Today I had the pleasure of attending a wonderful NOUS event.

I found the title intriguing and would like to share some notes and thoughts that I gathered today.

In the turbulent interwar years of 20th-century Germany, a group of thinkers known as the Freiburg School developed what would later be called Ordoliberalism — a “third way” between laissez-faire capitalism and authoritarian state socialism. Their vision was not merely economic, but deeply moral and philosophical.

Amid the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism, the ordoliberals sought to re-establish a stable social order based on Christian ethics and Aristotelian virtue. They imagined a society where the economy serves the common good, not private power or ideological ends. This was reflected in their 1943 Second Denkschrift, where they tentatively proposed a social and legal framework inspired by Christian moral principles, emphasizing service, justice, and responsibility.

Central to their approach was a kind of “idealistic authoritarianism” — not authoritarian in the political sense, but grounded in the authority of reason. Specifically, they looked to Kant’s practical reason and the Categorical Imperative: laws should be justifiable by universal principles, not arbitrary will. The state’s role, therefore, is to enforce a legal framework that enables free, responsible individuals to act as moral agents in the marketplace.

This resulted in a model of governance where the rule of law and competitive markets are seen as mutually reinforcing. The state maintains the conditions for fair competition and individual freedom but refrains from direct economic control.

Ultimately, Ordoliberalism represents a uniquely German synthesis of moral philosophy, legal order, and economic governance — one that remains influential, contested, and deeply relevant to modern political economy.