Patron Saints: (2) Continental European Ethical Philosophy

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the ways in which the distinctive conception of the moral order in conservative liberalism and Ordo-liberalism bears testament to the metaphysical and epistemological imprints of continental European ethical philosophy as it evolved in the period from the 1880s to the 1930s. Ethical philosophy helped to give flesh to their conception of liberalism as about human flourishing. The chapter begins by reflecting on the complex relationship with Adam Smith as political economist and moral philosopher and on the enormous importance of Immanuel Kant in shaping the broad parameters of the way in which conservative liberals and Ordo-liberals engaged with the ethical basis of liberalism. The founding thinkers of this tradition rejected Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The chapter investigates in depth the complex connections—far from neat causal relationships—between conservative liberals and Ordo-liberals and a range of philosophers with whom they had often studied or knew as family friends: Rudolf Eucken, Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, William James, and G. E. Moore, as well as the special case of Louis Rougier and of French positivism in the work of Rougier and Jacques Rueff. Attention is also paid to the Euckenbund (Eucken Association). This context is important in understanding the hostility of the founding thinkers to determinism, subjectivism, utilitarianism, naturalism, empiricist Realism, and moral relativism. A contrast is drawn between the differing philosophical roots of the early Austrian tradition and Ordo-liberalism. The chapter closes with an examination of the implications of developments in philosophy for the reception of conservative liberalism and Ordo-liberalism and of the problematic relationship between truth and relevance as it arises in economic and financial crisis.