Freedom is a great political good. This is not a claim that many who live in contemporary western states would be inclined to reject. Nor is it a claim that those thinkers who have undertaken a scholarly exploration of the nature of freedom would be inclined to dispute. But it is one thing to notice that freedom is all but universally considered a central political virtue, and quite another to have a clear sense of precisely what this virtue involves. The pursuit of such clarity requires a theoretical construction of the idea/ideal of freedom that effectively describes this particular political good and explains why it deserves its reputation as a central virtue of civil association. The purpose of this work is to move in this direction. Though the discussion to follow may fall somewhat short of a thoroughly systematic theoretical account of freedom, it does at least move some distance in this direction. And this is a start.
An inquiry of this sort is an exercise in political thoughtāthat is, an exercise that involves/requires an effort at thinking about a particular (and particularly important) aspect of political life. This is ordinarily considered a theoretical endeavor. It is important to mention this at the outset because theoretical undertakings of this sort necessarily take place within fixed methodological and ontological contexts. These contexts often operate in the background of theoretical discourse as pre-theoretical givens that inform and direct a political thinkerās problem set and intellectual agenda. Because they operate in the background of theoretical discussion, they may well go unnoticed by readers, especially if these readers happen to share, self-consciously or otherwise, the authorās methodological and ontological convictions. If, however, readers are inclined to regard these convictions as misguided or confused, nothing the author says about her subject, no matter how analytically rigorous her remarks might be, will likely seem to them either sensible or compelling.
Either way, the moral here seems to be that it is wise for anyone attempting a theoretical inquiry into the good of freedom to be up-front about the methodological and ontological commitments that background her discussion. These are important aspects of political thinking. That is, the methodological and ontological desiderata that background an exercise in political thought are not simply prior philosophical or sociological considerations; they are important features of the process of political thinking itself. Exploration of what Sheldon Wolin provocatively called āthe politicalā is not an activity that is grafted onto some pre-given conception of social being; as Hobbes famously understood, it is itself an aspect of the larger effort to understand our social being. Consequently, to understand this feature of social life, it is important to make certain we have in place a social theory and social ontology suitable to the task.
Accordingly, I am inclined to regard political thinking as a dimension of social theory. We should want to know, at the outset, what methodological orientation is appropriate for an inquiry into this, or any other, aspect of social life. This methodological concern is connected to, and inseparable from, an accompanying question of social ontology: What conception/understanding of the person is appropriate or proper for the enterprise of political thinking? This question introduces a number of philosophical concerns that are troublesome in their own right, and in the remainder of the chapter I will attempt to identify and expose the source of these troubles. I will also say some things intended to place the discussion to follow within the rather expansive set of theoretical controversies that spin around the notion of political freedom.
Rationalist and Historicist Political Thought
Political thinking, as a form of scholarly or academic activity, is hardly confined to one or two scholarly disciplines. It is a commonplace activity of most all disciplines concerned with the social life of humans, including (but hardly limited to) philosophy, political science, history, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Yet the methodological and ontological orientations that direct all this political thinking vary both within and between these various disciplines, and it is sometimes difficult to believe that the practitioners of political thinking are always talking about the same things. Insofar as methodological approaches to political thought vary between disciplines, they produce barriers to interdisciplinary cross-fertilization and encourage the formation of a set of intradisciplinary discourses on political life that defy easy integration into a more comprehensive or ecumenical form of political thought. Nonetheless, my aim in the following inquiry is to embrace an interdisciplinary approach that draws from philosophy, history, political theory, and social theory (sociology) in order to examine the nature of political freedom as a great good.
At the risk of considerable oversimplification, I will begin by imposing a methodological dichotomy upon this interdisciplinary universe of political thinking. The terms ārationalismā and āhistoricismā have rather long and complex theoretical pedigrees and admit of various meanings and usages. I introduce them here to characterize the methodological distinction I wish to highlight, but in doing so, I do not mean to brand either orientation with any of the various historical and philosophical schools of thought that are often identified by these labels. The reason why these two terms are used to characterize the divergent methodologies to which I wish to call attention will become apparent as the discussion proceeds.
