The paradox of liberalism is that freedom cannot be captured by an ideology.
But then the question arises: can we give an ideology-free account of freedom? If not, what are our descriptions and analyses worth?
To specify what I mean by an ideology, I shall highlight one aspect of the phenomenon in particular: its missionary quality, or, which is the reverse of the coin, an ideology's proclivity to reject accounts diverging from whatever it purports to represent.
A certain ideology X claiming that state intervention in the economy, including a high and enduring government deficit, is incompatible with its aims and ideals and detrimental to the public, clearly rejects other ideologies, policies or proposals, subsumed under the category Y, that lead or promise to lead to such interference.
Freedom, by contrast, is quite capable of enclosing both ideology X and the factors subsumed under Y.
In fact, for more than two hundred years, she has been able to embrace mutually demonising Xs and Ys, some of which having predicted the demise of freedom if some of the Xs and Ys were to be tolerated.
True some of the Xs and Ys have had apocalyptic consequences as predicted. But even in these cases, (Germany, Russia, China) freedom seems to have prevailed in the long term. At any rate, our argument is not concerned with the viability of freedom, but with her positive features. And clearly freedom has the capacity to accommodate tremendous ideological diversity and tension. In actual fact, that is her native and most proper job.
True some of the Xs and Ys have had apocalyptic consequences as predicted. But even in these cases, (Germany, Russia, China) freedom seems to have prevailed in the long term. At any rate, our argument is not concerned with the viability of freedom, but with her positive features. And clearly freedom has the capacity to accommodate tremendous ideological diversity and tension. In actual fact, that is her native and most proper job.
The paradox of liberalism means that to the extent that it is an ideology like X and seeks to reject Y and denigrate or even eliminate Y's presence in society, it is not capable of accounting for freedom. Liberalism is ideology-constrained, liberty is not. At least, a lot less so.
Can we give an ideology-free account of freedom?
My intuition tells me, this is a question of "useful precision." Meaning, we may not meet an ideal standard of precision, but our inaccuracy may be good enough. In fact, sometimes inaccuracy will be superior to precision, such as when toleration of slight delays in a rail network may actually benefit all by lowering costs and improving connections. We may be sufficiently "unideological" to render a useful account of freedom.
All things considered, an ideology-free account of freedom is not possible.
At this stage, I am not sure whether it may help to distinguish between bias and ideology, so that the last sentence should really read: an unbiased account of freedom is not possible, but an unideological account is within our reach.
However, there can still be accounts of liberty that capture the phenomenon more accurately and more comprehensively than others. Especially, when a positive theory of freedom is concerned.
Perhaps, this analogy is helpful: we may discern between a book in which only two of the ten schools of ideology Z are being dealt with, and another book, equally accurate in its presentation, that covers all ten schools. In other words, they may both be sufficiently close to being ideology-free in their positive accounts of the schools covered, while their ideological biases may kick in only when evaluating the merits of the respective doctrines.
Hegel has a conception of freedom, so does Marx. There are countless theories of freedom, including systems of intuition like esoteric creeds that see themselves as relating to a concept of freedom. But none of these propose a framework comprehensive enough to perceive the own version of a theory of freedom as part of a larger collection of such efforts.
Among the cornerstones of my theory of freedom are the hypotheses that
Though it may be advisable to include much of what liberal theories of freedom propose, ultimately we ought to be striving for a non-liberal, a non-ideological theory of freedom.
Hegel has a conception of freedom, so does Marx. There are countless theories of freedom, including systems of intuition like esoteric creeds that see themselves as relating to a concept of freedom. But none of these propose a framework comprehensive enough to perceive the own version of a theory of freedom as part of a larger collection of such efforts.
Among the cornerstones of my theory of freedom are the hypotheses that
- freedom is the efficient use of ideologies and other forms of human diversity.
- freedom is a stage for efficient ideological contention and therefore cannot be adequately represented by any one of the contending ideologies, including liberalism.
Though it may be advisable to include much of what liberal theories of freedom propose, ultimately we ought to be striving for a non-liberal, a non-ideological theory of freedom.
No comments:
Post a Comment