{"id":27332,"date":"2018-01-31T15:51:15","date_gmt":"2018-01-31T14:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libmod.de\/?p=27332"},"modified":"2020-03-28T02:47:58","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T01:47:58","slug":"freedom_in_modern_times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/en\/freedom_in_modern_times\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom in Modern Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Quelle: Flickr\/\u200bUK Parliament<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Karen Horn reminds us of forgotten, pioneering thinkers on liberty and highlights the necessary contra\u00addiction within which a modern liber\u00adalism exists: the tension between limiting state influence and recog\u00adnizing that influence as a prereq\u00aduisite for the liberty of all people. Compe\u00adtition among political parties for the goodwill of voters and the numerous interest groups that champion their causes in a pluralist democracy lead to the perpetual expansion of the sphere of government. This threatens the space for individual autonomy and self-organi\u00adzation under market economy condi\u00adtions. Yet a liberal society needs public insti\u00adtu\u00adtions to govern its common affairs. Subsidiarity and democ\u00adratic partic\u00adi\u00adpation are two comple\u00admentary principles for coping with this contra\u00addiction in a productive manner.<\/h2>\n

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Since we live in modern times,
\nI want a modern liberty
\nsuited to modern times...<\/p>\n

\u2013 Benjamin Constant (1819)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The majority of those living in Germany value liberty and feel themselves to be free. As reassuring as this survey finding may seem, it is equally difficult to draw any concrete conclu\u00adsions from it: people have very different ideas about what comprises liberty. For many, liberty has more to do with their actual material possi\u00adbil\u00adities than with their civil rights, which they believe to be secure; for others, liberty is more the result of inner, mental exertions than of external condi\u00adtions subject to political influence. Views of this kind might not satisfy the conceptual standards of political philosophy, which distin\u00adguishes between \u201cpositive\u201d liberty \u201cto do\u201d and \u201cnegative\u201d liberty, in the sense of an individual right protecting against undue inter\u00adference the State (Abwehrrechte) and sees the inner life as outside its remit. Still, this persistent disso\u00adnance does make it plain that as important as the focus on pushing back the ever-expanding State is, in the long-practiced combi\u00adnation of exclu\u00adsivity and lack of differ\u00aden\u00adti\u00adation, it is just as inade\u00adquate as the excessive concen\u00adtration of the concept of liberty on the economic.<\/p>\n

In political life, the imper\u00adative of liberty consists essen\u00adtially in preventing collective action from resulting in dangerous encroach\u00adments to the detriment of individual initiative and sponta\u00adneous social coordi\u00adnation. One place that this imper\u00adative expresses itself, though not the only one, is in tax rates which allow citizens financial scope to take respon\u00adsi\u00adbility for shaping of their own lives and which can be recon\u00adciled with the funda\u00admental protection of private ownership. The imper\u00adative of liberty first addresses what the State should not do. In addition, it also explicitly addresses what the State should do, how it should do it and which proce\u00addures are to be used in this connection.<\/p>\n

It cannot be about \u201cabolishing\u201d the State, as a few anarchists might still wish. Collective action on the part of citizens within the histor\u00adi\u00adcally developed, arduously won consti\u00adtu\u00adtional and democ\u00adratic insti\u00adtu\u00adtions that we call the \u201cState\u201d is essential given the complexity of the social reality at the stage of civiliza\u00adtional devel\u00adopment in which we find ourselves in the 21st century. Modernity \u2013 with its Enlight\u00adenment heritage; the appeal to reason; the primacy of the individual over a collective, one that is no longer envisaged as organic; the openness towards progress; the diverse and differ\u00aden\u00adtiated society and the global economy with its division of labour \u2013 does not exist indepen\u00addently of State insti\u00adtu\u00adtions. The liberty that is suited to this modernity is, for its part, complex. In addition to the containment of collective violence and the protection of the individual from the arbitrary exercise of state authority, modern liberty encom\u00adpasses political liberty, the right of citizens to partic\u00adipate in the collective decision-making process, a now univer\u00adsalised right whose basic features have come down from Antiquity.<\/p>\n

In a famous address given in Paris in 1819, the thinker Benjamin Constant, born in Lausanne 250 years ago, who, as a politician, advocated a liberal repre\u00adsen\u00adtative system in post-Napoleonic France, warned that these two aspects must be combined in such a way that they enhance one another, if collective action in the modern society is not to become total\u00adi\u00adtarian. In his analysis, the satis\u00adfaction imparted by political liberty can be no longer be a compen\u00adsation for enduring arbitrary power under these condi\u00adtions. In a small group of persons, one might be willing to put up with being out-voted and having to bear the unwanted burdens as a result; in the anonymity of modern society, one is left with only the bitter taste of heteronomy and power\u00adlessness. \u201cLost in the multitude, the individual can almost never perceive the influence he exercises. Never does his will impress itself upon the whole; nothing confirms in his eyes his own cooper\u00adation.\u201d This feeling is the melody under\u00adlying all disen\u00adchantment with politics, most recently expressed in the droves of voters who turned to the extremes in order to prove the opposite.<\/p>\n

One way forward lies in limiting the rights of the collective to act on the individual. The other, no less important way forward lies in strength\u00adening political partic\u00adi\u00adpation. Clearly, it is not enough to call on citizens \u201cto contribute by their deter\u00admi\u00adna\u00adtions and by their votes to the exercise of power\u201d, as Constant recog\u00adnised. Rather, it requires, wherever possible, insti\u00adtu\u00adtional correc\u00adtions in the spirit of the subsidiarity principle aimed at bringing the collective decisions necessary in the complex great societies of modernity closer to the citizens once more, and thereby to \u201cconse\u00adcrate their influence over public affairs\u201d.<\/p>\n

A prereq\u00aduisite for this, however, is that we do not mistrust the political liberty of the individual altogether, as do those critics of democracy who would prefer to make do without a State entirely and without univer\u00adsally binding collective decision-making. Rather, we must under\u00adstand political liberty as a key liberal demand in the here and now and give new impetus to the exercise of this liberty. In respect thereof, it is appro\u00adpriate for us to value \u2013 despite all the necessary criticism \u2013 the object towards which this claim to partic\u00adi\u00adpation is directed: the modern, partic\u00adi\u00adpative, contained State, bound by law and statute. We should think of the State, in essence, as a communal under\u00adtaking of all citizens to their mutual benefit. This is not contra\u00addicted by the fact that, as experience has shown, state activ\u00adities, driven by the zeal of citizens equipped with political liberty, will keep growing and overrunning the private sphere unless we occasionally prune back the intrusion of the collective. Because this pruning, too, is a task that demands political liberty. Yes, the State, in its self-reinforcing tendencies, does regularly endanger liberty, but the State should also be the systematic place and, ideally, servant of liberty. This tension and complexity must be borne and moderated: herein lies the continuing challenge of modern liberty.<\/p>\n

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