[Two friends, Philopolis and Eleutheria, are wandering through the marketplace sampling the wares at the various stalls they visit.⁽¹⁾ They find themselves, oblivious to each other's presence, at a bookseller's stall, each absorbed in scanning, turning over, and reading several of the learned tomes they find on display there. Philopolis looks at, and recognizes his old friend. They return the books they were perusing to their proper places and shake hands.]

P: Eleutheria! It's been a long time. But I see that you haven't lost your interest in augmenting your library.

E: Hello Philopolis! No, my interest remains high, though my pocket book is low. Perhaps that is just as well; I find the likelihood of reading a particular book diminishes once I put it on my shelf.

P: Say, I was just the other day speaking to our old colleague Nomosius about certain matters political, and he mentioned that he had run into you lately, and that you had been discussing his work on ethics and the state. Would you like to discuss these issues over a glass of wine in the café across the square?

E: Delighted.

[They cross the square to the café that Philopolis has suggested. They sit down and order two glasses of wine. Philopolis looks back across the square at the merchants talking to their customers, singing the praises of their merchandise, and exchanging their goods for money. After a moment of thought, he begins.]

P: Eleutheria, look at our friend the bookseller. Look at the care he takes in arranging his books, cleaning them, explaining their merits to his customers. He's probably thinking of the declining quality of book-binding, or the orders from the publishers he has to make, or satisfying the needs of his favourite customers. And when he considers politics, maybe he thinks of the odious book tax that the government has placed on his wares, and how this affects his sales.

Look, next door to him is a lady selling shirts: she might be thinking of how cheap foreign imports have cut into her sales, of the consequent need for higher tariffs on clothing, or on how government labour regulations have caused wages to increase, and so on. Each of them regard political questions that reflect on their self-interest, and spend little time meditating on question of the general good of the state. But don't you think that there's a need for a group of people who do contemplate this good, and are willing and able to act upon it? After all, isn't the community more than the sum of its parts, a rag-tag collection of individual self-interests?

E: Well, Philopolis, I have nothing against people who contemplate such questions as what is the Good. I certainly wouldn't want to forbid such a pursuit. Nevertheless, I am reluctant to surmise that any good can come of it. After all, what is good for one individual may be a loathsome nuisance to another. And if we want to say only one of these individuals has the right concept of the good, I would be curious to see on what basis such an argument can be made. Perhaps you can convince me otherwise, but I would suspect the appeal can be to nothing else than who thumps their chest loudest.

P: I shall leave the chest-stumping to the lawyers, petty politicians, and sophists in the city (for there are more than enough of them). But I admit that my sense of the public good may be elusive and slippery, especially to sceptics like yourself.

How can I begin? How can I give the spirit that animates the polis flesh? [P muses for a moment, then notices a new figure walking jig-jag through the market]. Ah... observe the ragged beggar across the square. He asks the bookseller for a few coins, then the shirt lady, then all the other merchants. Some give a small pittance, mainly to get rid of him, no doubt, or to make themselves feel proud as they display their charitable natures to the crowd. But they probably say to themselves, "we pity this poor fellow, but he's not OUR responsibility. We didn't make him poor. Let someone else take care of him." And in this limited sense, they're right, they're not personally responsible for his poverty.

But should the community simply ignore him? Refuse to dedicate some small amount of the taxes it collects to a simple shelter for him and his ilk? Maybe a few dollars to a public kitchen to save him from starvation? At minimum, these things are part of what I mean by the public good, a good that transcends the narrowly-defined interests of the individuals who make up the community.

E: I apologize, Philopolis, for you have confused me. You say two things that do not appear to go together. On the one hand, helping that poor beggar is an example of a public good. On the other, you say that public goods are things that transcend the interests of the individuals who make up the community. Which is it, pray tell? Does the good the beggar receives have nothing to do with him, but rather something beyond him? To me this is like talk of psychic power and hocus pocus.

Listen, if I give alms to that beggar, surely that is a good to that beggar. That sense of good I understand. What is this other good that I am furthering in your eyes, that transcends the individuals' conceptions of good? I have no comprehension of that sense of good.

P: Ah Eleutheria, you have eyes but you cannot see. I agree that your "generous" gift of alms to the beggar does indeed result in a "good" for that beggar, in the form of a shiny coin or two glittering in his poor benighted palm. But this sense of private good is indeed "transcended" when the community makes an effort to provide some measure of support to the beggar. Tell me Eleutheria, do you love your wife and children?

[Eleutheria sips his wine and falls into deep reflection, faint images of which drifted across his face like clouds on a summer day. Meanwhile, Philopolis fidgets in his seat awaiting what he presumes to be an obvious response. At length, Eleutheria replies.]

E: Yes, presuming we understand that "love" is a generic word for many things insufficiently catalogued.

