Abstract
In 1956 Peter Laslett started his introduction to the first volume of the successful series on Philosophy,Politics and Society with a lament for the ‘death’ of political philosophy that was to become famous. Laslett’s analysis focused on the English-speaking countries where, he believed, political philosophy had been killed by the advent of the neo-positivist paradigm. Coming back to this sixteen years later, he added that «most widely influential authors» of this destructive work had been Richard M. Hare and Thomas Weldon.
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Reference
Tussman, 1960; Pitkin, 1965–6; Macpherson, 1967; Plamenatz, 1968; Flathman, 1972, just to quote the most influential voices.
Think that this peculiar theoretical-political substratum — juvenile movements and academic debates on political obligation — goes a long way in explaining why the rebirth of contract theory is an almost exclusively American phenomenon.
n his celebrated The Terms of Political Discourse William Connolly (1974, 108) seems to agree that «the idea of authority embodies a presumption of legitimacy». Connolly’s book, hinging upon the idea that political discourse is scattered with that Gallie (1955–6) defined `essentially contested concepts’, presented itself as the counterpart to Weldon’s The Vocabulary of Politics. Thus Connolly’s agreement witnesses how pervasive the linguistic approach was and how cogent it and its ancillary theses have been appearing for some time.
In 1958 another strongly anti-naturalist book was published: namely, The Concept of Motivation by R.S. Peters.
The same holds true for the observing social scientist operating within a rationality governed by local rules, a `form of life’: her statements only make sense within its context.
At first Macintyre (1967; see also 1957) tried to qualify Winch’s theses by arguing that there is a conception of rationality which is somewhat neutral among different `forms of life’ and provides a ground for evaluating beliefs such as that in witches.
As is well known, for von Wright the intentionalist model of explanation is justified by the action and its intentions being, as G.E.M. Anscombe (1957) argued in his Intentions, the conclusion and the premise of a practical inference respectively.
Laslett and James Fishkin (1979, 1), in their introduction to the fifth volume of Philosophy, Politics and Society, comment that since the publication of A Theory of Justice «quite some part of the pursuit of political philosophy in the English speaking world since […] has been taken up with the discussion of this Olympian work. Philosophy and Public Affairs, an American journal, began its career at exactly the same time and has had an important impact too. In its columns, as in those of other journals including Political Theory (1973 on, also American) a new descriptive adjective has been coined, Rawlsian».
Rawls’s critique was aimed at utilitarian morality rather than utilitarian psychology, though the latter too underwent severe criticism by neo-contractarians.
Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) had already criticised utilitarianism because «it considers society to be formed of an aggregate of similar human beings. The character of each molecule is regarded as constant. [Utilitarianism] does not allow for the variation of character and of social relations» (quoted in Hardin, 1989, 190).
For example, when treating the relationship between freedom and the development of personality John Stuart Mill never used the term `autonomy’.
I am indebted to Sergio Caruso for making this point in a discussion of Santoro, 1991.
The two dimensions can also be found in Feinberg’s (1986, 28) four meanings of autonomy. This may mean at times the `capacity’ for governing oneself, at times actual self-government, at times the virtue of actual self-government, and at times, finally, the exclusive character of this self-government (`sovereign authority’). The polarisation of the notion of autonomy has been grasped by Thomas Hill (1987, 133 ff.), too. For him the term autonomy is used in theoretical debates at times to mean an individual’s right to be treated as an autonomous subject (R-autonomy, Right-autonomy), at times to mean the `psychological condition of self-government’ (PC-autonomy).
Benn (1976, 124) argues that if an `anomie’ individual, acting in a certain way not because she wants to do so but simply because she has no reason to do otherwise, were to be considered autonomous, the notion of autonomy would end up dissolving into that of «heterarchy or psychosis».
For an example of such a tendency in authors taking the psychological perspective, see Kohlberg, 1969.
Though Locke never uses the term `autonomy’, it can be argued that for him an individual is autonomous when she follows the law of nature’. I shall dwell on this later.
