Every will wants to be recognized — laying down principles for societies from scratch
Intelligence and conscience are based in self-reference. Just as Descartes reported firstly, the mere existence of conscience is proven by conscience recognizing its own existence — I think, so I am. And as conscience is modelling the “world” it lives in presumably based on the data our senses provide, it is impossible to prove the existence of things existing outside this system - see Gödel’s incompleteness theorems if you want to get deeper into that. Just as the consistency of mathematics can’t be proven finally but we see it working perfectly to explain the physical world, so we assume it is right until there is a reason to doubt that. We do the same thing with the assumption that other consciousnesses do exist. Maybe I am just a brain (or whatever) in a mad scientists lab, but it is not very probable.
All of the assumed selves share, that they have different interests they want to see fulfilled. So in general we can state, that everybody wants that his will is going to be enacted. This will has three possible sources of motivation.
The first and most common motivation is lust. We have needs (e.g. thirst) and then our intelligence comes up with means to fulfil these needs — buy a drink, steal it, take tap water or beer, whatever options the situation provides you with. Then you (usually unconsciously) compare the possible means and finally decide for the option you think is most efficient (low cost, high fulfilment of the need). This is also the mechanism constituting criminal law: the punishment you have to expect if you get caught wages high on the “cost” part of the equation.
It is impossible to decide for the second best option, because if you would consciously decide to take the second best solution, but then your need wouldn’t be to make your thirst go away, but finding the second best solution for that. And then choosing the second best drink is best suited for that. But in none of these steps freedom is involved. Freedom in this case is not what is often meant when it comes to political freedoms. These political freedoms are rather the absence of external restrictions interfering in the process that was just described (“positive freedom”) or protection against the interference of other people / institutions (“negative freedom”) . In this sense, freedom means, that one can choose among different options and even under complete knowledge of all factors involved in this decision, it would be impossible to strictly predict the outcome.
The needs hit us, influenced by external circumstances, but in the end it is random. Although we can influence the circumstances e.g. by choosing the music to wake up to. By the way, you are then trying to fulfil the need of having a certain need.
The second source of motivation is morality and this is where freedom as firstly mentioned comes into play. When your action is morally motivated, you freely decide to obey to a moral law you reasonably give yourself. Kant called this law the categorical imperative. This principle is more than the popular known version “act the way, your actions could be regarded as universal laws”, it also contains the second description that humanity, yourself and every being, able for reason always be the purpose and never the means of any action. This moral law is universal, does not require any preliminaries and it demands every reason-able person to act under it.
But as it only demands, it can be disobeyed freely. The ability to make such decisions is the core of human dignity. Animals and people who do not have the physical possibility to do so receive their dignity from the ability to suffer pain or their importance to other persons.
The last source of motivation is supererogation. This means that one is doing more than moral duty requires, like loving someone or offering oneself to be exchanged as a hostage. Supererogation carries with it the fascinating conclusion that god, being defined as a completely moral entity would not be able to love. Which would mean that many religious songs would have to be rewritten.
As we just have discovered how individuals form their will, now it is necessary to bridge this to the larger scope of society. The crucial problem in that case is, that these intentions often contradict and are incompatible. Just to put forward a simple example: a consumer wants to pay as little money as possible for a certain product, whereas the producer wants to earn as much as possible. Most of these economic dilemmata do not have direct ethical implications, and if they are (hypothetically) repeated many times, an equilibrium is found, which then represents the market price of a good.
But political decisions often do have such a moral aspect to it and it also affects many more than just two interacting people. So in this field we need different methods to find the common will of a society.
For most of the time in civilization history, there was a supreme ruler or a small junta, whose will was imposed upon everyone within their realm and who had the last saying in every political decision. And the Hellenistic tradition of democracy is also not feasible in this context, as the poleis were often so small, that the male decision makers were able to oversee the whole population of their polis. If decisions have to be made over people in ones direct proximity, people tend to be more generous and decision-making is much easier.
