The Supreme Court’s recent decision Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission has once again brought the notion of judicial activism to the forefront of debate. I think it is important to clarify what this term actually refers to as there seems to be quite a bit of confusion on the matter. Although the issue was not clear when the Constitution was ratified, the case of Marbury vs. Madison, or at least what has become the dominant interpretation of that case, has held that the Supreme Court is to be the last word on the meaning of the Constitution. Therefore, when the Supreme Court is interpreting the Constitution, it is engaging in its constitutionally prescribed role as the third branch of government. One could certainly argue whether or not the Supreme Court should have this authority. In my view, as long as the Court remains within the bounds of interpreting the Constitution, it is justified in having this authority. This power allows the judicial branch to serve as a check on the other two popularly elected branches of government, who may all too often be tempted to abridge fundamental rights in the attempt to appease the passions of an impetuous, albeit, many times, well meaning, majority.

The term judicial “activism” is typically used pejoratively to describe courts when they deliver an opinion with which one is in disagreement. It is argued that when judges invalidate what some may consider to be good legislation they are taking on an activist role. Nothing could be further from the truth. When courts invalidate legislation as being in conflict with the Constitution, they are usually simply doing their job. One example is the case of United States vs. Morrison, where the Supreme Court struck down a provision of the Violence Against Women Act, a provision which granted a civil remedy to women who are the victims of gender motivated violence, as being beyond the scope of Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce. One may disagree with the Court’s decision, and even disagree with the Court’s decision as a matter of constitutional interpretation, arguing, along with the dissenters in that case, that more deference should be given to congressional fact-finding concerning the impact of violence against women on the economy. However, it would be disingenuous to say that the court is being activist simply because it invalidated a piece of legislation. It is certainly not unreasonable to conclude that the link between gender motivated violence and economic activity is not strong enough to support the legislation under a common sense understanding of the term “commerce.”

Judicial activism occurs when courts go beyond interpreting the law and take on the role of a legislature. This definition could perhaps be further clarified by looking at the distinction between the activities of interpreting the law and making public policy. The former involves analyzing texts and determining authorial intent, while the latter is concerned with, generally speaking, trying to do what is best for society. Recently Congress has been debating whether universal health care would be good for society. Would a public insurance option, designed to keep private sector insurance companies “in check” be beneficial, or would the costs outweigh the benefits? Fashioning public policy involves making complex evaluations about the potential effects of proposed legislation and balancing a diversity of interests across society, decisions that the courts are simply not equipped to make.

First, when legislatures are considering health care legislation, for example, they will hear testimony from experts in the health industry, economists and medical professionals on topics such as the costs of insuring different age groups, the strengths and weaknesses of government regulation, places where more regulation is required, where less regulation is required, if more revenue is required, who in society is best able to bear the cost? While a court would be able to pass judgment on whether some particular provision of health care legislation is in accordance with the Constitution, the text of the Constitution does not provide the necessary solutions to the complex policy imperatives that legislatures must consider. Second, economies and major industries such as healthcare are extremely complex entities. It is very possible, when legislating in these areas, to make a mistake. Maybe, we later come to realize, that Congress did not properly anticipate the amount of revenue required to fund a public health care system, or maybe the public health care system needs to be more robust in order to take in more people and provide better care, maybe we need to reevaluate things like caps on premiums for people over the age of 65, or what should constitute a “preexisting condition.” Mistakes in these matters are inevitable, but when legislatures make mistakes they have the advantage of being able to adjust for them, relatively quickly, by amending the legislation. Look how fast Congress acted to authorize the FTC to maintain a “no call list” after a federal court interpreted the agency’s delegatory statute as not granting that authority. On the other hand, when courts make public policy, thereby usurping the legislative role, mistakes can only be corrected by overruling a previous case, something the courts are extremely reticent to do, after parties bring a case, the case is litigated, the case is appealed through the proper channels, and jurisdictional requirements, such as standing, are satisfied. Courts in the United States do not render “advisory opinions.” The Framers sought to limit the power of the judicial branch by restricting its sphere of action to actual cases and controversies, to parties who have a concrete stake in the litigation, of course with the understanding that the judiciary exists to interpret the text of the law, not determine what the law should be.

