\u201cLiberty\u201d is a word that figures centrally in our political lexicon, the term around which every other revolves.\u00a0\u00a0 No one\u2014neither the friends nor the foes of our traditions\u2014who seeks a hearing in \u201cthe public square\u201d that is our political discourse could coherently think to refrain from enlisting it in the service of his cause.\u00a0 And no one would think to expose himself as an enemy of \u201cliberty\u201d\u2014even if he really considered himself as such.<\/p>\n
But for as simple as it is, \u201cliberty,\u201d being a concept that is both general and abstract, admits of a plethora of views, many of which are mutually contradictory.\u00a0 Thus, if he is to avoid confusing others and, more importantly, himself, it is imperative that the lover of liberty specify the object of his affections with all of the exactness of which the subject matter admits.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The prevailing conception of it equates liberty with a \u201cright\u201d that is alleged to be \u201cnatural\u201d or \u201chuman.\u201d\u00a0 And because \u201cthis right,\u201d being timeless, is a \u201cfirst principle,<\/em>\u201d a proposition whose truth owes nothing to history, it is \u201cself-evident.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>Walter E. Williams, Andrew Napolitano, and Ron Paul\u2014men deserving of no small measure of respect\u2014are among the most visible of contemporary proponents of this view.\u00a0 They are only the most recent of its representatives, however.\u00a0 This vision of liberty has roots stretching back centuries, and its pedigree is as impressive as it is extensive.\u00a0 Our own Declaration of Independence is about as notable, and notably succinct, an expression of it as any. \u00a0<\/p>\n However, in spite of the undeniably valuable purposes that it has served, the notion of a \u201cnatural right to liberty\u201d is not without its problems.<\/p>\n First, if this \u201cnatural right to liberty\u201d was the self-evident proposition that its defenders claim, then presumably, anyone and everyone with just a shred of reason should be able to grasp it.\u00a0 But for most of human history, up until near the advent of the modern era, no one <\/em>spoke of \u201cnatural rights<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 The idea of \u201cnatural law<\/em>,\u201d it is true, has been in circulation for thousands of years.\u00a0 Yet all expositors of \u201cnatural law,\u201d whether Greek, Roman, or Christian, agreed that the natural law, like all law, postulated first and foremost obligations <\/em>for its subjects to observe\u2014not <\/em>rights for them to exercise. \u00a0\u00a0The concept of \u201crights\u201d rooted in nature <\/em>was alien to this tradition of natural law.<\/p>\n If there really is a self-evident right to liberty, then presumably it would be as impossible to question it as it is impossible to cast doubt upon the propositions that \u201c2+2 = 4,\u201d \u201cI am a conscious entity,\u201d \u201cThe world is more than five minutes old,\u201d and the like.\u00a0 However, even the defenders of natural law throughout the ancient and medieval periods had never heard or dreamt of natural rights.\u00a0 When we couple this fact with the consideration that to this day, many an astute observer, including and especially those of a more conservative temperament, question the concept of natural rights, it becomes obvious that it does not possess the self-evidence that its proponents ascribe to it.<\/p>\n This is a problem, though, because in claiming that there is a \u201cself-evident\u201d natural right to liberty in spite of <\/em>the fact that it has been anything but evident to most people, the proponent of natural rights arouses suspicions that he either doesn\u2019t believe that of which he speaks or realizes that his belief is without basis.<\/p>\n Another difficulty with the natural right conception of liberty is that even if it is \u201cself-evident\u201d that everyone has a natural right to liberty, this no more generates guidance for action than does the \u201cself-evident\u201d fact that we are awake.\u00a0 An allegedly \u201cself-evident\u201d natural right to liberty is as compatible with communism, socialism, and capitalism as it is compatible with liberalism, libertarianism, neoconservatism, and anarchism.<\/p>\n It may be true that there is such a right, but this in and of itself tells us nothing about how we should conduct our lives, arrange our institutions, or shape our policies.<\/p>\n Finally, although its apologists haven\u2019t seemed to have grasped this fact, the notion that there is a \u201cnatural right to liberty\u201d is of the same philosophical piece as the notion that rights are the creations of government alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n The nineteenth century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham had famously declared that \u201cnatural rights\u201d are \u201cnonsense on stilts.\u201d\u00a0 From Bentham\u2019s perspective, far from being \u201cnatural,\u201d rights were utilitarian devices that we contrive in order to \u201cmaximize pleasure and minimize pain for the greatest number of sentient beings.\u201d\u00a0 Although this position and that affirming a natural right to liberty are mutually exclusive, they are equally animated by the same philosophical impulse.\u00a0 This impulse has been called rationalism.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Rationalism is variously depicted, but common to all rationalists is an aversion to anything and everything that threatens to defy the reason\/nature dichotomy within which Western philosophy has operated for most of its history.\u00a0 To put it more specifically, the rationalist\u2019s analyzes of human conduct attach little to no importance to tradition, custom, culture, <\/em>or civilization\u2014<\/em>i.e. that which is intermediate between reason and nature.\u00a0 Either morality is grounded in an unencumbered, universal Rationality or else it is rooted in an unencumbered, universal human nature.\u00a0 Both the proponents of \u201cnatural rights\u201d as well as <\/em>their utilitarian enemies assume that these are our only two alternatives.<\/p>\n Yet they are both mistaken.\u00a0<\/p>\n Neither reason nor nature is unfettered: both are constituted by the culturally and historically-specific traditions within which they develop.\u00a0 The seventeenth century French Catholic philosopher Blaise Pascal once noted that while habit is usually said to be \u201csecond nature,\u201d it just may be the case that nature is \u201csecond habit.\u201d\u00a0 The point that he is making, I think, is that habit and nature are so closely bound that they are practically indistinguishable.<\/p>\n Though we mostly always speak of \u201cliberty,<\/em>\u201d <\/em>in truth, this is but a short-hand term for our liberties.\u00a0 Our<\/em> liberties are not \u201cnatural.\u201d\u00a0 They are not goods to which all <\/em>human beings in all places and at all times have \u201ca right.\u201d Rather, they are the fruits of the labors of our ancestors, a rich cultural inheritance that generations and generations worked tirelessly to bequeath to us.\u00a0<\/p>\n We no more need to lose ourselves in grand metaphysical speculations when affirming our liberties than when affirming our families.\u00a0 Rather, we need look no further than our constitutional arrangements.\u00a0 Our self-conflicted government with its wide dissemination of power and authority, its numerous \u201cchecks and balances,\u201d and its subservience to the rule of law; it is within the interstices of these peculiar arrangements that our liberties are located.<\/p>\n Genuine lovers of liberty can disagree over how best to interpret the object of their affections.\u00a0 However, those whose love leads them to elevate liberty into an abstract metaphysical perfection\u2014a \u201cself-evident\u201d and \u201cnatural right\u201d\u2014would do themselves a good turn to consider that in raising it too highly, <\/em>they risk losing it altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cLiberty\u201d is a word that figures centrally in our political lexicon, the term around which every other revolves.\u00a0\u00a0 No one\u2014neither the friends nor the foes of our traditions\u2014who seeks a hearing in \u201cthe public square\u201d that is our political discourse could coherently think to refrain from enlisting it in the service of his cause.\u00a0 And…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n