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Interpersonal Freedom and Freedom of Action*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Felix E. Oppenheim
Felix E. Oppenheim
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Extract

When speaking of freedom, La Bruyère's word comes to mind—that everything has been said and that we come too late to add anything. Yet an analysis of the concept of freedom may be warranted for the very reason that it is being used by everyone to refer to whatever he considers valuable, from obedience to law (positive or natural) to autonomy and economic abundance. I believe that it is possible to assign to “freedom” in its different aspects meanings which are emotively neutral and operationally testable, and thereby to rescue for the social sciences generally and for political science in particular an important set of concepts, closely related as they are to those of power and control.

One would have to start with disentangling the widely different senses in which “freedom” is being used indiscriminately. I shall deal with freedom in only two of its many meanings, interpersonal freedom and freedom of action. One of the difficulties will be to steer a middle course between the vagueness of conversational language and the awkwardness of a precise terminology; but I hope to demonstrate that such an endeavor is no idle exercise in semantics but a necessary prerequisite for the fruitful investigation of social and political phenomena.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , June 1955 , pp. 353 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1955

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References

1 For examples of the innumerable ways in which the words “freedom” or “liberty” are being used, see Fosdick, Dorothy, What is Liberty? (New York, 1939)Google Scholar, and Freedom—Its Meaning, ed. Anshen, (New York, 1940)Google Scholar. In these and other volumes, I have found no definition of freedom which would be satisfactory from the point of view of the present analysis, not even in Maurice Cranston's stimulating and penetrating Freedom, A New Analysis (London, 1953)Google Scholar.

2 Actions may be said to be free or unfree, but in a sense quite different from that of interpersonal freedom, as will be shown.

3 The kind of definition which occurs in this article is what logicians call explication. “Taking its departure from the customary meanings of the terms, explication aims at reducing the limitations, ambiguities and inconsistencies of their ordinary usage by propounding a reinterpretation intended to enhance the clarity and precision of their meanings as well as their ability to function in hypotheses and theories with explanatory and predictive force. Thus understood, an explication cannot be qualified simply as true or false; but it may be adjudged more or less adequate according to the extent to which it attains its objectives.” Hempel, Carl G., Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science (Chicago, 1952), p. 12Google Scholar.

4 The definition of unfreedom could therefore also be stated as follows: “A makes B unfree to do x” means that, were B to attempt to do x, A would restrain B from doing x; or, were B to do x, A would punish B for having done x. Unfreedom is thus defined in terms of the disposition of A to act in a certain way (to restrain or to punish) undercertain conditions. “Soluble in water” is another example of a disposition term, “x is soluble in water” means that, were x immersed in water, x would dissolve.

5 For a concise and lucid presentation of the modern view on operationalism, see Hempel, pp. 39–50. See also the symposium on “The Present State of Operationalism” in The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 79, pp. 209–31 (Oct., 1954)Google Scholar. Our approach is similar to Lasswell's endeavor “of relating scientific ideas to materials ultimately accessible to direct observation” by analyzing key concepts of political science “in terms of concrete interpersonal relationships of influence and control. The experiential data of political science are acts considered as affecting or determining other acts.” Lasswell, Harold D. and Kaplan, Abraham, Power and Society (New Haven, 1950), p. xivGoogle Scholar (italics mine).

6 I should add: “with respect to A,” but shall from here on omit this and similar clauses with the understanding that they are always implied.

7 Such contrary-to-fact conditionals can in principle be verified by reference to general laws, like other empirical statements. See Chisholm, Roderick M., “The Contrary-to-Fact Conditional”, Mind, Vol. 55, pp. 289–307 (Oct., 1946)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Readings in Philosophical Analysis, ed. Feigl, and Sellars, (New York, 1949), pp. 482–97Google Scholar.

8 Several actions form a series of alternative actions for someone if it is impossible for him to perform any two of these actions simultaneously (he need not be able to perform a single one). Thus, going east and going west constitutes a series of alternative actions; not so, having a wife and having a mistress (provided “simultaneously” is not taken too literally).

9 While interpersonal freedom must refer to series of alternative actions, interpersonal unfreedom may refer either to actions or to alternatives. In our example, voters are unfree to vote Communist; unfree with respect to: voting Republican, or Democratic, or Communist; free to vote either Republican or Democratic.

10 The definition of “freedom of religion” shows that it is not always necessary to specify all alternatives explicitly.

11 Concerning the different control techniques, see Dahl, Robert A. and Lindblom, Charles E., Politics, Economics, and Welfare (New York, 1953), pp. 93 ff.Google Scholar

12 It seems at first tempting to define the concept of interpersonal unfreedom (and, by analogy, of freedom) in terms of deprivation, as follows: “A makes B unfree to do x” means that A would deprive B if B attempted to do or did x. It can now readily be seen that our definition, while less elegant and more complicated, constitutes a more adequate explication (see note 3).

13 It is beyond the scope of this article to define degrees of interpersonal unfreedom and to demonstrate that the degree to which A makes B unfree to do x can in principle be measured, so that one can speak of being more unfree to do x1, than to do x2.

14 Russell, Bertrand, “Freedom and Government”, in Freedom—Its Meaning, p. 251Google Scholar (italics added).

15 Carritt, E. F., Ethical and Political Thinking (Oxford, 1947), p. 161Google Scholar.

16 Merriam, Charles E., Systematic Politics (Chicago, 1945), p. 56Google Scholar.

17 Pennock, J. Roland, Liberal Democracy: Its Merits and Prospects (New York, 1950), p. 60Google Scholar.

18 We can therefore say of every past action that it was possible for its actor to perform it. “Possible” is taken here in the sense of empirically possible rather than logically possible. The following are two classical examples of the use of “liberty” in the sense of freedom of action: “… liberty is the idea of a power in any agent to do or forbear any particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind” (John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. 2, Ch. 21, Sec. 8); “By liberty, then, we can only mean the power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will” (David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Sec. 8, Pt. 1, Art. 73).

19 For the sake of simplicity, we assume in this section that B is confronted with exactly two alternative courses of action, doing x and abstaining from doing x.

20 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Message to Congress, January 11, 1944, quoted by Corwin, Edward S., Liberty against Government (Baton Rouge, 1948), p. 4Google Scholar.

21 Chicago, B. & Q. B. Co. v. McGuire, 219 U. S. 549 (1911).

22 Perry, Ralph B., “Liberty in a Democratic State”, in Freedom—Its Meaning, p. 269Google Scholar.

23 For example, an UNESCO Committee of Experts arrived at the following “working definition” of “liberty”: “By liberty they mean more than only the absence of restraint. They mean also the positive organization of the social and economic conditions within which men can participate to a maximum as active members of the community and contribute to the welfare of the community at the highest level permitted by the material development of the society.” Quoted by McKeon, Richard, “Philosophic Differences and Issues of Freedom”, Ethics, Vol. 61, pp. 105–35, at p. 107 (Jan., 1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Quine, Willard V., Mathematical Logic (New York, 1940), p. 47Google Scholar.

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