The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L.

Dennehy, University of San Francisco

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of

Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by

the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in

JIS 2007.

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a

monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical

conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for

that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral

vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as

it is a virtue ethics­­forms individual character so that a person not

only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover,

possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This

is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character

that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation

whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to

freedom and equality for all.

FREEDOM AND VIRTUE

The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive

unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are

given in its support. First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue

ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a

rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.

Second, a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as it is a virtue ethics­­forms

individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to

act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be

able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices

create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse

choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its

commitment to freedom and equality for all.

But liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the

installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to

functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two

premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These two

premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only freedom

which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our own

way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede

their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of this essay

presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to

humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the two premises

are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will inevitably lead to

its self­destruction.

Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant

here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other ethical

theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue ethics here

refers to that state of character that integrates intellect, will, appetite, and

passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that actualize one's potential to

become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle enjoins, moral virtue is an

"excellence of behavior" (1941: 954­55). Second, virtue ethics is the ethics

of choice because it is the only ethical theory that grounds itself in the

principle that human nature is universal: since all human beings have the

same human nature, they are bound by the same ethical principles. If there is

a single, universal human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that

hold for a pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from

what is here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just

because it understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that

ethical behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and

monitored by reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions,

and appetites.

Pope John Paul II called attention to the mounting danger to democracy

from a concept of subjectivity carried to excess, and a notion of freedom

based on the concept of the individual isolated from society (Dennehy 2006:

50­53). These developments express themselves in various ways, one of

which is the change in the popular understanding of constitutional rights.

Russell Hittinger shows that whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived

as objective claims against the government, today, personal self­creation, to

wit, the right to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990:

486­99). This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense

of alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,

all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since the

body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as obstructive.

When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is inevitable that the

individual should find himself increasingly in tension with both nature and

society. The tension with society can be handled diplomaically: the individual

limits his behavior by respecting the rights and desires of others so as to

avoid retaliation. The tension with his body is handled by denial; it is

rejected root and branch as a source for ethical norms of conduct, since it is

perceived as an impediment to personal fulfillment.

For a consistent radical dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self­

awareness as his true self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere

encasement, a virtuous life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his

own actions and commitments. The Platonic Forms­­eternal, perfect, and

unchanging­­could furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior.

But a glorification of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external

criteria to the realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle,

freedom can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by

practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived as a

reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this

attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,

since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual grudgingly

obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has moral authority

(Hegel 1962: 85).

Regarding the second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to

pluralism (diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for

any political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw appears

when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The possibility

is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous Huxley's novel,

Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what they want, and

they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The inhabitants of

Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their desires are gratified. The

reality is that they are slaves, incapable of desiring anything beyond what

they have been genetically designed and conditioned to desire. Like the

iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with candor, "What, me worry?" If

there is any sense in which this may be called "freedom," then perhaps

subjective freedom is the term for it, for they are aware of no limitations to

their desires.

This raises the question: "Is freedom the personal state of being objectively

unrestrained or the subjective state of not being aware of being restrained?"

What is to prevent both Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being

true simultaneously of the same group of people? What about a nation

whose inhabitants are allowed the freedom to do everything they may wish

to do as long as they do not violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do

not realize that they have been programmed to desire only what their

government determines them to desire? One might object that such an

outcome in a free society, although possible, is highly improbable, since the

majority would not allow the encroachments on freedom and rights that

would initially have to occur before a techno­totalitarian regime such as

Huxley's Brave New World could come into existence. But the technology

involved is merely an instrumental cause of the illusion of freedom, not the

illusion itself. Could there be other causes?

Is it within the realm of plausibility that the majority of members of a political

society could think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is

"Yes." The principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that

is separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,

thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably possible

for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but the real cannot

be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is already here,

evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular vote, as well as

ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected. Each counts as an

example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In terms of the public

vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the sphere of private

behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not violate the rights of

others. Relevant examples include:

1. The rapid decline of public and private support for objective and

substantive ethics in favor of relativism.

2. The erosion of respect for human life in Western democracies. Since Roe

v. Wade (1973), some 50 million unborn human lives have been destroyed

in the United States alone. That U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred

legal justification for killing more Americans than the combined number of

those killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (North and South),

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf

War (Murti 2006: 57­60). To be sure, the classical conception of the state's

goal to make men moral undoubtedly produced its share of abuses. Equally

certain is the progress in public acknowledgment of the dignity of human

conscience heralded by the emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

the widespread practice of abortion in Western democracies shows that

monstrous crimes can be allowed and condoned by a society that from its

beginnings has proclaimed its commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness, and that in the name of the right to run one's life as

one chooses as long as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others,

nevertheless creates laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that

commitment.

3. Embryonic stem­cell research uses human beings, during their earliest

stages of development, as objects of scientific research, not only for the

purpose of finding cures for genetically based illness and defects, but also in

the hope of creating designer humans.

4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that proclaims its dedication to

the protection of the young, while failing to introduce laws and policies that

shield them from easy access to pornography.

5. The mounting support for same­sex marriage in the face of the fact that

the official and special recognition of marriage in society has always been

intimately tied to procreation and the realization that men and women are by

nature importantly different, a difference necessary to the proper

development of children.

6. Legislative and judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example,

the British Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for

teachers, even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral

(Bogle 2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from

feelings of unworthiness.

PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY

The argument against a morally neutral conception of freedom collides not

only with a fundamental premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems,

with a central tenet of what Americans accept as the public philosophy.

Michael Sandel succinctly sets forth that tenet:

"The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live is that freedom

consists in our capacity to choose our ends for ourselves. Politics should not

try to form the character or cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so

would be to "legislate morality." Government should not affirm, through its

policies or laws, any particular conception of the good life; instead it should

provide a neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their

own values and ends" (1996: 58).

Both conservative and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom

consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends." The

disagreement occurs when one asks whether any specific traits of character

are needed for an individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the

responsibility for overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since

republican political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing

people to acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self­rule, deliberating

with other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be

realized, it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its

involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In

contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the

procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to ensuring

equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern for its citizens'

personal moral state. The differences between the two theories are real, but

they are not what they seem. Both denounce the government's unjustified

interference in the lives of its citizens, but differ on what constitutes the

injustice:

"Liberals invoke the ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer,

restrictions on abortion or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring

their morality into the public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality

when opposing attempts by government to impose certain moral restraints ­­

for the sake of workers' safety or environmental protection or distributive

justice­­on the market economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on

both sides of the debate over the welfare state. Republicans have long

complained that taxing the rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a

form of coerced charity that violates people's freedom to choose what to do

with their own money. Democrats have long replied that government must

ensure all citizens a decent level of income, housing, education, and health

care, on the grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are

not truly free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their

disagreement about how government should act with respect to individual

choice, both sides assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to

choose their own ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).

If both sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to

choose one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government

intervention in the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting

meanings and valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends."

And thereby hangs a tale.

TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY

At stake here is the clash between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty

and positive liberty. Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is

the absence of external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is

the opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo­American tradition,

liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying rationale

for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that

of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt

to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18).

In contrast, a review of the Continental tradition shows that liberalism is

predominantly identified with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back

to ancient times (De Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers­­

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas­­agreed that the primary

aim of the state was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the

State is the individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that

underlies it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis

or city­state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good

and the good of the city­state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did not

mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the opportunity to

participate in the activities and life of the community (Sabine 1953: 742). It

is no exaggeration to say that this participation was viewed as one with the

state's commitment to the moral life of its citizens. This is evident in the

Republic, where Plato argues that the aim of the state is the implementation

of justice, a concept which, for him, refers both to the external relations of

men and to their internal states of the soul, as well (1992: 116­21). Aristotle

echoes this view (1941: 935­36).

The classical view of the individual's relation to political society underwent a

gradual yet, in the end, radical change. The impact of Christianity on Greco ­

Roman culture transformed the understanding of that relationship. No longer

did the individual exist primarily for the city­state or empire, for now he

could look to a destiny in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was

also the influence of Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual

had meaning and value only in virtue of membership in the city­state. Stoic

philosophy insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a

city­state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The deepening

sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was accompanied by a

corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of the monarch's

authority (Maritain 1966: 30­33). This transformation in the understanding

of the individual's relation to political society caused, in turn, a shift in the

standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place of the city­state and

empire, the transcendent God became the standard. For example, Martin

Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the Church, as the direct voice

of God's will for the individual, widened further the gap between the

individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz 1963: 175). And, while it is

true that a corresponding expansion of personal freedom was

acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom from temporal,

not divine, laws.

The classical­Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by

Nicolo Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally

separated politics from morality:

"there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he

who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin

him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a

career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who

are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain

himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not

use it according to necessity . . . . For, if everything be well considered,

something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if

adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in

his security and well­being" (2005: 87­88).

If Machiavelli deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the

secularization of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of

Padua who interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further

than the tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and

thereby eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a

position quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984:

173). Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,

surfacing in the twentieth century as Realpolitik.

Jean­Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is a reaction to

Machiavellianism. Therein, he attempts to rebuild democracy on the

foundation of the Greek city­state, fusing, once more, morality and politics:

"the State or the City is nothing but a moral person the life of which consists

in the union of its members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he

recognizes no distinction between the individual's moral liberty (which for

Rousseau is the only genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence,

he can write that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (Rousseau 1960: 262­63). This classical idea of the city­state was

picked up and developed by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical

idea" (1962: 107). This is not to overlook important differences between

Rousseau's concept of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as

Ethical Idea. For example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General

Will a mere extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly

making it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers

sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the

ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men

moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory, exemplified in

the writings of neo­Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920: 194) and

Thomas H. Green (1960: 31­32), which examined the relation of the

individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of

negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez­faire economics.

The concept of positive liberty is complex, more so than negative liberty.

For one thing, there seem to be two distinct versions of positive liberty,

which may be characterized as the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic

versions. It is important to separate the two, as the former grounds freedom

in objective moral principles, while the latter looks instead to socio­

economic and psychological conditions that enhance the individual's

capacity to actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version,

such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in

being one's own master. Self­mastery requires a virtuous character, since it

implies the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible

without a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying

the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so

that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher self.

The pragmatic version is clearly the conception of freedom embraced by

liberal political theory. Its advocates, like John Dewey, along with his

present­day descendant, Richard Rorty, are directly interested more in the

individual's socio­economic condition than in his moral and rational

development. They hold that freedom is having the opportunity to do what

is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of the individual's freedom, this

version, as with the ethical version, means obeying the laws of the state, but

they do not ascribe metaphysical or ethical properties to it. Rather, they see

the cultural traditions, laws, and social institutions of political society as

furnishing the conditions for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a

civilized society that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote

that freedom consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of

modern democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version

of positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the

resemblance ends there.

Most telling of all is that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the

pragmatic version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute

standard. They do appeal to standards like "self­realization" and "spiritual

enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling that

one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in­security. In

criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of positive

freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary condition of

freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an individual

free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain socio­

economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he wishes, or

at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to do. Practically

speaking, he or she is not free.

The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and

effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34­35). From a formal standpoint,

freedom is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates

of the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into account

the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of political

liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some extent the

conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's decisions, but for

advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty, these are of central

importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it must be the freedom to

do something worth doing. The absence of external restraint guarantees the

freedom of someone who enjoys favorable circumstances, such as enough

money and education, but that guarantee does not extend to one who lacks

them. This was the argument successfully deployed against laissez­faire

politicians in nineteenth­century Britain by the neo­liberal movement for

government interventionist legislation to help factory workers in labor

negotiations with factory owners. The latter resisted proposed laws that

would regulate labor negotiations by insisting that such would violate the

freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a mutually agreeable labor

contract. Factory owners claimed that if the worker found the contract

unacceptable, he was always free to find employment at a factory that had

an acceptable contract. But attempts to prevent the legislation failed when it

became clear that factory owners were united in standing firm behind the

same working conditions (Green 1964: 51­52).

Although advocates of the pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they

are improving the possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that

advocates of negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems

irreconcilable. Consider, for example, the different ways in which the

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to

the Great Depression in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of

the federal government into the economy constituted interference with free

enterprise and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance

to the depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted

accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of

freedom (1934: 107­35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as

positive (Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651­52).

The classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with

things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the state, its

application leads to an oppressive political society in which its members are

deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains them from doing what

they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do not wish to do, they

are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this is

Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (1960: 262­53). History offers sufficient evidence of the threat to

individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom with the state or

with things other than choosing one's own goals. But critics of negative

liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the individual from attempts

of procedural democracy to form policies based on moral neutrality,

illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic stem­cell research, and

sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that what Plato called the "greed

for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse of civil polity and the emergence

of tyranny (1992: 227­38).

Here, it would be well to return to the two premises set forth in the first

paragraph of this essay. The first is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill

the promise of Dewey's liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty

advocates the abandonment of all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule­

trading of principles that leads to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means

the best practical allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely,

some principles are non­negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life.

If both negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive

liberty are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what

basis can the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the

solution?

THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS

American democracy has its foundation in natural law, as is clear from the

Declaration of Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics

maintains that the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly

ordered, and that that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes

natural law theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all

humans will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence

be bound by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is

such a thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting

nonsense, nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human

rights or any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially

the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race, state

of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to the moral and

legal considerations called "rights." That is why an epistemological nominalist

like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social policies. Since he maintains

that our philosophical claims are culturally and historically bound, there is no

"God's eye view" from which we can view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our

picture of ourselves and nature is irredeemably ethnocentric.

Moreover, public discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no

constructive discourse is possible without commonly accepted principles,

many of which originate in natural law theory. Equally important is that

because the natural law is knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism

is compatible with public discourse to the extent that reason transcends all

ethnocentric and religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm

(Murray 1960: 30­33).

To grasp the precise connection between natural law and moral virtue, it is

necessary to avoid confusion over terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a

synonym for spontaneous occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling

trees, dogs growling over a bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to

one's head to fend off a thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the

natural to the artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since

aspirin and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to

express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may

seem comical.

But in the natural law tradition, "natural" is intended in the sense of the

Greek word for nature, physis: "The conception underlying that term sees

nature itself as teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to

all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to actualize

the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and thereby to attain its

perfection (telos) is natural and therefore good or desirable; what frustrates

its actualization is evil or undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this

understanding of "natural," the products of human artifice are not necessarily

unnatural, since they may contribute to the positive actualization of human

nature: aspirin alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which

is to see; the formation of political society is necessary for human flourishing.

The telos of each living thing is determined by its essence or nature. Thus,

the theory of natural law derives from the human understanding that "there

is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which

human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act

in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of the human

being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that" (Maritain

1966: 86).

An objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed

natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?

The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,

one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and

gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human

nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's understanding of

that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do with how a people

understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp human nature and

its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior conforms to natural

law. Thus, natural law does not change because human nature does not

change (Maritain 1966: 85­89). What changes is knowledge of human

nature­­for better or for worse.

The moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and

temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.

However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.

First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil" (Aquinas

1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except to obtain

what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes the woman's

purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be good, that is,

desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables on his plate, because

eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These are examples of

viewer­relative perceptions insofar as they refer to actions that are

objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good. One might

understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary examples of

natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and objectively

correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer­relative perception and

objective moral law is found in spontaneous human strivings, which Aquinas

calls "primary principles: the inclination to preserve one's life is the natural

law ground for the prohibition of murder; the attraction between the sexes is

the natural law ground for marriage and family; the inclination of humans to

live together in society is the natural law ground for justice since to live in

society requires respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).

The problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete

situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more

variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,

"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a

particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get agreement

on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get agreement

when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a starving family.

The moral virtues provide the bridge between the principles of natural law

ethics and proper action. The virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance

give the agent the right ends to pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him

what means to choose, in the particular situation, to realize those ends

(Aristotle 1941: 1026). Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not

the only thing needed for virtuous action; one must also desire the end.

Most important of all, since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in

acting, the virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to

the virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is

wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not

steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a theoretical

knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided; one must

possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a virtuous person

would make.

"President Clinton's so smart, how could he get himself involved with

Monica Lewinsky, when he knew they were investigating him in the Paula

Jones case?" So exclaimed an obviously intelligent and educated panelist on

a CNN talk show at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A

common error in ethical deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for

judging whether actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging

whether statements are true or false. The above question is a case in point.

Its author failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the

will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and ought

not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are importantly

different. The criterion for truth is conformity between thought and thing.

The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is raining out. Its truth depends

on actual meteorological conditions, which is to say that those conditions,

whatever they may be, exist independently of whatever may be said about

them.

The opposite obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the

conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the criterion

for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent and a

preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the reality,

first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting others, and second,

by either strengthening or weakening his or her character. Thus, matching

one's will to right desire requires more than merely knowing how one ought

to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to behave according to right desire,

and also possess the integration of intellect, will, passion, and appetite to

translate the desire to behave according to right desire into acting according

to right desire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen

for children chosen to become philosopher­kings was to last a full thirty­five

years, consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen.

Moral virtue required the integration of all one's faculties­­intellect, will,

passion, and appetite.

Plato's student, Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and

requirements of moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis)

from theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic principle

that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028­29). On the contrary,

Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take and yet not

take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to act that way

(1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian ethics, he insisted that

one who has to struggle to resist the urge to overindulge does not have the

virtue of temperance, since the very struggle betrays a lack of integration

among his faculties (Aristotle 1941: 1050). One starts on the path of

acquiring moral virtue by first acting as a virtuous person would act until one

can perform virtuous actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the

mimicry of virtuous action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter

must have the following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what

he is doing; (2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must

proceed from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941: 956).

The popular conception of the penalty for immoral behavior is some sort of

physical, mental, or socio­economic harm to oneself: excessive drinking

causes liver damage or loss of employment; lying leads to the loss of trust

among one's family and associates, etc. While no one would deny that those

are undesirable outcomes, classical moral theorists insisted that the price to

be paid for immoral behavior is worse: the loss of rational control. Some

challenge the view that a chosen immoral act is an expression of irrational

behavior. Candace Vogler, for example, sees no reason why one who

successfully plans and performs immoral acts on a regular basis in order to

attain his or her goals cannot be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40­41).

But, she is clearly using the word "rational" analogously. The agent's

behavior is "rational" in the sense that it is the result of sound deliberation

and efficient execution.

But, in the sense of rational entertained by classical moral theorists, his or

her behavior is irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone

seeks. From the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the

objective standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the

presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the

actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant, irrational.

Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying, and

murdering, he can only associate with his own kind­­liars, cheaters,

betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be

surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed

to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now held in

thrall by his own unruly and self­destructive urges (Plato 1992: 249­51).

So, there are at least two reasons why Vogler's immoral agent does not act

rationally. First, by a career of immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold

himself into slavery, riveting his will to the evil rather than the good.

Admittedly, his choices may be called "rational" in the sense that his planning

and acting are logically derived from, and consistent with, his immoral

attachments. But, that is a different sense of "rational" from the sense of the

word when applied to moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have

blinded him to the true state of his life and circumstances. He may feel free,

and believe he is acting freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based

on his belief that his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of

Huxley's Brave New World, they are slaves living delusions of freedom.

Consider, for example, the virtue of chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of

temperance as the latter pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is

badly misunderstood. The modern world identifies it with the prudish view

that regards sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the

extent that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining

to a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the

etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in matters

of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other person for

what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate respect and

justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by the vice of

lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the lion cannot appreciate

the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as food, so the lustful person can

only see another person as a source of sexual gratification (Pieper 1975:

166­67). Or, if the vice is greed, the other is perceived as a source of

monetary enrichment, and the like. Of course, references to sight are meant

to be analogical. The state of vice does not blind one to the truth that the

other is a human being, a person for whom justice demands respect. But, to

the extent that vice corrupts reason, the focus on the other person is

distorted by the desire for gratification.

The libertarian argument for the legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem

of freedom. The argument has two prongs. The first is that attempts by

federal and local authorities to stanch the flow of drugs into America have

been a spectacular failure (Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a

mentally competent adult has the right to ingest whatever substance he or

she chooses, as long as that behavior does not violate the rights of others.

But, would a permissive government policy pertaining to the sale and use of

narcotics produce a better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human

flourishing? A population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the

majority of its members make sensual gratification their criterion of

valorization, can be counted on to conclude, when voting for a political

candidate or law, that what guarantees that gratification is what is good for

democracy.

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

The illusion reveals itself in the inconsistency between the criticism of

objective moral norms as the fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact

that living and acting without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one

and the same object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is

that the demand that one act according to putative objective standards in

order to be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however

laudable­­truth, justice, beauty, goodness, or the law­­are not what

freedom is. The criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous,

since it can delude a population into believing that their adherence to those

kinds of lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive

regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961: 9­10).

But a characteristic of the lack of virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is

the will's enslavement to a specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that

to be free, the individual must have before him a range of options, the lack

of virtue produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably

evaluated in terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice.

Kant's heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a

consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of them­­the

object of his vice (1993: 45­48). From the viewpoint of a formal

consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides his

choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a standard

external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a material

consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous agent

chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta ratio) the locus

of which is the organization of passions and appetites according to reason.

The emergence of liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of

the dignity and freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience,

and the equality of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole,

one must dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost

sight of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the

dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a manifestation

of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are microcosms of the

State, or other totalitarian theories in which the individual has no meaning or

value apart from the state, liberal theory seems to have traveled in the

opposite direction, construing the individual's relation to the political

community primarily in utilitarian terms. This has blinded liberal democracy

to the meaning of Plato's observation that "the State is man writ large": the

moral condition of the political community expresses the moral condition of

its members. It would be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party

gained control of Germany following free elections.

If positive freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a

people's freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a

higher self as one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by

obeying the law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly

offers a better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their

respective and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely

because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is plausible.

Virtue ethics offers the solution to the extent that it furnishes the standard for

action based on understanding and choice unhampered by un­disciplined

passions and appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the

truest sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external

restraints and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human

flourishing, both for self­fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The

argument for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas

Aquinas observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby

succumbing to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the

obligation to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,

metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the

mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on

request; and now the movement to legalize physician­assisted suicide and

infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women as

sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a class of

disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed, and the

elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies, regardless of

whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if, indeed, what the

American people want most is the freedom to choose their own goals, why

do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the innocent and defense ­

less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is the freedom of the strong

against the weak who have no choice but to submit (Pope John Paul II

1995: 28­29).

The enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for

personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including

elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue

ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating

ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of

impending danger. Where are our geese?

REFERENCES:

Aquinas, Thomas. 1945. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol.

1. Ed. Anton C. Pegis. New York: Random House.

Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon.

New York: Random House.

Berlin, Isaiah. 1961. Two Concepts of Liberty. Oxford, UK: Clarendon

Press.

Bogle, Joanna. 2007. England Outlaws Catholic Teaching. National

Catholic Register (8­14 April): 1, 9.

Bosanquet, Bernard. 1920. The Philosophical Theory of the State.

London: Macmillan.

Dennehy, Raymond L. 1993. Bodenheimer's Theory of Natural Law: The

Conflict of a Divided Intellectual Allegiance. University of California

(Davis) Law Review 26 (3): 619­52.

_____. 2006. Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Death: Why John Paul II

Was Right. Telos 134 (Spring): 31­63.

De Riggiero, Guido. 1959. The History of European Liberalism. Tr.

Robin G. Collingwood. Boston, MA: Beacon Hill Press.

Dewey, John. 1963a. Freedom and Culture. New York: Capricorn

Books.

_____. 1963b. Liberalism and Social Action. New York: Capricorn

Books.

Green, Thomas H. 1960. Lectures on the Principles of Political

Obligation. London: Longman's Green.

_____. 1964. The Political Theory of T. H. Green. New York:

Appleton­Century­Crofts.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1962. Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Tr. Thomas M.

Knox. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Hittinger, Russell. 1990. Liberalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Wake

Forest Law Review 25: 429­99.

Hoover, Herbert. 1934. Challenge to Liberty. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons.

Huxley, Aldous. 1966. Brave New World. New York: Bantam Books.

Kant, Immanuel. 1993. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Tr.

James W. Ellington. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Machiavelli, Nicolo. 2005. The Prince. Tr./ed. William J. Connell. New

York: St. Martin's Press.

Maritain, Jacques. 1966. Man and the State. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press.

Mill, John Stuart. 1954. On Liberty. London: Oxford University Press.

Murray, John Courtney. 1960. We Hold These Truths. New York: Sheed

& Ward.

Murti, Vasu. 2006. The Liberal Case Against Abortion. Mt. Laurel, NJ:

Rage Media.

Nadelmann, Ethan A. 2004. An End to Marijuana Prohibition. National

Review (12 July): 1­7.

Pieper, Josef. 1975. The Four Cardinal Virtues. Notre Dame, IN:

University of Notre Dame Press.

Plamenatz, John P. 1963. Man and Society. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw­

Hill.

Plato. 1992. The Republic. Tr. George M. A. Grube. Rev. ed. C. D. C.

Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Pope John Paul II. 1995. The Gospel of Life. Vatican tr. New York:

Times Books.

Rorty, Richard. 1991. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1: Objectivity,

Relativism and Truth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1960. The Social Contract. In The Social

Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume and Rousseau. London: Oxford

University Press.

Sabine, George H. 1953. A History of Political Theory. New York:

Henry Holt.

Sandel, Michael J. 1996. America's Search for a New Public Philosophy.

Atlantic Monthly (January): 57­74.

Schall, James. 1984. The Politics of Heaven and Hell. Lanham, MD:

University Press of America.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1957. The Age of Roosevelt. Vols. I­II.

Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Simon, Yves R. 2002. A Critique of Moral Knowledge. Tr. Ralph

McInerny. New York: Fordham University Press.

Swanton, Christine. 2003. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic Account. Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press.

Verhagen, Eduard & Peter Sauer. 2005. The Groningen Protocol:

Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns. New England Journal of Medicine

352 (10): 959­62.

Vogler, Candace. 2002. Reasonably Vicious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

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Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Raymond L. Dennehy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San

Francisco.

After serving from 1954­58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the

heavy cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he

attended the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy.

He studied philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California,

Berkeley, finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Toronto.

He is the author of Anti­Abortionist at Large: How to Argue

Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It. (Go here for

reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity and an

anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently invited on

radio and television programs, as well as university campuses, to speak and

debate on topics such as abortion, physician­assisted suicide, and cloning.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven

grandchildren.

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The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L.

Dennehy, University of San Francisco

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of

Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by

the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in

JIS 2007.

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a

monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical

conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for

that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral

vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as

it is a virtue ethics­­forms individual character so that a person not

only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover,

possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This

is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character

that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation

whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to

freedom and equality for all.

FREEDOM AND VIRTUE

The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive

unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are

given in its support. First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue

ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a

rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.

Second, a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as it is a virtue ethics­­forms

individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to

act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be

able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices

create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse

choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its

commitment to freedom and equality for all.

But liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the

installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to

functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two

premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These two

premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only freedom

which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our own

way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede

their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of this essay

presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to

humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the two premises

are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will inevitably lead to

its self­destruction.

Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant

here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other ethical

theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue ethics here

refers to that state of character that integrates intellect, will, appetite, and

passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that actualize one's potential to

become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle enjoins, moral virtue is an

"excellence of behavior" (1941: 954­55). Second, virtue ethics is the ethics

of choice because it is the only ethical theory that grounds itself in the

principle that human nature is universal: since all human beings have the

same human nature, they are bound by the same ethical principles. If there is

a single, universal human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that

hold for a pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from

what is here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just

because it understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that

ethical behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and

monitored by reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions,

and appetites.

Pope John Paul II called attention to the mounting danger to democracy

from a concept of subjectivity carried to excess, and a notion of freedom

based on the concept of the individual isolated from society (Dennehy 2006:

50­53). These developments express themselves in various ways, one of

which is the change in the popular understanding of constitutional rights.

Russell Hittinger shows that whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived

as objective claims against the government, today, personal self­creation, to

wit, the right to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990:

486­99). This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense

of alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,

all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since the

body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as obstructive.

When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is inevitable that the

individual should find himself increasingly in tension with both nature and

society. The tension with society can be handled diplomaically: the individual

limits his behavior by respecting the rights and desires of others so as to

avoid retaliation. The tension with his body is handled by denial; it is

rejected root and branch as a source for ethical norms of conduct, since it is

perceived as an impediment to personal fulfillment.

For a consistent radical dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self­

awareness as his true self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere

encasement, a virtuous life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his

own actions and commitments. The Platonic Forms­­eternal, perfect, and

unchanging­­could furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior.

But a glorification of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external

criteria to the realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle,

freedom can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by

practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived as a

reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this

attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,

since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual grudgingly

obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has moral authority

(Hegel 1962: 85).

Regarding the second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to

pluralism (diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for

any political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw appears

when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The possibility

is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous Huxley's novel,

Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what they want, and

they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The inhabitants of

Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their desires are gratified. The

reality is that they are slaves, incapable of desiring anything beyond what

they have been genetically designed and conditioned to desire. Like the

iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with candor, "What, me worry?" If

there is any sense in which this may be called "freedom," then perhaps

subjective freedom is the term for it, for they are aware of no limitations to

their desires.

This raises the question: "Is freedom the personal state of being objectively

unrestrained or the subjective state of not being aware of being restrained?"

What is to prevent both Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being

true simultaneously of the same group of people? What about a nation

whose inhabitants are allowed the freedom to do everything they may wish

to do as long as they do not violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do

not realize that they have been programmed to desire only what their

government determines them to desire? One might object that such an

outcome in a free society, although possible, is highly improbable, since the

majority would not allow the encroachments on freedom and rights that

would initially have to occur before a techno­totalitarian regime such as

Huxley's Brave New World could come into existence. But the technology

involved is merely an instrumental cause of the illusion of freedom, not the

illusion itself. Could there be other causes?

Is it within the realm of plausibility that the majority of members of a political

society could think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is

"Yes." The principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that

is separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,

thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably possible

for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but the real cannot

be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is already here,

evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular vote, as well as

ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected. Each counts as an

example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In terms of the public

vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the sphere of private

behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not violate the rights of

others. Relevant examples include:

1. The rapid decline of public and private support for objective and

substantive ethics in favor of relativism.

2. The erosion of respect for human life in Western democracies. Since Roe

v. Wade (1973), some 50 million unborn human lives have been destroyed

in the United States alone. That U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred

legal justification for killing more Americans than the combined number of

those killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (North and South),

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf

War (Murti 2006: 57­60). To be sure, the classical conception of the state's

goal to make men moral undoubtedly produced its share of abuses. Equally

certain is the progress in public acknowledgment of the dignity of human

conscience heralded by the emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

the widespread practice of abortion in Western democracies shows that

monstrous crimes can be allowed and condoned by a society that from its

beginnings has proclaimed its commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness, and that in the name of the right to run one's life as

one chooses as long as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others,

nevertheless creates laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that

commitment.

3. Embryonic stem­cell research uses human beings, during their earliest

stages of development, as objects of scientific research, not only for the

purpose of finding cures for genetically based illness and defects, but also in

the hope of creating designer humans.

4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that proclaims its dedication to

the protection of the young, while failing to introduce laws and policies that

shield them from easy access to pornography.

5. The mounting support for same­sex marriage in the face of the fact that

the official and special recognition of marriage in society has always been

intimately tied to procreation and the realization that men and women are by

nature importantly different, a difference necessary to the proper

development of children.

6. Legislative and judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example,

the British Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for

teachers, even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral

(Bogle 2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from

feelings of unworthiness.

PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY

The argument against a morally neutral conception of freedom collides not

only with a fundamental premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems,

with a central tenet of what Americans accept as the public philosophy.

Michael Sandel succinctly sets forth that tenet:

"The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live is that freedom

consists in our capacity to choose our ends for ourselves. Politics should not

try to form the character or cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so

would be to "legislate morality." Government should not affirm, through its

policies or laws, any particular conception of the good life; instead it should

provide a neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their

own values and ends" (1996: 58).

Both conservative and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom

consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends." The

disagreement occurs when one asks whether any specific traits of character

are needed for an individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the

responsibility for overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since

republican political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing

people to acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self­rule, deliberating

with other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be

realized, it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its

involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In

contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the

procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to ensuring

equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern for its citizens'

personal moral state. The differences between the two theories are real, but

they are not what they seem. Both denounce the government's unjustified

interference in the lives of its citizens, but differ on what constitutes the

injustice:

"Liberals invoke the ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer,

restrictions on abortion or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring

their morality into the public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality

when opposing attempts by government to impose certain moral restraints ­­

for the sake of workers' safety or environmental protection or distributive

justice­­on the market economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on

both sides of the debate over the welfare state. Republicans have long

complained that taxing the rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a

form of coerced charity that violates people's freedom to choose what to do

with their own money. Democrats have long replied that government must

ensure all citizens a decent level of income, housing, education, and health

care, on the grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are

not truly free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their

disagreement about how government should act with respect to individual

choice, both sides assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to

choose their own ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).

If both sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to

choose one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government

intervention in the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting

meanings and valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends."

And thereby hangs a tale.

TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY

At stake here is the clash between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty

and positive liberty. Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is

the absence of external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is

the opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo­American tradition,

liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying rationale

for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that

of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt

to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18).

In contrast, a review of the Continental tradition shows that liberalism is

predominantly identified with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back

to ancient times (De Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers­­

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas­­agreed that the primary

aim of the state was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the

State is the individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that

underlies it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis

or city­state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good

and the good of the city­state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did not

mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the opportunity to

participate in the activities and life of the community (Sabine 1953: 742). It

is no exaggeration to say that this participation was viewed as one with the

state's commitment to the moral life of its citizens. This is evident in the

Republic, where Plato argues that the aim of the state is the implementation

of justice, a concept which, for him, refers both to the external relations of

men and to their internal states of the soul, as well (1992: 116­21). Aristotle

echoes this view (1941: 935­36).

The classical view of the individual's relation to political society underwent a

gradual yet, in the end, radical change. The impact of Christianity on Greco ­

Roman culture transformed the understanding of that relationship. No longer

did the individual exist primarily for the city­state or empire, for now he

could look to a destiny in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was

also the influence of Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual

had meaning and value only in virtue of membership in the city­state. Stoic

philosophy insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a

city­state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The deepening

sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was accompanied by a

corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of the monarch's

authority (Maritain 1966: 30­33). This transformation in the understanding

of the individual's relation to political society caused, in turn, a shift in the

standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place of the city­state and

empire, the transcendent God became the standard. For example, Martin

Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the Church, as the direct voice

of God's will for the individual, widened further the gap between the

individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz 1963: 175). And, while it is

true that a corresponding expansion of personal freedom was

acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom from temporal,

not divine, laws.

The classical­Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by

Nicolo Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally

separated politics from morality:

"there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he

who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin

him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a

career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who

are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain

himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not

use it according to necessity . . . . For, if everything be well considered,

something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if

adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in

his security and well­being" (2005: 87­88).

If Machiavelli deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the

secularization of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of

Padua who interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further

than the tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and

thereby eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a

position quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984:

173). Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,

surfacing in the twentieth century as Realpolitik.

Jean­Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is a reaction to

Machiavellianism. Therein, he attempts to rebuild democracy on the

foundation of the Greek city­state, fusing, once more, morality and politics:

"the State or the City is nothing but a moral person the life of which consists

in the union of its members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he

recognizes no distinction between the individual's moral liberty (which for

Rousseau is the only genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence,

he can write that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (Rousseau 1960: 262­63). This classical idea of the city­state was

picked up and developed by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical

idea" (1962: 107). This is not to overlook important differences between

Rousseau's concept of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as

Ethical Idea. For example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General

Will a mere extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly

making it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers

sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the

ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men

moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory, exemplified in

the writings of neo­Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920: 194) and

Thomas H. Green (1960: 31­32), which examined the relation of the

individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of

negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez­faire economics.

The concept of positive liberty is complex, more so than negative liberty.

For one thing, there seem to be two distinct versions of positive liberty,

which may be characterized as the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic

versions. It is important to separate the two, as the former grounds freedom

in objective moral principles, while the latter looks instead to socio­

economic and psychological conditions that enhance the individual's

capacity to actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version,

such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in

being one's own master. Self­mastery requires a virtuous character, since it

implies the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible

without a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying

the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so

that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher self.

The pragmatic version is clearly the conception of freedom embraced by

liberal political theory. Its advocates, like John Dewey, along with his

present­day descendant, Richard Rorty, are directly interested more in the

individual's socio­economic condition than in his moral and rational

development. They hold that freedom is having the opportunity to do what

is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of the individual's freedom, this

version, as with the ethical version, means obeying the laws of the state, but

they do not ascribe metaphysical or ethical properties to it. Rather, they see

the cultural traditions, laws, and social institutions of political society as

furnishing the conditions for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a

civilized society that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote

that freedom consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of

modern democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version

of positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the

resemblance ends there.

Most telling of all is that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the

pragmatic version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute

standard. They do appeal to standards like "self­realization" and "spiritual

enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling that

one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in­security. In

criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of positive

freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary condition of

freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an individual

free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain socio­

economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he wishes, or

at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to do. Practically

speaking, he or she is not free.

The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and

effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34­35). From a formal standpoint,

freedom is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates

of the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into account

the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of political

liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some extent the

conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's decisions, but for

advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty, these are of central

importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it must be the freedom to

do something worth doing. The absence of external restraint guarantees the

freedom of someone who enjoys favorable circumstances, such as enough

money and education, but that guarantee does not extend to one who lacks

them. This was the argument successfully deployed against laissez­faire

politicians in nineteenth­century Britain by the neo­liberal movement for

government interventionist legislation to help factory workers in labor

negotiations with factory owners. The latter resisted proposed laws that

would regulate labor negotiations by insisting that such would violate the

freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a mutually agreeable labor

contract. Factory owners claimed that if the worker found the contract

unacceptable, he was always free to find employment at a factory that had

an acceptable contract. But attempts to prevent the legislation failed when it

became clear that factory owners were united in standing firm behind the

same working conditions (Green 1964: 51­52).

Although advocates of the pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they

are improving the possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that

advocates of negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems

irreconcilable. Consider, for example, the different ways in which the

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to

the Great Depression in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of

the federal government into the economy constituted interference with free

enterprise and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance

to the depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted

accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of

freedom (1934: 107­35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as

positive (Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651­52).

The classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with

things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the state, its

application leads to an oppressive political society in which its members are

deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains them from doing what

they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do not wish to do, they

are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this is

Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (1960: 262­53). History offers sufficient evidence of the threat to

individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom with the state or

with things other than choosing one's own goals. But critics of negative

liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the individual from attempts

of procedural democracy to form policies based on moral neutrality,

illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic stem­cell research, and

sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that what Plato called the "greed

for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse of civil polity and the emergence

of tyranny (1992: 227­38).

Here, it would be well to return to the two premises set forth in the first

paragraph of this essay. The first is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill

the promise of Dewey's liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty

advocates the abandonment of all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule­

trading of principles that leads to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means

the best practical allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely,

some principles are non­negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life.

If both negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive

liberty are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what

basis can the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the

solution?

THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS

American democracy has its foundation in natural law, as is clear from the

Declaration of Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics

maintains that the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly

ordered, and that that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes

natural law theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all

humans will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence

be bound by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is

such a thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting

nonsense, nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human

rights or any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially

the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race, state

of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to the moral and

legal considerations called "rights." That is why an epistemological nominalist

like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social policies. Since he maintains

that our philosophical claims are culturally and historically bound, there is no

"God's eye view" from which we can view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our

picture of ourselves and nature is irredeemably ethnocentric.

Moreover, public discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no

constructive discourse is possible without commonly accepted principles,

many of which originate in natural law theory. Equally important is that

because the natural law is knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism

is compatible with public discourse to the extent that reason transcends all

ethnocentric and religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm

(Murray 1960: 30­33).

To grasp the precise connection between natural law and moral virtue, it is

necessary to avoid confusion over terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a

synonym for spontaneous occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling

trees, dogs growling over a bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to

one's head to fend off a thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the

natural to the artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since

aspirin and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to

express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may

seem comical.

But in the natural law tradition, "natural" is intended in the sense of the

Greek word for nature, physis: "The conception underlying that term sees

nature itself as teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to

all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to actualize

the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and thereby to attain its

perfection (telos) is natural and therefore good or desirable; what frustrates

its actualization is evil or undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this

understanding of "natural," the products of human artifice are not necessarily

unnatural, since they may contribute to the positive actualization of human

nature: aspirin alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which

is to see; the formation of political society is necessary for human flourishing.

The telos of each living thing is determined by its essence or nature. Thus,

the theory of natural law derives from the human understanding that "there

is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which

human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act

in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of the human

being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that" (Maritain

1966: 86).

An objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed

natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?

The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,

one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and

gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human

nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's understanding of

that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do with how a people

understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp human nature and

its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior conforms to natural

law. Thus, natural law does not change because human nature does not

change (Maritain 1966: 85­89). What changes is knowledge of human

nature­­for better or for worse.

The moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and

temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.

However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.

First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil" (Aquinas

1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except to obtain

what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes the woman's

purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be good, that is,

desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables on his plate, because

eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These are examples of

viewer­relative perceptions insofar as they refer to actions that are

objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good. One might

understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary examples of

natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and objectively

correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer­relative perception and

objective moral law is found in spontaneous human strivings, which Aquinas

calls "primary principles: the inclination to preserve one's life is the natural

law ground for the prohibition of murder; the attraction between the sexes is

the natural law ground for marriage and family; the inclination of humans to

live together in society is the natural law ground for justice since to live in

society requires respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).

The problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete

situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more

variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,

"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a

particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get agreement

on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get agreement

when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a starving family.

The moral virtues provide the bridge between the principles of natural law

ethics and proper action. The virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance

give the agent the right ends to pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him

what means to choose, in the particular situation, to realize those ends

(Aristotle 1941: 1026). Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not

the only thing needed for virtuous action; one must also desire the end.

Most important of all, since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in

acting, the virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to

the virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is

wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not

steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a theoretical

knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided; one must

possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a virtuous person

would make.

"President Clinton's so smart, how could he get himself involved with

Monica Lewinsky, when he knew they were investigating him in the Paula

Jones case?" So exclaimed an obviously intelligent and educated panelist on

a CNN talk show at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A

common error in ethical deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for

judging whether actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging

whether statements are true or false. The above question is a case in point.

Its author failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the

will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and ought

not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are importantly

different. The criterion for truth is conformity between thought and thing.

The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is raining out. Its truth depends

on actual meteorological conditions, which is to say that those conditions,

whatever they may be, exist independently of whatever may be said about

them.

