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.
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