What is the problem with aggressive realism in international relations?

 

Before I outline John Mearsheimer’s theory of aggressive realism, I will present my version of the classical liberal view of international relations.

A classical liberal view

As the epigraph might suggest, I subscribe to a view of international relations that has been around, in one form or another, at least since the time of the Ancient Greeks. The poet Hesiod, one of the founders of Greek epic poetry, advised his brother, Perses, to avoid thinking of obtaining wealth by engaging in predatory violence, including war. He urged Perses to respect the rights of other people, and to seek prosperity by working and engaging in peaceful competition with economic rivals.

As I see it, it is natural for individuals to seek to flourish by engaging in peaceful pursuits in mutually beneficial collaboration with others. However, it is an unfortunate fact of life that some people - individuals, groups, and nations - seek to obtain wealth by predation. People can flourish by engaging in peaceful pursuits only if they are able to protect themselves from predation.

It is not difficult to identify predatory nations which have a recent track record of seeking to invade the territory of other jurisdictions or threatening acts of violence against them. 

People in neighboring jurisdictions have an obvious incentive to protect themselves, and each other, from such predatory behavior. Nations that do not have predatory intent toward other jurisdictions have an incentive to band together to form communities of peaceful nations. The purpose of these multinational communities is to establish and enforce international rules that outlaw invasion and other violent activities that predatory nations undertake.

The multilateral communities of peaceful nations (MCPN) that I have in mind would have more in common with some existing security treaties than with the United Nations. I envisage that the MCPN would exist solely for mutual protection and would avoid attempting to pursue other objectives such as protecting individual rights, promoting economic development, or pursuing environmental objectives.  Multilateral cooperation might be desirable to pursue some of those other objectives, but the MCPN are more likely to be effective in pursuing the objective of discouraging predation if they focus specifically on that objective.

The approach proposed above should enable liberal democracies to avoid becoming involved in pathetic attempts to impose the institutions of liberal democracy on people with different belief systems, values, and ideals. However, it would support provision of military aid to Ukraine - to support its defense against Russian aggression, to Israel - to support its defense against terrorism sponsored by Iran, and to Taiwan - to counter Chinese threats of invasion.

I have previously outlined some similar ideas in myreview of Christopher Coyne’s book, In Search of Monsters to Destroy.

The approach proposed here has much in common with the classical liberal approach to international relations theory described by Edwin van de Haar in a monograph entitled, Human Nature and World Affairs, published by the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs in 2023.

The theory of aggressive realism

When a friend suggested a few weeks ago that I should watch Lex Fridman’s interview of John Mearsheimer, my initial reaction was that I had already knew enough about Mearsheimer’s views because someone had referred them to me in 2022, soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I suggested that my friend should take a look at Niall Ferguson’s refutation of Mearsheimer. Surprisingly, he took up my suggestion, so I felt obliged to watch the Mearsheimer interview.

After watching the interview, my initial reaction was that I had heard enough from John Mearsheimer to last me for at least the rest of 2025. However, I had to acknowledge (to myself) that Mearsheimer’s approach to the issues was scholarly, So I decided that it might be worth trying to find out more about the basis for his views. That is how I came to read, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2014 edition).

Mearsheimer argues that the overriding goal of each state is to maximize its share of world power. Since no state is likely to achieve global hegemony, the world is condemned to “perpetual great power competition”.

His theory of aggressive realism is based on 5 bedrock assumptions:

1. The international system is anarchic, in the sense that the system comprises independent states that have no central authority above them. 
2. Great powers inherently possess some offensive military capability. 
3. No state can ever be certain about another state’s intentions, regarding the use of offensive military capability.
4. Survival is the primary goal of great powers – they are unlikely to be able to pursue other goals if they are conquered.
5. Great powers are rational actors – they think strategically about how to survive in their external environment.

Mearsheimer argues that these assumptions are realistic and that, together, they “create powerful incentives for great powers to think and act offensively with regard to each other”.  He suggests that hegemony is the best way for any state to guarantee its own survival.

The author views aggressive realism as a prescriptive theory as well as a descriptive theory. If great powers want to survive, they should behave like aggressive realists.

The extent to which states fear each other determines the severity of their security competition as well as the probability that they will fight a war. An “unbalanced multipolarity” is the power configuration that generates the most fear because it contains a potential hegemon which stands a good chance of dominating the other great powers in its region and the world.

Much of Mearsheimer’s book is devoted to marshalling historical evidence in support of his theory, but the final chapter focuses on a specific application of his theory. In that chapter, he seeks to answer the question: Can China rise peacefully?