«Freedom (independence from being constrained by another’s choice), insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with a universal law, is the only original right belonging to every man by virtue of his humanity» (Kant, 1797 [1996], En. tr. 393).
Kant consistently argues that «punishment by court (poena forensis) […] can never be inflicted merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society. It must always be inflicted upon him only because he has committed a crime» (Kant, 1797 [1996], En. tr. 473). In a Kantian perspective punishment can never be aimed at re-education but only at retribution (see Murphy, 1972).
It would be interesting to establish whether J.S. Mill was driven not to use the term `autonomy’ because this would be reminiscent of Kant’s view.
Herbert Marcuse (1936, 92), among others, assimilated Kant’s position to the stoic one, claiming that «by the ultimate reference of freedom to the moral law, freedom becomes compatible with every type of unfreedom; owing to its transcendental nature, it cannot be affected by any kind of restriction imposed upon actual freedom». This seems to me too crude, but I shall not dwell here on a topic about which, as is well known, there is a huge literature.
Kant (1797 [1996], En. tr. 395) writes in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten: «in the doctrine of duties a human being can and should be represented in terms of his capacity for freedom, which is wholly supersensible, and so too merely in terms of his humanity, his personality independent of physical attributes (homo noumenon)».
The phrase is by Gerald Dworkin (1989).
See, among others, Roderick Chisholm (1964), Gerald Dworkin (1989), Joseph Raz (1982), Joel Feinberg (1986) and John Gray (1983). Chisholm (1964, 33) says that this notion of autonomy entails that «in one very strict sense of the term, there can be no science of man». It may be of interest to notice that, correspondingly, a major critique made against sociology since the 1960s, hence against Parsons’s account of social action too, was that it gave up the idea that individuals are autonomous and did not depict them as self-directing beings but as puppets moved by `social threads’.
That this conception of autonomy is untenable is evident when considering that it is inconsistent with any system of rules or criteria whatsoever. It completely ignores that even «if we are to make reasonable choices, then we must be governed by canons of reasoning, norms of conduct, standards of excellence that are not themselves the products of choices» (Dworkin, 1989, 12).
Raz (1982, 112) similarly claims that «the completely autonomous person is an impossibility».
Such theses ignore that, as Stephen Toulmin (1972, 264) remarked, «when we say `it is known that so-and- so’ or `biochemistry tells us that so-and-so’ […] we do not mean that everyone knows, or that every biochemist will tell us that so-and-so. We normally imply rather that this is the `authoritative’ views — both in the disciplinary sense, i.e., the view supported by the best accredited body of experience, and also in the professional sense, i.e., the view supported by the influential authorities in the subject».
«The relations of factual beliefs to moral attitudes (or beliefs) — both the logic and psychology of this — seem to me to need further philosophical investigation. The thesis that no relevant logical relationship exists, e.g. the division between fact and value often attributed to Hume, seems to me to be unplausible, and to point to a problem, not to its solution» (Berlin, 1969, xii n. 1).
The idea that fact judgements are necessarily relevant for other fact judgements implies that they are both independent of any theoretical mediation and concerning phenomena any individual can observe. In order to reject such a claim one need not deal with the first point and enter the dispute about the theory-laden character of observation. It suffices to acknowledge that in most cases `fact judgements’ — in Hare’s example the judgement about the roundness of Earth — are not an immediately observable given. They are rather explanations, based on a number of laws (physical in the case at hand), of some phenomena people observe. But we are not bound to accept such explanations because, as Pierre Duhem and then Quine have shown, one can always say that an alternative explanation provides a better account of facts.
