The Imago Dei and the Market Economy: Libertarian Tensions in Michael Novak’s Political Theology

Abstract

The paper explores Michael Novak’s understanding of the human person and his normative case for the market economy, specifically its points of agreement and tension with natural rights libertarianism. For Michael Novak, the imago dei provides the strongest account for the relationship between the market economy, human dignity, and natural rights. Rationalistic attempts, such as those within libertarianism, cannot adequately ground human dignity or sustain free institutions capable of serving the common good, the market economy, and political liberty. However, Novak’s affinity to his libertarian interlocutors presents an opportunity for dialogue on the necessity of economic freedom and related theological influences on natural rights theory for securing human flourishing.

1. Introduction

Conservatives and libertarians have debated for decades over the limits of the state, the market economy, and the concept of natural rights. Conservatives traditionally strive for minimal state intervention in the market. Libertarians typically eschew all forms of state intervention. A notable conservative philosopher, Michael Novak—whose body of work spans several decades and is particularly focused on a normative case for the market economy—offers a theological approach to economics that has significant overlap with many libertarian thinkers, and consequently, such overlap presents an opportunity for dialogue on the relationship between economic freedom, the state, and the human person.

This paper explores Michael Novak’s understanding of the human person and his normative case for the market economy, specifically on points of agreement and tension with natural rights libertarianism. Novak’s affinity to his libertarian interlocutors presents an opportunity for dialogue on the necessity of economic freedom for human flourishing and related theological influences on natural rights theory. However, given his distinctly Christian orientation, Novak’s foundational presuppositions about the human person as imago dei lead him into direct conflict with libertarian theory on the roles of reason, religion, and the state in shaping the common good.

This paper will argue for several points. First, according to Novak, the Judeo-Christian concept of the imago dei provides the strongest foundation for the market economy, human dignity, and natural rights. Second, the market economy characterized by free exchange and free association reflects both individual and social aspects of human nature and allows for the cultivation of moral virtues that are consistent with the imago dei. Third, a libertarian reliance on methodological rationalism undermines the case for universal natural human rights, including the right to economic freedom. In contrast, Novak’s methodological dependence on religious presuppositions offers the necessary bulwark for defending the market economy. Fourth and finally, libertarian arguments for a stateless society rely on an implicit moral idealism regarding the ability of the market alone to preserve liberty. Novak’s concept of “institutional pluralism” is offered as an alternative to this idealism.

2. The Imago Dei and Novak’s Case for the Market Economy

“All western civilization stands or falls with the words of Genesis, ‘God made man in His image’”. Dietrich von Hildebrand uttered those words in response to philosophical anti-personalism which swept Germany in the years leading up to WWII (Crosby 2006, p. 9). To Hildebrand, the fundamental issue for grounding human rights lay in the recognition of humanity’s status among the created beings, as creatures made in God’s image. Today, the fundamental issue of grounding human rights has not changed. The imago dei remains in the eyes of many the “the necessary bridging concept” for the intersection of theology and ethics, particularly as it relates to Christian engagement in public policy and the issue of natural human rights (Witherington 2010, p. 2).

2.1. The Imago Dei and the Unplanned Common Good

As a Christian moral philosopher, Michael Novak’s understanding of the human person cannot be described without reference to this theological foundation. For Novak, the doctrine of the imago dei is essential to understanding human dignity, human rights, and economic freedom. As imago dei, the human person is a relational individual, having the nature of being individuated yet requiring community. The human person, Novak writes, is “per se subsistens”. That is to say, each person is “free and independent of every other member of the species” but still requires community with other human persons (Novak 1989, p. 26). As imago dei, human beings possess reason and will and the capacity for insight and choice, but as fallen creatures, they are marred by sin, and therefore, are prone to error in their reason and will. In spite of their corruption, however, human beings retain an ultimate purpose (or telos) to live in communion with God and fellow human beings.1 This is the ultimate common good of humankind and the ultimate good of each person. Thus, the Judeo-Christian ground for human dignity and freedom in the imago dei has two components: “the unalienable responsibility of each person, per se subsistens; and also the final destination of each in the full insight of love of communion with God” (Novak 1989, p. 30).

Novak’s theological rendering is essential for his theorizing about political community and the market economy. The implication is that each and every political community must not frustrate the freedom of image bearers. To do so would be to rob human persons of their dignity and true justice. State power, therefore, should recognize that individuals are free by nature and that human freedom should be afforded its rightful space with free institutions and a largely undirected common good (Shaw 2014, p. 2).

How does Novak arrive at the conclusion that rational created beings require a society with an unplanned free market? Would it not be better for rational creatures to live in a rationally planned economy under a centralizing authority? In response to this challenge, Novak introduces a concept called “intelligent subjectivity”. Intelligent subjectivity refers to a person’s simultaneous awareness of himself as a subject and an awareness of other persons as subjects. As intelligent subjects who co-exist with other intelligent subjects and with a world of external objects, human persons must use their reason and will to interact with these entities, external to and yet related to themselves. In order to exercise their reason and will properly, intelligent subjects require a degree of individual sovereignty in many areas of life, including commerce and trade. Hence, there is an inherent drive toward personal freedom inherent in the nature of intelligent subjects (Novak 1996, p. 101). Writing on this concept, theologian Elizabeth Shaw shows why intelligent subjectivity is important for Novak’s case for the market economy. She writes the following:

As [Novak] characterized it, this drive [toward freedom] is (1) unstructured or preoccupied in the sense that it is open to receive whatever data might be presented to it; (2) unlimited in the sense that its object is to grasp everything that is to be understood, and even why the unintelligible is so; (3) objective in the sense that it seeks the critically verified real, as opposed to the imagined; and (4) unifying in the sense that it draws together the various activities of inquiry, namely, attention, insight, reflection, and understanding.