Mearsheimer does not believe China can rise peacefully. He argues that if China maintains rapid economic growth over the next few decades, it is likely to end up in an intense security competition with the United States and its neighbors. He views China as a potential hegemon and the current international power configuration as an unbalanced multipolarity.

According to Mearsheimer, the optimal policy for the United States to adopt toward China is “containment”, rather than other alternatives including preventive war, pursuing policies aimed at slowing China’s economic growth, or seeking to weaken China by fomenting trouble within its borders. Containment means “keeping Beijing from using its military forces to conquer territory and more generally expand its influence in Asia”. Mearsheimer suggests that the U.S. should form a balancing coalition with as many of China’s neighbors as possible.

Where is the problem?

As I see it, there are two main weaknesses in Mearsheimer’s analysis. The most fundamental problem stems from assumption 3. In order to argue that aggressive realism is the optimal strategy for a state to adopt, I think it would be necessary to argue that there is always a great deal of uncertainty about the intentions of neighboring states, rather than just lack of certainty. Perhaps it is true that no state can ever be certain about another state’s intentions, but I think states can usually make well-informed judgements about the intentions of their neighbors. Australia and New Zealand, for example, can be sufficiently certain about their intentions toward each other, to refrain from adopting offensive postures in that relationship. I think the same has generally been true of relations between Canada and the United States over the last century, but the recent rhetoric of the U.S. president might suggest that Canada would be wise to begin to re-assess the probability that the U.S. will continue to respect its territorial integrity.

Those examples illustrate the point I want to make. It is possible to make probabilistic assessments about the intentions of other states from past behavior and the rhetoric of their leaders. Some states obviously have peaceful intentions towards their neighbors whereas other states are currently engaged in predatory activities. In other instances, the probability of predatory behavior over the next decade might lie in the range from 0.1% to 1%; or from 90% to 100%; or in some other range.

The other weakness in Mearsheimer’s analysis seems to me to be an excessive focus on China as the potential hegemon. I agree with his analysis and policy prescription relating to China - as long as “containment” is pursued in a manner that can be presented to the Chinese government as a response to its aggressive policies toward its neighbors, rather than as an attempt to impede China's peaceful interactions with its neighbors.

 It seems to me, however, that communities of peaceful nations should be concerned to discourage all states from predation on their neighbors.  States that profit from predation have no incentive to stop until they assess that the costs of further predation are outweighed by the benefits. States in the neighborhood of Russia, Iran, and North Korea have good reasons to seek to contain the aggressive tendencies of those countries. Given that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea engage in military cooperation with each other, it would be particularly unwise for the U.S. and its allies to be unduly pre-occupied with responding to the rise of China.

Conclusions

John Mearsheimer’s theory of aggressive realism suggests that the over-riding goal of each state is to maximize its share of world power. He argues that there are powerful incentives for all great powers to act offensively with regard to each other.

The crucial assumption that Mearsheimer makes is that no state can ever be certain about another state’s intentions, regarding use of offensive military capability. I argue that it is possible for states to make probabilistic assessments about the intentions of other states based on past behavior and the rhetoric of their leaders.

It is not difficult to identify nations that have a recent track record of predatory behavior. Peaceful nations have an obvious incentive to band together to enforce international rules that outlaw invasion and other violent predatory activity.

Mearsheimer’s concerns about challenges that could arise from emergence of a new hegemon have led him to focus on the risks posed by the rise of China. While I agree with much of his analysis regarding the threat posed by China in the years ahead, it would be unwise for peaceful nations to overlook the threats currently posed by others (including Russia, Iran and North Korea) who clearly have predatory intentions toward other jurisdictions in their neighborhoods and are currently engaging in military cooperation in pursuit of their several objectives.

What Contribution did David L. Norton Make to our Understanding of Ethical Individualism?

 

The purpose of this post is to publish a review essay by Edward W. Younkins, author of among other things a wonderful trilogy of books on freedom and flourishing: Capitalism and Commerce, Champions of a Free Society, and Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society. (I have written a review of Ed’s trilogy, which was published on The Savvy Street last year. I published an earlier essay on Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society on this blog in 2019.)

David L. Norton, whose books are the subject of Ed’s review essay was an American philosopher who made an important contribution to the modern understanding of human flourishing. I read his book, Personal Destinies, last year, and wrote a couple of posts on this blog (here and here) on issues that were of particular interest to me.

Norton’s major books deserve a more comprehensive review. I am pleased to have the opportunity to publish on Freedom and Flourishing the following review essay by Ed Younkins.