The opposite obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the

conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the criterion

for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent and a

preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the reality,

first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting others, and second,

by either strengthening or weakening his or her character. Thus, matching

one's will to right desire requires more than merely knowing how one ought

to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to behave according to right desire,

and also possess the integration of intellect, will, passion, and appetite to

translate the desire to behave according to right desire into acting according

to right desire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen

for children chosen to become philosopher­kings was to last a full thirty­five

years, consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen.

Moral virtue required the integration of all one's faculties­­intellect, will,

passion, and appetite.

Plato's student, Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and

requirements of moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis)

from theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic principle

that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028­29). On the contrary,

Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take and yet not

take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to act that way

(1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian ethics, he insisted that

one who has to struggle to resist the urge to overindulge does not have the

virtue of temperance, since the very struggle betrays a lack of integration

among his faculties (Aristotle 1941: 1050). One starts on the path of

acquiring moral virtue by first acting as a virtuous person would act until one

can perform virtuous actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the

mimicry of virtuous action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter

must have the following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what

he is doing; (2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must

proceed from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941: 956).

The popular conception of the penalty for immoral behavior is some sort of

physical, mental, or socio­economic harm to oneself: excessive drinking

causes liver damage or loss of employment; lying leads to the loss of trust

among one's family and associates, etc. While no one would deny that those

are undesirable outcomes, classical moral theorists insisted that the price to

be paid for immoral behavior is worse: the loss of rational control. Some

challenge the view that a chosen immoral act is an expression of irrational

behavior. Candace Vogler, for example, sees no reason why one who

successfully plans and performs immoral acts on a regular basis in order to

attain his or her goals cannot be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40­41).

But, she is clearly using the word "rational" analogously. The agent's

behavior is "rational" in the sense that it is the result of sound deliberation

and efficient execution.

But, in the sense of rational entertained by classical moral theorists, his or

her behavior is irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone

seeks. From the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the

objective standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the

presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the

actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant, irrational.

Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying, and

murdering, he can only associate with his own kind­­liars, cheaters,

betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be

surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed

to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now held in

thrall by his own unruly and self­destructive urges (Plato 1992: 249­51).

So, there are at least two reasons why Vogler's immoral agent does not act

rationally. First, by a career of immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold

himself into slavery, riveting his will to the evil rather than the good.

Admittedly, his choices may be called "rational" in the sense that his planning

and acting are logically derived from, and consistent with, his immoral

attachments. But, that is a different sense of "rational" from the sense of the

word when applied to moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have

blinded him to the true state of his life and circumstances. He may feel free,

and believe he is acting freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based

on his belief that his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of

Huxley's Brave New World, they are slaves living delusions of freedom.

Consider, for example, the virtue of chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of

temperance as the latter pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is

badly misunderstood. The modern world identifies it with the prudish view

that regards sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the

extent that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining

to a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the

etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in matters

of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other person for

what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate respect and

justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by the vice of

lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the lion cannot appreciate

the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as food, so the lustful person can

only see another person as a source of sexual gratification (Pieper 1975:

166­67). Or, if the vice is greed, the other is perceived as a source of

monetary enrichment, and the like. Of course, references to sight are meant

to be analogical. The state of vice does not blind one to the truth that the

other is a human being, a person for whom justice demands respect. But, to

the extent that vice corrupts reason, the focus on the other person is

distorted by the desire for gratification.

The libertarian argument for the legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem

of freedom. The argument has two prongs. The first is that attempts by

federal and local authorities to stanch the flow of drugs into America have

been a spectacular failure (Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a

mentally competent adult has the right to ingest whatever substance he or

she chooses, as long as that behavior does not violate the rights of others.

But, would a permissive government policy pertaining to the sale and use of

narcotics produce a better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human

flourishing? A population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the

majority of its members make sensual gratification their criterion of

valorization, can be counted on to conclude, when voting for a political

candidate or law, that what guarantees that gratification is what is good for

democracy.

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

The illusion reveals itself in the inconsistency between the criticism of

objective moral norms as the fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact

that living and acting without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one

and the same object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is

that the demand that one act according to putative objective standards in

order to be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however

laudable­­truth, justice, beauty, goodness, or the law­­are not what

freedom is. The criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous,

since it can delude a population into believing that their adherence to those

kinds of lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive

regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961: 9­10).

But a characteristic of the lack of virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is

the will's enslavement to a specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that

to be free, the individual must have before him a range of options, the lack

of virtue produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably

evaluated in terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice.

Kant's heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a

consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of them­­the

object of his vice (1993: 45­48). From the viewpoint of a formal

consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides his

choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a standard

external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a material

consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous agent

chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta ratio) the locus

of which is the organization of passions and appetites according to reason.

The emergence of liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of

the dignity and freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience,

and the equality of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole,

one must dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost

sight of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the

dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a manifestation

of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are microcosms of the

State, or other totalitarian theories in which the individual has no meaning or

value apart from the state, liberal theory seems to have traveled in the

opposite direction, construing the individual's relation to the political

community primarily in utilitarian terms. This has blinded liberal democracy

to the meaning of Plato's observation that "the State is man writ large": the

moral condition of the political community expresses the moral condition of

its members. It would be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party

gained control of Germany following free elections.

If positive freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a

people's freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a

higher self as one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by

obeying the law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly

offers a better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their

respective and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely

because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is plausible.

Virtue ethics offers the solution to the extent that it furnishes the standard for

action based on understanding and choice unhampered by un­disciplined

passions and appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the

truest sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external

restraints and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human

flourishing, both for self­fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The

argument for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas

Aquinas observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby

succumbing to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the

obligation to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,

metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the

mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on

request; and now the movement to legalize physician­assisted suicide and

infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women as

sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a class of

disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed, and the

elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies, regardless of

whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if, indeed, what the

American people want most is the freedom to choose their own goals, why

do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the innocent and defense ­

less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is the freedom of the strong

against the weak who have no choice but to submit (Pope John Paul II

1995: 28­29).

The enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for

personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including

elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue

ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating

ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of

impending danger. Where are our geese?

REFERENCES:

Aquinas, Thomas. 1945. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol.

1. Ed. Anton C. Pegis. New York: Random House.

Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon.

New York: Random House.

Berlin, Isaiah. 1961. Two Concepts of Liberty. Oxford, UK: Clarendon

Press.

Bogle, Joanna. 2007. England Outlaws Catholic Teaching. National

Catholic Register (8­14 April): 1, 9.

Bosanquet, Bernard. 1920. The Philosophical Theory of the State.

London: Macmillan.

Dennehy, Raymond L. 1993. Bodenheimer's Theory of Natural Law: The

Conflict of a Divided Intellectual Allegiance. University of California

(Davis) Law Review 26 (3): 619­52.

_____. 2006. Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Death: Why John Paul II

Was Right. Telos 134 (Spring): 31­63.

De Riggiero, Guido. 1959. The History of European Liberalism. Tr.

Robin G. Collingwood. Boston, MA: Beacon Hill Press.

Dewey, John. 1963a. Freedom and Culture. New York: Capricorn

Books.

_____. 1963b. Liberalism and Social Action. New York: Capricorn

Books.

Green, Thomas H. 1960. Lectures on the Principles of Political

Obligation. London: Longman's Green.

_____. 1964. The Political Theory of T. H. Green. New York:

Appleton­Century­Crofts.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1962. Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Tr. Thomas M.

Knox. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Hittinger, Russell. 1990. Liberalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Wake

Forest Law Review 25: 429­99.

Hoover, Herbert. 1934. Challenge to Liberty. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons.

Huxley, Aldous. 1966. Brave New World. New York: Bantam Books.

Kant, Immanuel. 1993. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Tr.

James W. Ellington. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Machiavelli, Nicolo. 2005. The Prince. Tr./ed. William J. Connell. New

York: St. Martin's Press.

Maritain, Jacques. 1966. Man and the State. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press.

Mill, John Stuart. 1954. On Liberty. London: Oxford University Press.

Murray, John Courtney. 1960. We Hold These Truths. New York: Sheed

& Ward.

Murti, Vasu. 2006. The Liberal Case Against Abortion. Mt. Laurel, NJ:

Rage Media.

Nadelmann, Ethan A. 2004. An End to Marijuana Prohibition. National

Review (12 July): 1­7.

Pieper, Josef. 1975. The Four Cardinal Virtues. Notre Dame, IN:

University of Notre Dame Press.

Plamenatz, John P. 1963. Man and Society. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw­

Hill.

Plato. 1992. The Republic. Tr. George M. A. Grube. Rev. ed. C. D. C.

Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Pope John Paul II. 1995. The Gospel of Life. Vatican tr. New York:

Times Books.

Rorty, Richard. 1991. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1: Objectivity,

Relativism and Truth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1960. The Social Contract. In The Social

Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume and Rousseau. London: Oxford

University Press.

Sabine, George H. 1953. A History of Political Theory. New York:

Henry Holt.

Sandel, Michael J. 1996. America's Search for a New Public Philosophy.

Atlantic Monthly (January): 57­74.

Schall, James. 1984. The Politics of Heaven and Hell. Lanham, MD:

University Press of America.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1957. The Age of Roosevelt. Vols. I­II.

Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Simon, Yves R. 2002. A Critique of Moral Knowledge. Tr. Ralph

McInerny. New York: Fordham University Press.

Swanton, Christine. 2003. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic Account. Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press.

Verhagen, Eduard & Peter Sauer. 2005. The Groningen Protocol:

Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns. New England Journal of Medicine

352 (10): 959­62.

Vogler, Candace. 2002. Reasonably Vicious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

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Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Raymond L. Dennehy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San

Francisco.

After serving from 1954­58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the

heavy cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he

attended the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy.

He studied philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California,

Berkeley, finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Toronto.

He is the author of Anti­Abortionist at Large: How to Argue

Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It. (Go here for

reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity and an

anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently invited on

radio and television programs, as well as university campuses, to speak and

debate on topics such as abortion, physician­assisted suicide, and cloning.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven

grandchildren.

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The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L.

Dennehy, University of San Francisco

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of

Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by

the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in

JIS 2007.

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a

monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical

conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for

that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral

vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as

it is a virtue ethics­­forms individual character so that a person not

only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover,

possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This

is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character

that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation

whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to

freedom and equality for all.

FREEDOM AND VIRTUE

The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive

unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are

given in its support. First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue

ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a

rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.

Second, a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as it is a virtue ethics­­forms

individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to

act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be

able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices

create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse

choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its

commitment to freedom and equality for all.

But liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the

installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to

functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two

premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These two

premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only freedom

which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our own

way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede

their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of this essay

presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to

humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the two premises

are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will inevitably lead to

its self­destruction.

Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant

here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other ethical

theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue ethics here

refers to that state of character that integrates intellect, will, appetite, and

passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that actualize one's potential to

become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle enjoins, moral virtue is an

"excellence of behavior" (1941: 954­55). Second, virtue ethics is the ethics

of choice because it is the only ethical theory that grounds itself in the

principle that human nature is universal: since all human beings have the

same human nature, they are bound by the same ethical principles. If there is

a single, universal human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that

hold for a pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from

what is here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just

because it understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that

ethical behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and

monitored by reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions,

and appetites.

Pope John Paul II called attention to the mounting danger to democracy

from a concept of subjectivity carried to excess, and a notion of freedom

based on the concept of the individual isolated from society (Dennehy 2006:

50­53). These developments express themselves in various ways, one of

which is the change in the popular understanding of constitutional rights.

Russell Hittinger shows that whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived

as objective claims against the government, today, personal self­creation, to

wit, the right to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990:

486­99). This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense

of alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,

all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since the

body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as obstructive.

When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is inevitable that the

individual should find himself increasingly in tension with both nature and

society. The tension with society can be handled diplomaically: the individual

limits his behavior by respecting the rights and desires of others so as to

avoid retaliation. The tension with his body is handled by denial; it is

rejected root and branch as a source for ethical norms of conduct, since it is

perceived as an impediment to personal fulfillment.

For a consistent radical dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self­

awareness as his true self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere

encasement, a virtuous life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his

own actions and commitments. The Platonic Forms­­eternal, perfect, and

unchanging­­could furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior.

But a glorification of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external

criteria to the realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle,

freedom can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by

practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived as a

reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this

attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,

since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual grudgingly

obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has moral authority

(Hegel 1962: 85).

Regarding the second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to

pluralism (diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for

any political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw appears

when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The possibility

is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous Huxley's novel,

Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what they want, and

they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The inhabitants of

Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their desires are gratified. The

reality is that they are slaves, incapable of desiring anything beyond what

they have been genetically designed and conditioned to desire. Like the

iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with candor, "What, me worry?" If

there is any sense in which this may be called "freedom," then perhaps

subjective freedom is the term for it, for they are aware of no limitations to

their desires.

This raises the question: "Is freedom the personal state of being objectively

unrestrained or the subjective state of not being aware of being restrained?"

What is to prevent both Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being

true simultaneously of the same group of people? What about a nation

whose inhabitants are allowed the freedom to do everything they may wish

to do as long as they do not violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do

not realize that they have been programmed to desire only what their

government determines them to desire? One might object that such an

outcome in a free society, although possible, is highly improbable, since the

majority would not allow the encroachments on freedom and rights that

would initially have to occur before a techno­totalitarian regime such as

Huxley's Brave New World could come into existence. But the technology

involved is merely an instrumental cause of the illusion of freedom, not the

illusion itself. Could there be other causes?

Is it within the realm of plausibility that the majority of members of a political

society could think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is

"Yes." The principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that

is separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,

thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably possible

for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but the real cannot

be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is already here,

evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular vote, as well as

ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected. Each counts as an

example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In terms of the public

vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the sphere of private

behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not violate the rights of

others. Relevant examples include:

1. The rapid decline of public and private support for objective and

substantive ethics in favor of relativism.

2. The erosion of respect for human life in Western democracies. Since Roe

v. Wade (1973), some 50 million unborn human lives have been destroyed

in the United States alone. That U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred

legal justification for killing more Americans than the combined number of

those killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (North and South),

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf

War (Murti 2006: 57­60). To be sure, the classical conception of the state's

goal to make men moral undoubtedly produced its share of abuses. Equally

certain is the progress in public acknowledgment of the dignity of human

conscience heralded by the emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

the widespread practice of abortion in Western democracies shows that

monstrous crimes can be allowed and condoned by a society that from its

beginnings has proclaimed its commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness, and that in the name of the right to run one's life as

one chooses as long as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others,

nevertheless creates laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that

commitment.

3. Embryonic stem­cell research uses human beings, during their earliest

stages of development, as objects of scientific research, not only for the

purpose of finding cures for genetically based illness and defects, but also in

the hope of creating designer humans.

4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that proclaims its dedication to

the protection of the young, while failing to introduce laws and policies that

shield them from easy access to pornography.

5. The mounting support for same­sex marriage in the face of the fact that

the official and special recognition of marriage in society has always been

intimately tied to procreation and the realization that men and women are by

nature importantly different, a difference necessary to the proper

development of children.

6. Legislative and judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example,

the British Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for

teachers, even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral

(Bogle 2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from

feelings of unworthiness.

PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY

The argument against a morally neutral conception of freedom collides not

only with a fundamental premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems,

with a central tenet of what Americans accept as the public philosophy.

Michael Sandel succinctly sets forth that tenet:

"The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live is that freedom

consists in our capacity to choose our ends for ourselves. Politics should not

try to form the character or cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so

would be to "legislate morality." Government should not affirm, through its

policies or laws, any particular conception of the good life; instead it should

provide a neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their

own values and ends" (1996: 58).

Both conservative and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom

consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends." The

disagreement occurs when one asks whether any specific traits of character

are needed for an individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the

responsibility for overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since

republican political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing

people to acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self­rule, deliberating

with other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be

realized, it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its

involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In

contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the

procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to ensuring

equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern for its citizens'

personal moral state. The differences between the two theories are real, but

they are not what they seem. Both denounce the government's unjustified

interference in the lives of its citizens, but differ on what constitutes the

injustice:

"Liberals invoke the ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer,

restrictions on abortion or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring

their morality into the public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality

when opposing attempts by government to impose certain moral restraints ­­

for the sake of workers' safety or environmental protection or distributive

justice­­on the market economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on

both sides of the debate over the welfare state. Republicans have long

complained that taxing the rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a

form of coerced charity that violates people's freedom to choose what to do

with their own money. Democrats have long replied that government must

ensure all citizens a decent level of income, housing, education, and health

care, on the grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are

not truly free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their

disagreement about how government should act with respect to individual

choice, both sides assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to

choose their own ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).

If both sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to

choose one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government

intervention in the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting

meanings and valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends."

And thereby hangs a tale.

TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY

At stake here is the clash between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty

and positive liberty. Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is

the absence of external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is

the opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo­American tradition,

liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying rationale

for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that

of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt

to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18).

In contrast, a review of the Continental tradition shows that liberalism is

predominantly identified with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back

to ancient times (De Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers­­

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas­­agreed that the primary

aim of the state was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the

State is the individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that

underlies it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis

or city­state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good

and the good of the city­state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did not

mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the opportunity to

participate in the activities and life of the community (Sabine 1953: 742). It

is no exaggeration to say that this participation was viewed as one with the

state's commitment to the moral life of its citizens. This is evident in the

Republic, where Plato argues that the aim of the state is the implementation

of justice, a concept which, for him, refers both to the external relations of

men and to their internal states of the soul, as well (1992: 116­21). Aristotle

echoes this view (1941: 935­36).

The classical view of the individual's relation to political society underwent a

gradual yet, in the end, radical change. The impact of Christianity on Greco ­

Roman culture transformed the understanding of that relationship. No longer

did the individual exist primarily for the city­state or empire, for now he

could look to a destiny in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was

also the influence of Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual

had meaning and value only in virtue of membership in the city­state. Stoic

philosophy insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a

city­state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The deepening

sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was accompanied by a

corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of the monarch's

authority (Maritain 1966: 30­33). This transformation in the understanding

of the individual's relation to political society caused, in turn, a shift in the

standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place of the city­state and

empire, the transcendent God became the standard. For example, Martin

Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the Church, as the direct voice

of God's will for the individual, widened further the gap between the

individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz 1963: 175). And, while it is

true that a corresponding expansion of personal freedom was

acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom from temporal,

not divine, laws.

The classical­Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by

Nicolo Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally

separated politics from morality:

"there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he

who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin

him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a

career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who

are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain

himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not

use it according to necessity . . . . For, if everything be well considered,

something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if

adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in

his security and well­being" (2005: 87­88).

If Machiavelli deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the

secularization of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of

Padua who interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further

than the tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and

thereby eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a

position quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984:

173). Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,

surfacing in the twentieth century as Realpolitik.

Jean­Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is a reaction to

Machiavellianism. Therein, he attempts to rebuild democracy on the

foundation of the Greek city­state, fusing, once more, morality and politics:

"the State or the City is nothing but a moral person the life of which consists

in the union of its members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he

recognizes no distinction between the individual's moral liberty (which for

Rousseau is the only genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence,

he can write that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (Rousseau 1960: 262­63). This classical idea of the city­state was

picked up and developed by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical

idea" (1962: 107). This is not to overlook important differences between

Rousseau's concept of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as

Ethical Idea. For example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General

Will a mere extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly

making it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers

sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the

ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men

moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory, exemplified in

the writings of neo­Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920: 194) and

Thomas H. Green (1960: 31­32), which examined the relation of the

individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of

negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez­faire economics.

The concept of positive liberty is complex, more so than negative liberty.

For one thing, there seem to be two distinct versions of positive liberty,

which may be characterized as the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic

versions. It is important to separate the two, as the former grounds freedom

in objective moral principles, while the latter looks instead to socio­

economic and psychological conditions that enhance the individual's

capacity to actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version,

such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in

being one's own master. Self­mastery requires a virtuous character, since it

implies the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible

without a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying

the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so

that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher self.

The pragmatic version is clearly the conception of freedom embraced by

liberal political theory. Its advocates, like John Dewey, along with his

present­day descendant, Richard Rorty, are directly interested more in the

individual's socio­economic condition than in his moral and rational

development. They hold that freedom is having the opportunity to do what

is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of the individual's freedom, this

version, as with the ethical version, means obeying the laws of the state, but

they do not ascribe metaphysical or ethical properties to it. Rather, they see

the cultural traditions, laws, and social institutions of political society as

furnishing the conditions for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a

civilized society that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote

that freedom consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of

modern democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version

of positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the

resemblance ends there.

Most telling of all is that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the

pragmatic version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute

standard. They do appeal to standards like "self­realization" and "spiritual

enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling that

one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in­security. In

criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of positive

freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary condition of

freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an individual

free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain socio­

economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he wishes, or

at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to do. Practically

speaking, he or she is not free.

The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and

effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34­35). From a formal standpoint,

freedom is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates

of the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into account

the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of political

liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some extent the

conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's decisions, but for

advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty, these are of central

importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it must be the freedom to

do something worth doing. The absence of external restraint guarantees the

freedom of someone who enjoys favorable circumstances, such as enough

money and education, but that guarantee does not extend to one who lacks

them. This was the argument successfully deployed against laissez­faire

politicians in nineteenth­century Britain by the neo­liberal movement for

government interventionist legislation to help factory workers in labor

negotiations with factory owners. The latter resisted proposed laws that

would regulate labor negotiations by insisting that such would violate the

freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a mutually agreeable labor

contract. Factory owners claimed that if the worker found the contract

unacceptable, he was always free to find employment at a factory that had

an acceptable contract. But attempts to prevent the legislation failed when it

became clear that factory owners were united in standing firm behind the

same working conditions (Green 1964: 51­52).

Although advocates of the pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they

are improving the possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that

advocates of negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems

irreconcilable. Consider, for example, the different ways in which the

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to

the Great Depression in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of

the federal government into the economy constituted interference with free

enterprise and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance

to the depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted

accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of

freedom (1934: 107­35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as

positive (Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651­52).

The classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with

things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the state, its

application leads to an oppressive political society in which its members are

deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains them from doing what

they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do not wish to do, they

are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this is

Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (1960: 262­53). History offers sufficient evidence of the threat to

individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom with the state or

with things other than choosing one's own goals. But critics of negative

liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the individual from attempts

of procedural democracy to form policies based on moral neutrality,

illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic stem­cell research, and

sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that what Plato called the "greed

for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse of civil polity and the emergence

of tyranny (1992: 227­38).

Here, it would be well to return to the two premises set forth in the first

paragraph of this essay. The first is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill

the promise of Dewey's liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty

advocates the abandonment of all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule­

trading of principles that leads to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means

the best practical allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely,

some principles are non­negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life.

If both negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive

liberty are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what

basis can the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the

solution?

THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS

American democracy has its foundation in natural law, as is clear from the

Declaration of Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics

maintains that the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly

ordered, and that that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes

natural law theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all

humans will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence

be bound by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is

such a thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting

nonsense, nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human

rights or any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially

the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race, state

of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to the moral and

legal considerations called "rights." That is why an epistemological nominalist

like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social policies. Since he maintains

that our philosophical claims are culturally and historically bound, there is no

"God's eye view" from which we can view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our

picture of ourselves and nature is irredeemably ethnocentric.

Moreover, public discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no

constructive discourse is possible without commonly accepted principles,

many of which originate in natural law theory. Equally important is that

because the natural law is knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism

is compatible with public discourse to the extent that reason transcends all

ethnocentric and religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm

(Murray 1960: 30­33).

To grasp the precise connection between natural law and moral virtue, it is

necessary to avoid confusion over terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a

synonym for spontaneous occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling

trees, dogs growling over a bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to

one's head to fend off a thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the

natural to the artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since

aspirin and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to

express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may

seem comical.

But in the natural law tradition, "natural" is intended in the sense of the

Greek word for nature, physis: "The conception underlying that term sees

nature itself as teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to

all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to actualize

the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and thereby to attain its

perfection (telos) is natural and therefore good or desirable; what frustrates

its actualization is evil or undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this

understanding of "natural," the products of human artifice are not necessarily

unnatural, since they may contribute to the positive actualization of human

nature: aspirin alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which

is to see; the formation of political society is necessary for human flourishing.

The telos of each living thing is determined by its essence or nature. Thus,

the theory of natural law derives from the human understanding that "there

is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which

human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act

in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of the human

being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that" (Maritain

1966: 86).

An objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed

natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?

The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,

one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and

gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human

nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's understanding of

that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do with how a people

understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp human nature and

its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior conforms to natural

law. Thus, natural law does not change because human nature does not

change (Maritain 1966: 85­89). What changes is knowledge of human

nature­­for better or for worse.

The moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and

temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.

However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.

First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil" (Aquinas

1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except to obtain

what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes the woman's

purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be good, that is,

desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables on his plate, because

eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These are examples of

viewer­relative perceptions insofar as they refer to actions that are

objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good. One might

understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary examples of

natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and objectively

correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer­relative perception and

objective moral law is found in spontaneous human strivings, which Aquinas

calls "primary principles: the inclination to preserve one's life is the natural

law ground for the prohibition of murder; the attraction between the sexes is

the natural law ground for marriage and family; the inclination of humans to

live together in society is the natural law ground for justice since to live in

society requires respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).

The problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete

situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more

variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,

"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a

particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get agreement

on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get agreement

when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a starving family.

The moral virtues provide the bridge between the principles of natural law

ethics and proper action. The virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance

give the agent the right ends to pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him

what means to choose, in the particular situation, to realize those ends

(Aristotle 1941: 1026). Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not

the only thing needed for virtuous action; one must also desire the end.

Most important of all, since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in

acting, the virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to

the virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is

wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not

steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a theoretical

knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided; one must

possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a virtuous person

would make.

"President Clinton's so smart, how could he get himself involved with

Monica Lewinsky, when he knew they were investigating him in the Paula

Jones case?" So exclaimed an obviously intelligent and educated panelist on

a CNN talk show at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A

common error in ethical deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for

judging whether actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging

whether statements are true or false. The above question is a case in point.

Its author failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the

will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and ought

not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are importantly

different. The criterion for truth is conformity between thought and thing.

The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is raining out. Its truth depends

on actual meteorological conditions, which is to say that those conditions,

whatever they may be, exist independently of whatever may be said about

them.

The opposite obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the

conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the criterion

for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent and a

preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the reality,

first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting others, and second,

by either strengthening or weakening his or her character. Thus, matching

one's will to right desire requires more than merely knowing how one ought

to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to behave according to right desire,

and also possess the integration of intellect, will, passion, and appetite to

translate the desire to behave according to right desire into acting according

to right desire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen

for children chosen to become philosopher­kings was to last a full thirty­five

years, consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen.

Moral virtue required the integration of all one's faculties­­intellect, will,

passion, and appetite.

Plato's student, Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and

requirements of moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis)

from theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic principle

that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028­29). On the contrary,

Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take and yet not

take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to act that way

(1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian ethics, he insisted that

one who has to struggle to resist the urge to overindulge does not have the

virtue of temperance, since the very struggle betrays a lack of integration

among his faculties (Aristotle 1941: 1050). One starts on the path of

acquiring moral virtue by first acting as a virtuous person would act until one

can perform virtuous actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the

mimicry of virtuous action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter

must have the following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what

he is doing; (2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must

proceed from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941: 956).

The popular conception of the penalty for immoral behavior is some sort of

physical, mental, or socio­economic harm to oneself: excessive drinking

causes liver damage or loss of employment; lying leads to the loss of trust

among one's family and associates, etc. While no one would deny that those

are undesirable outcomes, classical moral theorists insisted that the price to

be paid for immoral behavior is worse: the loss of rational control. Some

challenge the view that a chosen immoral act is an expression of irrational

behavior. Candace Vogler, for example, sees no reason why one who

successfully plans and performs immoral acts on a regular basis in order to

attain his or her goals cannot be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40­41).

But, she is clearly using the word "rational" analogously. The agent's

behavior is "rational" in the sense that it is the result of sound deliberation

and efficient execution.

But, in the sense of rational entertained by classical moral theorists, his or

her behavior is irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone

seeks. From the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the

objective standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the

presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the

actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant, irrational.

Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying, and

murdering, he can only associate with his own kind­­liars, cheaters,

betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be

surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed

to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now held in

thrall by his own unruly and self­destructive urges (Plato 1992: 249­51).

So, there are at least two reasons why Vogler's immoral agent does not act

rationally. First, by a career of immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold

himself into slavery, riveting his will to the evil rather than the good.

Admittedly, his choices may be called "rational" in the sense that his planning

and acting are logically derived from, and consistent with, his immoral

attachments. But, that is a different sense of "rational" from the sense of the

word when applied to moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have

blinded him to the true state of his life and circumstances. He may feel free,

and believe he is acting freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based

on his belief that his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of

Huxley's Brave New World, they are slaves living delusions of freedom.

Consider, for example, the virtue of chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of

temperance as the latter pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is

badly misunderstood. The modern world identifies it with the prudish view

that regards sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the

extent that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining

to a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the

etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in matters

of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other person for

what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate respect and

justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by the vice of

lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the lion cannot appreciate

the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as food, so the lustful person can

only see another person as a source of sexual gratification (Pieper 1975:

166­67). Or, if the vice is greed, the other is perceived as a source of

monetary enrichment, and the like. Of course, references to sight are meant

to be analogical. The state of vice does not blind one to the truth that the

other is a human being, a person for whom justice demands respect. But, to

the extent that vice corrupts reason, the focus on the other person is

distorted by the desire for gratification.

The libertarian argument for the legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem

of freedom. The argument has two prongs. The first is that attempts by

federal and local authorities to stanch the flow of drugs into America have

been a spectacular failure (Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a

mentally competent adult has the right to ingest whatever substance he or

she chooses, as long as that behavior does not violate the rights of others.

But, would a permissive government policy pertaining to the sale and use of

narcotics produce a better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human

flourishing? A population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the

majority of its members make sensual gratification their criterion of

valorization, can be counted on to conclude, when voting for a political

candidate or law, that what guarantees that gratification is what is good for

democracy.

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

The illusion reveals itself in the inconsistency between the criticism of

objective moral norms as the fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact

that living and acting without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one

and the same object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is

that the demand that one act according to putative objective standards in

order to be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however

laudable­­truth, justice, beauty, goodness, or the law­­are not what

freedom is. The criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous,

since it can delude a population into believing that their adherence to those

kinds of lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive

regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961: 9­10).

But a characteristic of the lack of virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is

the will's enslavement to a specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that

to be free, the individual must have before him a range of options, the lack

of virtue produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably

evaluated in terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice.

Kant's heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a

consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of them­­the

object of his vice (1993: 45­48). From the viewpoint of a formal

consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides his

choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a standard

external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a material

consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous agent

chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta ratio) the locus

of which is the organization of passions and appetites according to reason.

The emergence of liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of

the dignity and freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience,

and the equality of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole,

one must dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost

sight of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the

dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a manifestation

of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are microcosms of the

State, or other totalitarian theories in which the individual has no meaning or

value apart from the state, liberal theory seems to have traveled in the

opposite direction, construing the individual's relation to the political

community primarily in utilitarian terms. This has blinded liberal democracy

to the meaning of Plato's observation that "the State is man writ large": the

moral condition of the political community expresses the moral condition of

its members. It would be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party

gained control of Germany following free elections.

If positive freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a

people's freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a

higher self as one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by

obeying the law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly

offers a better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their

respective and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely

because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is plausible.

Virtue ethics offers the solution to the extent that it furnishes the standard for

action based on understanding and choice unhampered by un­disciplined

passions and appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the

truest sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external

restraints and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human

flourishing, both for self­fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The

argument for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas

Aquinas observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby

succumbing to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the

obligation to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,

metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the

mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on

request; and now the movement to legalize physician­assisted suicide and

infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women as

sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a class of

disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed, and the

elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies, regardless of

whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if, indeed, what the

American people want most is the freedom to choose their own goals, why

do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the innocent and defense ­

less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is the freedom of the strong

against the weak who have no choice but to submit (Pope John Paul II

1995: 28­29).

The enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for

personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including

elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue

ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating

ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of

impending danger. Where are our geese?

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Verhagen, Eduard & Peter Sauer. 2005. The Groningen Protocol:

Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns. New England Journal of Medicine

352 (10): 959­62.

Vogler, Candace. 2002. Reasonably Vicious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

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Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Raymond L. Dennehy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San

Francisco.

After serving from 1954­58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the

heavy cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he

attended the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy.

He studied philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California,

Berkeley, finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Toronto.

He is the author of Anti­Abortionist at Large: How to Argue

Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It. (Go here for

reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity and an

anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently invited on

radio and television programs, as well as university campuses, to speak and

debate on topics such as abortion, physician­assisted suicide, and cloning.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven

grandchildren.

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The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L.

Dennehy, University of San Francisco

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of

Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by

the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in

JIS 2007.

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a

monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical

conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for

that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral

vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as

it is a virtue ethics­­forms individual character so that a person not

only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover,

possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This

is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character

that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation

whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to

freedom and equality for all.

FREEDOM AND VIRTUE

The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive

unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are

given in its support. First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue

ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a

rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.

Second, a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as it is a virtue ethics­­forms

individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to

act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be

able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices

create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse

choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its

commitment to freedom and equality for all.

But liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the

installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to

functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two

premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These two

premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only freedom

which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our own

way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede

their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of this essay

presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to

humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the two premises

are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will inevitably lead to

its self­destruction.

Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant

here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other ethical

theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue ethics here

refers to that state of character that integrates intellect, will, appetite, and

passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that actualize one's potential to

become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle enjoins, moral virtue is an

"excellence of behavior" (1941: 954­55). Second, virtue ethics is the ethics

of choice because it is the only ethical theory that grounds itself in the

principle that human nature is universal: since all human beings have the

same human nature, they are bound by the same ethical principles. If there is

a single, universal human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that

hold for a pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from

what is here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just

because it understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that

ethical behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and

monitored by reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions,

and appetites.

Pope John Paul II called attention to the mounting danger to democracy

from a concept of subjectivity carried to excess, and a notion of freedom

based on the concept of the individual isolated from society (Dennehy 2006:

50­53). These developments express themselves in various ways, one of

which is the change in the popular understanding of constitutional rights.

Russell Hittinger shows that whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived

as objective claims against the government, today, personal self­creation, to

wit, the right to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990:

486­99). This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense

of alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,

all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since the

body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as obstructive.

When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is inevitable that the

individual should find himself increasingly in tension with both nature and

society. The tension with society can be handled diplomaically: the individual

limits his behavior by respecting the rights and desires of others so as to

avoid retaliation. The tension with his body is handled by denial; it is

rejected root and branch as a source for ethical norms of conduct, since it is

perceived as an impediment to personal fulfillment.

For a consistent radical dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self­

awareness as his true self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere

encasement, a virtuous life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his

own actions and commitments. The Platonic Forms­­eternal, perfect, and

unchanging­­could furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior.

But a glorification of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external

criteria to the realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle,

freedom can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by

practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived as a

reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this

attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,

since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual grudgingly

obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has moral authority

(Hegel 1962: 85).

Regarding the second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to

pluralism (diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for

any political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw appears

when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The possibility

is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous Huxley's novel,

Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what they want, and

they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The inhabitants of

Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their desires are gratified. The

reality is that they are slaves, incapable of desiring anything beyond what

they have been genetically designed and conditioned to desire. Like the

iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with candor, "What, me worry?" If

there is any sense in which this may be called "freedom," then perhaps

subjective freedom is the term for it, for they are aware of no limitations to

their desires.

This raises the question: "Is freedom the personal state of being objectively

unrestrained or the subjective state of not being aware of being restrained?"

What is to prevent both Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being

true simultaneously of the same group of people? What about a nation

whose inhabitants are allowed the freedom to do everything they may wish

to do as long as they do not violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do

not realize that they have been programmed to desire only what their

government determines them to desire? One might object that such an

outcome in a free society, although possible, is highly improbable, since the

majority would not allow the encroachments on freedom and rights that

would initially have to occur before a techno­totalitarian regime such as

Huxley's Brave New World could come into existence. But the technology

involved is merely an instrumental cause of the illusion of freedom, not the

illusion itself. Could there be other causes?

Is it within the realm of plausibility that the majority of members of a political

society could think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is

"Yes." The principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that

is separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,

thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably possible

for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but the real cannot

be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is already here,

evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular vote, as well as

ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected. Each counts as an

example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In terms of the public

vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the sphere of private

behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not violate the rights of

others. Relevant examples include:

1. The rapid decline of public and private support for objective and

substantive ethics in favor of relativism.

2. The erosion of respect for human life in Western democracies. Since Roe

v. Wade (1973), some 50 million unborn human lives have been destroyed

in the United States alone. That U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred

legal justification for killing more Americans than the combined number of

those killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (North and South),

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf

War (Murti 2006: 57­60). To be sure, the classical conception of the state's

goal to make men moral undoubtedly produced its share of abuses. Equally

certain is the progress in public acknowledgment of the dignity of human

conscience heralded by the emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

the widespread practice of abortion in Western democracies shows that

monstrous crimes can be allowed and condoned by a society that from its

beginnings has proclaimed its commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness, and that in the name of the right to run one's life as

one chooses as long as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others,

nevertheless creates laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that

commitment.

3. Embryonic stem­cell research uses human beings, during their earliest

stages of development, as objects of scientific research, not only for the

purpose of finding cures for genetically based illness and defects, but also in

the hope of creating designer humans.

4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that proclaims its dedication to

the protection of the young, while failing to introduce laws and policies that

shield them from easy access to pornography.

5. The mounting support for same­sex marriage in the face of the fact that

the official and special recognition of marriage in society has always been

intimately tied to procreation and the realization that men and women are by

nature importantly different, a difference necessary to the proper

development of children.

6. Legislative and judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example,

the British Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for

teachers, even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral

(Bogle 2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from

feelings of unworthiness.

PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY

The argument against a morally neutral conception of freedom collides not

only with a fundamental premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems,

with a central tenet of what Americans accept as the public philosophy.

Michael Sandel succinctly sets forth that tenet:

"The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live is that freedom

consists in our capacity to choose our ends for ourselves. Politics should not

try to form the character or cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so

would be to "legislate morality." Government should not affirm, through its

policies or laws, any particular conception of the good life; instead it should

provide a neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their

own values and ends" (1996: 58).

Both conservative and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom

consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends." The

disagreement occurs when one asks whether any specific traits of character

are needed for an individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the

responsibility for overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since

republican political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing

people to acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self­rule, deliberating

with other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be

realized, it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its

involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In

contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the

procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to ensuring

equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern for its citizens'

personal moral state. The differences between the two theories are real, but

they are not what they seem. Both denounce the government's unjustified

interference in the lives of its citizens, but differ on what constitutes the

injustice:

"Liberals invoke the ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer,

restrictions on abortion or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring

their morality into the public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality

when opposing attempts by government to impose certain moral restraints ­­

for the sake of workers' safety or environmental protection or distributive

justice­­on the market economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on

both sides of the debate over the welfare state. Republicans have long

complained that taxing the rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a

form of coerced charity that violates people's freedom to choose what to do

with their own money. Democrats have long replied that government must

ensure all citizens a decent level of income, housing, education, and health

care, on the grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are

not truly free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their

disagreement about how government should act with respect to individual

choice, both sides assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to

choose their own ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).

If both sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to

choose one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government

intervention in the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting

meanings and valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends."

And thereby hangs a tale.

TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY

At stake here is the clash between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty

and positive liberty. Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is

the absence of external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is

the opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo­American tradition,

liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying rationale

for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that

of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt

to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18).

In contrast, a review of the Continental tradition shows that liberalism is

predominantly identified with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back

to ancient times (De Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers­­

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas­­agreed that the primary

aim of the state was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the

State is the individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that

underlies it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis

or city­state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good

and the good of the city­state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did not

mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the opportunity to

participate in the activities and life of the community (Sabine 1953: 742). It

is no exaggeration to say that this participation was viewed as one with the

state's commitment to the moral life of its citizens. This is evident in the

Republic, where Plato argues that the aim of the state is the implementation

of justice, a concept which, for him, refers both to the external relations of

men and to their internal states of the soul, as well (1992: 116­21). Aristotle

echoes this view (1941: 935­36).

The classical view of the individual's relation to political society underwent a

gradual yet, in the end, radical change. The impact of Christianity on Greco ­

Roman culture transformed the understanding of that relationship. No longer

did the individual exist primarily for the city­state or empire, for now he

could look to a destiny in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was

also the influence of Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual

had meaning and value only in virtue of membership in the city­state. Stoic

philosophy insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a

city­state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The deepening

sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was accompanied by a

corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of the monarch's

authority (Maritain 1966: 30­33). This transformation in the understanding

of the individual's relation to political society caused, in turn, a shift in the

standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place of the city­state and

empire, the transcendent God became the standard. For example, Martin

Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the Church, as the direct voice

of God's will for the individual, widened further the gap between the

individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz 1963: 175). And, while it is

true that a corresponding expansion of personal freedom was

acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom from temporal,

not divine, laws.

The classical­Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by

Nicolo Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally

separated politics from morality:

"there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he

who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin

him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a

career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who

are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain

himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not

use it according to necessity . . . . For, if everything be well considered,

something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if

adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in

his security and well­being" (2005: 87­88).

If Machiavelli deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the

secularization of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of

Padua who interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further

than the tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and

thereby eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a

position quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984:

173). Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,

surfacing in the twentieth century as Realpolitik.

Jean­Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is a reaction to

Machiavellianism. Therein, he attempts to rebuild democracy on the

foundation of the Greek city­state, fusing, once more, morality and politics:

"the State or the City is nothing but a moral person the life of which consists

in the union of its members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he

recognizes no distinction between the individual's moral liberty (which for

Rousseau is the only genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence,

he can write that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (Rousseau 1960: 262­63). This classical idea of the city­state was

picked up and developed by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical

idea" (1962: 107). This is not to overlook important differences between

Rousseau's concept of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as

Ethical Idea. For example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General

Will a mere extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly

making it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers

sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the

ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men

moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory, exemplified in

the writings of neo­Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920: 194) and

Thomas H. Green (1960: 31­32), which examined the relation of the

individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of

negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez­faire economics.

The concept of positive liberty is complex, more so than negative liberty.

For one thing, there seem to be two distinct versions of positive liberty,

which may be characterized as the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic

versions. It is important to separate the two, as the former grounds freedom

in objective moral principles, while the latter looks instead to socio­

economic and psychological conditions that enhance the individual's

capacity to actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version,

such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in

being one's own master. Self­mastery requires a virtuous character, since it

implies the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible

without a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying

the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so

that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher self.