(Shaw 2014, p. 5)

Human beings require significant freedom by virtue of their intelligent subjectivity and desire to seek out truth in the world of other subjects and objects. What best explains a rationally ordered world capable of satisfying human needs for both sovereignty and community? For Novak, the answer is obvious: an intelligent Creator who made intelligent subjects like Himself and who can approximate His governance in the world (Novak 1996, p. 146).

The imago dei is the bridging concept because it confers to each person a degree of sovereignty with respect to themselves, to others, and to God. Through “intelligent subjectivity”, humans learn to exercise sovereignty by means of trial and error, practical wisdom, prudence, and virtue. Without the freedom to exercise their individual sovereignty as intelligent subjects, humans become something less than human. If they are enslaved to a narrow, collectivist view of human rationality—characterized by centrally planned economics—then the natural mechanisms by which individuals build virtues in the full expression of the imago dei will be destroyed. A world with individual, intelligent subjects exercising sovereignty in their personal spheres necessitates an economic order that is largely unplanned and undirected (Klos 2014, p. 115).2

To ensure that each intelligent subject has this opportunity, personal liberty should be given primacy over the community but in a way that promotes a mutually beneficial relationship.3 Even though human persons are social in nature, requiring both families and societies to flourish as they were created, they also are individual in nature, holding different views of reality and pursuing different visions of the good. There is simply no way of arriving at a univocal conception of the “common good” among free persons, nor is there any way of ordering society such that free individuals can peacefully co-exist while pursuing divergent visions of the common good (Novak 1991, p. 63). A respect for intelligent subjectivity will permit the possibility that right-thinking, good-willed individuals will have legitimate disagreements about the rightness, justice, and goodness. The challenge for a free society, therefore, is to identify a common good capable of serving individuals with competing metaphysical worldviews.

How is this possible in a society of free persons? Is there a way to respect each individual’s conception of the true and the good while also supplying their need for cooperation and cohesion? The answer, Novak argues, is a free market economy and minimal state. Such a system does not seek to define all of life but merely the sphere of life dealing with social cooperation. As such, it serves as a suitable vehicle for social cohesion without requiring unanimity on all metaphysical or theological presuppositions (Novak 1991, p. 65).4

Before Novak can make this case, however, he has to reorient the meaning of the common good away its collectivist connotations. The common good, Novak argues, is both individual and communal. The good of the person and the good of the community can be mutually beneficial even if in a group with competing conceptions of the common good. Human persons, by nature, can exercise their God-given reason and natural freedom in ways that actualize this minimalistic common good when individuals have freedom of association (Novak 1989, p. 34). But how can society respect both liberty and responsibility? The answer lies in seeing human beings in their non-materiality, as spiritual persons. If human beings are viewed in merely materialistic terms, then they may be easily isolated into mere individuals with competing and unrelated existences, or they may be exploited by collectivist schemes where the “common good” completely annihilates the individual. However, if humans are spiritual beings possessing the capacities of intellect and will and capable of engaging in reflection and choice, they must remain free and responsible to uphold transcendent moral responsibilities to their neighbors.

This juncture is precisely where many political theories fail because they define the human person in one of two ways, neither of which can sustain a true common good. These flawed conceptions are (1) the self-enclosed individual or (2) the unfree collective. The self-enclosed individual idolizes the individuated person without respect for other persons or without acknowledgement of the divine source of human dignity (Novak 1989, p. 35). One can hope that the mechanisms for countering this form of individualism could be social and communal without resorting to centrally planned collectivism, but without a theological framing of human dignity in the imago dei, a purely rationalistic framing of individualism offers little defense against the collectivizing tendencies of society.5 Novak’s critique of libertarian theory (below) provides more reasons for thinking so. For now, it is important to consider the alternative to self-enclosed individualism: the unfree collective.

Like self-enclosed individualism, the unfree collective is a by-product of rationalist attempts to create a common good, but unlike self-enclosed individualism, collectivism outright denies individual freedom and human dignity by violating the moral law on which they are based. Collectivism requires the annihilation of the individual and its freedoms. It assumes what Novak describes as a “unanimity of moral preference in social philosophy” that makes collectivists blind to their immoral suppression of individual conscience (Novak 1989, p. 39). In essence, collectivism cannot recognize that legitimate moral disagreements may exist among members of society regarding the common good. Collectivism simply aims at correcting the excesses of individualism without understanding the social dimensions brought to bear by a respect for individualism. In collectivism, the common good is simply defined as that which is opposed to individualism. A common good respectful of free persons, however, must not capitulate to the smothering tendencies of collectivism because collectivism by definition contradicts a society of persons qua persons (Novak 1989, p. 39).

