454. A third form of freedom.

As discussed previously in this blog, Isaiah Berlin proposed two kinds of freedom:

‘Negative’ freedom as absence of external constraint, having room for action, and ‘positive’ freedom, access to the resources needed for action. I think there is a need for a third kind.

I proposed that happiness, the good life, entails purpose and pleasure. Purpose requires commitment to a goal larger than oneself, transcendence that can be vertical, to God, or horizontal, in dedication to society, mankind, nature, or specific others. This dedication requires discipline, freedom in resisting the urge towards pleasure, distraction, the pull of hedonism. One does not learn to play the violin, say, without it. That, I propose, is a form of freedom. Paradoxically, perhaps, this freedom entails constraint, constraint of hedonism. It is similar to Kant’s freedom of accepting constraints to satisfy the law.

Where does that leave liberalism? Liberalism is not, and has never been, the utmost of individual freedom, lack of external constraint, in negative freedom only.  That is libertarianism, perhaps neo-liberalism. From the beginning, in the works of Locke and Adam Smith, there was a plea for restraint of market power, for the common good, including positive freedom in education and social policies, and institutions for the regulation of markets. Also, it has never been against nations, communities and the local roots of culture.

Institutions are ‘enabling constraints’, restricting but also enabling action. Dick Nelson once said that it is odd to see a path through a morass as purely a constraint. Markets do not operate in an vacuum, but need laws concerning property rights, advertising, and restraints on concentration and market power. 

Now, in present times, capitalism has gone haywire, in uprooting local communities in maximum flexibility of labour and other resources, in unrestrained market ideology, along with globalization and privatisation. That is not the inevitable outcome of liberalism.

In its attempt to prevent religious violence, liberalism did relegate faith, and ethics,  to the private sphere, allowing for diversity of religion, safeguarding the separation of church and state. Now, with rampant inequality of income and economic power, public debate of morality is needed, including a re-appraisal of local roots of culture and community.

Inequality of income and power, the dislocation and neglect of culture, and loss of social concern, are sources of populism, which now threatens to derail in renewed nationalism, authoritarianism and exclusion, going against what is good in liberalism.

It is true that liberalism is an offshoot of the Enlightenment, with its overestimation of rationality and individualism. More room is to be reserved for emotions and impulse, limits to egotism, a revival of civil society and debates on morality. Attention to resonance is required, with renewed appreciation of the intrinsic value of labour and relations, and escapes from the frenzy of acquiring resources, as Hartmut Rosa advocated.