The case of Roe vs. Wade is perhaps the most well known example of the Supreme Court veering away from its proper role as interpreter of the law and acting like a “super legislature.” Following Griswold vs. Connecticut, which found in the Constitution, somehow, the right to make one’s own decisions concerning family planning issues, Roe declared that there is a fundamental constitutional right to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. It may be the case, that as a matter of public policy, people should be able to make their own decisions concerning birth control or whether to bring a pregnancy to term. The question is whether this public policy issue should be decided by the courts engaged in the practice of inventive constitutional construction or elected representatives in state legislatures. I would presume, that if a state legislature were to take up the issue of abortion, they would invite testimony from biologists and medical experts about difficult matters like the viability of a fetus, or what particular abortion procedures are the most safe, or at what point a fetus feels pain, whether parental consent should be required and at what age, and on and on. Why did the Court limit the right in Roe to the first trimester of pregnancy? Did the justices who were in the Roe majority have some specialized knowledge about fetal viability in that period of pregnancy vs. a later period? How could the Court reasonably restrict the right to abortion to the first trimester without this knowledge? Legislatures, on the other hand, are designed to make these kinds of decisions. Our understanding of fetal viability and neurological structure may evolve with advancements in science, and if so, legislators can revise abortion laws accordingly. However, when the Supreme Court inscribes the right in the Constitution, legislatures are much more limited, if the need later arises, to further define the contours of the public policy in question.

Of course this is not to say that the distinction between making public policy and simply interpreting the Constitution is always clear cut. But I think one thing is true, and that is the further we depart from the actual text of the document, the more “penumbral,” as it were, the path our reasoning pursues, the more we approach the realm of policymaking. There can be considerable debate about whether a particular subject is addressed by the Constitution, and if so, what the Constitution has to say about it. There can be differing opinions, all based on sound legal reasoning, about how the language of the Constitution should be construed in this or that context, as long as these are the questions judges are asking, they are at least engaged in the right inquiry.

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It is well known that the philosophy of Schopenhauer had a profound impact on Nietzsche. Walter Kaufman, a well known translator of Nietzsche into English, has commented, “it was in Leipzig that Nietzsche accidentally picked up a copy of Schopenhaur’s Die Felt als Wille und Vorstellung [The World as Will and Representation] in a second-hand bookstore-not to lay it down until he had finished it.” Given Nietzsche’s enthusiasm for his predecessor, an examination of Schopenhauer’s influence can only stand to provide us with further insight into Nietzsche, who is often thought of as an enigmatic, if not often misunderstood, thinker. What I wish to look at presently is the metaphysical concept of the will in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. I will examine the emergence of the concept of the will in Schopenhauer, and then show how the understanding of this concept is completely inverted in Nietzsche’s discussion of the ascetic ideal in the work On the Genealogy of Morals. The debate that emerges from this discussion is interesting in several respects. First, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer’s views on the will show how two important philosophers can agree on certain fundamental premises, yet come to diametrically opposed conclusions as to what those premises entail. Second, I believe Nietzsche’s response to Schopenhauer's formulation of the will can significantly inform our understanding of postmodern thinkers in the continental tradition such as Derrida and Foucault. Although it is not something I will specifically address in this paper, the Derridean notions of “transcendental signified,” the “dangerous supplement,” and the endless “deferral” of meaning, all have their origins, in Nietzsche’s attack on Schopenhauerian metaphysics.

On the Genealogy of Morals serves as an excellent starting point for anyone interested in Nietzsche, especially philosophers, as it is one of the few works of Nietzsche not written in the unfamiliar and perhaps, anti-philosophical, aphoristic style of many of his other works. But more importantly, the Genealogy contains the kernel of a great deal of Nietzsche’s thought. A case in point is the following passage on “meaning” and purpose:”

…whatever exists, having somehow come into being, is again and again reinterpreted to new ends, taken over, transformed, and redirected by some power superior to it; all events in the organic world are a subduing, a becoming master, and all subduing and becoming master involves a fresh interpretation, and adaptation through which any previous “meaning” and “purpose” are necessarily obscured or even obliterated . . . But purposes and utilities are only signs that a will to power has become master of something less powerful and imposed upon it the character of a function; and the entire history of a “thing,” and organ, a custom can in this way be a continuous sign-chain of ever new interpretations and adaptations whose causes do not even have to be related to one another but, on the contrary, in some cases, succeed and alternate with one another in a purely chance fashion.

