The Ethics of Capitalism: The Moral Side of the Free Market

Arguments against capitalism often take a moral tone, and accuse capitalism of deifying avarice: of making greed into a virtue. Who wants to defend an economic system which amounts to codified selfishness?

Such attacks are misguided on multiple fronts.

A polemic against capitalism, if it does not further specify what it is condemning, is fundamentally ill-founded, because the word ‘capitalism’ possesses multiple distinct, different, and mutually exclusive definitions. On the one hard, there is ‘crony capitalism,’ in which a small number of companies develop relationships with the government, in the process inducing the government to so regulate trade and commerce that only these companies have the advantage, and that the majority of companies are burdened by regulation and unable to effectively compete: such “crony capitalism” is opposed to any intuitive sense of fairness.

On the other hand, there is “free market capitalism,” which seeks precisely to correspond to this intuitive sense of fairness: the job of the government is to be a neutral referee or umpire, allowing companies to compete fairly by offering various products at various prices.

In addition to those two types of capitalism, one can even make the counterintuitive argument that Marxist communism or socialism is a type of capital: it argues that the “means of production” should be jointly owned by all the people, in the form of government ownership — and the means of production is nothing else than capital. Marxism, in the form of socialism or communism, can be characterized as “state capitalism.”

If one is to find fault with capitalism, then one must specify which type of capitalism one is vilifying.

Crony capitalism is easy game: it is almost universally seen as unfair, to the extent that even those who engage in it take pains to hide their activity. Beyond that, crony capitalism is of no utility to the citizens: the market is provided with goods of low quality at high prices, and shortages are frequent. Consumers have fewer options and choices in such a system.

State capitalism is sometimes advocated by people of good will, as a route to social justice. Other times, it is cynically implemented by those who see it as an opportunity for personal power. In either case, it leaves the citizens with fewer choices, higher prices, less quality, and shortages.

A free market system, on the other hand, can achieve the social justice which state capitalism claimed to seek. As economist Ludwig Erhard phrased it:

When I speak of a social market economy, I do not mean that the market needs to be made social. I mean that the market is intrinsically social.

A free market corresponds to an intuitive notion of social justice: a market economy is socially conscious because, as suppliers seek to sell to every demand, then every consumer benefits from the competition to offer better products at a lower price. Everyone is a consumer, and everyone is part of the economy’s aggregate demand. In a competitive market economy, every supplier wants to meet as many demands as possible, and suppliers will lower their prices and raise quality in order to sell to those demands.

Because suppliers want to sell to as many consumers as possible, they find ways to offer products at lower prices. Because suppliers compete with each other, they find ways to offer better quality at those lower prices. As consumers are able to obtain better products at lower prices, the goals of social justice are attained.

Ludwig Erhard showed that market economies lead to social justice, and that property rights lead to civil rights. He showed that when suppliers are free to creatively meet demands and consumers are free to choose, all parties in the marketplace benefit.

As a brilliant byproduct, free markets also give consumers more choice and more abundance.

Efforts to censure capitalism as immoral are effective against crony capitalism and against state capitalism, but gain no ground against free market capitalism, as Russ Roberts writes:

A lot of people reject capitalism because they see the market process at the heart of capitalism — the decentralized, bottom-up interactions between buyers and sellers that determine prices and quantities — as fundamentally immoral. After all, say the critics, capitalism unleashes the worst of our possible motivations, and it gets things done by appealing to greed and self interest rather than to something nobler: caring for others, say. Or love.

It is plausible to make moral arguments against greed. But in a free market, the retailer is working simply to feed his family: this is not greed, it is responsibility. How he would be chastened if he did not attempt to provide for his family!

Buyer and seller function as a couple dancing: each plays a part. Buyer and seller function as teammates in a sport: one would hardly accuse the player who caught a teammate’s pass as greedy because he received the ball.

In any discussion of the various forms of capitalism, it is good form to quote from the writings of Adam Smith, whose The Wealth of Nations appeared in 1776 and became a foundational text in economics:

Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favor, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. 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 own necessities but of their advantages.