Fortunately, a critique of excessive individualism does not require collectivism. Society can resist both poles and promote a common good through a respect for individual rights, especially the rights of private property and free association. However, in order for society to resist the pull in either direction, its common good cannot be based on purely rationalistic conceptions of the human person. Theological presuppositions such as the imago dei are necessary because they frame and limit the competing goods of individualism and community. The imago dei, Novak argues, is intrinsic to the belief that a market economy is the most effective tool at seeking the good of all through the freedom of all, and it is the imago dei which serves as Novak’s methodological starting point for defending free markets.

2.2. The Imago Dei, the Market, and Moral Virtue

Novak’s primary justifications for the market economy are the inalienable rights it protects and the market’s embodiment of significant moral virtues such as diligence, industriousness, prudence, reliability, and fidelity. Yet, in order for markets to cultivate moral virtue, they must be free, universal, and accessible. Thus, in building his normative case for the market economy, Novak turns to the idea that humans are by nature “acting persons”; that is, they are persons endowed with the inalienable rights to personal economic initiative and the virtues associated with free enterprise (Novak 2015, p. 252).

The cultivation of moral virtue produced by the market economy, along with the prosperity brought to the poor, is one of the decisive empirical refutations against collectivism. In contrast to collectivist systems, the market economy produces cardinal virtues that contribute to a just and prosperous society, virtues such as creativity, community, and practical reason. The market economy encourages the virtue of practical reason by requiring knowledge of how the real world works and trial and error to learn one’s limitations. It is the virtue of learning to deal with the world as it is, to face the reality of sin and the contingencies of life it produces. The market also fosters the creative habit of enterprise that constitutes an important source of wealth creation in modern society, creativity that is deeply personal, individualistic, and the signature of the imago dei (Novak 1996, p. 120).

The market economy, Novak writes, is not a “purely technical and instrumental arrangement…with no discernible moral qualities” (Novak 2015, p. 225). Rather, just the opposite. The creative spirit of the imago dei is embedded in the quintessential virtue of the market economy, entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship as a moral virtue means that individuals and businesses are not merely economic entities but are moral entities. Businesses, like groups of individuals, are an “expression of the social nature of human beings” (Novak 1981, p. 1). Entrepreneurial enterprise leads to the creation of businesses, and businesses serve as mediating structures that “make possible the flowering of human initiative, cooperation, and accountability” (Novak 1981, p. 5). Like individuals, businesses depend on the rule of law and on regimes favorable to their existence, but they also depend on the moral ethos of their shareholders and customers. In this way, businesses are not merely part of the economic system but also the political and moral culture in which they exist. They fulfill a vital human need for creativity and serve as a bulwark for human liberty, conscience, and service to God (Novak 1981, p. 25).

In a tangible way, Novak writes, “the modern business system expresses the interdependence of the whole human race” (Novak 1996, p. 126). This private corporation provides a means by which individuals can achieve common ends while serving their neighbors and providing a level of mediation between them and the state. Businesses generate a new form of human community, one that produces wealth that would not be possible otherwise, but when framed by the moral purpose of human society, they provide a level of community and purpose that would not otherwise exist.

For Novak then, the market economy encourages the flourishing of human persons, reflects both individual and social aspects of human nature, and preserves the natural rights of persons to free exchange and free association. In so doing, it cultivates significant moral virtues required of every human person. Together, these built-in features of the market economy are testaments of the true nature of the human person as imago dei.

3. Novak and Natural Rights Libertarians

Novak’s theological case for the market economy is important for addressing free market defenses found within natural rights libertarianism. Novak and libertarians agree on many issues, which presents opportunities for dialogue and cooperation. For instance, they agree that each human being has essentially the same fundamental needs and desires, and that these needs and desires suggest something about the kind of freedom human beings require. Most agree that self-governance is impossible without an underlying social ethos comprising intellectual and moral virtues. In fact, the libertarian arguments for political and economic freedom resemble Novak’s theological argument to an extent. However, there is at least one essential difference in their justifications for the market economy; namely, the grounding of natural rights (Novak 1999, p. 42).

Novak explicitly grounds the rights of individuals on theological foundations, the imago dei. By contrast, natural rights libertarians ground rights in a rationalist method drawn from Kantian deontology and natural law. More specifically, libertarians argue that the right of private property is a natural right of every rational moral agent. They often express this right as the right of self-ownership; that is to say, the right over one’s body, labor, freedom of association, and similar ideas (Schlueter 2014, p. 48).6

The right of self-ownership, therefore, underwrites the entire libertarian project (Attas 2000, p. 17). From this natural right stems the non-aggression principle (NAP), the delineation of all other rights, the proper (and limited) uses of force, and a repudiation of state coercion (McElwee 2010, p. 217). When comparing Novak to natural rights libertarianism, it will be helpful to limit the scope of comparison to one or two seminal thinkers—in this case, Murray Rothbard and Hans Hermann-Hoppe. Rothbard and Hoppe are two of the leading modern libertarian thinkers whose writings are explicitly committed to a non-theological natural law ethic, and by implication, the proposition that natural property rights of the individual person to self-ownership can be established apart from any religious presuppositions.7

