Toward The Development of A Paradigm of Human Flourishing in A Free Society

Ethics and Social Theory
Toward the Development of a

Paradigm of Human Flourishing
in a Free Society
Edward W. Younkins
This article supports the ancient Aristotelian idea, based on

philosophical realism, that eudaimonia (i.e., human flourishing) should
be the natural end of individual human actions. Proponents of this
idea hold that there is an inexorable connection between human
flourishing and human nature. They argue that one’s human flourish-
ing can be objectively derived (i.e., human flourishing is both
objective and individualized with regard to particular human agents).
They explain that, although some propensities are fundamental and
universal to human nature, there is also the need to consider what is
unique to the individual human person. The natural end is thus an
inclusive end. The good is objective, but it is not wholly the same, for
all individuals. Rather, it is contextual and relational. It follows that
a man requires practical wisdom to choose the proper course of
action in a given context—the good is always the good for a particular
person. Of course, things or activities can be objectively good for a
person even if he does not recognize, respond appropriately to,
and/or pursue them—he can be in error with respect to what is of
value to him. Eudaimonia is not subjectively determined.
An argument is made that self-direction (or autonomy) must
apply to everyone equally because of the universal human characteris-
tics of rationality and free will. Self-directedness is based on a proper
understanding of human nature that determines the minimum boun-
daries governing social interactions. The natural right to liberty is thus
the principle required for protecting the possibility of self-directed-
ness. In turn, self-directedness is necessary for persons’ decisions to
The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 9, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 253–304.

254 The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol. 9, No. 2
pursue (or not to pursue) their personal flourishing. Self-directedness

is open to diverse forms of human flourishing. Because the law is
properly concerned only with rules that are universal and necessary,
the state should be concerned only with protecting what could be
termed self-directedness, political autonomy, or negative liberty. The
right to liberty can be viewed as a metanormative principle that sets
limits to state power regarding the construction of a political order.
Self-directedness is a precondition for moral activity. Such a
political philosophy of metanorms regulates the conditions under
which moral actions may (or may not) take place. Rights define the
legal framework in which moral actions can occur (or not occur).
They also specify individuals’ obligations to respect the self-directed-
ness of others. The principle of self-directedness is the principle
shared by rights theory and personal normative morality. The
principle that specifies one’s rights is not aimed directly at specifying
one’s flourishing. Ethics is practical and concerned with the particular
and the contingent.
The article explains the relationship between human flourishing
and moral theory, that the personal virtues (as described by Ayn
Rand) are traits necessary for human flourishing, that the normative
reasons for one’s actions should derive from one’s personal flourish-
ing, and that the ideas of virtue and self-interest are inextricably
related. This paper also discusses how individuals pursue their
flourishing within the voluntary institutions of civil society and warns
of the problems that result from conflating the state with civil society.
The main aim of this article is to present a schema or diagram that
shows the ways in which its various topics link together and why. The
article argues for a plan of conceptualization of a number of rather
complex topics in relation to each other rather than for the topics
themselves. Its emphasis will be on the interconnections between the
elements of the flow chart presented in this paper.
This article contends that all of the disciplines of human action
are interrelated and can be integrated into a paradigm of individual
liberty and human flourishing based on the nature of man and the
world. It should not be surprising that discoveries of truth in various
disciplines and from different perspectives based on the nature of
man and the world are consistent with one another. True knowledge
must be a total in which every item of knowledge is interconnected.
Younkins — Human Flourishing 255
All objective knowledge is interrelated in some way thus reflecting the

totality that is the universe.
Ultimately, the truth is one. There is an essential interconnection
between objective ideas. It follows that more attention should be paid
to systems building rather than to extreme specialization within a
discipline. Specialization is fine but, in the end, we need to reintegrate
by connecting specialized knowledge back into the total knowledge of
reality. We need to think systemically, look for the relationships and
connections between components of knowledge, and aspire to
understand the nature of knowledge and its unity. The concern of the
system-builder is with truth as an integrated whole. Such a body of
knowledge is circumscribed by the nature of facts in reality, including
their relationships and implications. Principles that supply a system-
atic level of understanding must be based on the facts of reality. In
other words, the principles of a true conceptual framework must
connect with reality. We need to formulate principles explicitly and
relate them logically to other principles explicitly and to the facts of
reality. A systematic, logical understanding is required for cognitive
certainty and is valuable in communicating ideas, and the reasoning
underlying them, clearly and precisely.
A sound paradigm requires internal consistency among its
components. By properly integrating insights into a variety of topics,
we may be able to develop a framework for human flourishing in a
free society that would elucidate a theory of the best political regime
on the basis of proper conceptions of the nature of man, human
action, and society. Such a conceptual framework would address a
broad range of issues in metaphysics, epistemology, value theory,
ethics, and so on, in a systematic fashion.
This article presents a skeleton of a potential conceptual founda-
tion and edifice for human flourishing in a free society. It is an
attempt to forge an understanding from various disciplines and to
integrate them into a clear, consistent, coherent, and systematic whole.
Such a paradigm will help people to understand the world and to
survive and flourish in it. Our goal is to have a paradigm in which the
views of reality, human nature, knowledge, values, action, and society
make up an integrated whole. Of course, the paradigm will grow and
evolve as scholars engage, question, critique, interpret, and extend its
ideas. This is as it should be because our goal is to have a paradigm
that accords with reality and there is always more to learn about
reality.
To aid the reader in seeing the big picture, the following diagram
depicts the relationships among the ideas discussed in this article:
Rather than providing proof or validation of the concepts and

principles themselves, the goal of this paper is to provide a schema
(illustrated above) that demonstrates the interrelationships among the
concepts and principles. I am not going to attempt to “prove” every
point that follows in this article.
The Nature of Man and the World

The Aristotelian perspective is that reality is objective. There is
a world of objective reality that exists independent of the conscious-
ness of human beings and that has a determinate nature that is
knowable (Buchanan 1962; Gilson 1986; Pols 1992; Miller 1995). It
follows that natural law is objective because it is inherent in the nature
of the entity to which it relates. The content of natural law, which
derives from the nature of man and the world, is accessible to human
reason. Principles that supply a systematic level of understanding
must be based on the facts of reality.
It is necessary to focus our attention on the enduring characteris-
tics of reality. Men live in a universe with a definite nature and exist
within nature as part of the natural order. Using their minds, men
have the ability to discover the permanent features of the world. A
unified theoretical perspective and potent intellectual framework for
analyzing the social order must be based on the constraining realities
of the human condition—reality is not optional.
We live in a systematic universe with an underlying natural order
that makes it so. There are discernible regularities pervading all of
existence. There is an underlying order that gives circumscription,
predictability, and their character to all things. Through the use of the
mind, men can discover the nature of things, the laws that regulate or
apply to them, the way they now exist, and the ways they can
potentially be. To determine the nature of anything, it is necessary to
remove all that is unique and exclusive to a thing and examine it in
terms of the common characteristics it shares with all others of its
type. This is done in order to study the fundamental nature of
existence, of man, and of man’s relationship to existence. Our goal
is to discover the natural order as it applies to man and his affairs.
There exists a natural law that reigns over the affairs of human
conduct. Natural law theory holds that there is a law prior to man,
society, and government. It is a law that must be abided by if each of
these is to attain its true character and fulfillment.

To ascertain man’s nature, we must, through a process of
abstraction, remove all that is accidental to any specific man. What is
left must be man’s distinctive features and potentialities. It is man’s
ability to reason that separates him from other vital organisms. Man’s
rational faculty distinguishes him from all other living species.
Conceptualization based on reason is man’s unique and only proper
way of dealing with the rest of the natural world. It is in man’s nature
to use his rational powers, to form concepts, to integrate them, to
evaluate alternatives, to make choices, and so on. In order to survive
and flourish, men must come to terms with the requirements of reality
(Rand 1957; 1964, 22–28; Peikoff 1991, 152–86).
The ability to control one’s actions (i.e., natural liberty) is an
inborn condition of man. In the nature of things, no person can use
the mind, senses, or appendages of another. Man is free to use his
faculties provided that he does not harm others in his use of them.
All thinking and acting is done by individual persons in their own
spatiotemporal localities—a society cannot think or act although men
can choose to act in a coordinated manner with one another. Men
have the ability to cooperate and achieve through voluntary action
(Younkins 2002, 11–15).1 To properly construct a paradigm for
flourishing in a free society, it is necessary to go back to absolute
fundamentals in human nature. We need to have a precise under-
standing of the nature of the human person. Human beings are a
distinct species in a natural world whose lives are governed by means
of each person’s free will and individual conceptual consciousness.
Unlike other beings, a person’s survival and flourishing depends on
cognition at a conceptual level. People are all of one species with a
definite nature who are uniquely configured because of their individu-
ating features.
As explained by Tibor Machan (1990, 75–97; 1998a, 8–16), there
is a biological case for human diversity with the individual as the
primary reality. We must respect the condition of human diversity
and the fact that people are not interchangeable. Individuality is vital
to one’s nature. A person is responsible for achieving and sustaining
the human life that is his own. Each person has potentialities, is the
steward of his own time, talents, and energies, and is responsible for
becoming the person he has the potential to become by means of his
own choices and actions.

Human beings possess a stable nature with certain definite,
definable, and delimitable characteristics. Consciousness and free will
are essential attributes of man’s nature. Reason is man’s guiding
force. Human activities are self-conscious, purposeful, and deliber-
ately chosen. One’s actions are caused by one’s own volition, which
is a human capacity. A human being can initiate and make choices
about what he will do. Human action involves purposeful, inten-
tional, and normative behavior. Mental action or thinking is the
ultimate free action, is primary, and includes the direct focus and
willing of the person. Behavior thus takes place after a judgment or
conceptualization has been made. It follows that there is a moral
element or feature of action because human beings possess free will,
which can cause most (or at least some) of what they do (Rand 1957;
1964, 20–27; Peikoff 1991, 187–205).
The distinguishing features of human nature (i.e., rationality and
free will) provide objective standards for a man’s choice of both
means and ends. Man is a volitional being whose reason should guide
his selection of both ends and means to those ends. Volition is a type
of causation—it is not an exception to the law of causality. Men can
think, choose, act, and cause. Human beings act, choose means to
achieve ends, and choose both means and ends. In human action, a
person’s free will choice is the cause and this cause generates certain
effects. Such causality is a prerequisite of action and is primarily
concerned with a person’s manipulation of objects external to himself
(Rand 1957; 1964, 21–25; Peikoff 1991, 64–69).
Free will is not the negation of causality, but rather is a type of
causality that relates to man. Causality is an association between an
entity and its mode of action. It is not the relationship between
actions and earlier actions. For a human being, a cause can be the
change in his assessment of the relative importance of his values. A
person uses his knowledge to correlate his values with his various
plans. The concept of purpose underlies the idea of causality as
motivated action. Action in behavior is directed at attaining a
purpose. Human action has a teleological character because it is
rational conduct aimed at a goal. A person can consciously act to
initiate a sequence of causation by changing or moving an attribute of
his body. This act implies that he has a contemplated objective that
he wants to attain. This initial change in a person’s body is intended