If capitalism were merely greed cloaked in the equations of economists, it would be morally suspect, as Russ Roberts recites:

Capitalism, say its critics, encourages grasping, exploitation, and materialism. As Wordsworth put it: “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” In this view, capitalism degrades our best selves by encouraging us to compete, to get ahead, to win in business, to have a nicer car and house than our neighbors, and to always look for higher pro.ts and advantages. In the great rat race of the workplace, we all turn into rats. Is it any wonder so many want to kill off capitalism and replace it with something more just, more fair, more humane?

But he goes on to point out that only in a free market system does the retailer have a motive to treat his customers honestly and fairly. Only in a free market does the employer have a reason to pay his workers well. The freedom of the marketplace means that the consumers can go elsewhere if they perceive that they’ve been given a bad deal. Workers can go elsewhere if they feel unappreciated.

This is why people who live in countries with even a partially free market inevitably have a better standard of living than those who live in “command economies” or “planned economies.”

The political freedom and personal liberty which accompany a free market are pleasant byproducts of the laissez faire economic system.

Endless tirades have been made — and will be made — against “capitalism,” but when those attacks are carefully analyzed, they fail to undermine the results obtained by a free market system. Those who benefit the most from a free market are not the wealthy capitalists — for such people will enjoy a high standard of living in any economic system — but rather the working-class people, who obtain a level of prosperity not available to the working class in nations governed by other economic doctrines.

Radically Different Types of Capitalism: Why the Discussion Gets Confusing

People constantly debate about economics and politics. Sometimes they even fight about it. But these discussions are often confusing, unclear, and ambiguous. Why?

One simple vocabulary word can be misleading: “capitalism.”

Before deciding whether capitalism is good or bad, one must first discover what capitalism is. To complicate matters, it soon becomes clear that there are different types of capitalism — so different from each other that they are nearly opposites.

So when Ben Shapiro makes a radical statement like “Capitalism is morally preferable to socialism,” the meaning of his statement can vary, depending on which definition of ‘capitalism’ the reader has in mind.

The word ‘capital’ is used to denote, in the simplest sense, money. More specifically, it refers, in economic contexts, to money used to form “the means of production,” i.e., money invested to create jobs, factories, businesses, etc.

It is not possible to have an economy without capital: without value used to create production. Even socialist and communist economies have capital. So, in that sense, communism is a type of capitalism! That might seem like a confusing statement, but only because, in everyday conversation, the words ‘communism’ and ‘capitalism’ are used vaguely.

Friedrich Engels, who worked closely with Karl Marx, wrote, “State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but it contains within itself the formal means, the key to the solution.” Many communists, therefore, desire “state capitalism” — i.e., the government ownership of the means of production, which is the government ownership of factories and businesses.

Wilhelm Liebknecht, an early follower of Marx and Engels, wrote that “State Socialism is really State capitalism.”

To clarify matters, an adjective can precede the noun ‘capitalism,’ as in “state capitalism,” or “crony capitalism,” or “free market capitalism.”

“State capitalism,” as used in the above quotes from Engels and Liebknecht, is a type of communism or socialism, in which the government owns and controls much or all of the means of production.

“Crony capitalism” is a system in which government leaders cooperate and collaborate with those who own large amounts of capital. In “crony capitalism,” governments make regulations which favor large and influential businesses, and which do not create a fair or neutral marketplace for economic competition. “Crony capitalism” is a corruption of the system, and the role of the government fails to be impartial and unbiased. In “crony capitalism,” people cannot rely upon the government to be an objective referee or adjudicator between competing businesses. Instead of being neutral, the government in a “crony capitalist” system works to help some businesses and hinder others.

On the one hand, “state capitalism” leads to shortages in the marketplace and leads to a loss of freedom and prosperity. On the other hand, “crony capitalism” leads to a lack of opportunity for ordinary people: they can’t have a fair chance of competing with those who have a special relationship with the government. Crony capitalism also leads to higher prices and lower quality in production.

