What Freedom Requires -- Thoughts on Politics

Apr 9, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa calls for greater social and economic equality in Ecuador and across Latin America.
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After the first census in , the number of representatives was set at the census indicated a population of just over 3. Throughout the nineteenth century, the relative number of representatives to constituents declined continuously. In , the number of representatives was set at , the same number as today. Today, with a population of about million in the United States, the ratio of representatives to constituents is now one to nearly ,, indicating a roughly twenty-fold reduction in the voting power of the average citizen from the date of ratification.

If representation had kept pace with the ratio, there would be roughly representatives, rather than Of course, this is just part of the problem. There are about positions nationally as state representative or senator. Thus, even when state and local representation is counted, realistic opportunities of the average citizen for political participation, either as candidate or in some tertiary capacity, are remarkably scant. This greatly attenuates whatever sense of connection and involvement the average citizen might otherwise feel when choosing his representatives.

Anti-Federalists were fond of noting that, under the representational scheme that existed in the colonies at the time of the Revolution, a representative might know, or at least recognize, every one of his constituents. In contrast, today there are few constituents who would recognize their representatives. Positive freedom can be measured by a third criterion as well. Not only has the relative power of the individual vote diminished as the distance between citizen and representative has dramatically increased, so too has the relative domain over which it has any significance.

The power of the vote has diminished due principally to a number of sweeping constitutional developments that have marked twentieth-century legal history in the United States. This Section only touches generally upon these developments because an extended survey is beyond the scope of this Article, and because they have been well-covered elsewhere.

Most important among these developments are the decline of federalism and the rise of political and economic nationalism. Centralization has been facilitated, as a matter of constitutional law, by a greatly expanded interpretation of the commerce power, 85 by more aggressive use of the spending power, 86 and by the decline of the Tenth Amendment and related claims of state sovereignty. Moreover, the rise of the administrative state has served to insulate from electoral pressures what has in effect become a fourth branch of government. But there can be no doubt that the administrative state represents the antithesis of any conception of government that values positive liberty.

Because democratic agreement can never be reached on the vast array of issues that are ultimately delegated, these decisions are left to unelected administrators. As the devil is always in the details, delegation is a dodge to the increasingly insuperable difficulties of reaching democratic consensus in the highly centralized modern state. Ironically, over the course of the latter two-thirds of the twentieth century, patterns both of judicial deference and of judicial intervention have undermined positive liberty in American political life.

Judicial deference to federal authority, as evidenced by the expansion of the commerce power, has diminished the autonomy of the states, leaving little beyond the reach of federal power. At the same time, judicial intervention on constitutional grounds in a widening swath of state law matters represents a significant limitation to values of positive liberty as reflected in the rights of citizens to enact state laws that reflect their distinctive attitudes and mores. Contemporary liberals generally do not lament the expansion of federal power, the growth of the administrative state, or the intervention of federal courts; indeed, they typically welcome these developments.

Nevertheless, the liberal dismisses the value of positive freedom at his own peril, for in the world of politics, in contrast to the domain of philosophy, the negative and positive freedom of the individual are not so easily disentangled. No tradition has exercised a greater symbolic influence upon the political imagination of Americans over the course of the last two centuries than that which connects liberty to the idea of limited government and, more generally, to the philosophical conviction that freedom is none other than the absence of constraint.

There is, however, a great deal of difference between these two ideas. Herein lie the seeds of the dilemma of negative freedom. Negative liberals of all varieties follow Hobbes in arguing that only external conditions constrain: Generally, defenders of a negative conception of freedom fall into two groups: Neo-Hobbesians conceive of freedom and unfreedom in physical terms: Whether an agent is prevented from leaving the country by a natural disaster that has blocked his or her exit, or by confinement in a prison, the result is the same: This picture of freedom, however, turns out to be both over-inclusive and under-inclusive from the standpoint of political theory.

The person threatened with a fine or imprisonment for exercising a fundamental right is not, in the strict sense, physically unfree to exercise his or her right, but this legal impediment to action should still be considered a constraint on political liberty. In contrast to a physical conception of constraint, neo-Lockeans maintain that freedom contains an irreducible moral dimension. An actor will not be considered unfree in the politically relevant sense unless he or she has been prevented from acting, and this prevention violates his or her rights.

There are general philosophical objections, however, to purely normative ideas of rights. This threatens to embroil these ideas in a vicious circularity, or minimally, to leave unanswered deeper questions about the meaning of freedom. Herein lies the dilemma of negative freedom. By following the Hobbesian road, philosophers consign their theories of freedom to political irrelevance. Hobbesian conceptions tell us something about the nature of freedom, but with little relevance to our political ideals, whereas neo-Lockean ideas are relevant to political and legal theory, but only by presupposing what it means to be politically unfree in the first place.

If Hobbesian conceptions of freedom go nowhere while Lockeans beg the big questions, some recent negative liberals have attempted to avoid the horns of the dilemma by forging an intermediate position. Yet this position has been criticized by those on the left and on the right for embracing a halfway position that calls into question whether the defender of these views really qualifies as a true negative liberal.

Political conceptions of negative freedom in their most robust varieties have been cast in two forms: Although robust conceptions of negative liberty have always exerted a powerful symbolic influence upon our politics and constitutional case law, American constitutional history bears little evidence of a sustained commitment to any systematic conception of negative liberty. Beginning with the U. These early cases, however, usually concerned boundary conflicts between state and federal power, and between the three branches of government, rather than the protection of individual liberty as such.

In fact, from , when the Court decided Marbury v. Madison , until Dred Scott v. During the antebellum period, constitutional challenges to state laws were more frequent, even though there were limited means of attack from a federal constitutional standpoint. Constitution, one of the few rights provisions that applied to the states in this era, to strike down state laws that invalidated pre-existing contracts. The Civil War and the emancipation of African-Americans led to a more individualistic conception of personal freedom, one that is reflected in the fundamental constitutional inversion brought about by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Although the Court struck down a maximum hour law in Lochner , it upheld a similar law for factory workers twelve years later. In sum, the doctrine of freedom of contract was never interpreted so broadly that it served to shield the bargaining process between workers and employers from any form of state regulation. Moreover, the libertarian influence was strongest in the employment context. Not once during this period did the Court entertain the notion, so central to theoretical libertarianism, that states could not regulate private morals.

There was no protection, during the Lochner era, for other rights central to the libertarian ethic. With the exception of two cases in the s recognizing the rights of parents to have their children taught a foreign language and to send their children to private school, there was little protection for personal, or non-economic, liberties. Freedom of expression fared no better. In fact, throughout the nineteenth century, there was little protection for freedom of speech. Whatever underlying philosophical principle justified the inconsistent protection of freedom of contract in the employment context, it did not extend to the related associational right of persons to come together for personal or political purposes.

If we were to ask now why the Lochner Justices displayed what appears, from a modern liberal or libertarian standpoint, to be such an inconsistent attitude toward personal zones of negative liberty, several overlapping answers present themselves. The cynical answer, of course, is that they were simply doing the bidding of the power elite, reflecting its interests by adopting a conception of freedom that was consistent with the demands of the propertied. Considering that the Court upheld most progressive legislation, however, the record does not support simple cynicism.