A Review Essay of David L. Norton’s Books on Ethical Individualism

By

Edward W. Younkins

 

The purpose of this review essay is to introduce and evaluate the essential ideas that appear in David L. Norton’s two major books: his 1976 Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (PD) and his 1991 Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue (DMD). PD is a thorough, philosophically astute, visionary, and enduring contribution to contemporary moral philosophy in the tradition of classical Greek thinkers in which Norton offers a compelling view of human flourishing grounded in the idea that ethical life is rooted in the realization of unique personal potentialities. Norton’s philosophy will resonate with those seeking to reconcile individual freedom with moral responsibility. Then in DMD Norton attempts to extend his ethical individualism into the realm of political philosophy. In this work he advances politics that embraces ethical education. Although thought-provoking and ambitious, DMD falls short of meeting his goal and of having the impact of PD. In addition, its expanded role of the state and communitarian leanings are problematic, in tension with, and in opposition to, the individual freedom advocated in PD.

Personal Destinies

In this book Norton explains that for each person there is a particular unique way of living (his daimon) and there is a foundational ethical imperative to live in that manner. Each individual is morally obligated to know and live the truth according to his daimon, thus progressively actualizing an excellence that is innately and potentially his. His ethical responsibility and priority is to bring this inner self to outward actuality. Each of us is a unique irreplaceable being who has his own destiny in need of discovery and actualization.

What is the source of one’s daimon? Norton explains that the immediate source of one’s genetic inheritance is the person’s parents and that, as human beings, they represent the same category of being as the individual himself. This involves the consideration of both human nature and the specific unique identity of each individual.

The conclusion to be drawn is that each individual is the heir of the unrestricted humanity of which his parents are in his particular case the agents. Heteronomy does not obtain here because the individual is humanity in a particular instance. And genetic inheritance is fully capable of accounting for the individuation of daimons… (PD p.25)

Norton links the ancient concept of eudaimonia to Abraham Maslow’s idea of self-actualization. He also interchangeably uses the terms eudaimonism, perfectionism, self-actualization ethics, and normative individualism which stresses the quality of life of the agent. In addition, he distinguishes between self-actualization and self-realization because the inward self is real even if it is not actualized,

The eudaimonic individual experiences the whole of his life in every act, and he experiences parts and wholes together as necessary such that he can will that nothing be changed. But the necessity introduced here is moral necessity, deriving from his choice. Hence, we may say of him interchangeably, “He is where he wants to be, doing what he wants to do,” or “He is where he wants to be, doing what he must do.” (PD p.222)  

According to Norton, eudaimonia is both a feeling and a condition dependent upon right desire and is an objective value that is not imputed but recognized. It is the condition of living in truth to one’s daimon. The prerequisite of eudaimonia is the unique irreplaceable worth of each individual. Eudaimonia involves wholehearted commitment to one’s flourishing as a human being.

According to Norton, one’s aim is not to imitate the “worthy man” but to emulate him:

To emulate a worthy man is not to re-live his individual life, but to utilize the principle of worthy living, exemplified by him, toward the qualitative improvement of our individual life. (PD, p.13)

Norton informs us that it is Plato, rather than Aristotle, who supplies the underpinning support for individualistic metaphysics via his principle of the self-differentiation of the Forms and his idea of ultimate reality as a system of interrelated and intercommunicating Forms.  Because there are fewer Forms than existing things they serve as principles of intelligibility regarding the actual world.

Norton then builds on Leibniz’s principle of incompossibility that recognizes that not all possibilities are capable of co-existence. Stripping away Leibniz’s theology that states that actualization of pure possibilities is solely the work of God, Norton explains that distinct from actuality are infinite possibilities that are possible actualities and that, under certain conditions, these alternatives become available to existing beings. Between actuality and free possibility only total exchange can occur. Alternative worlds cannot exist simultaneously but can exist as possible worlds via the agency of world exchange. Whatever exists is susceptible to lapsing into the status of unactualized possibility.

Norton devotes three chapters to criticizing recent eudaimonisms from existentialist thinkers from Kierkgaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre none of whom has an unswerving commitment to reason. Norton dismisses Sartre’s characterization of freedom as freedom to do whatever one freely wants to do and criticizes Sartre’s denial of human nature in his efforts to affirm individuality.

Each person has his own irreplaceable and unique potential worth and innate distinct particularity which is his self. Norton’s notion of humankind is as “perfectible finitude”. Each unique person faces possibilities from which to choose. One’s unique flourishing can be progressively approached by living in truth to one’s daimon. Through an individual’s self-knowledge, self-discovery, and efforts he can progressively actualize the particularities that comprise his own essential identity. Human beings possess volition, can initiate action, and can make responsible decisions in accordance with who and what one is.