This passage expresses what “genealogy” really meant for Nietzsche. To understand any concept, or custom or “thing,” is to thoroughly understand all the permutations the concept has been subjected to throughout its existence. But when looking at the history of any concept, what emerges for Nietzsche is not necessarily a linear progression towards an appointed end, but a complex, dynamic system, serving different purposes at different times, often contrary to what we might consider its own “nature.” Perhaps the best example of how the method Nietzsche articulates here can be put into actual practice is the writings of Michel Focault, who analyzed the concepts of punishment, medical practice, and sexuality using a “genealogical” approach very similar to the on described here by Nietzsche.

In the field of Philosophy, the discipline of metaphysics attempts to answer the question of what exists. One may respond by thinking that should this not really be the domain of natural science-I mean we have galaxies, and planets and particles, dark matter, and maybe strings, what might philosophy have to say about this? One of the major debates in philosophy is, in fact, what is there left for philosophy to do in the area of metaphysics, or other areas for that matter-I hope to maybe write about this debate in the future but not now. Suffice it to say that philosophers have had a lot to say about the nature of what exists throughout history.

Schopenhauer, following the work of the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant, accepted a dualistic metaphysics which divided reality, or what exists, into the realms of the phenomenal and noumenal. The phenomenal corresponds to reality as it appears to human beings, whereas the noumenal refers to reality as it is in itself-its so-called true nature. Kant, and Schopenhauer as well, often uses the term "things-in-themselves," or singularly, the "thing-in-itself" when talking about the noumenal realm. One might wonder why it is even important to make such a distinction-is it not the case that the world that appears to us really is the real world. Well, according to Kant, no. One of Kant’s major innovations in philosophy, the transcendental method, takes into account the fact that the human mind and sensory organs are constructed in a particular way. For something to be an object of experience, which is really to say an object of scientific knowledge, it must obey certain properties which may simply be the result of our idiosyncratic mechanisms for being able to experience the world. Whether objects as they are in-themselves actually exist in the manner in which we must experience them is another question. Kant argued that it is possible for human beings to have scientific knowledge of the world, as it appears to us, but not necessarily of the world as it really is in itself. For Schopenhauer, as for Kant, the phenomenal world is characterized by the strict adherence of objects (representations to a subject) in space and time to the principle of sufficient reason. In other words, every change in the phenomenal world is preceded by, or can at least be explained by its ground, or that which precedes it in space and time. According to Schopenhauer, this gives objects, as seen from the perspective of the phenomenal, a purely relative existence. Whatever we seek to understand, we can only do so in relation to something else.

In addition to being governed by the principle of sufficient reason, basically, the laws of nature, the phenomenal world is representation, merely a picture or expression of what it really is in itself. In contrast to representation and the phenomenal world, is the thing-in-itself. Unlike Kant, who argued that there are strict epistemological limits on human beings ever being able to really know a things in-themselves, Schopenhauer came to the conclusion that the thing-in-itself, or ultimate reality, is the will. For Schopenhauer, the will is characterized by ceaseless striving, constant potentiality, at best only attaining momentary actuality and satisfaction. Schopenhauer sees this cycle as the source of suffering. The third book of The World as Will and Representation is opened with a quotation from Plato’s Timaeus, which asks, “What is that which eternally is, which has no origin? And what is that which arises and passes away, but in truth never is?” The Jowett translation of this same passage in the Timeaeus renders it as “what is that which always is, and has no becoming, and what is that which is always becoming, but never is?” The problem of becoming, which Plato brings to our attention here, will play a crucial role in Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, as well as Nietzsche’s response.

Schopenhauer basically adopts the traditional, and according to Nietzsche, “philosophical” solution to the problem of becoming. The Schopenhauer/Plato solution to the problem of becoming centers around the theory of Ideas. The natural world, and all of its objects, to Schopenhauer, the forms of the will become objectified, are always in a state of becoming, often times taking on contradictory characters as they change from one state of being to another. Hence, as the argument goes, these phenomenal objects cannot truly be said to exist, as we can only know the attributes of any one object as it appears to us in relation to something else, another object, or perhaps, ourselves:

All relation has itself only a relative existence; for example, all being in time is also non-being, for time is just that by which opposite determinations can belong to the same thing. Therefore, every phenomenon in time again is not, for what separates its beginning from its end is simply time, essentially an evanescent unstable, and relative thing, here called duration.

In contrast to the relativity and transitory nature of objects in the phenomenal world, the world as representation, there is the realm of absolute and immutable Ideas. Schopenhauer expresses this with an analogy of the phenomenal world as being an “endless line running horizontally,” while the Idea is a “vertical line cutting the horizontal at any point.” It is through the apprehension of the Ideas that one is released from the will, which like the objects appearing to a subject as representation, is in a constant state of becoming.

