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
actuality, of freedom,--yet quite recognise what has been above
insisted on as the common characteristic of all willing, the fact
that it is not a determination from without, like the determination
of any natural event or agent, but the realisation of an object which
the agent presents to himself or makes his own, the determination
by an object of a subject which itself consciously determines that
object; and they see that it is only for a subject free in this sense
('an sich' but not 'fur sich,' δυνάμει but not ενεργείᾳ) [1] that the
reality of freedom can exist.
[1] [Greek δυνάμει (dynamei) = potential, ενεργείᾳ (energiea) =
actuality Tr]
17. Now the propriety or impropriety of the use of 'freedom' to
express the state of the will, not as directed to any and every
object, but only to those to which, according to the law of nature
or the will of God or its 'idea,' it should be directed, is a matter
of secondary importance. This usage of the term is, at any rate,
no more a departure from the primary or juristic sense than is
its application to the will as distinct from action in any sense
whatever. And certainly the unsophisticated man, as soon as the usage
of 'freedom' to express exemption from control by other men and
ability to do as he likes is departed from, can much more readily
assimilate the notion of states of the inner man described as bondage
to evil passions, to terrors of the law, or on the other hand as
freedom from sin and law, freedom in the consciousness of union
with God, or of harmony with the true law of one's being, freedom
of true loyalty, freedom in devotion to self-imposed duties, than
he can assimilate the notion of freedom as freedom to will anything
and everything, or as exemption from determination by motives, or
the constitution by himself of the motives which determine his will.
And there is so far less to justify the extension of the usage of
the term in these latter ways than in the former. It would seem
indeed that there is a real community of meaning between 'freedom'
as expressing the condition of a citizen of a civilised state, and
'freedom' as expressing the condition of a man who is inwardly
'master of himself.' That is to say, the practical conception by
a man ('practical' in the sense of having a tendency to realise
itself) of a self-satisfaction to be attained in his becoming what
he should be, what he has it in him to be, in fulfilment of the
law of his being,--or, to vary the words but not the meaning, in
attainment of the righteousness of God, or in perfect obedience to
self-imposed law,--this practical conception is the outcome of the
same self-seeking principle which appears in a man's assertion of
himself against other men and against nature ('against other men,' as
claiming their recognition of him as being what they are; 'against
nature,' as able to use it). This assertion of himself is the demand
for freedom, freedom in the primary or juristic sense of power to
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