… Nock Revisited | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Nock’s essay on the Right Thing is a reminder that the advocates of the paternalistic state, whether “left” or “right,” have it backward: good conduct isn’t a precondition of freedom; it is a consequence of freedom. He contrasts the “region of conduct” regulated by force, that is, by government, with the region regulated by the individual’s sense of doing the Right Thing.
Nock wrote,
The point is that any enlargement [of the first region], good or bad, reduces the scope of individual responsibility, and thus retards and cripples the education which can be a product of nothing but the free exercise of moral judgment. Like the discipline of the army, again, any such enlargement, good or bad, depraves this education into a mere routine of mechanical assent. The profound instinct against being “done for our own good” . . . is wholly sound. Men are aware of the need of this moral experience as a condition of growth, and they are aware, too, that anything tending to ease it off from them, even for their own good, is to be profoundly distrusted. The practical reason for freedom, then, is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fibre can be developed. [Emphasis added.]
In other words . . . no, there are no better words.
Few writers have exerted a greater influence over me than Albert Jay Nock.
Those with instinctual paternalistic enthusiasms don't want to hear this. They very much like the power they assume by helping people "for our own good." And "mechanical assent" is not a bug for them, but a feature. Sigh....
ReplyDeleteI find Nock an interesting writer, but a very slippery moral guide. It is difficult to read Memoirs of a Superfluous Man with attention, and not conclude that the writer considers that a bit of adultery, conducted by grown-up rules & without reproaches is OK; making a fuss is what is no good. I am reminded of Allan Bloom, as I write this, for my impression of Closing of the American Mind is that he was largely distressed that this students got their nihilism from the Rolling Stones rather than Nietzche.
ReplyDeleteI've read those memoirs at least twice and did not get that impression myself, though I do think Nock felt that people should be able to form relationships on their own without the intermediation of church or state. It is not a view I happen to share exactly.
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