See the axis · Political liberty

Argument

The plurality-of-ends argument

To be free is not to be prevented: any richer definition of liberty opens the door to coercion exercised in its name.

Supports

Berlin · "Two Concepts of Liberty" · 1958

  1. Human ends are plural and often incompatible: sainthood, creation, success, pleasure, or the service of others cannot be ranked or combined into a single good life.
  2. No third party, whether state, majority, or sage, can claim superior knowledge of the end I ought to pursue: to presume otherwise is already .
  3. Any "thicker" definition of liberty (, realizing one's true self, living virtuously) builds in one particular conception of the good life: it thereby makes it possible to declare those who live otherwise "unfree", and to coerce them in the name of their own freedom, a slope history has slid down more than once.
  4. The definition is the one that prejudges ends least: free is the person whom others do not prevent from acting on their own choices. It assumes only that this latitude matters, not any conception of the good life.

Therefore To be free is to be unhindered by others: society must guarantee each person's perimeter, not prescribe the use they make of it.

How far does this reasoning convince you?

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Deepenings
"Experiments of living"
  1. No one knows in advance which lives are worth living: defends the diversity of "experiments of living" as the only path of discovery, the way science needs a diversity of hypotheses.
  2. To forbid a way of living that wrongs no one else is therefore to close down an experiment from which everyone, its opponents included, might have learned.

Therefore The protected plurality of ways of living is a condition of everyone's progress.

How far does this reasoning convince you?

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Entirely