P: I shall disregard the excessive care with which you've answered my question, and take it as a simple "yes." Can you say that this feeling is promoted by some sense of self-interest, or a good private to yourself? Or do you instead have a feeling that your family as a whole has value, and that your self-interests are somehow subsumed within this greater value? And isn't this feeling or value the same sort of feeling or value that public-spirited citizens have for their community, writ small?

E: I would be a fool to suggest that my love for my family is wholly self-interested, but neither is it something that subsumes my self-interest. No marriage lasts long in which self-interest is always suppressed for the interest of the family. (I am terribly sorry to hear about your divorce, by the way, but I digress.) Being self-interested is not to be equated with selfishness. My interests may extend to my family. These are still my interests, though. So, first off, it is not clear that I do supplant my self-interest for something higher, such as love.

Secondly, even if I did supplant my self-interest for the interests of something beyond me, such as my family, there is little to support the conclusion that I ought to thereby supplant my self-interest for the interests of my community. My wife's telling me to buy new shoes for my children is something I will do, however grudgingly, precisely because she is my wife and they are my children. But for a community member to tell me to buy some shoes for that beggar is not something to which I feel equally committed. Either I am an unfeeling cad not to treat this neighbour in my community on equal footing with my wife (or for that matter to treat the beggar on equal terms with my children), or, as I believe, any theory that suggests I do is psychologically unsound.

Lastly, if you were to insist that I am a cad, I would still maintain that the good I am to further in my community can only be understood in terms relative to persons; not to an abstract entity devoid of any mental states. It is my wife and children that I further by buying them shoes, not the family. To see my point, try to imagine an act that harms the individual members of a family, yet furthers the interests of that family. It is inconceivable, I say. Likewise, it is incoherent to think of the greater good of the community independently of the good of the individual members of that community.

P: Well, you've said quite a mouthful, but at least three points strike me as flaws in your argument. Firstly, your feelings toward your wife and your neighbour don't have to be either equally strong or separated by a chasm of difference. I see the feeling of a community as a hierarchical scale, with one's family feelings being strongest, then one's feelings for one's neighbours as less strong, and then for the community as a whole, including all the strangers contained therein, as the least strong. But that's not to say that one's communal feelings are at odds with one's feelings for one's family: ideally, they are an extension of those feelings.

Secondly, I certainly didn't mean to imply that the community is an abstract metaphysical entity with its own mental states. That would be patently absurd. To speak in such language is to speak purely metaphorically. Even the great atomist Hobbes, who you no doubt admire, prefaced his Leviathan with a picture of the body of the sovereign made up of dozens of tiny individual faces, to illustrate the way that the body politic consists of some sort of communal will.

Lastly, I take your point about collective harm being no more than a sum of individual harms. But "harm" is a difficult notion to define in a consistent manner. Think of the case of a child who wants to play with his friends instead of doing his school work: if you force him to do the latter, it might seem to be a harm to him, yet in another sense, it might turn out to be a long-term good. So isn't this a "harm" to one member of your family, that could turn out to be a "good" to your family, at least in the future sense?

E: I can see that we shall be here for a while longer. Here comes the waiter now. Our meagre glasses of this barely palatable house wine are insufficient for our task. Allow me the honour of ordering a bottle.

P: Yes, a good idea. Maybe a nice dry white, to match your dry wit.

E: [Eleutheria calls a passing waiter and makes the order.] Let me see, then, where were we? Ah, yes...you have suggested that my concern for strangers in my community is an extension of the concerns I have for my close kin. These original concerns I have toward my kin, presumably, are naturally inherent in our species, or have evolved over time so that for all intents and purposes they are natural, notwithstanding child and spousal abuse--which, by the way, is certainly not a rare event. To model the state after the traditional family is to fashion a brow-beating hierarchical state, one which modern thinkers ought to resist. Leaving that sobering thought aside, perhaps there is no harm in conceding your point: the point, that is, that my concern for strangers is an extension of my concern for my family. That is to say, there is no harm so long as you recognize, as you have admitted, that as one proceeds further from one's family and friends, the less concern one has; especially if to act on that weakened concern is at the expense of doing good for one's family or friends. Can we agree on that?

P: Yes, we can. Pray continue your argument--I will let you lead me by the nose for a while, but with the hopes that you lead me somewhere worth the trip.

E: Very well. I am glad you are so obliging, Philopolis, although I hear that being led by the nose to water is no guarantee that one will drink. In this case, we are at the water already. You say my interests in my family and my interests in the community are of the same kind. I say, whether this is so or not hardly matters. Community spirit is such a watered down sort of kin spirit, that the appeal to the "sameness" is as idle as remarking that fat and thin people are really the same, since there is an imperceptible progression, ounce by ounce, between weighing one hundred and three hundred pounds.

Notwithstanding this point, there is a further philosophical problem. Although some people might equate their interests with the interests of the community, nothing from this observation could show that we all ought to do so.

