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June 26, 2006
In an interview with Johan Norberg ---author of In Defence of Global Capitalism---published in the Winter 2006 issue of Policy, the quarterly magazine run by the points out how utilitarians apprach freedom. He says that as 'a consequentialist utilitarian I believe freedom is only valuable to the extent that it leads to people being on the whole, better off than they would be under alternative systems'. We can add to this in terms of the common thread. Both right and utilitarian traditions oppose freedom to coercion, and both have similarities in their understanding of freedom---both work more with a negative conception of freedom as an absence or lack of impediments, obstacles or coercion.
Personal freedom is the state that is not subject to coercion by the arbitrary will of others. As Hayek said it is a freedom from other people coercing a liberal subject to do their bidding. Libertarians, therefore, are fundamentally concerned with the amount of individual liberty that government permits.
Jason Soon mixes this up with his conception of freedom as 'experiments in living.'The phrase is that of J.S. Mill in his On Liberty (1859):
As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them.
Mill's utilitarian grounds justification is that there could be a public benefit in permitting lifestyle experimentation. His reasoning was that, just as we distinguish truth from falsehood by the clash of opinion, so we might learn how to improve human lives (well-being) by permitting a contest in lifestyles.
Doesn't that imply positive freedom? A freedom to achieve certain ends? A freedom based on capacity an absence or lack of impediments, obstacles or coercion.
Mill regards freedom as important for individuals to form and to develop their "characters", to express themselves both in words and in deeds, to cultivate what he calls 'the free development of individuality'. Positive liberty has to do with the necessity of living in community with others in that I can only realize my desires as mediated and negotiated with the desires of others. Experiments in living implies living with others and individuality. Individuality implies some sort of self-determination. I can constitutively determine my desires only through mediation with the desires of others, such that those other desires must afford me my capacity for self-determination.Self-determination is needed to develop my individuality.
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John Stewart Mill and the Utilitarian argument seem superficial. To say that the ?greatest Good is the greatest happiness for the greatest number? is tyrannical because the result is the harsh repression of any individual who constitutes a hurtle in the way of the ?greatest happiness.?
As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living
Here Mill says ?while mankind are imperfect.? I say that Mankind is perfect as long as it maintains its natural evolutionary course in accord with Reason. If the goal of society is to be the greatest happiness for the greatest number then we will have a society of pigs! Rolling and snorting in their own filth.
For the Love of Reason!