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7. Liberalism and the descriptive claims of the ethical model Should the fundamental theses of the liberal theory be found to be contradictory with the descriptive assumption of the ethical model, the program of “correction” would be bound to fail; one would have to choose between liberalism and the ethical model. Therefore, we have to see first whether or not liberalism is compatible with these assumptions. Let us begin with the thesis that—at least in the sphere of politics—individual decisions are not governed solely by self-regarding preferences. No doubt Jeremy Bentham, the father of the preference-aggregating model, believed that people are driven almost exclusively by selfish motives.19 Furthermore, many of the modern proponents of the model share Bentham’s hypothesis.20 It is well known, too, that critics of liberalism tend to identify it with the hypothesis of Homo oeconomicus.21 However, this hypothesis is not even necessary for the preference-aggregating model itself. We have just seen that from the point of view of the criteria of evaluation of this model, the content of individual preferences is indifferent. No matter whether the voters are egoists or altruists, the outcome of democratic voting will be the maximization of the preferences of the greatest number of voters, and this is alone what is relevant for the model.22 As far as the anthropological assumptions of liberal theories in general are concerned, on the other hand, the latter are simply not reducible to the hypothesis of universal selfishness. It was Adam Smith who first developed in a mature form the thesis that institutions, or at least market institutions, must treat individuals as though they were driven by nothing else but their self-interest. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner , but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love”, read his celebrated statement in the first pages of the Wealth of Nations.23 The explanation for this, however, resides not in that in Smith’s views humans are altogether selfish creatures 30 ⁄ The Common Good and Civic Virtue who have no sympathy for anyone but themselves and their families. The same Adam Smith clearly distinguished his position from that of egoism in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Following David Hume, he proceeded here from the assumption that sympathy with others (the inclination, that is, to feel pleasure by others’ pleasure and pain by others’ pain) belongs among the natural sentiments of human beings. True, such secondary pleasures and pains are weaker, and thus so is their motivating force as well. So, even though most people are ready to make sacrifices for the suffering and the needy and to promote the happiness of the many, this readiness has its limits . The interests of the larger community or of distant strangers will be given priority over our own interests and that of our immediate family only as long as the loss is limited. People differ in where to draw the line, yet very few make considerable sacrifices regularly. They are endowed with a certain generosity, yet this generosity is usually limited. Adam Smith’s and the other early liberals’ conception about the conditions of the proper functioning of the market follow from this anthropological assumption rather than from the thesis of Homo oeconomicus, and it was this assumption that was later applied by Bentham and the elder Mill to democratic politics. Institutions must rely on such motives that work with high predictability rather than on such whose operation is unpredictable. The market is an efficient institution because it would maximize the common good even if human individuals were governed by exclusively selfish considerations in their decisions, not because it is actually true that human beings are consistent egoists. Now, what about the claim that no matter what individual preferences may be, they must be accepted as given? It appears as though this thesis had a more direct relation with the fundamental tenets of liberal democracy than the hypothesis of universal selfishness. As we have seen in the introduction, liberalism is committed to the position of ethical individualism, and ethical individualism entails that individuals should take charge of their lives, that they have the ultimate authority over their way of life and that their ultimate responsibility for leading a meaningful and good life is owed to themselves. For this...

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