As one of the most formative thinkers of this tradition, Rothbard’s arguments will serve as libertarian natural rights arguments par excellence (Rothbard 2012). Hoppe will be used to supplement Rothbard’s arguments since his work represents a more recent innovation in natural rights theory (Hoppe 2012). For the purposes of this paper, Novak’s criticisms of classical liberal theory are helpful for analyzing natural rights libertarianism and for seeing the important differences that must be addressed if a fruitful dialogue is possible (Novak 1999). Novak’s first criticism targets libertarianism’s attempt to ground human rights apart from religious presuppositions. Novak’s second criticism attacks an implicit optimism about human nature that lurks within a libertarian view of the market.

3.1. Libertarian Methodological Independence from Religious Presuppositions

Novak argues that liberal theories—and by implication, libertarian theories—have failed to appreciate the critical role religion has played in the development of political liberty. This is perhaps the key historical critique of all attempts to ground natural rights in prior rationalistic arguments. Novak explains the following:

Religious ideas do not work in history as premises in logic or postulates in geometry; they work as yeast in dough. For their aim is not so much to chance logic as to change personal and social life. To fulfill this process, mediation, reflection, and the slow process of self-criticism as needed. Thus, the conviction that the one God is the Creator of all and made every woman and man in his image became the main ground in history for the growing sense of dignity of every human person, even among slaves and the poor and the vulnerable….That the creator calls all humans to himself, and is also the undeceivable Judge of all, further became the main historical ground for the idea that truth is weightier than power and interest, and that therefore, it is the truth that sets us free. Against every power and interest, the human being rightly appeals to truth. It is the same for the idea that every person is responsible for his own free choices in life, on which he or she will be judged. It is under the tutelage of Judaism and Christianity that, in due course, the operation (and the nature) of conscience emerged in human consciousness, and also the idea that the power of the state is limited in the realm of the sacred.

(Novak 1999, p. 45)

In other words, religious propositions are not rationalistic postulates that one can access through the exercise of pure reason. Human rationality is limited and corrupted by sin, and because of its corruption, it must be corrected by divine revelation. Religious propositions such as the imago dei are not discernible through reason alone, yet it is religious claims like the imago dei that gave rise to the notion of universal human dignity, human equality, and a normative ethic of responsibility before God. The imago dei gave rise to the notion of justice as respect for God’s rule and respect for the individual’s freedom to live out his God-given responsibilities (Tierney 1997). These ideas, argues Novak, are not anti-liberal or anti-rational. Rather, they are the bedrock upon which liberalism and rationalism are built.

Now, consider Murray Rothbard’s argument for natural rights. Rothbard begins by positing a hypothetical: If man has a nature, then it can be open to rational reflection and observation, and unaided reason is the tool by which one deduces facts about human nature. How else might one establish truths about man’s nature if not through rational reflection? After all, Rothbard writes, “man’s reason is objective” (Rothbard 2012, p. 10). This, Rothbard admits, does not entail that reason is infallible. Rather, reason is the objective ground for determining facts about human nature, and therefore, also the ground for determining a universal ethic for human beings. A universal, objective ethic may be established for man on scientific methods of inquiry into the natural law. He explains the following:

In the case of man, the natural law ethic states that goodness or badness can be determined by what fulfills or thwarts what is best for man’s nature. The natural law, then, elucidates what is best for man—what ends he should pursue that are most harmonious with, and best tend to fulfill, his nature.

(Rothbard 2012, p. 11)

Rothbard then asks how it is that natural law principles become binding on human beings. His answer: the facts underwriting the analysis of human nature are universal. That is, they are true of one and all human beings.8

Based on this argument, the key assumptions in natural rights libertarianism are (1) that one’s analysis of human nature is correct on the basis of rational reflection alone and (2) that one’s rational faculties are functioning properly to a sufficient degree to accurately deduce facts about human nature. These are, of course, the presuppositions that lead Rothbard to conclude that a natural law ethic enables human beings to establish universal objective norms through rational reflection. Reason, therefore, may elucidate the totality of a natural law ethic and can serve as the foundation of social and political philosophy (Rothbard 2012, p. 17).

This, of course, is an important point of disagreement between a theological approach such as Novak’s and a non-theological, rationalist approach common to natural rights libertarianism. Ironically, Rothbard finds the roots of his theory in the natural law tradition of Thomas Aquinas, the Spanish scholastics, and the Dutch-reformed jurist Hugo Grotius (O’Donovan and O’Donovan 1999, p. 787). According to Rothbard, the natural law ethic, best stated by Grotius and his successors, elaborated an “independent body of natural laws in a purely secular context…which was not…primarily theological” (Rothbard 2012, p. 6). In fact, Rothbard readily admits his intent on defending natural rights against any theological incursions. A true natural law ethic then is the exercise of man’s “unaided reason to give a fundamental explanation of the nature of things” (Rothbard 2012, p. 3). Hence, rational inquiry into the ethics of the natural law must be a purely secular endeavor.