“Free market capitalism” corresponds to the everyday notion of a “level playing field” or a “fair game.” In free market capitalism, individuals have freedom, and have the opportunity to make offers: to bargain about prices. Individuals have the freedom to choose which type of work they want to try, and for which employer they might work. They also have the freedom to start their own business. Fair competition between businesses leads to lower prices and higher quality. Individuals have opportunities to seek higher wages, and thereby raise their standards of living. When the rules are fair, and fairly enforced, everyone has a chance.

Because the word ‘capitalism’ gets used in these different ways, debates become garbled. Those who say that they are in favor of capitalism are really in favor of free market capitalism; those who say that they are against capitalism are actually against crony capitalism. Those who say that they are in favor of socialism or communism do not realize that they are actually in favor of a type of capitalism.

It “free market capitalism” that Ben Shapiro has in mind when he writes:

Capitalism is the greatest single force for the empowerment of human beings in the history of mankind. Free markets defeated the global scourge of communism, which was responsible for the impoverishment of half of mankind and the murder of a hundred million people; free markets raised nearly the entire globe out of abject poverty.

In a historical perspective, capitalism is often linked to the Industrial Revolution. This link is real, but also indirect. On the one hand are the advances in technology and inventions which radically changed work and life; on the other hand is the financial system which enabled this creativity and inventiveness.

Although the Industrial Revolution is sometimes linked with images of urban poverty and hardship, in many places it led in fact to a rising standard of living for the lower and middle classes. In the Soviet Socialist system, however, it led to shortages and lower standards of living. The former was a free market system, the latter was a form of state capitalism.

One of the principles that distinguishes “free market capitalism” from the other types of capitalism is that freedom is related to prosperity. Where there is freedom for people to make their own economic choices, standards of living rise. In general, human beings desire both freedom and prosperity; it turns out that those two are almost the same thing.

Capitalism is about the notion that you are not a slave. You own your own time, and you own your own labor, and you may do with it precisely what you wish. The miracle of capitalism is that such freedom doesn’t result in billions of artists finger-painting — it results in billions of people investing their time and effort into creating products for one another. Capitalism results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don’t give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution.

To take away people’s freedom is to lower their standard of living. To control people is to impoverish people. To willingly inflict both control and poverty on people is morally questionable.

Luther’s Inner Life Changed the World: A Personal Struggle Became a Global Reformation

Born in 1483, Martin Luther was around 34 years old when the Reformation began. As a multi-year event which changed society, civilization, and culture, the Reformation can be understood on various levels: spiritual, intellectual, political, ecclesiastical, and even economic.

The precipitating cause for all of those changes was, however, personal: The Reformation finds its roots in the conscience of Luther. His self-analysis and his questions about his own status — specifically, his status vis-a-vis God — were the causes of theological questions which lie at the core of the Reformation.

As Jonathan Kay writes:

Luther’s struggle against the Vatican began as a struggle against himself. He started his career as a tortured German academic whose spiritual neuroses were tangled up with biblical exegesis — a state of constant agitation that members of the religious classes then referred to as the “bath of hell” — according to Craig Harline’s outstanding new history, A World Ablaze: The Rise of Martin Luther and the Birth of the Reformation.

The problem for Luther was this: Like any human being, he knew that he was imperfect and flawed. In spiritual terms, this meant that he was sinful; everyone occasionally does the wrong thing, and Luther was no exception. What, then, is to be done about the resulting guilt?

The guilt which concerned Luther was not the feeling of guilt, but rather the objective fact of it. No matter how people feel about their failings, the failings themselves are events which cannot be wished away.

At first, Luther attempted to embrace the common teachings of the times: One could pay for one’s sins, and work off the guilt. A person could identify failures, confess them to a priest, and perform specific tasks assigned as penances.

Luther eventually identified several problems with this system: First, one had to identify the sins. What if a sin was forgotten and unconfessed? Second, given the perpetually imperfect nature of human beings, the next wrongdoing would soon be committed, and so the individual is in a never-ending cycle of confessing sins and working them off. Other problems permeated the system: How does one know if the prescribed penitential actions are sufficient? etc.

