Yearning For Freedom

What's so good about autonomy?

We are ambivalent about autonomy. We yearn for it when it is taken from us, recoil from it when it is offered to us.

The Forbidden Fruit is the gift of death as much as it is the gift of life.

Thomas Szasz

What’s so good about liberty? Why are people owed the freedom to craft their lives as they see fit?

Many political traditions recognize that political autonomy results in inequality and challenges communal living – and as such seek to limit it.

Debates over liberty are not merely political. Think about parents interfering with the choices of their children or decisions we make to restrict the freedom of our future selves. At some point, most people are fine with forcibly intervening in another’s life for their own good. 

The anti-liberty case has different flavors, but the key challenges have the same form: liberty results in bad consequences and isn’t good anyway. 

The defenders of liberty often respond by denying that freedom reliably produces bad consequences. For example, they may say that economic liberty produces more equality than its opposite – or, they may argue that the economic inequality that market liberty produces isn’t bad at all. For another example, think of J S Mill arguing that freedom of speech fosters the marketplace of ideas and that truth wins out in the long run.

This form of reply does work in some cases, but the crucial detail is that it only works in some cases. When people argue that something is good and produces good consequences in nearly every case we must be suspicious. The world isn’t that neat. Is it really likely that autonomy is good for communities, self-development, intellectual progress, equality, art, and happiness? Again, this form of reply can work, but one must consider the issues on a case-by-case basis.

The deeper challenge to answer is the question: what’s so good about choice?

Some seem to suggest that it’s intrinsically valuable. But this does not make sense to me. Choices are made for reasons and it’s those reasons, good or bad, that determine the value of our choices. As G K Chesterton said:

The worship of will is the negation of will. To admire mere choice is to refuse to choose.

This answer opens up space for the paternalist. Some things are worth choosing, others are not. Why not force people to make the right choices? That’s what we do when we restrict social media for ourselves after 9 pm, make heroin illegal, and so on.

A possible grounding to this is in respect. Allowing others to choose for themselves communicates respect that they’re a sovereign individual. 

Paternalism, the policy of intervening for the sake of others' welfare, communicates that not everyone can take care of themselves. They are not complete agents. They need the freedom of other people and themselves to be restricted so that they can live well. 

I think there’s something to this answer. Many paternalists may like it too – they don't want to force people to do the right thing in every case. Perhaps deciding when it's ok to force people to make the right decision is a delicate matter of balancing respect and welfare. We can let people create hardship for themselves by choosing the wrong career, friends, or marriage partner, but not dive into drugs, gamble away all their savings, or kill themselves. Respect has its limits. This issue deserves more consideration, but it’s not where I want to take things.

An underrated defense of autonomy is that it is necessary to cultivate character. This is an upshot of taking virtue ethics like Stoicism seriously.

If we think about our self-development it's clear that sometimes coercive interventions are necessary. They can be a part of shaping who you are, but they are crude tools. Character is a product of doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons across different situations. Paternalism forces us to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

With liberty, you risk people making bad choices. But if you force people to make the choices you want, you don’t create better people, just better choices.

For me, that’s a fundamental reason why autonomy is valuable. It is the precondition for excellence. 

The paternalist approach is fragile. Good character means making the right decisions across different circumstances. The paternalist forces good decisions only in the current conditions. This does not create strong people. When the conditions change, the people will be the same.

Of course, choices should be limited when they violate side constraints. J S Mill’s harm principle has well-known problems, but it is a decent rule of thumb. And some choices shouldn’t even be considered. Grounding the value of autonomy in respect and character is consistent with some infringements on autonomy, even for paternalistic reasons. Especially for individuals who are not fully developed.

But if you want to fully become yourself – and let others do the same, you need to give them the liberty to do so.