eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781741765571 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin Pty., Limited |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2008 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Sales rank: | 316,787 |
| File size: | 477 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Freedom Paradox
Towards A Post-Secular Ethics
By Clive Hamilton
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2008 Clive HamiltonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74176-557-1
CHAPTER 1
The disappointment of liberalism
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, citizens of rich countries confront a perplexing fact: despite decades of sustained economic growth, which have seen the real incomes of most people rise to three or four times the levels enjoyed by their parents and grandparents in the 1950s, people are no happier. Indeed, the proliferation of the maladies of affluence — such as drug dependence, obesity, loneliness, and psychological disorders ranging from depression, anxiety and compulsive behaviours to a widespread but ill-defined anomie — suggests that the psychological wellbeing of citizens in rich countries is in decline. Perhaps the most telling evidence is the prevalence of depression. In the five decades that followed the Second World War — which are regarded as the golden age of economic growth — the incidence of depression in the United States increased tenfold. Major depression, already the greatest cause of disability, is expected to become the world's second most burdensome disease by 2020. The market has turned its attention to ways of capitalising on the sicknesses of affluence; pharmaceutical corporations are leading the way, antidepressant drugs free of side-effects now being their Holy Grail.
This leads to questions that go to the heart of the modern world. If affluence — the object of so much determined effort — has failed to improve our wellbeing, why have we tried so hard to become rich? Has our pursuit of riches led us to sacrifice some things that contribute to more satisfying lives, including the strength of our relationships, a surer sense of self, and the quality of the natural environment? In short, has the whole growth project failed?
And there is another troubling question that must be asked. Has the struggle for freedom delivered on its promise? The gains in themselves cannot be decried, but we need to ask whether the personal and political freedoms won by social movements during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have succeeded in ushering in societies peopled by autonomous, creative, contented individuals living harmoniously in their communities. The answer must be 'no'. The liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s targeted other sources of oppression — sexual conservatism, subjugation of women, homophobia, and racism in its many guises. It now appears that, by removing sources of oppression based on gender, sexuality and race, these social revolutions have left us free to be miserable in new, more insidious ways.
If the barriers to the flourishing of our potential have been removed but we fail to flourish, depression would seem a natural response. Moreover, the liberation movements have ceded to us unprecedented moral confusion. The 'ethic of consent' that replaced the strictures of conservative morality has led to forms of behaviour raising deeper questions about personal responsibility that we have scarcely begun to understand.
These disappointments of affluence and freedom must be seen as a challenge to liberalism — and especially to its more dogmatic child, libertarianism, the anti-collectivist political philosophy that has given us modern conservatism. For decades libertarianism has been implicitly promising that the way to a good society is through economic growth and higher incomes. Writing in 1944, the high priest of libertarianism, Friedrich von Hayek, observed that the success of the expansion of individualism and commerce had 'surpassed man's wildest dreams':
... by the beginning of the twentieth century the working man in the Western world has reached a degree of comfort, security, and personal independence which a hundred years before had seemed scarcely possible.
What in the future will probably appear the most significant and far-reaching effect of this success is the new sense of power over their own fate, the belief in the unbounded possibilities of improving their own lot, which the success already achieved created among men.
I do not disparage the daily freedoms this abundance has bestowed on ordinary people; I simply say that people's sense of power over their own fate is almost as distant as ever. Hayek's grand vision has come to nothing.
As if in recognition of the disappointment of liberalism, in rich countries today there are signs that continual striving for personal freedom and economic security has been superseded by a new endeavour. Earlier generations' political demand for democracy and liberation has become a personal demand for freedom to find one's own path. Now that the constraints of socially imposed roles have weakened in rich countries, oppression based on gender, class and race is disappearing. The daily struggle for survival has for most people been banished. We have entered an era characterised by 'individualisation', where for the first time in history we have the opportunity to 'write our own biographies', rather than have the chapters foretold by the circumstances of our birth. For the first time the ordinary individual in the West has the opportunity to make a true choice.
In place of the class struggle and demands for liberation, the citizens of affluent societies have a new quest — the search for authentic identity, for self-actualisation, for the achievement of true individuality. Some have found promising paths in spiritual traditions or psychological 'work', but most have ended up seeking a proxy identity in the form of commodity consumption. People continue to pursue greater wealth and consume at ever higher levels because they do not know how better to answer the question 'How should I live?' This is widely understood. The Times of London observed:
It is the paradox of our lives. We've never had more freedom to shape ourselves in the way we want but we've also never been subject to so many pressures telling us what is desirable. While we stand in front of a supermarket display confronted with more bewildering choices than ever before, the voices telling us what to reach for are more insistent, and insidious, than ever.