Rothbard’s analysis is a striking departure from theological contributions to natural law and natural rights theory, a tradition that explicitly grounded individual rights not in self-ownership but in God’s universal ownership of creation. As historian Richard Tuck explains in his book, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development, the paradigmatic expression of natural rights theory meant that a person’s right to property was rooted in his natural “faculty” of reason bestowed by God. God, having universal ownership or dominion over creation, bestows partial ownership or dominion to man both in his person and in the things he can appropriate from creation. Thus, man has property in himself and the material world in accordance with his shared ownership with God (Tuck 2002, p. 24). It was the radical seventeenth century natural rights theories that divorced the notion of man having property in himself from its theistic foundation.

In keeping with this shift away from theological foundations, Rothbard derives natural rights from the mental faculty of reason without reference to any religious underpinnings. Rationality alone is the instrument of knowledge by which humans come to learn about the natural world, and in course, the natural law. By reason alone, humans learn how things work. Reason teaches humans about their nature, and most importantly, that they are rational creatures with the capacity of selecting and ordering ends for themselves. Reason also shows that humans not only possess freedom and self-ownership but that they require both by nature. Consequently, it is reason, not theology, that reveals a natural “ethic of liberty” and which serves as the basis for that liberty (Tuck 2002, p. 31).9

Contrast this with the role given to reason in the Thomistic natural law tradition held by Michael Novak. According to Thomas Aquinas, any law is a “dictate of practical reason emanating from a ruler” (Aquinas 1990, p. I-II.91-1). There are two positions from which to contemplate law, the perspective of the ruler and the perspective of the ruled. Those viewing law from the “ruled” perspective must ask what accounts for the fact that their actions conform to a law, and how it is they can participate in that law. The answer, according to Aquinas, is that God’s providential rule is “imprinted” on human beings; that they are created with “inclinations to their proper acts and ends” (Aquinas 1990, p. I-II.91-1). However, humans do not act deterministically. They use reason to distinguish between good ends and evil ends. In turn, good and evil ends are determined by what helps or hinders human flourishing.

Thus, there is a correlation between the good ends of a thing and its appetite or desires, but this correlation is not an identification. Good ends and good appetites are not the same. The important qualification Thomistic natural law makes is that appetites (desires) may sometimes go wrong with respect to good human ends. In order for a person’s appetite to reveal his good end, his appetite must be rightly ordered. Thus, natural reason, as Thomas calls it, is the imprint of God’s eternal law when it has inclinations to its proper end. Natural law constitutes the directives yielded to human reason by a proper participation in God’s eternal law. Ethicist Nicholas Wolterstorff summarizes the unavoidable conclusion of Thomas’ natural law ethic:

Thus natural law, rather than being external to the human being, expresses what human beings are. We are creatures whose participation in God’s providential rule takes the form of using our reason to reflect on our natural inclinations and thus, when reason is functioning properly, arriving at directives that coincide with God’s eternal law for human life.

(Wolterstorff 2008, p. 42)

In his own critique of rationalist attempts to ground natural rights, Wolterstorff demonstrates that secular conceptions of natural law incorrectly equate appetites with good ends. They wrongly infer that whatever ends a human desires are its good ends. They move from this inference to the conclusion that in seeking whatever good he desires, a person ought not to be aggressed against in his person or property and that it would be unjust to interfere in whatever ends that person seeks so long as that person does not interfere with another person’s liberty.

Returning to the natural rights libertarian ethic, one may ask how a secular account of natural law can determine the proper natural inclinations of human beings (Block 2015, p. 40). By rejecting so-called theological incursions into his natural law ethic, Rothbard forfeits any non-question-begging assertion about human nature. For in order to argue that human nature may be discerned through rational reflection regarding human needs, wants, and desires, Rothbard must assume at the outset what those undeniable features of human nature are and the moral implications derived from them (Share 2012, p. 117). However, reason cannot distinguish between what those features are and what they ought to be. In other words, the naturalistic “is-ought” fallacy threatens to destroy Rothbard’s rationalist project.10

If Rothbard’s argument is insufficient, there is perhaps another argument libertarians could turn to in order to establish natural rights. Recall that Rothbard’s natural law ethic hinges on the observation that human beings are rational creatures by nature. The innate capacity of rationality serves as the universal trait of human nature and the basis for determining the good ends of human beings. Rothbard infers from this observation that human beings have the rights they do because of their capacity for reason and all of the natural abilities this confers. These natural rights extend to humans because humans are rational creatures, which is why only human beings have the rights they have and why animals do not have those same rights—human beings are the only rational creatures we know of (Rothbard 2012, p. 155). Thus, when libertarians speak about natural rights, they mean natural human rights that are obtained by virtue of possessing rational agency.

