My friend Danny Frederick has just published an exciting book, Freedom, Indeterminism, and Fallibilism, that approaches many familiar but vexing problems in moral and political philosophy from an innovative, promising direction. Drawing on ideas presented in his large oeuvre of published work, and utilizing many of Karl Poppers’ important insights, Danny sets forth provocative theories regarding rationality; free will; the moral basis for individual freedom, and its limits; the functions of the liberal state; and the problem of political authority. Although overturning much of the conventional thinking on these topics, Danny’s arguments should be congenial to classical liberals and libertarians.
Danny graciously accepted my invitation to present his own synopsis of his book on my blog , which appears below. I am sure he will be happy to address any questions readers of this may have. I hope his book gets the wide readership it deserves. Here is a link to the publisher’s (Palgrave Macmillan) website, providing additional information, excerpts, and purchasing information.
* * *
FREEDOM, INDETERMINISM, AND FALLIBILISM
The two ideas that are central to classical liberalism are freedom and equality; or, putting the two together, equal freedom. The idea that everyone is entitled to equal freedom is sometimes expressed, in republican fashion, as the claim of equal sovereignty, which implies that no one has the right to lord it over others, to tell them what to do. On that view, each person is her own boss. Traditionally, it was thought that equal freedom was the preserve of men, who had the right to lord it over women and children. In more recent times liberals have held equal freedom to apply to all adult persons, excluding only those who have some kinds of mental impairment or those who have broken the law and are yet to make amends.
It should be evident that the state poses a problem for classical liberalism because it involves one or more rulers who rule over the citizens. If all the citizens have equal freedom, or equal sovereignty, it seems that there cannot be anyone who rightly rules over them. Any ruler must be a usurper. In that case, justice requires anarchy. Some classical liberals have indeed adopted that position; but for most of them anarchy is not at all attractive. Without a state enforcing order, it seems, there would be internecine strife in which life would be “nasty, brutish and short” (Hobbes, ‘Leviathan,’ I, chap. xiii). Thus, classical liberals face the problem of political authority, that is, of how to reconcile the existence of a just state with the equal sovereignty of persons. The standard way of attempting to solve that problem is to invoke a social contract; a non-standard way is to produce an ‘invisible hand’ explanation (Nozick, ‘Anarchy, State, and Utopia,’ part 1). Neither way has succeeded.
In my new book, ‘Freedom, Indeterminism, and Fallibilism,’ I propose a solution to the problem of political authority that begins with an analysis of the person. A person is a moral being in the sense that she has a conception of right and wrong. She therefore has a conception of her obligations to others and of others’ obligations to her. That means that a person is essentially a social creature: she has a conception of herself as distinct from but related to other persons. Thus a person is a member of a community or, at least, potentially so.
The fact that resources are scarce means that a person often faces a conflict between her self-interest and her obligations to others. That in turn means that if a community of persons is to exist there must be a state that enforces their obligations to each other (or, at least, their more important obligations). Thus the idea of a person who has equal sovereignty with other persons is inseparable from the idea of a state which has sovereignty over persons. However, the state cannot be another person, on pain of self-contradiction. It must therefore be something else, namely, a social structure or institution, that is, a complex set of relations in which persons participate. Thus, classical liberalism requires not just the idea of the equal sovereignty of persons but also the notion of persons as members of a community governed by an entity that is not a person. That entity, the state, is REPRESENTED by persons who are its officers and who, qua persons, have equal sovereignty with other persons but, qua officers of the state, may have some rights to give orders to other persons. They lord it over others, not in their personal capacity, but only insofar as they act on behalf of the state, that is, so long as they are fulfilling a particular role in a legitimate institutional structure.
A state that fulfils it obligations as thus described would be a liberal state. Actual states rarely, if ever, fulfil their obligations. I argue that, insofar as a state is illiberal, the persons in its jurisdiction owe it no obligations. Illiberal demands go beyond the state’s authority. As they are illegitimate, persons have no obligation to comply with them. If the demands require a person to commit a wrong, the person has an obligation not to comply. Nevertheless, most people will comply with unjust demands of the state much of the time in order to avoid the penalties that the state will otherwise impose on them.
Classical liberals often defend their demand for freedom for persons by claiming that each person knows what is best for herself. The claim is more than a little dubious. In contrast, I contend that freedom for persons is required because they do NOT know what is best for themselves. Each person has to DISCOVER what is best for herself: her needs and how best to satisfy them are to some extent, and often to a very great extent, unknown to her. She must make guesses about the kinds of life that would best fulfil her and then subject those guesses to criticism and testing. She therefore requires freedom in order to experiment with different kinds of life and to evaluate how well they fulfil her, so that she can discover what is best for herself, and thereby discover herself.
Thus, on my view, what makes moral demands legitimate is that, if they are met, the best conditions are obtained for the fulfilment of persons in general. The fallibility of persons means that those conditions ground persons’ equal rights to as much freedom to experiment with kinds of life as is practical. The peccability of persons means that those conditions ground the existence of a state with the (political) authority to enforce persons’ obligations to each other, as well as other obligations required to secure the maximum freedom for persons’ self-discovery. A person’s right to direct her own life requires that she has private property in her own body and the liberty to acquire and dispose of private property with the consent of other property owners. It also requires that the state, as far as practicable, converts all resources into private property. Private property gives persons the authority to say ‘no’ to interference.
The maximum freedom for self-discovery, which is required to provide the best prospects for personal fulfilment in general, falls a little short of the maximum freedom attainable. For instance, if a person commits suicide, she throws away all prospects of personal fulfilment. The maximum freedom for self-discovery therefore excludes the freedom to commit suicide, except under conditions in which a person has no prospects for future fulfilment. Similarly, maximum freedom for self-discovery does not include the freedom to submit to be a permanent slave of another, because that submission would not permit the person to rectify her error if it turned out that permanent slavery did not fulfil her. The obligations to refrain from suicide and from submitting to permanent slavery, I argue, are obligations owed to the state. That avoids employing the dubious notion of obligations to oneself.
Classical liberals have been reluctant to admit that there may be persons who are natural slaves. Aristotle thought that all non-Greeks were natural slaves and that, therefore, Greeks were entitled to enslave them, by force if necessary (as it usually was). That is a most illiberal view. But we can and, I think, should recognise that there do appear to be some people who find fulfilment in being under the control of another, whose needs would best be met if they became slaves. The best conditions for the fulfilment of persons in general would therefore assign persons the freedom to experiment with slavery and, if the experiment(s) are successful, to submit to another under an enforceable fixed-term slavery contract. The natural slave and her slave-owner would be able to renew the contract when the fixed term expires.
Employment contracts are similar to slavery contracts in that one person submits to the direction of another, though they are different in that the scope of submission is restricted and the contracts are terminable by either side. In employment contracts, as in fixed-term slavery contracts, a person uses her freedom to give up some of her freedom. The employee and the slave, while under contract, do not have the full right to direct their own lives. We must therefore recognise that equal sovereignty of persons is a default position. It applies to all persons except those who meet some disqualifying condition. Among the disqualifying conditions are not only such things as immaturity, mental impairment and having committed an unexpiated wrong, but also having voluntarily surrendered part of her freedom via employment, fixed-term slavery, or some other hierarchical relationship.
Apart from giving an account of political authority and defending freedom by grounding morality in the fulfilment of persons, the book also offers a solution to the problem of free will, an analysis of rationality, and an account of the differences between persons and other animals. The notions of indeterminism and fallibility are explored and are used to solve problems in every chapter.