Norton maintains that each person is a universal particular and that the universal humanity that subsists within each person makes the possibility of a broad range of alternatives a component of every individual’s existence. Of course, this does not mean that every option is equally appropriate for each person. It only means that choices from among alternatives are those to be made correctly or incorrectly.

Confine your aspirations to the possibilities of your own nature; to desire to be more than a human being is to become less, for extra-human aims betray humankind and produce blindness to the values human life affords…. Extra-human happiness and desires are impediments to the appreciation and participation in human worth. (PD p.357)

The virtue of integrity is Norton’s fundamental principle of the life of a mature human being. Living one’s own truth comprises integrity, the primary virtue. Norton explains that flourishing is inextricably tied to the actuality of an integrated self. He speaks of “personal truth” and makes clear that the great threat to integrity is not falsehood, but rather the attractiveness of foreign truths—the truths that belong to others.

Our consideration of “personal truth” reveals that the great enemy of integrity is not falsehood but—ironically—the attractiveness of foreign truths, the truths that belong to others. (PD p.9)

One excellent chapter is devoted to the stages of life—childhood (dependence), adolescence (creative exploration of potentialities), maturation (adulthood), and old age. There are distinguishing incommensurable principles of behavior that pertain to each stage. Norton calls the passage between these stages “world exchange”. There is a succession of stages of which normativity exacts its modes of actualization. The author then devotes a follow-up chapter titled “Eudaimonia: The Quality of Moral Life in the Stage of Maturation”.

Norton views the self as a self of a particular kind (i.e., the self of a human being). He explains that a human being becomes conscious of himself as a self only in social interaction with others. A person’s knowledge of his selfhood thus develops concurrently with the knowledge of others as selves.

Each individual has continuous access to minds different from his own. Norton explains that the presence of another human being is an invitation to enter a perspectival world different from our own. Through a process of participatory enactment each of us can recognize a world of possibilities in ourselves, only one of which is made real in our own existence. This range of possibilities permits us to see those possibilities within other people that are being actualized or that can potentially be actualized.

From the individuation of possibilities it follows that the goal of the human individual is the perfection of his own unique finitude, and the goal of humanity is the community of complementary, perfected individuals. (PD pp. 142-43)

Norton discusses the inherent sociality of human beings based on mutual appreciation rather than on conflict when he speaks of “the complementarity of the excellences” or what Plato termed “congeniality of the excellences”. Through social interaction one’s knowledge of his own selfhood emerges concurrently with the knowledge of others as selves. In addition, these contacts enable individuals to recognize and affirm values different from their own. Through specialization people benefit from what others create by fulfilling their innate destinies. This personal interdependence is manifested in love, labor, and justice.

For Norton, a self-actualizing individual takes an interest in the self-actualization of others and an ideal society is one of complementary perfected individuals. His idea of “consequent sociality” thus emphasizes the individualist significance of human community life and politics. Norton’s eudaimonism clearly recognizes that a human being is not an isolated entity.

Regarding justice as the paramount virtue of society, Norton states that:

…the foundation of justice is the presupposition of the unique, irreplaceable, potential worth of every person, and forms of sociality that neglect or contradict this presupposition…deal justice a mortal wound at the outset. (PD p.310)

Norton views justice as a type of entitlement in which an individual is only entitled to possess as much of anything as he can use in actualizing himself. His theory holds that at the lower limit (or floor) each person is entitled to what is necessary for self-actualization including food, shelter, and decent treatment by others. Then at the upper limit (or ceiling) a person is entitled to the commensurate goods whose potential worth he can maximally actualize in accordance with his destiny, his meaningful work. The point of this upper limit is that not everything is appropriate with what one is. A person is only entitled to those goods that are right and proper to his self-development.  In Norton’s view, how a person acquires something to which he is “entitled” in order to actualize himself is irrelevant. The door is opened to the notion of distributive justice in a society that disregards the manner in which a person acquires what he is ‘entitled” to.

The unfortunate designation “entitlement” is used by Norton in connection with what individuals should do in a social context. He discusses what a person is morally entitled to and deserves in virtue of his own distinctive potential achievements. He contends that not every person is entitled to all goods, but that every person is entitled to those goods that will help them with their self-actualization. The knowledge of other people’s entitlements leads him to entertain the idea of distributive justice.

Norton thinks that his eudaimonism can be employed to demonstrate which distribution of goods is just and which is not. He begins by saying that it is each individual who will decide whether a good is or is not commensurate with the pursuit of his self-actualization. However, he qualifies his answer by stating that others can specify what one is entitled to if the person has not yet reached a stage of true individuation. His theory of entitlement leaves room for a theory of rights that would inspire political control in the realm of social justice.

