According to Friedrich Hayek, conformity to the rule of law guarantees the existence of a free society, that is of a society governed by law and not by men. The aim of this paper is first to clarify the interpretation of the rule of law that is likely to sustain such a claim and second, to determine how far such an interpretation could allow for the criteria –specially the economic criteria — used by Hayek himself to ascertain the acceptability of laws. My conclusion is that the use of some of these criteria does conflict with a systematic conception of law and that far from confirming the determinant role of the rule of law, it rather allows for the arbitrariness of those who make laws.
Tag: autonomy
La loi de la liberté
According to Friedrich Hayek, conformity to the rule of law guarantees the existence of a free society, that is of a society governed by law and not by men. The aim of this paper is first to clarify the interpretation of the rule of law that is likely to sustain such a claim and second, to determine how far such an interpretation could allow for the criterian — specially the economic criteria — used by Hayek himself to ascertain the acceptability of laws. My conclusion is that the use of some of these criteria does conflict with a systematic conception of law and that far from confirming the determinant role of the rule of law, it rather allows for the arbitrariness of those who make laws.
Cheap Preferences and Intergenerational Justice
This paper focuses on a specific challenge for welfarist theories of intergenerational justice. Subjective welfarism permits and even requires that a generation, G1, inculcates cheap preferences in the next generation, G2. This would allow G1 to deplete resources instead of saving them, which seems to contradict the ideal of sustainability. The aim of the paper is to show that, even if subjective welfarism requires the cultivation of cheap preferences among future generations, it can accommodate two major objections to cheap preferences engineering, the Autonomy Objection and the Fairness Objection. The paper argues that teaching autonomy-related abilities is compatible with cheap preferences engineering insofar as autonomy is understood as an end-state and not as a precondition. Furthermore, teaching autonomy-related abilities could even be required in order to improve G2’s prospects for well-being. However, since being autonomous renders G2 able to revise their initially cheap preferences, G1 should also save enough resources to enable members of G2 to do so. Therefore, cultivating cheap preferences among G2 does not allow G1 to deplete the available resources.
Behavioral paternalism
This article deals with the idea of the performativity of economics. We use the notion of convention in order to emphasize a necessary condition for performativity of the scientific conventions. We show that performativity could be seen as the translation of a scientific convention into the social world. We demonstrate that such a translation needs the scientific concept to take a peculiar form: an empirical one. We study the example of the performativity of economic rationality, which is now a central concept of a new kind of public policy: “nudge” economics.
Cheap Preferences and Intergenerational Justice
This paper focuses on a specific challenge for welfarist theories of intergenerational justice. Subjective welfarism permits and even requires that a generation, G1, inculcates cheap preferences in the next generation, G2. This would allow G1 to deplete resources instead of saving them, which seems to contradict the ideal of sustainability. The aim of the paper is to show that, even if subjective welfarism requires the cultivation of cheap preferences among future generations, it can accommodate two major objections to cheap preferences engineering, the Autonomy Objection and the Fairness Objection. The paper argues that teaching autonomy-related abilities is compatible with cheap preferences engineering insofar as autonomy is understood as an end-state and not as a precondition. Furthermore, teaching autonomy-related abilities could even be required in order to improve G2’s prospects for well-being. However, since being autonomous renders G2 able to revise their initially cheap preferences, G1 should also save enough resources to enable members of G2 to do so. Therefore, cultivating cheap preferences among G2 does not allow G1 to deplete the available resources.