Michael Oakeshott (1975, 78–9) argued that «a morality […] is neither a system of general principles nor a code of rules, but a vernacular language. […] It is not a device for formulating judgements about conduct or for solving so-called moral problems, but a practice in terms of which to think, to choose, to act, and to utter». In the same vein Richard Rorty argues that «`moral principles’ (the categorical imperative, the utilitarian principle, etc.) only have a point insofar as they incorporate tacit reference to a whole range of institutions, practices, and vocabularies of moral and political deliberation. […] We can keep the notion of `morality’ just insofar as we can cease to think of morality as the voice of the divine part of ourselves and instead think of it as the voice of ourselves as members of a community, speakers of a common language» (Rorty, 1989, 58–9).
For a critique of Hare’s account see Warnock, 1967, 30–47.
For Gerald Dworkin (1989, 55), to deny that the practice of asking an `expert’ what is right and what is wrong is a moral practice means «either to adopt a stipulative definition of morality or to maintain a substantive thesis about the `correct’ or `rational’ way in which to think about moral matters».
«He must know them [the opposing views] in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty» (Mill, 1859 [1972], 97).
Daniela Gobetti (1992, 152) argued that this position differs from traditional liberal theses in that it entails «the broadening of the notion of `harm’», hence the broadening of the sphere where government can legitimately act and, correspondingly, the narrowing of the scope of negative freedom.
«Those in whose eyes this reticence on the part of heretics is no evil should consider, in the first place, that in consequence of it there is never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions; and that such of them as could not stand such a discussion, though they may be prevented from spreading, do not disappear. But it is not the minds of heretics that are deteriorated most by the ban placed on all enquiry which does not end in the orthodox conclusions. The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped, and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy» (Mill, 1859 [1972], 94).
This point is made by Haworth (1986, 223 n. 3) when he argues that it is a mistake to speak, as Nozick (who, as it is clear from the passage on the `experience machine’ quoted above, seems to take a Millian conception of self-realisation) does, of the sphere of freedom as a `domain of autonomy’. It is only a `domain for autonomy’. This is not a purely terminological question. For Nozick’s phrasing «suggests that presence of the domain provides a guarantee that it will be occupied autonomously; but of course there can be no such guarantee. It is entirely possible and not uncommon for people to act heteronomously in domains for autonomy». A sphere of freedom does not itself secure individuals’ autonomy, contrary to what the advocates of the Millian conception of self-realisation claim.
There is, as is well known, a heated debate on Mill’s actual commitment to his declared intentions. Ten (1980), for instance, argues that Mill departed from a strictly utilitarian position in order to appeal to an original right to autonomy and other natural rights. On this see Gray, 1983.
Susan Mendus (1986–7, 110) questioned the coherence of Mill’s position on the ground that «the spirit of improvement is not always the spirit of liberty» and that, given the great significance attached to self-realisation, Mill’s liberalism «simply cannot deliver on its promise of a plural, tolerant society in which there is a fundamental commitment to liberty». Indeed in On Liberty Mill argues, with reference not only to children but to the inhabitants of `uncivilised’ countries and some members of the working class, that the principle of liberty only applies to «a human being arrived at the maturity of his faculties». `Temporary’ and `limited’ restrictions on freedom, on the argument that full autonomy has not been reached, are undoubtedly, as Mendus (1986–7, 114) says, «paternalistic restrictions on liberty».
Mill (1859 [1972], 125) is categorical on this: «human beings are not like sheep; and even sheep are not indistinguishably alike. A man cannot get a coat or a pair of boots to fit him unless they are either made to his measure, or he has a whole warehouseful to choose from: and is it easier to fit him with a life than with a coat, or are human beings more like one another in their whole physical and spiritual conformation than in the shape of their feet? […] Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies, that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental moral and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable».
Unlike Kant, however, Mill argues that this is due to each human being’s distinctiveness rather than to our calling to rationality being written into each of us by nature.
According to Berlin’s (1958, 122) famous definition of `negative liberty’, I am free «to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others. If I am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise do, I am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or, it may be, enslaved».
