ȁȇȇ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophya failed attempt. Ļe gradation in punishments may help emphasize the
public’s solemn condemnation of murder, and in subtle psychological ways
it may cause more murder attempts to fail than otherwise would.
An analogy of sorts holds between these considerations and F.A. Ha-
yek’s argument (ȀȈȅǿ, chap.ȅ) about merit versus value in determining a
person’s income. Even though the market value of a person’s efforts proba-
bly does not correspond closely to his moral merit, powerful reasons argue
for allowing market supply and demand to establish his income anyway.
Such remuneration may usefully guide individuals on how to use their
special talents and knowledge, and it may motivate appropriate kinds
and degrees of risk-bearing. Above all, perhaps, alternative institutions
intended to attune remunerations to moral merit appear very unattractive
upon close analysis. Again, a person’s free will and intentions should not
be the only factors governing how other people treat him.
Admittedly, full-fledged determinism still poses embarrassment for
consequentialist considerations like these. If we recognize that our mak-
ing and implementing ethical judgments and adopting this or that set
of institutions are themselves fully caused and are mere links in a tight
causal chain, we run into awkward paradoxes. Ļese pertain to the whole
free-will /determinism issue itself, however, rather than to ethical issues
in particular.
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Determinism in its most extreme version (commonly attributed to Pierre-
Simon de Laplace) is fatalism even more comprehensive than the variety
rejected by Hazlitt. It recognizes human will and decision as elements in
one grand chain of universal causation. Everything that is happening or
has happened or will happen has been fated from the beginning of time
to happen exactly as it does or did or will. Causation operates tightly in
every detail. Even all of a person’s thoughts as he deliberates whether to
accept a new job or break off a love affair, and even all other persons’ reac-
tions to his decision, were fated to be exactly as they turn out. Even all
philosophical controversies over the free-will issue itself take an exactly
predetermined course. Far from denying that ideas and choices have con-
sequences, extreme determinism maintains that even these are links in the
great causal chain.
Laplace regards the present state of the universe as the effect of its
anterior state and the cause of its next state. Ineluctable necessity rules.