[The waiter arrives with a chilled bottle of Chardonnay. Eleutheria samples it and gives his assent. The waiter pours the two glasses, and places the bottle in a bucket of ice. He picks something up from the floor and hands it to Eleutheria. The waiter remarks, "Sir, I beg your pardon, but is this your wallet?"]

E: Yes, it is, Thank you. [The waiter leaves]

P: You see, Eleutheria, how the waiter gives palpable evidence of the very community spirit that you so recently were inveighing against. But in any case, there are two senses of the word "should" here: "should" in the sense of a universal moral imperative, and in the sense of bringing about the best consequences. My sense of should is primarily the latter: we should behave towards others with some sort of community spirit, at least until they betray that spirit by behaving selfishly, because it will bring about a better communal life for everybody. It's a pragmatic, not a metaphysical, "should."

I'll give you a simple example: it may be easier for me just to throw my trash over my neighbour's fence and forget about it. Of course, he'll probably start doing the same. So we might sign an implicit "contract" to toss it into the street instead, on neither of our property's. But what sort of a community would that sort of thinking leave us with? The sort of community we see in squalid urban jungles, where it's everyone for themselves. It's not a great leap to go from a simple case like trash to messier ones like pollution, crime, poverty, and the decaying physical structure of our cities, all important communal issues, issues that can't be adequately dealt with on the model of the isolated contract signer.

E: Ironically enough, the tragedy of the commons, or in this case the debacle of the public street, is used as an argument for privatization; not a commune. The logic is simply this: we know people will take care of things if they have a self-interest in doing so. One way of doing this is through privatization.

Don't choke, Philopolis! Personally, I do not advocate privatization--especially for things like streets and garbage pick-up. The point, though, is the recognition that we can not abandon self-interest when we create public rules. Implicitly you and your ilk recognize this when you make such convoluted efforts to convince me my self-interest really includes strangers on the street.

Let me return to one of my so-called "errors." Recall your example of the child. Have I "harmed" him by forcing him to do his homework against his will? Or have I acted rightly, though he does not appreciate that fact? I think the latter. This in no way reveals an error in my thinking, however, since I deny the analogy that how I ought to treat my child is how society ought to treat me. If anything, your example helps my side, not works against it.

Consider the analogy closely. A parent can do things to their children because they purportedly know what is best for them. But at some point the child grows up. My parents used to change my diaper and wipe my nose, but they certainly don't do that anymore. And why is that? Because I have grown up enough to make my own decisions. I have taken on my own identity. I am no longer merely an extension of them.

So, Philopolis, to follow the analogy of paternalism, the state ought to back off when I become an autonomous adult; not continue to intercede with their notions of my good--even if they're right!

P: Slow down there Eleutheria. By no means do I want to suggest that we abandon self-interest when making public rules, just that we rein in self-interest with some sense of communal or public interest. This can and often does conflict with individual, private interests, as you can see in my parable of the Hobbesian system of garbage disposal.

Be that as it may, I would be very interested in your account of how a group of purely self-interested individuals could provide a series of government services for a community, especially when these services don't benefit all people equally. For example: some people might use a given park or library frequently, others not at all.

Further, I reject your equation of communalism and paternalism: not all communities, or families for that matter, need to be run on the model of a stern Pater informing his household from on high how he wants them to behave. Further, although I agree in general that adult human beings no longer need their noses wiped for them by the state, citizens who "fall through the cracks" of our society could be cited by people like you to have reverted to a sort of "second childhood," one of dependence upon others for their well being. Think of the unemployed, those on welfare, the crippled, the insane: wouldn't expelling these people from the bonds of community be like throwing a child of six months out of the cradle, expecting it to walk and to take care of itself?

And lastly, do parents always know what's good for their children? I admit that they no doubt have much stronger ties of affection to their children than strangers do, but don't even the children of well-intentioned parents sometimes turn out bad? Turn out to be alcoholics, addicts, petty criminals, lawyers, or even as psychologically abused individuals with deep emotional scars? Parents don't by definition know what's good for their children (although in most cases they're quite sure they do!). Good parental intentions by themselves don't ensure a harm-free childhood, so I believe that your disjunction between the family and the polis doesn't stand up.

E: Your last point is of no concern to me, since I have always said that we cannot trust the community or the state to know what's good for us--even if we can presume their good intentions. I am glad to see that on this point we are in complete agreement!

Your second to last point is very clever indeed. As you were saying it I couldn't help thinking how glad I am to have run in to you, Philopolis, for you always entertain me with your keen insight. Some people, alas, do have wretched lives and would want our help. But you are unfair to surmise that I would wish to eject them from the bonds of the community. I do no such thing, since what counts as the bonds of community for me are individual negotiations. They are still free to enter any individual negotiation they can. True, their opportunities for success will be less than the able-bodied, but I don't presume the bonds of community are a contract for equality. Rather, you are free to negotiate for deals with whatever resources you have at your disposal. People have different resources at their disposal. Life is unfair. My theory doesn't pretend, like others, to alter the course of nature.