CHAPTER 2Rationale
It is necessary to place this critique of the modern affliction in a more considered philosophical framework, and John Stuart Mill's famous essay 'On liberty', first published in 1859, is a good place to start. Mill set out a world of personal and political freedom he and his followers imagined would bring about a society of free and contented individuals:
A person whose desires and impulses are his own — are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture — is said to have character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character.
Mill's thoughts about liberty are at the core of how we in the West understand ourselves as democratic societies. Yet, after reading 'On liberty' today, one feels a niggling sense that Mill's optimistic vision has turned out to be a disappointment. Oddly perhaps, the germ of a new understanding of freedom can be found in Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty, which might be considered the seminal text for the libertarian philosophy that from the 1970s has had such an influence on the modern world.
It is apparent from reading Mill and Hayek that both these political philosophers began with the world as they found it (and this is why I begin with a brief statement of where we find ourselves in the world). Mill was absorbed by the great political debates of his time, a time when representative democracy was still emerging in Europe and legal protections for the individual were only half-realised in some countries and still under threat. Mill's radical successors in the second half of the twentieth century, libertarians such as Milton Friedman (the Nobel Prizewinning economist who, like all modern libertarians, was inspired by Hayek), were reacting to what they saw as the greatest threat to freedom at the time — socialism in all its forms, with the danger it posed for economic freedom.
In this context I see it as self-evident that the advancement of human wellbeing is in itself a desirable goal and, along with freedom, should form the primary objective of any society. There are, however, two modern perspectives that take a different view. First, environmentalism usually argues that the ecological integrity of the Earth should be the principal objective of human action, individually and collectively, and that the wellbeing of humans is a desirable aspect or by-product of this objective. A decline in environmental health inevitably impinges on the wellbeing of humans, although maintenance of human populations should not always take precedence. Some environmental thinkers have maintained that sharp reductions in human populations, achieved through birth control, are necessary to meet the principal objective. Others argue that 'sustainability' must encompass social as well as ecological sustainability — that is, the long-term viability of communities that cultivate the factors which contribute to human happiness, consistent with the ecological goals.
Second, and more importantly for my purpose, the dominant political philosophy of our age, libertarianism, rejects the view that promotion of human wellbeing is self-evidently good and should be the principal objective of any society. Instead, it holds that the objective of society and of government should be not to set or endorse goals but to promote as much individual freedom as is feasible and to allow individuals to determine their own goals. Hayek was unabashed about this: 'Above all ... we must recognise that we may be free and yet miserable. Liberty does not mean all good things or the absence of all evils.' In his feted defence of liberal democracy as the political and economic system that is both inevitable and best, Francis Fukuyama argued that some states or conditions are natural or inevitable even though people might be happier in other states. For Hayek, Friedman, Fukuyama and other champions of the free market, liberty — not happiness — is the ultimate or inevitable goal.
In my view, if social conditions and the political and economic structure are making people miserable (even if they are free to pursue misery in their own ways), this is a matter of public concern. And, just as Hayek defends liberty against the tyranny that might be imposed by majorities, so the very freedoms he wants to protect might be jeopardised if the masses are told they are ungrateful when they question the value of the freedoms assigned to them. This is not to support the proposition that it is better to be happy in chains than to be unhappily free; rather, it is a call to look more closely at the nature of the liberties that Hayek and his followers have so successfully advanced and the social circumstances in which those liberties have taken root.
There is a need — more pressing by the day — to question the value of the economic, political and personal liberties that have been won. For one can reasonably say that free-market capitalism in the West is, to use a much-abused term, in crisis. It is not just under attack from various forms of fundamentalism (Islamic from without and Christian from within): it is suffering from a process of internal decay characterised by widespread alienation and a deep, but mostly private, questioning of the value of modern life. Of course, the fundamentalist assault and entrenched alienation are not unrelated. At the heart of the matter is one question: If the freedoms won, combined with abundance, are so good for us, why are we so discontented?
* * *
The political history of the modern world has been dominated by struggles to wrest political liberty and personal freedoms from the forces of autocracy and plutocracy. In the twentieth century, liberty was imperilled by fascism and communism. Political freedoms have at times come into conflict with personal liberty: Hitler was, after all, elected. Libertarianism succeeded in extending personal liberty through limiting the role of government in economic activity — although many would argue that the collective interests were thereby damaged — and the liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s advanced personal freedoms in social and moral life. But, if our objective has been to allow humans to lead fulfilling lives, then, without in any way maligning the liberties won, we must ask whether these freedoms are enough and whether other forces that commit us to a new and more deeply rooted form of servitude have been unleashed.
