Abstract
In this paper, which is concerned with philosophical methodology as it might affect social science and ethics, the endeavor is to explore the depth and implications of Buchanan’s interest in Spinoza. After establishing their connection, the paper explores the parallels between Spinoza’s “dualism” and Buchanan’s own dualism and how that can shed light on Buchanan’s distinction between constitutional and operational modalities. Given their analogous perspectives, the paper then considers the possibility of dimensional shifts in the dualism, such that what was once a constitutional perspective becomes operational and how that ability to shift might affect various research agendas in the social sciences and ethics. Finally, we raise the question of how separate are the two levels and can they be brought together. In a Spinozistic framework, they ultimately would collapse into a monism, but the conclusion here is that for Buchanan there must always be a gap between them. As a result, the effort to resolve the tension between the dimensions may signal future research agendas in ethics and political economy.
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Notes
I did this with my “Sociality and Social Contract: A Spinozistic Perspective” (1985).
The text from the Ethica (Spinoza 2002) reads as follows: “Before going any further, I wish here to explain, what we should understand by nature viewed as active (natura naturans), and nature viewed as passive (natura naturata). I say to explain, or rather call attention to it, for I think that, from what has been said, it is sufficiently clear, that by nature viewed as active we should understand that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself, or those attributes of substance, which express eternal and infinite essence, in other words (Prop. xiv., Coroll. i., and Prop. xvii., Coroll. ii) God, in so far as he is considered as a free cause. By nature viewed as passive I understand all that which follows from the necessity of the nature of God, or of any of the attributes of God, that is, all the modes of the attributes of God, in so far as they are considered as things which are in God, and which without God cannot exist or be conceived” (1p29s). Our point in what follows is to draw an analogy to this distinction and not literally apply Spinoza’s metaphysics to Buchanan’s world view. Whether Spinoza’s metaphysics would apply to Buchanan I do not know, but the distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata can be used usefully I believe without that metaphysics. However, as we shall see below without that metaphysical base, the distinction becomes more relativized than Spinoza would allow.
Obviously there are many complications here including Spinoza’s idea of infinite modes on the one hand and the problematic nature of individuals on the other. Nonetheless, the foregoing description is not misleading.
See Spinoza’s Letter to Oldenberg (Ep32) Spinoza (1928) discusses the idea that a worm in the bloodstream views its world as complete whole even though that whole is actually part of a much larger system.
In political philosophy, Rasmussen and I employ this same sort of dualistic perspective in our distinction between norms and metanorms. See Rasmussen and Den Uyl (2005, 33ff).
Boettke quotes Buchanan as saying: “[The economist’s] task includes the derivation of the institutional order itself from the set of elementary behavioral hypotheses with which he commences” (Boettke 2014: 352). Nothing about this view requires limiting one’s frame of analysis to traditional social contract assumptions and procedures.
Continuing our analogy even here, the actual rules arrived at are the natura naturata of the constitutional process that gives rise to them. Our question about the ontic gap, though formulated somewhat differently, applies here as well.
See my response to Buchanan’s rejection of teleology in Den Uyl (2009).
Earlier Buchanan was taken with the work of David Gautier in this regard. See Buchanan (2001b, 437–468).
Another example from a different source might be Barden and Murphy (2011).
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Den Uyl, D.J. Natura naturans, natura naturata. Rev Austrian Econ 27, 175–182 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11138-014-0261-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11138-014-0261-0
Keywords
- Methodology
- Ethics
- Buchanan
- Spinoza
- Research
- Political economy
- Public choice
- Dualism
- Constitutional perspective
- Hayek
- Choice