It is a characteristic feature of Modernity to separate between private morality and public ethics. The first concerns the ethics of principles by virtue of which each individual governs his own sphere of autonomy. Each individual, while not interfering in the interests of third parties, is a legislator, judge, and part of their own moral issues. The law regulates conflicts of interest between individuals, giving legal protection to a certain range of interests and systematically denying it to others (Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume I, “Norms and Order”, 1973). For example, in almost all modern legal systems the interest to move and, fundamentally, to leave a territory is protected through the freedom of locomotion. In the meantime, a producer may feel prejudiced by the mere existence of competition and nevertheless he may be denied the right to protection of his monopoly (since a “right” is a legally protected interest). In both cases, questions of principle and questions of social utility are combined.

In most modern systems, the interest to circulate freely is solved more by addressing questions of principles than of social utility – the right to freedom of locomotion is enshrined without addressing arguments about the utility of denying legal protection with respect to another interest. While the problems of protectionism and competition are considered mainly in terms of their social utility, the arguments about whether a certain individual or group of individuals have, as a matter of principle, the right to monopolize an economic activity by the mere fact of belonging to a certain ethnic group, estate, or guild today sounds ridiculous, but not in the past.

The widespread distinction practiced by Max Weber between ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility continues in force. Individuals, in their private lives, have the right to make decisions following the ethics of conviction, although their principles may be debatable, obsolete, incongruous, and arbitrary. In any case, the consequences will have to weigh on the agents of the decision themselves. On the other hand, the consequences of the decisions of politicians extend to the whole society. The ethics of responsibility becomes relevant here, which, although it may come into conflict with the ethical principles most widely spread among members of society – that is, the current morality – it must address issues related to social utility. This is to say that a substitution of the current morality for welfare economics would be operated.

However, the Weberian notion of ethics responsibility brings with it all the problems of instrumental reason: the means-that is, the resources to be sacrificed-must be proportional to the ends-in this case, the social utility-but remains open to definition what are the values ​​that will define social utility. This is how the question of principles is reintroduced, the discussions about what is right and what is wrong, i.e. morality, in the political sphere. Correlatively, the critiques around the notion of subjective or instrumental reason once formulated by Max Weber are also applicable to the aforementioned welfare economy, so that they retain special validity.

[Editor’s note: Here is Part 1 of the essay. You can find the full essay here.]