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The Individual and Society: A Response to the Conservative Critique of Liberalism
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19117 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1991 |
5,684 Words |
| Author
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E.M. Adams
E.M. Adams is Kenan Professor of Philosophy emeritus at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. |
Liberalism has come under powerful political and intellectual attack in recent decades. The most severe criticism focuses on the liberal view of values and the good society. I want to respond to this two-pronged challenge by developing a view of the individual and society that is consistent with classical liberalism.
According to classical liberalism, a human being is one who, by virtue of his nature, is a person; and personhood is a natural office, natural in contrast with offices constituted by social arrangements, such as being a president, a chancellor, a judge or a policeman. The office is defined by a persons responsibility to live a life of his own, under the guidance of his own knowledge-yielding and critical powers, that would be worthy of him as a unique human being--a life that would pass muster under rational and moral criticism. The rights of the office consist of the conditions of well-being and the freedoms that are necessary for him to have an opportunity to fulfill this responsibility.
It is widely recognized across cultures and across time that to treat human beings as though they did not have lives of their own is to violate their personhood in a most fundamental way--that it is to treat them as though they were things valuable for the purposes of others. One of the early voices for freedom proclaimed in the twelfth century: "The lowest man in all of England has a life to live the same as the king." The cry of the Filipino revolutionaries of the 1890s war: "We are people, not things." And we see people rising up in many countries today to claim their right to a life of their own and a voice in the governance of their society.
Liberals hold that human beings with normal, mature powers are responsible for their own lives and for the beliefs and judgments that guide them. Of course, everyone is heavily dependent on others and on the culture for the development of his normative self-concept, and for most of his knowledge and wisdom. Yet, with developed learning and critical powers, one should not be content to allow others to define his identity or thinking. He should not be the product of other people's choices or enslaved by his culture; rather, through the use of his own critical powers, he should liberate himself by gaining mastery of his own identity and life. This does not mean that one should reject his sense of identity formed through cultural conditioning and tutelage; but it does mean that, insofar as possible, he should come to terms with these matters or reconstruct them in justifiable ways.
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