Last month, I attended an Acton Institute conference in Dallas on cronyism and capitalism. It was the first time I had interacted with Acton, and I was anything but disappointed. As far as conferences go, Acton was generous, efficient, and genuinely interesting. The format of the conference was a series of lectures followed by Q & A sessions with a mixed group of about thirty students, professionals, and academics, most of whom invoked conversation that was both thoughtful and engaging.
But the reason I bring this up is not necessarily to talk about the Acton Institute. Although, if given the opportunity to attend one of their conferences, I would recommend it without reservation. I bring up the Institute because the more the mainstream networks flood our living rooms, social media, and video feeds with the vitriol they call news, I’m compelled to think more about the ideas that happen to be Acton’s motto, “toward a free and virtuous society.”
While it would seem that just about anyone on the street would agree that we all want a more free and virtuous society, that same society is starkly divided over what it would mean to be free and virtuous. It would be wonderful if we could just pull out a dictionary and settle the dispute, but for obvious reasons, it’s not that easy. In the case of virtue, the disparity seems to be over the definition of what is good rather than the definition of virtue itself.
For example, the OED defines virtue as 1) A moral quality regarded (esp. in religious contexts) as good or desirable in a person, such as patience, kindness, etc.; a particular form of moral excellence. 2) each of a specified number of morally good qualities regarded (esp. in religious contexts) as of particular worth or importance, such as the four cardinal virtues, the three theological virtues, or these seven virtues collectively as opposed to the seven deadly sins.
Since the cardinal and theological virtues are viewed as outdated and morality (the good) is believed to be relative in our modern world, it would be impossible for a society to achieve its aim of virtue and freedom unless it first agrees on what is good.
In the case of freedom, the situation is similar. However, the divergence here actually begins with disparate definitions; and the OED is of little help since it offers more than a dozen definitions with numerous sub-entries. What is helpful though, I think, is understanding the two philosophies or two kinds of freedom: positive freedom and negative freedom.
In his essay “Two Concepts of Liberty,” Isaiah Berlin explains these two kinds of freedom. Of negative freedom, Berlins says, “I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others.” This definition assumes everyone is able to do what he wants so long as his actions do not impede or interfere with another’s freedom to do the same.
Of positive freedom, Berlin says, “I wish, above all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for my choices and able to explain them by reference to my own ideas and purposes.” This contrasting view of freedom asserts that a person is free when he or she has the power to choose the good, that which promotes flourishing and is the chief aim of a human life. In the latter view, it’s not choice itself, as it is in the former view, but the content of one’s choices, their ends and their motives, that determine whether or not one is free.
In his essay “Freedom As Natural, Acquired, and Circumstantial,” Mortimer Adler defines negative and positive freedom similarly. He says negative freedom is “a freedom which is possessed by any individual who, under favorable circumstances, is able to act as he wishes for his own good as he sees it.” He defines positive freedom as being “possessed only by those men who, through acquired virtue or wisdom, are able to will or live as they ought in conformity to the moral law or an ideal befitting human nature.”
Without a standard by which we can agree what the good is, we cannot agree on what is virtuous; and subsequently, we can never agree on what what it means to be free. Of course, there was a time when our society embraced the Judeo-Christian ethic and so such a standard existed, but that has long been tossed aside by skeptics and individualists.
I would argue, therefore–as much as I hate to be a prophet of doom–unless that standard is once again recovered, as a society we are doomed to become vicious and enslaved.
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Near the end of your article you stated: there was a time when our society embraced the Judeo-Christian ethic and so such a standard existed, but that has long been tossed aside by skeptics and individualist. In my own lifetime, despite the Judeo – Christian ethic, injustice against minorities, brutality in law enforcement, mental institutions, and even the family home were accepted by society as well as the unregulated destruction of the environment and many other social conventions that would be considered abhorrent in today’s society. In retrospect, the ” Good Old Days” were not really so good.
Agreed, the prevailing Judeo-Christian ethic didn’t prevent all forms of injustice. But the point is not to argue for “The Good Old Days,” per se. Rather, I am arguing that there was a time when there was relatively consistent agreement within society about what was good. In our post-modern culture, even *the good* is now relative. Because the good cannot be agreed upon, the prevailing definition of freedom is reduced to what philosophers call “negative freedom.”