Freedom
Freedom
The word “freedom,” with its synonym “liberty,” has a strong laudatory connotation. It has therefore been applied to whatever actions, policies, or institutions may be deemed valuable, from obeying the law to attaining economic affluence. Political writings seldom provide explicit definitions of “freedom” in descriptive terms, but it is often possible to infer descriptive definitions from the context. If this is done, it will be seen that the concept of freedom refers most frequently to social freedom, which must be distinguished from other descriptive and valuational usages. Descriptive definitions of “freedom” designate empirically specifiable states of affairs and can therefore be accepted by anyone, regardless of his normative views on liberty. “Freedom” in a valuational sense is used to commend rather than to describe; it therefore means different things to writers committed to different ethical standards.
Social freedom
The concept of interpersonal or social freedom refers to relationships of interaction between persons or groups, namely, that one actor leaves another actor free to act in certain ways. This concept is best defined by reference to another interaction relation, that of interpersonal or social unfreedom.
Social unfreedom defined . With respect to actor B, actor A is unfree to perform action x if and only if B makes it either impossible or punishable for A to do x. “B makes it impossible for A to do x” means that B performs some action y such that were A to attempt x, his attempt would fail. By denying a citizen a passport, the government makes him practically unable to travel abroad and, hence, unfree to do so. With respect to the United States, Communist China is unfree to conquer Formosa, and vice versa, since U.S. forces would presumably prevent either power from invading the other. If the Ku Klux Klan forcibly prevents Negroes from entering a public school, the Negroes are unfree to do so with respect to the Klan, but not with respect to the government. “B makes it punishable for A to do x” means that were A to carry out x, B would perform some action y that would deprive A. Governmental sanctions against illegal acts are only one example of punishability as an instance of social unfreedom. With respect to a union, a company would be unfree to withhold certain benefits if the union were to picket the company. Residents in a typical block of modern suburbia are unfree to deviate from certain tacit norms with respect to the “neighborhood,” which tends to penalize nonconformists.
Social freedom defined . Social freedom is not the contradictory of social unfreedom. I am not officially unfree to pay incomes taxes, yet, I am not free to pay them either; rather, I am unfree to withhold payment. A relationship of freedom refers to a set of at least two alternative actions or types of actions. I am unfree to do this; I am free to do this or that. An actor is free to act in any one of several ways, provided there is no other actor who makes him unfree to perform any of these actions. Thus, with respect to B, A is free to do either x or z if and only if B makes it neither impossible nor punishable for A to do either x or z. “Freedom to vote” means freedom either to vote or to abstain; but “freedom to propagate the truth” really means unfreedom to spread “erroneous” views. Furthermore, I may be free to act in one way or another with respect to one person or group, whereas another actor makes me unfree to engage in one of these activities. Officially, Americans are free to adopt any religion or to adhere to none, but many Americans are unfree to be agnostics with respect to certain nonofficial groups who subject “atheists” to all kinds of informal sanctions.
Testing statements about social freedom . Whether an actor was unfree to do what he actually did can be determined with certainty, but only ex post facto. If A’s attempt to do x was frustrated by B, or if A succeeded in doing x but was penalized by B for having done so, it follows by definition that A was, with respect to B, unfree to do x. That A is imfree to do x, or that A was or is or will be free to do x or z, are empirical hypotheses that can be asserted only with a certain degree of probability, depending on the answers to such questions as: were A to carry out x, would B penalize him? If 60 per cent of all speeders in France are convicted, every French driver is to that extent unfree to speed, regardless of how many comply. A person’s social freedom does not depend on his actual behavior. We often perform actions that we are unfree to do (for example, speeding) and refrain from actions that we are free to perform (for example, driving at any speed lower than the speed limit).
Social freedom and political freedom. Relationships of interpersonal or social freedom and unfreedom may hold between any two persons or groups, for example, members of a family, buyers and sellers, legislature and executive, pope and emperor, members of the Common Market. A government’s freedom may or may not be limited by an international organization, another government, a church, its own citizens, some interest group within or outside of its jurisdiction, etc. Political freedoms are a subclass of social freedoms and usually refer to the freedom of citizens or associations with respect to the government. Interest in political liberty has in various periods of history centered on freedom of religion, of speech and writing, of association (religious, political, economic), and of participation in the political process (suffrage). The idea of political freedom has been extended to cover demands for economic liberty, “freedom from want,” national self-determination, etc.
