Q&A: Freedom and Liberty
Freedom and Liberty
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I read your article about the difference between freedom and liberty, and I wasn’t able to fully grasp your point.
You say that freedom is a state of the absence of constraints, whereas liberty is not the absence of constraints,
but rather autonomous action within constraints.
I didn’t completely manage to understand why you make this distinction, and what kind of constraints you mean. Do you mean physical constraints? Values? Commands? Or perhaps both.
Why is it only when there are constraints that freedom gains meaning and becomes liberty?
Answer
I have nothing to add to what I explained there. And of course, for this purpose any constraint is a constraint.
Discussion on Answer
I explained it there. I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do. If there’s a point that isn’t clear, say what it is. But here you’re asking me to repeat what I wrote there.
Freedom is a factual state, and therefore conceptually it cannot be a value.
Why is our capacity to choose not liberty unless it involves a value-laden dilemma? Why, for example, if I decide to eat vanilla ice cream instead of strawberry ice cream, is that not liberty but only freedom, whereas if I help an old woman in the street and because of that miss my bus, that is liberty?
Because a dilemma that is not value-laden is the result of a deterministic calculation and not a choice. “Everything is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven.” See my article on choice: https://mikyab.net/%d7%9e%d7%90%d7%9e%d7%a8%d7%99%d7%9d/%d7%9e%d7%91%d7%98-%d7%a9%d7%99%d7%98%d7%aa%d7%99-%d7%a2%d7%9c-%d7%97%d7%95%d7%a4%d7%a9-%d7%94%d7%a8%d7%a6%d7%95%d7%9f/
Thank you, and another question:
You argue that freedom is not a value because it is a fact, but a person’s wisdom is also a fact, and still we tend to see that as a value in itself.
The acquisition of knowledge and the like.
What’s the difference?
It’s strange to me that you ask, when you yourself write the answer in the body of the question. Intelligence is not a value. It is a fact. Improving one’s abilities and acquiring education or knowledge (the acquisition of intelligibles, in your wording) is a value, and that is of course a choice and not a fact.
Don’t we see value in wisdom in and of itself? Isn’t the level of a wise person greater than that of a fool (as Maimonides writes in Guide for the Perplexed)?
My intuition tells me that there is value in this, and that it is not just a neutral fact.
I don’t know who “we” is. I wrote my own opinion.
Sorry for asking anyway, but if the Rabbi could explain briefly it would really help me.
Why is it only a constraint that makes liberty possible? And why is it that the more constrained I am, the more liberty I have?