The pragmatic version is clearly the conception of freedom embraced by

liberal political theory. Its advocates, like John Dewey, along with his

present­day descendant, Richard Rorty, are directly interested more in the

individual's socio­economic condition than in his moral and rational

development. They hold that freedom is having the opportunity to do what

is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of the individual's freedom, this

version, as with the ethical version, means obeying the laws of the state, but

they do not ascribe metaphysical or ethical properties to it. Rather, they see

the cultural traditions, laws, and social institutions of political society as

furnishing the conditions for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a

civilized society that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote

that freedom consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of

modern democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version

of positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the

resemblance ends there.

Most telling of all is that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the

pragmatic version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute

standard. They do appeal to standards like "self­realization" and "spiritual

enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling that

one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in­security. In

criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of positive

freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary condition of

freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an individual

free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain socio­

economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he wishes, or

at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to do. Practically

speaking, he or she is not free.

The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and

effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34­35). From a formal standpoint,

freedom is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates

of the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into account

the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of political

liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some extent the

conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's decisions, but for

advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty, these are of central

importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it must be the freedom to

do something worth doing. The absence of external restraint guarantees the

freedom of someone who enjoys favorable circumstances, such as enough

money and education, but that guarantee does not extend to one who lacks

them. This was the argument successfully deployed against laissez­faire

politicians in nineteenth­century Britain by the neo­liberal movement for

government interventionist legislation to help factory workers in labor

negotiations with factory owners. The latter resisted proposed laws that

would regulate labor negotiations by insisting that such would violate the

freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a mutually agreeable labor

contract. Factory owners claimed that if the worker found the contract

unacceptable, he was always free to find employment at a factory that had

an acceptable contract. But attempts to prevent the legislation failed when it

became clear that factory owners were united in standing firm behind the

same working conditions (Green 1964: 51­52).

Although advocates of the pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they

are improving the possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that

advocates of negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems

irreconcilable. Consider, for example, the different ways in which the

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to

the Great Depression in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of

the federal government into the economy constituted interference with free

enterprise and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance

to the depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted

accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of

freedom (1934: 107­35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as

positive (Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651­52).

The classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with

things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the state, its

application leads to an oppressive political society in which its members are

deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains them from doing what

they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do not wish to do, they

are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this is

Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (1960: 262­53). History offers sufficient evidence of the threat to

individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom with the state or

with things other than choosing one's own goals. But critics of negative

liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the individual from attempts

of procedural democracy to form policies based on moral neutrality,

illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic stem­cell research, and

sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that what Plato called the "greed

for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse of civil polity and the emergence

of tyranny (1992: 227­38).

Here, it would be well to return to the two premises set forth in the first

paragraph of this essay. The first is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill

the promise of Dewey's liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty

advocates the abandonment of all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule­

trading of principles that leads to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means

the best practical allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely,

some principles are non­negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life.

If both negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive

liberty are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what

basis can the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the

solution?

THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS

American democracy has its foundation in natural law, as is clear from the

Declaration of Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics

maintains that the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly

ordered, and that that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes

natural law theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all

humans will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence

be bound by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is

such a thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting

nonsense, nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human

rights or any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially

the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race, state

of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to the moral and

legal considerations called "rights." That is why an epistemological nominalist

like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social policies. Since he maintains

that our philosophical claims are culturally and historically bound, there is no

"God's eye view" from which we can view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our

picture of ourselves and nature is irredeemably ethnocentric.

Moreover, public discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no

constructive discourse is possible without commonly accepted principles,

many of which originate in natural law theory. Equally important is that

because the natural law is knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism

is compatible with public discourse to the extent that reason transcends all

ethnocentric and religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm

(Murray 1960: 30­33).

To grasp the precise connection between natural law and moral virtue, it is

necessary to avoid confusion over terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a

synonym for spontaneous occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling

trees, dogs growling over a bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to

one's head to fend off a thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the

natural to the artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since

aspirin and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to

express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may

seem comical.

But in the natural law tradition, "natural" is intended in the sense of the

Greek word for nature, physis: "The conception underlying that term sees

nature itself as teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to

all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to actualize

the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and thereby to attain its

perfection (telos) is natural and therefore good or desirable; what frustrates

its actualization is evil or undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this

understanding of "natural," the products of human artifice are not necessarily

unnatural, since they may contribute to the positive actualization of human

nature: aspirin alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which

is to see; the formation of political society is necessary for human flourishing.

The telos of each living thing is determined by its essence or nature. Thus,

the theory of natural law derives from the human understanding that "there

is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which

human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act

in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of the human

being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that" (Maritain

1966: 86).

An objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed

natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?

The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,

one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and

gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human

nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's understanding of

that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do with how a people

understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp human nature and

its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior conforms to natural

law. Thus, natural law does not change because human nature does not

change (Maritain 1966: 85­89). What changes is knowledge of human

nature­­for better or for worse.

The moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and

temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.

However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.

First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil" (Aquinas

1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except to obtain

what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes the woman's

purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be good, that is,

desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables on his plate, because

eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These are examples of

viewer­relative perceptions insofar as they refer to actions that are

objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good. One might

understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary examples of

natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and objectively

correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer­relative perception and

objective moral law is found in spontaneous human strivings, which Aquinas

calls "primary principles: the inclination to preserve one's life is the natural

law ground for the prohibition of murder; the attraction between the sexes is

the natural law ground for marriage and family; the inclination of humans to

live together in society is the natural law ground for justice since to live in

society requires respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).

The problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete

situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more

variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,

"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a

particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get agreement

on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get agreement

when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a starving family.

The moral virtues provide the bridge between the principles of natural law

ethics and proper action. The virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance

give the agent the right ends to pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him

what means to choose, in the particular situation, to realize those ends

(Aristotle 1941: 1026). Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not

the only thing needed for virtuous action; one must also desire the end.

Most important of all, since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in

acting, the virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to

the virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is

wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not

steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a theoretical

knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided; one must

possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a virtuous person

would make.

"President Clinton's so smart, how could he get himself involved with

Monica Lewinsky, when he knew they were investigating him in the Paula

Jones case?" So exclaimed an obviously intelligent and educated panelist on

a CNN talk show at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A

common error in ethical deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for

judging whether actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging

whether statements are true or false. The above question is a case in point.

Its author failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the

will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and ought

not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are importantly

different. The criterion for truth is conformity between thought and thing.

The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is raining out. Its truth depends

on actual meteorological conditions, which is to say that those conditions,

whatever they may be, exist independently of whatever may be said about

them.

The opposite obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the

conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the criterion

for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent and a

preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the reality,

first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting others, and second,

by either strengthening or weakening his or her character. Thus, matching

one's will to right desire requires more than merely knowing how one ought

to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to behave according to right desire,

and also possess the integration of intellect, will, passion, and appetite to

translate the desire to behave according to right desire into acting according

to right desire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen

for children chosen to become philosopher­kings was to last a full thirty­five

years, consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen.

Moral virtue required the integration of all one's faculties­­intellect, will,

passion, and appetite.

Plato's student, Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and

requirements of moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis)

from theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic principle

that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028­29). On the contrary,

Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take and yet not

take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to act that way

(1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian ethics, he insisted that

one who has to struggle to resist the urge to overindulge does not have the

virtue of temperance, since the very struggle betrays a lack of integration

among his faculties (Aristotle 1941: 1050). One starts on the path of

acquiring moral virtue by first acting as a virtuous person would act until one

can perform virtuous actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the

mimicry of virtuous action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter

must have the following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what

he is doing; (2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must

proceed from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941: 956).

The popular conception of the penalty for immoral behavior is some sort of

physical, mental, or socio­economic harm to oneself: excessive drinking

causes liver damage or loss of employment; lying leads to the loss of trust

among one's family and associates, etc. While no one would deny that those

are undesirable outcomes, classical moral theorists insisted that the price to

be paid for immoral behavior is worse: the loss of rational control. Some

challenge the view that a chosen immoral act is an expression of irrational

behavior. Candace Vogler, for example, sees no reason why one who

successfully plans and performs immoral acts on a regular basis in order to

attain his or her goals cannot be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40­41).

But, she is clearly using the word "rational" analogously. The agent's

behavior is "rational" in the sense that it is the result of sound deliberation

and efficient execution.

But, in the sense of rational entertained by classical moral theorists, his or

her behavior is irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone

seeks. From the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the

objective standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the

presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the

actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant, irrational.

Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying, and

murdering, he can only associate with his own kind­­liars, cheaters,

betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be

surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed

to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now held in

thrall by his own unruly and self­destructive urges (Plato 1992: 249­51).

So, there are at least two reasons why Vogler's immoral agent does not act

rationally. First, by a career of immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold

himself into slavery, riveting his will to the evil rather than the good.

Admittedly, his choices may be called "rational" in the sense that his planning

and acting are logically derived from, and consistent with, his immoral

attachments. But, that is a different sense of "rational" from the sense of the

word when applied to moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have

blinded him to the true state of his life and circumstances. He may feel free,

and believe he is acting freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based

on his belief that his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of

Huxley's Brave New World, they are slaves living delusions of freedom.

Consider, for example, the virtue of chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of

temperance as the latter pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is

badly misunderstood. The modern world identifies it with the prudish view

that regards sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the

extent that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining

to a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the

etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in matters

of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other person for

what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate respect and

justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by the vice of

lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the lion cannot appreciate

the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as food, so the lustful person can

only see another person as a source of sexual gratification (Pieper 1975:

166­67). Or, if the vice is greed, the other is perceived as a source of

monetary enrichment, and the like. Of course, references to sight are meant

to be analogical. The state of vice does not blind one to the truth that the

other is a human being, a person for whom justice demands respect. But, to

the extent that vice corrupts reason, the focus on the other person is

distorted by the desire for gratification.

The libertarian argument for the legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem

of freedom. The argument has two prongs. The first is that attempts by

federal and local authorities to stanch the flow of drugs into America have

been a spectacular failure (Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a

mentally competent adult has the right to ingest whatever substance he or

she chooses, as long as that behavior does not violate the rights of others.

But, would a permissive government policy pertaining to the sale and use of

narcotics produce a better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human

flourishing? A population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the

majority of its members make sensual gratification their criterion of

valorization, can be counted on to conclude, when voting for a political

candidate or law, that what guarantees that gratification is what is good for

democracy.

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

The illusion reveals itself in the inconsistency between the criticism of

objective moral norms as the fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact

that living and acting without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one

and the same object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is

that the demand that one act according to putative objective standards in

order to be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however

laudable­­truth, justice, beauty, goodness, or the law­­are not what

freedom is. The criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous,

since it can delude a population into believing that their adherence to those

kinds of lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive

regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961: 9­10).

But a characteristic of the lack of virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is

the will's enslavement to a specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that

to be free, the individual must have before him a range of options, the lack

of virtue produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably

evaluated in terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice.

Kant's heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a

consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of them­­the

object of his vice (1993: 45­48). From the viewpoint of a formal

consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides his

choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a standard

external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a material

consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous agent

chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta ratio) the locus

of which is the organization of passions and appetites according to reason.

The emergence of liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of

the dignity and freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience,

and the equality of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole,

one must dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost

sight of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the

dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a manifestation

of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are microcosms of the

State, or other totalitarian theories in which the individual has no meaning or

value apart from the state, liberal theory seems to have traveled in the

opposite direction, construing the individual's relation to the political

community primarily in utilitarian terms. This has blinded liberal democracy

to the meaning of Plato's observation that "the State is man writ large": the

moral condition of the political community expresses the moral condition of

its members. It would be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party

gained control of Germany following free elections.

If positive freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a

people's freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a

higher self as one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by

obeying the law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly

offers a better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their

respective and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely

because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is plausible.

Virtue ethics offers the solution to the extent that it furnishes the standard for

action based on understanding and choice unhampered by un­disciplined

passions and appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the

truest sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external

restraints and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human

flourishing, both for self­fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The

argument for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas

Aquinas observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby

succumbing to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the

obligation to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,

metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the

mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on

request; and now the movement to legalize physician­assisted suicide and

infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women as

sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a class of

disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed, and the

elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies, regardless of

whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if, indeed, what the

American people want most is the freedom to choose their own goals, why

do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the innocent and defense ­

less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is the freedom of the strong

against the weak who have no choice but to submit (Pope John Paul II

1995: 28­29).

The enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for

personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including

elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue

ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating

ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of

impending danger. Where are our geese?

REFERENCES:

Aquinas, Thomas. 1945. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol.

1. Ed. Anton C. Pegis. New York: Random House.

Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon.

New York: Random House.

Berlin, Isaiah. 1961. Two Concepts of Liberty. Oxford, UK: Clarendon

Press.

Bogle, Joanna. 2007. England Outlaws Catholic Teaching. National

Catholic Register (8­14 April): 1, 9.

Bosanquet, Bernard. 1920. The Philosophical Theory of the State.

London: Macmillan.

Dennehy, Raymond L. 1993. Bodenheimer's Theory of Natural Law: The

Conflict of a Divided Intellectual Allegiance. University of California

(Davis) Law Review 26 (3): 619­52.

_____. 2006. Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Death: Why John Paul II

Was Right. Telos 134 (Spring): 31­63.

De Riggiero, Guido. 1959. The History of European Liberalism. Tr.

Robin G. Collingwood. Boston, MA: Beacon Hill Press.

Dewey, John. 1963a. Freedom and Culture. New York: Capricorn

Books.

_____. 1963b. Liberalism and Social Action. New York: Capricorn

Books.

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Obligation. London: Longman's Green.

_____. 1964. The Political Theory of T. H. Green. New York:

Appleton­Century­Crofts.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1962. Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Tr. Thomas M.

Knox. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Hittinger, Russell. 1990. Liberalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Wake

Forest Law Review 25: 429­99.

Hoover, Herbert. 1934. Challenge to Liberty. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons.

Huxley, Aldous. 1966. Brave New World. New York: Bantam Books.

Kant, Immanuel. 1993. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Tr.

James W. Ellington. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Machiavelli, Nicolo. 2005. The Prince. Tr./ed. William J. Connell. New

York: St. Martin's Press.

Maritain, Jacques. 1966. Man and the State. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press.

Mill, John Stuart. 1954. On Liberty. London: Oxford University Press.

Murray, John Courtney. 1960. We Hold These Truths. New York: Sheed

& Ward.

Murti, Vasu. 2006. The Liberal Case Against Abortion. Mt. Laurel, NJ:

Rage Media.

Nadelmann, Ethan A. 2004. An End to Marijuana Prohibition. National

Review (12 July): 1­7.

Pieper, Josef. 1975. The Four Cardinal Virtues. Notre Dame, IN:

University of Notre Dame Press.

Plamenatz, John P. 1963. Man and Society. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw­

Hill.

Plato. 1992. The Republic. Tr. George M. A. Grube. Rev. ed. C. D. C.

Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Pope John Paul II. 1995. The Gospel of Life. Vatican tr. New York:

Times Books.

Rorty, Richard. 1991. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1: Objectivity,

Relativism and Truth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1960. The Social Contract. In The Social

Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume and Rousseau. London: Oxford

University Press.

Sabine, George H. 1953. A History of Political Theory. New York:

Henry Holt.

Sandel, Michael J. 1996. America's Search for a New Public Philosophy.

Atlantic Monthly (January): 57­74.

Schall, James. 1984. The Politics of Heaven and Hell. Lanham, MD:

University Press of America.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1957. The Age of Roosevelt. Vols. I­II.

Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Simon, Yves R. 2002. A Critique of Moral Knowledge. Tr. Ralph

McInerny. New York: Fordham University Press.

Swanton, Christine. 2003. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic Account. Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press.

Verhagen, Eduard & Peter Sauer. 2005. The Groningen Protocol:

Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns. New England Journal of Medicine

352 (10): 959­62.

Vogler, Candace. 2002. Reasonably Vicious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

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Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Raymond L. Dennehy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San

Francisco.

After serving from 1954­58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the

heavy cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he

attended the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy.

He studied philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California,

Berkeley, finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Toronto.

He is the author of Anti­Abortionist at Large: How to Argue

Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It. (Go here for

reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity and an

anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently invited on

radio and television programs, as well as university campuses, to speak and

debate on topics such as abortion, physician­assisted suicide, and cloning.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven

grandchildren.

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The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L.

Dennehy, University of San Francisco

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of

Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by

the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in

JIS 2007.

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a

monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical

conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for

that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral

vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as

it is a virtue ethics­­forms individual character so that a person not

only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover,

possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This

is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character

that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation

whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to

freedom and equality for all.

FREEDOM AND VIRTUE

The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive

unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are

given in its support. First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue

ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a

rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.

Second, a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as it is a virtue ethics­­forms

individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to

act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be

able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices

create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse

choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its

commitment to freedom and equality for all.

But liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the

installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to

functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two

premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These two

premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only freedom

which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our own

way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede

their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of this essay

presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to

humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the two premises

are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will inevitably lead to

its self­destruction.

Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant

here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other ethical

theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue ethics here

refers to that state of character that integrates intellect, will, appetite, and

passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that actualize one's potential to

become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle enjoins, moral virtue is an

"excellence of behavior" (1941: 954­55). Second, virtue ethics is the ethics

of choice because it is the only ethical theory that grounds itself in the

principle that human nature is universal: since all human beings have the

same human nature, they are bound by the same ethical principles. If there is

a single, universal human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that

hold for a pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from

what is here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just

because it understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that

ethical behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and

monitored by reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions,

and appetites.

Pope John Paul II called attention to the mounting danger to democracy

from a concept of subjectivity carried to excess, and a notion of freedom

based on the concept of the individual isolated from society (Dennehy 2006:

50­53). These developments express themselves in various ways, one of

which is the change in the popular understanding of constitutional rights.

Russell Hittinger shows that whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived

as objective claims against the government, today, personal self­creation, to

wit, the right to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990:

486­99). This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense

of alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,

all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since the

body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as obstructive.

When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is inevitable that the

individual should find himself increasingly in tension with both nature and

society. The tension with society can be handled diplomaically: the individual

limits his behavior by respecting the rights and desires of others so as to

avoid retaliation. The tension with his body is handled by denial; it is

rejected root and branch as a source for ethical norms of conduct, since it is

perceived as an impediment to personal fulfillment.

For a consistent radical dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self­

awareness as his true self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere

encasement, a virtuous life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his

own actions and commitments. The Platonic Forms­­eternal, perfect, and

unchanging­­could furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior.

But a glorification of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external

criteria to the realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle,

freedom can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by

practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived as a

reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this

attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,

since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual grudgingly

obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has moral authority

(Hegel 1962: 85).

Regarding the second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to

pluralism (diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for

any political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw appears

when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The possibility

is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous Huxley's novel,

Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what they want, and

they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The inhabitants of

Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their desires are gratified. The

reality is that they are slaves, incapable of desiring anything beyond what

they have been genetically designed and conditioned to desire. Like the

iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with candor, "What, me worry?" If

there is any sense in which this may be called "freedom," then perhaps

subjective freedom is the term for it, for they are aware of no limitations to

their desires.

This raises the question: "Is freedom the personal state of being objectively

unrestrained or the subjective state of not being aware of being restrained?"

What is to prevent both Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being

true simultaneously of the same group of people? What about a nation

whose inhabitants are allowed the freedom to do everything they may wish

to do as long as they do not violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do

not realize that they have been programmed to desire only what their

government determines them to desire? One might object that such an

outcome in a free society, although possible, is highly improbable, since the

majority would not allow the encroachments on freedom and rights that

would initially have to occur before a techno­totalitarian regime such as

Huxley's Brave New World could come into existence. But the technology

involved is merely an instrumental cause of the illusion of freedom, not the

illusion itself. Could there be other causes?

Is it within the realm of plausibility that the majority of members of a political

society could think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is

"Yes." The principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that

is separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,

thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably possible

for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but the real cannot

be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is already here,

evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular vote, as well as

ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected. Each counts as an

example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In terms of the public

vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the sphere of private

behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not violate the rights of

others. Relevant examples include:

1. The rapid decline of public and private support for objective and

substantive ethics in favor of relativism.

2. The erosion of respect for human life in Western democracies. Since Roe

v. Wade (1973), some 50 million unborn human lives have been destroyed

in the United States alone. That U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred

legal justification for killing more Americans than the combined number of

those killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (North and South),

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf

War (Murti 2006: 57­60). To be sure, the classical conception of the state's

goal to make men moral undoubtedly produced its share of abuses. Equally

certain is the progress in public acknowledgment of the dignity of human

conscience heralded by the emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

the widespread practice of abortion in Western democracies shows that

monstrous crimes can be allowed and condoned by a society that from its

beginnings has proclaimed its commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness, and that in the name of the right to run one's life as

one chooses as long as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others,

nevertheless creates laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that

commitment.

3. Embryonic stem­cell research uses human beings, during their earliest

stages of development, as objects of scientific research, not only for the

purpose of finding cures for genetically based illness and defects, but also in

the hope of creating designer humans.

4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that proclaims its dedication to

the protection of the young, while failing to introduce laws and policies that

shield them from easy access to pornography.

5. The mounting support for same­sex marriage in the face of the fact that

the official and special recognition of marriage in society has always been

intimately tied to procreation and the realization that men and women are by

nature importantly different, a difference necessary to the proper

development of children.

6. Legislative and judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example,

the British Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for

teachers, even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral

(Bogle 2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from

feelings of unworthiness.

PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY

The argument against a morally neutral conception of freedom collides not

only with a fundamental premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems,

with a central tenet of what Americans accept as the public philosophy.

Michael Sandel succinctly sets forth that tenet:

"The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live is that freedom

consists in our capacity to choose our ends for ourselves. Politics should not

try to form the character or cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so

would be to "legislate morality." Government should not affirm, through its

policies or laws, any particular conception of the good life; instead it should

provide a neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their

own values and ends" (1996: 58).

Both conservative and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom

consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends." The

disagreement occurs when one asks whether any specific traits of character

are needed for an individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the

responsibility for overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since

republican political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing

people to acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self­rule, deliberating

with other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be

realized, it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its

involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In

contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the

procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to ensuring

equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern for its citizens'

personal moral state. The differences between the two theories are real, but

they are not what they seem. Both denounce the government's unjustified

interference in the lives of its citizens, but differ on what constitutes the

injustice:

"Liberals invoke the ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer,

restrictions on abortion or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring

their morality into the public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality

when opposing attempts by government to impose certain moral restraints ­­

for the sake of workers' safety or environmental protection or distributive

justice­­on the market economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on

both sides of the debate over the welfare state. Republicans have long

complained that taxing the rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a

form of coerced charity that violates people's freedom to choose what to do

with their own money. Democrats have long replied that government must

ensure all citizens a decent level of income, housing, education, and health

care, on the grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are

not truly free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their

disagreement about how government should act with respect to individual

choice, both sides assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to

choose their own ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).

If both sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to

choose one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government

intervention in the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting

meanings and valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends."

And thereby hangs a tale.

TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY

At stake here is the clash between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty

and positive liberty. Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is

the absence of external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is

the opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo­American tradition,

liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying rationale

for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that

of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt

to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18).

In contrast, a review of the Continental tradition shows that liberalism is

predominantly identified with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back

to ancient times (De Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers­­

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas­­agreed that the primary

aim of the state was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the

State is the individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that

underlies it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis

or city­state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good

and the good of the city­state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did not

mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the opportunity to

participate in the activities and life of the community (Sabine 1953: 742). It

is no exaggeration to say that this participation was viewed as one with the

state's commitment to the moral life of its citizens. This is evident in the

Republic, where Plato argues that the aim of the state is the implementation

of justice, a concept which, for him, refers both to the external relations of

men and to their internal states of the soul, as well (1992: 116­21). Aristotle

echoes this view (1941: 935­36).

The classical view of the individual's relation to political society underwent a

gradual yet, in the end, radical change. The impact of Christianity on Greco ­

Roman culture transformed the understanding of that relationship. No longer

did the individual exist primarily for the city­state or empire, for now he

could look to a destiny in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was

also the influence of Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual

had meaning and value only in virtue of membership in the city­state. Stoic

philosophy insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a

city­state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The deepening

sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was accompanied by a

corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of the monarch's

authority (Maritain 1966: 30­33). This transformation in the understanding

of the individual's relation to political society caused, in turn, a shift in the

standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place of the city­state and

empire, the transcendent God became the standard. For example, Martin

Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the Church, as the direct voice

of God's will for the individual, widened further the gap between the

individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz 1963: 175). And, while it is

true that a corresponding expansion of personal freedom was

acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom from temporal,

not divine, laws.

The classical­Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by

Nicolo Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally

separated politics from morality:

"there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he

who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin

him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a

career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who

are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain

himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not

use it according to necessity . . . . For, if everything be well considered,

something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if

adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in

his security and well­being" (2005: 87­88).

If Machiavelli deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the

secularization of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of

Padua who interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further

than the tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and

thereby eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a

position quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984:

173). Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,

surfacing in the twentieth century as Realpolitik.

Jean­Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is a reaction to

Machiavellianism. Therein, he attempts to rebuild democracy on the

foundation of the Greek city­state, fusing, once more, morality and politics:

"the State or the City is nothing but a moral person the life of which consists

in the union of its members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he

recognizes no distinction between the individual's moral liberty (which for

Rousseau is the only genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence,

he can write that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (Rousseau 1960: 262­63). This classical idea of the city­state was

picked up and developed by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical

idea" (1962: 107). This is not to overlook important differences between

Rousseau's concept of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as

Ethical Idea. For example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General

Will a mere extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly

making it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers

sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the

ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men

moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory, exemplified in

the writings of neo­Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920: 194) and

Thomas H. Green (1960: 31­32), which examined the relation of the

individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of

negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez­faire economics.

The concept of positive liberty is complex, more so than negative liberty.

For one thing, there seem to be two distinct versions of positive liberty,

which may be characterized as the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic

versions. It is important to separate the two, as the former grounds freedom

in objective moral principles, while the latter looks instead to socio­

economic and psychological conditions that enhance the individual's

capacity to actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version,

such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in

being one's own master. Self­mastery requires a virtuous character, since it

implies the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible

without a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying

the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so

that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher self.

The pragmatic version is clearly the conception of freedom embraced by

liberal political theory. Its advocates, like John Dewey, along with his

present­day descendant, Richard Rorty, are directly interested more in the

individual's socio­economic condition than in his moral and rational

development. They hold that freedom is having the opportunity to do what

is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of the individual's freedom, this

version, as with the ethical version, means obeying the laws of the state, but

they do not ascribe metaphysical or ethical properties to it. Rather, they see

the cultural traditions, laws, and social institutions of political society as

furnishing the conditions for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a

civilized society that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote

that freedom consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of

modern democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version

of positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the

resemblance ends there.

Most telling of all is that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the

pragmatic version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute

standard. They do appeal to standards like "self­realization" and "spiritual

enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling that

one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in­security. In

criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of positive

freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary condition of

freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an individual

free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain socio­

economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he wishes, or

at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to do. Practically

speaking, he or she is not free.

The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and

effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34­35). From a formal standpoint,

freedom is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates

of the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into account

the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of political

liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some extent the

conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's decisions, but for

advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty, these are of central

importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it must be the freedom to

do something worth doing. The absence of external restraint guarantees the

freedom of someone who enjoys favorable circumstances, such as enough

money and education, but that guarantee does not extend to one who lacks

them. This was the argument successfully deployed against laissez­faire

politicians in nineteenth­century Britain by the neo­liberal movement for

government interventionist legislation to help factory workers in labor

negotiations with factory owners. The latter resisted proposed laws that

would regulate labor negotiations by insisting that such would violate the

freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a mutually agreeable labor

contract. Factory owners claimed that if the worker found the contract

unacceptable, he was always free to find employment at a factory that had

an acceptable contract. But attempts to prevent the legislation failed when it

became clear that factory owners were united in standing firm behind the

same working conditions (Green 1964: 51­52).

Although advocates of the pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they

are improving the possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that

advocates of negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems

irreconcilable. Consider, for example, the different ways in which the

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to

the Great Depression in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of

the federal government into the economy constituted interference with free

enterprise and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance

to the depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted

accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of

freedom (1934: 107­35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as

positive (Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651­52).

The classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with

things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the state, its

application leads to an oppressive political society in which its members are

deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains them from doing what

they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do not wish to do, they

are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this is

Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (1960: 262­53). History offers sufficient evidence of the threat to

individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom with the state or

with things other than choosing one's own goals. But critics of negative

liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the individual from attempts

of procedural democracy to form policies based on moral neutrality,

illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic stem­cell research, and

sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that what Plato called the "greed

for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse of civil polity and the emergence

of tyranny (1992: 227­38).

Here, it would be well to return to the two premises set forth in the first

paragraph of this essay. The first is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill

the promise of Dewey's liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty

advocates the abandonment of all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule­

trading of principles that leads to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means

the best practical allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely,

some principles are non­negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life.

If both negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive

liberty are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what

basis can the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the

solution?

THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS

American democracy has its foundation in natural law, as is clear from the

Declaration of Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics

maintains that the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly

ordered, and that that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes

natural law theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all

humans will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence

be bound by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is

such a thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting

nonsense, nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human

rights or any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially

the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race, state

of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to the moral and

legal considerations called "rights." That is why an epistemological nominalist

like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social policies. Since he maintains

that our philosophical claims are culturally and historically bound, there is no

"God's eye view" from which we can view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our

picture of ourselves and nature is irredeemably ethnocentric.

Moreover, public discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no

constructive discourse is possible without commonly accepted principles,

many of which originate in natural law theory. Equally important is that

because the natural law is knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism

is compatible with public discourse to the extent that reason transcends all

ethnocentric and religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm

(Murray 1960: 30­33).

To grasp the precise connection between natural law and moral virtue, it is

necessary to avoid confusion over terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a

synonym for spontaneous occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling

trees, dogs growling over a bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to

one's head to fend off a thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the

natural to the artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since

aspirin and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to

express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may

seem comical.

But in the natural law tradition, "natural" is intended in the sense of the

Greek word for nature, physis: "The conception underlying that term sees

nature itself as teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to

all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to actualize

the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and thereby to attain its

perfection (telos) is natural and therefore good or desirable; what frustrates

its actualization is evil or undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this

understanding of "natural," the products of human artifice are not necessarily

unnatural, since they may contribute to the positive actualization of human

nature: aspirin alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which

is to see; the formation of political society is necessary for human flourishing.

The telos of each living thing is determined by its essence or nature. Thus,

the theory of natural law derives from the human understanding that "there

is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which

human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act

in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of the human

being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that" (Maritain

1966: 86).

An objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed

natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?

The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,

one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and

gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human

nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's understanding of

that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do with how a people

understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp human nature and

its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior conforms to natural

law. Thus, natural law does not change because human nature does not

change (Maritain 1966: 85­89). What changes is knowledge of human

nature­­for better or for worse.

The moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and

temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.

However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.

First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil" (Aquinas

1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except to obtain

what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes the woman's

purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be good, that is,

desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables on his plate, because

eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These are examples of

viewer­relative perceptions insofar as they refer to actions that are

objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good. One might

understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary examples of

natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and objectively

correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer­relative perception and

objective moral law is found in spontaneous human strivings, which Aquinas

calls "primary principles: the inclination to preserve one's life is the natural

law ground for the prohibition of murder; the attraction between the sexes is

the natural law ground for marriage and family; the inclination of humans to

live together in society is the natural law ground for justice since to live in

society requires respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).

The problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete

situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more

variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,

"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a

particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get agreement

on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get agreement

when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a starving family.

The moral virtues provide the bridge between the principles of natural law

ethics and proper action. The virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance

give the agent the right ends to pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him

what means to choose, in the particular situation, to realize those ends

(Aristotle 1941: 1026). Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not

the only thing needed for virtuous action; one must also desire the end.

Most important of all, since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in

acting, the virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to

the virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is

wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not

steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a theoretical

knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided; one must

possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a virtuous person

would make.

"President Clinton's so smart, how could he get himself involved with

Monica Lewinsky, when he knew they were investigating him in the Paula

Jones case?" So exclaimed an obviously intelligent and educated panelist on

a CNN talk show at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A

common error in ethical deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for

judging whether actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging

whether statements are true or false. The above question is a case in point.

Its author failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the

will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and ought

not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are importantly

different. The criterion for truth is conformity between thought and thing.

The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is raining out. Its truth depends

on actual meteorological conditions, which is to say that those conditions,

whatever they may be, exist independently of whatever may be said about

them.

The opposite obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the

conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the criterion

for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent and a

preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the reality,

first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting others, and second,

by either strengthening or weakening his or her character. Thus, matching

one's will to right desire requires more than merely knowing how one ought

to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to behave according to right desire,

and also possess the integration of intellect, will, passion, and appetite to

translate the desire to behave according to right desire into acting according

to right desire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen

for children chosen to become philosopher­kings was to last a full thirty­five

years, consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen.

Moral virtue required the integration of all one's faculties­­intellect, will,

passion, and appetite.

Plato's student, Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and

requirements of moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis)

from theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic principle

that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028­29). On the contrary,

Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take and yet not

take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to act that way

(1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian ethics, he insisted that

one who has to struggle to resist the urge to overindulge does not have the

virtue of temperance, since the very struggle betrays a lack of integration

among his faculties (Aristotle 1941: 1050). One starts on the path of

acquiring moral virtue by first acting as a virtuous person would act until one

can perform virtuous actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the

mimicry of virtuous action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter

must have the following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what

he is doing; (2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must

proceed from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941: 956).

The popular conception of the penalty for immoral behavior is some sort of

physical, mental, or socio­economic harm to oneself: excessive drinking

causes liver damage or loss of employment; lying leads to the loss of trust

among one's family and associates, etc. While no one would deny that those

are undesirable outcomes, classical moral theorists insisted that the price to

be paid for immoral behavior is worse: the loss of rational control. Some

challenge the view that a chosen immoral act is an expression of irrational

behavior. Candace Vogler, for example, sees no reason why one who

successfully plans and performs immoral acts on a regular basis in order to

attain his or her goals cannot be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40­41).

But, she is clearly using the word "rational" analogously. The agent's

behavior is "rational" in the sense that it is the result of sound deliberation

and efficient execution.

But, in the sense of rational entertained by classical moral theorists, his or

her behavior is irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone

seeks. From the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the

objective standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the

presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the

actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant, irrational.

Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying, and

murdering, he can only associate with his own kind­­liars, cheaters,

betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be

surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed

to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now held in

thrall by his own unruly and self­destructive urges (Plato 1992: 249­51).

So, there are at least two reasons why Vogler's immoral agent does not act

rationally. First, by a career of immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold

himself into slavery, riveting his will to the evil rather than the good.

Admittedly, his choices may be called "rational" in the sense that his planning

and acting are logically derived from, and consistent with, his immoral

attachments. But, that is a different sense of "rational" from the sense of the

word when applied to moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have

blinded him to the true state of his life and circumstances. He may feel free,

and believe he is acting freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based

on his belief that his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of

Huxley's Brave New World, they are slaves living delusions of freedom.

Consider, for example, the virtue of chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of

temperance as the latter pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is

badly misunderstood. The modern world identifies it with the prudish view

that regards sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the

extent that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining

to a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the

etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in matters

of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other person for

what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate respect and

justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by the vice of

lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the lion cannot appreciate

the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as food, so the lustful person can

only see another person as a source of sexual gratification (Pieper 1975:

166­67). Or, if the vice is greed, the other is perceived as a source of

monetary enrichment, and the like. Of course, references to sight are meant

to be analogical. The state of vice does not blind one to the truth that the

other is a human being, a person for whom justice demands respect. But, to

the extent that vice corrupts reason, the focus on the other person is

distorted by the desire for gratification.

The libertarian argument for the legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem

of freedom. The argument has two prongs. The first is that attempts by

federal and local authorities to stanch the flow of drugs into America have

been a spectacular failure (Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a

mentally competent adult has the right to ingest whatever substance he or

she chooses, as long as that behavior does not violate the rights of others.

But, would a permissive government policy pertaining to the sale and use of

narcotics produce a better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human

flourishing? A population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the

majority of its members make sensual gratification their criterion of

valorization, can be counted on to conclude, when voting for a political

candidate or law, that what guarantees that gratification is what is good for

democracy.

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

The illusion reveals itself in the inconsistency between the criticism of

objective moral norms as the fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact

that living and acting without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one

and the same object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is

that the demand that one act according to putative objective standards in

order to be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however

laudable­­truth, justice, beauty, goodness, or the law­­are not what

freedom is. The criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous,

since it can delude a population into believing that their adherence to those

kinds of lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive

regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961: 9­10).

But a characteristic of the lack of virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is

the will's enslavement to a specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that

to be free, the individual must have before him a range of options, the lack

of virtue produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably

evaluated in terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice.

Kant's heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a

consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of them­­the

object of his vice (1993: 45­48). From the viewpoint of a formal

consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides his

choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a standard

external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a material

consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous agent

chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta ratio) the locus

of which is the organization of passions and appetites according to reason.

The emergence of liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of

the dignity and freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience,

and the equality of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole,

one must dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost

sight of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the

dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a manifestation

of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are microcosms of the

State, or other totalitarian theories in which the individual has no meaning or

value apart from the state, liberal theory seems to have traveled in the

opposite direction, construing the individual's relation to the political

community primarily in utilitarian terms. This has blinded liberal democracy

to the meaning of Plato's observation that "the State is man writ large": the

moral condition of the political community expresses the moral condition of

its members. It would be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party

gained control of Germany following free elections.

If positive freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a

people's freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a

higher self as one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by

obeying the law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly

offers a better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their

respective and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely

because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is plausible.

Virtue ethics offers the solution to the extent that it furnishes the standard for

action based on understanding and choice unhampered by un­disciplined

passions and appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the

truest sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external

restraints and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human

flourishing, both for self­fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The

argument for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas

Aquinas observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby

succumbing to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the

obligation to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,

metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the

mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on

request; and now the movement to legalize physician­assisted suicide and

infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women as

sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a class of

disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed, and the

elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies, regardless of

whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if, indeed, what the

American people want most is the freedom to choose their own goals, why

do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the innocent and defense ­

less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is the freedom of the strong

against the weak who have no choice but to submit (Pope John Paul II

1995: 28­29).

The enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for

personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including

elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue

ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating

ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of

impending danger. Where are our geese?

REFERENCES:

Aquinas, Thomas. 1945. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol.

1. Ed. Anton C. Pegis. New York: Random House.

Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon.

New York: Random House.

Berlin, Isaiah. 1961. Two Concepts of Liberty. Oxford, UK: Clarendon

Press.

Bogle, Joanna. 2007. England Outlaws Catholic Teaching. National

Catholic Register (8­14 April): 1, 9.

Bosanquet, Bernard. 1920. The Philosophical Theory of the State.

London: Macmillan.

Dennehy, Raymond L. 1993. Bodenheimer's Theory of Natural Law: The

Conflict of a Divided Intellectual Allegiance. University of California

(Davis) Law Review 26 (3): 619­52.

_____. 2006. Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Death: Why John Paul II

Was Right. Telos 134 (Spring): 31­63.

De Riggiero, Guido. 1959. The History of European Liberalism. Tr.

Robin G. Collingwood. Boston, MA: Beacon Hill Press.

Dewey, John. 1963a. Freedom and Culture. New York: Capricorn

Books.

_____. 1963b. Liberalism and Social Action. New York: Capricorn

Books.

Green, Thomas H. 1960. Lectures on the Principles of Political

Obligation. London: Longman's Green.

_____. 1964. The Political Theory of T. H. Green. New York:

Appleton­Century­Crofts.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1962. Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Tr. Thomas M.

Knox. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Hittinger, Russell. 1990. Liberalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Wake

Forest Law Review 25: 429­99.

Hoover, Herbert. 1934. Challenge to Liberty. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons.

Huxley, Aldous. 1966. Brave New World. New York: Bantam Books.

Kant, Immanuel. 1993. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Tr.

James W. Ellington. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Machiavelli, Nicolo. 2005. The Prince. Tr./ed. William J. Connell. New

York: St. Martin's Press.

Maritain, Jacques. 1966. Man and the State. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press.

Mill, John Stuart. 1954. On Liberty. London: Oxford University Press.

Murray, John Courtney. 1960. We Hold These Truths. New York: Sheed

& Ward.

Murti, Vasu. 2006. The Liberal Case Against Abortion. Mt. Laurel, NJ:

Rage Media.

Nadelmann, Ethan A. 2004. An End to Marijuana Prohibition. National

Review (12 July): 1­7.

Pieper, Josef. 1975. The Four Cardinal Virtues. Notre Dame, IN:

University of Notre Dame Press.

Plamenatz, John P. 1963. Man and Society. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw­

Hill.

Plato. 1992. The Republic. Tr. George M. A. Grube. Rev. ed. C. D. C.

Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Pope John Paul II. 1995. The Gospel of Life. Vatican tr. New York:

Times Books.

Rorty, Richard. 1991. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1: Objectivity,

Relativism and Truth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1960. The Social Contract. In The Social

Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume and Rousseau. London: Oxford

University Press.

Sabine, George H. 1953. A History of Political Theory. New York:

Henry Holt.

Sandel, Michael J. 1996. America's Search for a New Public Philosophy.

Atlantic Monthly (January): 57­74.

Schall, James. 1984. The Politics of Heaven and Hell. Lanham, MD:

University Press of America.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1957. The Age of Roosevelt. Vols. I­II.

Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Simon, Yves R. 2002. A Critique of Moral Knowledge. Tr. Ralph

McInerny. New York: Fordham University Press.

Swanton, Christine. 2003. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic Account. Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press.

Verhagen, Eduard & Peter Sauer. 2005. The Groningen Protocol:

Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns. New England Journal of Medicine

352 (10): 959­62.

Vogler, Candace. 2002. Reasonably Vicious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

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Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Raymond L. Dennehy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San

Francisco.

After serving from 1954­58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the

heavy cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he

attended the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy.

He studied philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California,

Berkeley, finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Toronto.

He is the author of Anti­Abortionist at Large: How to Argue

Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It. (Go here for

reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity and an

anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently invited on

radio and television programs, as well as university campuses, to speak and

debate on topics such as abortion, physician­assisted suicide, and cloning.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven

grandchildren.

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The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L.

Dennehy, University of San Francisco

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of

Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by

the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in

JIS 2007.

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a

monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical

conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for

that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral

vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as

it is a virtue ethics­­forms individual character so that a person not

only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover,

possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This

is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character

that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation

whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to

freedom and equality for all.

FREEDOM AND VIRTUE

The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive

unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are

given in its support. First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue

ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a

rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.