Moreover, cynical answers in politics always overlook the fact that, except in exceptional circumstances, defenders of particular theories entertain them genuinely, whatever subsequent generations may think of their views. Any complete answer would have to include the tendency of classical liberals from Bentham on to freight their conceptions of liberty with such other values as material prosperity and social progress.

Indeed, one can imagine a judge from this era asking the opposite question: If the classical liberal commitment to negative liberty was ultimately halfhearted, emphasizing economic liberty at the expense of the personal, so too, they might point out, are our own conceptions of self-determination, which accent the personal at the expense of the economic dimensions of human life. In an extended sense, the jurisprudence of each of the next three faces of freedom draws upon the negative ideal of freedom. To this extent, we have not completed our discussion of negative liberty.

Yet, each of the three succeeding conceptions of freedom offers us something considerably more, and something undeniably less, than the simple antipathy between freedom and government interference. Four essential themes are central to the progressive conception of freedom.

First, progressive conceptions draw upon all three positive conceptions of freedom discussed in Part I, though different variants often emphasize one or another of these. Third, whereas negative liberals contrast freedom with physical or legal constraint, the progressive views interpersonal domination and social dependence as the primary limits on both individual freedom and political liberty. Finally, underlying each of these other ideas, progressives offer a theory of freedom that is thoroughly brigaded with egalitarian ideals.

In contrast, strong progressives defend a teleological conception of freedom that posits certain human ends as particularly important to the attainment of human potential in its fullest manifestation. One of the first philosophers of progressive thought was the Englishman T. Green, whose writings date from the s.

Unlike Mill, however, this refinement requires the active intervention of authorities to promote the appropriate external social conditions within which choices can be made. The extreme example is that of the individual who enters a contract for self-enslavement. We have come now to what is the single deepest source of tension in modern liberal theory. In seeking a middle way between the Scylla of radical subjective individualism for example, that no one may second guess the life choices of the drunkard or the prostitute and the Charybdis of authoritarianism, progressives have had to reconcile freedom with paternalism, personal autonomy with the belief that personalities are socially constructed.

This position is indistinguishable from authoritarianism. Another approach follows the old republican themes of domination and dependence, concluding that only some individual choices are suspect: Carl Becker summed up this central political impulse of progressivism:. The essential problem of liberal democracy, therefore, is to preserve that measure of freedom of thought and of political action without which democratic government cannot exist, and at the same time to bring about, by the social regulation of economic enterprise, that measure of equality of possessions and of opportunity without which it is no more than an empty form.

The concern for equality unites all of the subsidiary themes of progressivism. Minimally, progressives hold that freedom requires a strong measure of material equality. Ronald Dworkin typifies this more extreme tendency: That is, I think, the same question as the question of what it means for the government to treat all its citizens as free. Thus, John Dewey wrote that:. The direct impact of liberty always has to do with some class or group that is suffering in a special way from some form of constraint exercised by the distribution of powers that exists in contemporary society. Should a classless society ever come into being the formal concept of liberty would lose its significance, because the fact for which it stands would have become an integral part of the established relations of human beings to one another.

Nevertheless, these all boil down to a fundamental question: Is there any sphere of individual choice that lies beyond the reach of the state or society? What remains, in progressive thought, of the person? Given their post-structuralist conception of personality, progressives often dismiss such concepts as individual responsibility, personal merit, and active individual self-ownership. But this is not simply a call for economic redistribution. Rather, the vision of such extreme progressives stands as a rebuke to traditional notions of individual self-ownership.

After all, if even such personal capacities as talents, virtues, and dispositions are not immune from the process of social expropriation, is there any aspect of the individual that remains sacrosanct, thus placed beyond the reach of the social? The progressive period of modern constitutional law is usually dated from , a year significant for several reasons. Supreme Court with an additional six Justices for a total of fifteen , who would presumably uphold the New Deal legislation.

Parrish , important in its own right for rejecting a Lochner -style due process attack on a minimum wage law. The consequences of the switch in judicial philosophies were profound. The case that most stands out in this respect is Wickard v. Filburn , decided by the Court in The demise of Lochner -style due process rights signaled a general shift in judicial attitudes away from intervention in favor of recognition of legislative supremacy.

As a result, judges faced the problem of reconciling this deference with the traditional American commitment to a countermajoritarian conception of rights: A constitutional philosophy emerged to respond to this question, with its basic tenets announced in , in a famous footnote in United States v. Rights do not limit, but rather perfect, the political process. The two constitutional values that serve most to reinforce democracy, each beloved by progressives in their own right as measures of positive freedom, are access to the political process and equality. The ethical dissolution of the family results when the children have been educated to be free and responsible persons and they are of mature age under the law.

The natural dissolution of the family occurs with the death of the parents, the result of which is the passing of inheritance of property to the surviving family members. The disintegration of the family exhibits its immediacy and contingency as an expression of the ethical Idea pars. However, despite the pursuit of private or selfish ends in relatively unrestricted social and economic activity, universality is implicit in the differentiation of particular needs insofar as the welfare of an individual in society is intrinsically bound up with that of others, since each requires another in some way to effectively engage in reciprocal activities like commerce, trade, etc.

Because this system of interdependence is not self-conscious but exists only in abstraction from the individual pursuit of need satisfaction, here particularity and universality are only externally related. However, civil society is also a realm of mediation of particular wills through social interaction and a means whereby individuals are educated Bildung through their efforts and struggles toward a higher universal consciousness.

This dimension of civil society involves the pursuit of need satisfaction. Humans are different from animals in their ability to multiply needs and differentiate them in various ways, which leads to their refinement and luxury. Political economy discovers the necessary interconnections in the social and universalistic side of need.

Work is the mode of acquisition and transformation of the means for satisfying needs as well as a mode of practical education in abilities and understanding. Work also reveals the way in which people are dependent upon one another in their self-seeking and how each individual contributes to the need satisfaction of all others. Furthermore, labor undergoes a division according to the complexities of the system of production, which is reflected in social class divisions: Membership in a class is important for gaining status and recognition in a civil society. Hegel says that "A man actualizes himself only in becoming something definite, i.

In this class-system, the ethical frame of mind therefore is rectitude and esprit de corps , i. The "substantial" agricultural class is based upon family relationships whose capital is in the products of nature, such as the land, and tends to be patriarchial, unreflective, and oriented toward dependence rather than free activity.

In contrast to this focus on "immediacy," the business class is oriented toward work and reflection, e. The main activities of the business class are craftsmanship, manufacture, and trade. The third class is the class of civil servants, which Hegel calls the "universal class" because it has the universal interests of society as its concern.

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Members of this class are relieved from having to labor to support themselves and maintain their livelihood either from private resources such as inheritance or are paid a salary by the state as members of the bureaucracy. These individuals tend to be highly educated and must qualify for appointment to government positions on the basis of merit. The principle of rightness becomes civil law Gesetz when it is posited, and in order to have binding force it must be given determinate objective existence.

To be determinately existent, laws must be made universally known through a public legal code. Through a rational legal system, private property and personality are given legal recognition and validity in civil society, and wrongdoing now becomes an infringement, not merely of the subjective right of individuals but also of the larger universal will that exists in ethical life. The court of justice is the means whereby right is vindicated as something universal by addressing particular cases of violation or conflict without mere subjective feeling or private bias.

