The Open Society as a Rule-Based Order

1.My doctoral supervisor, John W. Chapman, spent his career analyzing why Western Europe developed an open, prosperous, dynamic society. In one way or another every seminar was about that, with our readings ranging over cultural history, economic history, sociology, social psychology, psychology and, yes, even philosophy. "What happened in the West?", he would inquire again and again, seeing parts of the truth in the diverse writings of Douglas North, Clifford Geertz, Zevedei Barbu, Jean Beachler and Fernand Braudel, to name just a very few. In the end, he was never able to weave all the strands into a narrative that, in his judgment, did justice to the problem (or perhaps he glimpsed that it would take over 2000 pages to do so). Deirdre Nansen McCloskey's three-volume work, culminating in Bourgeois equality, is in my view the most compelling grand narrative answering Chapman's query to date. I am entirely convinced on critical points: that the astonishing betterment since (roughly) 1800 is fundamentally a product of the market-tested innovations of the open society, and of the absolutely critical role of moral and ethical notions of bourgeois dignity and equality. On these and many other matters, I have learned immensely from McCloskey's great work, for which I am deeply grateful.To criticize this polymath's sweeping, learned treatise would seem churlish-and foolish, for there doubtlessly are piles of records and works that show the folly of disputing its claims. Yet, despite McCloskey's attractive grand synthesis, I remain unconvinced about some important matters. The heart of my worries concern a puzzle posed by McCloskey's narrative, the puzzle of the place of virtue in a diverse and open society. "From about 500 BCE to about 1790 CE", McCloskey writes, "the ethical universe was described in Europe as composed of the seven principal virtues, resulting by recombination in hundreds of minor and particular virtues" (p. 188).1 And, she continues, "Ethical philosophy since the sudden decline of virtue ethics in the late eighteenth century has focused [....] [on] how we treat other people", which concerns only part of virtue (p. 190). McCloskey realizes, I think, the importance of rule-based morality for the open society, quoting Milton Friedman on the importance of "conforming to the basic rules of society, both those embodied in law and ethical custom" (p. 231). Still, conformity with the rules of society is distinct from virtue. The puzzle I wish to address, then, is manifest: the liftoff of the Great Enrichment coincided with the rise of other-concerned rule-based ethics, yet at the core of McCloskey's narrative is the importance of virtue and character, which faded in ethical philosophy just as the Great Enrichment really got going. Perhaps this simply demonstrates how confused philosophical reflection is-abandoning virtue as a core concept in morality just as it was about to change the world. Perhaps just as the owl of Minerva took off, philosophy focused on the poor pigeon of rules of justice. I think not. Certainly a rule-based morality-a social morality based on rules, or social norms, shared by the group to which all expect that others will conform-does not itself make for a prosperous, dynamic, open society.2 But I am convinced that we cannot have one without it, and such a morality is more important than a socially recognized set of virtues -which we simply do not have in the diverse societies that spurred the Great Enrichment. I do not claim that McCloskey entirely overlooks the rules of social morality but I believe that because the main foil of Bourgeois equality is the institutionalist explanations of Douglas North and his coworkers, she tends to underappreciate the place of moral and social rules in the grounding of an open society.2.2.1. Two well-known lines of reasoning have driven most political philosophers and social scientists away from the stress on virtue that characterizes McCloskey's narrative. …