Social freedom and control. Social unfreedom and control are overlapping categories. By preventing A from doing x, B makes A unfree to do x and controls his behavior. If B punishes A for having done x, one may infer that A was, with respect to B, unfree to do x; but B did not control A’s behavior, since his threat of punishment failed to deter A from doing x. Influence is another form of control; however, if B succeeds, for example, in persuading A to vote Democratic, B does not thereby restrict A’s freedom to vote Republican (or Democratic). Here, both control and freedom relationships hold between B and A.
Social freedom and power. Although there may be unfreedom without control and control without unfreedom, the concept of power had best be taken as comprising both control and unfreedom relationships. If B either has influence over A’s not doing x, or prevents A from doing x, or makes it punishable for him to do so, B may be said to have power over A in this respect. The example of B persuading A to vote Democratic illustrates that power and freedom relationships may hold between the same pair of actors. The same is true in the following situations: B has power over A with respect to a limited range of alternatives; A is free within that range. Government, for example, has the power to compel citizens to serve in the armed forces but may leave them free either to submit to the draft or to volunteer. A may be, with respect to B, free to do x, either because B has no power to limit A’s freedom or because he permits A to do x. The United States Congress is free to legislate as it pleases as far as the president is concerned, to the extent that he chooses not to exercise his veto power. To affirm that freedom of speech prevails in a given society is to refer to the following relationships of both freedom and unfreedom (and power) between any two of its members, A and B: A and B each leave the other free to say what he wants; with respect to B, A is unfree to prevent him from expressing his views, and vice versa; A and B are unfree to do so, not only with respect to each other but also with respect to the government, which protects everybody’s right to free speech.
Social freedom and legal rights. It is true both that liberty depends “on the silence of the law” (Hobbes) and that “where there is no law there is no freedom” (Locke). I am socially free to act in a certain way only if (1) there is no effectively enforced law prohibiting or ordering me to do so and if (2) I have an effectively protected legal right to that effect, that is, if all others are unfree to hinder me from doing so. We must distinguish between freedom in the behavioral sense and in the legal sense. All drivers have the legal duty not to speed, but they are socially unfree to speed only to the extent that speeders are actually fined. Thus, driver A, who sped on a particular occasion without being detected, was socially free to do so on that occasion, even though he had no legal right to that effect. If 40 per cent of all speeders in France escape conviction, French drivers are to that extent socially free to speed.
Other descriptive meanings
Freedom of choice . Whereas social freedom refers to two actors and their respective actions, freedom of choice signifies a relationship between one actor and a series of alternative potential actions. “A has freedom of choice as to x or z” means that it is possible for A to do either x or z, or that both x and z are open as well as avoidable to A, or that A will bring about x provided he chooses to do x. Conversely, if it is either impossible or necessary for A to do x, A has no freedom of choice as to x. It is in this sense that Hume defines liberty as “the power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.” Freedom of choice is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for social freedom. If A cannot do x, he is unfree to do so only if his inability has been caused by some other actor B. Otherwise, A remains free to do x, even though he has no freedom of choice as to x. Most men are incapable, yet at liberty, to become millionaires or to run for high political office. Unemployment during a recession diminishes freedom of choice, not social freedom, unless the recession itself can be causally linked, for example, to specific governmental policies. The high cost of television time renders this medium inaccessible to most; this restricts freedom of choice for prospective broadcasters, not their freedom of speech. Everybody is socially “free to sleep under bridges” or at home, including the homeless, who have no choice in the matter. (In all such cases, the illusion of paradox arises because the actor is likely to value the opportunity he lacks, not the freedom he has.) Conversely, we do have freedom of choice with respect to most punishable actions; we can be made unfree to do them precisely because they are open to us.
Free will . Indeterminists often hold that human beings have “free will,” that is, that their actual choices and resulting behavior are not causally determined but constitute chance events. Determinists can with perfect consistency deny this doctrine and yet affirm that men often have freedom of choice. They argue that the fact that A has the choice of doing either x or z does not preclude the possibility of explaining and predicting A’s actual choice by virtue of causal (for example, psychological or sociological) laws.
Free actions . Of an action itself, it can be said that it was either a free or an unfree one, as when we say: “this murder was a free action,” or “he paid his taxes, but not freely.” Involuntary behavior is unfree, and so are nondeliberate actions, for example, those that the actor has been conditioned to perform. Voluntary actions are free, unless they are motivated by fear of punishment. A’s handing over his money to B, who points a gun at him, is an unfree action (yet it is a voluntary action, determined partly by B’s threat and partly by A’s desire to save his life). But if A refuses to comply with B, then A acts freely. One may do freely what one is unfree to do. Again, if B persuades A to do x without threats of punishment, A’s action x is a free one. Sometimes, however, “free” is used more broadly to refer to actions that are autonomous, that is, determined exclusively by the actor’s own decisions and not by the influence of others, as when John Stuart Mill said: “The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.”