Under normative individualism the final ground of the distinction between true and false desires is the nature of the individual himself, and he himself is the final authority. But by the emergent nature of individualism the exercise of this final authority by the individual is deferred until true individuation is attained, and meanwhile others must share with him the responsibility for the determination of his true interests. (PD pp.323-24)

Norton declares that public corroboration of claims of entitlement is needed because self-love and the knowledge it provides are imperfect. Although he suggests others who know and love the person, and thereafter, acquaintances as corroborators with respect to which goods are consistent with person’s unique calling, there remains the possibility that a political authority would step in when peer pressure and persuasion are insufficient. He has opened the door for huge amounts of control, and this unfortunately comes to fruition in his later book, Democracy and Moral Development.

 

Democracy and Moral Development

This 1991 book can be viewed as an extension of Norton’s earlier work, Personal Destinies. In it he aims to philosophically connect ideas from democratic theory, virtue (or character) ethics, moral development, and social and political justice. Norton praises democratic thinkers like Mill and Dewey for teaching that democratic institutions advance individuals pursuit of their chosen way of life. Holding a developmental notion of the individual, he makes a case for a greater than a minimal role for government in the life of each individual human being.

Norton explains the need to disclaim the closed teleology of Plato and Aristotle for an open-ended teleology. He views eudaimonia as an inclusive end that permits a multiplicity of types of self-actualizing lives aimed at a multiplicity of ends.

Arguing for an expanded notion of self-interest that includes the interests of others, Norton states that, because eudaimonia is of objective worth, one individual’s self-actualization is of value to another individual, and vice-versa. He claims that his eudaimonistic perspective transcends the altruist-egoist bifurcation.

Arguing that eudaimonism is not a form of egoism, he explains that:

The worth that is aspired to is objective worth, which is to say, it is of worth, not solely or primarily to the individual who actualizes it, but also to (some) other persons--specifically to such others as can recognize, appreciate, and utilize the distinctive kind of worth that the given individual manifests. (DMD p.7)

Norton explains that human beings are alike in seeking values but individuated by the differences of the types of values that they desire. It follows that his contention that one person’s actualization is of value to another person may be problematic because objective value for one person is not the same for every individual. Unlike Ayn Rand, he fails to realize that it is important to describe for whom and for what purpose something is of value.

Like Plato, Norton argues that self-love does not inhibit the love of others, but rather is the precondition of it:

…love is not exclusively or primarily interpersonal; it is first of all the right relationship of each person with himself or herself. The self to which love is the first instance directed is the ideal self that is aspired to and by which random change is transformed into the directed development we term growth, When the ideal of the individual is rightly chosen, it realizes objective values that subsisted within the individual as innate possibilities, thereby achieving in the individual as innate possibilities the self-identity that is termed “integrity” and that constitutes the foundation of other virtues. (DMD p.40)

According to Norton, there exists a kind of positive right to what every individual requires in order to exercise the central moral responsibility to discern and develop his personal potential moral excellence. He argues that a person is only entitled to what is commensurate with what is needed for his own self-development. Therefore, a worthy individual who has self-knowledge and lives by it, recognizes goods to which he is not entitled as distractions from the proper course of his life. Such a person manifests justice by not claiming goods that he cannot utilize and by actively willing them to those who can employ them toward their personal flourishing. A worthy person’s aspirations do not exceed the parameters of his own finitude. Recognizing these boundaries permits the potential augmentation of the finite excellences of qualitatively differentiated others.

According to Norton:

…no life can be said to be fulfilled whose worth is not recognized and utilized by (some) other person in their own self-actualizing enterprise. Correspondingly every well-lived life must utilize values produced by (some) other well-lived lives. And this is to say that within a society, every person has a legitimate interest in the essential personhood of every other. (DMD p.124)

Norton contends the switch from “some others” to “every other” is legitimated because all those upon you and I rely have need of values produced by others, who, in turn, have need of values produced by others, and so on. He states that this is the foundation for a “community of true individuals”.

Norton attempts to distinguish his views from those of contemporary communitarians. He does this by differentiating between “received” community and tradition and “chosen” community and tradition. He emphasizes choosing the right community and tradition as necessary to individuality as conceived of eudaimonistically. In the end, however, his worldview comes close to the communitarian worldview from which he wants to distinguish himself.

Norton argues that rights must be derived from responsibilities (not vice-versa}, that rights are not inherently adversarial, and that rights should be founded upon what a person requires in order to develop properly. He thus emphasizes responsibilities, the value of other people’s flourishing in one’s own self-interest, and the necessity of developing one’s latent powers.