to cause other events to take place and to eventually lead to the
accomplishment of the desired goal. The success or failure of a
person in attaining his objective depends on his ability to isolate
correctly the relevant causal features of a situation and to predict the
future accurately both in the presence and in the absence of one’s own
contemplated actions (Branden 2001, 57–62; Mises [1949] 1963;
Machan 1998a, 31–50; O’Connor 2002; Pols 1982; 2002).
The idea of human action depends upon the introspectively valid
fact that there is a type of conduct that is peculiarly human. This kind
of conduct coincides with the consciousness of volition. Actions are
free only if they are controlled by a faculty that functions volitionally.
A person knows via introspection that he experiences physical
variables and properties, creates concepts, chooses values, and
changes physical variables and properties because he constantly does
those activities. Introspection supplies the knowledge that we can
make metaphysically free decisions to attempt to attain our values
(Branden 1974; Machan 1998a, 17–30; 2000).
What is known (i.e., the object) is distinct from, and independent
of, the knower (i.e., the subject). Men are born with no innate
conceptual knowledge. Such knowledge is gained via various
processes of integration and differentiation from perceptual data. For
example, a person apprehends that he has a conscious mind by
distinguishing between external objects and events and the workings
of his mind. Self-awareness is thus attained when a person reflects
upon what he has observed (Rand 1957; [1966–67] 1990).
Reality is what there is to be perceived. Reality exists independ-
ently of a man’s consciousness. It exists apart from the knower. It
follows that empirical knowledge is acquired through observational
experience of external reality. People can observe goal-directed
actions from the outside. An individual attains an understanding of
causality and other categories of action by observing the actions of
others to reach goals. He also learns about causality by means of his
own acting and his observation of the outcomes. Action is thus a
man’s conscious adjustment to the state of the world.
It is necessary to provide a realistic foundation for a true
paradigm for a free society. Therefore, a comprehensive moral
defense of individualism and its political implications is founded
appropriately on a naturalistic philosophy. An Aristotelian metaphys-

ics such as that supplied by Rand (1957; 1964; 1967; [1966–67] 1990)
would be an excellent starting point for a political and economic
framework based on the requirements of reality and of man’s nature.
Logic is pivotal to correct human thought because reality corresponds
to the principles of logic. Men are capable of comprehending the
workings of the world through the application of logic. Logic is the
method by which a volitional consciousness conforms to reality. It is
reason’s method. The method of logic reflects the nature and needs
of man’s consciousness and the facts of external reality (Joseph 1916;
Veatch 1952; Rasmussen 2007).
Principles such as the laws of identity and noncontradiction
underpin the observable fact that there are innumerable distinct types
of being in reality. Human beings are a unique class, characterized by
the real attributes of reason and free will, that introduces a dimension
of value into nature. Human existence represents a distinct ontologi-
cal realm different from all others. A human being can choose and is
thus a moral agent. This moral nature is grounded in the facts of
nature. What a thing must be or do depends on the kind of object or
entity that it is. The values (and virtues) of life are discovered by
means of an understanding of human nature and the nature of the
world (Machan 1990, 78-85).
Natural Law
The idea of natural law has played an important role in political
and economic philosophy and in ethics for more than 2,500 years.
Elements of natural law can be found in the writings of many ancient
and medieval thinkers including Lao Tzu, Aristotle, the Stoics, Cicero
and the Romans, Epicurus, and Thomas Aquinas. The development
of natural law thought was continued by Spinoza, Hugo Grotius, John
Locke, A. R. J. Turgot, Adam Smith, J. B. Say, Herbert Spencer, and
Carl Menger as well as by others. Contemporary natural law thinkers
include Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, and Michael Novak, among
many others. Throughout history, both the secular natural law
tradition and the Christian natural law tradition have stressed
individual personal responsibility and have advanced the defense of
a free society and classical liberal thought (d’Entreves 1951; Wild
1953; Gierke 1957; Finnis 1980; Gilson 1956).
There are ontological necessities, constraints, possibilities, and

impossibilities regarding the way the world works that exist regardless
of what we believe of the world or how we represent it—the world
works through a variety of laws, causal processes, and interactions.
There is one universe in which everything is interconnected through
the inescapable laws of cause and effect. There is a natural order with
various types of beings whose fulfillment comes from developing and
perfecting their potentialities. Differences abound in nature and
reality is nuanced in its varieties. There is a stable human nature that
establishes limits regarding how human beings should act. To survive
and flourish a man must recognize that nature has its own impera-
tives. There is a natural law that derives from the nature of man and
the world and that is discernible through the use of reason. It is
necessary for men to discover the natural order and to adhere to it.
It follows that one needs to examine human nature—one requires a
sound, feasible, and viable conception of human nature.
Human nature is what it is. It follows that the law of human
nature is the only law that man, possessing free will, is free to try to
disobey. Of course, a man must be prepared to experience the
consequences of his “disobedience.” If a person desires to prosper,
he should not ignore natural law. We could say that the efficacy of
human nature is, in a sense, dependent upon human volition. The law
of nature is revealed by reason and man can choose to attempt to
violate it. Moral concerns are matters of fact and standards of
morality are grounded in the facts of nature. It is only if moral
standards can be freely adhered to or avoided that a framework for
moral standards can arise. In order to have such freedom, each
person must be protected from intrusion by others. What is required
is a social structure that accords each person a moral space over which
he has freedom to act—natural rights define this moral space.
Natural laws exist and we can discern what they are. Natural law
is universal and unchanging and is discovered rather than made. The
principles produced through natural law analysis are important and
nonarbitrary human constructs or concepts and are firmly rooted in
the real world. To derive objective concepts from reality requires a
rational epistemology involving both induction and deduction.
Natural law reveals an objective moral order knowable through reason
and favorable to the survival and flourishing of human beings in the
world. Natural law’s moral order provides individuals with motiva-

tions to fulfill their potential as human beings. Of course, putting
natural law principles into practice requires judgment and practical
reason. Aristotle taught the benefits of a virtuous life in accordance
with the law of human nature. He explained that man’s particular
nature, different from all other entities and objects, gives him the
ability to make moral judgments.
Natural law provides the groundwork for the Aristotelian idea of
human flourishing and links moral commitments to facts about the
natural world. Because human nature is what it is, ethical naturalism
is rooted in a biological understanding of human nature. Natural law
addresses the problem of how individual human persons should live
their lives. Human beings are not fungible—each individual is
responsible for his conduct in the context of his personal attributes
and circumstances. Of course, the laws of nature do not guarantee
that every person will flourish— they only offer the opportunity to
flourish. Human beings can flourish and attain happiness by living
their lives according to laws inscribed in their beings. Natural law
doctrines have generally been said to include, but are not limited to,
the state of nature, natural rights, the social contract, and the rule of
law. Because natural law can be inferred from what is innate in the
nature of man and the world, it would be compelling even if God
does not exist. Natural law can be deduced with or without a religious
framework. Natural law doctrines are discovered through the use of
reason.
The state of nature includes the suppositional circumstances that
are assumed to have existed before the institution of a civil govern-
ment. Because all persons are free and equal in the state of nature, it
follows that no one person has the natural right to reign over any of
the others (Harrison 2002).
Society is natural to man as an associative being. It is within
society that man can make voluntary exchanges that please and fulfill
him. Furthermore, government (or a system of private competing
legal and protection agencies) is essential to enable each man to keep
what is his and to live peacefully while having mutually beneficial
voluntary relations with others. The state is not society. It is simply
the organization charged with the function of protecting society that
overflows the boundaries of the state. If a society was synonymous
with the state, it would not be free because all human activity would
be prescribed and governed by law (Gierke 1957; Brown 2007).
According to thinkers such as Turgot, Spencer, and, arguably,
Hayek, the ideas of social cooperation, spontaneous order, and
progressive evolution of the social order are included within natural
law. That which is appropriate for society is appropriate for human
nature, and thus, according to natural law. If the law emerges and
evolves spontaneously, then it has its roots in human nature and
human intelligence (Bury 2004; Angner 2007).
The natural law insists that everything stands under the test of
reason grounded in reality. The particular nature of entities requires
particular actions if the desired ends are to be attained. Natural laws
of human action, discoverable through the use of reason, necessitate
specific means and arrangements to affect the desired ends. The laws
of nature determine the consequences. The free society works
because it is in accord with nature. Natural law provides for reason-
ing and verification about what is good and what is not good.
Natural law underpins the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. Negative liberty, the absence of constraints and
restraints coercively imposed upon a person by other persons, can be
arrived at by studying the distinctive faculties and abilities of human
beings and abstracting away the particular levels or amounts that
specific individuals possess with respect to their faculties and abilities.
What remains is the ability of each man to think his own thoughts and
control his own energies in his attempts to act according to those
thoughts. Negative freedom is thus a natural requirement of human
existence.
Freedom from coercive man-made constraints and obstacles is a
necessary condition to fulfill the potentialities of one’s nature. This
does not mean freedom from obstacles in general. Not having the
abilities or resources is not coercion and therefore does not constitute
a lack of freedom.
According to the precepts of natural law, a person should not be
forced into acting or using his resources in a way in which he has not
given his voluntary consent. It follows that man has certain natural
rights to life, to the use of one’s faculties as one wills for one’s own
ends, and to the fruits of one’s labor. These rights inhere in man’s
nature and predate government, constitutions, and courts. Natural
rights are derived from the facts of human nature and are respected
because they protect individual self-directedness (Younkins 2002; 11–
15).2
The social contract is the tacit agreement of all which is essential,
in the nature of things, to the existence of society. It is the implicit
and concurrent covenant not to initiate violence, to fulfill agreements,
not to trespass, not to deny others the use of their property, etc. The
social contract is the understood, timeless, and universal contract that
necessarily must exist if people are to live peacefully within society
(Paul 1983; Rasmussen and Den Uyl 1991, 191–206; Morris 1999).
Social interactions and associations offer great benefits to
individuals, including friendships, more information, specialization
and the division of labor, greater productivity, a larger variety of
goods and services, etc. Throughout history, economic activities have
been the main type of social interaction and cooperation among
people (Rasmussen and Den Uyl 1991,173–91).
Government (or a natural order of competing security and
conflict resolution agencies) is needed in order to enable people to live
well in society. It is needed to prohibit and punish the private
violation of the natural rights of those who peacefully use their
energies and resources, to punish fraud and deception, and to settle
disputes that may arise (Younkins 2002, 37–42).
Of course, the existence of a natural order prior to government
means that government’s role should be limited and restrained.
Natural law theory limits government to its proper sphere, sets
bounds to its actions, and subjects the government itself to the law.
It follows that to circumscribe government to its proper role, power
must be separated into its different functions and power must be
counterbalanced to keep those who govern from exceeding their
legitimate bounds. This is important because when those who govern
act outside the law, they do so with the full coercive power of the
government (147–49).
Under the rule of law, everyone, including the government, is
bound by rules. The idea that the government is under the law is a
condition of the liberty of the people. The rule of law requires law to
be general and abstract, known and certain, and equally applicable to
all persons in any unknown number of future instances (145–47;
Tamanaha 2004).
A constitution is a law for governments. Constitutional govern-

