Quentin Skinner on concepts of liberty
September 4th 2006 05:23
How many concepts of liberty?
A very potted summary of a lecture by Professor Quentin Skinner of Cambridge University. This lecture was delivered at Sydney University on Wednesday 19 July 2006.
Apologies for any misrememberings, misreadings, etc.
The lecture is now available in MP3 format from the Usyd podcast page.
We can never hope with any concept with a complex history to offer a definition. To the extent that concepts have a history, they evade definition. So instead, we must write genealogies.
There is no tidy origin from which to trace the Anglophone concept of freedom. But the most convenient moment is Hobbes' Leviathan.
In Hobbes, liberty is absence of interference by some external agency. So what it means to be "unfree" (as opposed to "unable") is that some agency disempowered you. And Hobbes conceived of interference as a physical force upon the body of the individual that prevents or compels action.
This is a "negative" concept: the presence of freedom is marked by an absence.
But Hobbes' definition has a counterintuitive implication, which is that coercion of the will does not remove freedom. Says Hobbes, if a highwayman asks you, "Your money or your life?", and you choose life, don't claim you didn't act freely -- you in fact acted very freely.
Locke takes up the criticism and thinks that in the highwayman example you are unfree. He is then faced with the problem of explicating coercion of the will, but gives examples rather than an explicit definition. Threats, promises and bribes can count as coercion.
Bentham attempts an explicit definition. He distinguishes two ways of binding the will: (1) promise of reward for compliance; and (2) penalizing for non-compliance. And it's only the latter that's coercive. You act freely if there are no costs to your action, and the sorts of things that count as costs are credible, immediate threats. Threats are clearly coercive. Bribes are clearly not. Promises and offers can occupy a fuzzy area. Early Rawls, in A theory of justice, employs the Benthamite concept.
Mill points out that the liberal tradition up to his day uses the word "external". Mill wants to ask: can't the agent who interferes with your freedom be YOU?
Mill owes something to Plato (the will can ally itself with reason or with passion; the latter is not you), and to Tocqueville. Mill thinks the yoke of opinion is heavier than the yoke of law, and the danger to freedom from civil society greater than from the state. Given strong civil norms, you might, by education especially, begin inauthentically to internalize those norms and choose what is customary in preference to what is your inclination.
Compare Marx: if society determines consciousness and that society is bourgeois, within such a society you will not be free to pursue your true interests. And Freud: there are unconscious motives, but you can be made aware of them and liberated.
All the theories so far are about absence of interference, holding off intruders of various kinds, especially the state. But after Mill, some argued that the state can be an important part of freedom. This line of thinking was particularly inspired by Hegel.
Charles Taylor: liberty is not minimum of interference. This is merely the negative part of the dialectic that must be transcended. There is also a positive content. The positive content: what it is to be free is to realize your highest potentialities. Human nature has an essence (whereas liberal philosophy denies a human essence). Some acts can be unfree even when free from interference.
Aristotle: "zoon politikon" -- the essence of our nature is self-government. Arendt: only in political activity do you realize your true nature. Taylor: freedom can only be realized in collective control.
But there are as many theories of positive freedom as there are of human essence. For instance, on the Christian view, service to deity is freedom.
Isaiah Berlin: the positive concept of freedom has sinister overtones.
There is also a third concept of liberty, a classical view. This is the view that Hobbes was particularly trying to discredit, and which Skinner wants to resurrect.
In Roman law, there is a distinction between the free man (liber homo) and the slave (servus). You are unfree if you depend upon the arbitrary will of anyone else -- that is the definition of slave -- anyone in the power of another. You never know what's going to happen to you, so you are prudent and self-censor. Any relationship of power, any dependency, any inequality takes away freedom. Any awareness that there could be interference. The mere fact of being dependent means action is prevented or compelled. Freedom means occupying a certain status.
Who tried to uphold this theory? James Harrington riposted Hobbes: to be subject to any discretionary power is slavery; all monarchy is slavery; you can only be free in a republic. In the 18th century, there was the idea that any unchecked power of an executive is slavery, for instance if the executive has the right of war and peace and the legislature has no control over the matter. The main argument of the US war of independence was that the colonized are slaves; and what is important about dependence is that you have no real rights, you are always subject to arbitrariness. And Mary Wollstonecraft speaks of women as dependent and slaves, and of self-deformation under the conditions of dependency.