Norton’s idea of a just society is “obligations primitive” rather than “rights primitive”. For him, rights are derived from the primary moral obligation of individuals to discern and actualize their innate potential excellences. This moral obligation produces both negative and positive rights that government will protect and help to implement.

Norton failed to understand that rights are an ethical concept that is not directly concerned with attaining the self-perfection of individuals but rather, as explained by Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl, are metanorms that establish the conditions for protecting the possibility of the pursuit of a person’s interests but not the achievement of flourishing itself. His philosophical individualism could have been improved if he had realized that ethics are not all at the same level. A two-level ethical system consists of metanorms (i.e., political norms) and personal ethical norms. Whereas metanorms are both legally and morally binding, personal ethical norms are only morally binding. Metanorms establish the conditions for the exercise of personal moral norms. [1]

Norton explicitly rejects moral minimalism and suggests a role for government in moral development. Taking a rather communitarian view of a person’s view of society, Norton contends that government should focus on helping people to realize their potential. For Norton, a just society is one in which an individual would be able to actualize his potential personal excellences. From his revisionist Platonist perspective, government should supply the preconditions for self-development that the individual is unable to supply and to which he is morally entitled. Among these necessary conditions are guaranteed subsistence, basic healthcare, and provision of appropriate education for children and adolescents in a variety of life-forming situations. An integrated self-actualized life requires both formal education and life-forming experiences that permit individuals the opportunity to explore life’s possibilities. The life choices one makes are founded on self-knowledge attained through exploration and experimentation as an adolescent in non-academic situations in a variety of youth service programs including apprenticeships, work study, community service programs, and a National Youth Service. Like Dewey, Norton suggests restructuring education by alternating academic courses and practical experiences and supporting youth public service.

As Norton puts it:

…the paramount function of government is to provide the necessary but non-self-suppliable conditions for optimizing opportunities for individual self-discovery and self-development. (DMD p.80)

Norton considers some implications of Plato’s The Republic for contemporary government and organizational management. One is that managers are distinct class of individuals including politicians whose vocation it is to manage. Others are that to be a good manager requires that a person know the good of the social organization as a whole that one manages and that he identifies his own good with the good of the whole organization. The result of the natural division of labor by individual excellences produces a type of management class who would be trustees of the public interest. Of course, this class would be the result of autonomous choices made during the progression of self-development through education especially at the stage of adolescence.

Norton argues that:

If we term both social engineering and the welfare state “maximal government” and the night-watchman state “minimal government”, then good government, eudaimonistically conceived, lies intermediate between them, as conducive government. (DMD p.166)   

Conclusion

Whereas PD explored the ethical and psychological dimensions of individual flourishing, DMD examined how political and social institutions and practices can support or impede the cultivation of moral virtues in individuals. DMD expands Norton’s analysis to include the role of the state and community in fostering moral development. It builds on the ideas introduced in PD but moves toward the view that political systems have a moral purpose beyond the protection of an individual’s negative rights and toward the notion that the state should be an active participant in moral education, shaping the conditions under which a person can develop virtues. DMD’s more communitarian focus is in tension with the ethical individualism of PD. PD offers a profound, original, and nearly flawless contribution to ethical thought by developing a solid foundation for understanding personal moral development and flourishing. However, Norton’s flawed theory of entitlement in PD leads him to go far off-track in DMD.

His entitlement theory opened the door for recurrent intrusion in people’s lives. Norton argues in DMD for people’s rights to things that cannot be self-provided. These are essentially claims to the positive performance of others. People have positive rights only at the expense of someone else’s negative rights. No political or social system can replace a person’s own responsibility for the character of his life. Norton’s view of the state as a moral educator risks imposing a state-sanctioned notion of virtue that could infringe on individual autonomy. This could be seen as paternalistic and undermining of the very autonomy that he seeks to promote in PD. Freedom is a prerequisite for the development of virtue. Any expansion of the role of the state beyond minimal government is undesirable. Norton’s case that both negative and positive rights must be derived from responsibilities is untenable.

Despite the above flaws, Norton’s work, primarily in PD, advances a metaphysics of authentic possibilities and an ethical individualism that is applicable to each person’s personal and social circumstances. His eudaimonistic view of the moral life in terms of perfecting one’s nature thereby attaining a state of flourishing provokes serious thought. His ideas deserve to be studied along with the ideas of contemporary thinkers writing from a neo-Aristotelian perspective including, but not limited to, Ayn Rand, Henry B. Veatch, Tibor R. Machan, Fred D. Miller, Lester Hunt, Douglas B. Rasmussen, and Douglas J. Den Uyl.

