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

MURRAY N. ROTHBARD VS. THE PHILOSPHERS: UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS
118 ON HAYEK, MISES, STRAUSS, AND POLYANI
the great arts, such as architecture, sculpture,
painting, music, and the dance, are built upon
these fixed relationships between the unchanging
character of the physics of radiant energy (light)
and of material vibrations (sound) and the organism.
Hence each art acquires its canons that
determine the relationships which are and which
are not evaluated as good or bad by human sight
and hearing. Once such values are established,
only a changing romantic whimsy or caprice can
pretend that they are not fixed and immutable so
long as human brains comprehend and senses
remain fixed. 70
I am enthused over this type of approach because I
believe that work along such paths could bear a great deal
of fruit in working out a viable system of absolute ethics,
esthetics, and values in general.
The fact that an eighteenth-century nobleman and a
primitive Indian had different table manners, avers
Carmichael, does not prove relativism, for the important
point is that both the nobleman and the savage needed and
ate food. There is variation, but there is also a nexus of
fixed norms. Monogamy may be demonstrable as absolutely
the best form of marriage for developing the emotional
characteristics of the human personality and also for child
rearing. Then, Carmichael goes on to criticize the “Gallup
Poll” moralists for trying to prove that the very fact that
some practices exist makes them moral or normal. He maintains
that the civilized human race has, over the centuries,
found ethical norms and practices that are absolutely better
than others; but they must be inculcated in each generation
of the young.
Carmichael also has good criticisms of the view that
growing up in a New Guinea hut is just as good as going to
Harvard, or that the latest nonobjective-art nonsense is as
70 Ibid., pp. 6–7.