But is the theory of the isolated contract-signer so bad that it cannot hope to clear garbage from the street, or disapprove of crime? Such a monstrous theory I would abandon in an instant. But look, you have misrepresented it. People can do to others anything at all so long as those others consent. This includes taxing those others to pay people to remove garbage from their streets. Would they consent? Sure they would, so long as privatized services were not more efficient, cheaper, or offered better assurance of clean streets--which I doubt. And my theory certainly justifies condemning crime, since crime is doing to others without the appropriate consent. It is clearly wrong. The prevention of crime requires a police force to help punish wrongdoers and perhaps dissuade others. Why would we give some of our tax money to help this cause, you may ask? Because it is in my interest to lessen crime. It is that simple.

Libraries and parks, unfortunately, fare less well. But I prefer, as you know, to augment my own library.

P: Well, Eleutheria, you have cleverly evaded my point about the state being like parents in that they are equally capable of treating their "wards" either well or badly by using the oldest rhetorical trick in the book -- agreeing with me! I won't plague you on this point, but move on to your second, more crucial, one. Do you really claim that political philosophy must be grounded in the reasoning of an abstract, individual decision-maker? Or perhaps in terms of some sort of "ideal" decision-maker, divorced from all flesh-and-blood individuals? Which is it?

E: Yes and no. The matter isn't quite as cut and dried as that. Individuals are keen on satisfying their interests and they want, therefore, a political structure that best accommodates their particular interests. Unfortunately, the interests of the various individuals or groups inevitably conflict, and a theory that tries to accommodate all interests is therefore a mish-mash and doomed to failure. Our interests, for example, would be well met by a political structure that supplied free books and wine. This would hardly satisfy the interests of book and wine merchants. The solution is to back away from grounding political theory on a subjective conception of the good that any individual or group happens to hold and, instead, adopt a political structure that is as neutral as possible to these competing interests. So yes, I believe political structures must be grounded on the interests of an abstract individual rather than any particular person or group. And no, I resist that this abstract concept of an individual must be entirely alien from any actual person's interest.

P: If you ground all your fine notions in this "abstract individual," then what is the necessity of consulting the goals and desires of any specific concrete individual? Further, aren't the very liberal goods you endorse, such as individual liberty, the product of your being situated in a given social position at a given point in time? And what if that specific individual disagrees with the political arrangements that you, the grand contractarian theorist, claims he would want in his "best" or most "rational" state? Aren't you trying to have your cake and eat it?

E: If a political institution claims that it satisfies the interests of the people yet defines "people" in a sense entirely removed from any individual, we have a right to complain. I would be the last person to disagree with you on that point. Does the contractarian political state that I envision succumb to such a grievous indiscretion? I wish very much, Philopolis, to disabuse you of believing the answer is yes. The question is how....

[While Eleutheria ruminates, Philopolis refills their wine glasses. Eleutheria hits upon his strategy and begins again.]

Earlier, I claimed that we need a conception of justified politics that is neutral to any one conception of the good. In order to do so, we must nevertheless appeal to something to which every reasonable person would consent. Your concern, I take it, is how we are to define "reasonable"? If you suspect this question is troubling to me, it must be because you believe the only possible answer I can give is an appeal to black box dictums of the grand contractarian inquisitor, as if what is "reasonable" can only be what is in agreement with ivory tower theorists. Such an inference is unreasonable. But instead of redirecting our otherwise profitable discussion concerning whether liberty corrupts the community to a discussion on theories of rationality, let me present to you another way of looking at the issue that will be independent of theories of rationality.

There are certain necessary conditions that any political structure must meet in order for actual individuals to pursue their various, individualized conceptions of the good. The preservation of liberty is not considered itself a good that I and my ilk are trying to ram down others's throats like stale cake. I concede that it is possible that some will trade this liberty for other goods (kin, friends, and community, for example), and hence, seemingly, they would not place as high a value on liberty as I claim. But this would not show that liberty is merely the product of my being situated in a given social position at a given point in time. The act of relinquishing one's liberty requires the liberty to do so, and not to have it forced upon one, let alone forbidden. And surely that is something the individual can value, no matter what her station in life, nor place of origin, nor thick conception of the good. No, Philopolis, I see liberty as a necessary precondition of a social institution that best enables a heterogenous population to pursue their individual desires, their subjective renderings of the good. Although it is frightfully evident that many would wish to deny others the liberty to pursue their notion of the good (think of homophobes and anti-abortionists, for example), it seems ludicrous to suppose anyone would reject their own liberty to pursue their own notions of the good!

