Russell Hasan is an author who has contributed a good deal to Liberty. Now he makes a contribution to liberty itself, in the form of two extensive monographs: The Apple of Knowledge: Introducing the Philosophical Scientific Method and Pure Empirical Essential Reasoning, and Golden Rule Libertarianism: A Defense of Freedom in Social, Economic, and Legal Policy. Both works are available online, at the addresses that follow at the end of this review. And both are very interesting.
I’ll start with The Apple of Knowledge, which itself starts with an account of the author’s quest for wisdom. He did not find it in the lessons of professional (i.e., academic) philosophers, who venerated the counterintuitive claims of earlier professional philosophers, often echoing their conviction that objective truth could not be found. The author turned to the objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand, but found that “it was truly a political philosophy, and not a rigorously reasoned system of metaphysics and epistemology. Rand’s ideas seemed clever and useful, but they contained contradictions and holes and gaps.”
So, as an intellectual entrepreneur, Hasan decided to see whether he could solve crucial philosophical problems himself. That’s the spirit of liberty.
He states his agenda in this way:
The six problems that this book will solve are: 1. Induction, 2. Consciousness, 3. Knowledge, 4. The Scientific Method, 5. Objectivity, and 6. Things in Themselves.
Hasan believes that these problems can be solved by his versions of “(1) the philosophical scientific method, and (2) pure empirical essential reasoning.”
What does this mean in practice? It means a rejection of dualism and radical skepticism, a reasoned acceptance of the world as empirically discovered by the healthy consciousness. An example:
When you look at this book and say “I am looking at this book, I am reading this book, I am aware of the experience of this book,” and you wonder about what it means to be conscious and to have an experience and to see this book, the only things in the picture are two physical objects, (1) this book, which physically exists and is the thing that you are experiencing and are conscious of, and (2) your brain, which is the consciousness that experiences and is aware of the book by means of the perceptions and concepts in your brain. Similarly, when you see a red apple, the red apple itself is the red that you see, and your brain is the subject which perceives that object and is aware of that object. Nowhere in this picture is there a need to deny that consciousness exists. We need not deny that you really see a red color. We need not deny that you are aware of an apple. And there is also no need to believe in ghosts or non-physical souls as an explanation for your being aware of an apple and seeing its red color.
As this example suggests, Hasan has an admirably clear style throughout. His clarity may also suggest, erroneously, that the problems he addresses are easy to solve, or that he deems them easy to solve. They aren’t, and he doesn’t. For every statement he makes there are time-honored quibbles, evasions, and yes, real challenges. The enjoyment of reading through this fairly long book comes from following Hasan’s own path among the challenges, assessing his arguments, and finding out how many of those arguments one wants to buy.
To this process, a statement of my own ideas can add no particular enjoyment. For what it’s worth — and it isn’t directly relevant to Hasan’s essential concerns — his grasp of Christian and biblical theology could be much stronger. Here’s where the dualism that he rejects asserts itself despite his efforts; he tends to see Christian ideas (as if there were just one set of them) as dualistically opposite to his own: Christians are against the world, the flesh, and the devil, while he is heartily in favor of the first two, at least. But it’s not as simple as that. “World” and “flesh” can mean a lot of things, as a concordance search through St. Paul’s epistles will illustrate. You don’t need to believe in God to recognize the complexity of Christian thought. (And, to digress a bit further, “666” didn’t come “from ancient confusion between the Latin word ‘sextus’ which means six and the Latin word ‘sexus’ which means sex.” No, it originated in the biblical book of Revelation [13:18], and it’s a code term, probably for “Nero.”)
It makes no difference whether you’re smarter or richer than I am, because it requires the same effort — that is, none — for both of us to leave each other alone.
About the philosophical problems that Hasan treats I can say that he usually appears to make good sense — very good sense. His education in the objectivist tradition is evident; his respect for the real world — which is, after all, the world that all philosophy is trying to explain — is still more evident. Both are valuable, and essential to his project. Indeed, Apple of Knowledge can be viewed as a particularly interesting and valuable addition to the objectivist tradition of philosophy that begins with Ayn Rand.
Golden Rule Libertarianism is an exposition and defense of a variety of radical libertarian ideas — about victimless crimes, war and peace, government intervention in the economy, and so on. Few libertarians will be surprised by the results of Hasan’s inquiries in these areas — but what does “Golden Rule Libertarianism” mean?
This represents what I take to be a new approach, though one that is nascent in the libertarian concept of the great “negative right,” the right to be left alone. From this point of view, it makes no difference whether you’re smarter or richer than I am, because it requires the same effort — that is, none — for both of us to leave each other alone. The Golden Rule, most famously enunciated by Jesus but, as Hasan points out, hardly foreign to other religious and ethical teachers, yields a more “positive” approach. “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” Yet nobody wants his neighbor to do certain things — to prohibit him from speaking or publishing his views or sleeping with whomever he wants, even on the pretense of helping him. In this sense, the Golden Rule turns out to be just as “negative” as libertarians could wish. As Hasan says in one exemplification of his theory:
if you let me be free to make economic decisions, including what wage to pay and at what price to buy services from other people, then I will give you the same freedom to make your own choices instead of me making your choices for you.