Luther’s search for inner peace — his search for a confident hope that he would not face painful eternal punishment for his sins — took place in the context of late medieval monasticism. Imposing hardships on one’s own self was a type of continual penance. Luther became a monk and lived, at first, in the monastery in Erfurt, starting in 1505. He had arrived in Erfurt in 1501 to study at the university there.

Luther was both a monk and a scholar, i.e., a highly-educated person. Some men were monks but not scholars; others were scholars but not monks. Luther was both.

Kay writes about Harline’s book:

Harline lingers on details of archeology, food and hygiene that allow the reader to imagine cloistered life in the 16th century. Even in a relatively well-funded monastery, such an existence was hard, filthy and, in the winters, freezing. As a scholar, Luther found a measure of comfort and privacy in his friary’s unglamorous nooks — including a third-floor tower room that once had been part of Wittenberg’s outer battlements, the visitors’ chambers and even the cloaca (cesspit).

The self-imposed hardships were a type of comfort to Luther: They made him feel that he was in some way addressing his own imperfections. Yet he still suffered from anxieties, wondering if he had done enough to earn forgiveness. In the word ‘earn’ lay the cause of most of Luther’s troubles.

The church of Luther’s era presented a muddle of ideas concerning salvation. It taught, on the one hand, that entry into the afterlife was a free gift. But on the other hand, it taught that each individual had to prove herself or himself worthy of that gift. Luther’s ideas amounted to a challenge to this usage of the words ‘free’ and ‘gift.’

Luther reasoned that, if one had to prove one’s self worthy of a gift — by feeling contrite, by performing acts of penance, by adhering to the traditions of the church — then it wasn’t really free. Luther focused on the word ‘grace’ and used it to refer to a unilateral gift, given by God to human beings, bestowing upon them a salvation and a justification in which they were passive: a “justification” which declared that compensation had been made for their sins and which thereby purchased the “salvation” which gained them entry into the afterlife — entry into heaven.

Compensation had been made for people’s sins, but people didn’t make that compensation. The compensation was made by God, as a gift to people.

As Luther’s career progressed, he became a priest and a professor. As a priest, he carried out certain tasks within the church and on behalf of the church. As a professor, he taught, researched, wrote, and published. His work as a professor initiated, or at least accelerated, certain skepticisms which Luther began to have regarding some of the church’s teachings and some of its practices.

In this context, the word ‘church’ refers to the organization which oversaw the spiritual life of nearly all of western Europe. This would later be called the ‘Roman Catholic’ church.

Luther’s research led him to the conclusion that the church had departed from its foundation: It was created to carry out the teaching and work of Jesus, but in fact had become something different. The church was failing to put into practice the ideas of Jesus, even though it had been founded to do that very thing. In short, the church was no longer Christian.

It is from this idea that the word ‘reformation’ arises: Luther wanted to reshape the church, to form it again, so that it would return to its original mission and purpose.

But Luther’s ideas remained, for a long period of time, in Luther’s head. He was not famous and hadn’t published much. His lecturing at the university and his preaching in church didn’t directly touch on the issues which were most troubling him — although, in hindsight, it can be seen that these issues were indirectly and obliquely simmering under the surface of his public speaking and writing, a sort of latent reformation in the making.

When Luther’s concerns about the church became public, they were mature, having benefited from a long period of reflection. Luther’s thought appeared in a mature form, as Jonathan Kay explains:

Luther’s first set of theses — not the famous 95 titled Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, but a more plodding 99 denouncing Aristotle’s influence on Christian theology — was almost completely ignored. Luther waited, pathetically, for many weeks, expecting some form of appreciation or critique from fellow scholars. Even when he produced his more provocative set of theses in October 1517, it took more than a month for any feedback to roll in — despite Luther’s efforts to move things along by sending personal copies to local bishops.

Although Luther was perhaps frustrated by a lack of speedy response and attention, it was, Jonathan Kay hypothesizes, this slow pace which allowed Luther’s thought to continue to develop and mature, and finally emerge as a considered viewpoint with substantial supporting argumentation. The years leading up to these two sets of theses, as well as the weeks and months afterwards, constituted a time of refining.

