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The Law- Classical defense of individual liberty
The Law, first published as a pamphlet in June, 1850, is already more than a hundred years old. And because its truths are eternal, it will still be read when another century has passed. In The Law, written in 1850, the year of his death, Frédéric Bastiat recognizes the central importance of the law and morality in a free society. He was concerned that government was using the 'law' to become too active a participant in the economy whilst devoting too little attention to protecting life and liberty.
Bastiat's The Law, is is venture into explicit political philosophy. In its clarity and brevity it is an achievement to behold. Philosophers have conceived law as resulting from a social contract with a paternalistic sovereign (Thomas Hobbes), as designed to effect the greatest happiness for the greatest number (Jeremy Bentham and the utilitarians), or as an arbitrary convention defining right and wrong (the legal positivists). In contrast, Bastiat is squarely in the natural law camp (along with John Locke): "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." He locates the source of law in human nature: to live, human beings need liberty and property in order to transform nature's potential into usable things.
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Barton Hinkle wins the 2008 Bastiat Prize |
