Down with ‘Justice is Liberty’!
up with maximizing liberty as a product of justice
In Two Treatises of Government (1689), John Locke defined ‘injustice’ as being “subject to the arbitrary will” of any other person(s). Who could disagree?
Liberty is being free from being subject to the arbitrary will of any other person(s). Since that is the opposite of injustice and justice is also the opposite of injustice, Locke concluded that justice is liberty.
Locke also had “Liberty” as a “Right” (as did Thomas Jefferson and them in the Declaration of Independence of the American colonies in 1776). As such, though, it is a belief. Like any belief, anyone can accept or reject it for any reason or no reason without being irrational — or even ‘unreasonable’.
Liberty, though, is everyone doing whatever anyone wants to do. Either any outcome of such relations among people must be considered to be ‘just’ or there must be some constraint on liberty.
Some people insist that liberty is distinguished from freedom because the former contains within itself constraints on conduct, but that is logically impossible. For Locke, liberty famously “ends at the person and property of any other person.” For him, equality constrains liberty. Logically, that actually makes equality, not liberty the true font of justice. [Locke made his case for ‘equality’ in the first of his Treatises; liberty-as-justice is in the second one.]
That is where things still stand in ‘old’ Liberalism. A tension exists between liberty and equality as ‘the twin pillars of justice for a just society’. Each has a claim within Liberalism for being what justice is.
That tension must be resolved for just governance to survive in this world. It must be noted that Liberalism is the only ideology to try figure out what justice is then govern society accordingly.
As we have seen, for the sake of just outcomes for any existing Liberal society liberty must be constrained by equality. A case can certainly be made that equality must also be qualified by the need for liberty — that seeking to apply equality to human life could lead to outcomes as bad for people in a society governed by it as those that would result from unconstrained liberty (which is total anarchy).
Yet, equality does offer a way out of the Liberal dilemma. Equality suggests an ethic of mutual respect to govern the governance of society.
So does Locke’s argument for liberty as being what justice is. If injustice is being subject to the arbitrary will of any other person(s), then the most immediate inference for justice is that everyone must refrain from subjecting any other person(s) to one’s own arbitrary will. That is mutual respect. Indeed, Locke’s own constraint on liberty — where it “ends” — yields a constricted form of mutual respect.
So a requirement of mutual respect can follow from equality and from Locke’s argument for liberty-as-justice. It is clear that human relations governed by mutual respect would maximize the liberty that co-existing people can share simultaneously.
One problem arises. ‘Equality’ is a belief, just as a claim that “Natural Rights” exist is a belief. Anyone can accept or reject that belief, too, for any reason or no reason without being irrational or unreasonable. That makes it an unsatisfactory starting point for establishing a really just society.
A really just society cannot start by imposing any belief on all people, since there is no belief that is shared by all people and every belief is completely arbitrary form the point of view of any person who does not hold it. As Locke, said, arbitrariness in human relations is injustice. Making any belief the starting point for the governance of society makes any such approach to governing society unjust at its core.
In “A New Liberalism” the approach to justice for justly governing society does involve mutual respect. It follows, however, not from any belief, but from the observation that human beings have no choice but to effect choices (i.e., choose from among perceived alternatives and take action to bring that choice to fruition) [from Warren J. Samuels]. So what must be respected is people’s capacity to choose, beginning with choosing whether/how/to what extent to be involved whenever any choice is being effected.
Any existing Liberal nation that came to be governed by this approach to justice would not be required to change any of its existing institutional structure, but its functioning — its effects on people, its outcomes for society — would be transformed, especially in the economy. ‘Equality’ is recognized in this New Liberalism to be an unnecessary complication: all that matters for justice in it is that the beings involved are humans. Liberty is maximized as a product of justice, not as its source, or foundation, or predicate, etc.
“A New Liberalism” (here in Medium, but not — for the benefit of any ‘guest readers’ — behind the paywall)