Kay suggests that, had Luther’s ideas gain fame sooner, they might have been weaker, and readily dismissed.

Was Wordsworth a Liar? No: Read Him Carefully

In the year 1800, William Wordsworth wrote that “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Scholars, teachers, and students quote this sentence often, and it has become part of the standard understanding of Romanticist literature.

This sentence is also wildly false.

Aside from the ambiguity of what “good poetry” might be, in contrast to other poetry, the alleged spontaneity of poetry in general, and Romanticist poetry in particular, is a standard motif in the self-advertisement of Romanticism. Like much self-advertisement, it is at least exaggerated, and more likely simply wrong.

Romantic poetry, both in its British and in its German incarnations, routinely features rigorous structures. Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is structured in multiple ways: the number of syllables per line, the stress on the various syllables in the form of an iambic foot, the division of the poem’s twenty-four lines into four stanzas of six lines each, and the strict rhyme scheme. A close reading will reveal yet more ways in which the poem is calculated. A stricter poetic structure is difficult to imagine.

The same is true of Romanticist poetry from Germany: Goethe’s “wild” poetry is meticulously planned.

Wordsworth was a smart man. Why would he write about poetry as a spontaneous overflow of emotion, when it is a premeditated and numerically determined product? He might have written this for various reasons.

His famous statement might have been a continuation of the self-advertisement of the Romanticist movement. Romanticism needs its readers to believe that such poetry is an unplanned eruption of uncontrollable emotions. In fact, Romanticist poetry is carefully planned to appear unplanned, strictly controlled in order to appear uncontrollable, rationally calculated to appear irrational. Perhaps Wordsworth was delivering the standard Romanticist trope in order to encourage his audience to continue buying his books.

A second, and more honorable motive, might be that Wordsworth wrote what he wrote because it didn’t mean it in the way in which it is often understood. A careful reading of the context in which Wordsworth’s famous sentence finds itself may illuminate a slightly different meaning.

The text from which the famous quote comes is the preface to one of his own books. Introducing his book to the reader, he comments about his colleagues, the other writers who were part of the British literary scene at that time. He writes:

I cannot, however, be insensible to the present outcry against the triviality and meanness, both of thought and language, which some of my contemporaries have occasionally introduced into their metrical compositions; and I acknowledge that this defect, where it exists, is more dishonourable to the Writer’s own character than false refinement or arbitrary innovation, though I should contend at the same time, that it is far less pernicious in the sum of its consequences.

Seeking to differentiate himself from some of the less than desirable practices of these other writers, he explains that his writings have purposes, unlike the texts produced by those other authors:

From such verses the Poems in these volumes will be found distinguished at least by one mark of difference, that each of them has a worthy purpose. Not that I always began to write with a distinct purpose formerly conceived; but habits of meditation have, I trust, so prompted and regulated my feelings, that my descriptions of such objects as strongly excite those feelings, will be found to carry along with them a purpose.

In defending and promoting his poems, Wordsworth argues that his writing is shaped by his “meditation” — the opposite of an irrational eruption of passion. He further boasts that he has “regulated” his feelings — again in contrast to wild uncontrollable emotions. Indeed, the very claim that his poems have “purpose” entails that they are subjugated to a higher purpose, and therefore are disciplined.

Then comes his famous generalization about “all good poetry” — yet in the same sentence, he argues that such poetry is product of “thought” — thought being the antipode of feeling.

If this opinion be erroneous, I can have little right to the name of a Poet. For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply.

By using the word “purpose,” Wordsworth is indicating that his writing is premeditated, and therefore the antithesis of a “spontaneous” outburst of emotion.

Why, then, does he insist on writing about this alleged spontaneity?

The spontaneity that he describes is not an unregulated eruption, but rather the reaction or response of a trained intellect. It is a spontaneity born of training and intellect.

Wordsworth tells the reader that the feelings are not raw and wild, but rather “modified and directed.” By training and practice, “by the repetition and continuance” of such discipline, people obtain the mental habit of connecting their feelings to “important subjects.”