Under this respect Cranston (1967, 458) seems to exaggerate the actual differences among liberal positions when, in writing the headword `Liberalism’ of the Encyclopedia of Political Thought, he holds that «by definition, a liberal is a man who believes in liberty, but because different men at different times have meant different things by liberty, `liberalism’ is correspondingly ambiguous». While it is true that the notion of freedom has taken a wide range of meanings, it is also true that, as Berlin (1958, 161) says, for liberals «every interpretation of the word liberty, however unusual, must include a minimum of what I have called `negative’ liberty». This idea is the lowest common denominator among positions as different as Hobbes’s rational egoism, natural law, utilitarianism, Ronald Dworkin’s and Rawls’s welfarist concerns, and Nozick’s early anarchical-capitalist positions. Green (1886 [1941], 3) too acknowledges that what he defines `juristic’ freedom «always implies some exemption from compulsion by others», even though he immediately goes on to say that «the extent and conditions of this exemption, as enjoyed by the `freeman’ in different states of society, are very various».
«Freedom is […] always of something (an agent or agents), from something, to do, not do, become, or not become something» (MacCallum, 1967, 314).
Berlin (1958, 128) argues, e.g., that freedom is the ground of «every plea for civil liberties and individual rights, every protest against exploitation and humiliation, against the encroachment of public authority, or the mass hypnosis of custom or organized propaganda».
Berlin (1958, 139) emphasises that «in its individualistic form the concept of the rational sage who has escaped into the inner fortress of his true self seems to arise when the external world has proved exceptionally arid, cruel, or unjust». He supports his contention by citing, among others, the cases of classical Greece, where the spread of the Stoic ideal coincided with the subjecting of the polis by the Macedonian kingdom, and the ancient Rome, where too Stoicism became widespread after the end of the Republic.
«lt might be said that living on a rail line with numerous open switches has the advantage that one can then travel to many different destinations and thus discover or decide which among them one most wants to move to. But, if in going to those various places and trying them out, one is unable to assess their attractions in an independent and controlled way, he might as well have stayed home and tossed a coin» (Haworth, 1986, 147).
For evidence of how influential such a thesis is still today, see Haworth’s positions mentioned in the preceding paragraph.
Berlin’s essays curiously appeared in the same year as Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science, 1958.
This emphasis, however, did not conceal that, as Richard Bellamy (1993, 3) says, «a person who regards the practical ability to perform an act to be included in the term freedom is articulating a different moral principle and vision of society from somone who wishes to restrict the term to its narrow negative sense of a lack of legal or physical impediments». There was such an intention, but Marxist authors kept the perception of this alive, so much so that MacCallum (1967, 329) in his paper admits that «only when we determine what the men in question are free from, and what they are free to do or become, […] will we be in a position to make rational evaluations of the relative merits of societies with regard to freedom».
Political science classifications distinguish these regimes from the authoritarian ones precisely on the basis of a propaganda apparatus devoted to indoctrinating citizens and convincing them that theirs is the `best possible world’. For an outline of this distinction see Morlino (1986).
The thesis that, when faced with a risky choice, people usually prefer logically inconsistent judgements (and that experts’ behaviour is not specially more coherent) is argued with a wealth of examples by Kahneman and Tversky (1983a and 1983b).
Agents’ awareness, instead, is arguably Mill’s criterion in On Liberty where he says: «When there is not a certainty, but only a danger of mischief, no one but the person himself can judge of the motive which may prompt him to incur the risk: in this case, therefore (unless he is a child, or delirious, or in some state of excitement or absorption incompatible with the full use of the reflecting faculty), he ought, I conceive, to be only warned of the danger; not forcibly prevented from exposing himself to it» (Mill, 1859 [1972], 152; my emphasis). Actually the meaning of this statement depends on one’s reading of the emphasised phrase: if `certainty’ is a matter of experts’ opinion, the theses of On Liberty and Utilitarianism are the same.