Second, a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as it is a virtue ethics­­forms

individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to

act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be

able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices

create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse

choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its

commitment to freedom and equality for all.

But liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the

installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to

functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two

premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These two

premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only freedom

which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our own

way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede

their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of this essay

presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to

humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the two premises

are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will inevitably lead to

its self­destruction.

Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant

here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other ethical

theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue ethics here

refers to that state of character that integrates intellect, will, appetite, and

passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that actualize one's potential to

become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle enjoins, moral virtue is an

"excellence of behavior" (1941: 954­55). Second, virtue ethics is the ethics

of choice because it is the only ethical theory that grounds itself in the

principle that human nature is universal: since all human beings have the

same human nature, they are bound by the same ethical principles. If there is

a single, universal human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that

hold for a pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from

what is here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just

because it understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that

ethical behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and

monitored by reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions,

and appetites.

Pope John Paul II called attention to the mounting danger to democracy

from a concept of subjectivity carried to excess, and a notion of freedom

based on the concept of the individual isolated from society (Dennehy 2006:

50­53). These developments express themselves in various ways, one of

which is the change in the popular understanding of constitutional rights.

Russell Hittinger shows that whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived

as objective claims against the government, today, personal self­creation, to

wit, the right to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990:

486­99). This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense

of alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,

all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since the

body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as obstructive.

When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is inevitable that the

individual should find himself increasingly in tension with both nature and

society. The tension with society can be handled diplomaically: the individual

limits his behavior by respecting the rights and desires of others so as to

avoid retaliation. The tension with his body is handled by denial; it is

rejected root and branch as a source for ethical norms of conduct, since it is

perceived as an impediment to personal fulfillment.

For a consistent radical dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self­

awareness as his true self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere

encasement, a virtuous life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his

own actions and commitments. The Platonic Forms­­eternal, perfect, and

unchanging­­could furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior.

But a glorification of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external

criteria to the realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle,

freedom can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by

practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived as a

reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this

attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,

since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual grudgingly

obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has moral authority

(Hegel 1962: 85).

Regarding the second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to

pluralism (diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for

any political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw appears

when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The possibility

is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous Huxley's novel,

Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what they want, and

they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The inhabitants of

Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their desires are gratified. The

reality is that they are slaves, incapable of desiring anything beyond what

they have been genetically designed and conditioned to desire. Like the

iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with candor, "What, me worry?" If

there is any sense in which this may be called "freedom," then perhaps

subjective freedom is the term for it, for they are aware of no limitations to

their desires.

This raises the question: "Is freedom the personal state of being objectively

unrestrained or the subjective state of not being aware of being restrained?"

What is to prevent both Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being

true simultaneously of the same group of people? What about a nation

whose inhabitants are allowed the freedom to do everything they may wish

to do as long as they do not violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do

not realize that they have been programmed to desire only what their

government determines them to desire? One might object that such an

outcome in a free society, although possible, is highly improbable, since the

majority would not allow the encroachments on freedom and rights that

would initially have to occur before a techno­totalitarian regime such as

Huxley's Brave New World could come into existence. But the technology

involved is merely an instrumental cause of the illusion of freedom, not the

illusion itself. Could there be other causes?

Is it within the realm of plausibility that the majority of members of a political

society could think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is

"Yes." The principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that

is separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,

thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably possible

for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but the real cannot

be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is already here,

evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular vote, as well as

ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected. Each counts as an

example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In terms of the public

vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the sphere of private

behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not violate the rights of

others. Relevant examples include:

1. The rapid decline of public and private support for objective and

substantive ethics in favor of relativism.

2. The erosion of respect for human life in Western democracies. Since Roe

v. Wade (1973), some 50 million unborn human lives have been destroyed

in the United States alone. That U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred

legal justification for killing more Americans than the combined number of

those killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (North and South),

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf

War (Murti 2006: 57­60). To be sure, the classical conception of the state's

goal to make men moral undoubtedly produced its share of abuses. Equally

certain is the progress in public acknowledgment of the dignity of human

conscience heralded by the emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

the widespread practice of abortion in Western democracies shows that

monstrous crimes can be allowed and condoned by a society that from its

beginnings has proclaimed its commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness, and that in the name of the right to run one's life as

one chooses as long as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others,

nevertheless creates laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that

commitment.

3. Embryonic stem­cell research uses human beings, during their earliest

stages of development, as objects of scientific research, not only for the

purpose of finding cures for genetically based illness and defects, but also in

the hope of creating designer humans.

4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that proclaims its dedication to

the protection of the young, while failing to introduce laws and policies that

shield them from easy access to pornography.

5. The mounting support for same­sex marriage in the face of the fact that

the official and special recognition of marriage in society has always been

intimately tied to procreation and the realization that men and women are by

nature importantly different, a difference necessary to the proper

development of children.

6. Legislative and judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example,

the British Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for

teachers, even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral

(Bogle 2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from

feelings of unworthiness.

PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY

The argument against a morally neutral conception of freedom collides not

only with a fundamental premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems,

with a central tenet of what Americans accept as the public philosophy.

Michael Sandel succinctly sets forth that tenet:

"The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live is that freedom

consists in our capacity to choose our ends for ourselves. Politics should not

try to form the character or cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so

would be to "legislate morality." Government should not affirm, through its

policies or laws, any particular conception of the good life; instead it should

provide a neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their

own values and ends" (1996: 58).

Both conservative and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom

consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends." The

disagreement occurs when one asks whether any specific traits of character

are needed for an individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the

responsibility for overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since

republican political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing

people to acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self­rule, deliberating

with other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be

realized, it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its

involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In

contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the

procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to ensuring

equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern for its citizens'

personal moral state. The differences between the two theories are real, but

they are not what they seem. Both denounce the government's unjustified

interference in the lives of its citizens, but differ on what constitutes the

injustice:

"Liberals invoke the ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer,

restrictions on abortion or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring

their morality into the public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality

when opposing attempts by government to impose certain moral restraints ­­

for the sake of workers' safety or environmental protection or distributive

justice­­on the market economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on

both sides of the debate over the welfare state. Republicans have long

complained that taxing the rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a

form of coerced charity that violates people's freedom to choose what to do

with their own money. Democrats have long replied that government must

ensure all citizens a decent level of income, housing, education, and health

care, on the grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are

not truly free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their

disagreement about how government should act with respect to individual

choice, both sides assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to

choose their own ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).

If both sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to

choose one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government

intervention in the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting

meanings and valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends."

And thereby hangs a tale.

TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY

At stake here is the clash between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty

and positive liberty. Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is

the absence of external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is

the opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo­American tradition,

liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying rationale

for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that

of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt

to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18).

In contrast, a review of the Continental tradition shows that liberalism is

predominantly identified with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back

to ancient times (De Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers­­

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas­­agreed that the primary

aim of the state was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the

State is the individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that

underlies it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis

or city­state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good

and the good of the city­state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did not

mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the opportunity to

participate in the activities and life of the community (Sabine 1953: 742). It

is no exaggeration to say that this participation was viewed as one with the

state's commitment to the moral life of its citizens. This is evident in the

Republic, where Plato argues that the aim of the state is the implementation

of justice, a concept which, for him, refers both to the external relations of

men and to their internal states of the soul, as well (1992: 116­21). Aristotle

echoes this view (1941: 935­36).

The classical view of the individual's relation to political society underwent a

gradual yet, in the end, radical change. The impact of Christianity on Greco ­

Roman culture transformed the understanding of that relationship. No longer

did the individual exist primarily for the city­state or empire, for now he

could look to a destiny in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was

also the influence of Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual

had meaning and value only in virtue of membership in the city­state. Stoic

philosophy insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a

city­state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The deepening

sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was accompanied by a

corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of the monarch's

authority (Maritain 1966: 30­33). This transformation in the understanding

of the individual's relation to political society caused, in turn, a shift in the

standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place of the city­state and

empire, the transcendent God became the standard. For example, Martin

Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the Church, as the direct voice

of God's will for the individual, widened further the gap between the

individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz 1963: 175). And, while it is

true that a corresponding expansion of personal freedom was

acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom from temporal,

not divine, laws.

The classical­Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by

Nicolo Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally

separated politics from morality:

"there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he

who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin

him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a

career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who

are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain

himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not

use it according to necessity . . . . For, if everything be well considered,

something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if

adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in

his security and well­being" (2005: 87­88).

If Machiavelli deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the

secularization of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of

Padua who interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further

than the tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and

thereby eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a

position quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984:

173). Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,

surfacing in the twentieth century as Realpolitik.

Jean­Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is a reaction to

Machiavellianism. Therein, he attempts to rebuild democracy on the

foundation of the Greek city­state, fusing, once more, morality and politics:

"the State or the City is nothing but a moral person the life of which consists

in the union of its members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he

recognizes no distinction between the individual's moral liberty (which for

Rousseau is the only genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence,

he can write that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (Rousseau 1960: 262­63). This classical idea of the city­state was

picked up and developed by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical

idea" (1962: 107). This is not to overlook important differences between

Rousseau's concept of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as

Ethical Idea. For example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General

Will a mere extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly

making it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers

sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the

ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men

moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory, exemplified in

the writings of neo­Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920: 194) and

Thomas H. Green (1960: 31­32), which examined the relation of the

individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of

negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez­faire economics.

The concept of positive liberty is complex, more so than negative liberty.

For one thing, there seem to be two distinct versions of positive liberty,

which may be characterized as the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic

versions. It is important to separate the two, as the former grounds freedom

in objective moral principles, while the latter looks instead to socio­

economic and psychological conditions that enhance the individual's

capacity to actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version,

such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in

being one's own master. Self­mastery requires a virtuous character, since it

implies the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible

without a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying

the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so

that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher self.

The pragmatic version is clearly the conception of freedom embraced by

liberal political theory. Its advocates, like John Dewey, along with his

present­day descendant, Richard Rorty, are directly interested more in the

individual's socio­economic condition than in his moral and rational

development. They hold that freedom is having the opportunity to do what

is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of the individual's freedom, this

version, as with the ethical version, means obeying the laws of the state, but

they do not ascribe metaphysical or ethical properties to it. Rather, they see

the cultural traditions, laws, and social institutions of political society as

furnishing the conditions for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a

civilized society that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote

that freedom consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of

modern democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version

of positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the

resemblance ends there.

Most telling of all is that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the

pragmatic version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute

standard. They do appeal to standards like "self­realization" and "spiritual

enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling that

one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in­security. In

criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of positive

freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary condition of

freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an individual

free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain socio­

economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he wishes, or

at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to do. Practically

speaking, he or she is not free.

The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and

effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34­35). From a formal standpoint,

freedom is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates

of the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into account

the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of political

liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some extent the

conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's decisions, but for

advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty, these are of central

importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it must be the freedom to

do something worth doing. The absence of external restraint guarantees the

freedom of someone who enjoys favorable circumstances, such as enough

money and education, but that guarantee does not extend to one who lacks

them. This was the argument successfully deployed against laissez­faire

politicians in nineteenth­century Britain by the neo­liberal movement for

government interventionist legislation to help factory workers in labor

negotiations with factory owners. The latter resisted proposed laws that

would regulate labor negotiations by insisting that such would violate the

freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a mutually agreeable labor

contract. Factory owners claimed that if the worker found the contract

unacceptable, he was always free to find employment at a factory that had

an acceptable contract. But attempts to prevent the legislation failed when it

became clear that factory owners were united in standing firm behind the

same working conditions (Green 1964: 51­52).

Although advocates of the pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they

are improving the possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that

advocates of negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems

irreconcilable. Consider, for example, the different ways in which the

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to

the Great Depression in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of

the federal government into the economy constituted interference with free

enterprise and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance

to the depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted

accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of

freedom (1934: 107­35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as

positive (Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651­52).

The classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with

things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the state, its

application leads to an oppressive political society in which its members are

deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains them from doing what

they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do not wish to do, they

are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this is

Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (1960: 262­53). History offers sufficient evidence of the threat to

individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom with the state or

with things other than choosing one's own goals. But critics of negative

liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the individual from attempts

of procedural democracy to form policies based on moral neutrality,

illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic stem­cell research, and

sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that what Plato called the "greed

for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse of civil polity and the emergence

of tyranny (1992: 227­38).

Here, it would be well to return to the two premises set forth in the first

paragraph of this essay. The first is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill

the promise of Dewey's liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty

advocates the abandonment of all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule­

trading of principles that leads to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means

the best practical allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely,

some principles are non­negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life.

If both negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive

liberty are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what

basis can the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the

solution?

THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS

American democracy has its foundation in natural law, as is clear from the

Declaration of Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics

maintains that the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly

ordered, and that that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes

natural law theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all

humans will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence

be bound by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is

such a thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting

nonsense, nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human

rights or any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially

the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race, state

of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to the moral and

legal considerations called "rights." That is why an epistemological nominalist

like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social policies. Since he maintains

that our philosophical claims are culturally and historically bound, there is no

"God's eye view" from which we can view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our

picture of ourselves and nature is irredeemably ethnocentric.

Moreover, public discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no

constructive discourse is possible without commonly accepted principles,

many of which originate in natural law theory. Equally important is that

because the natural law is knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism

is compatible with public discourse to the extent that reason transcends all

ethnocentric and religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm

(Murray 1960: 30­33).

To grasp the precise connection between natural law and moral virtue, it is

necessary to avoid confusion over terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a

synonym for spontaneous occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling

trees, dogs growling over a bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to

one's head to fend off a thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the

natural to the artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since

aspirin and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to

express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may

seem comical.

But in the natural law tradition, "natural" is intended in the sense of the

Greek word for nature, physis: "The conception underlying that term sees

nature itself as teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to

all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to actualize

the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and thereby to attain its

perfection (telos) is natural and therefore good or desirable; what frustrates

its actualization is evil or undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this

understanding of "natural," the products of human artifice are not necessarily

unnatural, since they may contribute to the positive actualization of human

nature: aspirin alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which

is to see; the formation of political society is necessary for human flourishing.

The telos of each living thing is determined by its essence or nature. Thus,

the theory of natural law derives from the human understanding that "there

is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which

human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act

in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of the human

being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that" (Maritain

1966: 86).

An objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed

natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?

The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,

one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and

gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human

nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's understanding of

that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do with how a people

understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp human nature and

its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior conforms to natural

law. Thus, natural law does not change because human nature does not

change (Maritain 1966: 85­89). What changes is knowledge of human

nature­­for better or for worse.

The moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and

temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.

However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.

First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil" (Aquinas

1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except to obtain

what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes the woman's

purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be good, that is,

desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables on his plate, because

eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These are examples of

viewer­relative perceptions insofar as they refer to actions that are

objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good. One might

understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary examples of

natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and objectively

correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer­relative perception and

objective moral law is found in spontaneous human strivings, which Aquinas

calls "primary principles: the inclination to preserve one's life is the natural

law ground for the prohibition of murder; the attraction between the sexes is

the natural law ground for marriage and family; the inclination of humans to

live together in society is the natural law ground for justice since to live in

society requires respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).

The problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete

situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more

variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,

"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a

particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get agreement

on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get agreement

when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a starving family.

The moral virtues provide the bridge between the principles of natural law

ethics and proper action. The virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance

give the agent the right ends to pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him

what means to choose, in the particular situation, to realize those ends

(Aristotle 1941: 1026). Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not

the only thing needed for virtuous action; one must also desire the end.

Most important of all, since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in

acting, the virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to

the virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is

wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not

steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a theoretical

knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided; one must

possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a virtuous person

would make.

"President Clinton's so smart, how could he get himself involved with

Monica Lewinsky, when he knew they were investigating him in the Paula

Jones case?" So exclaimed an obviously intelligent and educated panelist on

a CNN talk show at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A

common error in ethical deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for

judging whether actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging

whether statements are true or false. The above question is a case in point.

Its author failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the

will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and ought

not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are importantly

different. The criterion for truth is conformity between thought and thing.

The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is raining out. Its truth depends

on actual meteorological conditions, which is to say that those conditions,

whatever they may be, exist independently of whatever may be said about

them.

The opposite obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the

conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the criterion

for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent and a

preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the reality,

first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting others, and second,

by either strengthening or weakening his or her character. Thus, matching

one's will to right desire requires more than merely knowing how one ought

to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to behave according to right desire,

and also possess the integration of intellect, will, passion, and appetite to

translate the desire to behave according to right desire into acting according

to right desire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen

for children chosen to become philosopher­kings was to last a full thirty­five

years, consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen.

Moral virtue required the integration of all one's faculties­­intellect, will,

passion, and appetite.

Plato's student, Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and

requirements of moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis)

from theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic principle

that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028­29). On the contrary,

Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take and yet not

take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to act that way

(1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian ethics, he insisted that

one who has to struggle to resist the urge to overindulge does not have the

virtue of temperance, since the very struggle betrays a lack of integration

among his faculties (Aristotle 1941: 1050). One starts on the path of

acquiring moral virtue by first acting as a virtuous person would act until one

can perform virtuous actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the

mimicry of virtuous action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter

must have the following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what

he is doing; (2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must

proceed from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941: 956).

The popular conception of the penalty for immoral behavior is some sort of

physical, mental, or socio­economic harm to oneself: excessive drinking

causes liver damage or loss of employment; lying leads to the loss of trust

among one's family and associates, etc. While no one would deny that those

are undesirable outcomes, classical moral theorists insisted that the price to

be paid for immoral behavior is worse: the loss of rational control. Some

challenge the view that a chosen immoral act is an expression of irrational

behavior. Candace Vogler, for example, sees no reason why one who

successfully plans and performs immoral acts on a regular basis in order to

attain his or her goals cannot be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40­41).

But, she is clearly using the word "rational" analogously. The agent's

behavior is "rational" in the sense that it is the result of sound deliberation

and efficient execution.

But, in the sense of rational entertained by classical moral theorists, his or

her behavior is irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone

seeks. From the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the

objective standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the

presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the

actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant, irrational.

Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying, and

murdering, he can only associate with his own kind­­liars, cheaters,

betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be

surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed

to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now held in

thrall by his own unruly and self­destructive urges (Plato 1992: 249­51).

So, there are at least two reasons why Vogler's immoral agent does not act

rationally. First, by a career of immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold

himself into slavery, riveting his will to the evil rather than the good.

Admittedly, his choices may be called "rational" in the sense that his planning

and acting are logically derived from, and consistent with, his immoral

attachments. But, that is a different sense of "rational" from the sense of the

word when applied to moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have

blinded him to the true state of his life and circumstances. He may feel free,

and believe he is acting freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based

on his belief that his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of

Huxley's Brave New World, they are slaves living delusions of freedom.

Consider, for example, the virtue of chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of

temperance as the latter pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is

badly misunderstood. The modern world identifies it with the prudish view

that regards sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the

extent that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining

to a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the

etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in matters

of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other person for

what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate respect and

justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by the vice of

lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the lion cannot appreciate

the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as food, so the lustful person can

only see another person as a source of sexual gratification (Pieper 1975:

166­67). Or, if the vice is greed, the other is perceived as a source of

monetary enrichment, and the like. Of course, references to sight are meant

to be analogical. The state of vice does not blind one to the truth that the

other is a human being, a person for whom justice demands respect. But, to

the extent that vice corrupts reason, the focus on the other person is

distorted by the desire for gratification.

The libertarian argument for the legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem

of freedom. The argument has two prongs. The first is that attempts by

federal and local authorities to stanch the flow of drugs into America have

been a spectacular failure (Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a

mentally competent adult has the right to ingest whatever substance he or

she chooses, as long as that behavior does not violate the rights of others.

But, would a permissive government policy pertaining to the sale and use of

narcotics produce a better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human

flourishing? A population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the

majority of its members make sensual gratification their criterion of

valorization, can be counted on to conclude, when voting for a political

candidate or law, that what guarantees that gratification is what is good for

democracy.

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

The illusion reveals itself in the inconsistency between the criticism of

objective moral norms as the fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact

that living and acting without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one

and the same object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is

that the demand that one act according to putative objective standards in

order to be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however

laudable­­truth, justice, beauty, goodness, or the law­­are not what

freedom is. The criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous,

since it can delude a population into believing that their adherence to those

kinds of lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive

regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961: 9­10).

But a characteristic of the lack of virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is

the will's enslavement to a specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that

to be free, the individual must have before him a range of options, the lack

of virtue produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably

evaluated in terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice.

Kant's heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a

consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of them­­the

object of his vice (1993: 45­48). From the viewpoint of a formal

consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides his

choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a standard

external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a material

consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous agent

chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta ratio) the locus

of which is the organization of passions and appetites according to reason.

The emergence of liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of

the dignity and freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience,

and the equality of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole,

one must dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost

sight of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the

dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a manifestation

of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are microcosms of the

State, or other totalitarian theories in which the individual has no meaning or

value apart from the state, liberal theory seems to have traveled in the

opposite direction, construing the individual's relation to the political

community primarily in utilitarian terms. This has blinded liberal democracy

to the meaning of Plato's observation that "the State is man writ large": the

moral condition of the political community expresses the moral condition of

its members. It would be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party

gained control of Germany following free elections.

If positive freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a

people's freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a

higher self as one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by

obeying the law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly

offers a better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their

respective and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely

because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is plausible.

Virtue ethics offers the solution to the extent that it furnishes the standard for

action based on understanding and choice unhampered by un­disciplined

passions and appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the

truest sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external

restraints and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human

flourishing, both for self­fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The

argument for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas

Aquinas observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby

succumbing to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the

obligation to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,

metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the

mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on

request; and now the movement to legalize physician­assisted suicide and

infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women as

sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a class of

disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed, and the

elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies, regardless of

whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if, indeed, what the

American people want most is the freedom to choose their own goals, why

do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the innocent and defense ­

less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is the freedom of the strong

against the weak who have no choice but to submit (Pope John Paul II

1995: 28­29).

The enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for

personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including

elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue

ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating

ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of

impending danger. Where are our geese?

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Raymond L. Dennehy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San

Francisco.

After serving from 1954­58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the

heavy cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he

attended the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy.

He studied philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California,

Berkeley, finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Toronto.

He is the author of Anti­Abortionist at Large: How to Argue

Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It. (Go here for

reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity and an

anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently invited on

radio and television programs, as well as university campuses, to speak and

debate on topics such as abortion, physician­assisted suicide, and cloning.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven

grandchildren.

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The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L.

Dennehy, University of San Francisco

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of

Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by

the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in

JIS 2007.

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a

monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical

conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for

that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral

vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as

it is a virtue ethics­­forms individual character so that a person not

only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover,

possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This

is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character

that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation

whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to

freedom and equality for all.

FREEDOM AND VIRTUE

The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive

unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are

given in its support. First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue

ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a

rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.

Second, a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as it is a virtue ethics­­forms

individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to

act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be

able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices

create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse

choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its

commitment to freedom and equality for all.

But liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the

installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to

functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two

premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These two

premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only freedom

which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our own

way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede

their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of this essay

presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to

humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the two premises

are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will inevitably lead to

its self­destruction.

Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant

here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other ethical

theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue ethics here

refers to that state of character that integrates intellect, will, appetite, and

passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that actualize one's potential to

become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle enjoins, moral virtue is an

"excellence of behavior" (1941: 954­55). Second, virtue ethics is the ethics

of choice because it is the only ethical theory that grounds itself in the

principle that human nature is universal: since all human beings have the

same human nature, they are bound by the same ethical principles. If there is

a single, universal human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that

hold for a pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from

what is here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just

because it understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that

ethical behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and

monitored by reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions,

and appetites.

Pope John Paul II called attention to the mounting danger to democracy

from a concept of subjectivity carried to excess, and a notion of freedom

based on the concept of the individual isolated from society (Dennehy 2006:

50­53). These developments express themselves in various ways, one of

which is the change in the popular understanding of constitutional rights.

Russell Hittinger shows that whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived

as objective claims against the government, today, personal self­creation, to

wit, the right to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990:

486­99). This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense

of alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,

all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since the

body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as obstructive.

When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is inevitable that the

individual should find himself increasingly in tension with both nature and

society. The tension with society can be handled diplomaically: the individual

limits his behavior by respecting the rights and desires of others so as to

avoid retaliation. The tension with his body is handled by denial; it is

rejected root and branch as a source for ethical norms of conduct, since it is

perceived as an impediment to personal fulfillment.

For a consistent radical dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self­

awareness as his true self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere

encasement, a virtuous life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his

own actions and commitments. The Platonic Forms­­eternal, perfect, and

unchanging­­could furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior.

But a glorification of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external

criteria to the realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle,

freedom can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by

practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived as a

reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this

attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,

since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual grudgingly

obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has moral authority

(Hegel 1962: 85).

Regarding the second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to

pluralism (diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for

any political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw appears

when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The possibility

is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous Huxley's novel,

Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what they want, and

they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The inhabitants of

Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their desires are gratified. The

reality is that they are slaves, incapable of desiring anything beyond what

they have been genetically designed and conditioned to desire. Like the

iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with candor, "What, me worry?" If

there is any sense in which this may be called "freedom," then perhaps

subjective freedom is the term for it, for they are aware of no limitations to

their desires.

This raises the question: "Is freedom the personal state of being objectively

unrestrained or the subjective state of not being aware of being restrained?"

What is to prevent both Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being

true simultaneously of the same group of people? What about a nation

whose inhabitants are allowed the freedom to do everything they may wish

to do as long as they do not violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do

not realize that they have been programmed to desire only what their

government determines them to desire? One might object that such an

outcome in a free society, although possible, is highly improbable, since the

majority would not allow the encroachments on freedom and rights that

would initially have to occur before a techno­totalitarian regime such as

Huxley's Brave New World could come into existence. But the technology

involved is merely an instrumental cause of the illusion of freedom, not the

illusion itself. Could there be other causes?

Is it within the realm of plausibility that the majority of members of a political

society could think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is

"Yes." The principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that

is separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,

thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably possible

for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but the real cannot

be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is already here,

evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular vote, as well as

ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected. Each counts as an

example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In terms of the public

vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the sphere of private

behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not violate the rights of

others. Relevant examples include:

1. The rapid decline of public and private support for objective and

substantive ethics in favor of relativism.

2. The erosion of respect for human life in Western democracies. Since Roe

v. Wade (1973), some 50 million unborn human lives have been destroyed

in the United States alone. That U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred

legal justification for killing more Americans than the combined number of

those killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (North and South),

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf

War (Murti 2006: 57­60). To be sure, the classical conception of the state's

goal to make men moral undoubtedly produced its share of abuses. Equally

certain is the progress in public acknowledgment of the dignity of human

conscience heralded by the emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

the widespread practice of abortion in Western democracies shows that

monstrous crimes can be allowed and condoned by a society that from its

beginnings has proclaimed its commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness, and that in the name of the right to run one's life as

one chooses as long as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others,

nevertheless creates laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that

commitment.

3. Embryonic stem­cell research uses human beings, during their earliest

stages of development, as objects of scientific research, not only for the

purpose of finding cures for genetically based illness and defects, but also in

the hope of creating designer humans.

4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that proclaims its dedication to

the protection of the young, while failing to introduce laws and policies that

shield them from easy access to pornography.

5. The mounting support for same­sex marriage in the face of the fact that

the official and special recognition of marriage in society has always been

intimately tied to procreation and the realization that men and women are by

nature importantly different, a difference necessary to the proper

development of children.

6. Legislative and judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example,

the British Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for

teachers, even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral

(Bogle 2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from

feelings of unworthiness.

PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY

The argument against a morally neutral conception of freedom collides not

only with a fundamental premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems,

with a central tenet of what Americans accept as the public philosophy.

Michael Sandel succinctly sets forth that tenet:

"The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live is that freedom

consists in our capacity to choose our ends for ourselves. Politics should not

try to form the character or cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so

would be to "legislate morality." Government should not affirm, through its

policies or laws, any particular conception of the good life; instead it should

provide a neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their

own values and ends" (1996: 58).

Both conservative and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom

consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends." The

disagreement occurs when one asks whether any specific traits of character

are needed for an individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the

responsibility for overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since

republican political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing

people to acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self­rule, deliberating

with other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be

realized, it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its

involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In

contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the

procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to ensuring

equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern for its citizens'

personal moral state. The differences between the two theories are real, but

they are not what they seem. Both denounce the government's unjustified

interference in the lives of its citizens, but differ on what constitutes the

injustice:

"Liberals invoke the ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer,

restrictions on abortion or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring

their morality into the public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality

when opposing attempts by government to impose certain moral restraints ­­

for the sake of workers' safety or environmental protection or distributive

justice­­on the market economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on

both sides of the debate over the welfare state. Republicans have long

complained that taxing the rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a

form of coerced charity that violates people's freedom to choose what to do

with their own money. Democrats have long replied that government must

ensure all citizens a decent level of income, housing, education, and health

care, on the grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are

not truly free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their

disagreement about how government should act with respect to individual

choice, both sides assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to

choose their own ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).

If both sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to

choose one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government

intervention in the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting

meanings and valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends."

And thereby hangs a tale.

TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY

At stake here is the clash between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty

and positive liberty. Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is

the absence of external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is

the opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo­American tradition,

liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying rationale

for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that

of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt

to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18).

In contrast, a review of the Continental tradition shows that liberalism is

predominantly identified with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back

to ancient times (De Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers­­

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas­­agreed that the primary

aim of the state was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the

State is the individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that

underlies it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis

or city­state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good

and the good of the city­state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did not

mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the opportunity to

participate in the activities and life of the community (Sabine 1953: 742). It

is no exaggeration to say that this participation was viewed as one with the

state's commitment to the moral life of its citizens. This is evident in the

Republic, where Plato argues that the aim of the state is the implementation

of justice, a concept which, for him, refers both to the external relations of

men and to their internal states of the soul, as well (1992: 116­21). Aristotle

echoes this view (1941: 935­36).

The classical view of the individual's relation to political society underwent a

gradual yet, in the end, radical change. The impact of Christianity on Greco ­

Roman culture transformed the understanding of that relationship. No longer

did the individual exist primarily for the city­state or empire, for now he

could look to a destiny in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was

also the influence of Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual

had meaning and value only in virtue of membership in the city­state. Stoic

philosophy insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a

city­state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The deepening

sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was accompanied by a

corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of the monarch's

authority (Maritain 1966: 30­33). This transformation in the understanding

of the individual's relation to political society caused, in turn, a shift in the

standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place of the city­state and

empire, the transcendent God became the standard. For example, Martin

Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the Church, as the direct voice

of God's will for the individual, widened further the gap between the

individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz 1963: 175). And, while it is

true that a corresponding expansion of personal freedom was

acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom from temporal,

not divine, laws.

The classical­Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by

Nicolo Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally

separated politics from morality:

"there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he

who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin

him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a

career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who

are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain

himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not

use it according to necessity . . . . For, if everything be well considered,

something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if

adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in

his security and well­being" (2005: 87­88).

If Machiavelli deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the

secularization of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of

Padua who interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further

than the tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and

thereby eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a

position quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984:

173). Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,

surfacing in the twentieth century as Realpolitik.

Jean­Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is a reaction to

Machiavellianism. Therein, he attempts to rebuild democracy on the

foundation of the Greek city­state, fusing, once more, morality and politics:

"the State or the City is nothing but a moral person the life of which consists

in the union of its members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he

recognizes no distinction between the individual's moral liberty (which for

Rousseau is the only genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence,

he can write that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (Rousseau 1960: 262­63). This classical idea of the city­state was

picked up and developed by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical

idea" (1962: 107). This is not to overlook important differences between

Rousseau's concept of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as

Ethical Idea. For example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General

Will a mere extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly

making it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers

sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the

ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men

moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory, exemplified in

the writings of neo­Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920: 194) and

Thomas H. Green (1960: 31­32), which examined the relation of the

individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of

negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez­faire economics.

The concept of positive liberty is complex, more so than negative liberty.

For one thing, there seem to be two distinct versions of positive liberty,

which may be characterized as the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic

versions. It is important to separate the two, as the former grounds freedom

in objective moral principles, while the latter looks instead to socio­

economic and psychological conditions that enhance the individual's

capacity to actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version,

such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in

being one's own master. Self­mastery requires a virtuous character, since it

implies the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible

without a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying

the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so

that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher self.

The pragmatic version is clearly the conception of freedom embraced by

liberal political theory. Its advocates, like John Dewey, along with his

present­day descendant, Richard Rorty, are directly interested more in the

individual's socio­economic condition than in his moral and rational

development. They hold that freedom is having the opportunity to do what

is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of the individual's freedom, this

version, as with the ethical version, means obeying the laws of the state, but

they do not ascribe metaphysical or ethical properties to it. Rather, they see

the cultural traditions, laws, and social institutions of political society as

furnishing the conditions for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a

civilized society that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote

that freedom consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of

modern democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version

of positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the

resemblance ends there.

Most telling of all is that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the

pragmatic version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute

standard. They do appeal to standards like "self­realization" and "spiritual

enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling that

one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in­security. In

criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of positive

freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary condition of

freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an individual

free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain socio­

economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he wishes, or

at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to do. Practically

speaking, he or she is not free.

The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and

effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34­35). From a formal standpoint,

freedom is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates

of the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into account

the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of political

liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some extent the

conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's decisions, but for

advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty, these are of central

importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it must be the freedom to

do something worth doing. The absence of external restraint guarantees the

freedom of someone who enjoys favorable circumstances, such as enough

money and education, but that guarantee does not extend to one who lacks

them. This was the argument successfully deployed against laissez­faire

politicians in nineteenth­century Britain by the neo­liberal movement for

government interventionist legislation to help factory workers in labor

negotiations with factory owners. The latter resisted proposed laws that

would regulate labor negotiations by insisting that such would violate the

freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a mutually agreeable labor

contract. Factory owners claimed that if the worker found the contract

unacceptable, he was always free to find employment at a factory that had

an acceptable contract. But attempts to prevent the legislation failed when it

became clear that factory owners were united in standing firm behind the

same working conditions (Green 1964: 51­52).

Although advocates of the pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they

are improving the possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that

advocates of negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems

irreconcilable. Consider, for example, the different ways in which the

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to

the Great Depression in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of

the federal government into the economy constituted interference with free

enterprise and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance

to the depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted

accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of

freedom (1934: 107­35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as

positive (Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651­52).

The classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with

things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the state, its

application leads to an oppressive political society in which its members are

deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains them from doing what

they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do not wish to do, they

are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this is

Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (1960: 262­53). History offers sufficient evidence of the threat to

individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom with the state or

with things other than choosing one's own goals. But critics of negative

liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the individual from attempts

of procedural democracy to form policies based on moral neutrality,

illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic stem­cell research, and

sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that what Plato called the "greed

for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse of civil polity and the emergence

of tyranny (1992: 227­38).

Here, it would be well to return to the two premises set forth in the first

paragraph of this essay. The first is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill

the promise of Dewey's liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty

advocates the abandonment of all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule­

trading of principles that leads to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means

the best practical allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely,

some principles are non­negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life.

If both negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive

liberty are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what

basis can the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the

solution?

THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS

American democracy has its foundation in natural law, as is clear from the

Declaration of Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics

maintains that the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly

ordered, and that that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes

natural law theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all

humans will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence

be bound by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is

such a thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting

nonsense, nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human

rights or any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially

the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race, state

of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to the moral and

legal considerations called "rights." That is why an epistemological nominalist

like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social policies. Since he maintains

that our philosophical claims are culturally and historically bound, there is no

"God's eye view" from which we can view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our

picture of ourselves and nature is irredeemably ethnocentric.

Moreover, public discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no

constructive discourse is possible without commonly accepted principles,

many of which originate in natural law theory. Equally important is that

because the natural law is knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism

is compatible with public discourse to the extent that reason transcends all

ethnocentric and religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm

(Murray 1960: 30­33).

To grasp the precise connection between natural law and moral virtue, it is

necessary to avoid confusion over terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a

synonym for spontaneous occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling

trees, dogs growling over a bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to

one's head to fend off a thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the

natural to the artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since

aspirin and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to

express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may

seem comical.

But in the natural law tradition, "natural" is intended in the sense of the

Greek word for nature, physis: "The conception underlying that term sees

nature itself as teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to

all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to actualize

the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and thereby to attain its

perfection (telos) is natural and therefore good or desirable; what frustrates

its actualization is evil or undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this

understanding of "natural," the products of human artifice are not necessarily

unnatural, since they may contribute to the positive actualization of human

nature: aspirin alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which

is to see; the formation of political society is necessary for human flourishing.

The telos of each living thing is determined by its essence or nature. Thus,

the theory of natural law derives from the human understanding that "there

is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which

human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act

in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of the human

being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that" (Maritain

1966: 86).

An objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed

natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?

The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,

one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and

gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human

nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's understanding of

that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do with how a people

understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp human nature and

its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior conforms to natural

law. Thus, natural law does not change because human nature does not

change (Maritain 1966: 85­89). What changes is knowledge of human

nature­­for better or for worse.

The moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and

temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.

However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.

First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil" (Aquinas

1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except to obtain

what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes the woman's

purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be good, that is,

desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables on his plate, because

eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These are examples of

viewer­relative perceptions insofar as they refer to actions that are

objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good. One might

understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary examples of

natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and objectively

correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer­relative perception and

objective moral law is found in spontaneous human strivings, which Aquinas

calls "primary principles: the inclination to preserve one's life is the natural

law ground for the prohibition of murder; the attraction between the sexes is

the natural law ground for marriage and family; the inclination of humans to

live together in society is the natural law ground for justice since to live in

society requires respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).

The problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete

situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more

variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,

"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a

particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get agreement

on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get agreement

when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a starving family.

The moral virtues provide the bridge between the principles of natural law

ethics and proper action. The virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance

give the agent the right ends to pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him

what means to choose, in the particular situation, to realize those ends

(Aristotle 1941: 1026). Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not

the only thing needed for virtuous action; one must also desire the end.

Most important of all, since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in

acting, the virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to

the virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is

wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not

steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a theoretical

knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided; one must

possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a virtuous person

would make.

"President Clinton's so smart, how could he get himself involved with

Monica Lewinsky, when he knew they were investigating him in the Paula

Jones case?" So exclaimed an obviously intelligent and educated panelist on

a CNN talk show at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A

common error in ethical deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for

judging whether actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging

whether statements are true or false. The above question is a case in point.

Its author failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the

will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and ought

not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are importantly

different. The criterion for truth is conformity between thought and thing.

The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is raining out. Its truth depends

on actual meteorological conditions, which is to say that those conditions,

whatever they may be, exist independently of whatever may be said about

them.

The opposite obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the

conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the criterion

for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent and a

preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the reality,

first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting others, and second,

by either strengthening or weakening his or her character. Thus, matching

one's will to right desire requires more than merely knowing how one ought

to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to behave according to right desire,

and also possess the integration of intellect, will, passion, and appetite to

translate the desire to behave according to right desire into acting according

to right desire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen

for children chosen to become philosopher­kings was to last a full thirty­five

years, consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen.

Moral virtue required the integration of all one's faculties­­intellect, will,

passion, and appetite.

Plato's student, Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and

requirements of moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis)

from theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic principle

that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028­29). On the contrary,

Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take and yet not

take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to act that way

(1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian ethics, he insisted that

one who has to struggle to resist the urge to overindulge does not have the

virtue of temperance, since the very struggle betrays a lack of integration

among his faculties (Aristotle 1941: 1050). One starts on the path of

acquiring moral virtue by first acting as a virtuous person would act until one

can perform virtuous actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the

mimicry of virtuous action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter

must have the following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what

he is doing; (2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must

proceed from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941: 956).

The popular conception of the penalty for immoral behavior is some sort of

physical, mental, or socio­economic harm to oneself: excessive drinking

causes liver damage or loss of employment; lying leads to the loss of trust

among one's family and associates, etc. While no one would deny that those

are undesirable outcomes, classical moral theorists insisted that the price to

be paid for immoral behavior is worse: the loss of rational control. Some

challenge the view that a chosen immoral act is an expression of irrational

behavior. Candace Vogler, for example, sees no reason why one who

successfully plans and performs immoral acts on a regular basis in order to

attain his or her goals cannot be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40­41).

But, she is clearly using the word "rational" analogously. The agent's

behavior is "rational" in the sense that it is the result of sound deliberation

and efficient execution.

But, in the sense of rational entertained by classical moral theorists, his or

her behavior is irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone

seeks. From the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the

objective standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the

presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the

actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant, irrational.

Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying, and

murdering, he can only associate with his own kind­­liars, cheaters,

betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be

surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed

to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now held in

thrall by his own unruly and self­destructive urges (Plato 1992: 249­51).

So, there are at least two reasons why Vogler's immoral agent does not act

rationally. First, by a career of immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold

himself into slavery, riveting his will to the evil rather than the good.

Admittedly, his choices may be called "rational" in the sense that his planning

and acting are logically derived from, and consistent with, his immoral

attachments. But, that is a different sense of "rational" from the sense of the

word when applied to moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have

blinded him to the true state of his life and circumstances. He may feel free,

and believe he is acting freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based

on his belief that his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of

Huxley's Brave New World, they are slaves living delusions of freedom.

Consider, for example, the virtue of chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of

temperance as the latter pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is

badly misunderstood. The modern world identifies it with the prudish view

that regards sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the

extent that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining

to a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the

etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in matters

of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other person for

what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate respect and

justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by the vice of

lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the lion cannot appreciate

the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as food, so the lustful person can

only see another person as a source of sexual gratification (Pieper 1975:

166­67). Or, if the vice is greed, the other is perceived as a source of

monetary enrichment, and the like. Of course, references to sight are meant

to be analogical. The state of vice does not blind one to the truth that the

other is a human being, a person for whom justice demands respect. But, to

the extent that vice corrupts reason, the focus on the other person is

distorted by the desire for gratification.

The libertarian argument for the legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem

of freedom. The argument has two prongs. The first is that attempts by

federal and local authorities to stanch the flow of drugs into America have

been a spectacular failure (Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a

mentally competent adult has the right to ingest whatever substance he or

she chooses, as long as that behavior does not violate the rights of others.

But, would a permissive government policy pertaining to the sale and use of

narcotics produce a better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human

flourishing? A population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the

majority of its members make sensual gratification their criterion of

valorization, can be counted on to conclude, when voting for a political

candidate or law, that what guarantees that gratification is what is good for

democracy.

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

The illusion reveals itself in the inconsistency between the criticism of

objective moral norms as the fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact

that living and acting without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one

and the same object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is

that the demand that one act according to putative objective standards in

order to be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however

laudable­­truth, justice, beauty, goodness, or the law­­are not what

freedom is. The criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous,

since it can delude a population into believing that their adherence to those

kinds of lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive

regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961: 9­10).