After being subjected to such rigorous training, the intellect of the would-be poet will be such that it automatically or reflexively composes verse in a way, and about such subjects, as Wordsworth indicates.

For our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past feelings; and, as by contemplating the relation of these general representatives to each other, we discover what is really important to men, so, by the repetition and continuance of this act, our feelings will be connected with important subjects, till at length, if we be originally possessed of much sensibility, such habits of mind will be produced, that, by obeying blindly and mechanically the impulses of those habits, we shall describe objects, and utter sentiments, of such a nature, and in such connexion with each other, that the understanding of the Reader must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified.

The reader might consider the example of an athlete, whose long hours of training allow him to react quickly and automatically — spontaneously — in a game. This act may seem spontaneous, but it is the product of long and arduous training.

Or likewise also the example of someone who has learned an affected and highly technical way of speaking — perhaps a lawyer or a physicist, or one who has learned a foreign language. That individual will react quickly — spontaneously — in a conversation, but that reaction is the fruit of a long process of mental discipline.

When Wordsworth, then, writes that “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” he was indicating, not a natural and untamed spontaneity, but rather an automatic reaction, a learned reflex, instilled into the mind by training and discipline. An examination of the disciplined structure of Wordsworth’s own texts supports this reading.

The Mosaic Law: The Birth of Justice

Contemporary discourse includes much talk of justice, including “climate justice,” and “racial justice,” and dozens of others. Nearly everyone will agree that justice is a good thing, and nearly everyone will claim to desire justice.

But what is justice?

To find a useful and coherent definition of this word, the reader will want to consult the primary sources.

Perhaps one of the earliest hints of justice is found in the famous set of laws known as Hammurabi’s Code. Hammurabi was the king of Babylon around 1750 B.C., and his legal document is, in part, an example of the principle of rule of law.

The phrase “rule of law” is often used and rarely understood. It means that laws should apply to all citizens equally. For example, if a sign says “no parking here,” then, if a car is parked there, it doesn’t matter whose car it is, or who parked it there. The car should get a ticket and its owner should have to pay the fine, no matter who the owner or driver is.

The rule of law is a principle which prevents power from being abused. Without the rule of law, a person who happened to be a close personal friend of a senator or a mayor might avoid paying the fine for parking her or his car illegally, while ordinary citizens would have to pay the fine for doing the same thing; that would violate what most people intuitively consider to be justice.

While Hammurabi helped to crystalize the notion of rule of law, it was Moses who largely formed the broader concept of justice. The rule of law turns out to be merely one part of justice.

Moses lived around 1400 B.C., was born in Egypt, and led a group of escaped slaves to freedom. In the course of that journey, Moses encountered a sociological problem: to give the former slaves their liberty was a good action, but in order for them to form a society for themselves, it would be necessary for them to develop a sense of justice and social order. As former slaves, they had little leadership experience, and little experience in making value decisions on a societal level.

A set of directives called “The Mosaic Code” is not only a set of laws, but it also implies an underlying sense of values, and largely corresponds to what is now considered justice.

The Mosaic Code is not located in one place, but rather is scattered in bits and pieces across five different books. Those books are called the Torah or the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

In the book of Numbers, for instance, Moses clarifies a legal distinction between intentional murder and accidental death, and states that the value of human life exceeds the value of money, and that therefore a fine is not a suitable legal penalty for murder (cf. Number 35:9 - 35:34).

Elsewhere, Moses broadens the concept of intent beyond homicide to other actions (cf. Numbers 15:22 to 15:31). The distinction between intentional crime and accidental unintended actions has become part of the concept of justice.

Buried in the Mosaic Code are a set of ideas which define justice and the larger worldview behind justice, for example, the distinction between moral and legal, the distinction between proactive and reactive legislation, standards of evidence, standards of testimony by witnesses, the distinction between crimes against property and crimes against persons, a restriction of capital punishment, increasing the legal status of women, human life as having value and dignity, a distinction between guilt and shame, the surprising assertion that even slaves had rights which they could legally claim against their masters, the restriction and ultimately the abolition of slavery, and other concepts.

