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there is to be found in nature, including some beings the nature of which
include a normative component or dimension, even a moral one. Thus
Aristotle and those reviving his approach could call ethics a science because
they are not being reductive in their approach to the sciences as scientism has
always been.
At first scientism seemed to offer support for freedom because the idea
was that without government regulation, coercion, and interference human
beings would advance more rapidly toward self-preservation and self–
enhancement.
In our day, however, a fairly vocal group of academic philosophers, tak–
ing their clues from a wide array of past moral and political thinkers, as
well as recent science, have begun to revitalize the moral case for classical
liberalism, one that had been largely silenced by scientism's earlier tri–
umph. Mainly they have found that the scientistic view left us with serious
dilemmas, especially when we set about attempting to defend the institu–
tions it hoped to recommend. In short, the moral dimension of social life
began to be seen as irrepressible.
This newly emerging moral viewpoint that has energized many classi–
cal liberals treats human beings as agents of their own conduct, as crucial
first causes of some of what they do. Major problems have been associated
with this idea in the past when efficient causation had been thought the
only worthy kind of cause. Since with human beings the talk about what
they ought to do has persisted, resisting all efforts to reconstruct moral lan–
guage into some kind of technology, and since science has itself undergone
major changes the prospects for a moral defense of free society are no bet–
ter than they were in the past.
Moral talk doesn't appear to apply to other animals, although there are,
of course, some who would say otherwise. It seems right that when a dog
bites the mailman, we don't believe it ought not to have done that, even as
we lament the fact. We don't treat the dog as a responsible agent, as if it
could have made a different choice and thus mightn't have bitten the mail–
man. We do continue to treat human beings as responsible, not as robots or
brutes, with no choice about what they will do.
The problem with the non-normative version of classical liberalism is
when we consider the following: "Since, as liberalism sees it, governments
obstruct progress, we should or ought to, or it is right for us to, reduce
government intervention, so government intervention is wrong." So coer–
cion, government regimentation, is unjust, be it in regards to matters of
fighting crime, handling the suppression of dissident
Ii
terature, or planning
people's economic activities. While it seems inescapable for us to think and
say such things, that kind of thinking and talk makes no sense wi thin the
scientistic framework.
