There is so much talk today both on this side of the Atlantic and on the other side of the Atlantic and any other sea shore of ‘freedom’. Freedom of the market, freedom of society, freedom of the individual. This, coupled with, ‘liberty and justice for all’ makes an attractive package for us to give our political, social and indeed, moral assent to these wonderful ideas. Mmmm…I wonder sometimes if some of our politicians, economists, or even social scientists were to sit down and read Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, if their ideas on freedom, especially the freedom of the individual, might not radically change. But then we would have to determine what an individual is first and foremost before coming to any conclusions as to what freedom might entail for them. How to do this is something of a philosophical as well as psychological and social problem. Is an individual simply a single entity that makes up part of a social or cultural or ethnic group? Is an individual such that his/her rights are inviolable to the point that everyone else’s is? Are the human rights of an individual prior to the rights of a whole society or does a constituted group determine what the rights of the individuals who make up that group are? And within all this where does the individual come to a sense of their own freedom.
Freedom is often understood as free ‘from’ something: and in most cases it would mean free ‘from’ tyranny, oppression etc. And it is right that all men and all women [indeed the whole of creation] be free from tyranny and oppression. And where there is tyranny and oppression then it must be challenged no matter what quarter it comes from, even if it comes from those who are seeking to ‘free’ us from tyranny and oppression by imposing their concept of freedom on us so that it becomes little more than another form of tyranny and oppression. I cannot reflect on these issues without making my own socialist ‘left wing’ leanings clear, that would be unfair, but even within that there is a form of freedom that is on the one hand universal and other the other unique to the individual. It is what we might best call a ‘radical’ freedom, ‘radical’ here in the sense of the meaning of the Latin word ‘radix’ root. This would say that at the ‘root’ of the human person, there is a freedom which does not ‘come’ which is not given by another human being, which is not ‘given’ but which simply is by the fact that the person exists as an entity in his/herself even within what we night call the ‘common nature’. Common nature here would be ‘humanity’ and that that individual is an individuated instance of that common nature possessing their own ‘principle’ of individuation which no other instance of the common nature has because it is not that individual.
The ‘freedom’ here, therefore, is a freedom not just of ‘person’, but of something much deeper – it is freedom of the individual precisely as individual and an individual who is unique. And everyone has this ‘principle of uniqueness’, this ‘principle of individuation’, and indeed every existing thing has this principle and it is this which is inviolable. It is this which guarantees the individual’s freedom, it is this which guarantees their essential rights, and it is this which must be defended, not the freedom that is determined by a political, social or economic model. And this freedom belongs to every entity and this raises serious questions about ecological/environmental issues both at the bios level and at the ethical level. We are never simply freed ‘from’ anything, we are rather already in freedom and it is the freedom to be what which we are as unique individuals in the vastness of every other existing thing. However, this is a not an individual freedom that says. ‘Well, I am an individual. I have my uniqueness, my unrepeatability among all other existing things. I have my rights. I can do what I like’.
Would that it were so but it is not. We can only do what we will not what we like. And our will has a serious ‘checkrein’ on it. Perhaps in my next reflection I will tease out this issue of the principle of individuation and the will and its checkrein and say something about the way in which our wills are structured so as to prevent us from doing what we ‘like’ no matter the cost to ourselves or others but rather allows us to do what we will and yet at the very moment we will it we could will to do the opposite. In technical terms it’s known as ‘synchronic contingency’ – but that, as they say is a discussion for next time.
Thank you very much for this most thoughtful and thought-provoking post. What I found beautiful about it is the point that individual freedom is linked to each and every unique person singular in their freedom and in their dignity.
What I found most challenging about it was the correct assesment I think that freedom can’t stop only at the “freedom from” level. It must go farther, all the way to “freedom for.” In fact, all the way to freedom for virtuous excellence.
