Abstract

A branch of Public Choice theory, constitutional economics, treats the consequences of different political constitutions for the protection of individual rights and the provision of public goods. In The Limits of Liberty , James M. Buchanan investigates the contractarian perspective informing constitutional economics and upholds the perspective of a methodological individualist: what counts is not what social contractors agree upon but that they agree. This dissertation examines Limits and concludes that Buchanan does and must go beyond strict individualism if a social contract is to get off the ground and remain viable. ;Next examined is Knowledge and Politics by Roberto Mangabeira Unger, a broadside attack on the underlying assumptions of post-medieval individualism, especially in regards to the extreme and ultimately contradictory dichotomy between fact and value. This dissertation partly agrees with Unger but holds that bases for some separation exist in both the world and the way the brain is constructed. Unger might be regarded as a collectivist, as opposed to Buchanan the individualist; unfortunately, Unger does not spell out his own metaphysics. ;The dissertation then summarizes, in non-mathematical terms, the first and so far only metaphysics designed to be a science, that is an exact and rigorous account, compatible with all the specific sciences, of the way reality is built, developed by Mario Bunge in The Furniture of the World and A World of Systems . This materialist ontology holds that the world is made up of irreducible levels of systems. Bunge allows for free will--feedback loops in the brain--and holds that society is a system of interacting individuals, neither reducible to its members nor transcending them . ;A final chapter compares Buchanan's contractarianism, libertarianism , and an explicit proposal for evolutionary federalism of Raymond B. Cattell, A New Morality from Science: Beyondism . It is concluded that, while all three approaches introduce values, federalism will be the most general of the three and the most compatible with Bunge's metaphysics. The strengths of all three approaches should be combined