The fundamental problem with grounding natural human rights in rational agency, however, is that each defense of these rights amounts to a “capacities” defense of human dignity (Gewirth 1981; Pilon 1979, p. 1171).11 That is, only entities who have capacity “A” have a natural right of “B” to pursue good “C” (Mack 2016, p. 52).12 Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s argument from performative contradiction takes this form. Hoppe maintains that one cannot argue against the natural right of self-ownership without first assuming the right of ownership in oneself (Hoppe 2012, p. 205). He argues that any person who denies the right of private property assumes at the outset that he at least has ownership of his own thoughts and body, both of which are necessary to engage in argumentation. Hence, one cannot argue against the right of private property without first assuming he has private ownership over his own body.13

Arguments like those of Rothbard and Hoppe reveal two basic ways libertarians seek to ground natural rights in the capacity of rational agency. The first kind—Rothbard’s argument—is heavily indebted to Immanuel Kant’s kingdom of ends ethic, in which the dignity of each person is grounded in the inherent worth of rational agency (Kinsella 1996, p. 313). The second kind—Hoppe’s argument—relies on a reductio ad absurdum to show that any denial of self-ownership is impossible. It then makes inferences from self-consciousness and autonomy of the mind to self-ownership and autonomy of the body and any external property. In assessing rationalist attempts to ground natural rights, Nicholas Wolterstorff’s critique of rationalism again shows why each of these libertarian arguments fail to ground natural rights (Wolterstorff 2008, pp. 332–37). Wolterstorff does not directly address libertarians or their arguments, but his critique of rationalism logically applies to them.

Consider first Rothbard’s argument, which is not identical to Kant’s but nevertheless relies on similar claims (i.e., human beings have inherent dignity because of they possess the capacity for rational agency) (Kuznicki 2016, p. 91).14 For any natural rights theorist following Kant’s “kingdom of ends” ethic, he must show that all and only human beings have the capacity for rational agency in order to demonstrate the reality of natural human rights.

The problem for Kantian-style arguments is the difficulty in proving how inherent moral worth is conferred to human beings by virtue of the capacity of rational agency. There is also the additional problem of showing that all and only human beings have the natural rights they do by virtue of that capacity. The challenge for a natural rights theorist is identifying exactly how all and only human beings stand in the same particular relation to this capacity for rational agency and why this capacity confers natural rights exclusively to them and not any other species (Wolterstorff 2008, p. 332).15

Wolterstorff argues that this is impossible because not all human beings stand in the same relation to the capacity for rational agency. Some exercise the capacity; some merely possess it but never exercise it; still others neither exercise nor possess it but stand in some “soft” relationship to it, such as belonging to a species whose properly formed adult members possess the capacity for rationality (Wolterstorff 2008, p. 332).16 If the libertarian hopes to ground natural human rights in rational agency, he must choose between grounding rights in one of these three options, but each one poses significant problems.

If the secular natural rights theorist chooses the first option—grounding rights in the exercise of the capacity—then particular individuals will be excluded from the class of rights bearers because they never exercise the capacity. If the secularist chooses the second option—grounding rights in the possession of the capacity—the same result follows. Some individuals are excluded from the class of rights bearers because they do not actually possess the capacity but stand in a softer (inferior) relation to the capacity.17 This would potentially include human beings—unborn, infants, children, or adults—who have not yet reached a certain level of cognitive development.18 However, if the secularist chooses the third option—grounding rights in a soft relation to the capacity—then all human beings may be included in the class of rights bearers, but the class of rights bearers expands to the point of including higher mammalian species since these animals also stand in the same soft relation to rational agency (or stand in a stronger relation to the capacity for rational agency than some members of the human species) (MacIntyre and Carus 2011).19

The implication of Wolterstorff’s trilemma is unavoidable. A purely rationalistic account of natural rights cannot succeed in securing natural rights for all and only human beings. How could a normative case for the market economy be made on a natural rights ground if not all humans possess those rights or some animals possess them in addition to human beings? Such an ethic would not be the species-specific natural law ethic that Rothbard and other natural rights libertarians require.

What about the reductio ad absurdum offered by Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s argument from performative contradiction? Hoppe maintains that one cannot argue against the natural right of self-ownership without first assuming the right of ownership in oneself. Any person who denies the natural right of private property assumes at the outset that he at least has private ownership of his own thoughts and body. Hence, one cannot argue against the right of private property without first assuming it in himself. Is this argument sufficient to prove the reality of natural human rights?

Wolterstorff’s critique of rationalism suggests not. He shows that these forms of argumentation incorrectly infer from premise (A) one’s having the capacity for agency and recognizing it in other human beings to (B) that each person must be afforded the same freedom in the pursuit of their ends or in some purposive action. Hoppe’s argument might compel all rational agents to recognize (out of necessity and practicality) the natural right of freedom of thought or the belief in the existence of other rational agents. However, it does not necessitate that every rational agent has the right to property in his body or in the things he controls or possesses.

If Wolterstorff’s account of rationalism is correct, then by implication, Hoppe’s argument makes a two-fold mistake. First, he wrongly infers that a natural right to freedom in one sphere entails a natural right to freedom in other spheres. In this case, a natural right in the sphere of one’s mental state of being leads to natural rights in the sphere of one’s physical state of being. Most would probably agree with Hoppe’s conclusion that human beings have these rights, but this conclusion does not follow necessarily from his premises. Second, he infers wrongly from the premise that each rational agent requires a certain amount of freedom to achieve a purposive action to the conclusion that each rational agent has a natural right to that freedom. Again, most would probably agree with Hoppe’s conclusion that humans have the right to purposive action, but the inference is invalid.