I also was intrigued by the left-wing political reference. In my fellow-traveler status in the student movement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison long ago and far away, I always wondered during that hectic frenzy to misspend my youth about what economic system might accomodate individual choice most effectively and most judiciously. The economist F. A. Hyack discussed the “information problem,” the idea that the state would never be able to accumulate all the necessary information and have it all at the right moment in order to make optimal production and distribution decisions. So, if this claim has some merit, it would seem that de-centralized markets would be most conducive to making room for individual freedom, albeit of both “freedom from” as well as “freedom for” versions of personal liberty.
This economic claim has some support I think too from the Catholic social doctrine principles of subsidiarity and human dignity. His Holiness Pope Benedict spoke in Charity in Truth just recently of the importance of avoiding the “all-encompassing welfare state.” It seems then that Adam Smith, and before him the good Jesuits at the University of Salamanca who endorsed a version of the ‘invisible hand’ (with The Guiding Hand along!) of de-centralized markets as a vehicle for human freedom in the material realm, not government administration. But we can mull that over perhaps too in another exchange.
I conclude with a question. What is “freedom’s sake?” in Galatians 5:1 in which St. Paul tells us that Christ freed us for freedom’s sake?
Hi Stephen,
I know we changed venues over here so that we could discuss freedom and borders as they relate to undocumented immigration and detentions/deportations. I wondered after reading this wonderful meditation on freedom what it had to offer our differences on this issue (if in fact we have any, which I think we do).
I began to think about ways in which this principle of individuation might come into conflict in the travels of sojourners seeking economic flexibility through their response to a global labor demand. I think what most challenges the receiving community of migrants when they enter without papers is the idea that their collective property and economic rights, embodied in borders, are being violated. They seek punishment, with calls for the undocumented to just stand in line.
But while these individuals seeking their fortunes across space is a phenomena that has also spanned many generations (perhaps all of human history), the violation of a nation-state’s territory is rather new. As an individual manifests their freedom in coming here, their movement becomes criminalized because it is thought to impinge on other’s rights to realize their freedom homeside. While empirically this negative has been shown to only effect a small number of the domestic population (see Borjas), I can understand that it is a real and present danger.
Given this, I suppose we should be asking ourselves what limits on freedom of movement their should be, and to whose benefit? Perhaps this is the direction in which the post was going, and philosophically it may be an achievable negotiation. However accommodating the political slant, illegal immigration, detention and deportation of “normal” people is a hard nut to crack. Categories of citizenship, economic benefits, and cultural cross-dressing all come into play.
But strictly speaking of individual freedoms existing a priori of governments and other granting bodies, I would say that people should be allowed to move as they see fit. Ensuing border violations and draconian punishment neither fits the crime nor deters its repetition.
Thanks Lindsay for your excellent thoughts. What made me think is the point you made that the individual’s right, and by extension, the right of family members seeking to improve its material standard of living trumps borders. I agree with this. Milton Friedman and others have in the past advocated open borders with the proviso of no welfare benefits for the new comers. No subsidized medical care, no tuition-free education, no housing subsidies, no food stamps. The idea here I suppose is that those that seek benefits should also bare the costs of that pursuit. However, the enormous material and I think cultural benefits of immigration outweigh even the costs of welfare subsidies. So I guess I don’t entirely agree with Friedman. See for example Greg Mankiw’s excellent thoughts on his immigrant lineage. Even poor unskilled immigrants offer net economic gains to host countries. In early posts I’ve expressed thoughts that I think are supportive of the idea that family economic concerns trump, or take precedence over borders (see the St. Jude posts on immigration). On the other hand, I also believe Church teaching on this issue offers important advice to immigrants themselves. It reminds them of the moral obligation to respect the laws of the host country. There are some in the pro-immigrant camp that scoff at this idea, but I think that is a mistake. The rules of the game may be silly, even unfair, but the lawlessness of completely disregarding all laws that are inconvenient is a threat to civil society and the rule of law. Silly laws, as many of our immigration laws are, can be changed. It is far harder to change a predisposition to breaking the law because it is inconvenient.