Rights/Liberty

From Sean's Gospel Topical Guide
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"We believe that no government can exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual ... the free exercise of conscience."

Notes

This right is one which generally can't be understood well from its simple name. People, generally, are very confused about concept such as "liberty", agency, and free will. Too narrowly defined, and liberty becomes rather meaningless, but if too broadly defined, it clearly becomes self-contradictory, and threatens other rights.The standard understanding nowadays is vague and undefined enough to make application difficult. It is an emotion-filled sound bite.

To come to a solid definition of liberty, it should be clear that it is necessary to presuppose that the definition must not be self-contradictory, and must not contradict other rights taken to be fundamental. To that end, I cannot have the liberty to take life, take property, or infringe the liberty of others except, possibly, as it is agreeable to their exercise of liberty, or unless their exercise of liberty will infringe upon my rights.

Another description of liberty, might be that I am allowed to exercise all of my rights and privileges upon whatever basis I desire. The reason why this is important, is that it secures for each of us our moral agency, which is our freedom to assess the rightness or wrongness of our basic actions, and to act however we like with respect to that assessment. Anything less than this amounts to some degree of slavery. That is, if I am not allowed to assess the rightness or wrongness of my actions, and then act in the light of that assessment, then there will be situations when I decide something is wrong, but I am forced to act in a way I consider immoral.

Cross-References