Moreover, court proceedings and legal processes must take place according to rights and rules of evidence; judicial proceedings as well as the laws themselves must be made public; trial should be by jury; and punishment should fit the crime. The Police Polizei for Hegel is understood broadly as the public authorities in civil society. In addition to crime fighting organizations, it includes agencies that provide oversight over public utilities as well as regulation of and, when necessary, intervention into activities related to the production, distribution, and sale of goods and services, or with any of the contingencies that can affect the rights and welfare of individuals and society generally e.

Also, the public authority superintends education and organizes the relief of poverty. Society looks to colonization to increase its wealth but poverty remains a problem with no apparent solution. The corporation Korporation applies especially to the business class, since this class is concentrated on the particularities of social existence and the corporation has the function of bringing implicit similarities between various private interests into explicit existence in forms of association. This is not the same as our contemporary business corporation but rather is a voluntary association of persons based on occupational or various social interests such as professional and trade guilds, educational clubs, religious societies, townships, etc.

Because of the integrating function of the corporation, especially in regard to the social and economic division of labor, what appear as selfish purposes in civil society are shown to be at the same time universal through the formation of concretely recognized commonalities.

Hegel says that "a Corporation has the right, under the surveillance of the public authority, a to look after its own interests within its own sphere, b to co-opt members, qualified objectively by requisite skill and rectitude, to a number fixed by the general structure of society, c to protect its members against particular contingencies, d to provide the education requisite to fit other to become members. Furthermore, the family is assured greater stability of livelihood insofar as its providers are corporation members who command the respect due to them in their social positions.

Because individual self-seeking is raised to a higher level of common pursuits, albeit restricted to the interest of a sectional group, individual self-consciousness is raised to relative universality. The political State, as the third moment of Ethical Life, provides a synthesis between the principles governing the Family and those governing Civil Society. The rationality of the state is located in the realization of the universal substantial will in the self-consciousness of particular individuals elevated to consciousness of universality.

Freedom becomes explicit and objective in this sphere. Rationality is concrete in the state in so far as its content is comprised in the unity of objective freedom freedom of the universal or substantial will and subjective freedom freedom of everyone in knowing and willing of particular ends ; and in its form rationality is in self-determining action or laws and principles which are logical universal thoughts as in the logical syllogism. The Idea of the State is itself divided into three moments: Only through the political constitution of the State can universality and particularity be welded together into a real unity.

The self-consciousness of this unity is expressed in the recognition on the part of each citizen that the full meaning of one's actual freedom is found in the objective laws and institutions provided by the State. The aspect of differentiation, on the other hand, is found in "the right of individuals to their particular satisfaction," the right of subjective freedom which is maintained in Civil Society.

Thus, according to Hegel, "the universal must be furthered, but subjectivity on the other hand must attain its full and living development. As was indicated in the introduction to the concept of Ethical Life above, the higher authority of the laws and institutions of society requires a doctrine of duties.

From the vantage point of the political State, this means that there must be a correlation between rights and duties. In fulfilling one's duties one is also satisfying particular interests, and the conviction that this is so Hegel calls "political sentiment" politische Gesinnung or patriotism.

Thus, the "bond of duty" cannot involve being coerced into obeying the laws of the State. According to Hegel, the political state is rational in so far as it inwardly differentiates itself according to the nature of the Concept Begriff. The principle of the division of powers expresses inner differentiation, but while these powers are distinguished they must also be built into an organic whole such that each contains in itself the other moments so that the political constitution is a concrete unity in difference.

Constitutional Law is accordingly divided into three moments: Despite the syllogistic sequence of universality, particularity, and individuality in these three constitutional powers, Hegel discusses the Crown first followed by the Executive and the Legislature respectively. Hegel understands the concept of the Crown in terms of constitutional monarchy.

The third moment is what gives expression to the sovereignty of the state, i. The monarch is the bearer of the individuality of the state and its sovereignty is the ideality in unity in which the particular functions and powers of the state subsist. The monarch is not a despot but rather a constitutional monarch, and he does not act in a capricious manner but is bound by a decision-making process, in particular to the recommendations and decisions of his cabinet supreme advisory council. The monarch functions solely to give agency to the state, and so his personal traits are irrelevant and his ascending to the throne is based on hereditary succession, and thus on the accident of birth.

The "majesty of the monarch" lies in the free asserting of 'I will' as an expression of the unity of the state and the final step in establishing law. The executive has the task of executing and applying the decisions formally made by the monarch. Also, the executive is the higher authority that oversees the filling of positions of responsibilities in corporations. The executive is comprised of the civil servants proper and the higher advisory officials organized into committees, both of which are connected to the monarch through their supreme departmental heads.

Overall, government has its division of labor into various centers of administration managed by special officials. Individuals are appointed to executive functions on the basis of their knowledgibility and proof of ability and tenure is conditional on the fulfillment of duties, with the offices in the civil service being open to all citizens.

The executive is not an unchecked bureaucratic authority. Civil servants and the members of the executive make up the largest section of the middle class, the class with a highly developed intelligence and consciousness of right. Legislative activity focuses on both providing well-being and happiness for citizens as well as exacting services from them largely in the form of monetary taxes. The proper function of legislation is distinguished from the function of administration and state regulation in that the content of the former are determinate laws that are wholly universal whereas in administration it is application of the law to particulars, along with enforcing the law.

Hegel also says that the other two moments of the political constitution, the monarchy and the executive, are the first two moments of the legislature, i. In the legislature, the estates "have the function of bringing public affairs into existence not only implicitly, but also actually, i. Not only do the estates guarantee the general welfare and public freedom, but they are also the means by which the state as a whole enters the subjective consciousness of the people through their participation in the state. Thus, the estates incorporate the private judgment and will of individuals in civil society and give it political significance.

The estates have an important integrating function in the state overall. Also, the organizing function of the estates prevents groups in society from becoming formless masses that could form anti-government feelings and rise up in blocs in opposition to the state. The three classes of civil society, the agricultural, the business, and the universal class of civil servants, are each given political voice in the Estates Assembly in accordance with their distinctiveness in the lower spheres of civil life.

The legislature is divided into two houses, an upper and lower. The upper house comprises the agricultural estate including the peasant farmers and landed aristocracy , a class "whose ethical life is natural, whose basis is family life, and, so far as its livelihood is concerned, the possession of land. Landed gentry inherit their estates and so owe their position to birth primogeniture and thus are free from the exigencies and uncertainties of the life of business and state interference. The relative independence of this class makes it particularly suited for public office as well as a mediating element between the crown and civil society.

The second section of the estates, the business class, comprises the "fluctuating and changeable element in civil society" which can enter politics only through its deputies or representatives unlike the agricultural estate from which members can present themselves to the Estates Assembly in person. The appointment of deputies is "made by society as a society" both because of the multiplicity of members but also because representation must reflect the organization of civil society into associations, communities, and corporations.

It is only as a member of such groups that an individual is a member of the state, and hence rational representation implies that consent to legislation is to be given not directly by all but only by "plenipotentiaries" who are chosen on the basis of their understanding of public affairs as well as managerial and political acumen, character, insight, etc. The deputies of civil society are selected by the various corporations, not on the basis of universal direct suffrage which Hegel believed inevitably leads to electoral indifference, and they adopt the point of view of society.