In modern philosophy, one of the first thinkers trying to solve this problem was Rousseau with his “volontée generale” — the laws of a state were agreed on by the majority of the whole male adult population. Unfortunately the era of enlightenment had its often overseen shadowy backyards, where women, slaves, Jews and animals hide. Until today the oppressed billions all around the world still suffer from this lack of universality.
But, going back to Rousseau, the majority in these decisions would overrule the minority and they would have to obey. The constitution is weak and easily to be changed, as it is always the recent volontée generale to be made into the law. The elected government is not meant to follow its own agenda, they are only executing the general will. And if the majority decides immorally, like in Germany 1933, well that’s sad, but it is the way this method works.
In this scope, democracy is seen solely as a method and not, as nowadays, a principle as well.
Against this tradition, where one part of the society, be it the majority or certain classes in socialist theories, hijack the state, there are liberal principles. There the volontée generale is less specified, but rather generally fixed in a constitution that has a set of personal rights and freedoms as well as a complex institutional structure with checks and balances. The purpose of this constitution is to ensure everyone his personal field of living that he could shape in his own will, as long as there is no interference with other freely living persons. The state does not only guarantee these personal freedoms, but also rights, as they are necessary to unfold the personality.
These rights include things like social security, a living wage, personal security and health care. They cannot be opted out partly by a citizen, although they infringe personal freedoms by taxation, losing personal sovereignty and forced insurances, because if a single citizen would think “I don’t get sick, I’d rather keep my money than having medical insurance”, but then gets sick, it is morally impossible to let him die out of a lack of money or insurance if the medical means are available.
So in the end the society would be forced to grant this person the insurance he did not want to pay for. And this could lead to a state, where fewer insured people would bear the cost of everyones health care.
This dilemma can be fixed in two ways: either a duty to be insured or by financing the health care system via taxes. It is to possible to apply these mechanisms on living wages and social security as well.
Furthermore protection from criminal actions is a universal goal, as one cannot opt out from this protection, as a criminal act is not an action that the victim and the conductor mutually agreed on. If they agree, it is either not criminal or they both showed criminal behaviour. And as the state has the monopoly on the legal use of force, it is impossible to take care for security oneself.
Everybody suspected of a crime has a right to be processed under the rules of the society he agrees on by using its infrastructure. But the struggle to provide its citizens with these rights is permanently to be traded off with individual freedoms that are fixed in the constitution and overseen by the judicial system.
The only way to opt out of all these societal benefits, infringements and interactions is that everyone has the right to completely leave society like in Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden”. But this has never been chosen by a relevant number of people. The most recluses still kept a last bit of connection to the society, be it the use of collected food or money.
If someone is uncomfortable with the political system one was born in or if this system does not stand up to these standards (as they all are constrained down from the human dignity), he has the moral right to live in another system granting him these freedoms and rights.
But how does law-making and enforcing work under the restrictions of the generalized human dignity in the constitution? In a liberal system political power is distributed to representatives of the people who follow their own agenda and who are relatively free to act within the constitutional borders. The current predominant system with lobbying, highly influential parties and fraction discipline is critical to the free mandate. The greatest concerns of a representative should be his own legal standpoints, rational thought and the will to be re-elected.
It is important to understand, that law is only concerning the actions of people and not their motivation. If moral-motivational judgement — or to put it differently: taste — becomes into the law as often seen in dictatorships and theocracies, this makes the laws immoral. This comes from the circumstance, that external power can only influence ones actions but not the motivation of actions. You can force someone to kiss, but not to love. As the state has the monopoly on force, but not on thought, this implies that it can only restrict actions.
The described system of a liberal, social and capitalist welfare-state is probably an ideal — something you reach for, but can never reach completely. If you find any inconsistency, please criticize it openly, as exactly this is the very essence of progress. This should enhance us even more to pursue it to be fulfilled. Please do so and feel free to criticize,comment this article or contact @EarlHuntington via Twitter.