Each of these points needs to be expounded at length: they are simply listed here.

Moses also deals with the concept of privilege. He creates four classes, each of which is to receive special privileges: widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor.

All of these points are either introduced initially by Moses, or greatly amplified by Moses from mere hints of them in Hammurabi’s Code.

In some points, Moses is the opposite of Hammurabi: Hammurabi gave legal privileges to the wealthy and powerful; Hammurabi relegated slaves to the status of mere property, whose lives were at the whim of their masters; Hammurabi gave no legal protections or status to women; Hammurabi’s laws were purely reactive, with no proactive elements.

So, while Hammurabi foreshadowed justice, it was Moses who comprehensively articulated it.

Following Moses, a series of thinkers continued to reinterpret and reapply the concepts of justice to different societies and circumstances. The history of justice is the history of texts: The Magna Carta of 1215, The Tübinger Vertrag 1514, The English Bill of Rights of 1689, The U.S. Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Bill of Rights, and others.

Justice has a long history, but any perspective on it will reveal the central role of Moses. Any modern or postmodern sense of justice, even and especially those which claim to reject Mosaic thought, will, under close examination, ultimately reveal themselves to be founded on Mosaic Law.

Bossuet Replies to Hobbes: A Kinder, Gentler Absolutism

Although forms of absolutism have been around since the beginnings of recorded history, Thomas Hobbes is one of the most prominent formulators of modern political absolutism, along with Jean Bodin.

In 1651, Hobbes published Leviathan, his most famous book. The usual understanding of his political theory is drawn from the first half of the book. Hobbes presents what he considered to be a logical argument, the conclusion of which is that society needs to be ruled by an absolute monarch.

As envisioned by Hobbes, the absolute monarch should have limitless and unconditional power, or very nearly so. Hobbes views anarchy as an imagined natural state of humans prior to the formation of a commonwealth. In this primal state, human life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” in one of his most famous phrases. Government arises as the result of a social contract, in which each individual, simultaneously with other individuals in the same society, cedes power to the monarch.

The fact that this cession is done simultaneously in a mutually-agreed-upon act is what puts the “common” into commonwealth. But once made, this social contract is irrevocable.

By 1679, the Leviathan had been on the market for twenty-eight years, variously loved and hated. The common understanding of the book, based primarily on the first half of the text, was established as the received view of Hobbes.

It was in 1679 that Jacques-Benigne Bossuet began to write his Politique tirée des propres paroles de l'Écriture sainte. This book was his systematic exposition of political absolutism. Bossuet, born in 1627, was younger than Hobbes, who’d been born in 1588.

Responding to Hobbes, Bossuet hoped to formulate a version of absolutism which was perhaps more humane than the version found in the Leviathan. To do this, Bossuet looked to place limits and conditions on the power of the monarch.

“The king of Hobbes is a less restrained and probably harsher ruler than Bossuet’s,” writes historian Eugen Weber.

Bossuet begins by stating that “royal authority is sacred,” paternal, and “subject to reason.” Each of these constitutes some limiting factor. There are limits on how kings may use power, and on the purposes for which they use power, as Bossuet writes:

The kings must respect their own power and use it only to the public good. Their power coming from above, as we have said, they must not believe that it belongs to them to be used as they please; but they must use it with fear and restraint, as a thing which comes from God and for which God will call them to account. Kings should therefore tremble when using the power that God has given them, and think how horrible is the sacrilege of misusing a power which comes from God.

By labelling royal power as “paternal,” Bossuet places upon monarchs the moral obligations and duties of parenthood. Parents are ethically responsible to care for their children, and by observing the care that they give, parents are judged as good or bad. Kings, as “paternal” rulers, are subject to a similar evaluation.

