Ȃǿǿ Partʺʺ: Politics and PhilosophyAny consistently conceivable self must to at least some extent, then—
and experience suggests a large extent—be the product of external forces.
What implications follow concerning the freedom, autonomy, dignity,
and responsibility of the individual? Hobart faces the question: How can
anyone be praised or blamed if heredity and circumstance have ultimately
given him his qualities? Does the fact that a person did not create himself
bar recognizing his character for what it is? If—inconceivably—someone
had somehow made his own “original character,” and a fine one, and if
we praised him for it, we would be ascribing a still earlier character to
him. Praise or blame for decisions or actions refers to what kind of person
took them; there is nothing else for praise or blame to refer to (Hobart
ȀȈȂȃ/ȀȈȇȃ, p.ȄǿȄ).
A person’s character at a particular time is what it is. It inclines him to
the kinds of intentions and decisions and actions that it does incline him
toward; so it meaningfully exposes him to admiration or reprehension,
praise or blame. Ļis is true regardless of just how his character came to
be what it is. A reprehensible character remains reprehensible even though
it can be explained, or explained away, as the product of adverse heredity
and environment. Ļe notion of character being admirable or reprehen-
sible only to the extent that it is internally determined, free of external
influences, is a self-contradictory notion.
An analogy of sorts holds with a person’s wants and tastes. J.K. Gal-
braith (ȀȈȄȇ, esp. chap.Ťŕ) made much of what he called the “depen-
dence effect”: many of an individual’s wants in modern society are not
wants that he would experience spontaneously if left to himself. Instead,
his wants are created by the process of satisfying them. Ļe consump-
tion patterns of other members of society, and notoriously advertising,
create wants. Wants that are artificial in this sense cannot be urgent or
important, so the implication runs (and, in Galbraith’s view, incomes
that might nevertheless be spent on meeting them may properly be
taxed heavily to finance really important services of the kinds supplied by
government).
F.A. Hayek (ȀȈȅȀ/ȀȈȅȆ) calls this argument anon sequitur. Suppose
that people would indeed feel no need for something if it were not pro-
duced. If that fact did prove the thing of small value, then the highest
products of human endeavor, including the arts, literature, and the mar-
vels of high technology, would be of small value. Standards of hygiene and
the demand for products with which to meet them, instead of arising spon-
taneously within each separate individual, are likewise social products.