But a characteristic of the lack of virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is

the will's enslavement to a specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that

to be free, the individual must have before him a range of options, the lack

of virtue produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably

evaluated in terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice.

Kant's heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a

consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of them­­the

object of his vice (1993: 45­48). From the viewpoint of a formal

consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides his

choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a standard

external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a material

consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous agent

chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta ratio) the locus

of which is the organization of passions and appetites according to reason.

The emergence of liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of

the dignity and freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience,

and the equality of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole,

one must dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost

sight of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the

dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a manifestation

of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are microcosms of the

State, or other totalitarian theories in which the individual has no meaning or

value apart from the state, liberal theory seems to have traveled in the

opposite direction, construing the individual's relation to the political

community primarily in utilitarian terms. This has blinded liberal democracy

to the meaning of Plato's observation that "the State is man writ large": the

moral condition of the political community expresses the moral condition of

its members. It would be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party

gained control of Germany following free elections.

If positive freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a

people's freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a

higher self as one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by

obeying the law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly

offers a better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their

respective and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely

because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is plausible.

Virtue ethics offers the solution to the extent that it furnishes the standard for

action based on understanding and choice unhampered by un­disciplined

passions and appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the

truest sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external

restraints and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human

flourishing, both for self­fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The

argument for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas

Aquinas observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby

succumbing to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the

obligation to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,

metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the

mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on

request; and now the movement to legalize physician­assisted suicide and

infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women as

sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a class of

disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed, and the

elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies, regardless of

whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if, indeed, what the

American people want most is the freedom to choose their own goals, why

do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the innocent and defense ­

less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is the freedom of the strong

against the weak who have no choice but to submit (Pope John Paul II

1995: 28­29).

The enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for

personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including

elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue

ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating

ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of

impending danger. Where are our geese?

REFERENCES:

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1. Ed. Anton C. Pegis. New York: Random House.

Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon.

New York: Random House.

Berlin, Isaiah. 1961. Two Concepts of Liberty. Oxford, UK: Clarendon

Press.

Bogle, Joanna. 2007. England Outlaws Catholic Teaching. National

Catholic Register (8­14 April): 1, 9.

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London: Macmillan.

Dennehy, Raymond L. 1993. Bodenheimer's Theory of Natural Law: The

Conflict of a Divided Intellectual Allegiance. University of California

(Davis) Law Review 26 (3): 619­52.

_____. 2006. Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Death: Why John Paul II

Was Right. Telos 134 (Spring): 31­63.

De Riggiero, Guido. 1959. The History of European Liberalism. Tr.

Robin G. Collingwood. Boston, MA: Beacon Hill Press.

Dewey, John. 1963a. Freedom and Culture. New York: Capricorn

Books.

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Appleton­Century­Crofts.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1962. Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Tr. Thomas M.

Knox. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Hittinger, Russell. 1990. Liberalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Wake

Forest Law Review 25: 429­99.

Hoover, Herbert. 1934. Challenge to Liberty. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons.

Huxley, Aldous. 1966. Brave New World. New York: Bantam Books.

Kant, Immanuel. 1993. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Tr.

James W. Ellington. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Machiavelli, Nicolo. 2005. The Prince. Tr./ed. William J. Connell. New

York: St. Martin's Press.

Maritain, Jacques. 1966. Man and the State. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press.

Mill, John Stuart. 1954. On Liberty. London: Oxford University Press.

Murray, John Courtney. 1960. We Hold These Truths. New York: Sheed

& Ward.

Murti, Vasu. 2006. The Liberal Case Against Abortion. Mt. Laurel, NJ:

Rage Media.

Nadelmann, Ethan A. 2004. An End to Marijuana Prohibition. National

Review (12 July): 1­7.

Pieper, Josef. 1975. The Four Cardinal Virtues. Notre Dame, IN:

University of Notre Dame Press.

Plamenatz, John P. 1963. Man and Society. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw­

Hill.

Plato. 1992. The Republic. Tr. George M. A. Grube. Rev. ed. C. D. C.

Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Pope John Paul II. 1995. The Gospel of Life. Vatican tr. New York:

Times Books.

Rorty, Richard. 1991. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1: Objectivity,

Relativism and Truth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1960. The Social Contract. In The Social

Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume and Rousseau. London: Oxford

University Press.

Sabine, George H. 1953. A History of Political Theory. New York:

Henry Holt.

Sandel, Michael J. 1996. America's Search for a New Public Philosophy.

Atlantic Monthly (January): 57­74.

Schall, James. 1984. The Politics of Heaven and Hell. Lanham, MD:

University Press of America.

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Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

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McInerny. New York: Fordham University Press.

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UK: Oxford University Press.

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Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns. New England Journal of Medicine

352 (10): 959­62.

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University Press.

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Raymond L. Dennehy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San

Francisco.

After serving from 1954­58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the

heavy cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he

attended the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy.

He studied philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California,

Berkeley, finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Toronto.

He is the author of Anti­Abortionist at Large: How to Argue

Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It. (Go here for

reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity and an

anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently invited on

radio and television programs, as well as university campuses, to speak and

debate on topics such as abortion, physician­assisted suicide, and cloning.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven

grandchildren.

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The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L.

Dennehy, University of San Francisco

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of

Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by

the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in

JIS 2007.

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a

monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical

conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for

that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral

vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as

it is a virtue ethics­­forms individual character so that a person not

only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover,

possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This

is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character

that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation

whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to

freedom and equality for all.

FREEDOM AND VIRTUE

The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive

unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are

given in its support. First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue

ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a

rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.

Second, a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as it is a virtue ethics­­forms

individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to

act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be

able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices

create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse

choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its

commitment to freedom and equality for all.

But liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the

installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to

functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two

premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These two

premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only freedom

which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our own

way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede

their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of this essay

presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to

humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the two premises

are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will inevitably lead to

its self­destruction.

Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant

here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other ethical

theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue ethics here

refers to that state of character that integrates intellect, will, appetite, and

passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that actualize one's potential to

become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle enjoins, moral virtue is an

"excellence of behavior" (1941: 954­55). Second, virtue ethics is the ethics

of choice because it is the only ethical theory that grounds itself in the

principle that human nature is universal: since all human beings have the

same human nature, they are bound by the same ethical principles. If there is

a single, universal human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that

hold for a pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from

what is here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just

because it understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that

ethical behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and

monitored by reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions,

and appetites.

Pope John Paul II called attention to the mounting danger to democracy

from a concept of subjectivity carried to excess, and a notion of freedom

based on the concept of the individual isolated from society (Dennehy 2006:

50­53). These developments express themselves in various ways, one of

which is the change in the popular understanding of constitutional rights.

Russell Hittinger shows that whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived

as objective claims against the government, today, personal self­creation, to

wit, the right to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990:

486­99). This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense

of alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,

all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since the

body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as obstructive.

When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is inevitable that the

individual should find himself increasingly in tension with both nature and

society. The tension with society can be handled diplomaically: the individual

limits his behavior by respecting the rights and desires of others so as to

avoid retaliation. The tension with his body is handled by denial; it is

rejected root and branch as a source for ethical norms of conduct, since it is

perceived as an impediment to personal fulfillment.

For a consistent radical dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self­

awareness as his true self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere

encasement, a virtuous life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his

own actions and commitments. The Platonic Forms­­eternal, perfect, and

unchanging­­could furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior.

But a glorification of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external

criteria to the realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle,

freedom can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by

practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived as a

reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this

attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,

since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual grudgingly

obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has moral authority

(Hegel 1962: 85).

Regarding the second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to

pluralism (diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for

any political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw appears

when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The possibility

is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous Huxley's novel,

Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what they want, and

they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The inhabitants of

Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their desires are gratified. The

reality is that they are slaves, incapable of desiring anything beyond what

they have been genetically designed and conditioned to desire. Like the

iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with candor, "What, me worry?" If

there is any sense in which this may be called "freedom," then perhaps

subjective freedom is the term for it, for they are aware of no limitations to

their desires.

This raises the question: "Is freedom the personal state of being objectively

unrestrained or the subjective state of not being aware of being restrained?"

What is to prevent both Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being

true simultaneously of the same group of people? What about a nation

whose inhabitants are allowed the freedom to do everything they may wish

to do as long as they do not violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do

not realize that they have been programmed to desire only what their

government determines them to desire? One might object that such an

outcome in a free society, although possible, is highly improbable, since the

majority would not allow the encroachments on freedom and rights that

would initially have to occur before a techno­totalitarian regime such as

Huxley's Brave New World could come into existence. But the technology

involved is merely an instrumental cause of the illusion of freedom, not the

illusion itself. Could there be other causes?

Is it within the realm of plausibility that the majority of members of a political

society could think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is

"Yes." The principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that

is separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,

thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably possible

for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but the real cannot

be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is already here,

evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular vote, as well as

ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected. Each counts as an

example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In terms of the public

vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the sphere of private

behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not violate the rights of

others. Relevant examples include:

1. The rapid decline of public and private support for objective and

substantive ethics in favor of relativism.

2. The erosion of respect for human life in Western democracies. Since Roe

v. Wade (1973), some 50 million unborn human lives have been destroyed

in the United States alone. That U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred

legal justification for killing more Americans than the combined number of

those killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (North and South),

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf

War (Murti 2006: 57­60). To be sure, the classical conception of the state's

goal to make men moral undoubtedly produced its share of abuses. Equally

certain is the progress in public acknowledgment of the dignity of human

conscience heralded by the emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

the widespread practice of abortion in Western democracies shows that

monstrous crimes can be allowed and condoned by a society that from its

beginnings has proclaimed its commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness, and that in the name of the right to run one's life as

one chooses as long as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others,

nevertheless creates laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that

commitment.

3. Embryonic stem­cell research uses human beings, during their earliest

stages of development, as objects of scientific research, not only for the

purpose of finding cures for genetically based illness and defects, but also in

the hope of creating designer humans.

4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that proclaims its dedication to

the protection of the young, while failing to introduce laws and policies that

shield them from easy access to pornography.

5. The mounting support for same­sex marriage in the face of the fact that

the official and special recognition of marriage in society has always been

intimately tied to procreation and the realization that men and women are by

nature importantly different, a difference necessary to the proper

development of children.

6. Legislative and judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example,

the British Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for

teachers, even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral

(Bogle 2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from

feelings of unworthiness.

PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY

The argument against a morally neutral conception of freedom collides not

only with a fundamental premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems,

with a central tenet of what Americans accept as the public philosophy.

Michael Sandel succinctly sets forth that tenet:

"The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live is that freedom

consists in our capacity to choose our ends for ourselves. Politics should not

try to form the character or cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so

would be to "legislate morality." Government should not affirm, through its

policies or laws, any particular conception of the good life; instead it should

provide a neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their

own values and ends" (1996: 58).

Both conservative and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom

consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends." The

disagreement occurs when one asks whether any specific traits of character

are needed for an individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the

responsibility for overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since

republican political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing

people to acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self­rule, deliberating

with other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be

realized, it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its

involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In

contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the

procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to ensuring

equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern for its citizens'

personal moral state. The differences between the two theories are real, but

they are not what they seem. Both denounce the government's unjustified

interference in the lives of its citizens, but differ on what constitutes the

injustice:

"Liberals invoke the ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer,

restrictions on abortion or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring

their morality into the public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality

when opposing attempts by government to impose certain moral restraints ­­

for the sake of workers' safety or environmental protection or distributive

justice­­on the market economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on

both sides of the debate over the welfare state. Republicans have long

complained that taxing the rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a

form of coerced charity that violates people's freedom to choose what to do

with their own money. Democrats have long replied that government must

ensure all citizens a decent level of income, housing, education, and health

care, on the grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are

not truly free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their

disagreement about how government should act with respect to individual

choice, both sides assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to

choose their own ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).

If both sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to

choose one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government

intervention in the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting

meanings and valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends."

And thereby hangs a tale.

TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY

At stake here is the clash between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty

and positive liberty. Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is

the absence of external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is

the opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo­American tradition,

liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying rationale

for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that

of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt

to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18).

In contrast, a review of the Continental tradition shows that liberalism is

predominantly identified with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back

to ancient times (De Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers­­

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas­­agreed that the primary

aim of the state was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the

State is the individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that

underlies it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis

or city­state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good

and the good of the city­state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did not

mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the opportunity to

participate in the activities and life of the community (Sabine 1953: 742). It

is no exaggeration to say that this participation was viewed as one with the

state's commitment to the moral life of its citizens. This is evident in the

Republic, where Plato argues that the aim of the state is the implementation

of justice, a concept which, for him, refers both to the external relations of

men and to their internal states of the soul, as well (1992: 116­21). Aristotle

echoes this view (1941: 935­36).

The classical view of the individual's relation to political society underwent a

gradual yet, in the end, radical change. The impact of Christianity on Greco ­

Roman culture transformed the understanding of that relationship. No longer

did the individual exist primarily for the city­state or empire, for now he

could look to a destiny in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was

also the influence of Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual

had meaning and value only in virtue of membership in the city­state. Stoic

philosophy insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a

city­state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The deepening

sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was accompanied by a

corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of the monarch's

authority (Maritain 1966: 30­33). This transformation in the understanding

of the individual's relation to political society caused, in turn, a shift in the

standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place of the city­state and

empire, the transcendent God became the standard. For example, Martin

Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the Church, as the direct voice

of God's will for the individual, widened further the gap between the

individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz 1963: 175). And, while it is

true that a corresponding expansion of personal freedom was

acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom from temporal,

not divine, laws.

The classical­Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by

Nicolo Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally

separated politics from morality:

"there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he

who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin

him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a

career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who

are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain

himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not

use it according to necessity . . . . For, if everything be well considered,

something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if

adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in

his security and well­being" (2005: 87­88).

If Machiavelli deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the

secularization of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of

Padua who interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further

than the tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and

thereby eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a

position quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984:

173). Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,

surfacing in the twentieth century as Realpolitik.

Jean­Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is a reaction to

Machiavellianism. Therein, he attempts to rebuild democracy on the

foundation of the Greek city­state, fusing, once more, morality and politics:

"the State or the City is nothing but a moral person the life of which consists

in the union of its members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he

recognizes no distinction between the individual's moral liberty (which for

Rousseau is the only genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence,

he can write that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (Rousseau 1960: 262­63). This classical idea of the city­state was

picked up and developed by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical

idea" (1962: 107). This is not to overlook important differences between

Rousseau's concept of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as

Ethical Idea. For example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General

Will a mere extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly

making it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers

sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the

ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men

moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory, exemplified in

the writings of neo­Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920: 194) and

Thomas H. Green (1960: 31­32), which examined the relation of the

individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of

negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez­faire economics.

The concept of positive liberty is complex, more so than negative liberty.

For one thing, there seem to be two distinct versions of positive liberty,

which may be characterized as the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic

versions. It is important to separate the two, as the former grounds freedom

in objective moral principles, while the latter looks instead to socio­

economic and psychological conditions that enhance the individual's

capacity to actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version,

such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in

being one's own master. Self­mastery requires a virtuous character, since it

implies the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible

without a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying

the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so

that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher self.

The pragmatic version is clearly the conception of freedom embraced by

liberal political theory. Its advocates, like John Dewey, along with his

present­day descendant, Richard Rorty, are directly interested more in the

individual's socio­economic condition than in his moral and rational

development. They hold that freedom is having the opportunity to do what

is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of the individual's freedom, this

version, as with the ethical version, means obeying the laws of the state, but

they do not ascribe metaphysical or ethical properties to it. Rather, they see

the cultural traditions, laws, and social institutions of political society as

furnishing the conditions for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a

civilized society that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote

that freedom consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of

modern democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version

of positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the

resemblance ends there.

Most telling of all is that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the

pragmatic version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute

standard. They do appeal to standards like "self­realization" and "spiritual

enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling that

one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in­security. In

criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of positive

freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary condition of

freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an individual

free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain socio­

economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he wishes, or

at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to do. Practically

speaking, he or she is not free.

The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and

effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34­35). From a formal standpoint,

freedom is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates

of the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into account

the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of political

liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some extent the

conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's decisions, but for

advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty, these are of central

importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it must be the freedom to

do something worth doing. The absence of external restraint guarantees the

freedom of someone who enjoys favorable circumstances, such as enough

money and education, but that guarantee does not extend to one who lacks

them. This was the argument successfully deployed against laissez­faire

politicians in nineteenth­century Britain by the neo­liberal movement for

government interventionist legislation to help factory workers in labor

negotiations with factory owners. The latter resisted proposed laws that

would regulate labor negotiations by insisting that such would violate the

freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a mutually agreeable labor

contract. Factory owners claimed that if the worker found the contract

unacceptable, he was always free to find employment at a factory that had

an acceptable contract. But attempts to prevent the legislation failed when it

became clear that factory owners were united in standing firm behind the

same working conditions (Green 1964: 51­52).

Although advocates of the pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they

are improving the possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that

advocates of negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems

irreconcilable. Consider, for example, the different ways in which the

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to

the Great Depression in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of

the federal government into the economy constituted interference with free

enterprise and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance

to the depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted

accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of

freedom (1934: 107­35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as

positive (Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651­52).

The classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with

things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the state, its

application leads to an oppressive political society in which its members are

deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains them from doing what

they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do not wish to do, they

are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this is

Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (1960: 262­53). History offers sufficient evidence of the threat to

individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom with the state or

with things other than choosing one's own goals. But critics of negative

liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the individual from attempts

of procedural democracy to form policies based on moral neutrality,

illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic stem­cell research, and

sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that what Plato called the "greed

for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse of civil polity and the emergence

of tyranny (1992: 227­38).

Here, it would be well to return to the two premises set forth in the first

paragraph of this essay. The first is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill

the promise of Dewey's liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty

advocates the abandonment of all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule­

trading of principles that leads to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means

the best practical allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely,

some principles are non­negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life.

If both negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive

liberty are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what

basis can the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the

solution?

THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS

American democracy has its foundation in natural law, as is clear from the

Declaration of Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics

maintains that the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly

ordered, and that that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes

natural law theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all

humans will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence

be bound by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is

such a thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting

nonsense, nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human

rights or any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially

the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race, state

of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to the moral and

legal considerations called "rights." That is why an epistemological nominalist

like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social policies. Since he maintains

that our philosophical claims are culturally and historically bound, there is no

"God's eye view" from which we can view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our

picture of ourselves and nature is irredeemably ethnocentric.

Moreover, public discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no

constructive discourse is possible without commonly accepted principles,

many of which originate in natural law theory. Equally important is that

because the natural law is knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism

is compatible with public discourse to the extent that reason transcends all

ethnocentric and religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm

(Murray 1960: 30­33).

To grasp the precise connection between natural law and moral virtue, it is

necessary to avoid confusion over terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a

synonym for spontaneous occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling

trees, dogs growling over a bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to

one's head to fend off a thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the

natural to the artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since

aspirin and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to

express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may

seem comical.

But in the natural law tradition, "natural" is intended in the sense of the

Greek word for nature, physis: "The conception underlying that term sees

nature itself as teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to

all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to actualize

the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and thereby to attain its

perfection (telos) is natural and therefore good or desirable; what frustrates

its actualization is evil or undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this

understanding of "natural," the products of human artifice are not necessarily

unnatural, since they may contribute to the positive actualization of human

nature: aspirin alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which

is to see; the formation of political society is necessary for human flourishing.

The telos of each living thing is determined by its essence or nature. Thus,

the theory of natural law derives from the human understanding that "there

is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which

human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act

in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of the human

being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that" (Maritain

1966: 86).

An objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed

natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?

The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,

one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and

gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human

nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's understanding of

that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do with how a people

understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp human nature and

its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior conforms to natural

law. Thus, natural law does not change because human nature does not

change (Maritain 1966: 85­89). What changes is knowledge of human

nature­­for better or for worse.

The moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and

temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.

However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.

First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil" (Aquinas

1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except to obtain

what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes the woman's

purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be good, that is,

desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables on his plate, because

eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These are examples of

viewer­relative perceptions insofar as they refer to actions that are

objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good. One might

understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary examples of

natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and objectively

correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer­relative perception and

objective moral law is found in spontaneous human strivings, which Aquinas

calls "primary principles: the inclination to preserve one's life is the natural

law ground for the prohibition of murder; the attraction between the sexes is

the natural law ground for marriage and family; the inclination of humans to

live together in society is the natural law ground for justice since to live in

society requires respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).

The problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete

situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more

variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,

"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a

particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get agreement

on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get agreement

when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a starving family.

The moral virtues provide the bridge between the principles of natural law

ethics and proper action. The virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance

give the agent the right ends to pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him

what means to choose, in the particular situation, to realize those ends

(Aristotle 1941: 1026). Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not

the only thing needed for virtuous action; one must also desire the end.

Most important of all, since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in

acting, the virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to

the virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is

wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not

steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a theoretical

knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided; one must

possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a virtuous person

would make.

"President Clinton's so smart, how could he get himself involved with

Monica Lewinsky, when he knew they were investigating him in the Paula

Jones case?" So exclaimed an obviously intelligent and educated panelist on

a CNN talk show at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A

common error in ethical deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for

judging whether actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging

whether statements are true or false. The above question is a case in point.

Its author failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the

will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and ought

not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are importantly

different. The criterion for truth is conformity between thought and thing.

The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is raining out. Its truth depends

on actual meteorological conditions, which is to say that those conditions,

whatever they may be, exist independently of whatever may be said about

them.

The opposite obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the

conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the criterion

for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent and a

preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the reality,

first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting others, and second,

by either strengthening or weakening his or her character. Thus, matching

one's will to right desire requires more than merely knowing how one ought

to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to behave according to right desire,

and also possess the integration of intellect, will, passion, and appetite to

translate the desire to behave according to right desire into acting according

to right desire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen

for children chosen to become philosopher­kings was to last a full thirty­five

years, consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen.

Moral virtue required the integration of all one's faculties­­intellect, will,

passion, and appetite.

Plato's student, Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and

requirements of moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis)

from theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic principle

that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028­29). On the contrary,

Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take and yet not

take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to act that way

(1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian ethics, he insisted that

one who has to struggle to resist the urge to overindulge does not have the

virtue of temperance, since the very struggle betrays a lack of integration

among his faculties (Aristotle 1941: 1050). One starts on the path of

acquiring moral virtue by first acting as a virtuous person would act until one

can perform virtuous actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the

mimicry of virtuous action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter

must have the following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what

he is doing; (2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must

proceed from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941: 956).

The popular conception of the penalty for immoral behavior is some sort of

physical, mental, or socio­economic harm to oneself: excessive drinking

causes liver damage or loss of employment; lying leads to the loss of trust

among one's family and associates, etc. While no one would deny that those

are undesirable outcomes, classical moral theorists insisted that the price to

be paid for immoral behavior is worse: the loss of rational control. Some

challenge the view that a chosen immoral act is an expression of irrational

behavior. Candace Vogler, for example, sees no reason why one who

successfully plans and performs immoral acts on a regular basis in order to

attain his or her goals cannot be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40­41).

But, she is clearly using the word "rational" analogously. The agent's

behavior is "rational" in the sense that it is the result of sound deliberation

and efficient execution.

But, in the sense of rational entertained by classical moral theorists, his or

her behavior is irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone

seeks. From the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the

objective standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the

presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the

actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant, irrational.

Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying, and

murdering, he can only associate with his own kind­­liars, cheaters,

betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be

surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed

to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now held in

thrall by his own unruly and self­destructive urges (Plato 1992: 249­51).

So, there are at least two reasons why Vogler's immoral agent does not act

rationally. First, by a career of immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold

himself into slavery, riveting his will to the evil rather than the good.

Admittedly, his choices may be called "rational" in the sense that his planning

and acting are logically derived from, and consistent with, his immoral

attachments. But, that is a different sense of "rational" from the sense of the

word when applied to moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have

blinded him to the true state of his life and circumstances. He may feel free,

and believe he is acting freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based

on his belief that his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of

Huxley's Brave New World, they are slaves living delusions of freedom.

Consider, for example, the virtue of chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of

temperance as the latter pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is

badly misunderstood. The modern world identifies it with the prudish view

that regards sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the

extent that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining

to a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the

etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in matters

of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other person for

what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate respect and

justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by the vice of

lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the lion cannot appreciate

the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as food, so the lustful person can

only see another person as a source of sexual gratification (Pieper 1975:

166­67). Or, if the vice is greed, the other is perceived as a source of

monetary enrichment, and the like. Of course, references to sight are meant

to be analogical. The state of vice does not blind one to the truth that the

other is a human being, a person for whom justice demands respect. But, to

the extent that vice corrupts reason, the focus on the other person is

distorted by the desire for gratification.

The libertarian argument for the legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem

of freedom. The argument has two prongs. The first is that attempts by

federal and local authorities to stanch the flow of drugs into America have

been a spectacular failure (Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a

mentally competent adult has the right to ingest whatever substance he or

she chooses, as long as that behavior does not violate the rights of others.

But, would a permissive government policy pertaining to the sale and use of

narcotics produce a better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human

flourishing? A population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the

majority of its members make sensual gratification their criterion of

valorization, can be counted on to conclude, when voting for a political

candidate or law, that what guarantees that gratification is what is good for

democracy.

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

The illusion reveals itself in the inconsistency between the criticism of

objective moral norms as the fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact

that living and acting without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one

and the same object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is

that the demand that one act according to putative objective standards in

order to be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however

laudable­­truth, justice, beauty, goodness, or the law­­are not what

freedom is. The criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous,

since it can delude a population into believing that their adherence to those

kinds of lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive

regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961: 9­10).

But a characteristic of the lack of virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is

the will's enslavement to a specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that

to be free, the individual must have before him a range of options, the lack

of virtue produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably

evaluated in terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice.

Kant's heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a

consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of them­­the

object of his vice (1993: 45­48). From the viewpoint of a formal

consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides his

choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a standard

external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a material

consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous agent

chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta ratio) the locus

of which is the organization of passions and appetites according to reason.

The emergence of liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of

the dignity and freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience,

and the equality of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole,

one must dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost

sight of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the

dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a manifestation

of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are microcosms of the

State, or other totalitarian theories in which the individual has no meaning or

value apart from the state, liberal theory seems to have traveled in the

opposite direction, construing the individual's relation to the political

community primarily in utilitarian terms. This has blinded liberal democracy

to the meaning of Plato's observation that "the State is man writ large": the

moral condition of the political community expresses the moral condition of

its members. It would be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party

gained control of Germany following free elections.

If positive freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a

people's freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a

higher self as one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by

obeying the law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly

offers a better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their

respective and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely

because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is plausible.

Virtue ethics offers the solution to the extent that it furnishes the standard for

action based on understanding and choice unhampered by un­disciplined

passions and appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the

truest sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external

restraints and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human

flourishing, both for self­fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The

argument for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas

Aquinas observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby

succumbing to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the

obligation to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,

metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the

mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on

request; and now the movement to legalize physician­assisted suicide and

infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women as

sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a class of

disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed, and the

elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies, regardless of

whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if, indeed, what the

American people want most is the freedom to choose their own goals, why

do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the innocent and defense ­

less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is the freedom of the strong

against the weak who have no choice but to submit (Pope John Paul II

1995: 28­29).

The enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for

personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including

elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue

ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating

ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of

impending danger. Where are our geese?

REFERENCES:

Aquinas, Thomas. 1945. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol.

1. Ed. Anton C. Pegis. New York: Random House.

Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon.

New York: Random House.

Berlin, Isaiah. 1961. Two Concepts of Liberty. Oxford, UK: Clarendon

Press.

Bogle, Joanna. 2007. England Outlaws Catholic Teaching. National

Catholic Register (8­14 April): 1, 9.

Bosanquet, Bernard. 1920. The Philosophical Theory of the State.

London: Macmillan.

Dennehy, Raymond L. 1993. Bodenheimer's Theory of Natural Law: The

Conflict of a Divided Intellectual Allegiance. University of California

(Davis) Law Review 26 (3): 619­52.

_____. 2006. Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Death: Why John Paul II

Was Right. Telos 134 (Spring): 31­63.

De Riggiero, Guido. 1959. The History of European Liberalism. Tr.

Robin G. Collingwood. Boston, MA: Beacon Hill Press.

Dewey, John. 1963a. Freedom and Culture. New York: Capricorn

Books.

_____. 1963b. Liberalism and Social Action. New York: Capricorn

Books.

Green, Thomas H. 1960. Lectures on the Principles of Political

Obligation. London: Longman's Green.

_____. 1964. The Political Theory of T. H. Green. New York:

Appleton­Century­Crofts.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1962. Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Tr. Thomas M.

Knox. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Hittinger, Russell. 1990. Liberalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Wake

Forest Law Review 25: 429­99.

Hoover, Herbert. 1934. Challenge to Liberty. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons.

Huxley, Aldous. 1966. Brave New World. New York: Bantam Books.

Kant, Immanuel. 1993. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Tr.

James W. Ellington. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Machiavelli, Nicolo. 2005. The Prince. Tr./ed. William J. Connell. New

York: St. Martin's Press.

Maritain, Jacques. 1966. Man and the State. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press.

Mill, John Stuart. 1954. On Liberty. London: Oxford University Press.

Murray, John Courtney. 1960. We Hold These Truths. New York: Sheed

& Ward.

Murti, Vasu. 2006. The Liberal Case Against Abortion. Mt. Laurel, NJ:

Rage Media.

Nadelmann, Ethan A. 2004. An End to Marijuana Prohibition. National

Review (12 July): 1­7.

Pieper, Josef. 1975. The Four Cardinal Virtues. Notre Dame, IN:

University of Notre Dame Press.

Plamenatz, John P. 1963. Man and Society. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw­

Hill.

Plato. 1992. The Republic. Tr. George M. A. Grube. Rev. ed. C. D. C.

Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Pope John Paul II. 1995. The Gospel of Life. Vatican tr. New York:

Times Books.

Rorty, Richard. 1991. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1: Objectivity,

Relativism and Truth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1960. The Social Contract. In The Social

Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume and Rousseau. London: Oxford

University Press.

Sabine, George H. 1953. A History of Political Theory. New York:

Henry Holt.

Sandel, Michael J. 1996. America's Search for a New Public Philosophy.

Atlantic Monthly (January): 57­74.

Schall, James. 1984. The Politics of Heaven and Hell. Lanham, MD:

University Press of America.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1957. The Age of Roosevelt. Vols. I­II.

Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Simon, Yves R. 2002. A Critique of Moral Knowledge. Tr. Ralph

McInerny. New York: Fordham University Press.

Swanton, Christine. 2003. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic Account. Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press.

Verhagen, Eduard & Peter Sauer. 2005. The Groningen Protocol:

Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns. New England Journal of Medicine

352 (10): 959­62.

Vogler, Candace. 2002. Reasonably Vicious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

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Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Raymond L. Dennehy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San

Francisco.

After serving from 1954­58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the

heavy cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he

attended the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy.

He studied philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California,

Berkeley, finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Toronto.

He is the author of Anti­Abortionist at Large: How to Argue

Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It. (Go here for

reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity and an

anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently invited on

radio and television programs, as well as university campuses, to speak and

debate on topics such as abortion, physician­assisted suicide, and cloning.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven

grandchildren.

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The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L.

Dennehy, University of San Francisco

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of

Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by

the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in

JIS 2007.

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a

monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical

conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for

that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral

vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as

it is a virtue ethics­­forms individual character so that a person not

only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover,

possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This

is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character

that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation

whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to

freedom and equality for all.

FREEDOM AND VIRTUE

The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive

unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are

given in its support. First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue

ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a

rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.

Second, a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as it is a virtue ethics­­forms

individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to

act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be

able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices

create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse

choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its

commitment to freedom and equality for all.

But liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the

installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to

functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two

premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These two

premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only freedom

which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our own

way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede

their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of this essay

presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to

humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the two premises

are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will inevitably lead to

its self­destruction.

Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant

here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other ethical

theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue ethics here

refers to that state of character that integrates intellect, will, appetite, and

passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that actualize one's potential to

become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle enjoins, moral virtue is an

"excellence of behavior" (1941: 954­55). Second, virtue ethics is the ethics

of choice because it is the only ethical theory that grounds itself in the

principle that human nature is universal: since all human beings have the

same human nature, they are bound by the same ethical principles. If there is

a single, universal human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that

hold for a pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from

what is here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just

because it understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that

ethical behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and

monitored by reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions,

and appetites.

Pope John Paul II called attention to the mounting danger to democracy

from a concept of subjectivity carried to excess, and a notion of freedom

based on the concept of the individual isolated from society (Dennehy 2006:

50­53). These developments express themselves in various ways, one of

which is the change in the popular understanding of constitutional rights.

Russell Hittinger shows that whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived

as objective claims against the government, today, personal self­creation, to

wit, the right to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990:

486­99). This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense

of alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,

all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since the

body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as obstructive.

When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is inevitable that the

individual should find himself increasingly in tension with both nature and

society. The tension with society can be handled diplomaically: the individual

limits his behavior by respecting the rights and desires of others so as to

avoid retaliation. The tension with his body is handled by denial; it is

rejected root and branch as a source for ethical norms of conduct, since it is

perceived as an impediment to personal fulfillment.

For a consistent radical dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self­

awareness as his true self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere

encasement, a virtuous life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his

own actions and commitments. The Platonic Forms­­eternal, perfect, and

unchanging­­could furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior.

But a glorification of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external

criteria to the realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle,

freedom can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by

practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived as a

reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this

attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,

since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual grudgingly

obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has moral authority

(Hegel 1962: 85).

Regarding the second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to

pluralism (diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for

any political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw appears

when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The possibility

is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous Huxley's novel,

Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what they want, and

they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The inhabitants of

Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their desires are gratified. The

reality is that they are slaves, incapable of desiring anything beyond what

they have been genetically designed and conditioned to desire. Like the

iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with candor, "What, me worry?" If

there is any sense in which this may be called "freedom," then perhaps

subjective freedom is the term for it, for they are aware of no limitations to

their desires.

This raises the question: "Is freedom the personal state of being objectively

unrestrained or the subjective state of not being aware of being restrained?"

What is to prevent both Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being

true simultaneously of the same group of people? What about a nation

whose inhabitants are allowed the freedom to do everything they may wish

to do as long as they do not violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do

not realize that they have been programmed to desire only what their

government determines them to desire? One might object that such an

outcome in a free society, although possible, is highly improbable, since the

majority would not allow the encroachments on freedom and rights that

would initially have to occur before a techno­totalitarian regime such as

Huxley's Brave New World could come into existence. But the technology

involved is merely an instrumental cause of the illusion of freedom, not the

illusion itself. Could there be other causes?

Is it within the realm of plausibility that the majority of members of a political

society could think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is

"Yes." The principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that

is separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,

thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably possible

for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but the real cannot

be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is already here,

evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular vote, as well as

ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected. Each counts as an

example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In terms of the public

vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the sphere of private

behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not violate the rights of

others. Relevant examples include:

1. The rapid decline of public and private support for objective and

substantive ethics in favor of relativism.

2. The erosion of respect for human life in Western democracies. Since Roe

v. Wade (1973), some 50 million unborn human lives have been destroyed

in the United States alone. That U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred

legal justification for killing more Americans than the combined number of

those killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (North and South),

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf

War (Murti 2006: 57­60). To be sure, the classical conception of the state's

goal to make men moral undoubtedly produced its share of abuses. Equally

certain is the progress in public acknowledgment of the dignity of human

conscience heralded by the emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

the widespread practice of abortion in Western democracies shows that

monstrous crimes can be allowed and condoned by a society that from its

beginnings has proclaimed its commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness, and that in the name of the right to run one's life as

one chooses as long as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others,

nevertheless creates laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that

commitment.

3. Embryonic stem­cell research uses human beings, during their earliest

stages of development, as objects of scientific research, not only for the

purpose of finding cures for genetically based illness and defects, but also in

the hope of creating designer humans.

4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that proclaims its dedication to

the protection of the young, while failing to introduce laws and policies that

shield them from easy access to pornography.

5. The mounting support for same­sex marriage in the face of the fact that

the official and special recognition of marriage in society has always been

intimately tied to procreation and the realization that men and women are by

nature importantly different, a difference necessary to the proper

development of children.

6. Legislative and judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example,

the British Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for

teachers, even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral

(Bogle 2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from

feelings of unworthiness.

PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY

The argument against a morally neutral conception of freedom collides not

only with a fundamental premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems,

with a central tenet of what Americans accept as the public philosophy.

Michael Sandel succinctly sets forth that tenet:

"The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live is that freedom

consists in our capacity to choose our ends for ourselves. Politics should not

try to form the character or cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so

would be to "legislate morality." Government should not affirm, through its

policies or laws, any particular conception of the good life; instead it should

provide a neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their

own values and ends" (1996: 58).

Both conservative and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom

consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends." The

disagreement occurs when one asks whether any specific traits of character

are needed for an individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the

responsibility for overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since

republican political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing

people to acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self­rule, deliberating

with other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be

realized, it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its

involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In

contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the

procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to ensuring

equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern for its citizens'

personal moral state. The differences between the two theories are real, but

they are not what they seem. Both denounce the government's unjustified

interference in the lives of its citizens, but differ on what constitutes the

injustice:

"Liberals invoke the ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer,

restrictions on abortion or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring

their morality into the public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality

when opposing attempts by government to impose certain moral restraints ­­

for the sake of workers' safety or environmental protection or distributive

justice­­on the market economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on

both sides of the debate over the welfare state. Republicans have long

complained that taxing the rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a

form of coerced charity that violates people's freedom to choose what to do

with their own money. Democrats have long replied that government must

ensure all citizens a decent level of income, housing, education, and health

care, on the grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are

not truly free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their

disagreement about how government should act with respect to individual

choice, both sides assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to

choose their own ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).

If both sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to

choose one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government

intervention in the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting

meanings and valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends."

And thereby hangs a tale.

TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY

At stake here is the clash between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty

and positive liberty. Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is

the absence of external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is

the opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo­American tradition,

liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying rationale

for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that

of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt

to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18).

In contrast, a review of the Continental tradition shows that liberalism is

predominantly identified with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back

to ancient times (De Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers­­

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas­­agreed that the primary

aim of the state was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the

State is the individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that

underlies it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis

or city­state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good

and the good of the city­state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did not

mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the opportunity to

participate in the activities and life of the community (Sabine 1953: 742). It

is no exaggeration to say that this participation was viewed as one with the

state's commitment to the moral life of its citizens. This is evident in the

Republic, where Plato argues that the aim of the state is the implementation

of justice, a concept which, for him, refers both to the external relations of

men and to their internal states of the soul, as well (1992: 116­21). Aristotle

echoes this view (1941: 935­36).

The classical view of the individual's relation to political society underwent a

gradual yet, in the end, radical change. The impact of Christianity on Greco ­

Roman culture transformed the understanding of that relationship. No longer

did the individual exist primarily for the city­state or empire, for now he

could look to a destiny in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was

also the influence of Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual

had meaning and value only in virtue of membership in the city­state. Stoic

philosophy insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a

city­state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The deepening

sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was accompanied by a

corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of the monarch's

authority (Maritain 1966: 30­33). This transformation in the understanding

of the individual's relation to political society caused, in turn, a shift in the

standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place of the city­state and

empire, the transcendent God became the standard. For example, Martin

Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the Church, as the direct voice

of God's will for the individual, widened further the gap between the

individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz 1963: 175). And, while it is

true that a corresponding expansion of personal freedom was

acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom from temporal,

not divine, laws.

The classical­Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by

Nicolo Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally

separated politics from morality:

"there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he

who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin

him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a

career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who

are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain

himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not

use it according to necessity . . . . For, if everything be well considered,

something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if

adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in

his security and well­being" (2005: 87­88).

If Machiavelli deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the

secularization of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of

Padua who interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further

than the tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and

thereby eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a

position quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984:

173). Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,

surfacing in the twentieth century as Realpolitik.

Jean­Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is a reaction to

Machiavellianism. Therein, he attempts to rebuild democracy on the

foundation of the Greek city­state, fusing, once more, morality and politics:

"the State or the City is nothing but a moral person the life of which consists

in the union of its members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he

recognizes no distinction between the individual's moral liberty (which for

Rousseau is the only genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence,

he can write that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (Rousseau 1960: 262­63). This classical idea of the city­state was

picked up and developed by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical

idea" (1962: 107). This is not to overlook important differences between

Rousseau's concept of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as

Ethical Idea. For example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General

Will a mere extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly

making it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers

sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the

ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men

moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory, exemplified in

the writings of neo­Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920: 194) and

Thomas H. Green (1960: 31­32), which examined the relation of the

individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of

negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez­faire economics.

The concept of positive liberty is complex, more so than negative liberty.

For one thing, there seem to be two distinct versions of positive liberty,

which may be characterized as the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic

versions. It is important to separate the two, as the former grounds freedom

in objective moral principles, while the latter looks instead to socio­

economic and psychological conditions that enhance the individual's

capacity to actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version,

such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in

being one's own master. Self­mastery requires a virtuous character, since it

implies the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible

without a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying

the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so

that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher self.

The pragmatic version is clearly the conception of freedom embraced by

liberal political theory. Its advocates, like John Dewey, along with his

present­day descendant, Richard Rorty, are directly interested more in the

individual's socio­economic condition than in his moral and rational

development. They hold that freedom is having the opportunity to do what

is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of the individual's freedom, this

version, as with the ethical version, means obeying the laws of the state, but

they do not ascribe metaphysical or ethical properties to it. Rather, they see

the cultural traditions, laws, and social institutions of political society as

furnishing the conditions for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a

civilized society that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote

that freedom consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of

modern democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version

of positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the

resemblance ends there.

Most telling of all is that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the

pragmatic version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute

standard. They do appeal to standards like "self­realization" and "spiritual

enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling that

one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in­security. In

criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of positive

freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary condition of

freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an individual

free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain socio­

economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he wishes, or

at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to do. Practically

speaking, he or she is not free.

The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and

effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34­35). From a formal standpoint,

freedom is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates

of the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into account

the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of political

liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some extent the

conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's decisions, but for

advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty, these are of central

importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it must be the freedom to

do something worth doing. The absence of external restraint guarantees the

freedom of someone who enjoys favorable circumstances, such as enough

money and education, but that guarantee does not extend to one who lacks

them. This was the argument successfully deployed against laissez­faire

politicians in nineteenth­century Britain by the neo­liberal movement for

government interventionist legislation to help factory workers in labor

negotiations with factory owners. The latter resisted proposed laws that

would regulate labor negotiations by insisting that such would violate the

freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a mutually agreeable labor

contract. Factory owners claimed that if the worker found the contract

unacceptable, he was always free to find employment at a factory that had

an acceptable contract. But attempts to prevent the legislation failed when it

became clear that factory owners were united in standing firm behind the

same working conditions (Green 1964: 51­52).