One way to undertake the project of political thinking is to suppose that the social world is, or properly ought to be, governed by certain fundamental rules or laws that are accessible by reason and that guide and govern the nature of social, and especially political, organization. These rules, when effectively promulgated and implemented, blend some collection of distinct individuals into a civil union commonly described as a state. The natural law tradition, in both its classical and modern variants, is the obvious inspiration for this approach. Yet in spite of this common origin, two separate schools of thought on how best to practice this form of political thinking have emerged through time.
First, one may identify certain basic features of human beingsānatural, biological, psychologicalāand then reason through the kinds of rules that beings of this sort should rationally endorse in order for their lives to go well, given the inescapable and ineliminable fact that people naturally live in the presence of others. Hobbes, Hume, and Bentham are among the most evident and powerful of the philosophers who have pursued political thinking in this manner. Second, one might proceed by positing the existence of fundamental moral rulesānatural laws, in effect, that are legislated either by some deity or by human reasonāthat have evident political implications, and then proceed to expound upon the structural and procedural implications that follow from adherence to these rules. Locke and Kant are two of the most famous practitioners of this approach, an approach that continues to be favored by those moral philosophers who regard political thinking as a form of āapplied moralityā as Bernard Williams has put it (Williams 2005: 2).
The subtle difference that separates these two schools of thought depends upon whether the rules or laws presumed to govern civil association are derived from antecedent psychological or biological premises (e.g., fear and pride, pleasure and pain, or the confined generosity of men) or crafted from antecedent moral considerations (natural rights, a categorical imperative). At the moment, however, this difference matters less than the important similarities that identify these two schools as a common approach to political thought. In each case political thinking involves an appeal to reason in order to craft the rules which should govern the relations of persons within some fixed geographical context. The strong reliance upon reason, freed from all historical and sociological contingencies and relying upon only some basic moral or natural facts about persons, inspires my inclination to label this a ārationalist approachā to political thinking.
Underlying this approach is a highly individualistic, if not overtly atomistic, social ontology. Persons are conceived, rather abstractly, as autonomous or self-determining agents, each capable of exercising her own judgment and possessed with the capacity for studied, rational (moral or prudential), and reflective self-determination (Cf. Taylor 1985b: 187ā210). The ontological priority of persons (as such) means that civil association is a union of distinct, self-governing agents who elect to live together according to rules that each is willing to endorse. The social contract tradition may best illustrate the type of political thought that relies upon this sort of atomistic ontology and individualist methodology, though it is on display in most any consent theory of the state. The rationalist methodology, in effect, is evident in the work of any political thinker who begins by postulating certain controlling aspects of persons, moral or psychological/biological, and then proceeds to derive or formulate basic rulesāsay by rational choice argument or moral reflectionāthat are claimed to be appropriate for the governance of social activity.
This approach rather obviously trades heavily on the belief that it is possible to amass a body of political knowledgeāmoral, natural, or a mixture of bothāthat informs the project of civil association. This presumption about the existence and accessibility of political knowledge need not be taken to utopian extremes, but it does provide solace in the sense that the puzzle of civil association can be solved by human reason and ingenuity. On this view, it becomes possible to imagine a civil order that enables even the most devilish individuals to live together amicably and justly, provided (to finish the Kantian theme) that they are rational devilish individuals. The possibility of this political knowledge also permits one to imagine that the insights produced by this tradition of political inquiry qualify as timeless and universal. Because they apply to all persons at all times and in all places, they transcend historical and sociological contingency. Therefore, the rationalist tradition is frequently messianic, and invariably meliorist.
This manner of political thinking is distinguishable from an alternative approach that sees persons as socially configured and embedded beings whose beliefs, convictions, ideas, and ways are a product of the social world that englobes them. This view of persons is characteristic of social theory as a scholarly discipline, and more generally of sociology, anthropology, and perhaps history. On this view, the atomistic individualism characteristic of the rationalist approach is problematic because it reduces persons to an abstraction. Such reductionism is understood to ignore or overlook what I will call the social being of persons. According to this notion, any attempt to understand or conceptualize the (natural) person prior to her social being is nonsensical. As Peter Callero puts it, āone cannot define the individual without first considering the fundamental role of social relationships. In fact, for sociologists the individual and society are simply two sides of the same coin and cannot be separated. This means, for example, that our parents, siblings, coworkers, friends, and classmates are not only influential and important individuals, but they are actually a part of who we areā (Call...