 

Note

{1} See Rasmussen and Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty, pp. 257-264.

Works Cited

Norton, David L. 1976. Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

______. 1991. Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Rasmussen, Douglas B. and Douglas J. Den Uyl. 2005. Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics. University Park. PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

…….

A shorter version of this essay, focusing on Personal Destinies, has been published on The Savvy Street.

 

 

Whose life satisfaction is most affected by declining living standards in Australia?

Many Australians have good reasons to feel that their standard of living has declined in recent years.  The graph above shows what has happened to real disposable per capita incomes in Australia over the last decade. The impact of the Covid virus and government income support at that time is obvious. However, it is also obvious that real disposable incomes have declined since then.

Not so long ago, Australians could expect their real disposable per capita incomes to increase on average by about 2.5% per annum. That was the average rate of increase in the period from 1994 to 2014. However, there hasn’t been any increase over the last four years.

We can no longer assume that in Australia each generation will have higher disposable incomes on average than the previous generation at a given age. A recent report by the Productivity Commission has found that “slow growth in recent periods has meant people born in the 1990s have experienced almost no growth in incomes between the ages of 25–30 compared to those born in the 1980s.” See: Fairly equal? Economic mobility in Australia, p. 34 and figure 3.1.

People seem to have a fair idea of how their current income levels compare with those of their parents at a comparable age. Survey data suggests that the majority of young Australians feel that their income levels are lower than those of their parents.

When people feel that their incomes are lower than those of their parents at a comparable age, that often has an adverse impact on their life satisfaction. An essay I wrote on this blog in Nov 2021 made that point using data from the World Values Survey. The perception that living standards are worse than parents is associated with substantially lower life satisfaction in both Australia and United States, but the perception that income is higher than parents is not associated with higher life satisfaction than the perception that it is about the same.

In this essay I extend that analysis using Australian data for 2024 from the survey conducted by the Australian Centre on Quality of Life (ACQOL). The Australian Unity Wellbeing Index (AUWI) 2024 report found:

“On average, younger age groups (18-54 years old) were more likely to feel financially worse off compared to their parents at the same age (Figure 3-64). This was most notable for 25-34-year olds, where more than half (56%) of respondents felt worse off. In comparison, over half of 55+ year-olds felt financially better off than their parents were.”

I focus here on the 18-54 years group. In that group, 33% felt better off than their parents, 48% felt worse off, and 19% felt that their incomes were about the same as their parents’ incomes at a comparable age.

Life satisfaction of the 18-54 years group

The survey question about financial situation relative to parents was: “Thinking about how financially well-off your parents were at your age, do you feel better or worse off? Better, Worse, Same.”

The life satisfaction question was: “Thinking about your own life and personal circumstances, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole?” Scale: 0 to 10 (0 = not satisfied at all; 10 = completely satisfied).

The first graph shows the percentages with different life satisfaction experience for those who feel “better off”, “worse-off” and “about the same” relative to the financial position of their parents at a comparable age. Please note that the life satisfaction ratings are shown in reverse order (highest on the left) in the frequency distributions.

 

The graph shows clearly that those who feel worse off financially have substantially lower life satisfaction. Those who feel better off than their parents don’t have much higher life satisfaction than those who feel that their financial position is much the same as that of their parents at a comparable age. That suggests an important point – although economic progress has little impact on psychological well-being in high income countries, economic decline has potential to have a substantial adverse impact on psychological well-being in those countries.

The second graph indicates the proportions of people with different life satisfaction experience who feel better off, worse-off and about the same, relative to their parents.

 

Those who feel worse off than their parents clearly represent a high percentage of total numbers in the low life satisfaction categories. They are a smaller percentage of the total in the higher life satisfaction categories, but the absolute numbers involved are substantial.

The third graph looks more deeply at the group who feel worse-off than their parents, to observe the extent to which their life satisfaction experiences interact with their resilience. The resilience question was: “How quickly do you normally recover when something goes wrong?” (Scale: 0 to 10) The graph shows the average resilience rating of those who feel worse off than their parents in each of the life satisfaction categories.

 

As might be expected, the graph shows that those in the higher life satisfaction categories tend to have higher resilience. I guess that means that in a period of economic decline people who have a great deal of resilience don’t have too much trouble coping with the idea that their economic prospects are worse than those of their parents. However, there is no magic wand that people can use to enhance their resilience so they can avoid feeling grumpy when their economic prospects deteriorate. Resilience enhancement seems to be a long-term investment rather than something that can be accomplished overnight.