Thus the next question this discussion raises is how is one to apprehend the Ideas-the world outside of the relativity of space and time according to Schopenhauer? The answer is to somehow abolish the distinction between subject and object, which perpetuates a kind of perception in which one is always something other than what is perceived. Stated in another way, drawing again on Schopenhauer’s analogy, we must perceive in such a way so as to find the point where the vertical line intersects the horizontal and thereby step outside of time and forms of the principle of sufficient reason. Schopenhauer calls this a state of “pure perception” and says that it is the true sign of genius:

. . . genius is the capacity to remain in a state of pure perception, to lose oneself in perception, to remove from the service of the will the knowledge which originally existed only for this service. In other words, genius is the ability to leave entirely out of sight our own interest, our willing, and our aims, and consequently to discard entirely our own personality for a time, in order to remain pure knowing subject, the clear eye of the world . . .

One interesting application of this theory is Schopenhauer’s aesthetics. Art, in Schopenhauer’s view, is an attempt to transcend the phenomenal world and present only the Ideas. Schopenhauer even goes to great lengths to explain that the reason artists typically suffer in the areas of science and mathematics is because of their inability to think in terms of space, time, and causality, the characteristics of the phenomenal world, and the subject matter of those disciplines.

Nietzsche, on the other hand, was wholly opposed to this kind of formulation. On numerous occasions, Nietzsche attacked the whole doctrine of a pure, will-less, state of contemplation. In the third essay in the Genealogy, “On the Ascetic Ideal,” a commentary perhaps devoted to what, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is called “immaculate perception,” Nietzsche argues that the postulate of a “pure contemplation” is the result of the philosopher’s attempt to banish the central contradiction of the physical world: how things can be said to be and not be as they undergo alteration through time.

Nietzsche’s “philosophy” is thus an attempt to undermine the metaphysical foundation of the Schopenhauerian theory, which posits a “pure contemplation” as a means of escape from the ceaseless striving of a never satiated will. One of Nietzsche’s most penetrating attacks on Schopenhauer’s ascetic ideal is the following:

Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a “pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject;” let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as “pure reason,” “absolute spirituality,” “knowledge-in-itself:” these always demand that we should think of an eye that is unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective “knowing” . . . to eliminate the will altogether… supposing we were capable of this-what would that mean but to castrate the intellect.

The mystical state of pure contemplation that Schopenhauer, and on Nietzsche's view, much of the philosophical tradition aspired to, is an impossibility, as “pure perception” is not perception at all-it is not a perception of a something. Thus rather than seeing existence as some kind of pure knowing, apart from the will and its changing manifestations, Nietzsche wants to argue, as we saw before, that existence is more properly characterized as perpetual becoming or “reinterpretations” and “adaptations.” Rather than trying to free himself from the seeming contradictoriness of becoming in time, Nietzsche embraces it as something positive. What this becoming allows for is a complex process of sublimation. Many writers have commented on Nietzsche’s doctrine of sublimation. Walter Kaufman makes significant use of this concept in his work Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. The concept is particularly useful in explaining Nietzsche’s view of art as well as the notion of the “overman.”

Nietzsche opposed the doctrine that it is the artist’s concern to convey Ideas independently of the will. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes that in order for Shakespeare to have created a character like Hamlet he must have suffered a great deal. For Schopenhauer, all suffering springs from the will. Thus art, on Nietzsche’s view, rather than being an attempt to escape from the will, is in fact the greatest affirmation of the will. Nietzschean aesthetics does not see art as a desire to end all desire--the idea is not to extinguish the passions of the will, but to harness them and impose on them the function of creative energy.

In Nietzsche, when we make use of this energy in the sublimation process just described, we create something beyond ourselves. It is here where we come into contact with the “overman”, who Zarathustra says is “that which must always overcome itself.” The will then, understood in the context of the “overman,” is the affirmation of life; it corresponds to the ability to change and, in a sense, shed a skin that has become outworn through a process of successive transformations, or a sublimation.

