There is thus no such thing as total liberty, except living alone in a “state of nature,” which was the historical and theoretical construct seventeenth century philosophers used as a contrast for what liberty was really like in society. One might not care at all about the seventeenth century but in fact our American founders were heavily steeped in the ideas from that century and many of the key ideas that shaped their notions of liberty came from their reading in seventeenth century sources. Thomas Jefferson, for example, was twice as close in time to the writings of John Locke as we are to Jefferson. Locke puts his understanding of liberty this way in his Second Treatise On Government: “Freedom then is not what Sir Robert Filmer [an advocate of monarchy and natural inequality] tells us….A Liberty for everyone to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tyed by any laws…Freedom of Men under Government, is, to have a standing Rule to live by, common to every one of that Society, and made by the Legislative Power erected in it; A Liberty to follow my own Will in all things, where the Rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man.” (II § 22). Locke is often interpreted as understanding liberty principally as a protection of individual rights. But on closer reading, Locke, and other theorists of liberty, realized that at the heart of liberty in society is paradoxically a key sacrifice and renunciation of rights, since one must give up the freedoms of living alone in nature to takes on and benefit from the nature of social life. To put it another way, life together in society invariably requires a series of restrictions and compromises to make liberty in society possible. These renunciations signal that we have begun to transcend our natural “animal” or “nonsocial” state in which violence reigns and become transformed into moral beings that we are intended by God or nature to be. On this view, restrictions of one’s desires and freedom are thus key to becoming fully human.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 22:24:54 +0000
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