(which Hooker could not have conceived),rnand thus the government wernerect will have to deal with rational, selflimitingrnbeings, not with Hobbes’s worldrnof predators.rnXT’^SSJE;rnu) hlH^ DBsUyrni(J to Ihe ps^frEornYet Hoppe’s natural reason has farrnmore in common with Hobbesian “reckoning,”rnor calculation, than with Locke’srnjerrybuilt ethical defense of liberty.rnWhen Hoppe discusses ethical universals,rnhe clearly means the human capacity,rndiscussed in the first part ofrnLeviathan, to engage in the reasoningrnneeded to construct and carrv out civilrncontracts. This reasoning produces arnpurely functional kind of justice definedrnas the “keeping of promises,” and it isrnupon this that Hobbes, further inrnLeviathan, bottoms the contractual basisrnof his mortal good, the sovereign state.rnI am not sure that Hoppe ever movesrnbeyond this Hobbesian notion of justicernin characterizing ethical intelligence,rnthough I am also not sure that one canrnpresent the Western liberalism in whoserntradition Hoppe stands without acknowledgingrnits partly unwitting architect,rnThomas Hobbes. Both John Grayrnand Michael Oakeshott have made thisrnpoint convincingly.rnNonetheless, what is most appealingrnabout 1 loppe’s presentation is the way hernavoids conventional opinion in offering arndefense of property-based liberalism. Hernwrites like a maverick, albeit one who isrnpainfully systematic and concerned withrngiving us a conceptually integratedrnworldview. What was said of Hegel,rn”Alles fdllt wie aus einem Guss zusammen,”rnapplies to Hoppe’s system as well.rnIt too forms a unified, tightly reasonedrnwhole, and if one feels driven to challengernat least some of its elements, it isrnbecause Hoppe covers so much ground.rnIt is unusual to encounter anything sornfar-ranging and erudite by a contemporaryrnAmerican academic. That Hoppe,rnlike Murray Rothbard, is at the Universityrnof Nevada and not at some internationallyrnrecognized center of learningrnspeaks volumes about American universities.rnHoppe’s speculative intelligencernmay be the only positive force ever influencedrnby the militant globalist/soeialrndemocrat Jiirgen Habermas. In the futurernI shall think more kindly of Habermasrnwhen remembering his spiritedrnstudent.rnPaul Gottfried is a professor ofrnhumanities at EUzabethtown Collegernin Pennsylvania and the author of ThernConservative Movement: RevisedrnEdition (Twayne Publishers).rnA World Suffusedrnby Moneyrnby Michael D. AeschlimanrnMaking Americans: An Essay onrnIndividualism and Moneyrnby Quentin AndersonrnNew York: Harcourt Brace jovanovich;rn264pp.,$2L95rnI ohn Dewey, Neil Coughlan thought,rnI was “the philosopher par excellencernof American liberalism” because “hernshared with it the root conviction thatrnwc can have both self-defined selffulfillmentrnand social justice for all.”rnThis sunny picture of human nature canrnhardly be squared witli modern or contemporaryrnhistory. Nevertheless, asrnQuentin Anderson argues, the “historicalrnfact appears to be that American intellectualsrnshow a reluctance or inability tornadmit that any limitation of the goal ofrn’self-fulfillment’ is implied by membershiprnin the community.” So Dewey isrnone of Anderson’s targets in the presentrnbook.rnIn an earlier work of great distinctionrnand continuing influence, The ImperialrnSelf An Essay in American Literary andrnCultural History, published in 1971, Andersonrnargued that fantasies of a transcendental,rnimperious, self-begotten,rnand self-created individuality were promotedrnwith enduring effect by E’merson,rnThoreau, and Whitman. Theirrnpost-Christian, post-moral, and antisocialrnproject influenced and inspired arnbroad range of American artists and intellectuals,rnencouraging a pervasivern”culture of Narcissism” that reemcrgedrnwith radical force in the late I950’s andrnafter in the self-referential “Beat” writers.rnMaking Americans refines and appliesrnthis analysis by showing the imperialrnself’s relation and reaction to the laissezfairerncapitalism that emerged in Americarnin the quarter century before thernCivil War, triumphed after it, and nowrndominates and characterizes our socialrnmilieu.rnAnderson criticizes “the residualrnMarxism of American departments ofrnliterature in the 1990s” as well as thernAmerican Stalinists and fellow travelersrnof the I930’s and I940’s who were, in hisrnview, a far worse evil than the capitalistrncountry they inhabited, benefited from,rnand hated. Nevertheless, his critique ofrncontemporar capitalist culture is de’astatinglyrnacute in its attack upon “therndesiccating impersonality of economicrnrelationships” and a “world suffused byrnthe money network.”rnThough he has written with distinctionrnon George Eliot, Anderson’s mainrninterest has been American literature,rnespecially the work of Hawthorne,rnMelville, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman,rnand I lenry James. The Imperial Self andrnMaking Americans both argue that thernRomantic-Transcendentalist-aestheticistrnmode of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman,rnand James encouraged and prepared thernway for both a post-moral “visionary capitalism”rnand what at first sight seems itsrnopposite, the existential, aesthetic selfabsorptionrnof the Beats and of the 60’srncounterculture for which thev preparedrnthe way. Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitmanrn”had in common,” he writes, “arnpervasive undersong which was profoundlyrnsubversive” of ideas of familyrnand society, of obligation and duty, ofrntradition, authority, and religion. Aestheticrnvisionaries such as Emerson had arnprocreative relation to the visionary capitalistsrnof the Gilded Age, who also ignoredrntraditional authority or held it inrncontempt. Great men make history, andrnRockefeller, Gould, Vanderbilt, Fisk, andrnCarnegie were or saw themselves as suchrn”great men.” (As Anderson points out,rnNietzsche read and admired Emerson,rnnot vice versa.)rnThe anarchic, radical voluntarism ofrnEmerson, his friend Carlyle, and Nietzschernhelped destroy for their readers therncredibility of theism, Christianity, andrnnatural law, whose adherents were seenrnas timid, superstitious, or unmanly inrnthe age of America’s Social Darwinistrnexpansion. If “self-reliance is a sufficientrnvirtue, comprehending all other virtues,”rnas Anderson’s teacher Mark Van Dorenrnparaphrased Elmerson’s central eon-rn38/CHRONICLESrnrnrn