Chapter 26: Freedom

Varied and multitudinous as are the conceptions of "justice," they are as nothing compared with the variety and number of the conceptions of "freedom." Entire books have been devoted to an analysis of what the word means to various writers or in various settings. (1) My purpose here is to discuss only a few of these meanings.

The words liberty and freedom are used both in the legalpolitical and in the moral realm. In the legal and political realm the truest, or at least the most useful and fruitful concept, seems to me to be the one set forth by John Locke in The Second Treatise of Civil Government (sec. 57):

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others, which cannot be where there is no law; and is not, as we are told, "a liberty for every man to do what he lists." For who could be free, when every other man's humour might domineer over him? But a liberty to dispose and order freely as he lists his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.

The fullest and best modern restatement of this view is found in F. A. Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty. (2) The purpose of law, and the chief function of the state, should be to maximize security and liberty and to minimize coercion. Liberty for the individual means that he is free to act in accordance with his own decisions and plans, in contrast to one who is subject to the arbitrary will of another. Coercion, of course, cannot be altogether avoided. The only way to prevent the coercion of one man by another is by the threat of coercion against any would-be coercer. This is the function of the law, the law-enforcing officials, and the State. The State must have a monopoly of coercion if coercion is to be minimized. And coercion by the State itself can be minimized only if it is exercised without arbitrariness or caprice, and solely in accordance with known, general rules which constitute the law.

This concept of freedom as the absence of constraint (which includes the qualification that "there are cases in which people have to be constrained if one wants to preserve the freedom of other people") (3) is the oldest political conception of freedom. It is also, fortunately, still the common property of many jurists, economists, and political scientists. (4) True, it may be called a "merely negative" concept. But this is so only "in the sense that peace is also a negative concept or that security or quiet or the absence of any particular impediment or evil is negative." (5) It will be found that most of the "positive" concepts of liberty identify liberty with the power to satisfy all our wishes or even with "the freedom to constrain other people." (6)

Now when we apply this political conception of freedom in the moral realm we see that it is both an end-in-itself and the necessary means to most of our other ends. All men and all animals rebel at physical restraint just because it is restraint. Hold a baby's arms, and it will begin to struggle, cry, and scream. Put a puppy on a leash, and it will have to be dragged along by the neck with all four paws scraping the ground. Release a dog that has been tied up, and he will leap and bound and tear around in circles of frenzied joy. Prisoners, schoolboys, soldiers or sailors will show unrestrained glee in the first moments or hours of release from jail or school or barracks or shipboard. The value attached to liberty is never more clearly seen than when men have been deprived of it, or when it has been even mildly restricted. Liberty is so precious an end in itself that Lord Acton was moved to declare that it is "not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end."

Yet though liberty is beyond doubt an end-in-itself, it is also of the highest value, to repeat, as a means to most of our other ends. We can pursue not only our economic but our intellectual and spiritual goals only if we are free to do so. Only when we are free do we have the power to choose. And only when we have the power to choose can our choice be called right or moral. Morality cannot be predicated of the act of a slave, or of any act done because one has been coerced into doing it. (The same does not apply, of course, to immorality. If a man flogs someone else because he fears that he will otherwise be flogged himself, or murders someone else, under orders, to save his own life, his act is still immoral.)

Liberty is the essential basis, the sine qua non, of morality. Morality can exist only in a free society; it can exist to the extent that freedom exists. Only to the extent that men have the power of choice can they be said to choose the good.

Notes

1. Cf., for example, M. Cranston, Freedom: A New Analysis (New York, 1953) and Mortimer Adler, The Idea of Freedom: A Dialectical Examination of the Conceptions of Freedom (New York, 1958).

2. (University of Chicago Press, 1960.)

3. Bruno Leoni, Freedom and the Law (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1961), p. 3.

4. For a very full list of references see F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty.

5. Ibid., p. 19.

6. See Leoni, p. 4, and Hayek, passim.

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