ments are characterized by specific restraints and enumerations of
their powers.3 The force behind constitutional governments is the
idea of a higher natural law restricting the operations of the govern-
ment (Hayek 1960). What is required is a constitutional structure
based on natural rights.
The notion of metanormative justice, an idea in harmony with
natural law, is concerned only with the peaceful and orderly coordina-
tion of activities of any possible human being with any other in a
social setting. This type of justice refers to equal treatment under
social and legal conditions that include a collection of known rules
regarding allowable and nonallowable actions that will lead to unequal
positions with no one knowing in advance the particular result this
arrangement will have for any specific person (Den Uyl and Rasmus-
sen 1995, 68–70; Younkins 2002, 136–38).
Similarly, the state can properly be said to be ensuring the
common good when it protects man’s natural right to seek his own
happiness. Only protected liberty (or self-directedness) can be said to
be good for, and able to be possessed by, all persons simultaneously.
No other definition of the common good can be in harmony with an
ordered universe and the natural law. The common good properly
understood is protected freedom that permits persons to pursue
happiness or the good that each defines for himself. The government
achieves the common good when its functions are limited to protect-
ing the natural right to liberty and preserving peace and order
(Rasmussen and Den Uyl 1991, 131–71; Younkins 2002, 31–35).4
There is a critical distinction between the legitimacy of a right and
the morality of exercising that right. The government should only be
concerned with questions such as the domain of rights, the proper
role of violence, and the definitions of aggression and criminality.
The government should not be concerned with all personal moral
principles. There is a huge difference between establishing the
permissibility of an action and the goodness or morality of it. The
state should be concerned with the rights of men and not with the
oughts of men.
It follows that because religion is a private matter, the govern-
ment has no right to enter the field of religious beliefs on the side of
theism or on the side of atheism. People are free to hold any religious
or nonreligious view they choose. Religion is a matter of personal

conviction.
A healthy, differentiated social order relies on a separation of
political, economic, and moral-cultural-religious systems (Novak
1982). The power of the state should not be enhanced by the
identification with religion. Churches need to be free from state
power and vice versa. The Constitution and Bill of Rights correctly
state that neither a state nor a federal government can set up a religion
nor can they pass laws that aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer
one religion over another. Neither can they force nor influence a
person to go to or remain away from church against his will or force
him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. The state is
properly required to be neutral in its relations with groups of religious
believers and nonbelievers.
Human Flourishing
An Aristotelian self-perfectionist approach to ethics can be shown
to complement the natural right to liberty that itself provides a solid
foundation for a minimal state. This approach gives liberty moral
significance by illustrating how the natural right to liberty is a social
and political condition necessary for the possibility of human
flourishing—the ultimate moral standard in Aristotelian ethics
interpreted as a natural-end ethics. A foundation is thus provided for
a classical liberal political theory within the Aristotelian tradition.
Modern proponents of this approach include Rand (1957; 1964; 1967;
[1966–67] 1990), Rasmussen and Den Uyl (1991; 1997; 2005);
Machan (1975; 1989; 1990; 1998a), and others.5
According to Rasmussen and Den Uyl (2005 127–52), human
flourishing is objective, inclusive, individualized, agent-relative, self-
directed, and social. One’s flourishing is desired because it is desirable
and choiceworthy. Human flourishing is understood in a biocentric
context and is ontological (i.e., a state of being)—it is not simply a
feeling or experience of subjective (i.e., personally estimated) well-
being. It is a self-directed activity, an actuality, and an end accom-
plished through choice—it is not a passive or a static state. Human
flourishing is an inclusive end, is complex, individualized, unique, and
diverse, and involves moral pluralism. There can be no human
flourishing separate from the lives of individual human persons.
However, a person’s maturation or flourishing requires a life with

others—friendship is a constituent of human flourishing. In addition,
human sociality is open-ended with respect to relationships with any
other human being.
Rasmussen and Den Uyl explain that there are both generic and
individuative potentialities. As an inclusive end, human flourishing
comprises basic or generic goods (e.g., knowledge, health, wealth,
friendship, creative achievement, beauty, and pleasure) and virtues.
These determine what contributes toward flourishing because of
man’s universal human nature, but the appropriate proportions,
amounts, or applications of the goods and virtues depend upon the
particular and contingent circumstances of various individuals. What
is good for the flourishing of an individual is agent-relative and is
objective because of the actual potentialities, needs, and circumstances
that delineate both what and who a person is. The goods and virtues
must be attained according to the circumstances, endowments, talents,
contexts, beliefs, past choices, and history that differentiates an
individual from others. It takes practical wisdom, at the time of
action, for an individual to discern and choose what is morally
required in particular and contingent circumstances. It follows that
ethics is open-ended, practical, and concerned with the particular and
contingent facts and circumstances in the lives of different individuals.
The moral life requires that individuals be partial with respect to their
valuations of generic goods. Each person must use his practical
wisdom to discover how to integrate and particularize the generic
goods in their lives. Law, on the other hand, must be concerned with
rules or social conditions that are universal, necessary, and applicable
to everyone equally. Law must protect each person’s self-directedness
(i.e., autonomy) with respect to the exercise of his rational agency.
Self-direction is the central necessary ingredient or constituent of
human flourishing.
Human flourishing (also known as personal flourishing) involves
the rational use of one’s individual human potentialities, including
talents, abilities, and virtues in the pursuit of his freely and rationally
chosen values, goals, and personal projects. Human flourishing
depends on the sustainable pursuit of, and vital engagement in, a
person’s core projects (Little et al. 2007).6 An action is considered to
be proper if it leads to the flourishing of the person performing the
action. Human flourishing is, at the same time, a moral accomplish-

ment and a fulfillment of human capacities, and it is one through
being the other. Self-actualization is moral growth and vice-versa.
Not an abstraction, human flourishing is real and highly personal (i.e.,
agent relative) by nature, consists in the fulfillment of both a man’s
human nature and his unique potentialities, and is concerned with
choices and actions that necessarily deal with the particular and the
contingent. One man’s self-realization is not the same as another’s.
What is called for in terms of concrete actions such as choice of
career, education, friends, home, and others, varies from person to
person. Human flourishing becomes an actuality when one uses one’s
practical reason to consider one’s unique needs, circumstances,
capacities, and so on, to determine which concrete instantiations of
human values, goods, and virtues will comprise one’s well-being. The
idea of human flourishing is inclusive and can encompass a wide
variety of constitutive ends such as self-improvement, knowledge, the
development of character traits, productive work, religious pursuits,
athletic pursuits, physical fitness, community building, love, charitable
activities, allegiance to persons and causes, self-efficacy, material well-
being, pleasurable sensations, etc.
To flourish, a man must pursue goals and personal projects that
are rational for him both individually and also as a human being.
Whereas the former will vary depending upon one’s particular
circumstances, the latter are common to man’s distinctive na-
ture—man has the unique capacity to live rationally. The use of
reason is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for human
flourishing. Living rationally (i.e., consciously) means dealing with the
world conceptually. Living consciously implies respect for the facts
of reality. The principle of living consciously is not affected by the
degree of one’s intelligence or the extent of one’s knowledge; rather,
it is the acceptance and use of one’s reason in the recognition and
perception of reality and in his choice of values and actions to the best
of his ability, whatever that ability may be. To pursue rational goals
and personal projects through rational means is the only way to cope
successfully with reality and achieve one’s self-endorsed and self-
concordant goals. Although rationality is not always rewarded, the
fact remains that it is through the use of one’s mind that a man not
only discovers the values required for personal flourishing, but also
attains them. Values can be achieved in reality if a man recognizes

and adheres to the reality of his unique personal endowments and
contingent circumstances. Human flourishing is positively related to
a rational man’s attempts to externalize his values and actualize his
internal views of how things ought to be in the outside world.
Practical reason can be used to choose, create, and integrate all the
values, goods, and virtues that comprise personal flourishing. Virtues
and goods are the means to values and the virtues, goods, and values
together enable us to achieve human flourishing and happiness.
The constituent virtues (identified by Rand 1964, 25–27), such as
rationality, independence, integrity, justice, honesty, productiveness,
and pride (moral ambitiousness), must be applied, although differen-
tially, by each person in the task of self-actualization. Not only do
particular virtues play larger roles in the lives of some men than
others, but there is also diversity in the concrete with respect to the
objects and purposes of their application, the way in which they are
applied, and the manner in which they are integrated with other
virtues, goods, and values. Choosing and making the proper response
for the unique situation is the concern of moral living—one needs to
use his practical reason at the time of action to consider concrete
contingent circumstances to determine the correct application and
balance of virtues and values for himself. Although virtues, goods,
and values are not automatically rewarded, this does not alter the fact
that they are rewarded. Human flourishing is the reward of virtues,
goods, and values, and happiness is the goal and reward of human
flourishing.
Happiness can be defined as the positive conscious and emotional
experience that accompanies or stems from achieving one’s goals and
values and exercising one’s individual human potentialities, including
talents, abilities, and virtues.7 In other words, happiness results from
personal flourishing. One’s experience of happiness tends to correlate
with a properly led life. A person’s experience of happiness or
unhappiness is an indicator or internal monitor of the objective status
of one’s pursuit of one’s life and its values. The belief that one is
flourishing is usually a product of a person taking rational and proper
actions in his life. Of course, he may be mistaken and/or irrational
and his activities may not be truly advancing his existence. When
people are properly happy, they are motivated to further act in a life-
fulfilling manner. The joy found in one’s flourishing helps to

maintain and further a person’s motivation to continue to engage in
life-enhancing activities. There is a dynamic reinforcing interaction
between the condition of factual flourishing and one’s experience of
flourishing (i.e., happiness). The better a man is at living, the more
likely he will experience happiness, love his life, and be inspired to live
well. Happiness can be consistent with crisis, pain, grief, and struggle
and is generally not possible without them. Happy people tend to be
those who respond positively to adversities and setbacks.
Rasmussen and Den Uyl (2005, 76–96) explain the need for a
different type (or level of) ethical norm when social life is viewed as
dealing with relationships between any possible human beings, and
when the individualized makeup of human flourishing is understood.
Such a norm would not be concerned with promoting personal
conduct in moral activity, but instead with the regulation of conduct
so that conditions could be achieved that would permit morally
important actions to occur.
Self-directedness is required by this metanormative principle. It
follows that an ethics of human flourishing does not require a
perfectionist politics and that there is a perfectionist basis for a non-
perfectionist politics. It is the notion of self-directedness that supplies
the principle for linking the political and legal order and the personal
moral order. Self-directedness is necessary for human flourishing.
People have a shared need to act in a peaceful and orderly social and
political context. It follows that the legitimate aim of politics is peace
and order. Although the individual right to liberty is not a primary
ethical principle, it is politically primary because it protects the
possibility of self-directedness in a social context. Rasmussen and
Den Uyl’s position (with which I agree) thus differs from that of Rand
who holds that the prohibition on initiating force is a moral principle;
she contends that rights are a moral concept rather than a metanor-
mative one. Although self-perfection has moral primacy, individual
rights must be viewed as having political priority. Self-direction (i.e.,
autonomy) involves the use of one’s reason and is central and
necessary for the possibility of attaining human flourishing, self-
esteem, and happiness. It is the only characteristic of flourishing that
is both common to all acts of self-actualization and particular to each.
Freedom in decision-making and behavior is a necessary operating
condition for the pursuit and achievement of human flourishing.