The debates that take place in the Estates Assembly are to be open to the public, whereby citizens can become politically educated both about national affairs and the true character of their own interests. Public opinion is a "standing self-contradiction" because, on the one hand, it gives expression to genuine needs and proper tendencies of common life along with common sense views about important matters and, on the other, is infected with accidental opinion, ignorance, and faulty judgment.

Moreover, while there is freedom of public communication, freedom of the press is not totally unrestricted as freedom does not mean absence of all restriction, either in word or deed. Hegel calls the class of civil servants the "universal class" not only because as members of the executive their function is to "subsume the particular under the universal" in the administration of law, but also because they reflect a disposition of mind due perhaps largely from their education that transcends concerns with selfish ends in the devotion to the discharge of public functions and to the public universal good.

As one of the classes of the estates, civil servants also participate in the legislature as an "unofficial class," which seems to mean that as members of the executive they will attend legislative assemblies in an advisory capacity, but this is not entirely clear from Hegel's text. Also, given that the monarch and the classes of civil society when conceived in abstraction are opposed to each other as "the one and the many," they must become "fused into a unity" or mediated together through the civil servant class.

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From the point of view of the crown the executive is such a middle term, because it carries out the final decisions of the crown and makes it "particularized" in civil society. On the other hand, in order for the classes of civil society to actually sense this unity with the crown a mediation must occur from the other direction, so to speak, where the upper house of the estates, in virtue of certain likenesses to the Crown e.

The interpenetration of the universal with the particular will through a complex system of social and political mediations is what produces the self-consciousness of the nation-state considered as an organic internally differentiated and interrelated totality or concrete individual. In this system, particular individuals consciously pursue the universal ends of the State, not out of external or mechanical conformity to law, but in the free development of personal individuality and the expression of the unique subjectivity of each.

However, individuality is not something possessed by particular persons alone, or even primarily by such persons. The state as a whole, i. In principle, Mind or Spirit possesses a singleness in its "negative self-relation," i. For any being to have self-conscious independence requires distinguishing the self from any of its contingent characteristics inner self-negation , which externally is a distinction from another being.

This consciousness of what one is not is for the nation-state its negative relation to itself embodied externally in the world as the relation of one state to another. According to Hegel, war is an "ethical moment" in the life of a nation-state and hence is neither purely accidental nor an inherent evil. Because there is no higher earthly power ruling over nation-states, and because these entities are oriented to preserving their existence and sovereignty, conflicts leading to war are inevitable.

Also, defense of one's nation is an ethical duty and the ultimate test of one's patriotism is war. In making a sacrifice for the sake of the state individuals prove their courage, which involves a transcendence of concern with egoistic interests and mere material existence. Moreover, war, along with catastrophy, disease, etc, highlights the finitude, insecurity, and ultimate transitoriness of human existence and puts the health of a state to a test.

Hegel does not consider the ideal of "perpetual peace," as advocated by Kant, a realistic goal towards which humanity can strive. Not only is the sovereignty of each state imprescriptible, but any alliance or league of states will be established in opposition to others. States are not private persons in civil society who pursue their self-interest in the context of universal interdependence but rather are completely autonomous entities with no relations of private right or morality.

However, since a state cannot escape having relations with other states, there must be at least some sort of recognition of each by the other. International law prescribes that treaties between states ought to be kept, but this universal proviso remains abstract because the sovereignty of a state is its guiding principle, hence states are to that extent in a state of nature in relation to each other in the Hobbesian sense of there being natural rights to one's survival with no natural duties to others.

Obviously, if states come to disagree about the nature of their treaties, etc. States recognize their own welfare as the highest law governing their relations to one another, however, the claim by a state to recognition of this welfare is quite different from claims to welfare by individual person in civil society. States recognize each other as states, and even in war there is awareness of the possibility that peace can be restored and that therefore war ought to come to an end, as well as understandings about the proper limitations on the waging of war.

However, at most this translates into the jus gentium , the law of nations understood as customary relationships, which remains a "maelstrom of external contingency.

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To say that history is the world's court of judgment is to say that over and above the nation-states, or national "spirits," there is the mind or Spirit of the world Weltgeist which pronounces its verdict through the development of history itself. The verdicts of world history, however, are not expressions of mere might, which in itself is abstract and non-rational.

The history of Spirit is the development through time of its own self-consciousness through the actions of peoples, states, and world historical actors who, while absorbed in their own interests, are nonetheless the unconscious instruments of the work of Spirit. The actions of great men are produced through their subjective willing and their passion, but the substance of these deeds is actually the accomplishment not of the individual agent but of the World Spirit e. Hegel says that in the history of the world we can distinguish several important formations of the self-consciousness of Spirit in the course of its free self-development, each corresponding to a significant principle.

More specifically, there are four world-historical epochs, each manifesting a principle of Spirit as expressed through a dominant culture. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel discusses these in a very abbreviated way in paragraphs , which brings this work to an end. Here we will draw from the more elaborated treatment in the appendix to the introduction to Hegel's lectures on the Philosophy of World History.

Here Spirit exists in its substantiality objectivity without inward differentiation. Individuals have no self-consciousness of personality or of rights—they are still immersed in external nature and their divinities are naturalistic as well. Hegel characterizes this stage as one of consciousness in its immediacy, where subjectivity and substantiality are unmediated. In his Philosophy of History Hegel discusses China, India, and Persia specifically and suggests that these cultures do not actually have a history but rather are subject to natural cyclical processes.

The typical governments of these cultures are theocratic and more particularly despotism, aristocracy, and monarchy respectively. Persia and Egypt are seen as transitional from these "unhistorical" and "non-political" states. Hegel calls this period the "childhood" of Spirit. In this realm, we have the mixing of subjective freedom and substantiality in the ethical life of the Greek polis , because the ancient Greek city-states give expression to personal individuality for those who are free and have status. However, the relation of individual to the state is not self-conscious but is unreflective and based on obedience to custom and tradition.

Hence, the immediate union of subjectivity with the substantial mind is unstable and leads to fragmentation. This is the period of the "adolescence" of Spirit. At this stage, individual personality is recognized in formal rights, thus including a level of reflection absent in the Greek realm of "beautiful freedom.

A tension between the two principles of individuality and universality ensues, manifesting itself in the formation of political despotism and insurgency against it. This realm gives expression to the "manhood" of Spirit. The principle of subjective freedom comes to the fore in such a way as to be made explicit in the life of Spirit and also mediated with substantiality. This involves a gradual development that begins with the rise of Christianity and its spiritual reconciliation of inner and outer life and culminates in the appearance of the modern nation-state, the rational Idea of which is articulated in the Philosophy of Right.

Along the way there are several milestones Hegel discusses in his Philosophy of History that are especially important in the developing of the self-consciousness of freedom, in particular the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. One of the significant features of the modern world is the overcoming of the antithesis of church and state that developed in the Medieval period.

This final stage of Spirit is mature "old age. In sum, for Hegel the modern nation-state can be said to manifest a "personality" and a self-consciousness of its inherent nature and goals, indeed a self-awareness of everything which is implicit in its concept, and is able to act rationally and in accordance with its self-awareness. The modern nation-state is a "spiritual individual," the true historical individual, precisely because of the level of realization of self-consciousness that it actualizes.