Bossuet further requires that monarchs use their power only in ways which are “salutary to mankind.” He admonishes kings to “use” their power “with humility.” He points out that kings have power ab alio — from outside themselves — and that therefore it is entrusted to them, yet it is not inherently or intrinsically theirs, even if it is innately theirs. Bossuet writes that kings “are endowed with” power “from outside.” Concerning power, he states:

Fundamentally, it leaves you weak; it leaves you mortal; it leaves you sinners; and burdens you with greater responsibility towards God.

A further bridle on royal power is Bossuet’s demand that it is subject to reason. Although it will be a large interpretive question as to exactly which royal actions are rational and which are not, it is nonetheless clear that this is intended by Bossuet to be some form of limit on monarchical action.

Bossuet is clearly differentiating himself from Hobbes. Although Bossuet had begun writing the book in 1679, he added sections to it between 1700 and 1704. Parts of the text are therefore more than half a century later than the Leviathan.

Although raw temporal dislocation does not prove that Bossuet’s theses are different from Leviathan’s, it does show that Bossuet had ample time to reflect both on Hobbes and on the historical events of that half century.

In any case, it is plausible to argue that Bossuet’s monarch is not as invincible as the monarch in the first half of Leviathan. Bossuet boldly places limits and moral boundaries on monarchs in a way which Hobbes does not.

There is a less common understanding of Hobbes — a reading which includes the second half of Leviathan in addition to the first half — and this less common interpretation would yield a monarch who is more clearly under a moral yoke and less likely to engage in capricious actions to which his subject must unquestioningly submit. More emphasis on the second half of Leviathan might yield a kinder, gentler Hobbes — one who’d be in some ways similar to Bossuet’s vision of a more benevolent ruler.

“Suffer Naught to Vex Thee” — Copyrights and the Use of Primary Texts

Teaching a Humanities or Western Civ course, an instructor using some of the textbooks on the market might find his students wrestling with a sentence like “Let not aught vex thee” — in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius — and quickly a discussion of late Roman Stoicism becomes a lesson in Elizabethan vocabulary.

Certainly, it is proper for students to learn to negotiate the language of Edmund Spenser or John Donne. But Marcus Aurelius didn’t write in Elizabethan English, or any kind of English for that matter. He wrote in Greek, despite the fact that his mother tongue was Latin.

In some fantasy world, high school juniors and seniors, and university freshmen, might be able to negotiate the Greek of the Meditations, and negotiate it well enough to engage in the thought contained in the text, rather than get bogged down in the grammar and vocabulary.

In the real world, students are already quite challenged by the antiquated English of the translation, and challenged to the point that it impedes their exploration of Aurelius’s mental world. Which begs the question: Why are students confronted with a translation that hides thought in obscure language?

In the mid nineteenth century, Britain, and to a lesser extent America, had a bumper crop of classicists, many of whom brought translations of the Greco-Roman canon to the publishing marketplace. As a stylistic flourish, these translations were cast in what was already archaic English. When, e.g, George Long offered his rendering of Marcus Aurelius into English, it was an English that was already antiquated in the nineteenth century when he published it.

The language was a deliberate affectation, which may or may not have served a purpose when it appeared, but over a century later constitutes merely an obstacle to the student.

Why, then, would a contemporary publishing company bring to market an anthology containing texts which are needlessly obscure?

The answer: Copyright fees.

Such textbooks typically contain a large number of short excerpts, including many from classical Greek and Latin texts, along with medieval writings. Depending on the scope of the work, texts from the Ancient Near East may be included prior to the Greco-Roman material, and extracts from post-medieval works afterward.

Major texts from the canon are constantly being translated afresh: The Meditations by Aurelius were rendered into contemporary American English, e.g., by Gregory Hays in 2002, and by Scot Hicks and David Hicks in the same year. These texts make the thought of Aurelius accessible to the students, and allow them to explore the ideas, rather than the vocabulary.

Including these recent translations, however, costs money.

Older translations from the nineteenth century are usually in the public domain, not requiring modern publishers to obtain permission or pay fees.

When it comes to textbooks, caveat emptor. Affordable anthologies may be filled with classical texts translated into an affected antiquated pseudo-Elizabethan English rather than into twenty-first century American idiom.