Is Liberty Possible? Charles Fried (1981)

Charles Fried delivers his two 1981 Tanner lectures on Human Values at Stanford University.

00:00 First Lecture
55:42 Second Lecture

#philosophy #politicalphilosophy #politicaltheory

[philosophyoftrucking]

No one loves the sound of this guy’s voice more than he does.

[StevenDykstra-ub]

Better luck and/or talent is being discussed. But, the composite government burden approaches IRS declared income. So, should the question be is it proper for a government (certainly at the federal level) dedicated to promote the general welfare be (more and more) little more than a class tool? It is an honest question.

[kanalarchis]

His argument against full individual liberty, i.e. full protection from collective claims, is that "To be indifferent to the happiness of others is to devalue our own moral worth."
This is an invalid argument, because value is subjective. You cannot "devalue" something in general, because objective value doesn't exist. You can only devalue it in your own subjective value scale. By being indifferent to the happiness of someone else I say nothing about the general value of happiness and therefore the value of my own happiness. All I do is to say that, in my own values, his happiness doesn't rank high. But my own happiness may still rank very high in my own scale of values. I acknowledge, only, that my happiness may not matter to him, like his happiness doesn't matter to me. That's fair. Full liberty is possible, if his happiness doesn't create obligations ("collective claims") on me and my happiness doesn't create obligations on him.

[longcastle]

Of course liberty is possible. It just depends on whether the human species is willing to care about and for itself as a species—and balance that with providing as much as possible equal opportunities for all to live their most meaningful possible lives. If anything, such an arrangement would almost certainly produce the highest number and largest ratio of beneficial discoveries for humankind. Win win

But this is also, especially, where, I believe this speaker errors. For the bottom line of value (of what is of value) is not the person / the individual, but the species. While nevertheless agreeing that within that ethical sphere is room for many heroes or benefactors of humankind. Of the Nietzschean type, perhaps, but also probably not.