Passages like this make it possible to liken Mill’s views to Hare’s analysis of disposition. After all, it should not be forgotten that Mill is the author of that System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, that was a major reference of neo-positivist theory (it is expressly appealed to by Hempel in his famous 1942 article). In this work Mill argues that all sciences, including the humanities, are characterised by a study of phenomena falling under the rule of natural laws. It is worth noticing that Hobbes (1651 [1985], V, 111) is brought by his subjectivism to hold a view diametrically opposed to Mill’s: «no mans Reason, nor the Reason of any number of men, makes the certaintie; no more than an account is therefore well cast up, because a great many men have unanimously approved it».
Thus Taylor does not even consider Berlin’s view that the negative conception of freedom may allow a totalitarian regime to disguise itself by convincing citizens that they should not have certain desires.
Only two exceptions come to my mind. The first is MacCallum (1967, 314) who, in his famous triadic definition of freedom does not specify this and says: «freedom is […] always of something (an agent or agents), from something, to do, not do, become, or not become something […]. Taking the format `xis (is not) free from y to do (not do, become, not become) z’, x ranges over agents, y ranges over such `preventing conditions’ as constraints, restrictions, interferences, and barriers, and z ranges over actions or conditions o character or circumstance». The second is A.S. Kaufman (1962) who holds, against Berlin, that even obstacles not caused by human beings are a restriction of political and social freedom. The first exception seems to result from a failure fully to spell out the definition, for all over his article MacCallum takes it for granted that the only relevant interferences are attributable to individuals. Kaufinan’s position seems to have remained unique.
Intentionality is a more controversial issue. In `Two Concepts of Liberty’ Berlin (1958, 122) first claims that coercion implies a `deliberate’ interference in the area an individual might otherwise act within, then in the following page he argues that there is oppression when an individual `with or without intention’ frustrates another’s wishes. In his reply to critics he uses the phrase mentioned in the text but he then adds that only when interferences with another’s freedom «are deliberately intended (or, perhaps, are accompanied by awareness that they may block paths) will they be liable to be called oppression» (Berlin, 1969, xl).
According to our explanations, that water descends does not depend on `its nature’ but on the law of gravitation. It is surprising that Hobbes, an enthusiast admirer of Galileo, uses an Aristotelian language.
On this view the mere presence of an impediment, without an alleged wish to act, does not restrict freedom, as is shown by Locke’s contention that an individual is free if she is closed within a room but does not want to go out.
Berlin (1969, lxi; my emphasis) himself, in his reply to critics, says that «if it is maintained that the identification of the value of liberty with the value of a field of free choice amounts to a doctrine of self-realization, whether for good or evil ends, and that this is closer to positive than to negative liberty, I shall offer no great objection».
It is worth emphasising that Skinner (1990, 298) holds that «we may wish to claim that this theory of human nature is false. But we can hardly claim to know a priori that it could never be in principle sincerely held».
Baldwin (1984, 142), however, argues that if negative freedom enables an individual to be herself «where the moral ideals, commitment to which the ethical naturalist holds to be an essential feature of human nature, include political ideals, positive freedom requires political activity».
Skinner refers in particular to Thomas Aquinas’s De Regimine Principum (book 1, chap. I). As is well known, on the Aristotelian conception man is a social, indeed political, animal because he is not self-sufficient, he is not capable of autarcheia, he cannot live out of the polis. This does not mean that individuals cannot survive in isolation, but that they only develop their distinctive capacities within a society. Life within a society is seen as a necessary condition for practical rationality and moral responsibility to develop. Thus the key idea of Aristotelianism is that outside of a society — for some versions of it, a particular kind of society — the our distinctive capacities as human beings cannot develop.
One of the key points of `Two Concepts of Liberty’ is that «the connexion between democracy and individual liberty is a good deal more tenuous than it seemed to many advocates of both. The desire to be governed by myself or at any rate to participate in the process by which my life is to be controlled, may be as deep a wish as that of a free area for action, and perhaps historically older. But it is not a desire for the same thing» (Berlin, 1958, 130–1; my emphasis).