What is to be done?

There is an obvious solution to the adverse impact that declining economic prospects are having on the life satisfaction of young people in Australia. The solution is to adopt economic policies that will enhance growth in productivity and make it possible to return to a situation where each succeeding generation can reasonably expect to be better off than the one that came before.

It would not be difficult for a government to construct an agenda of economic policies to be adopted to raise productivity growth in Australia. The Productivity Commission compiled an extensive list in 2023.

When I look back on the economic performance of past governments in Australia, it seems obvious that the performance of the federal government in the 20 year period from around 1985 to 2005 was outstanding by comparison with the dismal performance of those that followed. During that period, the leaders of governing parties from both sides of politics were willing to undertake productivity-increasing economic reforms despite opposition from powerful interest groups.

By contrast, the current government is more interested in Wafflenomics than productivity-enhancing economic reform. The federal Opposition says they are interested in productivity-enhancing economic reforms but seem to me to be more interested in socialization of the means of production of electricity (by investing taxpayers’ money in nuclear energy). Both of the major political parties now seem to think that when government interference in markets has unintended adverse consequences, the solution lies in further government intervention, including attempts to pick winners. Most of the politicians currently occupying the crossbenches of the parliament are advocating policies that are even worse than those of the major parties.

Australian voters seem to have forgotten the lessons of the 1960s and 1970s about the risks of having faith in the ability of governments to pick winners. They should take heed of the wisdom of Johan Norberg: “Governments are bad at picking winners, but losers are good at picking governments.”

My bottom line

I don’t expect much improvement in economic policy in Australia in the near future.

As I see it, rather than waiting for governments to adopt better policies, it would be wise for young people to invest in personal resilience, so they will be better able to cope with the challenges that lie ahead.

That thought didn’t come from the top of my head just a few seconds ago. I have been thinking about this for several years. Something I wrote at the end of the chapter, “Will Progress Continue?” in my book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing (2021) is highly relevant. Here it is:

“We cannot rely on governments to maintain conditions favorable to the ongoing growth in opportunities for flourishing.

Whatever governments might do, human flourishing is intrinsically a self-directed activity in which individuals cooperate with others. When we reflect on what determines our own flourishing, we observe our individual capacities for wise and well-informed self-direction to be of central importance.” p. 121.

The following chapter of my book discusses the challenge of self-direction. I encourage people to read my book, but those  who wish to improve their resilience may also need relevant professional advice which is not too difficult to find.

Any Australians who are feeling depressed after reading this essay may be able to find help here, or here. 

Addendum

After reading this essay, a psychologist friend has suggested that Russ Harris’s book, The Happiness Trap: Stop struggling, start living (first published in 2007) might be relevant. I read the book several years ago, and wrote about it here.

Haris’s book is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) developed by Steven Hayes. Harris suggests that many people are caught in a happiness trap, which is based on four myths:

1. Happiness is the natural state for all human beings;
2. If you’re not happy, you’re defective;
3. To create a better life, we must get rid of negative feelings; and
4. You should be able to control what you think and feel.

I expect that there would be substantial overlap between people caught up in the happiness trap and the group identified above who feel worse-off than their parents, have low resilience, and low life satisfaction. I have no way to test the extent of overlap involved, but Harris’s suggestions about facing reality seem highly relevant to everyone:

“The reality is, life involves pain. There’s no getting away from it. As human beings we are all faced with the fact that sooner or later we will grow infirm, get sick and die. Sooner or later we all will lose valued relationships through rejection, separation or death. Sooner or later we all will come face-to-face with a crisis, disappointment and failure. This means that in one form or another, we are all going to experience painful thoughts and feelings.”

A point of clarification

When free market advocates (like me) encourage individuals who suffer economic adversity to adjust to their new circumstances, they are sometimes accused of victim blaming. That accusation is rarely appropriate, and entirely inappropriate in respect of the main point of this essay.

My main point is that to avoid the adverse impact that declining economic prospects are having on the life satisfaction of young people in Australia, our governments need to adopt economic policies that will enhance growth in productivity, and make it possible to return to a situation where each succeeding generation can reasonably expect to be better off than the one that came before.

If people who feel that they are worse off than their parents at a comparable age are looking for someone to blame, the group most obviously responsible for their predicament are those who have been seeking to stop economic growth. It is possible to pursue environmental objectives in a balanced way, using appropriate policy instruments, without imposing on young people the burden of adjusting to a no-growth future, offering less economic opportunities than enjoyed by their parents. Those who claim falsely that “degrowthing” the Australian economy is necessary for human survival need to be held accountable for the adverse consequences of their views.