Although advocates of the pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they

are improving the possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that

advocates of negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems

irreconcilable. Consider, for example, the different ways in which the

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to

the Great Depression in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of

the federal government into the economy constituted interference with free

enterprise and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance

to the depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted

accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of

freedom (1934: 107­35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as

positive (Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651­52).

The classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with

things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the state, its

application leads to an oppressive political society in which its members are

deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains them from doing what

they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do not wish to do, they

are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this is

Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (1960: 262­53). History offers sufficient evidence of the threat to

individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom with the state or

with things other than choosing one's own goals. But critics of negative

liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the individual from attempts

of procedural democracy to form policies based on moral neutrality,

illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic stem­cell research, and

sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that what Plato called the "greed

for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse of civil polity and the emergence

of tyranny (1992: 227­38).

Here, it would be well to return to the two premises set forth in the first

paragraph of this essay. The first is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill

the promise of Dewey's liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty

advocates the abandonment of all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule­

trading of principles that leads to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means

the best practical allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely,

some principles are non­negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life.

If both negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive

liberty are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what

basis can the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the

solution?

THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS

American democracy has its foundation in natural law, as is clear from the

Declaration of Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics

maintains that the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly

ordered, and that that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes

natural law theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all

humans will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence

be bound by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is

such a thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting

nonsense, nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human

rights or any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially

the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race, state

of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to the moral and

legal considerations called "rights." That is why an epistemological nominalist

like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social policies. Since he maintains

that our philosophical claims are culturally and historically bound, there is no

"God's eye view" from which we can view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our

picture of ourselves and nature is irredeemably ethnocentric.

Moreover, public discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no

constructive discourse is possible without commonly accepted principles,

many of which originate in natural law theory. Equally important is that

because the natural law is knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism

is compatible with public discourse to the extent that reason transcends all

ethnocentric and religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm

(Murray 1960: 30­33).

To grasp the precise connection between natural law and moral virtue, it is

necessary to avoid confusion over terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a

synonym for spontaneous occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling

trees, dogs growling over a bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to

one's head to fend off a thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the

natural to the artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since

aspirin and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to

express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may

seem comical.

But in the natural law tradition, "natural" is intended in the sense of the

Greek word for nature, physis: "The conception underlying that term sees

nature itself as teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to

all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to actualize

the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and thereby to attain its

perfection (telos) is natural and therefore good or desirable; what frustrates

its actualization is evil or undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this

understanding of "natural," the products of human artifice are not necessarily

unnatural, since they may contribute to the positive actualization of human

nature: aspirin alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which

is to see; the formation of political society is necessary for human flourishing.

The telos of each living thing is determined by its essence or nature. Thus,

the theory of natural law derives from the human understanding that "there

is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which

human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act

in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of the human

being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that" (Maritain

1966: 86).

An objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed

natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?

The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,

one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and

gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human

nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's understanding of

that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do with how a people

understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp human nature and

its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior conforms to natural

law. Thus, natural law does not change because human nature does not

change (Maritain 1966: 85­89). What changes is knowledge of human

nature­­for better or for worse.

The moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and

temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.

However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.

First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil" (Aquinas

1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except to obtain

what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes the woman's

purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be good, that is,

desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables on his plate, because

eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These are examples of

viewer­relative perceptions insofar as they refer to actions that are

objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good. One might

understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary examples of

natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and objectively

correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer­relative perception and

objective moral law is found in spontaneous human strivings, which Aquinas

calls "primary principles: the inclination to preserve one's life is the natural

law ground for the prohibition of murder; the attraction between the sexes is

the natural law ground for marriage and family; the inclination of humans to

live together in society is the natural law ground for justice since to live in

society requires respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).

The problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete

situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more

variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,

"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a

particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get agreement

on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get agreement

when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a starving family.

The moral virtues provide the bridge between the principles of natural law

ethics and proper action. The virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance

give the agent the right ends to pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him

what means to choose, in the particular situation, to realize those ends

(Aristotle 1941: 1026). Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not

the only thing needed for virtuous action; one must also desire the end.

Most important of all, since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in

acting, the virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to

the virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is

wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not

steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a theoretical

knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided; one must

possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a virtuous person

would make.

"President Clinton's so smart, how could he get himself involved with

Monica Lewinsky, when he knew they were investigating him in the Paula

Jones case?" So exclaimed an obviously intelligent and educated panelist on

a CNN talk show at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A

common error in ethical deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for

judging whether actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging

whether statements are true or false. The above question is a case in point.

Its author failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the

will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and ought

not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are importantly

different. The criterion for truth is conformity between thought and thing.

The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is raining out. Its truth depends

on actual meteorological conditions, which is to say that those conditions,

whatever they may be, exist independently of whatever may be said about

them.

The opposite obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the

conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the criterion

for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent and a

preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the reality,

first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting others, and second,

by either strengthening or weakening his or her character. Thus, matching

one's will to right desire requires more than merely knowing how one ought

to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to behave according to right desire,

and also possess the integration of intellect, will, passion, and appetite to

translate the desire to behave according to right desire into acting according

to right desire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen

for children chosen to become philosopher­kings was to last a full thirty­five

years, consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen.

Moral virtue required the integration of all one's faculties­­intellect, will,

passion, and appetite.

Plato's student, Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and

requirements of moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis)

from theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic principle

that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028­29). On the contrary,

Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take and yet not

take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to act that way

(1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian ethics, he insisted that

one who has to struggle to resist the urge to overindulge does not have the

virtue of temperance, since the very struggle betrays a lack of integration

among his faculties (Aristotle 1941: 1050). One starts on the path of

acquiring moral virtue by first acting as a virtuous person would act until one

can perform virtuous actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the

mimicry of virtuous action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter

must have the following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what

he is doing; (2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must

proceed from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941: 956).

The popular conception of the penalty for immoral behavior is some sort of

physical, mental, or socio­economic harm to oneself: excessive drinking

causes liver damage or loss of employment; lying leads to the loss of trust

among one's family and associates, etc. While no one would deny that those

are undesirable outcomes, classical moral theorists insisted that the price to

be paid for immoral behavior is worse: the loss of rational control. Some

challenge the view that a chosen immoral act is an expression of irrational

behavior. Candace Vogler, for example, sees no reason why one who

successfully plans and performs immoral acts on a regular basis in order to

attain his or her goals cannot be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40­41).

But, she is clearly using the word "rational" analogously. The agent's

behavior is "rational" in the sense that it is the result of sound deliberation

and efficient execution.

But, in the sense of rational entertained by classical moral theorists, his or

her behavior is irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone

seeks. From the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the

objective standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the

presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the

actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant, irrational.

Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying, and

murdering, he can only associate with his own kind­­liars, cheaters,

betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be

surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed

to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now held in

thrall by his own unruly and self­destructive urges (Plato 1992: 249­51).

So, there are at least two reasons why Vogler's immoral agent does not act

rationally. First, by a career of immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold

himself into slavery, riveting his will to the evil rather than the good.

Admittedly, his choices may be called "rational" in the sense that his planning

and acting are logically derived from, and consistent with, his immoral

attachments. But, that is a different sense of "rational" from the sense of the

word when applied to moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have

blinded him to the true state of his life and circumstances. He may feel free,

and believe he is acting freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based

on his belief that his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of

Huxley's Brave New World, they are slaves living delusions of freedom.

Consider, for example, the virtue of chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of

temperance as the latter pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is

badly misunderstood. The modern world identifies it with the prudish view

that regards sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the

extent that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining

to a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the

etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in matters

of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other person for

what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate respect and

justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by the vice of

lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the lion cannot appreciate

the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as food, so the lustful person can

only see another person as a source of sexual gratification (Pieper 1975:

166­67). Or, if the vice is greed, the other is perceived as a source of

monetary enrichment, and the like. Of course, references to sight are meant

to be analogical. The state of vice does not blind one to the truth that the

other is a human being, a person for whom justice demands respect. But, to

the extent that vice corrupts reason, the focus on the other person is

distorted by the desire for gratification.

The libertarian argument for the legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem

of freedom. The argument has two prongs. The first is that attempts by

federal and local authorities to stanch the flow of drugs into America have

been a spectacular failure (Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a

mentally competent adult has the right to ingest whatever substance he or

she chooses, as long as that behavior does not violate the rights of others.

But, would a permissive government policy pertaining to the sale and use of

narcotics produce a better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human

flourishing? A population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the

majority of its members make sensual gratification their criterion of

valorization, can be counted on to conclude, when voting for a political

candidate or law, that what guarantees that gratification is what is good for

democracy.

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

The illusion reveals itself in the inconsistency between the criticism of

objective moral norms as the fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact

that living and acting without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one

and the same object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is

that the demand that one act according to putative objective standards in

order to be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however

laudable­­truth, justice, beauty, goodness, or the law­­are not what

freedom is. The criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous,

since it can delude a population into believing that their adherence to those

kinds of lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive

regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961: 9­10).

But a characteristic of the lack of virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is

the will's enslavement to a specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that

to be free, the individual must have before him a range of options, the lack

of virtue produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably

evaluated in terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice.

Kant's heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a

consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of them­­the

object of his vice (1993: 45­48). From the viewpoint of a formal

consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides his

choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a standard

external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a material

consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous agent

chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta ratio) the locus

of which is the organization of passions and appetites according to reason.

The emergence of liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of

the dignity and freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience,

and the equality of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole,

one must dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost

sight of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the

dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a manifestation

of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are microcosms of the

State, or other totalitarian theories in which the individual has no meaning or

value apart from the state, liberal theory seems to have traveled in the

opposite direction, construing the individual's relation to the political

community primarily in utilitarian terms. This has blinded liberal democracy

to the meaning of Plato's observation that "the State is man writ large": the

moral condition of the political community expresses the moral condition of

its members. It would be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party

gained control of Germany following free elections.

If positive freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a

people's freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a

higher self as one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by

obeying the law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly

offers a better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their

respective and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely

because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is plausible.

Virtue ethics offers the solution to the extent that it furnishes the standard for

action based on understanding and choice unhampered by un­disciplined

passions and appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the

truest sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external

restraints and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human

flourishing, both for self­fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The

argument for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas

Aquinas observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby

succumbing to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the

obligation to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,

metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the

mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on

request; and now the movement to legalize physician­assisted suicide and

infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women as

sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a class of

disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed, and the

elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies, regardless of

whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if, indeed, what the

American people want most is the freedom to choose their own goals, why

do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the innocent and defense ­

less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is the freedom of the strong

against the weak who have no choice but to submit (Pope John Paul II

1995: 28­29).

The enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for

personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including

elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue

ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating

ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of

impending danger. Where are our geese?

REFERENCES:

Aquinas, Thomas. 1945. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol.

1. Ed. Anton C. Pegis. New York: Random House.

Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon.

New York: Random House.

Berlin, Isaiah. 1961. Two Concepts of Liberty. Oxford, UK: Clarendon

Press.

Bogle, Joanna. 2007. England Outlaws Catholic Teaching. National

Catholic Register (8­14 April): 1, 9.

Bosanquet, Bernard. 1920. The Philosophical Theory of the State.

London: Macmillan.

Dennehy, Raymond L. 1993. Bodenheimer's Theory of Natural Law: The

Conflict of a Divided Intellectual Allegiance. University of California

(Davis) Law Review 26 (3): 619­52.

_____. 2006. Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Death: Why John Paul II

Was Right. Telos 134 (Spring): 31­63.

De Riggiero, Guido. 1959. The History of European Liberalism. Tr.

Robin G. Collingwood. Boston, MA: Beacon Hill Press.

Dewey, John. 1963a. Freedom and Culture. New York: Capricorn

Books.

_____. 1963b. Liberalism and Social Action. New York: Capricorn

Books.

Green, Thomas H. 1960. Lectures on the Principles of Political

Obligation. London: Longman's Green.

_____. 1964. The Political Theory of T. H. Green. New York:

Appleton­Century­Crofts.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1962. Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Tr. Thomas M.

Knox. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Hittinger, Russell. 1990. Liberalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Wake

Forest Law Review 25: 429­99.

Hoover, Herbert. 1934. Challenge to Liberty. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons.

Huxley, Aldous. 1966. Brave New World. New York: Bantam Books.

Kant, Immanuel. 1993. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Tr.

James W. Ellington. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Machiavelli, Nicolo. 2005. The Prince. Tr./ed. William J. Connell. New

York: St. Martin's Press.

Maritain, Jacques. 1966. Man and the State. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press.

Mill, John Stuart. 1954. On Liberty. London: Oxford University Press.

Murray, John Courtney. 1960. We Hold These Truths. New York: Sheed

& Ward.

Murti, Vasu. 2006. The Liberal Case Against Abortion. Mt. Laurel, NJ:

Rage Media.

Nadelmann, Ethan A. 2004. An End to Marijuana Prohibition. National

Review (12 July): 1­7.

Pieper, Josef. 1975. The Four Cardinal Virtues. Notre Dame, IN:

University of Notre Dame Press.

Plamenatz, John P. 1963. Man and Society. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw­

Hill.

Plato. 1992. The Republic. Tr. George M. A. Grube. Rev. ed. C. D. C.

Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Pope John Paul II. 1995. The Gospel of Life. Vatican tr. New York:

Times Books.

Rorty, Richard. 1991. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1: Objectivity,

Relativism and Truth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1960. The Social Contract. In The Social

Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume and Rousseau. London: Oxford

University Press.

Sabine, George H. 1953. A History of Political Theory. New York:

Henry Holt.

Sandel, Michael J. 1996. America's Search for a New Public Philosophy.

Atlantic Monthly (January): 57­74.

Schall, James. 1984. The Politics of Heaven and Hell. Lanham, MD:

University Press of America.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1957. The Age of Roosevelt. Vols. I­II.

Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Simon, Yves R. 2002. A Critique of Moral Knowledge. Tr. Ralph

McInerny. New York: Fordham University Press.

Swanton, Christine. 2003. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic Account. Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press.

Verhagen, Eduard & Peter Sauer. 2005. The Groningen Protocol:

Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns. New England Journal of Medicine

352 (10): 959­62.

Vogler, Candace. 2002. Reasonably Vicious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

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Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Raymond L. Dennehy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San

Francisco.

After serving from 1954­58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the

heavy cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he

attended the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy.

He studied philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California,

Berkeley, finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Toronto.

He is the author of Anti­Abortionist at Large: How to Argue

Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It. (Go here for

reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity and an

anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently invited on

radio and television programs, as well as university campuses, to speak and

debate on topics such as abortion, physician­assisted suicide, and cloning.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven

grandchildren.

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The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L.

Dennehy, University of San Francisco

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of

Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by

the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in

JIS 2007.

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a

monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical

conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for

that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral

vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as

it is a virtue ethics­­forms individual character so that a person not

only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover,

possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This

is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character

that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation

whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to

freedom and equality for all.

FREEDOM AND VIRTUE

The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive

unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are

given in its support. First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue

ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a

rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.

Second, a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as it is a virtue ethics­­forms

individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to

act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be

able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices

create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse

choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its

commitment to freedom and equality for all.

But liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the

installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to

functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two

premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These two

premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only freedom

which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our own

way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede

their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of this essay

presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to

humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the two premises

are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will inevitably lead to

its self­destruction.

Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant

here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other ethical

theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue ethics here

refers to that state of character that integrates intellect, will, appetite, and

passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that actualize one's potential to

become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle enjoins, moral virtue is an

"excellence of behavior" (1941: 954­55). Second, virtue ethics is the ethics

of choice because it is the only ethical theory that grounds itself in the

principle that human nature is universal: since all human beings have the

same human nature, they are bound by the same ethical principles. If there is

a single, universal human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that

hold for a pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from

what is here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just

because it understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that

ethical behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and

monitored by reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions,

and appetites.

Pope John Paul II called attention to the mounting danger to democracy

from a concept of subjectivity carried to excess, and a notion of freedom

based on the concept of the individual isolated from society (Dennehy 2006:

50­53). These developments express themselves in various ways, one of

which is the change in the popular understanding of constitutional rights.

Russell Hittinger shows that whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived

as objective claims against the government, today, personal self­creation, to

wit, the right to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990:

486­99). This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense

of alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,

all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since the

body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as obstructive.

When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is inevitable that the

individual should find himself increasingly in tension with both nature and

society. The tension with society can be handled diplomaically: the individual

limits his behavior by respecting the rights and desires of others so as to

avoid retaliation. The tension with his body is handled by denial; it is

rejected root and branch as a source for ethical norms of conduct, since it is

perceived as an impediment to personal fulfillment.

For a consistent radical dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self­

awareness as his true self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere

encasement, a virtuous life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his

own actions and commitments. The Platonic Forms­­eternal, perfect, and

unchanging­­could furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior.

But a glorification of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external

criteria to the realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle,

freedom can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by

practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived as a

reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this

attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,

since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual grudgingly

obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has moral authority

(Hegel 1962: 85).

Regarding the second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to

pluralism (diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for

any political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw appears

when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The possibility

is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous Huxley's novel,

Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what they want, and

they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The inhabitants of

Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their desires are gratified. The

reality is that they are slaves, incapable of desiring anything beyond what

they have been genetically designed and conditioned to desire. Like the

iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with candor, "What, me worry?" If

there is any sense in which this may be called "freedom," then perhaps

subjective freedom is the term for it, for they are aware of no limitations to

their desires.

This raises the question: "Is freedom the personal state of being objectively

unrestrained or the subjective state of not being aware of being restrained?"

What is to prevent both Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being

true simultaneously of the same group of people? What about a nation

whose inhabitants are allowed the freedom to do everything they may wish

to do as long as they do not violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do

not realize that they have been programmed to desire only what their

government determines them to desire? One might object that such an

outcome in a free society, although possible, is highly improbable, since the

majority would not allow the encroachments on freedom and rights that

would initially have to occur before a techno­totalitarian regime such as

Huxley's Brave New World could come into existence. But the technology

involved is merely an instrumental cause of the illusion of freedom, not the

illusion itself. Could there be other causes?

Is it within the realm of plausibility that the majority of members of a political

society could think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is

"Yes." The principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that

is separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,

thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably possible

for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but the real cannot

be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is already here,

evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular vote, as well as

ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected. Each counts as an

example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In terms of the public

vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the sphere of private

behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not violate the rights of

others. Relevant examples include:

1. The rapid decline of public and private support for objective and

substantive ethics in favor of relativism.

2. The erosion of respect for human life in Western democracies. Since Roe

v. Wade (1973), some 50 million unborn human lives have been destroyed

in the United States alone. That U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred

legal justification for killing more Americans than the combined number of

those killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (North and South),

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf

War (Murti 2006: 57­60). To be sure, the classical conception of the state's

goal to make men moral undoubtedly produced its share of abuses. Equally

certain is the progress in public acknowledgment of the dignity of human

conscience heralded by the emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

the widespread practice of abortion in Western democracies shows that

monstrous crimes can be allowed and condoned by a society that from its

beginnings has proclaimed its commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness, and that in the name of the right to run one's life as

one chooses as long as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others,

nevertheless creates laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that

commitment.

3. Embryonic stem­cell research uses human beings, during their earliest

stages of development, as objects of scientific research, not only for the

purpose of finding cures for genetically based illness and defects, but also in

the hope of creating designer humans.

4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that proclaims its dedication to

the protection of the young, while failing to introduce laws and policies that

shield them from easy access to pornography.

5. The mounting support for same­sex marriage in the face of the fact that

the official and special recognition of marriage in society has always been

intimately tied to procreation and the realization that men and women are by

nature importantly different, a difference necessary to the proper

development of children.

6. Legislative and judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example,

the British Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for

teachers, even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral

(Bogle 2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from

feelings of unworthiness.

PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY

The argument against a morally neutral conception of freedom collides not

only with a fundamental premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems,

with a central tenet of what Americans accept as the public philosophy.

Michael Sandel succinctly sets forth that tenet:

"The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live is that freedom

consists in our capacity to choose our ends for ourselves. Politics should not

try to form the character or cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so

would be to "legislate morality." Government should not affirm, through its

policies or laws, any particular conception of the good life; instead it should

provide a neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their

own values and ends" (1996: 58).

Both conservative and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom

consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends." The

disagreement occurs when one asks whether any specific traits of character

are needed for an individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the

responsibility for overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since

republican political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing

people to acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self­rule, deliberating

with other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be

realized, it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its

involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In

contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the

procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to ensuring

equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern for its citizens'

personal moral state. The differences between the two theories are real, but

they are not what they seem. Both denounce the government's unjustified

interference in the lives of its citizens, but differ on what constitutes the

injustice:

"Liberals invoke the ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer,

restrictions on abortion or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring

their morality into the public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality

when opposing attempts by government to impose certain moral restraints ­­

for the sake of workers' safety or environmental protection or distributive

justice­­on the market economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on

both sides of the debate over the welfare state. Republicans have long

complained that taxing the rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a

form of coerced charity that violates people's freedom to choose what to do

with their own money. Democrats have long replied that government must

ensure all citizens a decent level of income, housing, education, and health

care, on the grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are

not truly free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their

disagreement about how government should act with respect to individual

choice, both sides assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to

choose their own ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).

If both sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to

choose one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government

intervention in the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting

meanings and valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends."

And thereby hangs a tale.

TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY

At stake here is the clash between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty

and positive liberty. Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is

the absence of external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is

the opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo­American tradition,

liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying rationale

for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that

of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt

to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18).

In contrast, a review of the Continental tradition shows that liberalism is

predominantly identified with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back

to ancient times (De Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers­­

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas­­agreed that the primary

aim of the state was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the

State is the individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that

underlies it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis

or city­state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good

and the good of the city­state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did not

mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the opportunity to

participate in the activities and life of the community (Sabine 1953: 742). It

is no exaggeration to say that this participation was viewed as one with the

state's commitment to the moral life of its citizens. This is evident in the

Republic, where Plato argues that the aim of the state is the implementation

of justice, a concept which, for him, refers both to the external relations of

men and to their internal states of the soul, as well (1992: 116­21). Aristotle

echoes this view (1941: 935­36).

The classical view of the individual's relation to political society underwent a

gradual yet, in the end, radical change. The impact of Christianity on Greco ­

Roman culture transformed the understanding of that relationship. No longer

did the individual exist primarily for the city­state or empire, for now he

could look to a destiny in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was

also the influence of Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual

had meaning and value only in virtue of membership in the city­state. Stoic

philosophy insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a

city­state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The deepening

sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was accompanied by a

corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of the monarch's

authority (Maritain 1966: 30­33). This transformation in the understanding

of the individual's relation to political society caused, in turn, a shift in the

standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place of the city­state and

empire, the transcendent God became the standard. For example, Martin

Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the Church, as the direct voice

of God's will for the individual, widened further the gap between the

individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz 1963: 175). And, while it is

true that a corresponding expansion of personal freedom was

acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom from temporal,

not divine, laws.

The classical­Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by

Nicolo Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally

separated politics from morality:

"there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he

who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin

him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a

career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who

are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain

himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not

use it according to necessity . . . . For, if everything be well considered,

something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if

adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in

his security and well­being" (2005: 87­88).

If Machiavelli deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the

secularization of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of

Padua who interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further

than the tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and

thereby eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a

position quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984:

173). Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,

surfacing in the twentieth century as Realpolitik.

Jean­Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is a reaction to

Machiavellianism. Therein, he attempts to rebuild democracy on the

foundation of the Greek city­state, fusing, once more, morality and politics:

"the State or the City is nothing but a moral person the life of which consists

in the union of its members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he

recognizes no distinction between the individual's moral liberty (which for

Rousseau is the only genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence,

he can write that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (Rousseau 1960: 262­63). This classical idea of the city­state was

picked up and developed by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical

idea" (1962: 107). This is not to overlook important differences between

Rousseau's concept of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as

Ethical Idea. For example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General

Will a mere extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly

making it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers

sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the

ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men

moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory, exemplified in

the writings of neo­Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920: 194) and

Thomas H. Green (1960: 31­32), which examined the relation of the

individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of

negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez­faire economics.

The concept of positive liberty is complex, more so than negative liberty.

For one thing, there seem to be two distinct versions of positive liberty,

which may be characterized as the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic

versions. It is important to separate the two, as the former grounds freedom

in objective moral principles, while the latter looks instead to socio­

economic and psychological conditions that enhance the individual's

capacity to actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version,

such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in

being one's own master. Self­mastery requires a virtuous character, since it

implies the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible

without a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying

the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so

that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher self.

The pragmatic version is clearly the conception of freedom embraced by

liberal political theory. Its advocates, like John Dewey, along with his

present­day descendant, Richard Rorty, are directly interested more in the

individual's socio­economic condition than in his moral and rational

development. They hold that freedom is having the opportunity to do what

is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of the individual's freedom, this

version, as with the ethical version, means obeying the laws of the state, but

they do not ascribe metaphysical or ethical properties to it. Rather, they see

the cultural traditions, laws, and social institutions of political society as

furnishing the conditions for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a

civilized society that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote

that freedom consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of

modern democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version

of positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the

resemblance ends there.

Most telling of all is that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the

pragmatic version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute

standard. They do appeal to standards like "self­realization" and "spiritual

enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling that

one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in­security. In

criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of positive

freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary condition of

freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an individual

free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain socio­

economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he wishes, or

at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to do. Practically

speaking, he or she is not free.

The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and

effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34­35). From a formal standpoint,

freedom is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates

of the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into account

the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of political

liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some extent the

conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's decisions, but for

advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty, these are of central

importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it must be the freedom to

do something worth doing. The absence of external restraint guarantees the

freedom of someone who enjoys favorable circumstances, such as enough

money and education, but that guarantee does not extend to one who lacks

them. This was the argument successfully deployed against laissez­faire

politicians in nineteenth­century Britain by the neo­liberal movement for

government interventionist legislation to help factory workers in labor

negotiations with factory owners. The latter resisted proposed laws that

would regulate labor negotiations by insisting that such would violate the

freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a mutually agreeable labor

contract. Factory owners claimed that if the worker found the contract

unacceptable, he was always free to find employment at a factory that had

an acceptable contract. But attempts to prevent the legislation failed when it

became clear that factory owners were united in standing firm behind the

same working conditions (Green 1964: 51­52).

Although advocates of the pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they

are improving the possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that

advocates of negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems

irreconcilable. Consider, for example, the different ways in which the

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to

the Great Depression in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of

the federal government into the economy constituted interference with free

enterprise and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance

to the depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted

accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of

freedom (1934: 107­35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as

positive (Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651­52).

The classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with

things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the state, its

application leads to an oppressive political society in which its members are

deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains them from doing what

they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do not wish to do, they

are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this is

Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (1960: 262­53). History offers sufficient evidence of the threat to

individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom with the state or

with things other than choosing one's own goals. But critics of negative

liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the individual from attempts

of procedural democracy to form policies based on moral neutrality,

illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic stem­cell research, and

sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that what Plato called the "greed

for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse of civil polity and the emergence

of tyranny (1992: 227­38).

Here, it would be well to return to the two premises set forth in the first

paragraph of this essay. The first is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill

the promise of Dewey's liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty

advocates the abandonment of all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule­

trading of principles that leads to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means

the best practical allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely,

some principles are non­negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life.

If both negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive

liberty are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what

basis can the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the

solution?

THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS

American democracy has its foundation in natural law, as is clear from the

Declaration of Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics

maintains that the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly

ordered, and that that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes

natural law theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all

humans will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence

be bound by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is

such a thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting

nonsense, nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human

rights or any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially

the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race, state

of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to the moral and

legal considerations called "rights." That is why an epistemological nominalist

like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social policies. Since he maintains

that our philosophical claims are culturally and historically bound, there is no

"God's eye view" from which we can view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our

picture of ourselves and nature is irredeemably ethnocentric.

Moreover, public discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no

constructive discourse is possible without commonly accepted principles,

many of which originate in natural law theory. Equally important is that

because the natural law is knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism

is compatible with public discourse to the extent that reason transcends all

ethnocentric and religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm

(Murray 1960: 30­33).

To grasp the precise connection between natural law and moral virtue, it is

necessary to avoid confusion over terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a

synonym for spontaneous occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling

trees, dogs growling over a bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to

one's head to fend off a thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the

natural to the artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since

aspirin and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to

express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may

seem comical.

But in the natural law tradition, "natural" is intended in the sense of the

Greek word for nature, physis: "The conception underlying that term sees

nature itself as teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to

all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to actualize

the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and thereby to attain its

perfection (telos) is natural and therefore good or desirable; what frustrates

its actualization is evil or undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this

understanding of "natural," the products of human artifice are not necessarily

unnatural, since they may contribute to the positive actualization of human

nature: aspirin alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which

is to see; the formation of political society is necessary for human flourishing.

The telos of each living thing is determined by its essence or nature. Thus,

the theory of natural law derives from the human understanding that "there

is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which

human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act

in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of the human

being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that" (Maritain

1966: 86).

An objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed

natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?

The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,

one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and

gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human

nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's understanding of

that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do with how a people

understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp human nature and

its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior conforms to natural

law. Thus, natural law does not change because human nature does not

change (Maritain 1966: 85­89). What changes is knowledge of human

nature­­for better or for worse.

The moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and

temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.

However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.

First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil" (Aquinas

1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except to obtain

what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes the woman's

purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be good, that is,

desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables on his plate, because

eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These are examples of

viewer­relative perceptions insofar as they refer to actions that are

objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good. One might

understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary examples of

natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and objectively

correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer­relative perception and

objective moral law is found in spontaneous human strivings, which Aquinas

calls "primary principles: the inclination to preserve one's life is the natural

law ground for the prohibition of murder; the attraction between the sexes is

the natural law ground for marriage and family; the inclination of humans to

live together in society is the natural law ground for justice since to live in

society requires respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).

The problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete

situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more

variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,

"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a

particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get agreement

on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get agreement

when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a starving family.

The moral virtues provide the bridge between the principles of natural law

ethics and proper action. The virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance

give the agent the right ends to pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him

what means to choose, in the particular situation, to realize those ends

(Aristotle 1941: 1026). Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not

the only thing needed for virtuous action; one must also desire the end.

Most important of all, since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in

acting, the virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to

the virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is

wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not

steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a theoretical

knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided; one must

possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a virtuous person

would make.

"President Clinton's so smart, how could he get himself involved with

Monica Lewinsky, when he knew they were investigating him in the Paula

Jones case?" So exclaimed an obviously intelligent and educated panelist on

a CNN talk show at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A

common error in ethical deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for

judging whether actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging

whether statements are true or false. The above question is a case in point.

Its author failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the

will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and ought

not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are importantly

different. The criterion for truth is conformity between thought and thing.

The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is raining out. Its truth depends

on actual meteorological conditions, which is to say that those conditions,

whatever they may be, exist independently of whatever may be said about

them.

The opposite obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the

conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the criterion

for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent and a

preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the reality,

first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting others, and second,

by either strengthening or weakening his or her character. Thus, matching

one's will to right desire requires more than merely knowing how one ought

to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to behave according to right desire,

and also possess the integration of intellect, will, passion, and appetite to

translate the desire to behave according to right desire into acting according

to right desire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen

for children chosen to become philosopher­kings was to last a full thirty­five

years, consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen.

Moral virtue required the integration of all one's faculties­­intellect, will,

passion, and appetite.

Plato's student, Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and

requirements of moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis)

from theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic principle

that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028­29). On the contrary,

Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take and yet not

take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to act that way

(1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian ethics, he insisted that

one who has to struggle to resist the urge to overindulge does not have the

virtue of temperance, since the very struggle betrays a lack of integration

among his faculties (Aristotle 1941: 1050). One starts on the path of

acquiring moral virtue by first acting as a virtuous person would act until one

can perform virtuous actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the

mimicry of virtuous action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter

must have the following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what

he is doing; (2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must

proceed from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941: 956).

The popular conception of the penalty for immoral behavior is some sort of

physical, mental, or socio­economic harm to oneself: excessive drinking

causes liver damage or loss of employment; lying leads to the loss of trust

among one's family and associates, etc. While no one would deny that those

are undesirable outcomes, classical moral theorists insisted that the price to

be paid for immoral behavior is worse: the loss of rational control. Some

challenge the view that a chosen immoral act is an expression of irrational

behavior. Candace Vogler, for example, sees no reason why one who

successfully plans and performs immoral acts on a regular basis in order to

attain his or her goals cannot be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40­41).

But, she is clearly using the word "rational" analogously. The agent's

behavior is "rational" in the sense that it is the result of sound deliberation

and efficient execution.

But, in the sense of rational entertained by classical moral theorists, his or

her behavior is irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone

seeks. From the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the

objective standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the

presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the

actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant, irrational.

Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying, and

murdering, he can only associate with his own kind­­liars, cheaters,

betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be

surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed

to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now held in

thrall by his own unruly and self­destructive urges (Plato 1992: 249­51).

So, there are at least two reasons why Vogler's immoral agent does not act

rationally. First, by a career of immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold

himself into slavery, riveting his will to the evil rather than the good.

Admittedly, his choices may be called "rational" in the sense that his planning

and acting are logically derived from, and consistent with, his immoral

attachments. But, that is a different sense of "rational" from the sense of the

word when applied to moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have

blinded him to the true state of his life and circumstances. He may feel free,

and believe he is acting freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based

on his belief that his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of

Huxley's Brave New World, they are slaves living delusions of freedom.

Consider, for example, the virtue of chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of

temperance as the latter pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is

badly misunderstood. The modern world identifies it with the prudish view

that regards sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the

extent that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining

to a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the

etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in matters

of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other person for

what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate respect and

justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by the vice of

lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the lion cannot appreciate

the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as food, so the lustful person can

only see another person as a source of sexual gratification (Pieper 1975:

166­67). Or, if the vice is greed, the other is perceived as a source of

monetary enrichment, and the like. Of course, references to sight are meant

to be analogical. The state of vice does not blind one to the truth that the

other is a human being, a person for whom justice demands respect. But, to

the extent that vice corrupts reason, the focus on the other person is

distorted by the desire for gratification.

The libertarian argument for the legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem

of freedom. The argument has two prongs. The first is that attempts by

federal and local authorities to stanch the flow of drugs into America have

been a spectacular failure (Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a

mentally competent adult has the right to ingest whatever substance he or

she chooses, as long as that behavior does not violate the rights of others.

But, would a permissive government policy pertaining to the sale and use of

narcotics produce a better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human

flourishing? A population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the

majority of its members make sensual gratification their criterion of

valorization, can be counted on to conclude, when voting for a political

candidate or law, that what guarantees that gratification is what is good for

democracy.

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

The illusion reveals itself in the inconsistency between the criticism of

objective moral norms as the fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact

that living and acting without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one

and the same object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is

that the demand that one act according to putative objective standards in

order to be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however

laudable­­truth, justice, beauty, goodness, or the law­­are not what

freedom is. The criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous,

since it can delude a population into believing that their adherence to those

kinds of lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive

regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961: 9­10).

But a characteristic of the lack of virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is

the will's enslavement to a specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that

to be free, the individual must have before him a range of options, the lack

of virtue produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably

evaluated in terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice.

Kant's heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a

consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of them­­the

object of his vice (1993: 45­48). From the viewpoint of a formal

consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides his

choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a standard

external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a material

consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous agent

chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta ratio) the locus

of which is the organization of passions and appetites according to reason.

The emergence of liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of

the dignity and freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience,

and the equality of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole,

one must dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost

sight of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the

dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a manifestation

of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are microcosms of the

State, or other totalitarian theories in which the individual has no meaning or

value apart from the state, liberal theory seems to have traveled in the

opposite direction, construing the individual's relation to the political

community primarily in utilitarian terms. This has blinded liberal democracy

to the meaning of Plato's observation that "the State is man writ large": the

moral condition of the political community expresses the moral condition of

its members. It would be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party

gained control of Germany following free elections.

If positive freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a

people's freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a

higher self as one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by

obeying the law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly

offers a better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their

respective and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely

because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is plausible.

Virtue ethics offers the solution to the extent that it furnishes the standard for

action based on understanding and choice unhampered by un­disciplined

passions and appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the

truest sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external

restraints and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human

flourishing, both for self­fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The

argument for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas

Aquinas observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby

succumbing to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the

obligation to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,

metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the

mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on

request; and now the movement to legalize physician­assisted suicide and

infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women as

sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a class of

disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed, and the

elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies, regardless of

whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if, indeed, what the

American people want most is the freedom to choose their own goals, why

do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the innocent and defense ­

less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is the freedom of the strong

against the weak who have no choice but to submit (Pope John Paul II

1995: 28­29).

The enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for

personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including

elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue

ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating

ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of

impending danger. Where are our geese?

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York: St. Martin's Press.

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Chicago Press.

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Murray, John Courtney. 1960. We Hold These Truths. New York: Sheed

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Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Raymond L. Dennehy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San

Francisco.

After serving from 1954­58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the

heavy cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he

attended the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy.

He studied philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California,

Berkeley, finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Toronto.

He is the author of Anti­Abortionist at Large: How to Argue

Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It. (Go here for

reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity and an

anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently invited on

radio and television programs, as well as university campuses, to speak and

debate on topics such as abortion, physician­assisted suicide, and cloning.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven

grandchildren.

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The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L.

Dennehy, University of San Francisco

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of

Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by

the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in

JIS 2007.

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a

monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical

conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for

that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral

vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as

it is a virtue ethics­­forms individual character so that a person not

only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover,

possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This

is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character

that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation

whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to

freedom and equality for all.

FREEDOM AND VIRTUE

The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive

unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are

given in its support. First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue

ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a

rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.

Second, a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as it is a virtue ethics­­forms

individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to

act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be

able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices

create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse

choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its

commitment to freedom and equality for all.

But liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the

installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to

functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two

premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These two

premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only freedom

which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our own

way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede

their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of this essay

presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to

humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the two premises

are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will inevitably lead to

its self­destruction.

Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant

here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other ethical

theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue ethics here

refers to that state of character that integrates intellect, will, appetite, and

passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that actualize one's potential to

become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle enjoins, moral virtue is an

"excellence of behavior" (1941: 954­55). Second, virtue ethics is the ethics

of choice because it is the only ethical theory that grounds itself in the

principle that human nature is universal: since all human beings have the

same human nature, they are bound by the same ethical principles. If there is

a single, universal human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that

hold for a pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from

what is here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just

because it understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that

ethical behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and

monitored by reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions,

and appetites.

Pope John Paul II called attention to the mounting danger to democracy

from a concept of subjectivity carried to excess, and a notion of freedom

based on the concept of the individual isolated from society (Dennehy 2006:

50­53). These developments express themselves in various ways, one of

which is the change in the popular understanding of constitutional rights.

Russell Hittinger shows that whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived

as objective claims against the government, today, personal self­creation, to

wit, the right to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990:

486­99). This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense

of alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,

all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since the

body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as obstructive.

When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is inevitable that the

individual should find himself increasingly in tension with both nature and

society. The tension with society can be handled diplomaically: the individual

limits his behavior by respecting the rights and desires of others so as to

avoid retaliation. The tension with his body is handled by denial; it is

rejected root and branch as a source for ethical norms of conduct, since it is

perceived as an impediment to personal fulfillment.

For a consistent radical dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self­

awareness as his true self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere

encasement, a virtuous life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his

own actions and commitments. The Platonic Forms­­eternal, perfect, and

unchanging­­could furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior.

But a glorification of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external

criteria to the realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle,

freedom can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by

practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived as a

reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this

attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,

since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual grudgingly

obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has moral authority

(Hegel 1962: 85).

Regarding the second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to

pluralism (diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for

any political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw appears

when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The possibility

is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous Huxley's novel,

Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what they want, and

they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The inhabitants of

Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their desires are gratified. The

reality is that they are slaves, incapable of desiring anything beyond what

they have been genetically designed and conditioned to desire. Like the

iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with candor, "What, me worry?" If

there is any sense in which this may be called "freedom," then perhaps

subjective freedom is the term for it, for they are aware of no limitations to

their desires.

This raises the question: "Is freedom the personal state of being objectively

unrestrained or the subjective state of not being aware of being restrained?"

What is to prevent both Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being

true simultaneously of the same group of people? What about a nation

whose inhabitants are allowed the freedom to do everything they may wish

to do as long as they do not violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do

not realize that they have been programmed to desire only what their

government determines them to desire? One might object that such an

outcome in a free society, although possible, is highly improbable, since the

majority would not allow the encroachments on freedom and rights that

would initially have to occur before a techno­totalitarian regime such as

Huxley's Brave New World could come into existence. But the technology

involved is merely an instrumental cause of the illusion of freedom, not the

illusion itself. Could there be other causes?

Is it within the realm of plausibility that the majority of members of a political

society could think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is

"Yes." The principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that

is separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,

thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably possible

for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but the real cannot

be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is already here,

evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular vote, as well as

ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected. Each counts as an

example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In terms of the public

vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the sphere of private

behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not violate the rights of

others. Relevant examples include:

1. The rapid decline of public and private support for objective and

substantive ethics in favor of relativism.

2. The erosion of respect for human life in Western democracies. Since Roe

v. Wade (1973), some 50 million unborn human lives have been destroyed

in the United States alone. That U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred

legal justification for killing more Americans than the combined number of

those killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (North and South),

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf

War (Murti 2006: 57­60). To be sure, the classical conception of the state's

goal to make men moral undoubtedly produced its share of abuses. Equally

certain is the progress in public acknowledgment of the dignity of human

conscience heralded by the emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

the widespread practice of abortion in Western democracies shows that

monstrous crimes can be allowed and condoned by a society that from its

beginnings has proclaimed its commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness, and that in the name of the right to run one's life as

one chooses as long as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others,

nevertheless creates laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that

commitment.

3. Embryonic stem­cell research uses human beings, during their earliest

stages of development, as objects of scientific research, not only for the

purpose of finding cures for genetically based illness and defects, but also in

the hope of creating designer humans.

4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that proclaims its dedication to

the protection of the young, while failing to introduce laws and policies that

shield them from easy access to pornography.

5. The mounting support for same­sex marriage in the face of the fact that

the official and special recognition of marriage in society has always been

intimately tied to procreation and the realization that men and women are by

nature importantly different, a difference necessary to the proper

development of children.

