A common technique of “arguing” these days is to turn any
accusation, observation, or comment back on the one who makes it. For example, if you protest that someone who
already had a doughnut just grabbed the last Bavarian Cream, he or she snaps
back with, “Well, you eat too much, anyway.”
This sort of thing does have the advantage of freeing
someone from having to make an actual argument to support or defend some
position. For example, we noted in
yesterday’s posting that neo-distributists are fond of the straw man
argument. We didn’t give an example,
although there are quite a few to choose from.
Our main point was that neo-distributists as a group almost inevitably
employ the appeal to authority — that they then re-edit to serve whatever
purposes they have in mind.
We should not be too surprised, then, that the commentator
instantly came back with the accusation that we had created a straw man. What it was, he didn’t say, just that we had
committed the logical error.
This is just a rehash of the sort of accusation we’re used
to getting. We’ve allegedly done
something, but the accuser isn’t going to tell us what it is. We have to guess. That being the case, we guess we won’t
respond to the accusation.
Our accuser — commentator, rather — also demanded that we
give him a “quote or two from the ISI book description that has caused you to
be more convinced in your opinion on the book?”
He had quoted,
“Since
the great Adam Smith tore down this pillar of economic thought, economic theory
has had no way to account for a fundamental aspect of human experience: the
social relationships that define us, the loves (and hates) that motivate and
distinguish us as persons. In trying to reduce human behavior to mere
exchanges, modern economists have lost sight of how these essential motivations
are expressed: as gifts (or their opposite, crimes). Mueller makes economics whole again,
masterfully reapplying economic thought as articulated by Aristotle, Augustine,
and Aquinas.”
In retrospect, we should have taken the statement that
“loves (and hates) . . . distinguish us as persons.” We’ll correct that now.
The idea that “loves (and hates) . . . distinguish us as
persons” is, frankly, a much more astounding statement than the one we selected
(and which we’ll get to in the next posting in this series). That’s because it contains an incredible
fallacy of equivocation on which, apparently, Mueller builds his case: that
emotions (loves and hates) or — to stretch a point possibly far beyond what
Mueller meant (but which would be more accurate) — virtues (loves) and vices
(hates) “distinguish us as persons.”
Well . . . . . . . . no.
Even stretching a point and assuming that Mueller meant that
virtues and vices distinguish us as persons is to confuse what is meant by
“person.” At best, he could only have
meant it in the popular, not the scientific, sense. Our habits of doing good (virtues) and our
habits of doing evil (vices) do not distinguish us as persons, but as individuals. They, along with our physical appearance and
other accidentals, reflect not our personality
(except in a colloquial sense), but our individuality. Personality
relates to our substantial nature, our analogously complete capacity to acquire
and develop virtue that defines us as human beings and special creations of
God, and which necessarily includes possession and exercise of the natural
rights that define us as persons.
This is because a “person” is something very specific, especially
when the subject under discussion is the natural law. A “person” is “that which has rights.” A “natural person” is that which has rights
by nature, that is, as an inherent aspect of its being. Among creatures, only men and angels are
natural persons. Everything else may be
created an artificial person, but an artificial person only has such rights as
a natural person somewhere along the line delegates (in Aristotle’s
terminology, “reflects”) to the artificial person.
It is important to note that, under ordinary circumstances,
only a creator can vest a creation with rights.
No one else has the power, for to do otherwise would be to make rights
less than what they are. Ordinarily only
the right holder can delegate his or her rights. If you delegate (usurp) my rights without my
consent, you are a tyrant or a thief.
Thus, for Mueller or his publicist to claim that the
economic theories of Adam Smith are unworkable because they don’t take into
account “the loves (and
hates) that motivate and distinguish us as persons” is an argument
containing a false premise: that “loves (and hates) . . . distinguish us as
persons.” Loves (and hates) do not, in fact, “distinguish us as
persons.” Our natural rights “distinguish
us as persons.” To say otherwise is simply
wrong.