Respect for individual autonomy is essential to human flourishing
(Miller 2002).8 This logically leads to the endorsement of the right of
personal direction of one’s life, including the use of his endowments,
capacities, and energies. These natural (i.e., negative) rights are
metanormative principles concerned with protecting the self-directed-
ness of individuals thus ensuring the freedom through which
individuals can pursue their flourishing.
The goal of the right to liberty is to secure individuals’ self-
directedness, which, in turn, allows for the possibility of human
flourishing. This is done by preventing encroachments upon the
conditions under which human flourishing can occur. Natural rights
impose a negative obligation—the obligation not to interfere with
one’s liberty. Natural rights, therefore, require a legal system that
provides the necessary conditions for the possibility that individuals
might self-actualize. It follows that the proper role of the government
is to protect man’s natural rights through the use of force, but only in
response, and only against those who initiate its use. In order to
provide the maximum self-determination for each person, the state
should be limited to maintaining justice, police, and defense, and to
protecting life, liberty, and property.
The negative right to liberty, as a basic metanormative principle,
provides a context in which all the diverse forms of personal flourish-
ing may coexist in an ethically compossible manner. This right can be
accorded to every person with no one’s authority over himself
requiring that any other person experience a loss of authority over
himself. Such a metanormative standard for social conduct favors no
particular form of human flourishing while concurrently providing a
context within which diverse forms of human flourishing can be
pursued. The necessity of self-direction for human flourishing
provides a rationale for a political and legal order that will not require
that the flourishing of any individual be sacrificed for that of any
other nor use people for purposes for which they have not consented.
A libertarian institutional framework guarantees man only the
freedom to seek his moral well-being and happiness as long as he does
not trample the equivalent rights of others. Such a system is not
concerned with whether people achieve the good or conduct
themselves virtuously. The minimal state is concerned only with a
person’s outward conduct rather than with the virtuousness of his

inner state of being. Rights are necessary principles for the construc-
tion of political policies at the constitutional level. Because rights are
metanormative principles, rather than normative ones, they cannot
replace the role of the constituent virtues. A political and legal order
based on the metanormative principle of the right to liberty allows
people to act in ways that are not self-perfecting. Its purpose is not
to direct the positive promotion of human flourishing; it is simply to
allow persons to pursue their moral well-being on their own. The
good of the individual person is thus inextricably related to the
common good of the political community that involves the protection
of each man’s natural right to liberty through which he can self-
actualize and freely pursue further actions. Therefore, the legitimate
purpose of the state, the protection of man’s natural right to liberty,
is procedural in nature and is the same as the promotion of the
common good of the political community. In other words, the
common good of the political community involves a set of social and
legal conditions based on a man’s natural rights (Younkins 2002, 40).
It follows that the minimal state is concerned only with justice in
a metanormative sense—not as a personal virtue. Whereas justice as
a constituent virtue of one’s personal flourishing involves an individ-
ual’s specific contextual recognition and evaluation of people based
on objective criteria, justice in a metanormative sense is concerned
only with the peaceful and orderly coordination of activities of any
possible person with any other. Justice as a normative principle is
concerned with exclusive (i.e., selective) relationships and requires
practical reason and discernment of differences of both circumstances
and persons. On the other hand, justice as a metanormative principle
is concerned with nonexclusive (i.e., open-ended and universal)
relationships that do not assume a shared set of commitments or
values. Although both types of justice are concerned with social or
interpersonal relationships, justice as a constituent virtue deals with
others in much more specific and personal ways than when justice is
considered as the foundation of a political order that is concerned
with any person’s relationship with any other human being. There-
fore, metanormative justice (i.e., the basic right to liberty) provides the
context for exclusive relationships to develop and for the possibility
of human flourishing and happiness (Den Uyl and Rasmussen 1995,
68–70; Younkins 2002, 136–38).
Human Flourishing and Natural Rights

Natural law is thought by many scholars to be an older concept
than the idea of natural rights. John Locke and his predecessor, Hugo
Grotius, are frequently credited with ushering in the modern concept
of natural rights. Historically, the doctrine of natural rights appears
to have developed either within, or at least consonant with, the
framework of the natural law tradition. There is some debate among
philosophers as to whether the idea of natural rights is based on the
idea of natural law, whether the concept of natural law is derived from
the concept of natural rights, or whether they are separately devel-
oped, but related, concepts. Either way, natural law and natural rights
are compatible ideas each of which is rooted in human nature
itself—both require an ontological foundation. Both natural law and
natural rights are based on epistemological realism.
People are all of one species with a definite nature who are also
each uniquely configured because of their individuating attributes—
individuality is essential to one’s nature. Having reason and free will,
each person has the capacity and responsibility to choose to attempt
to actualize his potential for being a flourishing individual human
being—it is a person’s moral responsibility to be as good as possible
at living his own life. Morality is the good of man in his individual
instantiation—it does not aim at the common good. There is only
flourishing of individual human beings. The human telos is the
standard for morality and the individual human person is the center
of the moral world. This classical teleological eudaimonistic approach
to ethics states that the proper moral task of each person is to seek his
personal flourishing and happiness in his life—one’s needs and
purposes in life are determined by his humanity and individuality. It
follows that the morally good is subject to the determination by each
individual person who is responsible for his own life—the human
moral good is connected with individual initiative. There is a
connection between respecting each person’s right to liberty and one’s
attempt to flourish by answering questions of morality and by acting
accordingly.
Each unique individual human person is morally autonomous and
should be held responsible for his actions. It is essential to respect
human autonomy and uniqueness so that individuals can attain self-

actualization. There is an inviolable moral space around each person
that protects him from intrusion by others. Rights involve a delinea-
tion of jurisdiction within which an individual may decide what to do.
A person’s own discerned potentialities tell him what to do and the
standard of flourishing provides a criterion for one’s wants and
desires. Each person is responsible for living the type of life that
realizes his distinctiveness. The notion of responsibility is a key
concept for understanding rights, morality, and human flourishing.
Agential direction involves autonomous acting on decisions made via
a process of examination, reflection, deliberation, and choice.
Individual uniqueness is the source from which value pluralism
flows—from value differences emanate the need to engage in peaceful
exchanges and for voluntary associations. Individuality entails
varieties of value and diversity with respect to human flourishing; in
a society of varied individuals the outcomes of human flourishing will
reflect that variety. It follows that what is required is freedom of
action to allow for a plurality of ends and for a diversity of approaches
to the attainment of human flourishing. Responsible agents require
a moral space for living their lives in accordance with their nature as
individual human persons. A protected moral space is needed for the
possibility of self-direction. The doctrine of natural rights attributes
to human beings moral rights that others are obligated to respect.
Natural rights justify the context in which human actions take place
and determine the moral principles that establish what is permissible
within that context. Mutual noninterference provides the context and
proper setting for social interactions.
Natural rights are derived by reason from human nature and
supply a comprehensive principle that applies universally to all
persons and to all acts. Natural rights are based on the common
aspects of human beings whereas each life to be lived is the life of
some individual person—the human telos is individualized and agent
relative. The cognition of the universal idea of natural rights involves
abstraction without precision and is based on the consideration of
human nature. Natural rights provide a context of self-directedness
that is common to every act of human flourishing. Common features
give rise to universal standards; some principles are irrefutable and
indispensable. Natural rights provide a sphere of rightful defensible
authority for individuals to live their own lives according to their

nature as individual human beings. The designation “natural” refers
to the justification of these rights.
The ultimate justification of an ethic of human flourishing is
consequentialist and agent-based, endorsing each person’s pursuit of
his individual well-being. On the other hand, the doctrine of natural
rights can be viewed as having a deontic dimension, informing people
what restrictions they must accept. There is a distinction between
ethical principles that are teleological and those that are deontic.
According to teleological principles, the moral value of an action
depends upon the consequences of the action—human flourishing is
a consequence-based theory of right action. According to deontic
principles, the propriety of an action stems from something other
than the consequences. Deontic restrictions are moral prohibitions
against imposing specific forms of treatment upon other people.
There are deontic restrictions that are correlative to the rights of
others as well as correlative to each person’s right to his own life. We
could say that rights and responsibilities are relational in the nature of
human persons. It would be inconsistent or contradictory to maintain
the right to direct one’s own life and not to advocate others’ rights to
direct their own lives. It follows that an individual is not limited
personally regarding his own pursuits but he is limited interpersonally
with respect to others’ actions.
In his various writings, Eric Mack (1989; 1993; 1995; 1998a;
1998b) has explained that there is a distinctive correspondence or
correlation between the doctrines of human flourishing and natural
rights. Endorsing human flourishing makes it rationally necessary to
also endorse natural rights. Although human flourishing is not the
mainspring or source of rights, the two doctrines are complementary
systematizing principles within an ethical framework that is rational
because it contains both of these coordinating and integrating
components. The rationality of advocating the doctrine of human
flourishing depends upon the support of the doctrine of natural
rights.
The doctrine of natural rights provides a conception of freedom
that establishes the context for other senses of freedom. Natural
rights portray the appropriate setting for social interactions and
specify the conditions for meaningful senses of moral virtue and
human flourishing. Natural rights delineate conceptually the moral