In fact, the amount of freedom and well-being necessary to achieve any purposive action is actually very little (McElwee 2010, p. 216). It hardly necessitates the kind of property rights Hoppe believes are self-evident and normative. It only establishes a minimal kind of freedom in the mind of each rational agent, one that could hardly establish the exclusive and absolute property rights of self-ownership and autonomy in the external world. The only conclusion that seems to follow from Hoppe’s argument is that each rational agent who possesses the same degree of rationality possesses the same degree of freedom in rational reflection, or in other words, that he possesses the same degree of autonomy in mind. Simply because one is logically compelled to acknowledge the basic right of autonomy of the mind does not mean that one must acknowledge all property rights per se. There is no requirement to acknowledge natural rights beyond the right of psychological autonomy. Therefore, it is doubtful that Hoppe’s argument from performative contradiction is sufficient to ground natural rights or serve as a normative basis for the market economy.

3.2. Libertarian Idealism and the Market Economy

Returning to Michael Novak’s theological grounding in the imago dei, one may now appreciate Novak’s criticism that liberal/libertarian theory overestimates reason’s ability to defend liberty without appeal to religious presuppositions. He explains the following:

[T]he notion that one can defend reason and liberty apart from the conviction that truth derives from the Creator and Judge has turned out to be a weak reed, just as Nietzche predicted. Usually, we use the word “truth” as a characteristic either or propositions or of the reality of things. But the suppressed implication of this usage, as Nietzsche saw clearly, is that truth in the end is personal; it is grounded in God. Take out God and truth floats free, flimsily related if at all to either propositions or things. It comes then to seem rooted in nothing more than our own desires and projects. It thereby loses its original force. We are thus once again (after an exception interval of two millennia) left embedded in a world whose moving forces are power and interest”.

(Novak 1999, p. 46)

The Nietzschean analysis of “truth as power” poses a critical threat to the rationalist project of grounding natural rights in a priori arguments. Intellect and will, without the conviction of God as Creator and ground of truth, prove to be impotent in securing natural rights, and the rationalist project offers little protection against the criminality and thuggery of nihilism. In the face of such nihilism, there can be no recourse to notions of truth, justice, or even a universal rationality.

The recognition of God as the ground of objective truth is indispensable, therefore, for reflecting upon the nature of human persons and the political liberty they require. Reason alone does not supply society with the belief that every human being is responsible toward God as their creator, nor does it provide humanity with important categories like the conscience and the realm of the sacred. Without a religious backdrop from which to theorize about human nature, the natural rights libertarian is left to wither on the vine of rationalism without reference to man’s non-material nature. The rationalist may only appeal to man’s materiality, but if this appeal cannot guard against nihilism, it is questionable that it can adequately defend against statist, collectivist, and totalitarian incursions (Novak 1999, p. 46).

Naturally, then, Novak takes exception to the rationalist’s underlying view of human nature and the nature of the state. Natural rights libertarians view political institutions like the state as inimical devices that inherently erode natural liberty (Hoppe 2012, p. 221), and many libertarians reject any political theory that erodes natural liberty and defends the existence of the state. Herein lies another fundamental problem for libertarians who hold to this view. They place unwarranted confidence in the exercise of reason to guide individuals towards a kind of society that actually preserves natural rights. They hold as a tenet of faith (not reason) a belief that human nature is such that the market alone can direct society toward its good ends without capitulating to nihilism, relativism, and statism.

In Novak’s assessment, the libertarian position is idealistic with respect to humanity’s ability to preserve the common good. Novak sees this as an error of idealism which allows the “perfect to become the enemy of the good” (Novak 1996, p. 79). For Novak, political institutions like the state are necessary evils for protecting market economies (Tucker 2014, p. 20).20 In contrast to natural rights libertarians, who are mostly anarchic in their appraisals of the state, Novak sees the market economy as a system on both a political and moral–cultural system. Similar to libertarians such as Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, Novak argues that markets rely on pre-existing frameworks of law and government in order to function properly. It is implausible to believe that a market economy would arise without these institutions (Novak 1996, p. 81; Mises 1979, p. 37).

Since Rothbard and Hoppe reject a theological natural law tradition, relying instead on a modern, rationalist view that grounds natural rights without reference to God or religious claims, they cannot truly take seriously the effects of sin on human reasoning and will. Their idealism is as explicit as it is ironic. The libertarian conception of natural rights and the market economy, therefore, requires adjustments to be made compatible with a true understanding of the human person.

For Novak, if laws and political bodies like the state are necessary for a market economy to thrive, then a society of free persons must approach politics and economics with a mindset of realism. What realism requires is a separation of three social spheres—the political, economic, and moral—into a tripartite system Novak calls “democratic capitalism”. The strength of a market economy within this system lies in its institutional pluralism. “Institutional pluralism”, writes Novak, “disrupts rationalism” (Novak 1991, p. 53). Once the tripartite system is in place, it remains open to a theological worldview to supply its institutions with a thorough religious telos that demands its members pursue certain moral virtues over others. In this kind of system, the economic, moral–religious, and political institutions remain distinct.

