The Essential Rothbard - Ludwig von Mises Institute

64 The Essential Rothbard
Rothbard firmly believed in an objective ethics; and in this
stance he found himself in the unfamiliar position of agreement
with Leo Strauss. Commenting on Strauss’s paper “Relativism,”
Rothbard writes: “Strauss has one good point, and one alone: that
there exists an absolute ethics for man, discoverable by reason, in
accordance with [the] natural law of human nature.” 167 Rothbard
found Strauss effective in his criticism of assorted relativists and
historicists:
Strauss begins [an essay on relativism] with the almost
incredibly confused and overrated Isaiah Berlin, and he has
no trouble demolishing Berlin and exposing his confusions—
Berlin trying to be at the same time an exponent of “positive
freedom,” “negative freedom,” absolutism, and relativism. 168
Strauss shows that, “in denying the possibility of rational ends
[as relativists do] rational means are not on a very secure basis
either.” 169
Why should we believe in an objective ethics? Both Rothbard
and Strauss found persuasive an appeal to ordinary language. The
signature tune of David Hume and his many successors, the “factvalue
dichotomy,” 170 is an artificial construction. Suppose, e.g.,
that someone pushes you aside while you are waiting in line for a
movie. Has he not acted rudely? The judgment that he is rude is
not a matter for subjective decision but is governed by objective
criteria. But surely “rude” is a value-term: what then has happened
to the alleged dichotomy between fact and value? In the view
favored by Rothbard and Strauss, value judgments are factual. If
so, is it not also true—though this is much more controversial—
that if human beings need certain things in order to flourish, this
167
“Comments on Relativism Symposium,” Rothbard Papers;
Modugno, ed, Diritto, natura e ragione, p. 137. The quotations are from
the original English reports in the Rothbard Papers; page references refer
to the Italian translation in Modugno’s book.
168Ibid., p. 137.
169Ibid., p. 138.
170The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press), p. 14.