6. Legislative and judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example,

the British Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for

teachers, even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral

(Bogle 2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from

feelings of unworthiness.

PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY

The argument against a morally neutral conception of freedom collides not

only with a fundamental premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems,

with a central tenet of what Americans accept as the public philosophy.

Michael Sandel succinctly sets forth that tenet:

"The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live is that freedom

consists in our capacity to choose our ends for ourselves. Politics should not

try to form the character or cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so

would be to "legislate morality." Government should not affirm, through its

policies or laws, any particular conception of the good life; instead it should

provide a neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their

own values and ends" (1996: 58).

Both conservative and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom

consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends." The

disagreement occurs when one asks whether any specific traits of character

are needed for an individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the

responsibility for overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since

republican political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing

people to acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self­rule, deliberating

with other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be

realized, it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its

involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In

contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the

procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to ensuring

equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern for its citizens'

personal moral state. The differences between the two theories are real, but

they are not what they seem. Both denounce the government's unjustified

interference in the lives of its citizens, but differ on what constitutes the

injustice:

"Liberals invoke the ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer,

restrictions on abortion or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring

their morality into the public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality

when opposing attempts by government to impose certain moral restraints ­­

for the sake of workers' safety or environmental protection or distributive

justice­­on the market economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on

both sides of the debate over the welfare state. Republicans have long

complained that taxing the rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a

form of coerced charity that violates people's freedom to choose what to do

with their own money. Democrats have long replied that government must

ensure all citizens a decent level of income, housing, education, and health

care, on the grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are

not truly free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their

disagreement about how government should act with respect to individual

choice, both sides assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to

choose their own ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).

If both sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to

choose one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government

intervention in the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting

meanings and valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends."

And thereby hangs a tale.

TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY

At stake here is the clash between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty

and positive liberty. Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is

the absence of external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is

the opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo­American tradition,

liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying rationale

for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that

of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt

to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18).

In contrast, a review of the Continental tradition shows that liberalism is

predominantly identified with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back

to ancient times (De Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers­­

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas­­agreed that the primary

aim of the state was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the

State is the individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that

underlies it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis

or city­state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good

and the good of the city­state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did not

mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the opportunity to

participate in the activities and life of the community (Sabine 1953: 742). It

is no exaggeration to say that this participation was viewed as one with the

state's commitment to the moral life of its citizens. This is evident in the

Republic, where Plato argues that the aim of the state is the implementation

of justice, a concept which, for him, refers both to the external relations of

men and to their internal states of the soul, as well (1992: 116­21). Aristotle

echoes this view (1941: 935­36).

The classical view of the individual's relation to political society underwent a

gradual yet, in the end, radical change. The impact of Christianity on Greco ­

Roman culture transformed the understanding of that relationship. No longer

did the individual exist primarily for the city­state or empire, for now he

could look to a destiny in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was

also the influence of Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual

had meaning and value only in virtue of membership in the city­state. Stoic

philosophy insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a

city­state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The deepening

sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was accompanied by a

corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of the monarch's

authority (Maritain 1966: 30­33). This transformation in the understanding

of the individual's relation to political society caused, in turn, a shift in the

standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place of the city­state and

empire, the transcendent God became the standard. For example, Martin

Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the Church, as the direct voice

of God's will for the individual, widened further the gap between the

individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz 1963: 175). And, while it is

true that a corresponding expansion of personal freedom was

acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom from temporal,

not divine, laws.

The classical­Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by

Nicolo Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally

separated politics from morality:

"there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he

who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin

him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a

career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who

are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain

himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not

use it according to necessity . . . . For, if everything be well considered,

something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if

adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in

his security and well­being" (2005: 87­88).

If Machiavelli deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the

secularization of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of

Padua who interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further

than the tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and

thereby eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a

position quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984:

173). Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,

surfacing in the twentieth century as Realpolitik.

Jean­Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is a reaction to

Machiavellianism. Therein, he attempts to rebuild democracy on the

foundation of the Greek city­state, fusing, once more, morality and politics:

"the State or the City is nothing but a moral person the life of which consists

in the union of its members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he

recognizes no distinction between the individual's moral liberty (which for

Rousseau is the only genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence,

he can write that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (Rousseau 1960: 262­63). This classical idea of the city­state was

picked up and developed by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical

idea" (1962: 107). This is not to overlook important differences between

Rousseau's concept of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as

Ethical Idea. For example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General

Will a mere extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly

making it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers

sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the

ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men

moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory, exemplified in

the writings of neo­Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920: 194) and

Thomas H. Green (1960: 31­32), which examined the relation of the

individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of

negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez­faire economics.

The concept of positive liberty is complex, more so than negative liberty.

For one thing, there seem to be two distinct versions of positive liberty,

which may be characterized as the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic

versions. It is important to separate the two, as the former grounds freedom

in objective moral principles, while the latter looks instead to socio­

economic and psychological conditions that enhance the individual's

capacity to actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version,

such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in

being one's own master. Self­mastery requires a virtuous character, since it

implies the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible

without a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying

the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so

that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher self.

The pragmatic version is clearly the conception of freedom embraced by

liberal political theory. Its advocates, like John Dewey, along with his

present­day descendant, Richard Rorty, are directly interested more in the

individual's socio­economic condition than in his moral and rational

development. They hold that freedom is having the opportunity to do what

is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of the individual's freedom, this

version, as with the ethical version, means obeying the laws of the state, but

they do not ascribe metaphysical or ethical properties to it. Rather, they see

the cultural traditions, laws, and social institutions of political society as

furnishing the conditions for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a

civilized society that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote

that freedom consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of

modern democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version

of positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the

resemblance ends there.

Most telling of all is that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the

pragmatic version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute

standard. They do appeal to standards like "self­realization" and "spiritual

enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling that

one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in­security. In

criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of positive

freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary condition of

freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an individual

free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain socio­

economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he wishes, or

at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to do. Practically

speaking, he or she is not free.

The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and

effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34­35). From a formal standpoint,

freedom is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates

of the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into account

the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of political

liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some extent the

conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's decisions, but for

advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty, these are of central

importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it must be the freedom to

do something worth doing. The absence of external restraint guarantees the

freedom of someone who enjoys favorable circumstances, such as enough

money and education, but that guarantee does not extend to one who lacks

them. This was the argument successfully deployed against laissez­faire

politicians in nineteenth­century Britain by the neo­liberal movement for

government interventionist legislation to help factory workers in labor

negotiations with factory owners. The latter resisted proposed laws that

would regulate labor negotiations by insisting that such would violate the

freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a mutually agreeable labor

contract. Factory owners claimed that if the worker found the contract

unacceptable, he was always free to find employment at a factory that had

an acceptable contract. But attempts to prevent the legislation failed when it

became clear that factory owners were united in standing firm behind the

same working conditions (Green 1964: 51­52).

Although advocates of the pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they

are improving the possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that

advocates of negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems

irreconcilable. Consider, for example, the different ways in which the

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to

the Great Depression in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of

the federal government into the economy constituted interference with free

enterprise and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance

to the depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted

accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of

freedom (1934: 107­35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as

positive (Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651­52).

The classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with

things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the state, its

application leads to an oppressive political society in which its members are

deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains them from doing what

they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do not wish to do, they

are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this is

Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (1960: 262­53). History offers sufficient evidence of the threat to

individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom with the state or

with things other than choosing one's own goals. But critics of negative

liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the individual from attempts

of procedural democracy to form policies based on moral neutrality,

illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic stem­cell research, and

sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that what Plato called the "greed

for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse of civil polity and the emergence

of tyranny (1992: 227­38).

Here, it would be well to return to the two premises set forth in the first

paragraph of this essay. The first is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill

the promise of Dewey's liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty

advocates the abandonment of all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule­

trading of principles that leads to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means

the best practical allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely,

some principles are non­negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life.

If both negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive

liberty are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what

basis can the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the

solution?

THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS

American democracy has its foundation in natural law, as is clear from the

Declaration of Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics

maintains that the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly

ordered, and that that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes

natural law theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all

humans will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence

be bound by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is

such a thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting

nonsense, nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human

rights or any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially

the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race, state

of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to the moral and

legal considerations called "rights." That is why an epistemological nominalist

like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social policies. Since he maintains

that our philosophical claims are culturally and historically bound, there is no

"God's eye view" from which we can view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our

picture of ourselves and nature is irredeemably ethnocentric.

Moreover, public discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no

constructive discourse is possible without commonly accepted principles,

many of which originate in natural law theory. Equally important is that

because the natural law is knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism

is compatible with public discourse to the extent that reason transcends all

ethnocentric and religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm

(Murray 1960: 30­33).

To grasp the precise connection between natural law and moral virtue, it is

necessary to avoid confusion over terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a

synonym for spontaneous occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling

trees, dogs growling over a bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to

one's head to fend off a thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the

natural to the artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since

aspirin and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to

express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may

seem comical.

But in the natural law tradition, "natural" is intended in the sense of the

Greek word for nature, physis: "The conception underlying that term sees

nature itself as teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to

all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to actualize

the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and thereby to attain its

perfection (telos) is natural and therefore good or desirable; what frustrates

its actualization is evil or undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this

understanding of "natural," the products of human artifice are not necessarily

unnatural, since they may contribute to the positive actualization of human

nature: aspirin alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which

is to see; the formation of political society is necessary for human flourishing.

The telos of each living thing is determined by its essence or nature. Thus,

the theory of natural law derives from the human understanding that "there

is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which

human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act

in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of the human

being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that" (Maritain

1966: 86).

An objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed

natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?

The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,

one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and

gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human

nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's understanding of

that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do with how a people

understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp human nature and

its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior conforms to natural

law. Thus, natural law does not change because human nature does not

change (Maritain 1966: 85­89). What changes is knowledge of human

nature­­for better or for worse.

The moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and

temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.

However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.

First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil" (Aquinas

1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except to obtain

what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes the woman's

purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be good, that is,

desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables on his plate, because

eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These are examples of

viewer­relative perceptions insofar as they refer to actions that are

objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good. One might

understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary examples of

natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and objectively

correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer­relative perception and

objective moral law is found in spontaneous human strivings, which Aquinas

calls "primary principles: the inclination to preserve one's life is the natural

law ground for the prohibition of murder; the attraction between the sexes is

the natural law ground for marriage and family; the inclination of humans to

live together in society is the natural law ground for justice since to live in

society requires respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).

The problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete

situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more

variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,

"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a

particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get agreement

on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get agreement

when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a starving family.

The moral virtues provide the bridge between the principles of natural law

ethics and proper action. The virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance

give the agent the right ends to pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him

what means to choose, in the particular situation, to realize those ends

(Aristotle 1941: 1026). Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not

the only thing needed for virtuous action; one must also desire the end.

Most important of all, since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in

acting, the virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to

the virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is

wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not

steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a theoretical

knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided; one must

possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a virtuous person

would make.

"President Clinton's so smart, how could he get himself involved with

Monica Lewinsky, when he knew they were investigating him in the Paula

Jones case?" So exclaimed an obviously intelligent and educated panelist on

a CNN talk show at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A

common error in ethical deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for

judging whether actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging

whether statements are true or false. The above question is a case in point.

Its author failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the

will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and ought

not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are importantly

different. The criterion for truth is conformity between thought and thing.

The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is raining out. Its truth depends

on actual meteorological conditions, which is to say that those conditions,

whatever they may be, exist independently of whatever may be said about

them.

The opposite obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the

conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the criterion

for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent and a

preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the reality,

first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting others, and second,

by either strengthening or weakening his or her character. Thus, matching

one's will to right desire requires more than merely knowing how one ought

to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to behave according to right desire,

and also possess the integration of intellect, will, passion, and appetite to

translate the desire to behave according to right desire into acting according

to right desire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen

for children chosen to become philosopher­kings was to last a full thirty­five

years, consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen.

Moral virtue required the integration of all one's faculties­­intellect, will,

passion, and appetite.

Plato's student, Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and

requirements of moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis)

from theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic principle

that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028­29). On the contrary,

Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take and yet not

take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to act that way

(1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian ethics, he insisted that

one who has to struggle to resist the urge to overindulge does not have the

virtue of temperance, since the very struggle betrays a lack of integration

among his faculties (Aristotle 1941: 1050). One starts on the path of

acquiring moral virtue by first acting as a virtuous person would act until one

can perform virtuous actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the

mimicry of virtuous action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter

must have the following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what

he is doing; (2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must

proceed from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941: 956).

The popular conception of the penalty for immoral behavior is some sort of

physical, mental, or socio­economic harm to oneself: excessive drinking

causes liver damage or loss of employment; lying leads to the loss of trust

among one's family and associates, etc. While no one would deny that those

are undesirable outcomes, classical moral theorists insisted that the price to

be paid for immoral behavior is worse: the loss of rational control. Some

challenge the view that a chosen immoral act is an expression of irrational

behavior. Candace Vogler, for example, sees no reason why one who

successfully plans and performs immoral acts on a regular basis in order to

attain his or her goals cannot be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40­41).

But, she is clearly using the word "rational" analogously. The agent's

behavior is "rational" in the sense that it is the result of sound deliberation

and efficient execution.

But, in the sense of rational entertained by classical moral theorists, his or

her behavior is irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone

seeks. From the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the

objective standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the

presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the

actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant, irrational.

Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying, and

murdering, he can only associate with his own kind­­liars, cheaters,

betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be

surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed

to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now held in

thrall by his own unruly and self­destructive urges (Plato 1992: 249­51).

So, there are at least two reasons why Vogler's immoral agent does not act

rationally. First, by a career of immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold

himself into slavery, riveting his will to the evil rather than the good.

Admittedly, his choices may be called "rational" in the sense that his planning

and acting are logically derived from, and consistent with, his immoral

attachments. But, that is a different sense of "rational" from the sense of the

word when applied to moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have

blinded him to the true state of his life and circumstances. He may feel free,

and believe he is acting freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based

on his belief that his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of

Huxley's Brave New World, they are slaves living delusions of freedom.

Consider, for example, the virtue of chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of

temperance as the latter pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is

badly misunderstood. The modern world identifies it with the prudish view

that regards sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the

extent that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining

to a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the

etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in matters

of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other person for

what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate respect and

justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by the vice of

lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the lion cannot appreciate

the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as food, so the lustful person can

only see another person as a source of sexual gratification (Pieper 1975:

166­67). Or, if the vice is greed, the other is perceived as a source of

monetary enrichment, and the like. Of course, references to sight are meant

to be analogical. The state of vice does not blind one to the truth that the

other is a human being, a person for whom justice demands respect. But, to

the extent that vice corrupts reason, the focus on the other person is

distorted by the desire for gratification.

The libertarian argument for the legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem

of freedom. The argument has two prongs. The first is that attempts by

federal and local authorities to stanch the flow of drugs into America have

been a spectacular failure (Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a

mentally competent adult has the right to ingest whatever substance he or

she chooses, as long as that behavior does not violate the rights of others.

But, would a permissive government policy pertaining to the sale and use of

narcotics produce a better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human

flourishing? A population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the

majority of its members make sensual gratification their criterion of

valorization, can be counted on to conclude, when voting for a political

candidate or law, that what guarantees that gratification is what is good for

democracy.

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

The illusion reveals itself in the inconsistency between the criticism of

objective moral norms as the fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact

that living and acting without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one

and the same object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is

that the demand that one act according to putative objective standards in

order to be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however

laudable­­truth, justice, beauty, goodness, or the law­­are not what

freedom is. The criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous,

since it can delude a population into believing that their adherence to those

kinds of lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive

regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961: 9­10).

But a characteristic of the lack of virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is

the will's enslavement to a specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that

to be free, the individual must have before him a range of options, the lack

of virtue produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably

evaluated in terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice.

Kant's heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a

consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of them­­the

object of his vice (1993: 45­48). From the viewpoint of a formal

consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides his

choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a standard

external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a material

consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous agent

chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta ratio) the locus

of which is the organization of passions and appetites according to reason.

The emergence of liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of

the dignity and freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience,

and the equality of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole,

one must dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost

sight of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the

dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a manifestation

of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are microcosms of the

State, or other totalitarian theories in which the individual has no meaning or

value apart from the state, liberal theory seems to have traveled in the

opposite direction, construing the individual's relation to the political

community primarily in utilitarian terms. This has blinded liberal democracy

to the meaning of Plato's observation that "the State is man writ large": the

moral condition of the political community expresses the moral condition of

its members. It would be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party

gained control of Germany following free elections.

If positive freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a

people's freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a

higher self as one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by

obeying the law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly

offers a better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their

respective and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely

because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is plausible.

Virtue ethics offers the solution to the extent that it furnishes the standard for

action based on understanding and choice unhampered by un­disciplined

passions and appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the

truest sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external

restraints and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human

flourishing, both for self­fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The

argument for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas

Aquinas observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby

succumbing to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the

obligation to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,

metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the

mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on

request; and now the movement to legalize physician­assisted suicide and

infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women as

sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a class of

disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed, and the

elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies, regardless of

whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if, indeed, what the

American people want most is the freedom to choose their own goals, why

do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the innocent and defense ­

less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is the freedom of the strong

against the weak who have no choice but to submit (Pope John Paul II

1995: 28­29).

The enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for

personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including

elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue

ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating

ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of

impending danger. Where are our geese?

REFERENCES:

Aquinas, Thomas. 1945. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol.

1. Ed. Anton C. Pegis. New York: Random House.

Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon.

New York: Random House.

Berlin, Isaiah. 1961. Two Concepts of Liberty. Oxford, UK: Clarendon

Press.

Bogle, Joanna. 2007. England Outlaws Catholic Teaching. National

Catholic Register (8­14 April): 1, 9.

Bosanquet, Bernard. 1920. The Philosophical Theory of the State.

London: Macmillan.

Dennehy, Raymond L. 1993. Bodenheimer's Theory of Natural Law: The

Conflict of a Divided Intellectual Allegiance. University of California

(Davis) Law Review 26 (3): 619­52.

_____. 2006. Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Death: Why John Paul II

Was Right. Telos 134 (Spring): 31­63.

De Riggiero, Guido. 1959. The History of European Liberalism. Tr.

Robin G. Collingwood. Boston, MA: Beacon Hill Press.

Dewey, John. 1963a. Freedom and Culture. New York: Capricorn

Books.

_____. 1963b. Liberalism and Social Action. New York: Capricorn

Books.

Green, Thomas H. 1960. Lectures on the Principles of Political

Obligation. London: Longman's Green.

_____. 1964. The Political Theory of T. H. Green. New York:

Appleton­Century­Crofts.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1962. Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Tr. Thomas M.

Knox. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Hittinger, Russell. 1990. Liberalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Wake

Forest Law Review 25: 429­99.

Hoover, Herbert. 1934. Challenge to Liberty. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons.

Huxley, Aldous. 1966. Brave New World. New York: Bantam Books.

Kant, Immanuel. 1993. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Tr.

James W. Ellington. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Machiavelli, Nicolo. 2005. The Prince. Tr./ed. William J. Connell. New

York: St. Martin's Press.

Maritain, Jacques. 1966. Man and the State. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press.

Mill, John Stuart. 1954. On Liberty. London: Oxford University Press.

Murray, John Courtney. 1960. We Hold These Truths. New York: Sheed

& Ward.

Murti, Vasu. 2006. The Liberal Case Against Abortion. Mt. Laurel, NJ:

Rage Media.

Nadelmann, Ethan A. 2004. An End to Marijuana Prohibition. National

Review (12 July): 1­7.

Pieper, Josef. 1975. The Four Cardinal Virtues. Notre Dame, IN:

University of Notre Dame Press.

Plamenatz, John P. 1963. Man and Society. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw­

Hill.

Plato. 1992. The Republic. Tr. George M. A. Grube. Rev. ed. C. D. C.

Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Pope John Paul II. 1995. The Gospel of Life. Vatican tr. New York:

Times Books.

Rorty, Richard. 1991. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1: Objectivity,

Relativism and Truth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1960. The Social Contract. In The Social

Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume and Rousseau. London: Oxford

University Press.

Sabine, George H. 1953. A History of Political Theory. New York:

Henry Holt.

Sandel, Michael J. 1996. America's Search for a New Public Philosophy.

Atlantic Monthly (January): 57­74.

Schall, James. 1984. The Politics of Heaven and Hell. Lanham, MD:

University Press of America.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1957. The Age of Roosevelt. Vols. I­II.

Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Simon, Yves R. 2002. A Critique of Moral Knowledge. Tr. Ralph

McInerny. New York: Fordham University Press.

Swanton, Christine. 2003. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic Account. Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press.

Verhagen, Eduard & Peter Sauer. 2005. The Groningen Protocol:

Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns. New England Journal of Medicine

352 (10): 959­62.

Vogler, Candace. 2002. Reasonably Vicious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

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Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Raymond L. Dennehy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San

Francisco.

After serving from 1954­58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the

heavy cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he

attended the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy.

He studied philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California,

Berkeley, finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Toronto.

He is the author of Anti­Abortionist at Large: How to Argue

Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It. (Go here for

reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity and an

anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently invited on

radio and television programs, as well as university campuses, to speak and

debate on topics such as abortion, physician­assisted suicide, and cloning.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven

grandchildren.

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The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L.

Dennehy, University of San Francisco

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of

Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by

the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in

JIS 2007.

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a

monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical

conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for

that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral

vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as

it is a virtue ethics­­forms individual character so that a person not

only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover,

possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This

is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character

that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation

whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to

freedom and equality for all.

FREEDOM AND VIRTUE

The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive

unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are

given in its support. First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue

ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a

rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.

Second, a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as it is a virtue ethics­­forms

individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to

act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be

able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices

create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse

choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its

commitment to freedom and equality for all.

But liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the

installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to

functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two

premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These two

premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only freedom

which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our own

way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede

their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of this essay

presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to

humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the two premises

are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will inevitably lead to

its self­destruction.

Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant

here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other ethical

theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue ethics here

refers to that state of character that integrates intellect, will, appetite, and

passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that actualize one's potential to

become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle enjoins, moral virtue is an

"excellence of behavior" (1941: 954­55). Second, virtue ethics is the ethics

of choice because it is the only ethical theory that grounds itself in the

principle that human nature is universal: since all human beings have the

same human nature, they are bound by the same ethical principles. If there is

a single, universal human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that

hold for a pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from

what is here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just

because it understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that

ethical behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and

monitored by reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions,

and appetites.

Pope John Paul II called attention to the mounting danger to democracy

from a concept of subjectivity carried to excess, and a notion of freedom

based on the concept of the individual isolated from society (Dennehy 2006:

50­53). These developments express themselves in various ways, one of

which is the change in the popular understanding of constitutional rights.

Russell Hittinger shows that whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived

as objective claims against the government, today, personal self­creation, to

wit, the right to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990:

486­99). This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense

of alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,

all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since the

body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as obstructive.

When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is inevitable that the

individual should find himself increasingly in tension with both nature and

society. The tension with society can be handled diplomaically: the individual

limits his behavior by respecting the rights and desires of others so as to

avoid retaliation. The tension with his body is handled by denial; it is

rejected root and branch as a source for ethical norms of conduct, since it is

perceived as an impediment to personal fulfillment.

For a consistent radical dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self­

awareness as his true self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere

encasement, a virtuous life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his

own actions and commitments. The Platonic Forms­­eternal, perfect, and

unchanging­­could furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior.

But a glorification of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external

criteria to the realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle,

freedom can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by

practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived as a

reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this

attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,

since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual grudgingly

obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has moral authority

(Hegel 1962: 85).

Regarding the second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to

pluralism (diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for

any political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw appears

when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The possibility

is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous Huxley's novel,

Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what they want, and

they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The inhabitants of

Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their desires are gratified. The

reality is that they are slaves, incapable of desiring anything beyond what

they have been genetically designed and conditioned to desire. Like the

iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with candor, "What, me worry?" If

there is any sense in which this may be called "freedom," then perhaps

subjective freedom is the term for it, for they are aware of no limitations to

their desires.

This raises the question: "Is freedom the personal state of being objectively

unrestrained or the subjective state of not being aware of being restrained?"

What is to prevent both Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being

true simultaneously of the same group of people? What about a nation

whose inhabitants are allowed the freedom to do everything they may wish

to do as long as they do not violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do

not realize that they have been programmed to desire only what their

government determines them to desire? One might object that such an

outcome in a free society, although possible, is highly improbable, since the

majority would not allow the encroachments on freedom and rights that

would initially have to occur before a techno­totalitarian regime such as

Huxley's Brave New World could come into existence. But the technology

involved is merely an instrumental cause of the illusion of freedom, not the

illusion itself. Could there be other causes?

Is it within the realm of plausibility that the majority of members of a political

society could think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is

"Yes." The principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that

is separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,

thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably possible

for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but the real cannot

be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is already here,

evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular vote, as well as

ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected. Each counts as an

example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In terms of the public

vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the sphere of private

behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not violate the rights of

others. Relevant examples include:

1. The rapid decline of public and private support for objective and

substantive ethics in favor of relativism.

2. The erosion of respect for human life in Western democracies. Since Roe

v. Wade (1973), some 50 million unborn human lives have been destroyed

in the United States alone. That U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred

legal justification for killing more Americans than the combined number of

those killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (North and South),

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf

War (Murti 2006: 57­60). To be sure, the classical conception of the state's

goal to make men moral undoubtedly produced its share of abuses. Equally

certain is the progress in public acknowledgment of the dignity of human

conscience heralded by the emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

the widespread practice of abortion in Western democracies shows that

monstrous crimes can be allowed and condoned by a society that from its

beginnings has proclaimed its commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness, and that in the name of the right to run one's life as

one chooses as long as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others,

nevertheless creates laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that

commitment.

3. Embryonic stem­cell research uses human beings, during their earliest

stages of development, as objects of scientific research, not only for the

purpose of finding cures for genetically based illness and defects, but also in

the hope of creating designer humans.

4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that proclaims its dedication to

the protection of the young, while failing to introduce laws and policies that

shield them from easy access to pornography.

5. The mounting support for same­sex marriage in the face of the fact that

the official and special recognition of marriage in society has always been

intimately tied to procreation and the realization that men and women are by

nature importantly different, a difference necessary to the proper

development of children.

6. Legislative and judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example,

the British Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for

teachers, even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral

(Bogle 2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from

feelings of unworthiness.

PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY

The argument against a morally neutral conception of freedom collides not

only with a fundamental premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems,

with a central tenet of what Americans accept as the public philosophy.

Michael Sandel succinctly sets forth that tenet:

"The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live is that freedom

consists in our capacity to choose our ends for ourselves. Politics should not

try to form the character or cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so

would be to "legislate morality." Government should not affirm, through its

policies or laws, any particular conception of the good life; instead it should

provide a neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their

own values and ends" (1996: 58).

Both conservative and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom

consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends." The

disagreement occurs when one asks whether any specific traits of character

are needed for an individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the

responsibility for overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since

republican political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing

people to acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self­rule, deliberating

with other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be

realized, it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its

involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In

contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the

procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to ensuring

equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern for its citizens'

personal moral state. The differences between the two theories are real, but

they are not what they seem. Both denounce the government's unjustified

interference in the lives of its citizens, but differ on what constitutes the

injustice:

"Liberals invoke the ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer,

restrictions on abortion or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring

their morality into the public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality

when opposing attempts by government to impose certain moral restraints ­­

for the sake of workers' safety or environmental protection or distributive

justice­­on the market economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on

both sides of the debate over the welfare state. Republicans have long

complained that taxing the rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a

form of coerced charity that violates people's freedom to choose what to do

with their own money. Democrats have long replied that government must

ensure all citizens a decent level of income, housing, education, and health

care, on the grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are

not truly free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their

disagreement about how government should act with respect to individual

choice, both sides assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to

choose their own ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).

If both sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to

choose one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government

intervention in the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting

meanings and valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends."

And thereby hangs a tale.

TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY

At stake here is the clash between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty

and positive liberty. Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is

the absence of external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is

the opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo­American tradition,

liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying rationale

for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that

of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt

to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18).

In contrast, a review of the Continental tradition shows that liberalism is

predominantly identified with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back

to ancient times (De Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers­­

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas­­agreed that the primary

aim of the state was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the

State is the individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that

underlies it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis

or city­state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good

and the good of the city­state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did not

mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the opportunity to

participate in the activities and life of the community (Sabine 1953: 742). It

is no exaggeration to say that this participation was viewed as one with the

state's commitment to the moral life of its citizens. This is evident in the

Republic, where Plato argues that the aim of the state is the implementation

of justice, a concept which, for him, refers both to the external relations of

men and to their internal states of the soul, as well (1992: 116­21). Aristotle

echoes this view (1941: 935­36).

The classical view of the individual's relation to political society underwent a

gradual yet, in the end, radical change. The impact of Christianity on Greco ­

Roman culture transformed the understanding of that relationship. No longer

did the individual exist primarily for the city­state or empire, for now he

could look to a destiny in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was

also the influence of Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual

had meaning and value only in virtue of membership in the city­state. Stoic

philosophy insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a

city­state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The deepening

sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was accompanied by a

corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of the monarch's

authority (Maritain 1966: 30­33). This transformation in the understanding

of the individual's relation to political society caused, in turn, a shift in the

standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place of the city­state and

empire, the transcendent God became the standard. For example, Martin

Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the Church, as the direct voice

of God's will for the individual, widened further the gap between the

individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz 1963: 175). And, while it is

true that a corresponding expansion of personal freedom was

acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom from temporal,

not divine, laws.

The classical­Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by

Nicolo Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally

separated politics from morality:

"there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he

who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin

him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a

career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who

are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain

himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not

use it according to necessity . . . . For, if everything be well considered,

something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if

adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in

his security and well­being" (2005: 87­88).

If Machiavelli deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the

secularization of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of

Padua who interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further

than the tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and

thereby eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a

position quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984:

173). Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,

surfacing in the twentieth century as Realpolitik.

Jean­Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is a reaction to

Machiavellianism. Therein, he attempts to rebuild democracy on the

foundation of the Greek city­state, fusing, once more, morality and politics:

"the State or the City is nothing but a moral person the life of which consists

in the union of its members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he

recognizes no distinction between the individual's moral liberty (which for

Rousseau is the only genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence,

he can write that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (Rousseau 1960: 262­63). This classical idea of the city­state was

picked up and developed by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical

idea" (1962: 107). This is not to overlook important differences between

Rousseau's concept of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as

Ethical Idea. For example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General

Will a mere extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly

making it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers

sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the

ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men

moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory, exemplified in

the writings of neo­Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920: 194) and

Thomas H. Green (1960: 31­32), which examined the relation of the

individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of

negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez­faire economics.

The concept of positive liberty is complex, more so than negative liberty.

For one thing, there seem to be two distinct versions of positive liberty,

which may be characterized as the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic

versions. It is important to separate the two, as the former grounds freedom

in objective moral principles, while the latter looks instead to socio­

economic and psychological conditions that enhance the individual's

capacity to actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version,

such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in

being one's own master. Self­mastery requires a virtuous character, since it

implies the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible

without a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying

the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so

that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher self.

The pragmatic version is clearly the conception of freedom embraced by

liberal political theory. Its advocates, like John Dewey, along with his

present­day descendant, Richard Rorty, are directly interested more in the

individual's socio­economic condition than in his moral and rational

development. They hold that freedom is having the opportunity to do what

is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of the individual's freedom, this

version, as with the ethical version, means obeying the laws of the state, but

they do not ascribe metaphysical or ethical properties to it. Rather, they see

the cultural traditions, laws, and social institutions of political society as

furnishing the conditions for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a

civilized society that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote

that freedom consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of

modern democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version

of positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the

resemblance ends there.

Most telling of all is that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the

pragmatic version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute

standard. They do appeal to standards like "self­realization" and "spiritual

enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling that

one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in­security. In

criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of positive

freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary condition of

freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an individual

free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain socio­

economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he wishes, or

at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to do. Practically

speaking, he or she is not free.

The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and

effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34­35). From a formal standpoint,

freedom is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates

of the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into account

the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of political

liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some extent the

conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's decisions, but for

advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty, these are of central

importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it must be the freedom to

do something worth doing. The absence of external restraint guarantees the

freedom of someone who enjoys favorable circumstances, such as enough

money and education, but that guarantee does not extend to one who lacks

them. This was the argument successfully deployed against laissez­faire

politicians in nineteenth­century Britain by the neo­liberal movement for

government interventionist legislation to help factory workers in labor

negotiations with factory owners. The latter resisted proposed laws that

would regulate labor negotiations by insisting that such would violate the

freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a mutually agreeable labor

contract. Factory owners claimed that if the worker found the contract

unacceptable, he was always free to find employment at a factory that had

an acceptable contract. But attempts to prevent the legislation failed when it

became clear that factory owners were united in standing firm behind the

same working conditions (Green 1964: 51­52).

Although advocates of the pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they

are improving the possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that

advocates of negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems

irreconcilable. Consider, for example, the different ways in which the

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to

the Great Depression in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of

the federal government into the economy constituted interference with free

enterprise and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance

to the depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted

accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of

freedom (1934: 107­35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as

positive (Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651­52).

The classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with

things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the state, its

application leads to an oppressive political society in which its members are

deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains them from doing what

they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do not wish to do, they

are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this is

Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (1960: 262­53). History offers sufficient evidence of the threat to

individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom with the state or

with things other than choosing one's own goals. But critics of negative

liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the individual from attempts

of procedural democracy to form policies based on moral neutrality,

illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic stem­cell research, and

sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that what Plato called the "greed

for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse of civil polity and the emergence

of tyranny (1992: 227­38).

Here, it would be well to return to the two premises set forth in the first

paragraph of this essay. The first is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill

the promise of Dewey's liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty

advocates the abandonment of all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule­

trading of principles that leads to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means

the best practical allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely,

some principles are non­negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life.

If both negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive

liberty are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what

basis can the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the

solution?

THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS

American democracy has its foundation in natural law, as is clear from the

Declaration of Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics

maintains that the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly

ordered, and that that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes

natural law theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all

humans will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence

be bound by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is

such a thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting

nonsense, nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human

rights or any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially

the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race, state

of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to the moral and

legal considerations called "rights." That is why an epistemological nominalist

like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social policies. Since he maintains

that our philosophical claims are culturally and historically bound, there is no

"God's eye view" from which we can view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our

picture of ourselves and nature is irredeemably ethnocentric.

Moreover, public discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no

constructive discourse is possible without commonly accepted principles,

many of which originate in natural law theory. Equally important is that

because the natural law is knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism

is compatible with public discourse to the extent that reason transcends all

ethnocentric and religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm

(Murray 1960: 30­33).

To grasp the precise connection between natural law and moral virtue, it is

necessary to avoid confusion over terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a

synonym for spontaneous occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling

trees, dogs growling over a bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to

one's head to fend off a thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the

natural to the artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since

aspirin and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to

express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may

seem comical.

But in the natural law tradition, "natural" is intended in the sense of the

Greek word for nature, physis: "The conception underlying that term sees

nature itself as teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to

all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to actualize

the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and thereby to attain its

perfection (telos) is natural and therefore good or desirable; what frustrates

its actualization is evil or undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this

understanding of "natural," the products of human artifice are not necessarily

unnatural, since they may contribute to the positive actualization of human

nature: aspirin alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which

is to see; the formation of political society is necessary for human flourishing.

The telos of each living thing is determined by its essence or nature. Thus,

the theory of natural law derives from the human understanding that "there

is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which

human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act

in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of the human

being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that" (Maritain

1966: 86).

An objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed

natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?

The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,

one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and

gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human

nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's understanding of

that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do with how a people

understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp human nature and

its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior conforms to natural

law. Thus, natural law does not change because human nature does not

change (Maritain 1966: 85­89). What changes is knowledge of human

nature­­for better or for worse.

The moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and

temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.

However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.

First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil" (Aquinas

1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except to obtain

what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes the woman's

purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be good, that is,

desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables on his plate, because

eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These are examples of

viewer­relative perceptions insofar as they refer to actions that are

objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good. One might

understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary examples of

natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and objectively

correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer­relative perception and

objective moral law is found in spontaneous human strivings, which Aquinas

calls "primary principles: the inclination to preserve one's life is the natural

law ground for the prohibition of murder; the attraction between the sexes is

the natural law ground for marriage and family; the inclination of humans to

live together in society is the natural law ground for justice since to live in

society requires respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).

The problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete

situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more

variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,

"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a

particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get agreement

on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get agreement

when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a starving family.

The moral virtues provide the bridge between the principles of natural law

ethics and proper action. The virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance

give the agent the right ends to pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him

what means to choose, in the particular situation, to realize those ends

(Aristotle 1941: 1026). Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not

the only thing needed for virtuous action; one must also desire the end.

Most important of all, since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in

acting, the virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to

the virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is

wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not

steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a theoretical

knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided; one must

possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a virtuous person

would make.

"President Clinton's so smart, how could he get himself involved with

Monica Lewinsky, when he knew they were investigating him in the Paula

Jones case?" So exclaimed an obviously intelligent and educated panelist on

a CNN talk show at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A

common error in ethical deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for

judging whether actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging

whether statements are true or false. The above question is a case in point.

Its author failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the

will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and ought

not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are importantly

different. The criterion for truth is conformity between thought and thing.

The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is raining out. Its truth depends

on actual meteorological conditions, which is to say that those conditions,

whatever they may be, exist independently of whatever may be said about

them.

The opposite obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the

conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the criterion

for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent and a

preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the reality,

first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting others, and second,

by either strengthening or weakening his or her character. Thus, matching

one's will to right desire requires more than merely knowing how one ought

to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to behave according to right desire,

and also possess the integration of intellect, will, passion, and appetite to

translate the desire to behave according to right desire into acting according

to right desire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen

for children chosen to become philosopher­kings was to last a full thirty­five

years, consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen.

Moral virtue required the integration of all one's faculties­­intellect, will,

passion, and appetite.

Plato's student, Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and

requirements of moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis)

from theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic principle

that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028­29). On the contrary,

Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take and yet not

take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to act that way

(1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian ethics, he insisted that

one who has to struggle to resist the urge to overindulge does not have the

virtue of temperance, since the very struggle betrays a lack of integration

among his faculties (Aristotle 1941: 1050). One starts on the path of

acquiring moral virtue by first acting as a virtuous person would act until one

can perform virtuous actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the

mimicry of virtuous action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter

must have the following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what

he is doing; (2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must

proceed from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941: 956).

The popular conception of the penalty for immoral behavior is some sort of

physical, mental, or socio­economic harm to oneself: excessive drinking

causes liver damage or loss of employment; lying leads to the loss of trust

among one's family and associates, etc. While no one would deny that those

are undesirable outcomes, classical moral theorists insisted that the price to

be paid for immoral behavior is worse: the loss of rational control. Some

challenge the view that a chosen immoral act is an expression of irrational

behavior. Candace Vogler, for example, sees no reason why one who

successfully plans and performs immoral acts on a regular basis in order to

attain his or her goals cannot be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40­41).

But, she is clearly using the word "rational" analogously. The agent's

behavior is "rational" in the sense that it is the result of sound deliberation

and efficient execution.

But, in the sense of rational entertained by classical moral theorists, his or

her behavior is irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone

seeks. From the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the

objective standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the

presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the

actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant, irrational.

Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying, and

murdering, he can only associate with his own kind­­liars, cheaters,

betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be

surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed

to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now held in

thrall by his own unruly and self­destructive urges (Plato 1992: 249­51).

So, there are at least two reasons why Vogler's immoral agent does not act

rationally. First, by a career of immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold

himself into slavery, riveting his will to the evil rather than the good.

Admittedly, his choices may be called "rational" in the sense that his planning

and acting are logically derived from, and consistent with, his immoral

attachments. But, that is a different sense of "rational" from the sense of the

word when applied to moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have

blinded him to the true state of his life and circumstances. He may feel free,

and believe he is acting freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based

on his belief that his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of

Huxley's Brave New World, they are slaves living delusions of freedom.

Consider, for example, the virtue of chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of

temperance as the latter pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is

badly misunderstood. The modern world identifies it with the prudish view

that regards sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the

extent that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining

to a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the

etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in matters

of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other person for

what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate respect and

justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by the vice of

lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the lion cannot appreciate

the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as food, so the lustful person can

only see another person as a source of sexual gratification (Pieper 1975:

166­67). Or, if the vice is greed, the other is perceived as a source of

monetary enrichment, and the like. Of course, references to sight are meant

to be analogical. The state of vice does not blind one to the truth that the

other is a human being, a person for whom justice demands respect. But, to

the extent that vice corrupts reason, the focus on the other person is

distorted by the desire for gratification.

The libertarian argument for the legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem

of freedom. The argument has two prongs. The first is that attempts by

federal and local authorities to stanch the flow of drugs into America have

been a spectacular failure (Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a

mentally competent adult has the right to ingest whatever substance he or

she chooses, as long as that behavior does not violate the rights of others.

But, would a permissive government policy pertaining to the sale and use of

narcotics produce a better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human

flourishing? A population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the

majority of its members make sensual gratification their criterion of

valorization, can be counted on to conclude, when voting for a political

candidate or law, that what guarantees that gratification is what is good for

democracy.

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

The illusion reveals itself in the inconsistency between the criticism of

objective moral norms as the fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact

that living and acting without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one

and the same object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is

that the demand that one act according to putative objective standards in

order to be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however

laudable­­truth, justice, beauty, goodness, or the law­­are not what

freedom is. The criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous,

since it can delude a population into believing that their adherence to those

kinds of lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive

regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961: 9­10).

But a characteristic of the lack of virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is

the will's enslavement to a specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that

to be free, the individual must have before him a range of options, the lack

of virtue produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably

evaluated in terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice.

Kant's heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a

consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of them­­the

object of his vice (1993: 45­48). From the viewpoint of a formal

consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides his

choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a standard

external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a material

consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous agent

chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta ratio) the locus

of which is the organization of passions and appetites according to reason.

The emergence of liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of

the dignity and freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience,

and the equality of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole,

one must dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost

sight of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the

dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a manifestation

of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are microcosms of the

State, or other totalitarian theories in which the individual has no meaning or

value apart from the state, liberal theory seems to have traveled in the

opposite direction, construing the individual's relation to the political

community primarily in utilitarian terms. This has blinded liberal democracy

to the meaning of Plato's observation that "the State is man writ large": the

moral condition of the political community expresses the moral condition of

its members. It would be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party

gained control of Germany following free elections.