space within which individuals need to be free (and self-directed) to
make their own choices regarding their possible pursuit of their self-
actualization without interfering with the like pursuit of others with
whom they interact socially.
Natural rights do not enforce themselves. Securing natural rights
should be the primary and central concern of the political and legal
order. The notion of natural rights should inform the formation of
law and government. Political liberty should involve a state of
organized social life in which persons are not deprived of their
sovereignty. Human flourishing can best occur when there exists a
minimal state that takes no actions except to uphold the negative
natural rights of all of its citizens. Politics and law should not have a
direct role in how people ought to live their lives. Politics should be
concerned only with the limited ends of peace and security—politics
and law should be separated from personal morality.
The 2005 book, Norms of Liberty, embodies the most complete
expression of, and best statement to date of, Rasmussen and Den
Uyl’s thesis that liberalism is a political philosophy of metanorms that
does not guide individual conduct in moral activity. Arguing that
politics is not suited to make men moral, they proclaim the need to
divest substantive morality from politics. The purpose of liberalism,
as a political doctrine, is to secure a peaceful and orderly society.
Political philosophy should only be concerned with providing a
framework within which people can make moral choices for them-
selves. This framework creates a moral space for value-laden activity.
Politics should be concerned solely with securing and maintaining the
conditions for the possibility of human flourishing that is real,
individualized, agent-relative, inclusive, self-directed, and social.
Liberalism requires conduct so that conditions may be obtained where
moral actions can take place; liberalism is not an equinormative
system. Metanormative and normative levels of ethical principles are
split because of their different relationships to self-perfection. Rights
are metanormative principles; they are ethical principles, but they are
not normative principles.
What is required is the existence of an ethical principle that
aspires not to guide human conduct in moral activity, but instead to
regulate conduct so that conditions can be achieved where moral
actions can occur. Rasmussen and Den Uyl explain that rights are an
ethical concept that is not directly concerned with human flourishing,
but rather is concerned with context-setting—establishing a politi-
cal/legal order that will not require one form of human flourishing to
be preferred over any other form. A two-level ethical structure
consists of metanorms (also referred to as political norms) and
personal ethical norms. Rights, as a metanormative principle, supply
guidance in the formulation of a constitution whereby the legal system
establishes the political and social conditions required for persons to
select and implement the principles of normative morality in their
individual lives.
Ethics are not all of one category. Whereas some regulate the
conditions under which moral conduct may exist, others are more
directly prescriptive of moral conduct. Of course, the conditions for
making any type of human flourishing possible are less potent than
conditions that serve to advance forms of human flourishing directly.
Natural rights do not aim at directly promoting human flourishing; the
context of natural rights is as universal as possible. Self-direction is
the common crucial element in all concrete distinct forms of human
flourishing and the negative natural right to freedom is a metanorma-
tive principle because it protects the possibility of self-direction in a
social context. According to Rasmussen and Den Uyl, the purpose of
rights is to protect the possibility of self-directedness. Although they
acknowledge that human flourishing is man’s telos, their argument for
rights does not justify rights for their being conducive to achieving
human flourishing. The natural right to liberty permits each individ-
ual a sphere of freedom in which self-directed activities can be
undertaken without the interference of other people.
A neo-Aristotelian ethical perfectionism is consistent with, and
supportive of, a non-perfectionist view of politics. A person’s human
nature calls for his personal flourishing, which, in turn, requires
practical wisdom and self-directedness. The purpose of rights is to
protect self-directedness. It follows that self-directedness can be
viewed as an intermediate factor between metanormative natural
rights and normative human flourishing. Self-perfection requires self-
direction and pluralism; diverse forms of flourishing are ethically
compossible under the rubric of universal metanorms.
Rasmussen and Den Uyl have extended and refined ideas from
political philosophy that began in ancient times. These are the ideas
that the state should not use or permit coercion against peaceful
people and that the state should have nothing to do with fostering
individual personal morality and virtue—people participate in political
life so that they are not harmed rather than to be made to flourish.
Elements of these notions can be found in the writings of a number
of philosophers such as Lao Tzu, Epicurus, and especially of Spinoza,
who strongly warned people about the dangers of the moralization of
politics.9
Rasmussen and Den Uyl state that, based on the nature of man
and the world, certain natural rights can be identified and an appropri-
ate political order can be instituted. Rasmussen and Den Uyl base
their view of natural rights as metanormative principles on the
universal characteristics of human nature that call for the protection
and preservation of the possibility of self-directedness in society
regardless of the situation. Because they do not base natural rights on
human flourishing, they believe they have formulated a strong
argument for a non-perfectionist and non-moralistic minimal-state
politics. Rasmussen and Den Uyl see a problem in putting what many
consider to be a moral principle (i.e., natural rights) as the subject of
political action or control. Their goal is to abandon legal moralism—
the idea that politics is institutionalized ethics. They say that statecraft
is not soulcraft and that politics is not appropriate to make men
moral.
A number of thinkers over the years have also commented on the
different senses in which a system can be said to be moral and in
which an individual human being can be said to be moral. For
example, in his book The Morality of Law (1964), legal philosopher Lon
L. Fuller distinguishes between what he calls the “morality of duty”
and the “morality of aspiration.” Fuller explains that the morality of
duty begins at the bottom of human achievement and establishes the
fundamental rules that are necessary to have an ordered society. He
says that the basic rules impose duties regarding what is necessary in
order to have social life. According to Fuller, natural rights create a
universal enforceable duty with regard to just conduct but not with
respect to good conduct. In the morality of duty, penalties take
priority over rewards and objective standards can be applied to
deviations from adequate performance. It is not the function of the
morality of duty to compel a man through the law to live the good
and virtuous life of reason. The law, through the enforcement of
natural rights, can only create the prerequisite conditions necessary,
but not sufficient, for the attainment of one’s personal flourishing in
society. Securing the social order through protected natural rights
places restrictions on the means a person can use to pursue his
happiness. Fuller points out that the type of justification that
characterizes judgments of duty does not apply with respect to the
morality of aspiration. He says that the morality of aspiration is
reflected in the Greek philosophy of excellence, challenging ideals,
and the Good Life. It follows that the morality of aspiration exists at
the highest rank of human achievement. Fuller notes that the ancients
properly saw that the word “virtue” belongs in the vocabulary of the
morality of aspiration and not in the vocabulary of the morality of
duty. In the sphere of the morality of aspiration, a person makes
value judgments, and praise and reward take precedence over
disapproval and punishment. It is clear that virtuous conduct far
surpasses the realm of natural rights, which are neutral regarding the
variety of ways in which a person could choose to pursue his
happiness. In his work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Adam
Smith’s idea of justice approximates Fuller’s idea of the morality of
duty. Smith thus sets justice apart from all of the other virtues. In
addition, both Herbert Spencer’s (1851) “law of equal freedom” and
Robert Nozick’s (1974) “framework for utopias” emphasize the
importance of negative freedom so that each person can pursue his
happiness as he sees it best for him to do so. Also, although Rand
(1964) promulgated what Fuller would call a morality of aspiration,
derived natural rights and all of Objectivism’s other moral principles
by way of ethical egoism, and did not use the word “duty,” she still
spoke of natural rights that must be respected by every human being.
Unlike Rand, who derived her political ethics from a code of personal
morality, Rothbard ([1982] 1998) deduced his “social ethic of liberty”
from the self-ownership axiom and the nonaggression principle.
Rothbard developed a radical dissociation between political ethics and
personal morality, thus differentiating between what Rasmussen and
Den Uyl term the metanormative realm of politics and law and the
normative sphere of moral principles. Rothbard began and ended his
ethics at the metanormative level. Of course, instead of a minimal
state, he advocated a pure anarchocapitalist society to provide defense,

security, and arbitration services.
Morality and Human Flourishing

Moral values enter the world with human life. There is a close
connection between an objective normative structure for understand-
ing human life and economics. Human flourishing or happiness is the
standard underpinning the assessment that a goal is rational and
should be pursued. This common human benchmark implies a
framework for evaluating a person’s decisions and actions. It follows
that the fundamental ethical task for each man is the fullest develop-
ment of himself as a human being and as the individual that he is.
Human life thus provides the foundation and context of the realm of
ethics. The idea of value is at the root of ethics. A man’s immediate
needs for survival are economic and are values for his life. Economic
production is necessary to satisfy these needs or material values. A
productive man is a rational, self-interested, and virtuous man. He is
doing what he ought to do to sustain his life (Machan 1989, 37–50).
To survive and flourish a man must grasp reality. To do this
requires a rational epistemology and a theory of objective concepts.
These have been supplied by Rand ([1966–67] 1990). A person needs
to observe reality, abstract essentials, and form objective concepts and
laws. The objective nature of the world circumscribes the operations
that must be accomplished if goals and values are to be attained.
Reality is what is there to be perceived and studied. Everyone is
constrained by what is metaphysically real. Fortunately, people have
the capacity to objectively apprehend reality. A man’s mind can
identify, but cannot create, reality. Knowability of the world is a
natural condition common both to the external world and the human
mind.
Rand’s conception of universals (or essences) as epistemological
(she really means contextual and relational) is arguably superior to the
traditional interpretation given to Aristotle’s ideas or universals as
being metaphysical. Rand explains that knowledge is acquired by an
active, conscious agent through the processes of induction and
deduction. In order to deduce from axioms and general statements,
we must first have inductive inferences. We can know via the senses,
inferences from data supplied by the senses, and introspective
understanding.
Capitalism is the consequence of the natural order of liberty,
which is based on the ethic of individual happiness. Freedom is
connected with morality, ethics, and individual flourishing. Men are
moral agents whose task it is to excel at being the human being that
one is. In order to be moral agents, people need to be free and self-
directed. It follows that capitalism is the political expression of the
human condition. As a political order relegated to a distinct sphere
of human life, it conforms with human nature by permitting each
person to pursue happiness, excellence, and the perfection of his own
human life through the realization of his rational and other capacities.
A free society, one that respects an individual’s natural rights,
acknowledges that it is an individual’s moral responsibility to be as
good as possible at living his own life. Of course, such a society
cannot guarantee moral and rational behavior on the part of its
members. It can only make such conduct possible (Machan 1989,
153–64; 1990, 128–44; Younkins 2001; 2002, 1–6).
Free will is critical to human existence and human flourishing. A
person has the ability to choose to actualize his potential for being a
fully-developed individual human being. A man depends on his
rationality for his survival and flourishing. He must choose to initiate
the mental processes of thinking and focusing on becoming the best
person he can be in the context of his own existence. He is responsi-
ble for applying reason, wisdom, and experience to his own specifi-
cally situated circumstances. Rationality is the virtue through which
a man exercises reason (Boyle et al. 1976; Machan 1998a, 17–30).
Rand explains (1964, 1–25) that men know they have volition through
the act of introspection. The fact that people are regularly deciding
to think or not to think is directly accessible to each person. Each
person can introspectively observe that he can choose to focus his
consciousness or not. A person can pay attention or not. The
implication of free will is that men can be held morally responsible for
their actions.
The idea of free will does not imply that a person has unlimited
power with respect to the operation of his own mind. Man’s
consciousness has a particular nature, structure, set of powers, and
characteristics. Action can be said to be influenced by physiological,
psychological, sociological, and other factors, but there is at least
some residual amount of free will behind the action that operates
independently of the influencing factors. An action is not totally
determined by a man’s inheritance.
Although a man’s choices are ultimately free, there is, in all
probability, some connection to a person’s physical endowments,
facticity, urges, past choices, articulated preferences for the future,
scarcity of a good, acquisition of new knowledge, and so on.
Certainly each person is subject to his unconscious mind, biological
constraints, psychological impediments, genetic inheritances, feelings,
urges, social environment, social influences, etc. However, none of
these denies the existence of free will, but only shows that it may be
challenging for a person to use his free will to triumph over them.
Each person shares some attributes with other human beings,
such as free will and the capacity to reason. It follows that at a basic
or metanormative level what is objectively moral or ethical is
universally the same. In addition, a person’s moral decisions depend,
to a certain degree, on his particular circumstances, talents, and
characteristics. The particular evaluations a person should make are
made through a process of rational cognition. A rational ethical
action is what a person believes he should do based on the most
fitting and highest quality information acquired about human nature
and the individual person that one is. When people approach life
rationally, they are more likely to conclude that virtues and ethical
principles are necessary for human flourishing. They discover that
human beings have a profound need for morality.
Human purposefulness makes the world understandable in terms
of human action. Human action is governed by choice and choice is
free. Choice is a product of free will. A voluntaristic theory of action
recognizes the active role of reason in decisions caused by a human
person who wills and acts. Choosing both ends and means is a matter
of reason. Because human action is free, it is potentially moral. It
therefore follows that human actions necessarily include moral or
ethical considerations. Values cannot be avoided. Free will means
being a moral agent.
Human Flourishing and the Personal Virtues