Democratic capitalism did not develop in a rationalist vacuum, nor could it, but through conscious reflection on the ramifications of the Judeo-Christian social ethic. Moreover, it is not static but “subject to a further specification by a more perfect practice of Christian and Jewish life” (Novak 2015, p. 228). The closer its citizens are to the moral habits of Christianity, the better the market economy functions. Clearly, a democratic capitalist society is a form of realism designed for sinners and always burdened by the structures of sin but one that attempts to approximate the kind of society implicit in God’s Kingdom.

In essence, the tripartite system not only arises from a Judeo-Christian worldview, it requires a sufficient portion of its members to maintain that worldview and to impose their influence on its institutions. A society that rejects this worldview may attempt to form a secular, often pragmatic, foundation for democratic capitalism, but this is possible only in so far as secularists are capable of agreeing on the basic, non-natural rights of individuals in society. Once that agreement is no longer possible, the system collapses. Purely secular principles of liberty, if unchecked and unmoderated by religious convictions, eventually turn in on themselves to form a “systemic illiberalism” (Novak 1999, p. 48). Without the theological underpinnings of the imago dei, even in a largely libertarian society, political and economic freedom are not likely to endure.

3.3. The Limitations of Novak’s Tripartite System

In spite of democratic capitalism’s virtues, libertarian critics have noted a significant weakness in the enduring qualities of Novak’s system. Jeffery Tucker, a contemporary libertarian thinker and friend of Novak, believes this shortcoming stems from Novak’s confidence in the political institutions to function as economic corollaries. Throughout his writings, Novak goes to great lengths to defend free markets, but in Tucker’s estimation, Novak does not go far enough. The flaw in Novak’s thinking, Tucker argues, is his failure to see how the market economy could eventually “replace democratic institutions as the basis of law, justice, and security, thus replacing the public sector entirely in a way that upholds the common good” (Tucker 2014, p. 20). For Tucker, there remains within Novak’s thought an exaggerated importance of political institutions, and this flaw prevents Novak from recognizing the authoritarian trajectory of American institutions over the centuries.

In this way, Novak’s view of political institutions is similar to many classical liberals (Ludvig von Mises included) who all “tended to regard democracy as a political corollary in the economic sphere” (Tucker 2014, p. 19). The true nature and outcome of political systems, however, is much different than classical liberal theory. “Modern democracy”, writes Tucker, “has emerged as a highly bureaucratic system of entrenched elites who live and thrive quite apart from voting mechanisms and public input” (Tucker 2014, p. 20). In the end, Tucker concludes, Novak’s tripartite system may work well in the theoretical and idyllic past of America’s founding, but it does little to account for the tumultuous political struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, let alone the rise of a leviathan bureaucracy in the twenty-first century.

Herein lies the tension in Novak’s political theology. On the one hand, his insistence on a theological foundation for political liberty offers a non-rationalist defense of natural rights and human dignity that contemporary libertarians could employ. On the other hand, Novak’s over-confidence that the political sphere can function as a corollary of the economic sphere poses perhaps the greatest weakness of his tripartite system and would benefit from a libertarian-oriented skepticism about modern political institutions.

4. Conclusions

Novak’s theological understanding of the human person and his case for the market economy presents critical disagreements with natural rights libertarians. Perhaps these disagreements are intractable in the end, but it seems that Novak’s analysis of persons and markets offers theological presuppositions to natural rights libertarians that secular, rationalist methodology has continually failed to deliver.

For natural rights libertarians, the normative case for the market economy is an a priori argument for natural rights based on the capacity of rational agency. It draws upon the natural law tradition of Thomas Aquinas but also departs from it in fundamental respects. Novak’s case, in contrast, holds to a natural law tradition, but rejects rationalistic attempts to understand the human person and what is required for a free society. For Novak, the Judeo-Christian ethic is the essential ingredient for a defense of free persons and free markets. For natural rights libertarians, theological propositions are tangential at best.

Still, there is considerable agreement between Novak and libertarianism. Both agree that self-governance, whether in conservative or libertarian models, is impossible without an underlying social ethos comprising intellectual and moral virtues. Such virtues are found in the relationship of reason, choice, and will. Illustrative of this point is Rothbard’s insistence that a core element of the libertarian model is an ethos of cultural and moral conservativism, without which liberty could not survive (Rothbard 2012, p. xxxviii). Similarly, Novak warns that the habits of self-governance in private life might collapse into a “vulgar relativism”, yielding decadence and dissolution and collapse of self-governance in public life. A vulgar relativism would collapse the will of individuals and thereby hamstring their ability to resist a slow-growing soft despotism—an entity that emerges as a therapeutic state offering more and more benefits as the people gradually surrender their liberties and become serfs (Novak 1999, p. 50). Natural rights libertarians actually agree with Novak on the problem of relativism and its link to modern society’s creep toward totalitarianism (Hoppe 2012, p. 234).

In fact, libertarian arguments resemble Novak’s theological argument in many ways. They agree that each human being has essentially the same fundamental needs and desires, and that these needs and desires suggest something about the kind of freedom human beings require, but a theological approach supplies the missing metaphysical elements that natural rights libertarians are missing. Such overlap offers avenues of dialogue and political cooperation between conservatives who agree with Novak and those who follow various streams of natural rights libertarianism.