The development of the perfected nation-state is the end or goal of history because it provides an optimal level of realization of self-consciousness, a more comprehensive level of realization of freedom than mere natural individuals, or other forms of human organization, can produce. In closing this account of Hegel's theory of the state, a few words on a "theory and practice" problem of the modern state. In the preface to the Philosophy of Right Hegel is quite clear that his science of the state articulates the nature of the state, not as it ought to be, but as it really is, as something inherently rational.

Hegel's famous quote in this regard is "What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational," where by the 'actual' Wirklich Hegel means not the merely existent, i. Later in the introduction of the Idea of the state in paragraph , Hegel is at pains to distinguish the Idea of the state from a state understood in terms of its historical origins and says that while the state is the way of God in the world we must not focus on particular states or on particular institutions of the state, but only on the Idea itself.

Real freedom requires justice

Furthermore he says, "The state is no ideal work of art; it stands on earth and so in the sphere of caprice, chance, and error, and bad behavior may disfigure it in many respects. But the ugliest of men, or a criminal, or an invalid, or a cripple, is still always a living man. The issue, then, is whether the actual state -- the subject of philosophical science -- is only a theoretical possibility and whether from a practical point of view all existing states are in some way disfigured or deficient.

Our ability to rationally distill from existing states their ideal characteristics does not entail that a fully actualized state does, or will, exist. Hence, there is perhaps some ambiguity in Hegel's claim about the modern state as an actualization of freedom. The books listed below either focus on one or more aspects of Hegel's social and political thought or include some discussion in this area and, moreover, are significant enough works on Hegel to be included.

G Saur Verlag, For books and articles in the last 25 years, consult the Philosopher's Index. Social and Political Thought Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is one of the greatest systematic thinkers in the history of Western philosophy. Political Writings Apart from his philosophical works on history, society, and the state, Hegel wrote several political tracts most of which were not published in his lifetime but which are significant enough in connection to the theoretical writings to deserve some mention.

The Jena Writings Hegel wrote several pieces while at the University of Jena that point in the direction of some of the main theses of the Philosophy of Right. Logic and Political Theory The Logic constitutes the first part of Hegel's philosophical system as presented in his Encyclopedia. Abstract Right The subject of Abstract Right Recht is the person as the bearer or holder of individual rights.

Morality The demand for justice as punishment rather than as revenge, with regard to wrong, implies the demand for a will which, though particular and subjective, also wills the universal as such. Ethical Life Hegel's analysis of the moral implications of "good and conscience" leads to the conclusion that a concrete unity of the objective good with the subjectivity of the will cannot be achieved at the level of personal morality since all attempts at this are problematic.

The Family The family is characterized by love which is "mind's feeling of its own unity," where one's sense of individuality is within this unity, not as an independent individual but as a member essentially related to the other family members. A Marriage The union of man and woman in marriage is both natural and spiritual, i. A The System of Needs This dimension of civil society involves the pursuit of need satisfaction. B Administration of Justice The principle of rightness becomes civil law Gesetz when it is posited, and in order to have binding force it must be given determinate objective existence.

The State The political State, as the third moment of Ethical Life, provides a synthesis between the principles governing the Family and those governing Civil Society. Closing Remarks In closing this account of Hegel's theory of the state, a few words on a "theory and practice" problem of the modern state.

References and Further Reading a. Works by Hegel in German and in English Translation Below are works by Hegel that relate most directly to his social and political philosophy. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts , ed. Hegels Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts , 2 nd edn. This is the most recent edition referred to in T. Knox's translation of Hegel's Logic , trans. Oxford University Press, Christianity, or more precisely Judeo-Christianity, emphasized the idea of freedom: The fact that a free act involves an eternal destiny gave to the problem of freedom a tragic aspect completely overlooked by the Greeks, Aristotle in particular.

The specifically Christian problem of the harmony between freedom and grace further complicated the problem of the harmony between divine knowledge and freedom. Moreover the Christian message, with St. Paul in particular, was presented as a liberation: The Fathers of the Church, in fact, at first appeared concerned with defending free will against the fatalism of the Gnostics and the Manichaeans St.

Knowledge does not change the nature of its object; what is foreseen as free is free St. He clarified the idea of eternity, that in God there is not foreknowledge but knowledge, so that what is future for man is present for God. The problem of freedom and grace came to the fore with the Pelagian controversy see pelagius and pelagianism. In what sense and to what point is man, a fallen creature and enslaved to sin, free? How can God move man toward good without infringing upon his freedom, and so on? The Latin Middle Ages would remain under the influence of the Augustinian problematics.

In the early scholastic period, Saints anselm of canterbury and bernard of clairvaux are the two outstanding figures. Anselm considered freedom essentially as the power to retain rectitude of the will for love of this very rectitude. It is inseparable from the will and perdures even in the sinner who cannot recover his lost rectitude. Bernard distinguished three freedoms: The will is essentially free, and in man this freedom effects a special resemblance to God. The thinkers of the high scholastic period dealt more rigidly with the nature of the will's freedom, some relating it to reason, others to the will, still others to both.

He based his theory of the free act on the distinction between the order of specification, in which intelligence is primary, and that of exercise, in which the will has primacy. Only the good in general, the Absolute Good, can necessarily determine the will in the order of specification. But in the latter case, although this necessity does away with freedom of choice, it does permit a freedom of spontaneity. Man participates in such freedom here on earth to the degree that he is led by the Holy Spirit.

It must be noted that, since divine motion respects natures, God can move the will with no detriment to its freedom. John Duns Scotus gives freedom a particular emphasis as that which characterizes the will and differentiates it from "natural" powers. The will is the sole cause of its decision, the role of the intellect being merely that of proposing its object.

Even when faced with the Absolute Good, the will strictly retains the possibility of refusing its assent. The theology of Scotus tries to avoid anything that would place in God a dependence of will on intellect. The nominalist school further accented the voluntarist and indeterminist tendency. Physical and moral laws are completely subject to the divine mind, and a type of theological determinism begins to appear. This does not always deny free will but views it as necessarily determined by God and in reality as nonexistent.

Such theories found an echo among the reformers. It is basically incompatible with the foreknowledge and sovereign dominion of God. The controversy raised by such opinions afforded Catholic theologians the opportunity to study the nature of freedom and of its compatibility with divine knowledge, providence, and action. As regards the first topic, Thomists maintained the nondetermining character of motives, whereas F. On the other hand, Thomists and St. The second topic gave rise to the systems of D. These two systems have confronted each other throughout the history of Catholic theology see concurrence, divine; predetermination; premotion, physical.

The problems of philosophers during this period differed from those of the theologians. In God freedom is absolute and operates with essences and truths as well as with existences. This indifference is one aspect of God's infinite perfection, of His supreme independence. Freedom is in some way infinite in man too; in this way it is in him the mark of the Creator. Man can oppose the clearly known good simply to assert his freedom. However, this indifference is not purely and simply a perfection in man, who does not create the true and the good.

On the contrary, the infinity of freedom in man, insofar as it goes beyond the extent of understanding, is the cause of error and sin, for man can affirm and will something whose truth and worth he does not perceive clearly. Perfect freedom, for him, would be an irresistible and fully spontaneous adherence to the clearly perceived good. Descartes cites an example of this in consenting to the evidence of the Cogito. The Cartesian notion of freedom oscillates between the second and the third meanings cited at the beginning of this article.

