ŏ Ŕ ō Ŝ Š ő ŞșȜMises and His Critics on Ethics,
Rights, and Law*
řŕşőş’ş šŠŕŘŕŠōŞŕōŚŕşř
Ludwig von Mises was a utilitarian and has been criticized for being one.
Utilitarianism is a particular approach to ethics in personal life and public
affairs. It compares alternative sets of institutions, laws, traditions, pat-
terns and maxims and rules of behavior, and traits of personal character.
It approves of those that support and disapproves of those that subvert the
kind of society that affords people relatively good opportunities to make
satisfying lives for themselves. Institutions and practices and attitudes that
facilitate fruitful cooperation among individuals as they pursue their own
diverse specific ends score ahead of ones that make for destructive clashes.
“Social cooperation” (so called by Mises and other thinkers in the utilitar-
ian and libertarian traditions) is so nearly essential to individuals’ success
in their own diverse pursuits that it is a nearly ultimate criterion of insti-
tutions, ethical precepts, character traits, and so forth. On this criterion,
truth-telling and promise-keeping command approval. So does respect
for justice, property rights, and other human rights.
Ļese words are mine, not Mises’s; but his stance on economic policy
does rest on an ethical underpinning like the one just sketched out. Mises
wrote bluntly. Ļe theory of social cooperation elaborated by British polit-
ical economy from Hume to Ricardo, he says,
consummated the spiritual, moral and intellectual emancipation of man-
kind inaugurated by the philosophy of Epicureanism. It substituted
an autonomous rational morality for the heteronomous and intuition-
ist ethics of older days. Law and legality, the moral code and social
*FromĻe Meaning of Ludwig von Mises, ed. Jeffrey M. Herbener (Auburn, Ala., and
Norwell, Mass.: Ludwig von Mises Institute and Kluwer,ȀȈȈȂ),ȂȁȀ–Ȃȃȃ. A few pages have
been cut out here.ȃȁȁ