Q&A: Why Does Freedom Have No Value?
Why Does Freedom Have No Value?
Question
Hello Rabbi,
In your book The Science of Freedom, you emphasize the difference between freedom and liberty. A free person is someone who acts under 0 constraints, whereas a liberated person is someone who acts under constraints. A person is liberated, in the sense that he operates on a topographical map made up of the external and internal circumstances of his life.
You also emphasize that freedom has no value in itself. And this is what you wrote in one of your articles here on the site: “The definition of freedom is the absence of constraints. But as such, it is hard to see it as a value. It is simply a given state of affairs—either I have constraints or I do not. Why should that be seen as a value?”
My question is: why not? Suppose we lived in a world devoid of negative impulses. There would no longer be any “ascents” on the topographical map. Everyone would want to do good, and only good. Wouldn’t that be a good situation in your view? And I don’t mean morally good, but good in the sense that people would come closer to the qualities of the Holy One, blessed be He. True, it would simply be a given state, and not the result of a decision. So what? Can’t it still be a successful given state?
Thank you in advance, and happy holiday,
Tair
Answer
The question is not what seems good to me, but what seems good in the eyes of the Holy One, blessed be He. If He created man with free will, then apparently it is not correct to define the purpose of our creation in purely outcome-based terms. He does not want us to do or think X; He wants us to choose to do or think X. If He had wanted only the result, He could have produced it Himself.
Beyond that, one must distinguish between consequential good and human-moral good. A sheep that behaves kindly toward the other sheep is not good. That is its nature. A good act is one done through choice, when the option of doing the opposite was on the table. A situation in which everyone does good because of their nature is consequentially good, but then we are all basically sheep.
When we once studied The Perplexed of the Generation by Rabbi Kook, I noticed that at the beginning of the chapter he presents Maimonides’ approach in The Guide for the Perplexed, according to which the image of man, or the image of God in man, is the intellect. Rabbi Kook, in contrast, saw the image of man/God in the will.