I argue that extension of the freedoms of the market and the personal freedoms won by the liberation movements have actively worked against our freedom to choose to lead more fulfilling lives. The consequence is that people today find it more difficult to know who they are and so understand how to advance their interests. I argue, too, that the dominating political concern in rich countries today is the conflict betweeneconomic and political liberties on one hand and 'inner freedom' on the other and that only in a society that nurtures inner freedom is it possible to live according to our true human purpose.
Some, especially social democrats, might interpret my argument as an unduly individualistic political philosophy — one that pays too little attention to our social natures and the imperative of cooperation in the pursuit of our own wellbeing. Mrs Thatcher's epoch-marking assertion that 'there is no such thing as society, only individuals' was shocking because it seemed to deny that each of us is a product of our society and is in constant interaction with it. It would be more accurate to say 'there is no such thing as an individual'— certainly in the form of the self-interested, rational maximiser imagined by neoclassical economists. But it must be conceded that we have made the transition to an individualised society and that the 'social' as traditionally conceived by social democrats is in decline; that is, the social groupings that previously defined us in practice and provided the categories for sociological and political analysis are no longer relevant (or are at least of greatly diminished relevance). So, in this sense, we are individuals for the first time.
This discussion is thus a prelude to answering the question of how we can reconstruct the social in a newly individualised world. In a world where we are no longer bound together by our class, gender or race, why should we live cooperatively? There are, as neoliberalism concedes, utilitarian reasons — reduced transaction costs, economies of scale, savings arising from the collective provision of certain goods, and so on. These forms of cooperation are generally justified on the ground that they are more 'efficient'. But that is not enough; indeed, such an argument reinforces a neoliberal conception of the individual that is fundamentally hostile to the social. We must reconstruct the idea of solidarity. And if we are to reconstruct the idea of solidarity we must first reconstruct the individual. Who is it that joins with others in pursuit of common goals? On the way to answering this question we must rescue the idea of autonomy from the 'free choice' of neoliberalism and, indeed, from the idea of liberation inherited from the 1960s and 1970s.
CHAPTER 3Types of happiness
The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill's famous dictum on the extent of liberty provided the intellectual foundation for modern liberal democracy. Polities in the West, especially during the last three decades, have generally adopted the moral position that people should be able to do whatever they like as long as it does not interfere with the rights or wellbeing of others. How the principle should be applied in particular circumstances is the subject of impassioned political contest. Debates about abortion, gun ownership and gay marriage come to mind. The debate might be advanced by people who feel their individual rights are being restricted by moral positions they do not adhere to. Often there are also third parties whose interests are contested, although moral disapproval can be veiled by an argument that the activity in question is a nuisance to others.
Mill's principle was upheld with particular energy by those at the forefront of the liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The restrictions law and custom imposed on sexual expression, women's rights and the rights of minorities could not be sustained in the face of the simple demand that people should not be restricted merely by outdated convention or prejudice. The radicals of the right have been as quick to appeal to the principle as the radicals of the left. Advocates of economic liberalism have insisted that governments restrict the market behaviour of consumers and producers only to the extent necessary to prevent exploitation.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Freedom Paradox by Clive Hamilton. Copyright © 2008 Clive Hamilton. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments,Preface,
PART ONE Freedom reconsidered,
1 The disappointment of liberalism,
2 Rationale,
3 Types of happiness,
4 Freedom and happiness,
5 Types of liberty,
6 Inner freedom,
7 Do we prefer what we choose?,
8 Self-deception and akrasia,
9 A digression on the ethic of consent,
10 Exercising inner freedom,
11 Subtle coercion,
12 The decline of free will,
13 From political philosophy to metaphysics,
PART TWO Philosophical foundations,
14 The need for metaphysics,
15 Consciousness and the subject,
16 Phenomenon and noumenon,
17 The 'legislation for nature',
18 Scientific thinking,
19 Knowing and being,
20 Instances of non-sensible intuition,
21 The noumenon and the Self,
22 A digression on the existence of God,
23 On death,
PART THREE Towards a post-secular ethics,
24 Modern moral anxiety,
25 Moral relativism,
26 Reconstructing a moral code,
27 Rationalist ethics,
28 Genuine philanthropy,
29 The moral self,
30 Emotions as judgments,
31 Further thoughts,
32 Avatars of virtue,
33 Egoism and malice,
34 Eternal justice,
PART FOUR Moral judge or moral adviser?,
35 Becoming good,
36 The theory in practice,
37 Suicide,
38 Sex,
39 Nature,
PART FIVE Freedom rediscovered,
40 The ground of inner freedom,
41 Finding inner freedom,
42 The individual and the collective,
43 Aesthetics,
44 Happiness reconsidered,
45 The human condition,
Notes,
Index,