In ancient times the Greek and the Latin term for freedom, eleutheria and libertas, were used «chiefly, if not entirely, in reference to the freedom of the state». Foreign domination and despotic government were depicted as equivalent with respect to freedom: «the contrast implied is sometimes between autonomy and subjection to a foreign power; sometimes between the freedom of [within] a republic and the rule of a despot» (C.S. Lewis, 1961, 124–5). Individuals’ freedom and state’s self-determination were substantially coincident. It should be noticed that this conception of freedom, though endorsed by Rousseau’s and Hegel’s positions, is rejected by Green, even though for some commentators not always in a coherent way (see e.g. Baldwin, 1984). Green (1886 [1941], 8) says of the `juristic’ freedom that «we cannot significantly speak of freedom except with reference to individual persons».
To be sure, Berlin (1958, 160–2) admits that even a Rousseauan conception of freedom as self-government can be argued for «without thereby rendering the word `freedom’ wholly meaningless». It should only be clear that it «has little to do with Mill’s and liberals’ idea of freedom».
For a definition of such an anthropology and the republican notion of `corruption’ Skinner refers to Machiavelli’ s Discorsi (1.XVII-XIX).
The idea that the opposition is between a common sense, even `natural’, model of individual and a model proposed by an obscure philosophical doctrine (such as `ethical naturalism’) is the leitmotiv of the 1960s debate on positive and negative freedom. In particular MacCallum opposes the `they’ of the advocates of positive freedom to a `we’ that, including the author himself, surely implies the idea of `sensible person’ and presumably refers to `us liberals’. According to MacCallum (1967, 323; my emphasis) a proponent of the negative conception of freedom «is purported to count persons just as we do — to point to living human bodies and say of each (and only of each), `There’s a person’. Precisely what we ordinarily call persons. (And if he is troubled by nonviable fetuses, and so forth, so are we)». Instead «much might trouble us in the accounts of the so called adherents of `positive’ freedom. They sometimes do not count, as the agent whose freedom is being considered, what inheritors of our tradition would unhesitatingly consider to be a ‘person’» (MacCallum, 1967, 324; my emphasis).
This position is explicitly held by C.I. Lewis (1969).
This anthropological model is so pervasive that Berlin himself does not realise that it underlies one of the central theses of `Two Concepts of Liberty’. For his belief that the freedom of an individual `extinguishing’ the wishes she cannot fulfil is a false freedom implies that we can distinguish the wishes we give up because we changed our minds, or personalities, and wishes we give up because we are weak or conditioned. The distinction between an individual’s natural wishes, those she chooses for herself, and her artificial wishes, those circumstances impose upon her, entails a conception of personality (here, in spite of Berlin’s criticism, I would say Millian personality). Without such a conception, as Berlin (1969, xlii) himself says in his reply to critics, «apathetic neglect of various avenues to more vigorous and generous life […] is not considered incompatible with the notion of being free». Ignoring the process of the formation of wishes and lacking criteria for assessing their genuineness, nothing other than the judgement that some wishes are vital for an individual’s `true’ identity can allow us to tell whether a renunciation was self-or other-imposed; nothing other than the idea that there is a `substantive’ rationality that must be a constitutive element of every individual can allow us to say that the costs of fulfilling a desire do not justify its abandonment.
Green (1888, 372), e.g., in `Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract’ argues that «freedom in positive sense» consists in «liberation of the powers of all men equally for contributions to a common good».
For a more extensive treatment of this point see Santoro, 1994.
As Abbott (1976, 74) says, «the exercise of political authority is simply incompatible with the exercise of conscience. The exercise of moral judgement is quite different from the acceptance of political authority». By accepting `as final the commands of the others’, an individual «forfeits his autonomy» (Wolff, 1970, 14).
«For the autonomous man, there is no such thing, strictly speaking, as a command» (Wolff, 1970, 15).
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Santoro, E. (2003). Individual Autonomy and Freedom. In: Autonomy, Freedom and Rights. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 65. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0823-4_2
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