Taylor: What s Wrong with Negative Liberty

Transcription

1 Taylor: What s Wrong with Negative Liberty Charles Taylor ( ) Canadian philosopher; succeeded Berlin as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Philosophy; taught for many years at McGill; now Professor of Law and Philosophy at Northwestern. Ran unsuccessfully for Parliament four times (1962, 1963, 1968) as an NDP candidate, in one instance famously losing to Pierre Trudeau (1965). In 1991, appointed to the Conseil de la langue française Templeton prize; 2008 Kyoto Prize. Etc., etc., etc. Often described (but not usually self-described) as a communitarian 1

2 Communitarianism Philosophical view: Chiefly a reaction to the assumptions of classical liberalism: In its emphasis on the voluntary actions of f atomic individuals, liberalism is epistemologically and/or ontologically incoherent. Communities are not simply collections of individuals. instead individuals are largely shaped and defined by their communities. Exclusive Humanism : For Taylor, the focus is not so much on political community as on the moral sources provided by wider cultural and intellectual traditions and communities. (Ideological communitarianism, e.g., Amitai Etzioni is something distinct roughly, leftish economic policy + conservative social policy) Communitarianism: Rights & Freedoms The classical liberal/libertarian worry: Positive welfare rights inevitably involve the restriction of negative rights (e.g., through taxation, regulation). Can this (ever) be justified? Communitarians: The very idea of negative rights depends on the existence of a political community that values rights reciprocity dictates that we have a duty to give something back. Moreover, a lack of positive rights can make negative rights meaningless (e.g., literacy/free press; unemployment/market freedoms) 2

3 What s Wrong With Negative Liberty? The liberal conception of positive liberty (à la Berlin) easily slides into caricature: Most positive conceptions do not maintain that freedom consists purely and simply in the collective control over the common life (98) I.e., The explicitly political question Who governs me? is an important question, but not by any means the only question when it comes to positive liberty. For one thing, there are other internal (negative) obstacles to freedom besides gross external obstacles lack of awareness, false consciousness, repression. Speaking of Internal Factors Of special concern to Taylor: The post-romantic idea that each person s form of self-realization is original to him/her, and therefore can only be worked out independently (99) This sort of project (obviously) can fail on account of internal as well as external factors. E.g., I haven t yet figured out what would count as self- E.g., I haven t yet figured out what would count as self realization for me. Also, there may be conflicts between competing values that I hold to be important to me. 3

4 Berlin s Distinction Reworked Opportunity Concept : Being free is a matter of what we can do without interference, the area in which we are free to act. ( Being able to do X ) Exercise Concept : Being free is a matter of effectively determining for oneself the shape of one s life ( Doing X ) A conception of liberty could be grounded on either type of concept; a positive conception, however, requires an exercise concept The Maginot Line If we adopt a view of liberty that involves self-realization, then we have to discriminate among various forms of self- realization, including forms of collective self-realization li (nations, classes). So, for some liberals (e.g., Berlin): It seems safer and easier to cut all the nonsense off at the start by declaring all self-realization views to be metaphysical hogwash. (100) The alternative would be to allow second-guessing the subject i.e., to accept that people can be mistaken about their desires, goals or aspirations. 4

5 Forced To Be Free An exercise concept of freedom entails that being able to do what one wants can no longer be accepted as a sufficient condition for being free (101) fear, inauthentically internalized standards, false consciousness, etc. may get in the way. Accordingly: the subject himself can t be the final authority on the question of whether he is free. There is a danger here of forcing people to be free, but, says Taylor, this doesn t automatically open the door to totalitarian control: Any account of our real purposes has to be based on good reasons. Significance and Strong Evaluation But evaluative reasons, says Taylor, are precisely what negative accounts (defensively) leave out: Human beings are purposive, we assign value to things and states of affairs and also have second order desires desires about desires In evaluative terms, not all opportunities are equal of equal value. And, Taylor asserts, we all recognize this: E.g., the London vs. Tirana traffic lights example 5

6 our attributions of freedom make sense against a background sense of more and less significant purposes. p For the question of freedom/unfreedom is bound up with the frustration/fulfillment of our purposes. Further, our significant purposes can be frustrated by our own desires, and where these are sufficiently based on misappreciation, we consider them not really ours, and experience them as fetters. (108) 6