Chapter One: Varieties of Liberty.Chapter 1 explores various ways of conceiving of liberty. We may think of liberty as (a) an absence of obstacles, or (b) obstacles imposed by other people, or (c) deliberately imposed by other people, or (d) wrongfully imposed by other people.We can think of liberty as a power (e) to do what we want, or (f) to do what is right, or (g) to do the right thing free of all temptation to do otherwise.Hobbes's conception was more like (a). Kant's conception was more like (g). To Kant, in effect, personal integrity is a type of liberty. Kant's conception also draws at least some attention to the idea that there are internal as well as external impediments to liberty.
Kant's conception is moralized but we want also to discuss a family of related (and not overtly moralized) conceptions according to which liberty is (h) a power to do what we want free of self-imposed baggage (free of commitments, or more generally, of plans, promises, hang-ups, and self-conceptions that no longer fit the person one is becoming).There is a Sartrean existentialist conception according to which a person is responsible for literally everything, including events that occurred before the person was born. The idea is on its face absurd, yet there is an interesting idea here. When a person says, "I am not responsible for the Holocaust (I descend from Germans, but the Holocaust happened before I was born)," that person is freely choosing to regard her responsibilities as thus limited. She had reason for so choosing. On the other hand, it would have been equally intelligible for her to claim responsibility for the Holocaust, in the sense of choosing to take responsibility for making amends, for making sure it never happens again, or simply for remembering what happened. That too would have been her choice. What existentialism should insist on is that she is not at liberty to view herself as not responsible for her choices.
It is a fundamental constituent of being a person of good faith that she sees herself as responsible for her choices.Sartre's conception of freedom highlights a more general truth: any freedom worth defending has responsibility as a corollary. Liberal societies encourage diversity and give people the opportunity to choose a conception of a life worth living. But the opportunity to invent ourselves also is a responsibility to do so. We're most free when we learn that responsibility is not the cost of freedom, but one of its rewards.In any case, our thesis is that these conceptions of freedom sometimes are treated as competitors. We are supposed to sort out which of them is correct. Our view, though, is that these conceptions are more complementary than competitive.
Most of these time-honored conceptions of liberty play proper roles-different and complementary roles-in common-sense thinking. We conclude with a caution, though: none of these conceptions entail that it is a government's job to secure liberty so conceived. Identifying a particular role for government as protector of particular liberties requires a separate argument.Subsequent chapters discuss pivotal moments in the history of liberty. The discussions will not be isolated. The threads of the discussion will interpenetrate. (This will be one of our main challenges as we write the book, to keep the various threads of conversation in play, without taxing the reader. Locke, Marx, and Mill, for example, each were pivotal figures in more than one way, and thus will figure in more than one chapter.
Chapter Two: Civil Liberty & Equality Before the Law.Chapter 2 discusses civil liberty and freedom of conscience. Our discussion will focus on 19th century events, but we begin with Martin Luther and the Protestant Refo.