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Faith in Freedom

The global crisis reflected in the problems of global warming, poverty and inequality could be attributed in large part to a belief in unrestrained liberty. Freedom means having not only liberty, but also the self-control to make wise choices. Such self-restraint is rooted in our values and norms, which are underscored by belief, or "faith," as Stein Ringen argues here.

The Egyptian revolution of February 2011, and other revolutions and attempted revolutions in the region, showed again, as so often before, how people are willing to risk their lives for freedom. But as imperative as the getting of freedom is, successful revolutions also show that having it is not without difficulties and costs.

To live freely is to be, in the words of the philosopher Joseph Raz, the author of one's own life. For those who are blessed with liberty of choice, being the author of one's life means not just indulging but taking control.

If constraint is what others impose on us, liberty of choice means to live without (too much) constraint. Restraint on the other hand is imposed by ourselves as self-control. Restraint is grounded in values and norms. When we restrain our own urges, we are, without coercion, paying attention to the long-term good, to others, to decency, to, for example, the environment or future generations. My values and norms are some of the instruments in my toolbox for forging good choice out of the liberty to do as I like.

The relationship among these concepts can be summarized as follows:

• Liberty of choice is not freedom. It is a condition of freedom.
• Restraint does not subtract from freedom. It is another condition of freedom.
• The free life does not come spontaneously to people once they have the liberty of choice. It is something that must be learned.
• Freedom is not separate from values, norms and faith. These are tools for people who aim to be the authors of their own lives.
• The managing of freedom is not something to turn to after the having of freedom. It is part and parcel of the free life itself.
• The actual experience of freedom is not individual, but is realized in social living where people interact and deliberate with each other.

Values, Norms and Faith

A person's values and norms are what the French sociologist Raymond Boudon has called "axiological beliefs." They give us an awareness of the difference between good and bad and right and wrong, shaping our opinions and decisions. Values are beliefs about what is good; they help us decide on good and bad ends or objectives in life. Norms are beliefs about what is right; they help us decide on right and wrong in the means used to realize ends.

But for a belief to become a value or a norm there must be something more to it than just awareness. I must believe in the belief, so to speak. "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" becomes a value for me when I make it my belief. My values and norms are those beliefs about good and right which I have faith in.

I call this faith because in the end there is something intangible about values and norms. When a value is established as a value in the mind of a person, it has some force in her mind which cannot be fully pinned down. She knows it to express what is good, right or even true. She knows she should live by it. She knows that others, too, should share that value and live by it.

Faith infuses beliefs with power. Your awareness of a norm makes of it a reason for you to think or do as it says. Your faith in it starts to make it a good reason.

Faith, firstly, separates those values and norms which you make yours from those you discard. In various ways--from parents, from teachers, from leaders, from laws--society offers you a menu of values and norms to consider. Some encourage you to believe in solidarity, others that it's each man for himself. Values and norms are things people choose, if in complicated ways.

In addition, faith enables you to do in fact as your beliefs recommend in theory. We all know that it is wrong to not obey the law. What makes me accept that rule as authoritative and actually obey the law even when I do not want to, is that I have faith that it is right.

The inner competence to reason, including managing liberty of choice, rests ultimately in this elusive faculty which I call faith, a faculty which enables the person to actually believe in his beliefs and practically make them signposts for his opinions and actions.

Deliberative Processes

But, if faith starts to make a belief a good reason for choice, how can one know that what faith puts to one as a good reason really is a good reason? Blind faith is not the stuff of free women and men.

The alternative to blind faith is evidence-based faith. Evidence comes in many forms. In a scientific age we want to trust science, but scientific evidence about issues of human passion is thin on the ground. The law tells us about right and wrong, but the law can be mistaken. The philosophers offer guidance, but are often too circumspect to be easily understood. Prime Ministers and Archbishops tell us what to do and how to live, but trust is thin. There is evidence out there, but it is not complete, not objective and not clear and easy to make sense of; it is of many kinds and from many sources, scattered and often contradictory, always ambiguous.

Persuasive evidence is tested evidence. Is it, for example, true that the nuclear family is the best basis for raising children? I can try to find the answer in my own experience, but that's a flimsy base. I am better off by asking others: This is how I'm inclined to see it, but what is your experience and what do you know that is relevant to the question? If I ask several others and keep an open mind, I am on my way to finding a safe opinion.

In the end, evidence is tested by conversation, exchange of information and opinions, and discussion: in the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas's language, by deliberation. But even this is no foolproof method. It may be that we use deliberation to confirm prejudices or that the more informed are able to manipulate those who have less knowledge. Still, it is the best we have. Tested evidence is evidence that has survived deliberation.

Social Anchorage

Liberty of choice is a strange commodity. To not have it is tantamount to social death. That is the lesson of the revolutions in Egypt and elsewhere. But when you have it, you find that it does not do much for you. If you do not use it well, its temptations strike back at you, and you find yourself living under a dictatorship of the desires you just happen to have. The world is in the midst of economic and perhaps moral crisis. This has much to do with beliefs in unrestrained liberty having taken hold, in the guise of free markets and freedom of choice.

"Doing what one likes" is a false conception of freedom, said Aristotle. Being the author of one's life is a challenge and depends on skills. I've tried to suggest where such skills may come from. It is something that is finally fostered in institutions, most importantly in the families in which children grow up and learn about life and reason, in the schools in which they continue to learn, and in social and political institutions of deliberation. Robust institutions are settings that protect individuals from isolation, in which they can craft beliefs about the good and the wrong, and in which they find what I have elsewhere called social anchorage. A society where there is not just liberty of choice but real freedom is a society of strong institutions in which individuals can live and grow in community with each other.

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