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Toward The Development of A Paradigm of Human Flourishing in A Free Society
Toward The Development of A Paradigm of Human Flourishing in A Free Society
Edward W. Younkins
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:
Younkins — Human Flourishing 257
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).
262 The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol. 9, No. 2
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
Younkins — Human Flourishing 265
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).
266 The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol. 9, No. 2
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.
268 The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol. 9, No. 2
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
Younkins — Human Flourishing 279
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
280 The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol. 9, No. 2
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
Younkins — Human Flourishing 281
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
Younkins — Human Flourishing 283
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.
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
286 The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol. 9, No. 2
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
Younkins — Human Flourishing 291
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
Younkins — Human Flourishing 293
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
296 The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol. 9, No. 2
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
Younkins — Human Flourishing 299
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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