Liberty – a Two Edged Sword
Liberty cuts both ways. It can free the potential of human ingenuity or shred the social norms that produce stability. The modern concept of liberty developed during the latter second millennium AD in Europe. It was based on the idea that individual people are special and not just a part of a nest, herd, flock or hive. Earlier in history individual people were unimportant, as they still are in some backward countries. Anciently, only kings were considered related to god. But the gift of the Jewish Old Testament (regardless of what you think about religion) was the idea that every man, having been “created in the image of god” was important, and had rights (and women had some too). Under the reign of the judges in Israel, prior to their retrogression into a kingdom, each Jew (but not outsiders) was free and problems were adjudicated by leaders who were their piers. This was a major step forward for mankind.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the idea of individual rights was expanded into the idea of individual liberty which meant that each person was, at least theoretically, the owner of his own body and mind and that what he produced through his own efforts should be under his control. This liberty was to be limited only by the rights of others to their liberty so that the individual was free to do whatever he pleased as long as it did not infringe the liberty of others (not counting slaves of course). Each man (and eventually woman) had the right to determine what they wanted to do with their lives and labor, free of the dictates of any other person or group of people (government).
As long as people used this liberty for good ends, it enriched life and produced greater prosperity through voluntary interaction in a free market. But free license to do whatever you want, only limited by what you think will not hurt others, is heady stuff and went to the heads of the philosophers of the time, leading to the idea that one could revel in all manner of acts that long centuries of experience showed destroyed society.
For instance, John Stewart Mill, “considered one of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism”, conceived of liberty as the freedom of the individual to do whatever he wanted, the sole limitation being not interferring with the liberty of others except for self-protection. In his pursuit of his liberty which would be better defined as license, he became a proponent of utilitarianism which proposed that one should seek the greatest good for the greatest number. But what was GOOD? His answer was that what is pleasurable is good and what is painful is bad and one should therefore seek the greatest pleasure. So you should avoid anything that is unpleasant or painful. Imaging a world where police officers or soldiers would not do anything hard or painful, or scientists would not work through the night seek cures for disease.
But Mills philosophy had another problem. Pigs feel pain and pleasure so by this standard, men are just glorified pigs. So he had to introduce the idea of quality, wherein what constitutes happiness should be judged by someone best qualified to make comparisons between different pleasures and pains. Which leads naturally to the conclusion that someone, like Mill, should experience all possible activities to see which ones provided the greatest pleasure or worst pain in order to decide how liberty should be used. We can all thank Mill for trying every form of debauchery to tell us what we should pursue and avoid in his utilitarian paradise. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out where all this would leave society in the name of liberty.
So liberty, which can be one of the greatest goods in freeing man to live life outside the dictates of others, including big business and government, must be exercised responsibly (not Mills fort) if it is not to destroy society.
As Will and Ariel Durant pointed out in The Lessons of History, chapter X Government and History, "Unless individual freedom is limited and channeled into socially beneficial pursuits by law, tradition and morals, it leads to anarchy and chaos. "
How to limit and channel liberty without destroying freedom and its benefits is the challenge of our time.