Free persons . “Free” often refers to a characteristic, not of actions but of persons. A person may be said to be free to the extent that he has the disposition to act freely, or to act autonomously, or to develop his capacities to the fullest. Marx, for example, prophesied a society “in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” “Freedom” becomes a synonym for “self-realization.” Laski uses the term almost exclusively in this sense in his article on liberty (1933).
Feeling free . Liberty is often said to consist in doing what one desires. It would be more accurate to say that an actor feels free to the extent that he does what he wants. Freedom as a state of mind must be distinguished from freedom as a state of affairs. Among the things I want to avoid doing, there may be some I am free to do and others I am unfree to do. Some persons derive a feeling of freedom from the fact that they are left free to act out any one of several alternatives. Others feel free when they “escape from freedom” into submission to some authority that conditions them to want to do its will. Dostoevski’s grand inquisitor plays on these two meanings of the word: “Today, people are more persuaded than ever that they have perfect freedom; yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet.”
A free society . Is it legitimate to use “free” as a characteristic of a group, such as when democracy is held to be a free society? There is no such thing as freedom in general; every organized society consists of an intricate network of specific relations of both freedom and unfreedom. Citizens in a democracy have the political freedom to participate in the governmental process through “free” elections. Voters, parties, and pressure groups are thereby empowered to limit the freedom of their elected officials. Democracy also requires that “civil liberties” be protected by legal rights and duties, and these duties again imply limitations of freedom. In a perfect dictatorship, the ruler has unlimited freedom with respect to his subjects, whereas they are totally unfree with respect to him. In a democracy, both liberties and restrictions of freedom are distributed more evenly, for example, among the various branches of government, between government and governed, majority and minority. Equal freedom, not more freedom, is the essence of democracy. (Strictly speaking, it is not meaningful to say that there is “more” freedom in one society than in another; but it is possible to define degrees of social freedom in the sense that one actor has greater freedom in a certain respect than another.) A society in which liberties are evenly distributed may be called a free society. However, here we come close to using “freedom” in a valuational sense: a society is free in which those and only those freedom relations hold that are desirable.
Valuational meanings
Because of the laudatory connotation of the word “freedom,” writers have been inclined to define it to cover those and only those relationships of both social freedom and unfreedom that they happen to value and wish to commend to others. Such persuasive definitions of freedom are useful not as tools of the empirical social sciences but as rhetorical devices; they enable the writer to express his normative views in assertive form. For example, by stating that “to obey the laws laid down by society is to be free,” Rousseau in effect exhorts citizens to obey such laws; he is not trying to explicate the meaning of freedom. Persuasive definitions of freedom have been used to propound almost every political ideology, as is illustrated by the following examples.
Freedom as protection of basic rights . Classical liberalism from Locke to Spencer and his followers advocated that government ought to restrict a person’s freedom when and only when necessary to protect another person’s basic rights (often held to correspond to natural rights). Accordingly, “no society in which these liberties are not, on the whole, respected, is free” (Mill). Conversely, a society is free, provided it is based on these laissez-faire principles. And a person who enjoys these legal rights and is subject to the corresponding legal duties is free, however unfree he may be in other regards and with respect to actors other than the government, for example, because of economic exploitation or social pressure. Thus, the United States Supreme Court once held that minimum-wage and maximum-hour laws violate the constitutional principle of liberty, because such regulations are not necessary to the protection of basic rights but constitute “arbitrary” limitations of “freedom of contract” of both employer and employee.
Freedom as satisfaction of basic needs . Neoliberals point out that the right to acquire the necessities of life is of little value to those who lack the opportunity to acquire them, that government ought to make them available to all, and that this may require governmental restriction of individual freedom through regulations concerning public health, education, and welfare. Social welfare, not social freedom, is their ultimate goal; but they still use the word “freedom” to designate this end. “Personal freedom means, in fact, the power of the individual to buy sufficient food, shelter, and clothing” (Sidney and Beatrice Webb). And so, “the distinction between welfare and liberty breaks down altogether” (Ralph Barton Perry). Conversely, those who are unable to bring about what society ought to enable them to achieve, but who are free with respect to the government to make the attempt, are said to lack “true freedom.” “Freedom from want,” unlike freedom of speech, does not refer directly to social freedom, but to absence of want and presence of a satisfactory living standard for all. It is only in an indirect sense that “necessitous men are not free men” (Franklin D. Roosevelt). They have little freedom of choice and are socially unfree with respect to the economically powerful. “Freedom” is applied not only to the welfare goal itself but also to whatever restrictions of social freedom are deemed necessary to achieve it. The Supreme Court now interprets liberty to be compatible with minimum-wage laws and other “reasonable regulations and prohibitions imposed in the interest of the community.” “Freedom” includes desirable social unfreedom and excludes undesirable social freedom.