How many concepts of freedom? There are three. And one ends up with serious incompatibilities between the three accounts. Which concept do we want? Well, the lectern shouldn't be a pulpit. Lectures should never tell you what to think but should try to show you how you might think, should open up an issue, and leave you with questions.
In the question and answer period, Skinner remarks:
* The question of liberty is separate from the question of free will. Liberty is about freedom of action, not freedom of will. For instance, Hobbes speaks of free and unfree water.
* Is the master free? In the Roman law context, yes. But in the positive freedom tradition, Hegel speaks of a master/slave dialectic where the master also is contaminated, rendered unfree. [And Mill agrees.]
* Does the positive account need to speak of the essence of human nature? Well, in this tradition not all exercise of power is free action. Without some concept of human essence, you couldn't distinguish between free and not free.
* On arbitrary government: Hobbes doesn't mind arbitrariness; law is command, and if it's arbitrary, tough luck. But according to Locke: if you are in a state of arbitrary dependence, you are not free, you are a slave; and slavery is not a possible form of government.
* Mill plays all three traditions, but doesn't do this coherently. One can't. There are choices to be made; the three types cannot be reconciled.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Quentin Skiner's website and from the Wikipedia articles Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, and Statue of Liberty.
A very potted summary of a lecture by Professor Quentin Skinner of Cambridge University. This lecture was delivered at Sydney University on Wednesday 19 July 2006.
Apologies for any misrememberings, misreadings, etc.
The lecture is now available in MP3 format from the Usyd podcast page.
***
We can never hope with any concept with a complex history to offer a definition. To the extent that concepts have a history, they evade definition. So instead, we must write genealogies.
***
Thomas Hobbes
In Hobbes, liberty is absence of interference by some external agency. So what it means to be "unfree" (as opposed to "unable") is that some agency disempowered you. And Hobbes conceived of interference as a physical force upon the body of the individual that prevents or compels action.
This is a "negative" concept: the presence of freedom is marked by an absence.
***
But Hobbes' definition has a counterintuitive implication, which is that coercion of the will does not remove freedom. Says Hobbes, if a highwayman asks you, "Your money or your life?", and you choose life, don't claim you didn't act freely -- you in fact acted very freely.
John Locke
Locke takes up the criticism and thinks that in the highwayman example you are unfree. He is then faced with the problem of explicating coercion of the will, but gives examples rather than an explicit definition. Threats, promises and bribes can count as coercion.
Jeremy Bentham
***
Mill points out that the liberal tradition up to his day uses the word "external". Mill wants to ask: can't the agent who interferes with your freedom be YOU?
Mill owes something to Plato (the will can ally itself with reason or with passion; the latter is not you), and to Tocqueville. Mill thinks the yoke of opinion is heavier than the yoke of law, and the danger to freedom from civil society greater than from the state. Given strong civil norms, you might, by education especially, begin inauthentically to internalize those norms and choose what is customary in preference to what is your inclination.
Compare Marx: if society determines consciousness and that society is bourgeois, within such a society you will not be free to pursue your true interests. And Freud: there are unconscious motives, but you can be made aware of them and liberated.
***
All the theories so far are about absence of interference, holding off intruders of various kinds, especially the state. But after Mill, some argued that the state can be an important part of freedom. This line of thinking was particularly inspired by Hegel.
Charles Taylor: liberty is not minimum of interference. This is merely the negative part of the dialectic that must be transcended. There is also a positive content. The positive content: what it is to be free is to realize your highest potentialities. Human nature has an essence (whereas liberal philosophy denies a human essence). Some acts can be unfree even when free from interference.
Aristotle: "zoon politikon" -- the essence of our nature is self-government. Arendt: only in political activity do you realize your true nature. Taylor: freedom can only be realized in collective control.
But there are as many theories of positive freedom as there are of human essence. For instance, on the Christian view, service to deity is freedom.
Isaiah Berlin: the positive concept of freedom has sinister overtones.
***
There is also a third concept of liberty, a classical view. This is the view that Hobbes was particularly trying to discredit, and which Skinner wants to resurrect.
In Roman law, there is a distinction between the free man (liber homo) and the slave (servus). You are unfree if you depend upon the arbitrary will of anyone else -- that is the definition of slave -- anyone in the power of another. You never know what's going to happen to you, so you are prudent and self-censor. Any relationship of power, any dependency, any inequality takes away freedom. Any awareness that there could be interference. The mere fact of being dependent means action is prevented or compelled. Freedom means occupying a certain status.