If positive freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a

people's freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a

higher self as one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by

obeying the law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly

offers a better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their

respective and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely

because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is plausible.

Virtue ethics offers the solution to the extent that it furnishes the standard for

action based on understanding and choice unhampered by un­disciplined

passions and appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the

truest sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external

restraints and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human

flourishing, both for self­fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The

argument for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas

Aquinas observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby

succumbing to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the

obligation to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,

metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the

mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on

request; and now the movement to legalize physician­assisted suicide and

infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women as

sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a class of

disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed, and the

elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies, regardless of

whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if, indeed, what the

American people want most is the freedom to choose their own goals, why

do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the innocent and defense ­

less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is the freedom of the strong

against the weak who have no choice but to submit (Pope John Paul II

1995: 28­29).

The enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for

personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including

elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue

ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating

ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of

impending danger. Where are our geese?

REFERENCES:

Aquinas, Thomas. 1945. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol.

1. Ed. Anton C. Pegis. New York: Random House.

Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon.

New York: Random House.

Berlin, Isaiah. 1961. Two Concepts of Liberty. Oxford, UK: Clarendon

Press.

Bogle, Joanna. 2007. England Outlaws Catholic Teaching. National

Catholic Register (8­14 April): 1, 9.

Bosanquet, Bernard. 1920. The Philosophical Theory of the State.

London: Macmillan.

Dennehy, Raymond L. 1993. Bodenheimer's Theory of Natural Law: The

Conflict of a Divided Intellectual Allegiance. University of California

(Davis) Law Review 26 (3): 619­52.

_____. 2006. Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Death: Why John Paul II

Was Right. Telos 134 (Spring): 31­63.

De Riggiero, Guido. 1959. The History of European Liberalism. Tr.

Robin G. Collingwood. Boston, MA: Beacon Hill Press.

Dewey, John. 1963a. Freedom and Culture. New York: Capricorn

Books.

_____. 1963b. Liberalism and Social Action. New York: Capricorn

Books.

Green, Thomas H. 1960. Lectures on the Principles of Political

Obligation. London: Longman's Green.

_____. 1964. The Political Theory of T. H. Green. New York:

Appleton­Century­Crofts.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1962. Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Tr. Thomas M.

Knox. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Hittinger, Russell. 1990. Liberalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Wake

Forest Law Review 25: 429­99.

Hoover, Herbert. 1934. Challenge to Liberty. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons.

Huxley, Aldous. 1966. Brave New World. New York: Bantam Books.

Kant, Immanuel. 1993. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Tr.

James W. Ellington. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Machiavelli, Nicolo. 2005. The Prince. Tr./ed. William J. Connell. New

York: St. Martin's Press.

Maritain, Jacques. 1966. Man and the State. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press.

Mill, John Stuart. 1954. On Liberty. London: Oxford University Press.

Murray, John Courtney. 1960. We Hold These Truths. New York: Sheed

& Ward.

Murti, Vasu. 2006. The Liberal Case Against Abortion. Mt. Laurel, NJ:

Rage Media.

Nadelmann, Ethan A. 2004. An End to Marijuana Prohibition. National

Review (12 July): 1­7.

Pieper, Josef. 1975. The Four Cardinal Virtues. Notre Dame, IN:

University of Notre Dame Press.

Plamenatz, John P. 1963. Man and Society. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw­

Hill.

Plato. 1992. The Republic. Tr. George M. A. Grube. Rev. ed. C. D. C.

Reeve. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Pope John Paul II. 1995. The Gospel of Life. Vatican tr. New York:

Times Books.

Rorty, Richard. 1991. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1: Objectivity,

Relativism and Truth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1960. The Social Contract. In The Social

Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume and Rousseau. London: Oxford

University Press.

Sabine, George H. 1953. A History of Political Theory. New York:

Henry Holt.

Sandel, Michael J. 1996. America's Search for a New Public Philosophy.

Atlantic Monthly (January): 57­74.

Schall, James. 1984. The Politics of Heaven and Hell. Lanham, MD:

University Press of America.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1957. The Age of Roosevelt. Vols. I­II.

Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Simon, Yves R. 2002. A Critique of Moral Knowledge. Tr. Ralph

McInerny. New York: Fordham University Press.

Swanton, Christine. 2003. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic Account. Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press.

Verhagen, Eduard & Peter Sauer. 2005. The Groningen Protocol:

Euthanasia in Severely Ill Newborns. New England Journal of Medicine

352 (10): 959­62.

Vogler, Candace. 2002. Reasonably Vicious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

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Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Raymond L. Dennehy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San

Francisco.

After serving from 1954­58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the

heavy cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he

attended the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy.

He studied philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California,

Berkeley, finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Toronto.

He is the author of Anti­Abortionist at Large: How to Argue

Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It. (Go here for

reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity and an

anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently invited on

radio and television programs, as well as university campuses, to speak and

debate on topics such as abortion, physician­assisted suicide, and cloning.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven

grandchildren.

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The Illusion of Freedom Separated from Moral Virtue | Raymond L.

Dennehy, University of San Francisco

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/dennehy_freedom1_nov07.asp

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Journal of

Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XIX, 1/2 2007), and is reproduced here by

the kind permission of JIS. It won the Oleg Zinam Award for Best Essay in

JIS 2007.

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a

monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. A monistic philosophical

conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for

that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral

vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as

it is a virtue ethics­­forms individual character so that a person not

only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover,

possesses the integration of character to be able to act that way. This

is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character

that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices. A nation

whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to

freedom and equality for all.

FREEDOM AND VIRTUE

The thesis defended in this essay is that liberal democracy cannot survive

unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture. Two arguments are

given in its support. First, a monistic philosophical conception of virtue

ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a

rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society.

Second, a monistic virtue ethics­­insofar as it is a virtue ethics­­forms

individual character so that one not only knows how to act, but desires to

act that way and, what is more, possesses the integration of character to be

able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices

create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse

choices. A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its

commitment to freedom and equality for all.

But liberal democratic doctrine presents a major practical challenge to the

installation of any theory of monistic ethics. Given its commitment to

functioning as a procedural democracy, the challenge springs from two

premises. The first premise is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. These two

premises are implied in John Stuart Mill's famous dictum: "The only freedom

which deserves the name, is that of preserving our own good in our own

way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede

their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18). Although the argument of this essay

presupposes that liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to

humans insofar as they are rational, autonomous beings, the two premises

are mutually contradictory and, if consistently applied, will inevitably lead to

its self­destruction.

Regarding the first part of the thesis, two questions arise. What is meant

here by "virtue ethics?" And, why virtue ethics, as opposed to other ethical

theories, such as utilitarianism or deontologism? First, virtue ethics here

refers to that state of character that integrates intellect, will, appetite, and

passion, so that one regularly acts in ways that actualize one's potential to

become more fully human. Thus, as Aristotle enjoins, moral virtue is an

"excellence of behavior" (1941: 954­55). Second, virtue ethics is the ethics

of choice because it is the only ethical theory that grounds itself in the

principle that human nature is universal: since all human beings have the

same human nature, they are bound by the same ethical principles. If there is

a single, universal human nature, it follows that theories of virtue ethics that

hold for a pluralistic understanding of the moral virtues are excluded from

what is here meant by "virtue ethics" (Swanton 2003: 27). And, just

because it understands that to be human is to be embodied, it maintains that

ethical behavior for a human being demands harmony, orchestrated and

monitored by reason, among all the human faculties, intellect, will, passions,

and appetites.

Pope John Paul II called attention to the mounting danger to democracy

from a concept of subjectivity carried to excess, and a notion of freedom

based on the concept of the individual isolated from society (Dennehy 2006:

50­53). These developments express themselves in various ways, one of

which is the change in the popular understanding of constitutional rights.

Russell Hittinger shows that whereas in Colonial times rights were perceived

as objective claims against the government, today, personal self­creation, to

wit, the right to privacy, is lauded as the primary constitutional right (1990:

486­99). This attitude toward subjectivity cannot be separated from a sense

of alienation from nature. Since nature has its own furniture and dynamics,

all too frequently it poses an obstacle to personal ambition. And, since the

body is a part of physical nature, it, too, must be viewed as obstructive.

When the norm for conduct is subjective desire, it is inevitable that the

individual should find himself increasingly in tension with both nature and

society. The tension with society can be handled diplomaically: the individual

limits his behavior by respecting the rights and desires of others so as to

avoid retaliation. The tension with his body is handled by denial; it is

rejected root and branch as a source for ethical norms of conduct, since it is

perceived as an impediment to personal fulfillment.

For a consistent radical dualist, who acknowledges only one's soul or self­

awareness as his true self, while seeing his body as, at best, a mere

encasement, a virtuous life is still possible, as Socrates demonstrated in his

own actions and commitments. The Platonic Forms­­eternal, perfect, and

unchanging­­could furnish the unwavering standards for ethical behavior.

But a glorification of subjectivism to the extent of relegating all external

criteria to the realm of the oppressive demands that, as a matter of principle,

freedom can have no limits. De facto, it will, nonetheless, be limited by

practical considerations of living with other people, but it is perceived as a

reality conceded but never accepted. G. W. F. Hegel rightly saw this

attitude as a dangerous moment in the development of a people's ethics,

since it dichotomizes the personal and the public. The individual grudgingly

obeys the law, while believing that only his conscience has moral authority

(Hegel 1962: 85).

Regarding the second part of the thesis, given democracy's commitment to

pluralism (diversity), Mill's dictum seems the only defensible possibility for

any political society that regards itself as liberal. But the fatal flaw appears

when that dictum is compared with a possibility and a reality. The possibility

is expressed with the utterance of Mustafa Mond in Aldous Huxley's novel,

Brave New World: "People [here] are happy; they get what they want, and

they never want what they can't get" (1966: 149). The inhabitants of

Huxley's world think that they are free, for all their desires are gratified. The

reality is that they are slaves, incapable of desiring anything beyond what

they have been genetically designed and conditioned to desire. Like the

iconic Alfred E. Newman, they ask, with candor, "What, me worry?" If

there is any sense in which this may be called "freedom," then perhaps

subjective freedom is the term for it, for they are aware of no limitations to

their desires.

This raises the question: "Is freedom the personal state of being objectively

unrestrained or the subjective state of not being aware of being restrained?"

What is to prevent both Mill's dictum and Mond's observation from being

true simultaneously of the same group of people? What about a nation

whose inhabitants are allowed the freedom to do everything they may wish

to do as long as they do not violate anyone else's personal freedom, but do

not realize that they have been programmed to desire only what their

government determines them to desire? One might object that such an

outcome in a free society, although possible, is highly improbable, since the

majority would not allow the encroachments on freedom and rights that

would initially have to occur before a techno­totalitarian regime such as

Huxley's Brave New World could come into existence. But the technology

involved is merely an instrumental cause of the illusion of freedom, not the

illusion itself. Could there be other causes?

Is it within the realm of plausibility that the majority of members of a political

society could think they are free when, in fact, they are not? The answer is

"Yes." The principal cause would be the attempt to preserve a freedom that

is separated from moral virtue. But "would be" is the subjunctive mood and,

thus, belongs to the realm of the merely possible. It is undeniably possible

for a population to suffer from the illusion of being free, but the real cannot

be inferred from the possible. Agreed. But the reality is already here,

evident from practices ratified by legislatures and popular vote, as well as

ratified by the courts as constitutionally protected. Each counts as an

example of the freedom to "choose one's own ends." In terms of the public

vs. private model, they are alleged to belong in the sphere of private

behavior insofar as they pertain to actions that do not violate the rights of

others. Relevant examples include:

1. The rapid decline of public and private support for objective and

substantive ethics in favor of relativism.

2. The erosion of respect for human life in Western democracies. Since Roe

v. Wade (1973), some 50 million unborn human lives have been destroyed

in the United States alone. That U.S. Supreme Court decision conferred

legal justification for killing more Americans than the combined number of

those killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (North and South),

World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf

War (Murti 2006: 57­60). To be sure, the classical conception of the state's

goal to make men moral undoubtedly produced its share of abuses. Equally

certain is the progress in public acknowledgment of the dignity of human

conscience heralded by the emergence of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

the widespread practice of abortion in Western democracies shows that

monstrous crimes can be allowed and condoned by a society that from its

beginnings has proclaimed its commitment to the rights of life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness, and that in the name of the right to run one's life as

one chooses as long as, by so doing, one respects the rights of others,

nevertheless creates laws, policies, and court decisions that contradict that

commitment.

3. Embryonic stem­cell research uses human beings, during their earliest

stages of development, as objects of scientific research, not only for the

purpose of finding cures for genetically based illness and defects, but also in

the hope of creating designer humans.

4. The contradiction is manifest in a society that proclaims its dedication to

the protection of the young, while failing to introduce laws and policies that

shield them from easy access to pornography.

5. The mounting support for same­sex marriage in the face of the fact that

the official and special recognition of marriage in society has always been

intimately tied to procreation and the realization that men and women are by

nature importantly different, a difference necessary to the proper

development of children.

6. Legislative and judicial violence to the right of free speech. For example,

the British Parliament recently approved a law that makes it illegal for

teachers, even in a Catholic school, to teach that homosexuality is immoral

(Bogle 2007: 1). This, apparently, to protect homosexual students from

feelings of unworthiness.

PROCEDURAL VS. FORMATIVE DEMOCRACY

The argument against a morally neutral conception of freedom collides not

only with a fundamental premise of liberal democracy, but also, it seems,

with a central tenet of what Americans accept as the public philosophy.

Michael Sandel succinctly sets forth that tenet:

"The central idea of the public philosophy by which we live is that freedom

consists in our capacity to choose our ends for ourselves. Politics should not

try to form the character or cultivate the virtue of its citizens, for to do so

would be to "legislate morality." Government should not affirm, through its

policies or laws, any particular conception of the good life; instead it should

provide a neutral framework of rights within which people can choose their

own values and ends" (1996: 58).

Both conservative and liberal politics are in agreement that "freedom

consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends." The

disagreement occurs when one asks whether any specific traits of character

are needed for an individual's exercise of freedom, and who has the

responsibility for overseeing the acquisition of those character traits. Since

republican political theory sees the government's role as that of preparing

people to acquire the virtues needed for sharing in self­rule, deliberating

with other citizens about what the common good is and how it is to be

realized, it entertains a formative conception of politics that demands its

involvement with the moral virtues and chosen goals of its citizens. In

contrast, the past decades have witnessed the greater influence of the

procedural politics of liberal political theory, with its commitment to ensuring

equal justice for all without any officially expressed concern for its citizens'

personal moral state. The differences between the two theories are real, but

they are not what they seem. Both denounce the government's unjustified

interference in the lives of its citizens, but differ on what constitutes the

injustice:

"Liberals invoke the ideal of neutrality when opposing school prayer,

restrictions on abortion or attempts by Christian fundamentalists to bring

their morality into the public square. Conservatives appeal to neutrality

when opposing attempts by government to impose certain moral restraints ­­

for the sake of workers' safety or environmental protection or distributive

justice­­on the market economy. The ideal of free choice also figures on

both sides of the debate over the welfare state. Republicans have long

complained that taxing the rich to pay for welfare programs for the poor is a

form of coerced charity that violates people's freedom to choose what to do

with their own money. Democrats have long replied that government must

ensure all citizens a decent level of income, housing, education, and health

care, on the grounds that those who are crushed by economic necessity are

not truly free to exercise choice in other domains. Despite their

disagreement about how government should act with respect to individual

choice, both sides assume that freedom consists in the capacity of people to

choose their own ends" (Sandel 1996: 58; emphasis added).

If both sides seek to defend the same primary value, to wit, the freedom to

choose one's own ends, their conflicting reactions to government

intervention in the lives of its people must hinge on assigning conflicting

meanings and valuations to the phrase, "capacity to choose their own ends."

And thereby hangs a tale.

TWO CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY

At stake here is the clash between two concepts of liberty: negative liberty

and positive liberty. Simply expressed, negative liberty holds that freedom is

the absence of external restraint, while positive liberty holds that freedom is

the opportunity to do what is worth doing. In the Anglo­American tradition,

liberalism subscribes to negative freedom. That is the underlying rationale

for Mill's statement that: "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that

of preserving our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt

to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it" (1954: 18).

In contrast, a review of the Continental tradition shows that liberalism is

predominantly identified with positive liberty, a tradition that extends back

to ancient times (De Riggiero 1959). The classical political philosophers­­

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas­­agreed that the primary

aim of the state was to make its members moral. Plato's notion that "the

State is the individual writ large," regardless of the metaphysical view that

underlies it, in itself merely reflects the ancient Greek conception of the polis

or city­state, which recognized no distinction between the individual's good

and the good of the city­state. For the ancient Greeks, citizenship did not

mean rights against the state, but rather membership in it, the opportunity to

participate in the activities and life of the community (Sabine 1953: 742). It

is no exaggeration to say that this participation was viewed as one with the

state's commitment to the moral life of its citizens. This is evident in the

Republic, where Plato argues that the aim of the state is the implementation

of justice, a concept which, for him, refers both to the external relations of

men and to their internal states of the soul, as well (1992: 116­21). Aristotle

echoes this view (1941: 935­36).

The classical view of the individual's relation to political society underwent a

gradual yet, in the end, radical change. The impact of Christianity on Greco ­

Roman culture transformed the understanding of that relationship. No longer

did the individual exist primarily for the city­state or empire, for now he

could look to a destiny in eternity with his Creator. To be sure, there was

also the influence of Stoicism, which rejected the view that the individual

had meaning and value only in virtue of membership in the city­state. Stoic

philosophy insisted, on the contrary, that everyone, whether belonging to a

city­state or not, was a world citizen, a civitas maxime. The deepening

sense of the nature and dignity of the human person was accompanied by a

corresponding reassessment of the nature and extent of the monarch's

authority (Maritain 1966: 30­33). This transformation in the understanding

of the individual's relation to political society caused, in turn, a shift in the

standard of what constituted moral behavior. In place of the city­state and

empire, the transcendent God became the standard. For example, Martin

Luther's emphasis on conscience, rather than the Church, as the direct voice

of God's will for the individual, widened further the gap between the

individual and earthly institutions (Plamenatz 1963: 175). And, while it is

true that a corresponding expansion of personal freedom was

acknowledged, the new sense of freedom was a freedom from temporal,

not divine, laws.

The classical­Christian view was supplanted in the sixteenth century by

Nicolo Machiavelli who, in his manual of practical politics, formally

separated politics from morality:

"there is such a distance from how one lives to how one ought to live that he

who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns what will ruin

him rather than what will save him, since a man who would wish to make a

career of being good in every detail must come to ruin among so many who

are not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to maintain

himself, to learn to be able to be not good, and to use this faculty and not

use it according to necessity . . . . For, if everything be well considered,

something will be found that will appear a virtue, but will lead to his ruin if

adopted; and something else that will appear a vice, if adopted, will result in

his security and well­being" (2005: 87­88).

If Machiavelli deserves credit for the separation of morals and law, the

secularization of political theory seems to have begun with Marsilius of

Padua who interpreted Aristotle to mean that politics reached no further

than the tangible world: "Marsilius completely despiritualized politics and

thereby eliminated the transcendent from any place in the world of men, a

position quite the opposite of both Aristotle and Aquinas" (Schall 1984:

173). Subsequent political theory was characterized by moral neutrality,

surfacing in the twentieth century as Realpolitik.

Jean­Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is a reaction to

Machiavellianism. Therein, he attempts to rebuild democracy on the

foundation of the Greek city­state, fusing, once more, morality and politics:

"the State or the City is nothing but a moral person the life of which consists

in the union of its members" (Rousseau 1960: 276). Accordingly, he

recognizes no distinction between the individual's moral liberty (which for

Rousseau is the only genuine liberty) and his political or civil liberty. Hence,

he can write that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (Rousseau 1960: 262­63). This classical idea of the city­state was

picked up and developed by Hegel: "The State is the actuality of the ethical

idea" (1962: 107). This is not to overlook important differences between

Rousseau's concept of the General Will and Hegel's theory of the State as

Ethical Idea. For example, Hegel criticizes Rousseau for making the General

Will a mere extension of the individual's conscious will, instead of properly

making it the "absolute or rational will" (Hegel 1962: 33). Yet both thinkers

sounded the alarm against the rise of amoral politics, and shared the

ambition of restoring the goal of classical political theory to make men

moral. That ambition carried over into British political theory, exemplified in

the writings of neo­Hegelians like Bernard Bosanquet (1920: 194) and

Thomas H. Green (1960: 31­32), which examined the relation of the

individual to society as the preface to their challenges to the notion of

negative freedom espoused by advocates of laissez­faire economics.

The concept of positive liberty is complex, more so than negative liberty.

For one thing, there seem to be two distinct versions of positive liberty,

which may be characterized as the metaphysical/ethical and pragmatic

versions. It is important to separate the two, as the former grounds freedom

in objective moral principles, while the latter looks instead to socio­

economic and psychological conditions that enhance the individual's

capacity to actualize one's choices. Advocates of the metaphysical version,

such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Bosanquet, hold that freedom consists in

being one's own master. Self­mastery requires a virtuous character, since it

implies the capacity to act in accordance with reason, which is impossible

without a virtuous character. In terms of political liberty, this means obeying

the laws of the state, which is construed as the embodiment of reason, so

that in that obedience, one is really obeying one's higher self.

The pragmatic version is clearly the conception of freedom embraced by

liberal political theory. Its advocates, like John Dewey, along with his

present­day descendant, Richard Rorty, are directly interested more in the

individual's socio­economic condition than in his moral and rational

development. They hold that freedom is having the opportunity to do what

is worth doing (Dewey 1963a: 7). In terms of the individual's freedom, this

version, as with the ethical version, means obeying the laws of the state, but

they do not ascribe metaphysical or ethical properties to it. Rather, they see

the cultural traditions, laws, and social institutions of political society as

furnishing the conditions for the individual's fulfillment. It is as a member of a

civilized society that one actualizes one's potential. Hence, Dewey wrote

that freedom consists in the ability to participate in the cultural riches of

modern democratic society (1963b: 5). In this sense, the pragmatic version

of positive liberty resembles that of classical political theorists, but the

resemblance ends there.

Most telling of all is that, in contrast to classical theorists, proponents of the

pragmatic version do not necessarily acknowledge an objective or absolute

standard. They do appeal to standards like "self­realization" and "spiritual

enrichment," but interpret them broadly to mean such things as feeling that

one's work is important or avoiding poverty and economic in­security. In

criticizing negative liberty, advocates of the pragmatic version of positive

freedom do not deny that the absence of restraint is the primary condition of

freedom. What they deny is that this condition alone makes an individual

free. Freedom, they insist, depends on the presence of certain socio­

economic conditions, without which a person cannot do what he wishes, or

at least cannot do what a civilized person ought to be able to do. Practically

speaking, he or she is not free.

The rationale for this view rests on a distinction between formal and

effective freedom (Dewey 1963b: 34­35). From a formal standpoint,

freedom is the absence of external restraint; but this, according to advocates

of the pragmatic version, is a hollow criterion. It fails to take into account

the individual's specific circumstances. No doubt, every theory of political

liberty, even versions of negative liberty, assumes to some extent the

conditions or opportunities necessary to act on one's decisions, but for

advocates of the pragmatic version of positive liberty, these are of central

importance. Freedom, they say, must be effective; it must be the freedom to

do something worth doing. The absence of external restraint guarantees the

freedom of someone who enjoys favorable circumstances, such as enough

money and education, but that guarantee does not extend to one who lacks

them. This was the argument successfully deployed against laissez­faire

politicians in nineteenth­century Britain by the neo­liberal movement for

government interventionist legislation to help factory workers in labor

negotiations with factory owners. The latter resisted proposed laws that

would regulate labor negotiations by insisting that such would violate the

freedom of owner and worker to arrive at a mutually agreeable labor

contract. Factory owners claimed that if the worker found the contract

unacceptable, he was always free to find employment at a factory that had

an acceptable contract. But attempts to prevent the legislation failed when it

became clear that factory owners were united in standing firm behind the

same working conditions (Green 1964: 51­52).

Although advocates of the pragmatic version of freedom maintain that they

are improving the possibilities for the exercise of the very freedom that

advocates of negative freedom seek, the tension between them seems

irreconcilable. Consider, for example, the different ways in which the

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt administrations reacted to

the Great Depression in the United States. Hoover believed that the entry of

the federal government into the economy constituted interference with free

enterprise and, accordingly, refused to allow massive government assistance

to the depressed economy. Roosevelt held the opposite view, and reacted

accordingly. Not surprisingly, Hoover embraced the negative concept of

freedom (1934: 107­35), whereas Roosevelt conceived freedom as

positive (Schlesinger 1957, 1: 424; II: 651­52).

The classical objection to positive liberty is that, by confusing freedom with

things like justice, goodness, one's higher self, or the laws of the state, its

application leads to an oppressive political society in which its members are

deluded in the belief that even when the law restrains them from doing what

they wish to do, and requires them to do what they do not wish to do, they

are nevertheless "free." Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this is

Rousseau's claim that "it may be necessary to compel a man to be

free" (1960: 262­53). History offers sufficient evidence of the threat to

individual freedom posed by the identification of freedom with the state or

with things other than choosing one's own goals. But critics of negative

liberty have found ample evidence of threats to the individual from attempts

of procedural democracy to form policies based on moral neutrality,

illustrated by the legalization of abortion, embryonic stem­cell research, and

sexual promiscuity. Accordingly, they warn that what Plato called the "greed

for freedom" will lead to the moral collapse of civil polity and the emergence

of tyranny (1992: 227­38).

Here, it would be well to return to the two premises set forth in the first

paragraph of this essay. The first is that liberal democracy is committed to

ensuring its individual members the widest latitude of personal freedom

consistent with the freedom of others. The second is that liberal democracy

is committed to moral neutrality in all matters where individual or group

behavior does not violate the rights and freedom of others. Striving to fulfill

the promise of Dewey's liberalism in contemporary democracy, Rorty

advocates the abandonment of all absolutes in favor of a kind of mule­

trading of principles that leads to "reflective equilibrium," by which he means

the best practical allocation of justice in society (1991: 190). But, surely,

some principles are non­negotiable, such as the right of the innocent to life.

If both negative liberty and the metaphysical/ethical version of positive

liberty are unacceptable as the standard of democratic freedom, on what

basis can the theory of monistic virtue ethics lay claim to providing the

solution?

THE NATURAL LAW FOUNDATION OF VIRTUE ETHICS

American democracy has its foundation in natural law, as is clear from the

Declaration of Independence. Since the monistic theory of virtue ethics

maintains that the standard of moral conduct is human nature properly

ordered, and that that nature is universal, it follows that it presupposes

natural law theory. For, if there is a single human nature, it follows that all

humans will have the same exigencies, display the same drives, and hence

be bound by the same essential principles. Nominalists deny that there is

such a thing as a real human nature or essence, but besides courting

nonsense, nominalism is inconsistent with a universal declaration of human

rights or any rational defense of civil rights. Only if all humans are essentially

the same (this excludes morally irrelevant characteristics such as race, state

of health, economic condition) are they all entitled in justice to the moral and

legal considerations called "rights." That is why an epistemological nominalist

like Rorty can only propose pragmatic social policies. Since he maintains

that our philosophical claims are culturally and historically bound, there is no

"God's eye view" from which we can view reality (Rorty 1991: 202). Our

picture of ourselves and nature is irredeemably ethnocentric.

Moreover, public discourse is the lifeblood of democracy, but no

constructive discourse is possible without commonly accepted principles,

many of which originate in natural law theory. Equally important is that

because the natural law is knowable by unaided reason, religious pluralism

is compatible with public discourse to the extent that reason transcends all

ethnocentric and religious boundaries. It is the coin of the (world) realm

(Murray 1960: 30­33).

To grasp the precise connection between natural law and moral virtue, it is

necessary to avoid confusion over terms. In common parlance, "natural" is a

synonym for spontaneous occurrences, such as the sprouting of sapling

trees, dogs growling over a bone, or reflexively throwing one's hands up to

one's head to fend off a thrown object. This use of the word juxtaposes the

natural to the artificial, which embraces all products of human artifice. Since

aspirin and eyeglasses are artificial, instead of natural, the use of "natural" to

express moral approval and "unnatural" to express moral condemnation may

seem comical.

But in the natural law tradition, "natural" is intended in the sense of the

Greek word for nature, physis: "The conception underlying that term sees

nature itself as teleological: a striving for fulfillment (horme) is attributed to

all natural entities, including human beings. What allows an entity to actualize

the potentials of its determinate nature, its essence, and thereby to attain its

perfection (telos) is natural and therefore good or desirable; what frustrates

its actualization is evil or undesirable" (Dennehy 1993: 630). With this

understanding of "natural," the products of human artifice are not necessarily

unnatural, since they may contribute to the positive actualization of human

nature: aspirin alleviates pain; eye glasses facilitate the aim of the eye, which

is to see; the formation of political society is necessary for human flourishing.

The telos of each living thing is determined by its essence or nature. Thus,

the theory of natural law derives from the human understanding that "there

is, by the very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which

human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act

in order to attune itself to the essential and necessary ends of the human

being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that" (Maritain

1966: 86).

An objection frequently raised against natural law is that if it is indeed

natural, how come all peoples do not follow the same set of moral laws?

The answer is epistemological and ethical. Regarding the epistemological,

one can, following Maritain, distinguish between the ontological and

gnoseological aspects of natural law. The former term refers to human

nature or essence as it really is; the latter refers to one's understanding of

that nature. Historical and social forces have much to do with how a people

understand moral behavior. The more clearly they grasp human nature and

its exigencies, the more closely their moral behavior conforms to natural

law. Thus, natural law does not change because human nature does not

change (Maritain 1966: 85­89). What changes is knowledge of human

nature­­for better or for worse.

The moral virtues, chief among them prudence, justice, fortitude, and

temperance, play an indispensable part in the fulfillment of natural law.

However, establishing that connection requires several preliminary steps.

First, there is a preamble to natural law: "Do good and avoid evil" (Aquinas

1945: 774). This is implied in all action, for no one acts except to obtain

what is good or avoid what is evil. The mugger forcibly takes the woman's

purse, since acquiring money in that way appears to him to be good, that is,

desirable; the child tries to avoid eating the vegetables on his plate, because

eating them appears to him to be undesirable. These are examples of

viewer­relative perceptions insofar as they refer to actions that are

objectively morally evil, although appearing to be good. One might

understandably suppose that, as such, they are hardly salutary examples of

natural law whose principles are supposedly universally and objectively

correct. The bridge between subjective, viewer­relative perception and

objective moral law is found in spontaneous human strivings, which Aquinas

calls "primary principles: the inclination to preserve one's life is the natural

law ground for the prohibition of murder; the attraction between the sexes is

the natural law ground for marriage and family; the inclination of humans to

live together in society is the natural law ground for justice since to live in

society requires respect for people" (Aquinas 1945: 775).

The problem with abstract principles is that applying them in concrete

situations generates variables, the more concrete the situation, the more

variables. For example, it is one thing to get agreement on the statement,

"Murder is wrong," but quite another to find agreement on whether a

particular act of homicide counts as murder. It is one thing to get agreement

on the statement, "Stealing is wrong," but quite another to get agreement

when someone sneaks food from a grocery market to feed a starving family.

The moral virtues provide the bridge between the principles of natural law

ethics and proper action. The virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance

give the agent the right ends to pursue, while the virtue of prudence tells him

what means to choose, in the particular situation, to realize those ends

(Aristotle 1941: 1026). Knowing the proper means to a desired end is not

the only thing needed for virtuous action; one must also desire the end.

Most important of all, since ethics has its fulfillment not in thinking, but in

acting, the virtue of prudence does not simply show what means will lead to

the virtuous goal, it commands that they be used. It does not say, "It is

wrong to steal that person's wallet"; rather, it issues a command, "Do not

steal that wallet." Thus, virtuous behavior demands more than a theoretical

knowledge of which actions are to be done and which avoided; one must

possess the practical virtues to execute the decisions that a virtuous person

would make.

"President Clinton's so smart, how could he get himself involved with

Monica Lewinsky, when he knew they were investigating him in the Paula

Jones case?" So exclaimed an obviously intelligent and educated panelist on

a CNN talk show at the beginning of the Clinton impeachment process. A

common error in ethical deliberation is the assumption that the criterion for

judging whether actions are moral or immoral is the same for judging

whether statements are true or false. The above question is a case in point.

Its author failed to understand that morality is not in the intellect, but in the

will. People frequently act contrary to what they know they ought and ought

not to do. The respective criteria for truth and action are importantly

different. The criterion for truth is conformity between thought and thing.

The statement, "It is raining out," is true, if it is raining out. Its truth depends

on actual meteorological conditions, which is to say that those conditions,

whatever they may be, exist independently of whatever may be said about

them.

The opposite obtains in ethics. The criterion for truth in moral action is the

conformity of the will to right desire (Simon 2002: 10). Unlike the criterion

for a true statement, the conformity is not between the agent and a

preexisting reality. On the contrary, the agent's choice creates the reality,

first, by altering the external state of affairs and affecting others, and second,

by either strengthening or weakening his or her character. Thus, matching

one's will to right desire requires more than merely knowing how one ought

to behave. To reiterate, one must desire to behave according to right desire,

and also possess the integration of intellect, will, passion, and appetite to

translate the desire to behave according to right desire into acting according

to right desire. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plato's educational regimen

for children chosen to become philosopher­kings was to last a full thirty­five

years, consisting as much of character formation as intellectual acumen.

Moral virtue required the integration of all one's faculties­­intellect, will,

passion, and appetite.

Plato's student, Aristotle, gave fuller articulation to the nature and

requirements of moral virtue by separating practical wisdom (phronesis)

from theoretical wisdom (sophia), thereby rejecting the Socratic principle

that no one deliberately does evil (1941: 1028­29). On the contrary,

Aristotle observed, just as one can know what medicine to take and yet not

take it, so one can know how one ought to act and yet fail to act that way

(1941: 956). As if to anticipate a criticism of Kantian ethics, he insisted that

one who has to struggle to resist the urge to overindulge does not have the

virtue of temperance, since the very struggle betrays a lack of integration

among his faculties (Aristotle 1941: 1050). One starts on the path of

acquiring moral virtue by first acting as a virtuous person would act until one

can perform virtuous actions easily and pleasurably. To avoid mistaking the

mimicry of virtuous action for the real thing, Aristotle held that the latter

must have the following three characteristics: (1) the agent must know what

he is doing; (2) he must choose the action for its own sake; (3) the act must

proceed from a fixed and permanent state of character (1941: 956).

The popular conception of the penalty for immoral behavior is some sort of

physical, mental, or socio­economic harm to oneself: excessive drinking

causes liver damage or loss of employment; lying leads to the loss of trust

among one's family and associates, etc. While no one would deny that those

are undesirable outcomes, classical moral theorists insisted that the price to

be paid for immoral behavior is worse: the loss of rational control. Some

challenge the view that a chosen immoral act is an expression of irrational

behavior. Candace Vogler, for example, sees no reason why one who

successfully plans and performs immoral acts on a regular basis in order to

attain his or her goals cannot be said to be acting rationally (2002: 40­41).

But, she is clearly using the word "rational" analogously. The agent's

behavior is "rational" in the sense that it is the result of sound deliberation

and efficient execution.

But, in the sense of rational entertained by classical moral theorists, his or

her behavior is irrational because it cannot lead to the goal that everyone

seeks. From the subjective standpoint, the goal is happiness; from the

objective standpoint, the goal, according to Aquinas, say, is eternity in the

presence of God (Vogler 2002: 34). Socrates zeroed in on what makes the

actions of even the most successful of immoral people, the tyrant, irrational.

Having made his way to the top by lying, cheating, betraying, and

murdering, he can only associate with his own kind­­liars, cheaters,

betrayers, and murderers. His own untrustworthiness condemns him to be

surrounded by deputies whom he cannot trust. More relevant, having failed

to integrate his appetites and passions with reason, the tyrant is now held in

thrall by his own unruly and self­destructive urges (Plato 1992: 249­51).

So, there are at least two reasons why Vogler's immoral agent does not act

rationally. First, by a career of immoral scheming and choosing, he has sold

himself into slavery, riveting his will to the evil rather than the good.

Admittedly, his choices may be called "rational" in the sense that his planning

and acting are logically derived from, and consistent with, his immoral

attachments. But, that is a different sense of "rational" from the sense of the

word when applied to moral behavior. Second, immoral choices have

blinded him to the true state of his life and circumstances. He may feel free,

and believe he is acting freely, but this is a merely subjective freedom, based

on his belief that his choices and actions are unrestrained. Like members of

Huxley's Brave New World, they are slaves living delusions of freedom.

Consider, for example, the virtue of chastity, which is the cardinal virtue of

temperance as the latter pertains to sexual appetite. The term "chastity" is

badly misunderstood. The modern world identifies it with the prudish view

that regards sexuality with disdain and even fear; thus, one is chaste to the

extent that one is not sullied by sexual behavior. But, rather than pertaining

to a Gnostic or Manichean prudishness toward bodily functions, the

etymological roots of "chastity" refer to purity or clarity of vision in matters

of sexual behavior. The chaste person is one who sees the other person for

what he or she is, a being of dignity for whom appropriate respect and

justice are due. In contrast, one who has become enslaved by the vice of

lust no longer sees the other in a true light. Just as the lion cannot appreciate

the stag for its grace and beauty, but only as food, so the lustful person can

only see another person as a source of sexual gratification (Pieper 1975:

166­67). Or, if the vice is greed, the other is perceived as a source of

monetary enrichment, and the like. Of course, references to sight are meant

to be analogical. The state of vice does not blind one to the truth that the

other is a human being, a person for whom justice demands respect. But, to

the extent that vice corrupts reason, the focus on the other person is

distorted by the desire for gratification.

The libertarian argument for the legalization of drugs pinpoints the problem

of freedom. The argument has two prongs. The first is that attempts by

federal and local authorities to stanch the flow of drugs into America have

been a spectacular failure (Nadelman 2004: 1). The second is that a

mentally competent adult has the right to ingest whatever substance he or

she chooses, as long as that behavior does not violate the rights of others.

But, would a permissive government policy pertaining to the sale and use of

narcotics produce a better, or at least no worse, set of conditions for human

flourishing? A population lacking the virtue of temperance so that the

majority of its members make sensual gratification their criterion of

valorization, can be counted on to conclude, when voting for a political

candidate or law, that what guarantees that gratification is what is good for

democracy.

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

The illusion reveals itself in the inconsistency between the criticism of

objective moral norms as the fulfillment of personal freedom and the fact

that living and acting without moral virtue inevitably yokes one's will to one

and the same object of desire. The standard criticism of positive freedom is

that the demand that one act according to putative objective standards in

order to be free is to confuse freedom with things, which, however

laudable­­truth, justice, beauty, goodness, or the law­­are not what

freedom is. The criticism goes on to say that the confusion is dangerous,

since it can delude a population into believing that their adherence to those

kinds of lofty standards makes them free when it fact it allows an oppressive

regime to control their lives (Berlin 1961: 9­10).

But a characteristic of the lack of virtue, and surely of the state of vice, is

the will's enslavement to a specific object of desire. So, despite insisting that

to be free, the individual must have before him a range of options, the lack

of virtue produces the opposite: prospective choices are inevitably

evaluated in terms of their relation to the principal object of one's vice.

Kant's heteronomous man looks as though he chooses on the basis of a

consideration of options, but his will is necessitated to only one of them­­the

object of his vice (1993: 45­48). From the viewpoint of a formal

consideration, the structure of the choice is like that of one who guides his

choices by moral virtue insofar as those choices are guided by a standard

external to his subjective self. But from the viewpoint of a material

consideration, the two could not be farther apart. The virtuous agent

chooses according to a rule of reason (orthos logos; recta ratio) the locus

of which is the organization of passions and appetites according to reason.

The emergence of liberal democracy signals a deepened understanding of

the dignity and freedom of the human person, the integrity of conscience,

and the equality of all human beings. But in a finite existence, to fill a hole,

one must dig a hole. For all its glories, liberal democratic theory has lost

sight of the individual's connection with the political community. Granting the

dangers inherent in Rousseau's theory that each individual is a manifestation

of the General will or Hegel's view that individuals are microcosms of the

State, or other totalitarian theories in which the individual has no meaning or

value apart from the state, liberal theory seems to have traveled in the

opposite direction, construing the individual's relation to the political

community primarily in utilitarian terms. This has blinded liberal democracy

to the meaning of Plato's observation that "the State is man writ large": the

moral condition of the political community expresses the moral condition of

its members. It would be well to remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party

gained control of Germany following free elections.

If positive freedom, especially the metaphysical version, poses threats to a

people's freedom to choose their own ends by imposing the state or a

higher self as one's true self, so that one is deluded into believing that by

obeying the law, one is really obeying oneself, negative freedom hardly

offers a better prospect. The possibility of a nation enslaved in their

respective and collective actions by their vices, but believing they act freely

because they do what they wish, is as disturbing as it is plausible.

Virtue ethics offers the solution to the extent that it furnishes the standard for

action based on understanding and choice unhampered by un­disciplined

passions and appetites. For the virtuous person, freedom is negative in the

truest sense insofar as he or she enjoys a freedom from both external

restraints and the inner restraints of vice. That is the route to human

flourishing, both for self­fulfillment and preparation for citizenship. The

argument for a virtuous society must not be allowed to go begging. Thomas

Aquinas observed that after one loses the virtue of chastity, thereby

succumbing to the vice of lust, the next virtue to be lost is justice, the

obligation to pay each his due. That is because vice, being a malignancy,

metastasizes. First, there was the sexual revolution, accompanied by the

mainstream acceptance of pornography; then legalization of abortion on

request; and now the movement to legalize physician­assisted suicide and

infanticide (Verhagen & Sauer 2005: 960). The objectification of women as

sexual objects has led to the creation of a new social category: a class of

disposable people, to wit the unborn, the sickly and deformed, and the

elderly. Hardly a desirable policy for democratic societies, regardless of

whether they are procedural or formative polities. For if, indeed, what the

American people want most is the freedom to choose their own goals, why

do they not acknowledge that the freedom to kill the innocent and defense ­

less contradicts any democratic freedom, for it is the freedom of the strong

against the weak who have no choice but to submit (Pope John Paul II

1995: 28­29).

The enduring ideal is a democracy that confers the widest latitude for

personal freedom on its members, the vast majority of whom, including

elected officials and judges, have characters shaped by a monistic virtue

ethics. The crucial question is, who has the responsibility of inculcating

ethics in society? The cackling of the sacred geese warned ancient Rome of

impending danger. Where are our geese?

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Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Raymond L. Dennehy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San

Francisco.

After serving from 1954­58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the

heavy cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he

attended the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy.

He studied philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California,

Berkeley, finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Toronto.

He is the author of Anti­Abortionist at Large: How to Argue

Intelligently about Abortion and Live to Tell About It. (Go here for

reviews and excerpts.) His previous books are Reason and Dignity and an

anthology he edited, Christian Married Love. He is frequently invited on

radio and television programs, as well as university campuses, to speak and

debate on topics such as abortion, physician­assisted suicide, and cloning.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven

grandchildren.

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