Liberty
Liberty is the rule of reason over passions and appetites according to the moral law.
The idea of liberty is so familiar to Americans that it can be easy to take for granted. Yet liberty is not simply the absence of restraint, nor does it mean doing whatever one happens to desire in the moment.
A person can be free from external coercion while nevertheless being ruled internally by anger, appetite, addiction, fear, envy, or some other passion. Classical political philosophy therefore understood liberty in connection with self-government: a free human being is capable of governing himself through reason rather than being enslaved by his appetites and passions.
Personal Liberty and Self-Government
Human beings possess appetites, desires, passions, and impulses. But they do not always point toward what is good.
The glutton who cannot restrain himself, the addict who cannot resist another dose, or the person whose rage overwhelms his judgment may be free from external control while remaining subject to internal domination.
Liberty therefore requires more than being left alone. It requires that reason govern passion and appetite, directing choices according to what is right and good.
This is one reason liberty and virtue are closely connected. Prudence, justice, courage, moderation, honesty, and self-restraint strengthen a person’s capacity to choose deliberately and morally rather than merely satisfying whatever desire happens to be strongest.
Samuel West expressed this understanding powerfully in a sermon delivered in 1776: “The most perfect freedom consists in obeying the dictates of right reason, and submitting to natural law.” West argued that when a person acts contrary to reason and the moral natural law, he becomes a slave to his passions and desires. His conclusion was memorable: “Where licentiousness begins, liberty ends.”
Liberty Is Not License
Liberty, on this understanding, is morally ordered freedom. It should therefore be distinguished from license, or licentiousness.
License means acting according to desire without regard to reason, virtue, moral natural law, or the rights of others.
No person has a natural right to murder, steal, assault, defraud, or enslave another merely because he desires to do so. Such actions violate the equal natural rights of others.
But liberty can also be abused in ways that do not immediately violate another person’s rights. A person might cultivate destructive habits, surrender himself to addiction, neglect his responsibilities, or allow passions to dominate his life. Government does not necessarily possess rightful authority to prohibit every such choice. Yet that does not make every exercise of political freedom an expression of genuine personal liberty.
A person may possess the political freedom to choose badly while becoming less capable of personal self-government through the choices he makes.
This distinction prevents two opposite errors. Liberty does not mean that every choice is equally good merely because it is freely chosen. But neither does the connection between liberty and virtue mean that government should forcibly make citizens virtuous. Using political power to govern every private choice would destroy much of the liberty that free government exists to protect.
Political Liberty
Political liberty concerns the rightful freedom of human beings from arbitrary control by others.
The Declaration of Independence describes human beings as possessing “certain unalienable Rights,” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Government is instituted to secure these rights and derives its “just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Political liberty therefore requires a protected sphere in which individuals may use their judgment, property, labor, speech, religion, and associations without arbitrary political command.
Government protects political liberty when it secures natural rights while remaining within the limits of its rightful authority.
The Reason of the Public
Political liberty also has a collective dimension. Citizens in a free republic govern themselves together through institutions they authorize by consent. Political self-government therefore requires something analogous to personal self-government: reason should govern passion.
Federalist No. 49 draws precisely this connection. Publius distinguishes between the “reason” and the “passions” of the public and argues that “the reason, alone, of the public” ought to control and regulate government, while government in turn should control and regulate the passions.
The analogy is striking. A person governs himself well when reason governs his passions. Free citizens govern themselves well politically when the reason of the public governs political passions.
Political liberty therefore cannot be sustained merely by giving citizens power. Citizens must also possess enough judgment, restraint, knowledge, and virtue to exercise that power well.
Thomas Jefferson expressed a related idea when he wrote to Spencer Roane in 1819: “Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.”
The people are independent of arbitrary human masters, but they are not independent of the moral law. Political freedom does not abolish moral obligation or personal responsibility.
Personal and Political Self-Government
Personal liberty and political liberty are deeply connected.
A free political order protects individuals from arbitrary coercion so that they may govern themselves. But its survival depends upon citizens capable of governing themselves personally.
People unable to restrain their appetites, passions, anger, envy, fear, or ambition will have difficulty sustaining constitutional self-government. Where individuals cannot govern themselves, demands grow for someone else to govern them.
Liberty therefore requires both freedom from wrongful external rule and freedom through rightful internal self-rule.
Why Liberty Matters
Liberty makes responsible human action possible.
Virtue, friendship, generosity, religious faith, intellectual inquiry, productive work, property, association, and the pursuit of happiness all depend upon substantial freedom to judge, choose, and act.
But liberty is not fulfilled merely by multiplying choices. The highest freedom is the capacity to choose well. An addict who cannot resist another dose illustrates the point: possessing a choice is not the same thing as governing oneself well.
Political institutions can protect the conditions of liberty, but they cannot substitute for the personal virtues required to use liberty wisely.
Political self-government ultimately depends upon personal self-government. A free society requires not merely citizens who are left free, but citizens capable of using freedom well.