P: But sometimes what is liberty to one person is to another a restriction on their own freedom, on quite good grounds. This is especially true in a competitive society with limited resources. Everyone can't be rich. Everyone can't have political power. There will be winners and losers within all competitive schemes, and, leaving aside whether a given scheme determines winners and losers in a "fair" manner, the winners will demand the "freedom" to enjoy the spoils of their victories, while the losers will bewail the restrictions on their freedom caused by their condition of poverty or powerlessness.

E: My dear friend, Philopolis, you are confusing liberty with freedom. In one sense, "liberty" refers to a particular sort of claim right. In another sense, it refers to freedom, to being free, or having the pure freedom of doing what you want. And this sense of being free to do what you want may include the absence of both external and internal constraints. And should we distinguish being free as merely having no external constraints, we may even incorporate some further notion of autonomy. The freedom to do whatever you want, however, is not a claim right. The inhabitants of a land where everyone has pure freedom, but no liberty rights, is a land where lives are brutish and short. So, pointing out that one's liberty rights entail restrictions on freedom and thinking this commits one toward greater restrictions on liberty is simply to confuse the two concepts. Becoming clear about this also shows the horrible inadequacy of the argument's conclusion. That you accept some restrictions on your freedom can hardly justify that you should thereby accept more. That you do not mind gaining one pound does not commit you to being indifferent to gaining fifty pounds.

P: By no means do I wish to defend the anarchic freedom you so rightly deny. But your distinction between liberty and freedom seems at best to be a scholastic point: when we say in ordinary language "I have the liberty to do X," we are, in essence, saying "I have the freedom to do X." But no sane person imagines that political liberty means "everything is permitted." Your distinction is grammatical, not real. But the problem gets back to that one little word "reasonable" you mentioned earlier but seemed to slough off as unimportant: empires can rise and fall on the meaning of little words like this one. The reasonableness (or, dare I say it, the "rationality") of one's defence of a given definition of liberty is not based on abstract considerations of right, but on the concrete reality of your present social and economic situation. If that situation changed to a less advantageous one, or you were operating, theoretically speaking, in ignorance of your personal situation, then you would be far more likely to favour a more egalitarian set of political arrangements. Otherwise, the rich and the powerful are those most likely to favour libertarian political schemes, and to use rhetoric to seduce the poor and the powerless into joining their libertarian laments.

E: The rational strategy in a situation where someone's success is, one, totally unpredictable, and two, depends on someone else's loss is, as you've noted, a matter of choosing the outcome where the amount of the loss is the least possible given the alternatives. But such a "maximin strategy," as it's called, is not the rational choice in situations where it is neither a crap-shoot nor a zero-sum game. Need I mention that typical contractual negotiations in real life are neither crap-shoots nor zero-sum games. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

But perhaps such talk seems divorced from the real issues you're highlighting. You claim that an individual's adoption of a moral theory depends on the social-psychological circumstances in which she finds herself. I agree! In fact, let us drink a toast...a toast to the psycho-social context in which we make our decisions. [The two friends refill their glasses]. Here's to being embedded.

P: Yes, yes, you old goat. [They drink.]

E: Simply, I ask, so what? That we are socially situated, is really quite irrelevant, since that wouldn't alone show that we have homogenous interests. The term "social" is a catch-all phrase for a multiplicity of factors. Although there is some plausibility that any one factor will have an influence on many people, it goes against probability that many individuals will be equally effected by all the same variables together. Having heterogenous interests matter to me for two reasons. It shows there is no political community if community is defined as a group of individuals with homogenous goals, notwithstanding our common social influences. Further, it shows that a political institution that governs this heterogenous bunch must be as neutral as possible precisely because of the biases of individuals you're pointing out exist. These two observations support, not damage, liberal theory.

The intent of political machinations is to better enable people to pursue their disparate interests in peace. To do this well, they must be sensitive to the kinds of people we are and the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Noting this, however, is a far cry from inferring that the individual is a myth to be superceded by the community -- especially if such rhetoric has the consequence of putting aside precisely those interests of the individual that the state was designed to protect!

P: It's not the individual that's a myth, but the abstract, rational, individual. It would be more proper to say that there are as many "individuals" as there are people. The individual is always situated, both in a trivial and in a more meaningful sense. In the trivial sense, my dear Eleutheria, as you sit here sipping a glass of wine, chatting about political theory with me, you are quite a different individual from the person who plays at home with his children, or who fills out forms in the workplace. But more meaningfully, you are situated in a given social and economic way, as an educated white male roughly in the middle classes. These circumstances, I claim, make it easier for you to adhere to a liberal contractarian position, a position that places the burden for most of what we call "public spending" on groups of freely contracting individuals, and not on the state.

