Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation: Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard BosanquetGreen, Thomas Hill
Philosophy
Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation: Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard Bosanquet
Green, Thomas Hill
Liberty; Natural law; Political obligation
7. Meanwhile it must be borne in mind that in all these different
views as to the manner and degree in which freedom is to be attained,
'freedom' does not mean that the man or will is undetermined, nor
yet does it mean mere self-determination, which (unless denied
altogether, as by those who take the strictly naturalistic view
of human action) must be ascribed equally to the man whose will
is heteronomous or vicious, and to him whose will is autonomous;
equally to the man who recognises the authority of law in what St.
Paul would count the condition of a bondman, and to him who fulfils
the righteousness of the law in the spirit of adoption. It means
a particular kind of self-determination; the state of the man who
lives indeed for himself, but for the fulfilment of himself as a
'giver of law universal' (Kant); who lives for himself, but only
according to the true idea of himself, according to the law of his
being, 'according to nature' (the Stoics); who is so taken up into
God, to whom God so gives the spirit, that there is no constraint
in his obedience to the divine will (St. Paul); whose interests,
as a loyal citizen, are those of a well-ordered state in which
practical reason expresses itself (Hegel). Now none of these modes
of self-determination is at all implied in 'freedom' according
to the primary meaning of the term, as expressing that relation
between one man and others in which he is secured from compulsion.
All that is so implied is that a man should have power to do what
he wills or prefers. No reference is made to the nature of the will
or preference, of the object willed or preferred; whereas according
to the usage of 'freedom' in the doctrines we have just been
considering, it is not constituted by the mere fact of acting upon
preference, but depends wholly on the nature of the preference, upon
the kind of object willed or preferred.
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