Liberty

Seven steps to the fence around the self: what may no power — not even the people entire — ever do to you?

A course on the thought of Political Philosophy.

What you will learn

State Locke's central argument: why the magistrate's outward force cannot reach the inward belief salvation requires.
Distinguish civil interests (the magistrate's province) from the care of souls (each person's own) — and why the two societies must not be confused.
See toleration as the historical SEED of liberty: a single province carved out, from which the general claim to personal freedom later grew.
State the harm principle exactly and place it on the spectrum between anarchism and absolutism.
Draw the self-regarding / other-regarding distinction — and watch it collapse under the trivial-effect objection (brown shoes, sleeping posture).
Run the rescue (harm = damage to interests, not mere dislike) and its remaining trouble (competition harms interests freely) — so harm is neither clearly sufficient nor clearly necessary.
Run the three-part argument: the silenced opinion may be true (fallibility); may be false but vital to test the truth (dead dogma); or may be a part-truth (the usual case).
State the fallibility move precisely: confusing 'our being certain' with 'the view being certain' is the assumption of infallibility.

Course outline

The Care of Souls — Liberty's first stone: Locke's argument that the magistrate's sword can compel outward conformity but never the inward belief that salvation requires — so conscience is the one province the state…
One Very Simple Principle — Mill builds the fence: the one principle meant to settle every case of society's power over the individual — coercion only to prevent harm to others — and the discovery, pressed hard, that the line…
The Liberty of Thought and Discussion — Mill's defence of free speech, made at full stretch: even the opinion we are certain is false must be free, because we may be wrong, because a true belief unchallenged dies into dead dogma, and…
Experiments in Living — Mill's case for individuality — that a life chosen is worth more than a life copied, that variety is the engine of progress, and that we may reason with a person but never force him for his own good…
The Open Door and the Prison Within — Rousseau returns to voice the older, deeper freedom: not the absence of interference but mastery of oneself — the citizen who obeys the general will is freed from his own appetites, even "forced to…
The Man Who Owns Himself — Nozick's libertarian challenge: the fence is set too low. If each person owns himself — body, talents, and labour — then taxing his earnings to help others is forced labour, and the basketball star…
The Cell and the Verdict — Foucault's challenge to the whole framework: the free individual the fence protects is not a natural given but a product of disciplinary power — trained, observed, normalized into self-surveillance.…

Works read in this course

On Liberty — Mill's 1859 manifesto of the free individual: the harm principle, free thought, and individuality
A Letter Concerning Toleration — Locke (1689): the care of souls is not the magistrate's — liberty of conscience, the historical seed
The Social Contract — Rousseau (1762): freedom as obedience to the general will — the citizen 'forced to be free'
Anarchy, State, and Utopia — Nozick (1974): self-ownership, the entitlement theory, and the Wilt Chamberlain argument that liberty upsets patterns
Discipline and Punish — Foucault (1975): the panopticon and the disciplinary production of the modern individual
Considerations on Representative Government — Mill (1861): government as the school of citizenship — cited for the participation argument

Terms introduced

harm principle, self-regarding, other-regarding, liberty of conscience, dead dogma, experiments of living, paternalism, offence principle, negative liberty, positive liberty, forced to be free, two selves, self-ownership, entitlement theory, liberty upsets patterns, discipline

Part of the Simposeum course library.