philjit
Arch-Enemy of Idealism
Registered: Jan 2002
Location: UK
Posts: 13018 |
quote:
Originally posted by CHiPsJr
Phil posted a thread on this very subject something like a year ago. Perhaps he'll dredge it back up for us.
rather than pulling the thread up here is what I write instead:
Liberty is a concept that we hear so much about, but at the same time we have real trouble actually understanding. Why do I say this? Well if we look at the history of the concept we can see that it has meant differing things for differing people. Yet we know that each group has held it as a truly high value. We speak of liberty in the same way we speak of freedom. As, for example freedom of speech, religion, writing, association, participation in the political process. The idea itself has even been extended to include such things as economic liberty, freedom from want, and even national self-determination. In fact as the theorist Bernard Crick put it: 'So important, indeed, is the concept of liberty that we are all reluctant to define it too closely, wanting to apply it to everything we value.' So lets look at that little word liberty, and see if, now in the modern/contemporary world, we can see what it means and possibily come to some sort of definition.
Liberty can find its roots in the ancient times. The ancients, like the greeks, and the romans, understood liberty as being important. But, the ancient concept of liberty is far from the what we would consider liberty to be today. For the ancients, liberty was associated with the state's ability to conquest. It meant the freedom of ones own state was compatible with denying the liberty of other states. It also menat for the ancient not being subject to despotic power. To remove the master and slave relationship that exists in despotism.
One of the interesting aspects of ancient liberty is therefore the contrast in the emphasis of todays understanding of the term. Unlike today the emphsis is not on the freedom of the individual from political control and interference. In the case of the ancients liberty was compatible with the authority of the community over the individual so long as this authority was exercised according to the law, and not the will of a despot.
It was only in the 16th and 17th century that the notion of liberty and freedom became a general condiiton that ought to be shared equally amongst all citizens of a state. In a sense, the growing passion for liberty at this time was a direct reaction to the expansion of the modern state and the centralisation of power. This is where the first difficulty for the thinkers of liberty arose. As the calls for liberty and freedom became more apparent in theorists work, so too did the need to establish the limits to which the state could constrain liberty. Thus the difficulty lied in finding a way and justification for the limitation of liberty without it degenerating into license by the state.
The German philosopher Immanual Kant came up with a way of resolving this issue. Kant thought that freedom was a matter of autononmy. A matter of self-determination as a self-governing agent. But this self-governing did not mean liberty and freedom to do what one happened to wish. It meant stipulating laws for oneself based on morality, and those laws ought to be set with the condition that they were laws that one would wish to see other agents following. This notion of liberty however is problematic in itself, something which I will come back to in a moment.
As the debate and thought on liberty went on, the English utilitarian J.S.Mill argued for a differing, but equally influential strategy to liberty from Kant. Without going too deep into Mills' ideas, Mill, distinguished between two opposing types of action that man could do. These were 'self-regarding' and 'other-regarding' actions. In other words Mill saw that actions against one self shoudl not be contrained, whether they caused harm to the person or not. The only issue where constraint on liberty was justified was where actions harmed others liberty. Again, like Kant this idea is problematic, and I will show you why in moment.
The next thinkers in the line on liberty were those that were truly radical. Another englishman George Winstanley was the first of these radical, and the first to use economics within his notion and coceptualisation of liberty. For Winstanley, the oppresson of liberty lie in the ditribution of land which denied some men access to the very measn of subsistence. He asked, along with his peers, what the use of political and civil liberties was when the majority of the population lacked the econmic resources to use them. This notion, of liberty in economic terms is where Marx and Engels picked up, along with the socialists, in analysing not how things ought to be, but ways in which to change how things were.
But, it should be made clear here, that is not a necessity to be a marxist to argue that liberty and social justice are linked. Liberalism, of which this piece is a defence, also argues this. However, the difference between the liberal argument and that of the soicalist are very apart.
So, what do the liberals see as liberty? And how did it differ from the socialists and marxists, while maintaing similarities? The answer to this can be found in the way in which liberty exists throughout the ages. What elements of liberty are consistant throughout each of the theories already put forward? The answer to this question is that there are two concepts of liberty that run through these ideas. That of negative liberty, and that of positive liberty. Negative liberty, is simply the 'freedom from' restraint. While positive liberty is the 'freedom to' do what one wants.
