Having done my best to evict Thomas Szasz from the Libertarian pantheon, I feel that it is incumbent upon me to nominate a suitable replacement, and I believe I have found one. I speak of the great poet, playwright, and critic, T. S. Eliot. As far as I can tell, Eliot was not particularly active in or outspoken about his politics, but his most acclaimed play, Murder in the Cathedral, has unmistakable libertarian overtones.
For those unfamiliar with this work, it is a dramatization of the last days in the life of Archbishop Thomas Beckett, murdered at the behest of Henry II in 1170. Beckett willingly sacrificed his life in defense of the authority of canon law in certain cases, thereby opposing the absolute power of the King.
In Eliot’s portrayal, Beckett justifies his stance in terms congenial to defenders of natural rights. He emphatically rejects the idea that he is bound by positive law when it conflicts with his inescapable moral obligations. So as his assassins are pounding at the cathedral doors, he proclaims, “I give my life to the Law of God above the Law of Man.”[1] And in so doing, he blazes a path later taken by our founding fathers, the abolitionists and many others.
Eliot is also unrelenting here in his rejection of consequentialism. In contemplating his likely martyrdom, Beckett closely examines and struggles with his own motives, because, “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason…For those who serve the greater cause may make the cause serve them.”[2] Thus, against the consequentialist, he endorses the Kantian view that the right-making feature of an act is the maxim (or subjective principle) pursuant to which it is taken.
Later in the play, he echoes one of the standard objections to consequentialism; that is, its indeterminacy: “You defer to the fact. For every life and every act/Consequence of good and evil can be shown./And as in time results of many deeds are blended/So good and evil in the end become confounded.”[3]
This stance is libertarian, because claims to natural rights rest most firmly on deontological (non-consequentialist) foundations. While it is true that many economists and philosophers (e.g. Milton Friedman, Richard Epstein, etc.) have argued for libertarian prescriptions on utilitarian grounds, this would only show (if they are correct) that respect for rights also happens to produce optimal consequences. Why? Because satisfactory ethical theories must not only resolve real world cases, but counterfactual ones as well.
Utilitarianism, the most familiar version of consequentialism, flunks this test. To illustrate by way of example, there is plenty of room in libertarian theory for, as a last resort, taking resources from the extremely wealthy to save innocent persons in dire straits.[4] Suppose, however, that we came to have irrefutable empirical evidence that, due to the effect of marginal utility, the redistribution of justly earned income from the very rich to the middle class would enhance our society’s overall utility. The utility-based libertarian would, it seems, have to choose between robust property rights and his ethical principles. An endless number of similar cases could be posed, such as if it turned out to be the case that raising the minimum wage to $15/hour would enhance overall utility.
Natural rights libertarians need suffer no comparable embarrassment. We will unabashedly uphold rights even at some practical cost, although not, as Nozick cautions, if doing so would produce a moral catastrophe. So, welcome to the club, Thomas Stearns.
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[1] T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays, 1901-1950 (Harcourt Brace, 1952), 212.
[2] Ibid., 196. Although he never earned a higher degree, he studied philosophy, and particularly Kantian ethics, as a postgraduate fellow at Harvard. See M. A. R. Habib, “The Prayers of Childhood: T. S. Eliot’s Manuscripts on Kant,” The Journal of the History of Ideas 51/1 (1990), 95-114.
[3] Ibid., 212
[4] See my Libertarian Philosophy in the Real World, 29-31.
