Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

REVIEWS AND COMMENTS BY MURRAY N. ROTHBARD 117
Leonard Carmichael,
“Absolutes, Relativism, and the Scientific Psychology
of Human Nature” 68
I am extremely impressed with Mr. Carmichael’s paper.
This is a highly important and pioneering effort to ground a
set of natural-law ethics and values on the biological nature
of man and what is best for man. I think one of the most
important directions to be pursued in the “sciences of
human action” is to develop a natural-law ethics based on
nature rather than, or at least to supplement, ethics based
on theological revelation. Carmichael is here undertaking
this from his vantage point as a biologist. This provides a
truly absolutist, and yet “scientific,” grounding for ethics.
Carmichael begins, in happy omen, by resurrecting Herbert
Spencer, and showing that Spencer must be modified
to eliminate his bias for an evolutionary ethics, since man
has already fully “evolved,” since he has not physically
changed in all historic time. Carmichael then goes on to
look for those stable absolutes in human nature that could
be used to base an absolute ethic. First, Carmichael shows
that biological organisms tend to remain with constant
qualities—biological “conservatism.” 69 While human individuals
are variable within each generation, the average
man doesn’t change basically from one century to the next.
(The tools built by Bronze Age men would fit the men of
today, etc.) Carmichael goes on to point, keenly, to such
other human psychological and physiological constants as
symmetry (e.g., cave drawings), rhythm, texture, perception
through human sense organs, etc. From this, Carmichael
hints brilliantly at the derivation of an absolute natural law
esthetics. Thus
68Leonard Carmichael, “Absolutes, Relativism, and the Scientific
Psychology of Human Nature,” in Schoeck and Wiggins, eds., Relativism,
pp. 1–22.
69Ibid., p. 4.