Freedom as government by consent . This persuasive definition of freedom is used to express the norm that government ought to be based on consent of the governed, and this usually means representative government and majority rule. For example, “the liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth” (Locke). Under such a system, men are free because their freedom is limited only by measures in the enactment of which they were free to participate. With a slight shift in emphasis, “freedom” stands no longer for the government’s duty to be responsive to the will of the citizens but for the citizen’s duty to obey governmental enactments reflecting the will of the majority or the “general will.” According to Rousseau, the citizen is free whether he fulfills this obligation freely or whether he has been “compelled to be free.” And so “freedom” comes to refer no longer to having the choice of acting in one way or another, but to acting in no other way than that prescribed by authority.
Freedom as moral constraint . The definitions of freedom taken up so far, including even the persuasive ones, are made up entirely of descriptive terms. However, definitions of freedom often include ethical words, such as “right,” “ought,” or “virtue.” In such cases, not only the term to be defined (freedom) but also the defining expression has valuational meaning. For example, “Liberty can consist only in the power of doing what we ought to will” (Montesquieu). Similarly, a person is often said to be free, not if he acts freely or develops his capacities, but if he realizes his “best” or “essential” self. For example, “Liberty may be defined as the affirmation by an individual or group of his or its own essence” (Laski 1933, p. 444). Some have held that a person is most likely to realize his essence if he is left free to choose for himself.
According to another tradition, which extends from Plato via the Stoics and Christian thought to Neo-Hegelianism, man reaches the highest form of self-realization by submitting to some moral norm imposed by his own “higher self,” which is usually identified with faith, reason, or moral conscience. “I call him free who is led solely by reason” (Spinoza). “Obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty” (Rousseau). Freedom no longer signifies the absence of unwelcome, but the presence of welcome restraints. “For freedom is not acquired by satisfying yourself with what you desire, but by destroying your desire” (Epictetus). In short, freedom is unfreedom to do wrong, whereas freedom to deviate from the prescribed path is license. “If unbridled license of speech and of writing be granted to all, nothing will remain sacred and inviolate. . . . Thus, license will gain what liberty loses” (Encyclical libertas 1888).
If “freedom” becomes a label for anybody’s moral or political ends, then everybody’s value commitment to freedom will be vacuous. All will agree that liberty is the supreme good, but they will agree on nothing else. Meaningful disagreement about the value of freedom presupposes agreement about the meaning of freedom in nonvaluational terms. The concept of social freedom provides an adequate basis for a fruitful discussion of the normative, as well as the empirical, aspects of liberty. In this discourse, the divergent views about which social freedoms ought to be extended or limited will depend on the value one assigns to such other social goals as equality, justice, or welfare, which may compete with the goal of freedom.
FELIX E. OPPENHEIM
[See also DEMOCRACY; EQUALITY; JUSTICE; NORMS; POLITICAL THEORY; VALUES.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABLER, MORTIMER J. 1958-1961 The Idea of Freedom. 2 vols. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. ? Contains significant quotations about freedom selected from all major writings from the Greeks to the present. Bibliography covers anthologies and periodical literature.
AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR POLITICAL AND LEGAL PHILOSOPHY 1962 Liberty. Edited by Carl J. Friedrich. Nomos 4. New York: Atherton. ? A collection of essays.
AHON, RAYMOND 1965 Essai sur les libertés. Paris: Calmann-Lévy.
BAY, CHRISTIAN 1958 The Structure of Freedom. Stanford (Calif.) Univ. Press.
BERLIN, ISAIAH 1958 Two Concepts of Liberty. Oxford Univ. Press.
CRANSTON, MAURICE (1953)1955 Freedom: A New Analysis. 2d ed. London: Longmans.
HAYEK, FRIEDRICH A. VON 1960 The Constitution of Liberty. Univ. of Chicago Press; London: Routledge.
LASKI, HAROLD 1933 Liberty. Volume 9, pages 442-446 in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan.
MULLER, HERBERT J. 1960 Issues of Freedom: Paradoxes and Promises. New York: Harper.
OPPENHEIM, FELIX E. 1961 Dimensions of Freedom: An Analysis. New York: St. Martins; London: Macmillan.