E: Our present state is being imbued with wine, as you're well aware, and one might thereby expect agreement on political theory -- but alas, it is not so. Let me revert to an issue you dismissed as merely a "grammatical" point. You misunderstood the force of my observation, and I think it is germane to the present point. Of course, lay-philosophers often charge naysayers with misunderstanding rather than, heaven forbid, contemplate the potentiality of their error. I apologize for adopting the same primitive strategy. But look, my point is clearly more than a grammatical nit-pick. I am at liberty to drive a golf ball three hundred yards. No one external to me is forcibly preventing me. But, if you will, I am not free to do so, since it is, in my case, an impossibility. Likewise, the poor and infirm are at liberty to pursue their interests, albeit they are not free to do so, if you get my point. To complain that liberal theorists put priority on liberty but do nothing to actually enable people to be free in this thicker sense is neither a paradox nor a sign of incoherence.

You are right, Philopolis, that this is not to say we ought not enable this thicker sense of freedom. So far I am arguing merely that an enabling sense of freedom does not follow from an appeal to liberty, nor to a commitment about the importance of liberty. The two are different concepts.

To return, now, to the biases inherent in our situatedness (in my case being an educated white male sipping wine), my previous point was to agree with you, but show why this makes it imperative we find some political structure that can accommodate as many of these opposed views as possible. It would indeed be a complaint against a political structure that was biassed to only one group -- white males, typically. But saying a political structure predicated on liberty preservation biases the rich, white male property owners' liberty at the expense of any other group's liberty, is an out and out misunderstanding. Everyone's liberty is treated equally. What you want to point out is that everyone's freedom under such a system is unequal. This is not merely a grammatical point, since the liberal structure promises only to be neutral with regards to liberty.

P: Let's say that I agree that there is a real distinction to be made between liberty and freedom, as you describe them. Then we would have to posit the individual's basic liberty as an a priori condition for the realization of freedom taken in the more positive sense. So far I agree. But here's the rub: I believe that in any decent society, liberty (i.e. the absence of impediments to my self-expression and self-development) requires, even on liberal grounds, some degree of positive freedom, at least in terms of a reasonable guarantee of the ground conditions of my economic well being. Without these ground conditions, our liberty is a sham. And on top of this, we cannot sharply divide the two -- for example, my "liberty" to walk the streets of my home town at night requires a freedom from the fear of being robbed or assaulted by thugs to make that liberty worth anything. Finally, moving away from strictly liberal presuppositions, it's not unreasonable to say that the community can lay claim to greater "goods" than those of the self-interests of atomic individuals. Be that as it may, in your distinction between negative liberties and positive freedoms you've unearthed what is perhaps the core of our disagreement.

E: Well, we disagree, then, on whether negative liberty requires positive freedom. Perhaps we can lay this discord aside without harm. Let us focus, instead, on whether it is desirable to demand government imposed restrictions on our negative liberty in order to enhance our positive freedom. I take it you will say, 'yes, of course'. Perhaps you even have an argument to that effect that does not hinge on the putative link between negative liberty and positive freedom -- for we evidently won't get further on that point.

P: Perhaps the crux of our disagreement doesn't rest on the respective quality or our arguments (although part of my "argument" for connecting negative liberty and positive freedom is a comparison of the empirical experience of living in a society where such a link has become part of the political culture to one where it hasn't: I would argue that the majority would prefer the former, given a choice). Instead, I believe it rests on a prior (to all argument, that is) ethico-existential disposition toward either liberty or community. Leaving aside the etiology of these dispositions, I believe that such a presupposition of the superiority of one or the other grounds all higher-level political debate, as a sort of condition for the possibility of this debate. It's also the condition for what counts as empirical evidence for either case: the validity of the examples, statistics, even the forms of argument used depends on these presuppositions.

Let me illustrate this point in a more quotidian manner. Here's a simple question: why do philosophers rarely if ever change their minds concerning their basic positions, even if confronted by solid arguments? How many times have each of us encountered a professor of philosophy in a public forum doggedly defending his or her point of view against all comers? So, if even those who represent the supposed pinnacle of rational clarity of thought allow passion to cloud their arguments, then how can we expect the unenlightened masses to avoid this pitfall?

E: I admit I have met individuals loathe to entertain even the slimmest possibility that a counter argument has merit and discussions with them are frustrating. But that hardly shows the debate is a hopeless task in principle -- depending merely on one's preconceived, perhaps involuntary, biases. Otherwise, any attempt at discrediting you will count as evidence in your theory's favour. Such non-falsifiability can hardly constitute a merit.

Look, Philopolis, part of the philosopher's role is to unearth those biases of which you speak and show why they are contentious or ill-founded. Alternatively, we may seek points of agreement upon which we may build an edifice. In our case, judging from your parenthetical utterance concerning how people would agree to live under a benevolent state than under one which preserves merely our negative liberty, we have an agreement: we agree on predicating justice on consent; we merely disagree on what principles of justice would ensue from such a procedure. But, really, that is not for us to decide.