Who tried to uphold this theory? James Harrington riposted Hobbes: to be subject to any discretionary power is slavery; all monarchy is slavery; you can only be free in a republic. In the 18th century, there was the idea that any unchecked power of an executive is slavery, for instance if the executive has the right of war and peace and the legislature has no control over the matter. The main argument of the US war of independence was that the colonized are slaves; and what is important about dependence is that you have no real rights, you are always subject to arbitrariness. And Mary Wollstonecraft speaks of women as dependent and slaves, and of self-deformation under the conditions of dependency.
***
How many concepts of freedom? There are three. And one ends up with serious incompatibilities between the three accounts. Which concept do we want? Well, the lectern shouldn't be a pulpit. Lectures should never tell you what to think but should try to show you how you might think, should open up an issue, and leave you with questions.
***
In the question and answer period, Skinner remarks:
* The question of liberty is separate from the question of free will. Liberty is about freedom of action, not freedom of will. For instance, Hobbes speaks of free and unfree water.
* Is the master free? In the Roman law context, yes. But in the positive freedom tradition, Hegel speaks of a master/slave dialectic where the master also is contaminated, rendered unfree. [And Mill agrees.]
* Does the positive account need to speak of the essence of human nature? Well, in this tradition not all exercise of power is free action. Without some concept of human essence, you couldn't distinguish between free and not free.
* On arbitrary government: Hobbes doesn't mind arbitrariness; law is command, and if it's arbitrary, tough luck. But according to Locke: if you are in a state of arbitrary dependence, you are not free, you are a slave; and slavery is not a possible form of government.
* Mill plays all three traditions, but doesn't do this coherently. One can't. There are choices to be made; the three types cannot be reconciled.
***
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Quentin Skiner's website and from the Wikipedia articles Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, and Statue of Liberty.
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Comment by BenP
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
What's wrong with Prof Skinner's haircut?
Mine's quite similar.
I think a lot of people's are.
Is it better to have a haircut like this? --
Comment by Justin
I'm unsure which is better and for what reasons. It's hard to deliberate. Hobbes goes for the materialistic type that accounts for bodily freedom. Mill sees liberty as the antonym to slavery in a type of reflexive endorsement of Aristotle. Locke points out tacit and explicit consent for arguing out why we have fundamental excersise as the state and serving it.
Interestingly there's two types of freedom - the negative and positive versions. Patriarchal auhority is given credence to culture-bound ideas especially from the early theorists stating initially women don't have any power to women being just like men without the authority to be heard in a respected level.
I guess it's a concept we're still grappling to comes to terms with past an implicit level of understanding.
I'll get back to you on this one!
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I don't know if you were making this point, but, if not, you were close to making it -- it's interesting that the change in concepts of freedom from negative to positive might be parallelled by changes in feminism and what the goal was seen to be.
Comment by BenP
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Comment by BenP
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Comment by Justin
I was nowhere near the point you made but it looks good that it was somewhere attributed in some way to me! Hah.
Yeah, it's just such a huge topic and so much going on there. But as to your reference, it's very arguable now that you mention it. I don't know any modern political philosphers and how they see the role of women in the social contract and legitimising political authority like the lads do. However, there's definitely an increasing trend of elevating women as being supportive and conducive to the state from Aristotle who considered them on the same level with slaves to Locke who saw them as merely subjugated by patriarchal authority to.. who knows? Surely though there must be an influential theorist whose come to terms with at least the modern world if not post/second modernity?
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
-- Re political philosophy and women in general: it's been traditional to think of a spectrum from right to left, with liberty on the right, and equality on the left. Feminism, however, doesn't neatly fit on this old picture of politics and political philosophy.
-- Re women and social contract: my impression is that a lot of feminists don't like social contract theory. Often, the idea in social contract is to work out the standards that free and equal individuals would agree to. The feminist critique says: But your free and equal individual is male.
Why a feminist might think this is complicated. But reasons might include: (1) that the social contract model might not take into account economic and other entrenched disparities in the real world; and (2) the the particular feminist believes in a feminine "ethics of care" that is distinct from a male "ethics of justice"; such an ethics of care might be alleged to be inconsistent with the idea of construct abstract, universal rules.