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are in agreement that it is the nature of the will to be in a constant state of becoming, and that the will constitutes the thing-in-itself, the ultimate metaphysical reality. The primary point of contention between them is that while Schopenhauer stressed the importance of “pure actuality,” Nietzsche wished to emphasize the promise implicit in potentiality. Interestingly, by affirming becoming, Nietzsche removed himself from Schopenhauer, but found consolation in Heraclitus, whom he praises in Twilight of the Idols:

With the highest respect I accept the name of Heraclitus. When the rest of the philosophic folk rejected the testimony of the senses because they showed multiplicity and change, he rejected their testimony because they showed things as if they had permanence and unity. Heraclitus did the senses an injustice. They lie neither in the way the Eleatics believed, nor as he believed--they do not lie at all. What we make of their testimony, that alone introduces the lies; for example, the lie of thinghood, of substance, of permanence.

Nietzsche’s admiration of Heraclitus, and especially the latter part of this passage, where he writes about the “lie” of things or substances, sheds light on what initially appears as a contradiction in Nietzsche’s philosophy: his wanting to say that substance is a lie, while at the same time, asserting that the will to power is the ultimate underlying substance as Schopenhauer had done. However, there is really no discrepancy here. Remember that, according to Nietzsche, “purposes and utilities are only signs that a will to power has become master of something less powerful and imposed upon it the character of a function.” The will to power in Nietzsche is the basic “thing,” but it does not represent permanence. It is a thing, or substance, in the same sense as Heraclitus’s flame--connoting incessant movement-not stasis. As Charles Kahn, a noted Heraclitus scholar has asserted, “[Heraclitus’s flame] seems to remain the same, the flame seems to be what we call a ‘thing.’ And yet the substance of it is continually changing. It is always passing away in smoke, and its place is always being taken by fresh matter from the fuel that feeds it.” Like Heraclitus’s flame, the will to power is a process in which everything is in a state of flux, being constantly destroyed and then reemerging. It is hoped that what reemerges is something higher than what preceded it. Therefore, since perpetual coming into and going out of being is the fundamental “metaphysical” reality, it is impossible to have any kind of “advance” or drive towards being, without destruction. When Nietzsche talks about writing in blood, this is perhaps what he is referring to; all the truths or insights which any philosopher or writer may impart in his or her works have been paid for, by some form or other, of dying and passing away.

So far we have seen how both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer responded to the question posed in the Timaeus about the nature of becoming. Both philosophers agreed that the will constitutes the fundamental metaphysical reality and that it is always in a state of becoming. It now remains for us to examine more closely the divergent paths taken by these thinkers as they come to terms with the implications of this doctrine. Schopenhauer states what he sees as one of the implications in these terms:

If we compare life to a circular path of red-hot coals having a few cool places, a path that we have to run over incessantly, then the man entangled in delusion is comforted by the cool place on which he is just now standing, or which he sees near him, and sets out to run over the path. But the man who sees through the principium individuationis, and recognizes the true nature of things-in-themselves, and thus the whole, is no longer susceptible of such consolation . . .his will turns about; it no longer affirms its own inner nature mirrored in the phenomenon, but denies it. The phenomenon by which this becomes manifest is the transition to asceticism.

The ascetic ideal that Schopenhauer speaks of here is the final embodiment of the denial of the will to live. We are thus not surprised to find that one of its characteristics is the repression of the sexual impulse. “Voluntary and complete chastity,” Schopenhauer writes, “is the first step in asceticism or the denial of the will to live.”

In contrast, Nietzsche views the will to power as the “unexhausted procreative [my emphasis] will of life.” Nietzsche’s goal in the third essay of the Genealogy, is to expose the ascetic ideal for what it is while affirming Zarathustra’s procreative will. Nietzsche states that the ascetic ideal is “the basic fact of the human will, its horror vacui, it needs a goal--and it will rather will nothingness than not will.” Schopenhauer expresses the need for a goal in his aesthetic postulate of a pure, will-less, state of contemplation, in which some kind of actuality is attained, and one is removed from the world of becoming. Furthermore, Schopenhauer saw this as the only way to overcome the contradictions implicit in the transitory nature of the phenomenal world. To Nietzsche, however, this ascetic ideal is a contradiction in itself, for it constitutes “the attempt to employ all force to block up the well of force.” For Nietzsche, the procreative will is what gives life and provides for the continuance of life.

The two poles occupied by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer on the ascetic ideal represents a crucial aspect of both of their philosophies. In evaluating their respective positions, we can also see how important Schopenhauer is for the study of Nietzsche. In fact, Nietzsche’s thought could be seen as really the continuation of Schopenhauer with a few minor adjustments. Both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer recognized transitoriness and becoming as an underlying reality. One came to the conclusion that the will can never be satiated and thus sought refuge in ascetic contemplation, while the other saw the transformations of the will as an invigorating life force providing for potentiality and the opportunity for genuine advancement.