During the last forty years or so, there has been a revival of
scholarly interest in the virtues in general and in virtue ethics in
particular. Many thinkers have turned their attention to a neo-

Aristotelian version of virtue ethics, but none has made a better or
more consistent case for a virtuous life than has Rand (1957; 1964;
1967; [1966–67] 1990).10 She explains that attaining moral perfection
means achieving the highest level of human flourishing of which one
is capable of reaching. Rand details how and why the consistent
practice of seven virtues is essential for a person to attain his objective
well-being (i.e., his flourishing).
For Rand, morality is a type of enlightened and rational self-in-
terest—each individual’s moral obligation is to attain his own moral
well-being. She defines value as “that which one acts to gain and/or
keep” (1964, 27). The purpose in pursuing values is the flourishing
of one’s own life. Values are thus at the root of morality. Proper
moral norms are determined by human nature. Rand’s ethical egoism
sees naturalism as leading to facts that become the basis for objective
judgments of value. An objective value is a feature of reality that is
positively related to the flourishing of an individual human being. An
objective value is relational and exists in a life-affirming relationship
to a particular person.
Rand defends the principled pursuit of one’s own flourishing.
She explains that promoting one’s own interest requires a person to
consistently follow principles. A human being needs to understand,
in the framework of principles, the cause and effect relationships
between his actions and the achievement of his values. Moral
principles are formulated through observation and induction regard-
ing the effects of various forms of action on one’s well-being. A man
must identify and follow rational principles if he is to flourish.
Moral principles, as guides to life-promoting actions, are defined
in relationship to the facts that makes them essential. For man to
survive, he must discern the principles of action necessary to direct
him in his relationships with other men and with nature. Man’s need
for these principles is his need for a code of morality. To flourish, a
person must select proper principles and act in accordance with them.
Human flourishing requires the identification and practice of a
particular systematic code of morality. The traditional major virtues,
as recast by Rand, provide the rational principles for this code of
morality—virtues are manifestations of the rational long-range
standards or principles that life as a human being requires.
Rand explains that a virtue is the act by which one gains and/or
keeps an objective value. From another perspective, character traits
that objectively and rationally benefit their possessor are deemed to
be virtues. The virtues are egoistic or partial to oneself, but not in any
objectionable sense. A virtuous character is the result of appropriate
actions and is contributive to further appropriate actions.
Rand explains throughout her writings that the rational pursuit of
one’s self-interest requires the consistent practice of seven principal
virtues: rationality, honesty, independence, justice, integrity, produc-
tiveness, and pride. Unfortunately, she did not produce a comprehen-
sive, systematic, and detailed work with respect to the virtues. On the
positive side, Tara Smith (2006) has endeavored to provide a detailed
explanation of the virtues in the context of Rand’s rational egoism.
Rationality, the primary virtue, involves full focus, commitment
to reality, and the constant expansion of one’s knowledge. Rationality
is one’s recognition and acknowledgment of reason as one’s only
source of knowledge, judge of values, and guide to action. Reason is
the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by
man’s senses; it is man’s fundamental means of survival and a
practical instrument for gaining the values that further one’s life.
Rationality is concerned with the method by which an individual
reaches his conclusions rather than being concerned with the
particular conclusions that he comes to. Rationality is essential to the
kind of practical actions required to attain human flourishing. It
involves acceptance of the conditions necessary for man’s flourishing.
The virtue of rationality requires an individual to act on his rational
conclusions.
Rationality requires the exercise of six additional derivative virtues
that can be viewed as expressions of rationality (48–74). Honesty is
the refusal to fake reality—it is the rejection of unreality and the
recognition that the unreal can have no value. Misrepresenting reality
does not change reality. Facts are independent of a person’s beliefs.
For honesty, a person must renounce misrepresentation, artifice, and
evasion. He must also develop an active mind and act on his
knowledge—an honest person seeks knowledge because he needs it
to act properly. Honesty is practical. An individual must be truthful
with himself, and not pretend that reality is something other than
what it is. Self-deception is counter-productive. Dishonesty diverts
an individual from identifying and seeking rational plans for gaining

objective values. Dishonesty diminishes one’s self-esteem and pride.
It also changes facts and his own rationality into his enemies.
Whereas an honest person depends on others’ virtues, a dishonest
person relies upon their vices.
Through dishonesty, a man makes himself dependent on others’
standards, expectations, judgments, and ignorance. A liar depends
upon others’ naivete and he must strive to keep them unaware. In
reality, an individual is apt to profit the most from others’ rationality,
knowledge, and virtues. Honesty, like all the virtues, is contextual and
does not require one to tell the truth in all cases. It is permissible (and
moral) to lie in order to protect a value that is being threatened. The
use of force or fraud by an aggressor changes the conditions and the
relationship between honesty and life. Lying is wrong when done in
an attempt to gain a value (75–105).
An independent person establishes his primary orientation to
reality rather than to other people. Accepting the primacy of
existence, the independent person goes by his own judgment of
reality. Independence requires a person’s acceptance of the responsi-
bility for making his own judgments, gaining knowledge through the
use of his own mind, and surviving and flourishing by the efforts of
his own mind. Thought is performed individually. Because reason is
a characteristic of the individual human person, knowledge must be
attained by the individual. Because thinking is a self-directed activity,
the requirement of independence is implied in the requirement of
rationality. Independence can be viewed as the method through
which an individual comprehends ideas. It is essential to follow
through by acting on his independent judgment.
It is permissible to learn from others provided that one thinks
through and grasps the ideas for himself. A man can be independent
while not being the creator or discoverer of new ideas. What is
important is a person’s own judgment. In our division of labor
society, it is rational to make use of the knowledge of experts and
people who are more experienced. However, it is essential not to
accept unconditionally whatever the other person says merely because
it is the judgment of another person. It is necessary not to substitute
the judgments of others for one’s own judgment. It is important to
assess, to the best of one’s ability, the ideas presented and the
legitimacy of the expert’s qualifications, education, and experience

(106–34).
Because other people are potential values or disvalues to an
individual, it is essential to judge other individuals’ character and
conduct objectively and to act accordingly. The personal virtue of
justice involves the application of rationality to the evaluation and
treatment of other persons. These moral assessments and judgments
require fidelity to reality and the use of one’s reason rather than
yielding to one’s emotions.
It is essential to give each person that which he deserves. This
idea reflects respect for causality—certain causes justify certain
effects. This value-oriented perspective on justice recognizes that
virtuous actions bring values into existence and that unprincipled or
irrational actions damage or destroy values. It is rational to reward
virtues with positive values and vices with punishments or negative
values.
Smith explains that a man should judge others objectively and
treat them as they deserve because that is the best way to achieve his
own personal flourishing. In fact, everyone is in a position to profit
from actions that produce value and to be diminished by actions that
harm or extirpate values. Injustice destroys the natural causal chain
by rewarding corrupt conduct and punishing virtuous conduct. The
Randian view is that both those who receive just treatment and the
individual bestowing that treatment profit from that practice. It
follows that one should support and endorse qualities in other people
that benefit himself and dissuade those attributes that are damaging
to oneself. It is necessary to judge, evaluate, and act properly toward
other people in order to attain one’s values and flourishing (135–75).
Integrity is loyalty in action to rational principles and to one’s
convictions and values. There should be no breach or dichotomy
between one’s thought and moral principles and his actions. Integrity
is fundamental to attaining one’s values and flourishing. Integrity
requires a policy and the conscientious consistent practice of life-
promoting principles. Smith explains that Rand condemns some, but
not all, forms of compromise. There is a difference between a
compromise of moral principle and a compromise of the details of a
situation falling under a moral principle. It follows that when a
person voluntarily negotiates toward a final agreed-upon price, he is
not compromising the principle of free trade (176–97).

Productiveness, the process of creating material values, is
necessary for human survival. Such values should be created rather
than being confiscated. Productive work is the process through
which man’s mind maintains his life. It is through productive work
that man’s consciousness controls his existence; it involves the
adjustment of nature to man’s requirements and the translation of
ideas into physical form. All productive work requires a combination
of mental and physical exertion in varying proportions depending
upon the particular kind of work. Values in reality are made possible
by the existence of knowledge. Although the mental aspect is
primary, this does not imply that there is some type of separation
from the physical realm. The product of one’s work must acquire
physical existence outside of one’s consciousness. Existential values
are made possible through the application of a person’s knowledge.
Productive work is necessary for a man both materially and
spiritually; according to Rand, it is the central purpose of a person’s
life. Productivity depends upon one’s rationality and sustains a man’s
self-esteem and sense of identity. Productive work can act as the
integrating central element of a person’s life. As such, it can be
viewed as both an end and as a means (198–220).
Pride (i.e., moral ambitiousness) is the commitment to attain one’s
own moral perfection. Pride demonstrates the exercise of the other
six Randian virtues and involves one’s dedication to achieving the
highest or best character state of which he is capable of attaining.
Like Aristotle, Rand views pride as the “crown of the virtues.” Smith
explains that pride involves one’s commitment to rationality in
thought and action, the systematic pursuit of achievement, life-
advancing actions, and the continual strengthening of one’s character.
Pride leads a person to the self-esteem that is necessary for human
life. Moral perfection is essential for one’s personal flourishing
(221–46).
The Pursuit of Flourishing and Happiness

