A legitimate role for government?

On another level, there is the need to recognise those values that arise simply from our human condition. These must be separated from other values over which there are grounds for discussion and debate. The government can realise its role in treading that line between upholding the natural law and allowing for a legitimate plurality of values.

Critics of this view may fear from it a “return to the Dark Ages” or simply the first steps down a slippery slope to tyranny. However, I think we should reflect on our own society and consider that, in many ways, this is in part what we already allow. We forbid murder, rape, robbery, stealing and so on, and rarely consider why. They are based on more than positive law or common sense. The challenge for governments in the 21st century is to identify those aspects of natural law we have ceded to plurality. We will probably find that they are at the epicentre of our “moral chaos”.

What we are trying to grapple with here is essentially a question of the meaning of human freedom. In the West, “freedom is the value by which all other values are measured”. No word is more important to the Enlightenment, no word is more important to postmodernism and no word, in both contexts, is as poorly understood. Lord Acton in Essays on Freedom and Power rightly pointed out that freedom, or liberty “is an idea of which there are two hundred definitions”.

We protect our freedom like a possession. Our greatest fear is that it will be interfered with by others. We make a contract to ensure the safety of our freedom and that of others. But this is a rather limited view of freedom. It is a negative freedom; a freedom from inhibitions, including duties, obligations and others. I prefer to see it as something that we share with all persons for all time. I do not have freedom, I am free.

At the same time we are inherently limited beings. We have physical, psychological and intellectual limitations. We have social and moral limitations, also. Beyond the rhetoric, this fact is often recognised. In the context of the individual and society, attempts have been made to rationalise these limitations to freedom. The most famous is John Stuart Mill’s principle of “harm”; we are socially and morally free, so long as we do not harm others. Government has a role in dealing with a person’s crimes, but not with his or her vices.

Such a morality is remarkably pervasive in our society. But the dichotomy identified is again problematic. The Millsian concept of “harm” does not allow for psychological harm, which is something that a litigious society such as ours must increasingly come to terms with. It doesn’t account for the harm occasioned by neglected responsibilities. Does a drunken father cause harm to his family simply by being unable to support them? Nor does it allow for moral harm. Scruton rightly asks, “in particular, am I harmed by those things which disturb and upset me, and which perhaps tempt me away from the path of righteousness?” Couldn’t the very expression of “freedom” be at times the occasion for moral harm for those whose value systems differ from ours? Is it a satisfactory solution simply to ask these persons to abandon their “scruples”?

In a globalised, multicultural West it is possible that this negative, individualistic freedom will become a new form of slavery. Perhaps this is already happening with the demands for political correctness made, for example, by the EU. It is here that the concept of natural law again begs discussion. An authentic freedom must be a perennial freedom, and we cannot guarantee freedom to future generations unless it is anchored to some evergreen moral philosophy. Human freedom in matters of law and government must be viewed with reference to the natural law. Freedom by itself is self-defeating; we could do well to ask with Nietzsche, “Freedom? Ah, but for what?” We could also take a warning from Scruton: “If all that Western civilisation offers is freedom, then it is a civilisation bent on its own destruction.”

There is a famous cartoon from the French Revolution depicting a peasant bent over under the weight of the privileged estates. In a sense, it could represent the human person in the West in the 21 century: stooped, malnourished and burdened with the triple weight of our society, values and freedom. Didn’t Satre say, “We are condemned to freedom”?

I believe we are in a position, taking on board postmodern criticisms of the Enlightenment project, to recognise the weightiness of the human person. Our freedom, values and society are not excess baggage. We are not lightweights who need be afraid of being pushed around by governments. We need not necessarily be antagonistic to government at all. Given the presence of a natural law inscribed in our being, both government and individuals may “shape” each other’s values with a view to the same end.