P: In principle I agree that consent should be the ground of political community. But you've certainly stirred up a hornets' nest of theoretical problems by introducing this question into our deliberations, Eleutheria. Let me try to identify but a few of these stinging problems:

First of all, who has to consent to a given form of political organization? Everyone within a community? Or just the majority? What if a minority feels that their interests are being trampled on by the "consent" of the majority -- what do we do? Send them packing? If so, just how realistic is emigration as a solution to the problem of minority discontents: after all, should you force people to leave the country of their birth, maybe the only land where they have any sort of common linguistic and cultural identity?

Secondly, there's the temporal question. When do we ask for this consent? At birth? At the age of majority? Do we tacitly assume that all citizens of a state who do not expressly deny their consent to the social contract are de facto signers of the contract? And do I have the right to tear up this contract, as a rational adult who no longer accepts its terms, but without being forced to leave my home and native land? And if I don't have this right, then just what value is such a contract, outside the ethereal realms of pure theory?

Thirdly, in a complex society, full of conflicting social, political, and economic interests, one where most public discourse takes the form of rhetoric and propaganda, is there such a thing as informed consent? Even if we can ask for this consent in a clear and non-propagandistic fashion, can the average citizen be expected to have the time and energy to inform themselves adequately about the burning issues of the day? I know that I can't always do this, and I have an active interest in the political life of our polis. Again, you're free to say that this "consent" is a purely formal notion, one that has no part to play in everyday affairs. But surely this is like a bottle of wine that has been diluted with ten parts of water: technically, it's still wine; but it will satisfy only the most indiscriminating of drinkers.

Lastly, leaving aside the question of individual consent, there may be moral claims that one can make that are totally independent of any discrete bundle of individual senses of the good. To speak in a concretely historical voice, a given society may in general favour slavery or imperialism or racism, yet posterity quite rightly judge that society harshly. People are all too often swayed by the fancy talk of demagogues and tyrants, and too easily sweep what they know in their hearts is right under the dusty old carpet of self-interest or mass mania.

In short, Eleutheria, perhaps you should withdraw your arm from this hornets' nest of troubling questions lest you be stung. But I leave this decision to your own discretion.

E: Yes, I see that I have inadvertently opened Pandora's apiary. Still, I think if we innoculate ourselves with a proper understanding of the principle, to which you give at least theoretical assent, we will not be as troubled by these stings as you might think. First off, who counts? All and only concerned parties count. Who is a concerned party? Those who are necessarily affected (typically adversely) by the actions of a negotiation. The fact that a gang of thieves agrees to rob a bank does not make their action moral, since they neglected to involve the bank in their negotiations. Busybodies who are adversely affected by your lifestyle do not count as concerned parties, however, since it is not a necessary feature of your action that they will be so affected in order to achieve your objective. I recall Nomosius's disdain at learning homosexuals lived beside him. But the homosexuals did not require Nomosius's existence or action in order to be homosexuals, and we can suppose they did not choose to be gay in order to upset Nomosius. Plainly, notwithstanding Nomosius's adverse affects, he does not count as a concerned party in the agreement between the homosexuals. Likewise, that Nomosius does not benefit from a private transaction between you and I is not a concern to us.

Please note, by the way, that the issue of concerned parties addresses your last vexation as well. That it is in my interest to enslave you may go without saying; but it is not likely to be in your interest. The scope of the concerned parties is greater than merely those who benefit from the acts. My concept of morality is not merely: Do what is in your self-interest, nor Do what is in the majority's interest. Rather, since you value the liberty to pursue your interests, you must abide by the like restrictions on others. That tyranny and mass mania exist and are deemed immoral is no more of a threat to my concept of morality than the fact that murderers exist is a refutation of the fifth commandment.

Your temporal question is ambiguous: it can be understood in three different ways. Are we asking whether we all consented to the contractarian principle itself; are we asking whether all concerned parties consented to a political policy; or are we asking whether all concerned parties agreed to a particular act? The answers are very different. The question is really quite silly if we're talking about any given act. Contrary to Socrates's thinking, any agreement has a particular scope, explicit or otherwise. When Ulysses agreed to be bound to the mast and have his orders refused so that he could hear the sirens without cost, he did not at the same time agree to be flogged and have his orders to stop the flogging go unheard. Likewise, it hardly counts as justification that workers did not explicitly agree not to be injured from flying glass. The meta-ethical question is perhaps even sillier, since no one pretends our forefathers sat down and agreed to contractarian principles to which we're unconditionally forevermore bound. Asking when we agreed to such a principle is just to miss the function of such a principle. We agree to it now. That is all that matters. We ask ourselves, situated right here, right now, with all our biases and backgrounds, whether we ought to seek and respect people's consent if we plan to use them in pursuit of our interests. In our case, we both have assented to such a principle, notwithstanding our differences. Your earlier conception of an "isolated contract signer" is really incoherent, as you should see now. If I sign a contract under the rubric of our moral principle, that necessarily entails I am not acting in isolation; I am acting in accord with all concerned parties. Concerning the political mandate, it is true that I did not agree to being taxed in order for my government to fund a book called "Dumb Blonde Jokes." For that matter, I did not agree to being ruled by the present party. I did not vote for them; nevertheless I find myself bound to them. I am bound to them because I have accepted the process, if not the outcome. That is the crucial matter. I can, of course, complain if they have violated the process.