Personal flourishing requires the rational use of one’s talents,
abilities, and virtues in the pursuit of one’s freely chosen goals.
Happiness is the positive experience that accompanies or flows from
the use of one’s individual human potentialities in the pursuit of one’s
values and goals. In other words, personal flourishing leads to

happiness.
Virtues and goods are the means to values and the virtues, goods,
and values together enable individuals to attain human flourishing and
happiness. Living by, and acting on, rational moral principles cultivate
corresponding virtues, which, in turn, lead to value attainment,
flourishing, and happiness. An appropriate set of general evaluative
principles provides basic guidelines in living well (Younkins 2002, 43–
51).
The right of private property is a precondition for making the
pursuit of one’s flourishing and happiness possible. No more
fundamental human right exists than the right to use and control
one’s things, thoughts, and actions so as to manage one’s life as one
sees fit. If one has the right to sustain his life, then he has the right to
whatever he is able to produce with his own time and means. Each
person has the right to do whatever he wants with his justly held
property as long as in so doing he does not violate the rights of
another. Without private ownership, voluntary free trade and
competition would be impossible (55–62).
As men found specialization desirable, an exchange mechanism
evolved through which one person, who could produce an item more
efficiently than others, could exchange it for an article that he could
not make as efficiently as another person could make it. As trade and
commerce developed, this giving-and-getting arrangement became
more and more protected by formal contract. The idea of sanctity of
contract is essential to a market economy and one of the most
important elements that hold a civilized society together (63–68).
A market economy is a voluntary association of property owners
for the purpose of trading to their mutual advantage. The market
accommodates people who seek to improve their circumstances by
trading goods and services in a non-coercive setting. Markets are
efficient and effective mechanisms for ensuring that society is
arranged to maximize individuals’ ability to act on their best vision of
their well-being. The market process reflects both social cooperation
and voluntarism in human affairs. A market economy is a necessary
condition for a free society.
Private markets encourage people to interact, cooperate, learn,
and prosper from their diversity. The market economy inspires
people to seek out others who are different from them, treat their
differences as opportunities, and garner mutual gains through their
cooperative interaction. When two people make a deal, each one
expects to gain from it. Each person has a different scale of values
and a different frame of reference. The market mechanism permits
people to maximize their results while economizing their efforts.11
The price of any good or service is whatever others willingly give
in voluntary exchange in particular circumstances. The judgments of
all parties are continually and everlastingly changing. There is no one
optimal product or service specification. Not only do consumer tastes
vary among prospective purchasers at any one point in time, they also
change over time and situationally, so that experimentation and
research in product and service specifications is a continuous process.
The market is an effective communicator of data. With its
continuing flow of positive and negative feedback, the market allows
decision makers to review a constantly changing mix of options and
resulting trade-offs and to respond with precision by continually
making incremental adjustments. The role of prices as transmitters of
knowledge economizes the amount of information required to
produce a given economic result. No one person need have complete
information in order for the economy to convey relevant information
through prices and achieve the same adjustments that would obtain
if everyone had that knowledge. Prices are a mechanism for carrying
out the rationing function and are a fast, efficient conveyor of
information through a society in which fragmented knowledge must
be coordinated. Accurate prices, resulting from voluntary exchanges,
allow the economy to achieve optimal performance in terms of
satisfying each person as much as possible by his own standards
without sacrificing others’ rights to act according to their own
standards.12
Many economists make a value-free case for liberty and hold that
values are subjective. Although these economists maintain that values
are subjective and Objectivists argue that values are objective, these
claims are not incompatible because they are not really about the same
things; they exist at different levels or spheres of analysis. The value-
subjectivity of economists (especially of Austrian praxeological
economists) complements the Randian sense of objectivity. In reality,
there is no dichotomy between these two notions of value. The
distinction arises because of the different conceptual contexts (i.e., the

levels of abstraction and isolation) of praxeological economists and
proponents of Objectivism’s ethical egoism. The realm of objective
values dealing with personal flourishing transcends the level of
subjective value preferences. Value-free economics is not sufficient
to establish a total case for freedom. A systematic, reality-based
ethical system must be discovered to firmly ground the argument for
individual liberty (High 1985, 3–16; Machan 1998b, 43–46; and
Younkins 2005a; 2005b, 361–64).
Production is the means to the fulfillment of men’s material
needs. The production of goods, services, and wealth metaphysically
precedes their distribution and exchange. When a man acts rationally
and in his own self-interest, he makes wealth creation, economic
activity, and the scientific study of economics possible. To survive
and flourish, men have to produce what is necessary for their
existence. The requirements of life must be objectively identified and
produced. The facts regarding what enhances or restrains life are
objective, established by the facts of reality, and based on proper
cognition. There are requirements and rules built into the nature of
things that must be met if we are to survive and prosper.
Both Austrian economists and Objectivists agree with the French
classical economist, Jean-Baptiste Say, that production is the source
of demand. Products are ultimately paid for with other products.
Consumption follows from the production of wealth. Supply
metaphysically comes before consumption. The primacy of produc-
tion means that we must produce before we can consume. Demand
does not create supply, and consumption does not create production.
Productiveness is a virtue. People tend to be productive and
successful when they are rational and self-interested. Production
requires people who practice the virtues of rationality and self-interest.
Rationality, a common standard in human nature, is a discerning
approach to the selection of both ends and means. Self-interest is also
a virtue because living, for human beings, is ultimately an individual
task. Because the maintenance of each person’s life is conditional, it
is necessary for each individual to choose to think, plan, and produce
if he wants to survive and flourish.
Work is built into the human condition. Men have to work in
order to sustain themselves. The things by which people live do not
exist until someone creates them. Man survives by using his reason
and other faculties to adjust his environment to himself. Productive
work is also a means through which people attain purpose in their
lives. Work is at the heart of a meaningful life and is essential for
personal survival and flourishing. Work is necessary not only to
obtain wealth but also to one’s purpose and self-esteem. There are
integrated links between reality, reason, self-interest, productive work,
goal attainment, personal flourishing, and happiness.
There is an inextricable association between purposeful work and
individual freedom. Both employees and employers are parties to a
voluntary agreement, the terms of which both parties are legally and
morally obliged to honor. Both seek to gain from the arrangement.
As independent moral agents, the employee and employer agree to
terms in a matter that affects their lives, their values, and their futures.
A freely chosen job can be a source of one’s happiness and self-
respect (Younkins 2002, 69–76). Because a large portion of an
individual’s potentialities can only be realized through association with
other human beings, personal flourishing requires a life with others—
family, friends, acquaintances, business associates, etc. These associa-
tions are instrumentally valuable in the satisfaction of nonsocial wants
and desirable for a person’s moral maturation, including the sense of
meaning and value obtained from the realization of the consanguinity
of living beings that accompanies such affiliations. Men are necessar-
ily related to others and they can determine to a great extent the
persons they will be associated with and the ways in which they will
be associated. Each person is responsible for choosing, creating, and
entering relationships with persons that he values that enable him to
flourish. Voluntary, mutually beneficial relations among autonomous
individuals using their practical reason is necessary for attaining
authentic human communities. Human sociality is also open to
relationships with strangers, foreigners, and others with whom no
common bonds are shared—except for the common bond of
humanity (17–21).
Unlike the state, which is based on coercion, civil society is based
on voluntary participation. Civil society consists of natural and
voluntary associations such as families, private businesses, unions,
churches, clubs, charities, etc. Civil society, a spontaneous order,
consists of a network of associations built on the freedom of the
individual to associate or not to associate. The voluntary communi-

ties and associations of civil society are valuable because human
beings need to associate with others in order to flourish and achieve
happiness. For example, freely given charity may be considered as an
embodiment of one’s struggle for self-perfection. In this context,
charitable activities may be viewed as fulfillment of one’s potential for
cooperation and as a specific demonstration of that capacity—not as
an obligation owed to others (23–29).
A person’s moral maturation requires a life with others. Charita-
ble conduct can therefore be viewed as an expression of one’s self-
perfection. From this viewpoint, the obligation for charity is that the
benefactor owes it to himself, not to the recipients. If a benefit is
owed to another, rendering it is not a charitable act; charity must be
freely given and directed toward those to whom we have no obliga-
tion. Charitable actions may be viewed as perfective of a person’s
capacity for cooperation and as a particular manifestation (i.e., giving
to those in need) of that capacity. Kindness and benevolence, as a
basic way of functioning is not an impulse or an obligation to others
but a rational goal. Compassion is not charity and sentiment is not
virtue. This nonaltruistic, noncommunitarian view of charity (and the
other virtues) is grounded in a self-perfective framework under which
persons can vary the type, amount, and object of their charity based
on their values and their contingent circumstances. Other contempo-
rary concepts of charity rely on adherence to duty expressed as
deontic rules or as the maximization of social welfare (Den Uyl 1993,
192–224).13
Business is the way a free society arranges its economic activities.
Business deals with the natural phenomena of scarcity, insatiability,
and cost in a valuable and efficient manner. The business system
creates equality of opportunity and rewards businessmen who take
advantage of opportunities by anticipating consumer preferences and
efficiently using resources to satisfy those preferences. Through his
thought and action, the businessman enables other people to obtain
what they want (Younkins 2002, 97–107).
Progress is difference and change. If individuals were not free to
try new things, then we would never have any improvements. In
order to have progress, there must be freedom to attempt new
advances. Progress is impossible unless people are free to be
different. Regulation and controls stifle innovation and experimenta-

tion. Bureaucracy gets in the way of change. Capitalism has made
advances possible, not solely in providing life’s necessities, but in
science, technology, and knowledge of all types upon which human
society depends. Freedom attracts innovators and explorers and gives
life to their ideas. Freedom for people to act in their own self-interest
is the mainspring for a diversity of ideas, innovations, and experi-
ments that lead to the discovery of new products, services, and other
means of production.
Progress requires the use of information that exists only as widely
dispersed knowledge that each person has with respect to his own
circumstances, conditions, and preferences. Such tacit, locationally
specific knowledge is only useful if people are free to act upon it. A
free market permits prices to emerge from the use of people’s
localized knowledge. These prices contain more and better informa-
tion and result in better decisions than what can be achieved under a
regime of central planners. Limited government and decentralized
markets permit more freedom and foster more prosperity than do
state-dominated and centralized bureaucracies.14
Flourishing as a human being requires adequate information. It
follows that human beings are, to a certain extent, information
processing entities who reason theoretically and practically and can act
autonomously. Bynum (2006) explains that philosopher-scientist
Norbert Weiner ([1950/1954] 2006) understood well the important
relationship between the information-processing nature of human
beings and the purpose of a human life (i.e., to flourish as a human
person). To flourish as a human person requires one to participate in
a wide range of diverse information processing activities. Weiner
emphasizes the importance of individual autonomy with respect to
making life choices and carrying them out in the pursuit of one’s
goals. He explains that the creative and flexible information process-
ing potential of human beings allows each person to strive to reach his
full potential as the individual that he is. When presented with
adequate information, autonomous human beings have the potential
to live flourishing human lives in a diversity of ways. Weiner teaches
that a society should be built upon principles that would maximize
each person’s ability to flourish through variety and adaptability of
human action. His Principle of Freedom aims toward the maximiza-
tion of the opportunities for all people to use their autonomy as they
attempt to attain their chosen goals and individual human potential.
This necessitates a social context that provides security for protection
of individuals’ lives and property.
Wealth, in the form of goods and services, is created when
individuals recombine and rearrange the resources that comprise the
world. Wealth increases when someone conceives and produces a
more valuable configuration of the earth’s substances than the
combination that existed previously. It is the existence of unremitting
change that summons entrepreneurs in their search for profits. The
entrepreneur predicts, responds to, and creates change regarding the
discovery of new resource sources, new consumers’ desires, and new
technological opportunities. He seeks profit by creating new products
and services, new businesses, new production methods, and so on.
An entrepreneur attains wealth and his other objectives by providing
people with goods and services that further flourishing on earth.
Entrepreneurs are specialists in prudence—the virtue of applying
one’s talents to the goal of living well (Younkins 2002, 111–16).
Technology is an attempt to develop means for the ever more
effective realization of individuals’ ideas and values. The purpose of
technological advancement is to make life easier through the creation
of new products, services, and production methods. These advances
improve people’s standard of living, increase their leisure time, help
to eliminate poverty, and lead to a great variety of products and
services. New technologies enhance people’s lives both as producers
and consumers. By making life easier, safer, and more prosperous,
technological progress permits a person more time to spend on
higher-level concerns such as personal project pursuit, religion,
character development, love, and the perfection of one’s soul
(117–24).
The corporation occupies an important position within civil
society. The corporation is a social invention with the purpose of
providing goods and services in order to make profits for its owners,
with fiduciary care for shareholders’ invested capital. Corporate
managers thus have the duty to use the stockholders’ money for
expressly authorized purposes that can run from the pursuit of profit
to the use of resources for social purposes. Managers have a
contractual and moral responsibility to fulfill the wishes of the
shareholders and, therefore, do not have the right to spend the

