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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2009
As today's battles rage between those who march under the banner of liberty and those who unfurl the flag of equality, even an engaged partisan might be forgiven for occasionally wondering whether the game is, after all, worth the candle. For one thing, neither party simply rejects the other's principle – properly understood. Egalitarians routinely emphasize that their concern for equality is, also, a concern for true liberty; thus Michael Walzer, writing “In Defense of Equality,” finds it “worth stressing that equality as I have described it does not stand alone, but is closely related to the idea of liberty.”1 Libertarians tend to be less enthusiastic in their embrace of equality, but almost all endorse some form of equality or other – for example, equality of political rights or equality before the law. It would seem, then, that the differences between egalitarians and libertarians are really over the meaning and scope of equality and liberty, and that putting the issue as one of equality vs. liberty may be misleading.
More important, one can wonder whether either the egalitarian or the libertarian combination of the principles of liberty and equality is worthy of support. What society has exalted personal liberty, has taken rights more seriously, than ours? Yet who can easily dismiss Solzhenitsyn's charge that our worship of freedom has resulted in “destructive and irresponsible freedom” being granted “boundless scope,” leaving us defenseless against “the corrosion of evil”?2 The cause of liberty against tyranny surely continues to command our support; but what conclusion ought we to draw from the facts that liberty in absentia seems so markedly more attractive than liberty in practice, and that the qualities manifested in the struggle for liberty seem so superior to those that come to the fore once liberty is secured?
1 Walzer, Michael, Radical Principles (New York: Basic Books, 1980), p. 256.Google Scholar
2 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I., “A World Split Apart,” in East and West (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), p. 50.Google Scholar
3 ibid, p. 57.
4 Stephen, James Fitzjames, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (New York: Holt and Williams, 1873), p. 253.Google Scholar
5 ibid., pp. 253–254.
6 ibid., p. 3.
7 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), p. xii; see also p. 297.Google Scholar
8 ibid., p. 312.
9 ibid., p. 332.
10 ibid., p. 321.
11 ibid., p. 330.
12 ibid, p. 332.
13 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1971), especially pp. 15, 310–312, 440–442.Google Scholar Nozick's comment on this point is telling: “So denigrating a person's autonomy and prime responsibility for his actions is a risky line to take for a theory that otherwise wishes to buttress the dignity and self-respect of autonomous beings; especially a theory that founds so much (including a theory of the good) upon persons' choices. One doubts that the unexalted picture of human beings Rawls' theory presupposes and rests upon can be made to fit together with the view of human dignity it is designed to lead to and embody.” (p. 214) See also Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr., The Spirit of Liberalism (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 90–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, p. 107Google Scholar
15 ibid., p. 544.
16 An Address delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa of Harvard College, July 1, 1875 (New Haven: Judd and White, 1875), p. 3.
17 Berger, Peter L., Berger, Brigitte, and Kellner, Hansfried, The Homeless Mind (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 83.Google Scholar
18 De Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America trans. Lawrence, George (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), II,iii.18 (“Concerning Honor in the United States and Democratic Societies”), pp. 626–627.Google Scholar I have occasionally corrected the translation.
19 ibid., p. 624.
20 ibid., p. 623.
21 ibid., p. 623–624.
22 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, p. 442.Google Scholar
23 Nozick, , Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 243.Google Scholar
24 ibid. pp. 244–246.
25 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Macpherson, C. B. (London: Penguin, 1968), p. 156.Google Scholar
26 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (New York: NAL, 1968), pp. 345–361Google Scholar, especially section 70.
27 Strauss, Leo, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Genesis, trans. Sinclair, Elsa M. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), p. 128.Google Scholar
28 “Publius” (Hamilton, Alexander, Madison, James, and Jay, John), The Federalist (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), #39, p. 243.Google Scholar
29 Federalist #1, p. 3. Emphasis added.
30 For the following interpretation of the Declaration and its principles, I am indebted to Jaffa, Harry V., Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1959)Google Scholar, and especially to Mansfield, , The Spirit of Liberalism, ch. 5.Google Scholar
31 Jefferson, Thomas, letter to Weightman, Roger C., June 24, 1826, in Selected Writings, ed. Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr. (Arlington Heights, Illinois: AHM, 1979), p. 13.Google Scholar
32 Federalist #36, p. 223.
33 Federalist #37, pp. 227–228.
34 Federalist #10, p. 62.
35 Federalist #39, pp. 243–244.
36 ibid.
37 Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, II,iii,18, p. 626.Google Scholar
38 Federalist #11, p. 69.
39 Jefferson, , letter to Weightman, , in Selected Writings, p. 12.Google Scholar
40 ibid., pp. 12–13.
41 ibid.
42 Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, II,ii,1, p. 504.Google Scholar
43 ibid., II,ii,1–3, pp. 503–509.
44 ibid., II,ii,4–9, pp. 509–528.
45 ibid. Introduction, p. 20.
46 ibid., II,ii,5, pp. 513–517.
47 ibid.
48 ibid., II,ii,8, pp. 527.
49 ibid., II,ii,4, pp. 512–513.
50 ibid., II ii,18, pp. 550–551.
51 ibid., II,ii,18, pp. 550–551, and II,iii,18, pp. 616–627.
52 ibid., II,iii,18, p. 621.
53 ibid., II,ii,13, p. 538.
54 ibid., pp. 537–538.
55 ibid., II,ii,12, pp. 534–535
56 ibid., II,ii,10–17, pp. 530–549.
57 ibid., II,ii,12, p. 534; II,ii,15, p. 543.
58 ibid., II,ii,10, pp. 530–532.
59 ibid., II,ii,17, p. 459.
60 ibid., II,ii,8, p. 526.