John Locke’s distinction between liberty and the voluntary

[Originally published on a weblog called “What Is Liberalism?”]

Written by Phillip Honenberger

I’m still working my way through Locke’s “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” Perhaps some others involved in this blog would like to pick up a copy for themselves and dialogue a bit?

My reasons for concentrating on the Essay here are as follows.

Locke’s text is, on the surface, a mighty tome devoted to classical philosophical questions of an epistemological, metaphysical, or ethical nature. Though these sorts of questions are undoubtedly central to the text, it seems to me that there is also a deeply political undercurrent throughout. Obviously Locke’s political philosophy was very influential to the American founders, but one suspects that most of these men, practically-oriented as they were, would not have busied themselves with the hefty four volume Essay, and would likely instead– if they read Locke in the original at all– have concerned themselves with the much shorter (and, much more to the point so far as politics is concerned) “Two Treatises on Government.” And yet, the themes of the Essay are extremely wide-ranging and significant, and I have reason to suspect that at least some of the insights offered there will prove fruitful for consideration of the question, “What is Liberalism?”

I’m not the only one to think that the doctrines put forward in the Essay might be more-or-less politically motivated: if I recall correctly, similar claims have been made by Bertrand Russell and Allan Bloom. Perhaps in a later post I will consider their comments on the Essay explicitly.

In Locke’s own words, the essay is concerned primarily with three things.

First. I shall inquire into the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes, and is conscious to himself he has in mind, and the ways whereby the understanding comes to be furnished with them.

This first part of the project will involve what we might call a “speculative psychology.”

Secondly. I shall endeavour to show what knowledge the understanding hath by those ideas, and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it.

This second part of the project is more akin to what we today call “epistemology.” It is concerned with establishing a method for differentiating true knowledge from mere opinion or falsehood. Whereas the first part of the project will mean drawing a conclusion about the nature and functioning of the mind, this second part will mean drawing a conclusion about the extent and limits of human knowledge.

Thirdly. I shall make some inquiry into the nature and grounds of faith and opinion; whereby I mean, that assent which we give to any proposition as true, of whose truth yet we have no certain knowledge: and here we shall have occasion to examine the reasons and degrees of assent.

Thus, Locke will eventually attempt to provide an answer to questions regarding religious faith (some of which I commented on in my last post). He will also in this context offer some interesting arguments regarding what we would today call “probablity” and the reasonableness of believing some things even if we can’t have perfect knowledge of them.

All of the above passages are taken from Book I, Chapter I, Section 3 of the Essay.

None of this– with the possible exception of the topic of religious revelation– appears to have very much to do with the question of liberalism, which is mostly a political and governmental question. On the other hand, if Locke can teach us something about the nature of the human understanding, and if he can persuade us that various aspects of his account can be known with certainty to be true of the human understanding, then this information might be extremely useful to us as we try to answer political and ethical questions.

I now turn to a passage where the epistemological significance of Locke’s account seems to have direct consequences for political theory. This passage can be found in book II, chapter XXI, section 8, where Locke gives a preliminary definition of the idea of liberty. Locke is here especially concerned to distinguish the idea of liberty from the idea of the voluntary. Locke writes,

…so far as a man has a power to think or not to think, to move or not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind, so far is a man free. Wherever any performance or forbearance are not equally in a man’s power, wherever doing or not doing will not equally follow upon the preference of his mind directing it, there he is not free, though perhaps the action is voluntary. So that the idea of liberty is the idea of a power in any agent to do or forbear any particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is preferred to the other; where either of them is not in the power of the agent, to be produced by him according to his own volition, there he is not at liberty, that agent is under necessity. So that liberty cannot be where there is no thought, no volition, no will; but there may be thought, there may be will, there may be volition, where there is no liberty.

In other words, the presence or absence of liberty in any given context is measured by whether or not the person can actually do what he or she might choose to do. The presence or absence of volition, on the other hand, is measured by whether or not the person makes any kind of choice.

In the remainder of this chapter (which is comparatively a rather long one) Locke will use this distinction between liberty and volition to solve the problem of “free will.” He will say that the question of freedom is a question that only makes sense in regards to what it is that a person can actually do, not in regards to what it is that a person can choose or prefer or will. To ask whether a person is free to choose is stupid; a person’s choices are measurable only in the act of choosing. To ask whether a person is free to make manifest that which is chosen, however, is entirely sensical. The latter question is a question about the liberty of the person.

Locke will also argue that the cause of human volition is in the mind, and that the object of human volition is always happiness (which is maximum of pleasure and minimum of pain), though human beings are often misguided about what actions are most likely to bring about their happiness. Locke further argues that to decide (i.e. to will) the greatest good for ourselves (i.e. our happiness) is no abridgment to our liberty, but is actually the purpose of our liberty. I cite a passage from section 48.

48. To be determined by our own judgment, is no restraint to liberty.– This is so far from being a restraint or diminution of freedom, that it is the very improvement and benefit of it; it is not an abridgment, it is the end and use, of our liberty; and the farther we are removed from such a determination, the nearer we are to misery and slavery.

It seems that Locke is, throughout this chapter, engaged in two typically philosophical maneuvers. First, he wants to secure the knowledge that there is such a thing as volition (i.e. that people do in fact make choices about what to do). Second, he wants to argue that true happiness consists in aligning that volition with what might be called a “virtuous course of action.”

What is distinctive here, however– and it makes Locke’s conclusions on this topic of “the freedom of the will” very different from Kant’s and Hegel’s, for instance– is the way in which the ideas of freedom and the voluntary are kept distinct from one another. Freedom (also called liberty) is for Locke only a means to the end of happiness. It is contingent on social and political realities. The rightness or wrongness of the (voluntary) decisions made by a person (who inevitably seeks happiness) are measured only by their likelihood of bringing about the happiness for which that person seeks.

All of this, however, is beside the point I wanted to make.

In articulating this fundamental distinction between the idea of liberty and the idea of the voluntary, Locke writes that

liberty cannot be where there is no thought, no volition, no will; but there may be thought, there may be will, there may be volition, where there is no liberty.

This means that liberty is to be understood as the freedom to do that which one wills. Any restriction here is a form of constraint.

This allows us to formulate a kind of quantifiable “index” for liberty. Liberty only exists insofar as (1) there is a choice to be made (imagine it as a fork in the road), and (2) any of the possible choices may also be made physically manifest (imagine it as the absence of roadblocks along any of these paths). Thus, the degree of liberty in existence at any given time can be measured by the degree to which there are possible choices which are at the same time actualizable.

Some of the consequences of this liberty-index are interesting. For instance: it can be said that human beings were less free in a certain way before the invention of the airplane, since before there were airplanes, there was (a) not even a possible choice to fly in an airplane, and (b) such a choice was not actualizable.

On the other hand, before there were airplanes there may have been a choice to fly– which was not actualizable– even if there could not have been a choice to fly in an airplane (since airplanes were unknown by most people prior to their invention).

It might seem that this contention– namely, that the invention of the airplane has introduced a greater degree of liberty into the world– must be balanced against all the instances where a person might want to fly in an airplane but not be able to, since this latter case represents a certain degree of absence of liberty. On the other hand, can it be said that the deficiency of liberty in this latter case is any greater than it was before the airplane was invented? In other words, is it possible that the introduction of new possible chocies that are, for some people, unactualizable, means that they have actually become *less free* than before?

These reflections are becoming too tangled for me at the moment. Perhaps someone can help me sort them out. I’ll plan to post again soon on the topic of a quantifiable index for liberty.