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The Song of the Aged Mother which shook the heavens with Wrath
Hearing the march of long resounding strong heroic verse
Marshalld in order for the day of intellectual battle
-William Blake, The Four Zoas

How often have we heard political commentators, usually, those of the "moderate" or "independent" variety, decrying the excessive partisanship present in the crafting of public policy? After all, it is exclaimed, why can't these legislators just do what is right for the country, rather than getting mired in politics? The problem that the moderate, or independent, fails to see is that the answer to the question of "what is right for the country," as well as the differences between the major political parties, is rooted deep in ideology-ones fundamental beliefs about human nature, knowledge and the proper role of government in society. It may in fact be possible for the "moderate" to remain neutral with regard to party affiliation, but much harder, I think, to maintain that same level of neutrality when it comes to ideology. For the most part, political parties are merely an expression of ideology, whereby individuals who generally share a common ideology, attempt to gain control of the political process. Since, however, political parties are engaged in more pragmatic affairs winning over an electorate, they may remain more or less true, at any particular time, to the ideological beliefs by which they are inspired.

In his book, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, Thomas Sowell utilizes the terminology of the "constrained" and "unconstrained" visions, to explain the differences between contemporary conservatives and liberals. The constrained vision, which Sowell sees as characterized by Adam Smith, sees human nature as fundamentally selfish, and morally imperfect. This is not to say that people cannot ever act for the benefit of others, this is certainly possible, but is usually due to an "intervening factor," such as a concerted commitment to some moral duty to help the poor, for example, rather than truly caring for another as much as one's self. So the question arises as to how we go about crafting public policy, or doing what is best for society, based on the constraint of an inherently flawed human nature? Essentially we establish processes which provide incentives for people to do the right thing. Sowell is careful to note that, the system will never be perfect, we will have to operate in the arena of trade-offs-we can have so much of one thing at the cost not having another. Nowhere is this system of trade-offs more apparent than in the area of equality and the debate over affirmative action. For those that operate under the constrained vision, the best we can hope for is a system that ensures fairness-equality of opportunity-as the phrase goes, to do otherwise, to grant specific benefits to people of one race over another, entails social costs which are too high.

Sowell characterizes the unconstrained vision by reference to Williams Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Whereas the constrained vision is satisfied to function within a system of trade-offs and incentives, a system where the best thing we can do for society is preserve the integrity of a fair process, where we may get the desired social benefits accidentally, the unconstrained vision believes that it is possible to perfect human nature, in effect, to achieve social benefits intentionally. In this vision, government plays a much more significant role, as a fundamental transformation must take place in order for people to not act according to their selfish nature.The problem here, as those with the constrained vision see it, is that fundamental transformations often entail fundamental costs. The French Revolution would be on example. I suspect very few would defend the pre-revolutionary regime in France of aristocratic rule and oppression. However, the path towards transformation led through neighbor informing on neighbor and countless executions at the foot of the guillotine before the end came in the form of Napoleon. However, according to the unconstrained vision, costs, as long as they are born on the way to a sufficiently desired ideal are justified. What really matter are results. If the process is not providing us with the required results, it can simply be discarded. Thus, the ultimate goal is not to function within a system of trade-offs, but to arrive at the final solution. As Sowell writes:

A solution is achieved when it is no longer necessary to make a trade-off, even if the development of that solution entailed costs now past. The goal of achieving [my emphasis] a solution is in fact what justifies the initial sacrifices or transitional conditions which might otherwise be considered unacceptable.

For the unconstrained vision, merely the goal itself of achieving a solution justifies the “transitional conditions” on the way to that goal. Returning to the example of the debate over affirmative action policies, the social costs, which have been more than adequately spelled out by opponents of these policies-one can look at the case of the firefighters in Connecticut-are simply “transitional conditions” on the way to the solution of racial equality, or at least one definition of racial equality.

So with two completely different visions of human nature and the proper direction for public policy, how do we engage in the enterprise of actually convincing the opposition to come around to our point of view? It would seem that any empirical observation or data I might provide to support the view that human nature is fundamentally selfish and flawed, could be equally rebutted by similar evidence on the other side. At the most, it would seem, political debate can take place only at the periphery. We can debate things like whether Cadillac insurance plans should be those valued at $24,000.00 or $28,000.00, which is certainly important, but hardly satisfying.

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