Only one being fits this definition, God or substance, whose freedom and necessity are identical. There is no freedom of choice in God, for this would place contingency in Him; things derive from Him as conclusions from a principle. Again, there is no freedom of choice in man, whose activity is determined not only by his own essence but by the action of other beings modes. Human freedom in the third meaning, however, does exist; it consists in freedom from passions or affections and in determination by reason, and comes about because of "knowledge of the third kind," which grasps things through their highest reason, sub specie aeternitatis.

In his view, the free act is characterized by 1 spontaneity, a characteristic common to every activity since the substance, or monad, is alone the cause of all its determinations; 2 intellectuality; and 3 contingency, in the sense that the opposite act does not imply any logical or metaphysical contradiction. Decision is always the result of judgments, affections, tendencies, "little perceptions," and the like, which converge in the soul at a moment coinciding with the autonomous development with no external command of the monad.

A "freedom of indifference" would violate the principle of sufficient reason, whose discovery Leibniz attributed to himself. Thus he never went beyond psychological determinism and considered the free subject an immaterial automaton. In his opinion, God Himself is determined by His perfection to the choice of the better. Eighteenth-century empiricism and materialism completely rejected free will. Freedom is an attribute of man, not of the will, and it consists in the power man has to determine his actions including his internal acts by his will when faced with possible alternatives.

But the will is necessarily moved by the attraction of pleasure and especially, according to J. Yet these writers were deeply interested in freedom in the first meaning. In this period, the development of liberal ideas in politics and economics put an end to the old regime and created a new type of society. The pure reason, requiring that phenomena be linked among themselves according to causal determinism, excludes the freedom of the phenomenal world but allows the possibility of freedom in the noumenal world, of which it knows nothing see phenomena; noumena.

But the practical reason sees in the fact of obligation a determination by pure reason that implies freedom. In reality Kant has two ideas of freedom: How is negative freedom reconciled with the determinism in this view? This idea was to appear many times in the future, for example, with F. The notion of freedom is much used in contemporary philosophy but with very different meanings, a diversity already seen in post-Kantian idealism. Such a notion of freedom excludes contingency; it is an inclusive and internalized necessity. Concretely it is realized within a well-organized state.

This notion of freedom as the perfect penetration of man by reason, as the realization of the true ego i. Whereas the positivistic empiricism of J. True freedom is what all of humanity will possess when men control the physical and social mechanisms that dominate them at present. Freedom is necessity that is understood and utilized. There is no free will.

Freedom of the Press: Crash Course Government and Politics #26

Because they make no distinction between theory and practice, the Marxists speak of liberation i. Man learns what freedom is by liberating himself. They insist on the dialectical connection between determinism and freedom; without determinism freedom is impossible, because man cannot act upon nature. Among the defenders of free will, apart from traditional spiritualism, may be cited C. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, an antirationalist and antideterminist reaction appeared in the form of pragmatism, the philosophy of contingency developed by W.

Unfortunately, the assertion of freedom has often been separated from a finalist metaphysics that alone renders it intelligible. The free act is the continuous expression of the underlying ego, which continually reconstitutes itself so that one state can never be reduced to a previous state. Determinism proceeds from an illusion that expresses pure spiritual duration in terms of space. More recently some claim to have found a defense for freedom in the indeterminism of quantum mechanics. Existential or existentialist thinkers since S.

Choice plays an important role in the ontology of J. Sartre, for whom freedom is conscious awareness and existence. It precedes the entire order of reason and in this sense, but in this sense alone, it is "absurd. Such a freedom has no limit but the impossibility of self-renunciation. No nature or order of values is before or above it; it itself creates values. This necessity is the radical evil. On the other hand, human freedom is interpreted by the theory of "levels of being," each of which is free with respect to the inferior levels.

Among contemporary Thomists, Jacques Maritain has studied the problem of freedom more profoundly than any other see thomism. Freedom of choice presupposes freedom of spontaneity, common to everything that lives and acts, but it must lead to the freedom of "autonomy and exultation. Moreover, Maritain draws attention to the ontological basis of freedom by relating it to the Thomistic doctrine of existence. Among the topics associated with freedom that merit more detailed consideration are its ontological basis, its relationships to God, and its particular relation to the person.

In its metaphysical essence, freedom implies autodetermination of the subject more than it does nonnecessity. Its various types stem from the various ways of considering the subject, which can be 1 man as determined from without; 2 more particularly, man as determining his internal or external acts by his will; 3 deeper still, in the willing subject, the ego as not completely determined by nature, circumstances, motives, and the like; or 4 the superego, as opposed to the ego and to the id. To understand the bond between freedom broadly associated with being in this way, one must consider being not only as an essence, as a determination to be this or that, but also as an existent actuality.

A purely essentialist notion of being tends to conceive the bond between various beings after the fashion of a logical connection; in its extreme form, this is found in the rationalist determinism of Spinoza and somewhat less in that of Leibniz. In reality, the act by which the subject exists and subsists in his incommunicable individuality, and this in accordance with the demands of his essence, is the root of his activity and spontaneity.

His activity is his own inasmuch as it is the expression and realization of this radical actuality. Spontaneity increases with the ontological level of being. Being is more unified and more itself, its activity more its own and more autonomous, the more it is being and the more it approaches the sufficiency and independence of Subsistent Being.

But below the level of spirit, this spontaneity remains entirely determined by the nature of the agent and the concrete conditions of its exercise. With spirit there appears a new kind of spontaneity. Spirit, of course, acts according to its nature, or essence, but its nature is not to be simply a nature, not to be simply what it is, but to be somehow everything.

Its essence is "open" and its aspirations can be satisfied by the Absolute alone. In this way it escapes from determinism. Other existents, being only what they are, can act only according to what they are at a given moment. But spirit is not imprisoned by any particular determination, by any end or value; it can transcend them all. This condition of the spirit can be referred to as ontological freedom.

In spirit, in fact, there "freely" appears the positive indetermination of being as such, its eminence over its various determinations. Freedom of action is rooted in this ontological freedom. Obviously, for a spirit incarnate in matter, the exercise of this power of surpassing is conditioned by what it has of the nonspiritual within itself. Human freedom is essentially impure and its field of immediate action is quite diminished. Freedom in no way constitutes an irrational exception in being, as was believed under the influence of determinist thought.

On the contrary, it is nonfreedom that marks a decadence in being. Thomas, free action as action "by itself" has primacy over any action that is determined by a given nature, which is action "by another" De pot. The mystery of freedom is basically the mystery of being itself, of the existent. This is why, if every act clearly makes existence manifest, the free act does so to an eminent degree.

The essence of the will does not explain such behavior in these circumstances; only the existent can remove such indetermination. Insofar as freedom implies the contingency of the act in the choice of a finite good, the mystery that it envelops is also that of finite being, of nonbeing in being itself.

Finally, insofar as created freedom expresses the at least radical possibility of failure, it implies nonbeing not only on the part of the object but also on the part of the subject. Two points here merit consideration: As pure act of being, dependent on nothing, not even on a nature that might differ so little as to be His act and for Him a given, God is freedom. Some thinkers, such as C. This implies two impossibilities: Divine existence can be called a free act only if one understands by this the independence and unconditional character of Absolute Being. Such a freedom is also a necessity because Absolute Being cannot not exist contingency is a defect of being.