There are yet other matters, as you've noted: your concern about informed consent, for example; and what counts as "voluntary;" and complications in dealing with the irrational, like children and the insane. It is an old school that supposes the gathering of information is entirely the responsibility of the consumers. If you're selling me a car you know has a faulty engine, it is your duty to inform me about that; not mine to somehow discover it. Such a restriction on the liberty of the seller is perfectly consistent with the principle of consent. A related matter concerns the method by which information is transmitted. If I cannot reasonably expect you to have comprehended the information, that too is a failure of the conditions of consent.

You're right, of course: these are huge problems we cannot possibly resolve over one bottle of wine, let alone two or three. More specific to our topic, however, is what you alluded to in your last point. The competing interests that exist in our complex society are what, as I've been saying all along, make the principle of consent so attractive. Finding a consensus about what good the state ought to pursue is what seems to me a hopeless task, given our vast differences about what constitutes a good life. If we adhere to the principle of consent, we will end up enacting only that upon which all concerned can agree, and this will be most plausibly a minimal procedure -- a rights-based state focussing on procedures, and not at all on a thick conception of what constitutes the good life. This, you see, has been my point all along. Frankly, the view that there is a Good life which we all share, yet most are too unenlightened to realize, is to me a nightmare of oppression.

P: What a forest of verbiage to cut my way through! Well, let me take a stab at it. Firstly, your notion of a "concerned party" troubles me: on the one hand, you quite sensibly dismiss the right of busybodies to meddle with their neighbours' privacy, but you expand this into a general dismissal of all forms of moral outrage as pertinent to the question. All that you seem to be left with is an economic basis for being a concerned party, and that only if the law justifies this interest (hence your rejection of bank robbery as beyond the contractarian pale). So it would seem that your social contract is a purely economic affair, with no grounds for any broader political or social issues being included in public discourse.

Next, I agree that we can't possibly expect all citizens to contract to each and every political act done by their representatives, nor even to their general policies. You say they must agree to the contractarian principle, to the process of government by consent. Fine. But what's the difference between a society where pretty well everyone does agree to this principle, and one where most people don't? Does the contractarian principle actually prevent a government acting under it from performing any given act, except those that would cause such general misery as to bring about public revolt (which, after all, can take place under any regime)? It sounds as though all you're saying is that the contractarian principle is a vague a priori condition for the existence of a "government by consent," one that allows all sorts of things to go on in actual states.

Lastly, to reflect your own rhetoric, unless I was so fabulously rich that I could hire a private army and live in a walled estate, surrounded by a mob of paid retainers, the minimalist rights-based state you fancy would be a nightmare of oppression to me. Life within it for most citizens would be poor, nasty, brutish, and short. I too would not want one narrow notion of the Good imposed upon a people by an authoritarian regime. But, like most things in life, the wise man (or woman) should pay homage to the genius of compromise, which, in the realm of the political, involves our building of some sense of Community upon the charred ruins of individual and egoistic Liberty that you would prefer to be housed in.

E: There is a vast difference between abiding by the principle of consent and your bleak vision of a free-for-all warfare. And surely we need a criterion of morality free from impassioned outrage. Passions alone are not sufficient justification for us to prevent others from doing what they value -- a value that no economic model might be able to track, by the way. I am afraid, though, you will think my resisting your clever arguments is proof enough for your side. My only strategy left is to remain silent. Besides, our bottle is empty.

[The two friends agree to defer the discussion for a later date. They equally share the bill and pay a handsome tip to the helpful waiter. After they leave the café, they shake hands and continue on their separate ways, idly browsing the wares of the marketplace. The waiter gathers the money from the table and remarks, "Ah, my kindness paid!"]⁽²⁾
 

NOTES

1. The temporal and geographic location of this dialogue should not be confused with any actual time or place. Furthermore, its characters should not be mistaken for any real persons, either living or dead.

2. Although the characters were miserly in citing sources for their ideas, the authors are not unaware of important modern works which have explored many facets of the ideas presented here. They include, David Gauthier, Morals By Agreement, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986; Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989; Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Philosophy, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984; Jan Narveson, The Libertarian Idea, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988; Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York: Basic Books, 1974; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971; John Rawls, Political Liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993; Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982; John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization, Free Press, 1997; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1989; Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity, Concord, Ont.: Anansi Press, 1991.