What are Freedoms For?

There's no harder task in political theory than elucidating and defending our deepest assumptions. Sure, we're all for equality. But why, exactly, and what sort of equality is important? Of course we favor democracy. But why should we (recent results are hardly inspiring), and what constitutes genuine democracy? In What Are Freedoms For?, Notre Dame law professor John H. Garvey asks similar questions about freedom. We all know freedom is good, and we all want more of it. But explaining precisely why it's good, and determining how the state should balance liberties when they come into conflict, are central problems in political thought. Garvey's aim is to resolve both of these questions.

In the first half of the book Garvey considers two approaches to the value of freedom. The first grounds freedom in our capacity for choice. What governments should protect is our freedom to make whatever choices we want, and they should treat any choice (assuming it does not harm others) as equal to any other. They should be, as the saying goes, neutral toward the good. In the alternative approach that Garvey himself defends, the importance of freedom derives from our capacity to act in ways that further our good. Here freedom is important not simply because it allows us to make choices, but because it allows us to make choices in areas central to true human flourishing. Though at odds with much contemporary philosophy, this take on freedom is essentially compatible with traditional Catholic views.

What is at stake between these two approaches? If we think freedoms protect our capacity to choose, and that the state in balancing freedoms should not consider the distinctive value of what is chosen, then it follows that governments should not treat religious freedom, for example, as any more important than the freedom to blow on the kazoo, and should not treat restrictions on the former as any more worrisome than restrictions on the latter. But if, as Garvey suggests, freedoms protect our capacity to engage in certain especially valuable pursuits, then the state should consider the relative value of actions when balancing liberties. In that case, the state should acknowledge that religious worship is intrinsically more important than playing the kazoo. Garvey argues that only through adopting this second approach to the value of freedom can states reasonably resolve conflicts over liberties, a task he discusses through extensive case analysis in the second half of the book.

Overall, Garvey's argument is unassailable: The view that the state can balance freedoms without any reference to ultimate human goods is not only impracticable, but theoretically indefensible. But the consequences of adopting his model of freedoms are significant, as Garvey makes clear: Since many individuals disagree about what activities constitute the human good, some may find that the liberties of most concern to them (for example, sexual liberty) receive less protection than the liberties of most concern to others (for example, religious liberty). This result will strike some, perhaps many, as unfair. However one sees it, the preference for religious freedom over sexual freedom does point to the inherent conservatism in Garvey's approach. That approach is not without its costs. For if freedoms are valued because they protect our pursuit of the good, those actions that might lead to new or unexplored areas of human flourishing will tend to receive less protection. That does not seem desirable. Garvey might respond that all we can do is look at our shared traditions and try to identify what best serves the individual and common good; the process may not be neat, but there's no alternative. This may well be right (I suspect it is), but it does mean that those empowered with balancing freedoms have a responsibility to gather input from all citizens and to distinguish between actions that don't further human goods and actions that some people just don't like. Both of these concerns loom over any attempt to talk about "our" values. So when Garvey says, in the context of a discussion of Georgia's law against sodomy, that "sex is an activity that we value highly only when it is connected with love," one can't help asking, who is we, and who speaks for our shared values? The book would be strengthened by further discussion of this concern.

This omission, however, could be easily addressed without significantly recasting Garvey's argument. The problems in his characterization of liberalism are deeper. Liberalism is often defended on grounds that it best protects individual autonomy. Now autonomy is an enormously contested concept: Some understand it as our ability to forgo acting on desires we wish to disown (rising above compulsion or obsessions), while others have in mind the capacity of pure reason to legislate rules of morality binding on all rational beings. But when Garvey glosses autonomy as "the ability each person has to make his own moral rules," he reduces it to a kind of moral subjectivism quite at odds with what its defenders, from Kant to Rawls, have argued for. His claim that "it is illiberal to favor childbirth over abortion" seems a similarly unfair swipe. Since one of liberalism's central premises is that the immorality of an action is not by itself reason to outlaw it, it is quite reasonable for prochoice liberals to regard childbirth as a better option than abortion. Garvey's claim about abortion collapses tolerance (shown to that which is disapproved of) into indifference: The most reasonable defenses of liberalism, however, depend upon drawing a distinction between the two. So while he is right to suggest that certain strands of liberalism have gone too far in their apotheosis of individual choice, there is more to autonomy-based liberalism than Garvey credits, and his unsympathetic interpretation closes off the opportunity for an enlightening confrontation between his own position and that endorsed by autonomy's defenders.

This weakness, however, does not detract from the important accomplishment of this book. The kinds of arguments Garvey makes are essential to restoring both cohesiveness and purpose to our most vital public institutions. If we cut off politics from all discussion of the human good, we shall end up only with the dispiriting spectacle of an enervated nation that thinks itself a corporation, one that in championing efficiency loses all contact with what is of greatest concern in the lives of its citizens. In arguing that we cannot engage in politics without also talking about values, this book may help counter the political malaise in this country. Whatever one thinks of his answers, John Garvey has raised all the right questions. One only hopes that we as a nation can show the same courage.

David McCabe teaches philosophy at Colgate University.