Only He exists by Himself alone; His existence is neither a pure fact nor the effect of necessity that is a priori with respect to Him. Neither is there freedom of choice in the love that God has for Himself, which is the internal aspect of His necessity, although He does have freedom of choice with regard to other beings. God is determined neither to create, nor to create a particular type of world, nor to impress a determined course on its history.

To think otherwise would be to include this world among the conditions without which God would not be God. The Divine Being is sufficient unto Himself; His worth does not depend upon the beings He establishes, nor is He better for having created better for man, indeed, but this is true only insofar as man exists. This poses a difficulty, which was accentuated by Spinoza, for indetermination and contingency seem thus to be attributed to God. Had God created another world, His act would have been different; and since His act and His being are inseparable, His being would have been other than it is.

Here it is pointless to make, as some do, a distinction between God and His choice, to presume that such a distinction can be reconciled with the simplicity of god and that it does not introduce nonbeing or potency in Him. Even though it is claimed that the determination God gives Himself proceeds from His plenitude and presupposes no lack within Him, there is still the presence of this determination itself that must be explained, and this can proceed ad infinitum.

In reality, here one encounters the mystery of free causality. It is proper to the thing that it cannot produce a different effect unless it is modified in its being. It is proper to spirit to be able to give rise to different effects without so changing. For the finite spirit, acts are specified by their objects, and the contingency of objects reflects back on the acts. On the other hand, God is not involved in a network of relationships, for He gives and receives nothing.

Contingency, multiplicity, and the diversity of beings that He establishes cannot affect His unique, identical, and necessary act. Man's reason cannot very well grasp the "how" of this. The affirmation of divine freedom guarantees the contingency of the universe but transfigures it at the same time; such contingency is no longer absurd and distressing, as the existentialists hold, but rather it becomes the expression of a loving freedom.

The world's entire value stems from its appearing to be the result of a free gift. Man's freedom before God. There is no need to examine here the particular problems encountered in reconciling human freedom of choice with divine knowledge and providence see predestination; providence of god. The more general difficulty is the following. If man can begin a chain of events, he seems to be a creator and to possess within himself something that does not depend upon God.

Human freedom thus seems to limit the universality of divine action. In fact, some thinkers, for example, H. Without entering into an examination of theories that have tried to clarify the problem of divine concurrence, one may note that a correct understanding of the relation between freedom and being can shed much light on the problem. The relation of created freedom to God is then seen as an aspect of the relation of participated being to Absolute Being see participation.

God is this very relationship at its maximum intensity. Human freedom participates in divine freedom, but it no more limits divine freedom than finite being limits Infinite Being. On the contrary, divine freedom and omnipotence are manifested by the ability of beings to determine themselves, to be in some way "causes of themselves" — a capacity that itself comes from their "openness" to the Absolute. The free act reveals the infinite depth of the Spirit who makes its originator be an "image of God.

The participated character of human freedom is here the fundamental truth. To specify the "how" of this must be left to various systems of explanation, though none offers complete satisfaction. The real problem lies in the matter of choosing evil, for one would not wish to place responsibility for this on God. But the possibility of sinning, far from perfecting freedom, limits it.

Man sins to the extent that he participates only imperfectly in divine freedom. Sin is the expression of the nothingness in the creature. It is the negation or "rupture" of the divine movement toward good; and as such, it is the work exclusively of the creature. Although contrary to the divine will, sin is permitted by this will, which wishes beings to be what they are and to act according to their nature.

Divine action grace and human freedom must not be considered as contradictories, as though man is freer when less "moved" by God; it is the opposite, rather, that is true. Human freedom, participating in God's freedom, perfects itself as freedom only to the extent that it allows itself to be completely enveloped by God.

Freedom appears as the act proper to the person. Metaphysically speaking, the person is radically composed of two elements: This latter aspect is particularly stressed in contemporary thought. But freedom exhibits the person in this twofold characterization: My free act is mine; I alone am responsible whereas a truth is true for all.

Moreover, freedom completes individuality, adding to natural differences or those owed to circumstances that stem from various choices. The awareness of freedom is nothing more than the awareness of this power of surpassing and of the opening out toward the Absolute. In this way the person is rendered present to himself, in possession of himself, as opposed to the dispersion and the alienation of the thing. This enables the person truly to give himself in a selfless love. Authentic or spiritual love and freedom are thus closely related; both express the superabundance of the spiritual existent.

True love implies freedom, and it is itself a liberator. It is obvious from this that freedom is a condition for the establishment of a true society of persons. This implies that the person must be placed in conditions conducive to the full operation of his power of self-determination, and this normally implies a certain amount of freedom in the first meaning mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Only a really strong personality can find in servitude the opportunity to affirm his proper freedom. The education of the person will thus leave some play for freedom, even though this involves some risk; one need not attempt to prevent every deviation by external restraints.

The virtuous act must proceed from within, and this presumes the subject's recognition and acceptance of moral values as his own. When the Good, with whom the subject identifies himself through love, completely determines him and conditions and envelops the very good of his subjectivity and freedom, it is then that he is fully self-determined, fully free, and fully a person. Berlin — 30 3: Paris — 50 9. Freiburg — 65 4: Its Meaning New York In the history of philosophical and social thought "freedom" has a specific use as a moral and a social concept — to refer either to circumstances that arise in the relations of man to man or to specific conditions of social life.

Even when so restricted, important differences of usage are possible, and most of the political or philosophical argument about the meaning or the nature of freedom is concerned with the legitimacy or convenience of particular applications of the term. It is best to start from a conception of freedom that has been central in the tradition of European individualism and liberalism. According to this conception, freedom refers primarily to a condition characterized by the absence of coercion or constraint imposed by another person; a man is said to be free to the extent that he can choose his own goals or course of conduct, can choose between alternatives available to him, and is not compelled to act as he would not himself choose to act, or prevented from acting as he would otherwise choose to act, by the will of another man, of the state, or of any other authority.

Freedom in the sense of not being coerced or constrained by another is sometimes called negative freedom or "freedom from" ; it refers to an area of conduct within which each man chooses his own course and is protected from compulsion or restraint. Mill's essay On Liberty is perhaps the best-known expression in English of this individualistic and liberal conception of freedom. Some writers take the view that the absence of coercion is the sufficient and necessary condition for defining freedom; so long as a man acts of his own volition and is not coerced in what he does, he is free. Other writers wish to widen the concept in one or both of two ways.

They argue that natural conditions, and not only the will or the power of other men, impose obstructions and restraints on our capacity to choose between alternatives and that therefore the growth of knowledge or anything else that increases our capacity to employ natural conditions for the achievement of our purposes ipso facto enlarges our freedom.

They also sometimes argue that whether or not it is the will of other men or natural obstacles that are considered as limiting or constraining our actions, we cannot truly be said to be free to choose some preferred alternative unless we have the means or the power to achieve it, and thus the absence of means or power to do X is equivalent to absence of freedom to do it.

For those who take this view the necessary conditions for the existence of freedom would be a the absence of human coercion or restraint preventing one from choosing alternatives he would wish to choose; b the absence of natural conditions preventing one from achieving a chosen objective; c the possession of the means or the power to achieve the objective one chooses of one's own volition.