So negative and positive liberty are the answers to two distinctly different questions. The first, negative, of: 'What is the area in which a subject, or person, should be free to do or be what they want without the interference of another person or body of persons? And the second, positive, of: 'What or who is the person or object that can control a persons action to do what they wish to do or be? I think, that it would be fair to say that this is the central dilemma, or paradox if you will, of the very notion of liberty. On the one hand, the state appears as a threat to liberty, and on the other hand the state also appears as the guarantor of liberty. This dilemma is a classic example of the oppositon of negative and positive liberty. The next question that arises is therefore is: Which of these two concepts is more preferable?
The answer to this question is arguably that of negative liberty. Why? you may ask. What is wrong with wanting the freedom to do as I please like the concept of positive liberty? To be ones own master? A slave to no man? The problem, with the positive concept of liberty is thus.
Earlier on I mentioned that both Kant's and Mill's ideas of liberty were problematic. Arguably, both these thinkers, along with others of their school, were all advocates of the positive concept of liberty. That of being ones own master. Admittedly, Mill, accepted that their would be too a degree some interfernce, but he also noted that there ought to be a absolute boundary where one ought not be interfered. In essence both writers were champions of the notion of the individual. The problematic points of their thought are different, but arguably will lead to the same thing if followed.
If you remember, Kant was concerned with autonomy along the guideline of personal moral code. That this code ought to be based on how one wished others to be. The problem here lies in that the not all men would necessarily be capable of this. It also lies in the idea that ones on moral code is based on how one wishes others to be. In essence the result of Kant's concept is that man is 'forced to free'. That man is coerced into liberty by the very nature of the belief in ones own moral code. I ask the question: How can coercion into positive liberty be liberty at all?
As with Kant, Mill's concept of liberty is problematic, but in a different way. Remember Mill notion of 'self-regarding' and 'other-regarding'? For Mill, the actions of a man, on himself, should be his free decision and liberty to do. That interference should only apply when others liberty may be harmed. The problem here is that Mill failed to see that almost everything that we do can harm others liberty, whether it is self-regarding or not.
The reason for this is that man is a social being. After all, am I not what I am, to some degree, in virtue of what others think and feel me to be? If I ask myself the question: What am I? I may answer, an Englishman, a techie, a man of no importance. If we then look at this we see all these attributes contain the element of being recognised within some particular group or class. This recognition is part of the meaning of of some of my most personal characteristics. As Isaiah Berlin put it:
'It is not only that my material life depends on interaction with other men, or that I am what I am as a result of social forces, but that some, perhaps all, of my ideas about myself, in particular my sense of my own moral and social identity, are intelligible only in terms of the social network in which I am an element.'
So, our individual selfs are not something that we can detach from our relationship with others, for that relationship is what makes us what we are. And this my friends is the problem with Mill's concept of liberty to do what one wish in respect to the self. The flaw lies not in neccesarily in the notion of liberty or freedom, but in the premiss of the individual as a detached element of existance.
And so we return to the idea of positive and negative liberty. Negative liberty, the freedom from things such as interfernce and coercion is how liberty ought to be perceived. The length to which these interferences extend are not what is under examination here though. That is, admittedly a matter for infinte debate. How far can control enter into our lives is not what I am trying to address. Liberty as an idea, and what it actually is the subject of discussion. We can see that there are two conepts, two faces if you will to liberty.
The positive face is that which can lead to what it intended to avoid. The forcing of man to free, the coercion towards liberty. The negetive in comparison accepts the necessity of some from of political control, and is concerned with mans 'freedom from' and not 'to' something. Negetive liberty, I believe is the true liberty that we all believe, for it is the one that maintains our freedom to choose whereas positive liberty forces us to free, which is not liberty at all, but simply despotism.
For all of us that live in the Western World I stand here now and maintain that we are all liberals. Whether, Conservative, Labour, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Reform, I believe that almost all of us see liberty in the negative concept. The freedom 'from' oppression and interference, and not the freedom 'to' do as we please. This is the liberal way. What we argue about is the extent to which this interference should extend, but what we believe is still the same concept, that of negetive liberty. For if we follow the the path of positive liberty, then as Benjamin Constatnt warned: 'The danger is that absorbed in the enjoyment of our private independence and in the pursuit of our particular interests, we should surrender our right to share in political power too easily.'
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05-31-2003 05:46 AM