There is a pragmatic dimension to this. In case you are wondering whether letting everyone be free to make his or her own decisions would leave the poor in the lurch, or, to vary the metaphor, in the clutches of an exploitative capitalism that the poor are not capable of turning to their own advantage, Hasan adds:
The best thing you can do for me is to get the government out of my way and let me be free, because capitalism helps the poor more than socialism.
Libertarians understand this, and Hasan provides plenty of reasons for everyone else to understand it too. His book will be valuable to nonlibertarians, because there is something in it for every interest or problem they may have. As he says, in another exemplary passage:
The liberal concern for civil liberties, e.g. my freedom to write atheist books, and the conservative concern for freedom from regulation, e.g. my freedom to buy and sell what I want on my terms, is really two sides of the same libertarian coin, because if the government claims the right to be the boss of your beliefs then it will soon usurp the power to be the boss of your place in the economy and take total control over you, and if the government is the boss of the economy then it will inevitably take over the realm of ideas in order to suppress dissent and stifle criticism of the economic planners.
I believe that Hasan is right to pay particular attention to what he calls “the coercion argument,” which is one of the strongest ripostes to libertarian thought. It is an attempt to argue against libertarian ideas on libertarian grounds. The notion is that if I leave you alone I permit someone else to coerce you. As Hasan says,
Some version of the coercion argument underscores a great deal of anti-libertarian sentiment: poor people will be coerced into selling their organs and body parts, which justifies denying them the right to do so. Poor people are coerced into accepting dangerous, low-paying jobs such as coal mining, or are coerced into working long hours for wages that are lower than what they want. They are coerced into buying cheap high-fat fast food, or are coerced into buying cheap meat, packed at rat-infested plants, and so on. The coercion argument is a thorn in the side of laissez-faire politics, because socialists argue that poor people aren’t really free in a capitalist system where they face economic coercion.
Hasan’s insight into the legal history and ramifications of the coercion argument is enlightening:
An example of the grave seriousness of the coercion myth is legal scholar Robert Lee Hale’s famous law review article “Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State” (1923). Hale brainwashed generations of law students with his argument that capitalist employers exert coercion upon workers, and socialism would not produce more coercion or less freedom than capitalism.
This is a powerful myth, but Hasan has little trouble refuting it. Others are yet more formidable; I would be surprised, however, if even a hostile reader could emerge from a serious consideration of Hasan’s arguments without admitting serious damage to his or her own assumptions.
For libertarian readers, the fun is in seeing what Hasan will do with various popular topics of libertarian discourse — natural rights versus utilitarianism, racial discrimination, gay marriage, an interventionist versus a non-interventionist foreign policy, privatization of education and banking, disparity of wealth, etc. Even well-informed libertarians will be surprised, and probably grateful, for many of the arguments that Hasan adduces.
Hasan is one of the few questioning occupational licensing, which exacts immense costs from society, and especially from the poor, who must pay dearly for even the simplest services.
I was such a reader — and for me, the book gained in stature because I did not always agree with it. For me, libertarianism is more a matter of experience and less a matter of moral logic than it is for Hasan; but even within the large area of our philosophical, or at least temperamental, disagreement, I found myself admiring his intrepid and intricate, yet nevertheless clear and cogent progression of thought. I suspect that anyone who shares my feeling for the great chess match of political economy will share my feeling about this book.
Not all of Hasan’s many topics can possibly be of intense interest to everyone, but that’s just another way of saying that the book is rich in topics. My heart rejoiced to see a chapter on the evils of occupational licensing — a practice that virtually no one questions but that exacts immense costs from society, and especially from the poor, who must pay dearly for even the simplest services of licensed individuals. And I was very pleased to see Hasan take on many of the most sacred cows of my fellow academics.
One is game theory. Readers who are familiar with game theory and with the part of it that involves the so-called prisoner’s dilemma know that for more than two decades these things have been the favorite pastime, or waste of time, among thousands of social scientists. (If you ask, How can there by thousands of social scientists? or, Why don’t they find something better to do?, see above, under “occupational licensing.”) The tendency of game theory is to deal with people as objects of power, not subjects of their own agency. Its effect has often been to emphasize the statist implications of human action. Hasan cuts through the haze:
The specific refutation of Game Theory and the “prisoner’s dilemma” is that the solution is not for the group to impose a group-beneficial choice onto each individual, it is for each individual to freely choose the right choice that benefits the group. If the benefits of the supposedly right, good-for-the-group decision are really so great, then each individual can be persuaded to freely choose the right, optimal, efficient choice.
My advice is to get the book, which like the other book is available at a scandalously low price, read the introductory discussion, then proceed to whatever topics interest you most. You may not agree with the arguments you find, but you will certainly be stimulated by the reading.