Many of the assertions frequently made about liberty in recent political thought assume that possession of the means or power to realize preferred objectives is part of what it means to be free. For example, the contention that men who suffer from poverty or have a low level of education cannot really be free, or that they cannot be as free as the well-to-do and the well educated, relies on the assumption that "to be free to do X " includes within its meaning "to be able," "to have the means," and "to have the power" to do X.

What are the objections to thus connecting "being free to" with "having the capacity or the power to"? It can be said that, at least in many cases, equating freedom with possession of power will involve a distortion of ordinary language.

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If I ask, "Am I free to walk into the Pentagon? The linking of "being free to" with "having the capacity or power" deprives the word free of its essential and unequivocal function, which is to refer to a situation or state of affairs in which a man's choice of how he acts is not deliberately forced or restrained by another man. As Bertrand de Jouvenel points out, if we say that to be free to achieve chosen ends requires the possession of the power and the social means necessary for their achievement, then the problem of freedom coincides with or becomes confused with the quite different problem of how satisfactions are to be maximized.

It may be true to say that the poor man is as free to spend his holidays in Monte Carlo as the rich man is, and true also to say that he cannot afford to do so. These two statements, it is argued, refer to two distinct states of affairs, and nothing is gained by amalgamating them. Even if we confine ourselves to saying that a man is free insofar as his action is not coerced by another, it is evident that the concept of coercion itself requires some consideration.

An important point may be made by examining Bertrand Russell's often-quoted sentence: Let us imagine an authoritarian society in which rulers have for years been so successful in controlling and manipulating what members of the community read and what views they encounter, and in which the educators have been able so subtly and skillfully to mold the minds and dispositions of the very young, that almost all citizens naturally desire what their rulers desire them to desire, without its ever occurring to them that there are alternatives to what they are accustomed to or that their freedom to choose has been in any way circumscribed.

They are not conscious of any obstructions to the satisfaction of desire and, indeed, no obstructions may exist to the satisfaction of any desires they experience. This is a limiting case, but it points to conditions that exist more or less in all societies. We would scarcely concede that the members of such a society enjoyed any or much freedom. The society described may be one in which coercion in the usual sense does not occur and has in fact become unnecessary.

Two important points follow from this. First, if absence of coercion is a necessary condition of being free, coercion must be understood as including not only the direct forms — commands or prohibitions backed by sanctions or superior power — but also the many indirect forms — molding and manipulation or, more generally, forms of control that are indirect because they involve control by certain persons of the conditions that determine or affect the alternatives available to others. This is an important extension of the notion of coercion. Second, if liberty means the right of individual choice between alternatives, then this right in turn implies that the alternatives can be known by those who are to choose; that individuals have the opportunity to understand the character of available alternatives and can make a deliberate or informed choice.

The freedom that members of a society enjoy will be connected, therefore, with the extent to which competing opinions, objectives, modes of behavior, ways of living, and so on are, so to speak, on display; on how freely they can be recommended, criticized and examined; and thus on the ease with which men can make a deliberate choice between them. For this reason, since literacy or education enlarges the capacity or faculty of choice and decision, it is an important precondition of the existence of freedom: Similarly, not only suppression but also distortion and misrepresentation, any kind of dishonest propaganda that gains its effect from privileged control over sources of publicity, may restrict the freedom of others; insofar as it succeeds in concealing or misrepresenting the character of certain of the available alternatives, it will tend to restrict or manipulate the range of choice no less effectively than direct coercion or constraint may; and thus it will also tend to limit the exercise of freedom in a particular society.

It is not sufficient to consider only the presence or absence of coercion in the more literal and direct sense. Freedom in its positive aspect is the activity or process of choosing for oneself and acting on one's own initiative, and choice can be manipulated as readily as it can be coerced. Does it follow from this that the extent of freedom is related to the number of available alternatives, in that the more alternatives there are for choice, the freer a man is?

Clearly there can be no simple or direct relationship between the range of available alternatives and the extent of freedom. However numerous the alternatives between which a man may choose, he will not admit himself to be free if the one alternative that he would most prefer is the one that is excluded. In a society that forbids the preaching of Catholic doctrine and the practice of Catholic forms of worship, Catholics will not concede that they are free just because they are still free to be either Anglicans, Methodists, or Buddhists.

In certain circumstances the extent of the range of available alternatives may be relevant to a judgment of the extent of freedom; but in general we can talk profitably about both the existence and the extent of freedom in a particular society only by taking into account the individual and social interests, the capacities, the modes of behavior, and the ways of living on behalf of which freedom is claimed.

When men speak of their being free or claim freedom for themselves, they are referring not only to the absence of coercion and restraint imposed by others freedom from but also to that on behalf of which freedom is being claimed what they are claiming freedom for. This is another sense in which we can speak about a positive aspect of freedom. In political and social discussion a claim to freedom is almost invariably albeit usually implicitly a claim to a particular liberty, a claim to freedom for or in the exercise of some particular interest or form of activity.

Although Russell says that freedom is the absence of obstacles to the satisfaction of desire, probably no serious philosophical or social thinker has defended freedom in the sense of absence of obstacles to the satisfaction of any desire; what has been defended, and what freedom has been identified with, is the absence of obstacles to the exercise and satisfaction of specific interests and forms of activity that are accepted as possessing special moral and social significance. Thus, freedom in the abstract is a class comprising many species — freedom of thought and speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship, freedom of movement, freedom in the use or disposal of one's property, freedom in the choice of one's employer or occupation, and so on.

In every case there is, of course, a reference to the absence of coercion or interference and to an area within which one can choose or act on one's own initiative; not to an abstract or indeterminate possibility of choosing but instead to a specific sphere of individual or social activity within which the right to make one's own choices and decisions, to follow one's own course, is regarded as being of particular importance in the moral life of the individual.

This seems to be one way in which positive notions of freedom as contrasted with the more abstract idea of bare immunity from coercion or interference by others have emerged, namely, in the attempt to identify and thus to identify with freedom those specific spheres of human activity within which what Mill calls individuality, the right and capacity for individual choice and initiative, really matter. Some of the particular freedoms that have been much emphasized in recent times freedom from want and freedom from fear are important examples seem at first sight to refer neither to the absence of coercion nor to any specific interest or form of activity for which freedom is being claimed.

It might appear that what is being claimed is, rather, the institution of political and economic arrangements by means of which men may be made immune from feelings and circumstances that they find to be evil. If this is all that is meant, then this is to employ freedom in a sense different from the one we have been discussing; this is shown by the fact that freedom from want and fear could conceivably be attained by the setting up of political and social arrangements under which the amplitude of choice within important spheres of activity would be drastically restricted and under which there might be a considerable measure of coercion and constraint; in other words, freedom from want and freedom from fear might well be compatible with a very authoritarian regime, just as in contemporary China freedom from flies is said to have been achieved by very authoritarian methods.

Thus, if "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear" are taken simply in that way, the freedom involved is logically and socially distinct from that which has so far been taken as being central and fundamental in the tradition of liberal thinking. However, this may be to interpret these two freedoms superficially. For a more sympathetic interpretation we must return to what has been said about manipulation.

In modern societies manipulation in various forms is at least as important as the processes we normally identify as coercive.