owners’ money in ways that have not been approved by the stock-
holders, no matter what social benefits may accrue by doing so
(87–96).
Unionism currently consists of both voluntary and coercive
elements. Voluntary unions restrict themselves to activities such as
mass walkouts and boycotts. They do nothing to violate the rights of
others by using violence against them. Coercive unions use physical
force (e.g., picketing when its purpose is to coerce and physically
prevent others from crossing the picket line and from dealing with the
struck employer) aimed at nonaggressing individuals. Mass picketing
that obstructs entrance or exit is invasive of the employer’s property
rights as are sit-down strikes and sit-ins that coercively occupy the
property of the employer. People who are willing to work for a struck
employer have a legitimate right (but currently not a legal right in
many states) to do so. In addition, the struck employer has a
legitimate right to engage in voluntary exchanges with customers,
suppliers, and other workers.
Coercive unions achieve their goals through the coercive power
of the state. Most states’ legislation excludes nonunion workers when
a majority of the workers choose a particular union to be their
exclusive bargaining agent. The state should not be concerned with
a private citizen’s agreement to work with a particular firm. In a free
society, one based on natural law principles, each person would be
free to take the best offer that he gets. In a free society, unions could
merely be voluntary groups trying to advance their members’ interests
without the benefit of special privileges. In such a society, some
workers would join one union, some would join other unions, and
some would choose to deal with the employer directly and individually
(77–85).
Toward the Future

There are a great many coercive challenges, encroachments, and
constraints that have inhibited the establishment of a society based on
the natural liberty of the individual and the realities of the human
condition. By nature, these barriers tend to be philosophical,
economic, and political. Some of the strongest attacks on, and
impediments to, a free society include: collectivist philosophies,
cultural relativism, communitarianism, environmentalism, public

education, taxation, protectionism, antitrust laws, government
regulation, and monetary inflation. These bureaucratic and socialistic
ideologies and schemes tend to stem from various sources such as
true human compassion, envy, the insecurity of people who want
protection from life’s uncertainties, categorical “solutions” proposed
to solve problems, idealism, and the tendency to think only of
intended, primary, and immediate results while ignoring unintended,
ancillary, and long-term ones (161–288).
We must work to create a culture of liberty that would serve as
the foundation for a free society in which individuals can flourish.
Attitudinal and behavioral changes are a function of culture. Because
the required cultural changes cannot be legislated, we need to study
the cultural and nonrational factors that affect people’s attitudes
toward political, economic, and moral-cultural freedom. It is essential
for us to be culturally aware, acknowledge the importance of culture,
and appreciate insights from a diversity of disciplines.
In Total Freedom (2000), Chris Matthew Sciabarra cautions us not
to reduce the study and defense of freedom to economics or politics
with an inadequate understanding of the interconnections between the
philosophical, the historical, the personal, and so forth. Sciabarra’s
message is that libertarians need an effective strategy that recognizes
the dynamic relationships between the personal, political, historical,
psychological, ethical, cultural, economic, and so on, if they are to be
successful in their quest for a free society. He explains that attempts
to define and defend a nonaggression principle in the absence of a
broader philosophical and cultural context are doomed to fail. Typical
libertarian opposition to state intervention is not enough. Libertarians
must pay greater attention to the broader context within which their
goals and values can be realized. The battle against statism is
simultaneously structural (political and economic), cultural (with
implications for education, race, sex, language, and art) and personal
(with connections to individuals’ tacit moral beliefs, and to their
psychoepistemological processes). The crusade for freedom is
multidimensional and takes place on a variety of levels with each level
influencing and having reciprocal effects on the other levels.
It is possible to analyze society from different vantage points and
on different levels of generality in order to develop an enriched
picture of the many relationships between the various areas involved.

Change must occur on many different levels and in many different
areas. It cannot just be dictated from the political realm, but must
filter through all of the various levels and areas. Any attempt to
understand or change society must entail an analysis of its interrela-
tions from the perspective of any single aspect.
People need to understand both the necessity for objective
conceptual foundations and the need for cultural prerequisites in the
fight for the free society because some cultures promote, and others
undermine, freedom. Freedom cannot be defended successfully when
severed from its broader requisite conditions. We must attempt to
grasp and address all of freedom’s prerequisites and implications.
The gradual breakdown and crises of the reigning welfare-state
paradigm enhance our future prospects for a free society. Only a free
society is compatible with the true nature of man and the world.
Capitalism works because it is in accordance with reality. Capitalism
is the only moral social system because it protects a man’s mind, his
primary means of survival and flourishing. Truth and morality are on
our side. Our battle is intellectual, moral, and cultural. Our message
should appeal to all individuals and groups across the public spec-
trum. Let us hasten the demise of statism and the establishment of a
free society by working individually and in concert with others to
educate, persuade, and convert people to a just and proper political
and economic order that is a true reflection of the nature of man and
the world properly understood.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank several people for their help in my efforts to clarify the ideas
that appear in this article. I am extremely grateful to the following individuals for
their useful comments, observations, and suggestions: Roger E. Bissell, Samuel
Bostaph, Robert L. Campbell, Douglas J. Den Uyl, John B. Egger, Shawn E. Klein,
William E. Kline, Roderick T. Long, Loren Lomasky, Tibor R. Machan, Geoffrey
Allan Plauché, Douglas B. Rasmussen, Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Larry J. Sechrest,
and Aeon Skoble.
Notes
1. Regarding the importance of the idea of individualism see Lukes 1973;
Machan 1989; 1990; and Marine 1984.
2. For a variety of perspectives on natural rights, see Finnis 1980; Lomasky
1987; Machan 1975; 1989; Nozick 1974; Rasmussen and Den Uyl 1991; 2005; Shue
1980; Smith 1995; Strauss 1953; Sumner 1987; Tuck 1979; and Veatch 1985.
3. For relevant and useful discussions of constitutionalism, see Berman 1983;
Buchanan 1975; Buchanan and Tullock 1962; Corwin 1928; Kurland and Lerner
1987; Lutz 1988; McIlwain 1940; Pangle 1988; Pound 1957; Spiro 1959; and
Sutherland 1965.
4. Readers interested in further elucidation of the notion of the common good
should consult Aquinas 1963; Maritain 1947; Novak 1989; and Udoidem 1988.
5. For a range of additional accounts of the idea of human flourishing, see
Annas 1993; Hunt 1999; Hurka 1993; Norton 1976; Nussbaum and Sen 1993; Paul
et al. 1999; Sen 1993; Skoble 2008; Smith 2000; Sumner 1996; and Veatch 1971.
6. Lomasky (1984 and 1987) has drawn on a conception of personal projects
in constructing a theory of individual rights.
7. The nature of happiness has never been defined in a uniform way. One can
find a multiplicity of meanings especially in the fields of economics and psychology
in which researchers routinely attempt to measure happiness. For literature on this,
see Annas 1993; Diener et al. 1999; Diener et al. 2003; Kahneman et al. 1999; and
McGill 1967.
8. For more on autonomy, see Christman and Anderson 2005; Mele 2001; Paul
et al. 2003; Spector 1992; and Taylor 2005.
9. More detailed discussion of these three philosophers are found in chapters
1, 4, and 6 of Younkins (2008).
10. For rival explanations of virtue ethics, see Annas 1998; Crisp and Slote
1997; Darwall 2002; Foot 1978; 2001; Gaut 1997; Hunt 1997; Hursthouse 1999;
Korsgaard 1996; MacIntyre 1997; McDowell 1978; Slote 1992; 1995; Swanton 1995;
Wallace 1978; and Zagzebski 1996.
11. For excellent discussions of the market process see Boettke 1994; Harper
1996; and Kirzner 1992.
12. For more detailed explanations, see Hayek 1937; 1945; Kirzner 1984; and
Sowell 1980.
13. For somewhat different perspectives, see Kelley 1996; and Machan 1998b.
14. For more on this, see Hayek 1945; Kirzner 1984, Lavoie 1986; and Sowell
1980.
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Toward The Development of A Paradigm of Human Flourishing in A Free Society

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Ethics and Social Theory

Toward the Development of a

This article supports the ancient Aristotelian idea, based on

The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 9, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 253–304.

pursue (or not to pursue) their personal flourishing. Self-directedness

All objective knowledge is interrelated in some way thus reflecting the

Rather than providing proof or validation of the concepts and

The Nature of Man and the World

these is to attain its true character and fulfillment.

own choices and actions.

he wants to attain. This initial change in a person’s body is intended

appropriately on a naturalistic philosophy. An Aristotelian metaphys-

There are ontological necessities, constraints, possibilities, and

world. Natural law’s moral order provides individuals with motiva-

A constitution is a law for governments. Constitutional govern-

or nonreligious view they choose. Religion is a matter of personal

However, a person’s maturation or flourishing requires a life with

action. Human flourishing is, at the same time, a moral accomplish-

attains them. Values can be achieved in reality if a man recognizes

fulfilling manner. The joy found in one’s flourishing helps to

condition for the pursuit and achievement of human flourishing.

person’s outward conduct rather than with the virtuousness of his

68–70; Younkins 2002, 136–38).

Human Flourishing and Natural Rights

human autonomy and uniqueness so that individuals can attain self-

authority for individuals to live their own lives according to their

human flourishing. Natural rights delineate conceptually the moral

state, he advocated a pure anarchocapitalist society to provide defense,

Morality and Human Flourishing

Human Flourishing and the Personal Virtues

particular. Many thinkers have turned their attention to a neo-

an individual from identifying and seeking rational plans for gaining

legitimacy of the expert’s qualifications, education, and experience

not compromising the principle of free trade (176–97).

The Pursuit of Flourishing and Happiness

values and goals. In other words, personal flourishing leads to

distinction arises because of the different conceptual contexts (i.e., the

individual to associate or not to associate. The voluntary communi-

different. Regulation and controls stifle innovation and experimenta-

shareholders and, therefore, do not have the right to spend the

Toward the Future

cultural relativism, communitarianism, environmentalism, public

picture of the many relationships between the various areas involved.

University of Notre Dame Press.

___. 1998a. Classical Individualism. London: Routledge.

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