component of the total rich ness. We know this, but we need re minding-as in these words from the gifted and unorthodox thinker, An thony M. Ludovici: The profound and cultivated man of wanton spirits, whose sense of self is the outcome of healthy impulses springing from the abundant energy and serenity of his being, not only affirms his own self and the universe with every breath he takes, but, by the intimate knowledge he acquires of life through the intensity of his own vitality, he feels deeply at one with everything else that lives. The intensity of his feeling of life helps him to perceive, behind the exter nal differences of living phenomena, that quality and power which unites him to them. The luxuriant profligacy 28 THE FREEMAN January of nature finds a reflection in his soul, but it also finds an answering note in his feelings. Profound enough not to be deceived by surfaces, he feels· the dark mystery behind himself and the rest of life, and what is more important, guesses at the truth that he himself cannot, any more than the daisy or the antelope, stand alone, or dispense with the power which is enveloped in that dark mystery. (Man: An Indictment, p.

204) These are the authentic accents of a religious· world view, and a citi zenry in whom this vision lives will invest each person with a sacred ness, a protected private domain, a body of rights and immunities. The law, then, is established to secure these prerogatives of the person, and government is limited to those func tions which maximize liberty and justice for all. This is Jefferson's UEqual and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion." This is the free society, and it is not an autonomous social order, sus pended in midair, it is based neces sarily on a religious foundation. Freedom in the Market when Options Are Open Even less autonomous is the free market. Freedom of action in the economic sphere does not beget it self, but a society which maximizes liberty for all persons equally has freedom in economic transactions as well. The free economy, in other words, is simply the label attached to human behavior in the market place when our options are open, as they should be.

ttThe heavens themselves, the planets and this centre observe de gree, priority and place." Shake speare was right; there is an over arching Order and Pattern built into the nature of things. Everything has its rightful place in that Order, and each thing after its own kind mani fests its peculiar nature-except man. Man does not simply and natu rally manifest his own nature; he is open-ended! Unlike the other orders of creation, man is not infallibly guided by instinct-he is free. Not being locked into a behavior pat tern, he has to establish contact with his deeper self, and then properly interpret and carry out its man dates. Only then may he learn to ex press his true being by conforming himself and all his works to the uni versal Pattern. Plato, in the Laws, refers to an ancient saying that God, who holds in his hands beginning, end and middle of all that is, moves through the cycle of nature, straight to His end. And Plato adds: Justice always follows Him and pun ishes those who fall short of the divine law. To that Law, he who would be happy holds fast and follows it in all humility and order; but he who is lifted up with pride or money or honour or beauty, who has a soul hot with folly and youth and 1981 THE PERSON AND HIS SOCIETY 29 insolence, and thinks that he has no need of a guide or ruler, but is able of himself to be the guide of others, he, I say, is deserted of God; and being thus deserted he takes to himself others who are like him, and jumps about, throw ing all things into confusion, and many think he is a great man. But in a short time he pays the penalty of justice and.

is utterly destroyed and his family and. state with him. (Laws, IV, 716) We are the architects of our own Leviathan. Whenever a people goes slack, whenever the mean, sluggish, and careless are moved up to the top of the pecking order, then we get an unlovely society to match our own ill nature. But this need not be. The way we express our nature is not fixed in one mode only; we are free to change the pattern of our lives. There is a right way, a way that is good for man, a way that meets the needs and demands of human na ture and the human condition, a way that fulfills the law of our being. Walking in that way, men and women find their proper happiness in a free and prosperous common wealth. ® IDEAS ON LIBERTY The Case for Economic Fll"eedom THE doctrine of man held in general in nineteenth-century America argued that each man was ultimately responsible for what happened to him) for his own salvatilon, both in the here and now and in the hereafter. Thus, whether a man prospered or failed in economic life was each man's individual responsibility: each man had a right to the rewards for success and, in the same sense, deserved the punishment that came with failure. It followed as well that it is explicitly immoral to use the power of government to take from one man to give to an other, to legalize Robin Hood. This doctrine of man found its economic counterpart in the system of free enterprise and, hence, the system of free enterprise was accepted and respected by many who had no real understanding of its subtleties as a technique for organizing resource use.

As this doctrine of man was replaced by one which made of man a helpless victim of his subconscious and his environment-responsible for neither his successes nor his failures-the free enterprise system came to be rejected by many who still had no real understanding of its actual operating characteristics. BENJAMIN A. ROGGE (1920-1980) John K. Willia,ms THE BUSINESS BOGY MYTHS die hard. Everybody knows that the words, t1\.las!poor Yorick! I knew him well," are taken from Shakespeare's Ham let. Everybody knows that Sherlock Holmes was given to muttering, ttElementary, my dear Watson!" Ev erybody knows that Cinderella wore glass slippers to the handsome prince's ball. Unfortunately everybody is wrong. The relevant lines in Hamlet read, t1\.las!poor Yorick! I knew him, Hor atio ... " Sherlock Holmes' famous dictum doesn't occur even once in the fifty-six short stories and four novels Sir Arthur Conan Doyle penned about his celebrated detec tive. The seventeenth-century· French text of Cinderella asserts' that the good lady's slippers were vair (ermine) not verre (glass); Charles Perrault, who translated the The Reverend Doctor John K. Williams is chaplain and teacher of classics at St. Leonard's College, Brighton, Victoria in Australia.