Battle of the Books: Liberty as the Absence of Force

Thus the word {liberty} is either a misleading appeal to passion, or else it embodies or rather hints at an exceedingly complicated assertion, the truth of which can be proved only by elaborate historical investigations.  'The cause of liberty, for which Hampden died on the field and Sydney on the scaffold,' means either that Hampden and Sydney were right in resisting Charles I and Charles II, respectively, or else merely that they did as a fact die in resisting those kings.  The first assertion obviously requires, before it can be accepted, a full account by way of proof.  The second tells us nothing worth knowing except a bare matter of fact, and would be consistent with Hampden's having been shot when trying to rob on the highway and Sydney's being hanged for highway robbery(p121).  Yet this definition of liberty, which is in exact agreement with Mr. Mill's own views as expressed in his chapter on Liberty and Necessity, in the 2nd volume of his Logic,  is the very foundation of my book.  Liberty is a eulogistic word;  substitute for it a neutral word--'leave', for instance, or 'permission'--and it becomes obvious that nothing whatever can be predicated of it, unless you know who is permitted by whom to do what.  I would ask Mr. Morley whether he attaches any absolute sense whatever to the word liberty, and if so, what it is?  If he attaches to it only the relative sense of 'permission' or 'leave,' I ask how he can make any affirmation at all about it unless he specifies the sort of liberty to which he refers?  Of course, liberty may have positive effects.  Give all men leave to steal, and no doubt some men will steal, but this does not show that liberty itself is a definite thing, with properties of its own, like coal or water(p233, James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Liberty Fund ed.) 

Battle of the Books: Persuasion and Force

This quote is also from James Fitzjames Stephen's Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

On the other hand, when a priest says,'Vote as I tell you or you will be damned,' he employs force just as much as if he held a pistol to his parishioner's head, though the arguments through which the force is applied are more elaborate than in the other case.  A surgeon tells a patient that he will die unless he submits to a painful operation.  Is this persuasion or force?  No man would lose a limb if he were not forced to do so by the fear of losing what he values even more, but the surgeon would usually be said to persuade his patient, and not to compel him(p77).  There is one other point in Mr. Harrison's article which calls for notice.  He totally misapprehends the object of my chapter on the distinction between the temporal and the spiritual power, and he naturally misrepresents what I have said on the subject.  As to his misrepresentations, I have dealt with them as far as I thought necessary in foot-notes to the passages misrepresented, and I will only say here that they may be summed up in a few words.  Mr. Harrison supposes me to teach 'the paradox' of 'the essential identity of material and moral power,' in order to establish the conclusion that the 'State ought to be the Church,' that it is not to be a Pope-king, but only a King-pope.'  If Mr. Harrison had read the chapter in question with any care, he would have seen that I said nothing of the sort.  I admit as fully as anyone can the difference between temporal and spiritual power.  The one I say is the power which rests upon temporal sanctions, and the other the power which rests upon spiritual sanctions, and I think that when for this expression, Mr. Harrison substitutes the word 'hell,' he does me great injustice.  I mean by spiritual sanctions all the hopes and fears, all the feelings of various kinds which may be excited by the prospect of a future state.  What I deny is the right of positivists, who do not believe in spiritual sanctions at all, and who do not accept the distinction between spirit and matter, to make use of the word 'spiritual,' and I say that their theory becomes nonsense without it.  Again I do not deny, but assert, the distinction between persuasion and force.  What I deny is that this distinction corresponds to the distinction between temporal and spiritual power.  I observe indeed, in passing, that persuasion and force run into each other, as do many dissimilar things, but the whole of my argument shows that I recognise the distinction, as, indeed, Mr. Harrison himself proves from other parts of my book, thinking to catch me in a contradiction.  This, however, is unnecessary to my argument, and the passage which Mr. Harrison refers to as if it conveyed the substance of the whole chapter might have been struck out of the book without interfering with its principal positions.  The whole chapter forms a carefully constructed argument, and it is difficult to answer it without an equally careful consideration of it as a whole(p244-45).

Battle of the Books, Part One

Here is an account, similar to Finnis' Incommensurability thesis, but informed by Hume, thus without a Natural Law potential.  It comes from James Fitzjames Stephen's Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

To give a specific illustration, Hume's doctrine,'that personal merit consists entirely in the usefulness or agreeableness of qualities to the person himself possessed of them, or to others who have any intercourse with him,' and that,' every man who has any regard to his own happiness and welfare will best find his account in the practice of every moral duty,' is quite independent of religion in my sense of the word.  That up to a certain point 'true self love and social are the same' does not admit of serious dispute(p176).  Happiness has a very different meaning to a fierce pastoral tribe in Central Asia;  to an ignorant husbandman in Bengal;  to a cultivated modern European;  to a naked savage in Central Africa, to say nothing of the different conceptions of happiness which are formed by different individuals similarly situated.  But what does this prove?  Merely that morality is not fixed but varying, that there is no such thing as absolute, unchangeable morality, and that it is hardly possible that there should be moral intuitions, and this is the plain truth and the ultimate result of these speculations.  Bring any considerable number of human beings into relations with each other.  Let them talk, fight, eat, drink, continue their species, make observations, form a society, in short, however rough or however polished, and experience proves that they will form a conception more or less definite of what for them constitutes happiness;  that they will also form a conception of the rules of conduct by which happiness may be increased or diminished;  that they will enforce such rules upon each other by different sanctions, and that such rules and sanctions will produce an influence upon individual conduct varying according to circumstances(p225, Liberty Fund ed.)