Liberty

Seven steps to the fence around the self: what may no power — not even the people entire — ever do to you?

A course on the thought of Political Philosophy.

Course outline

1. The Care of Souls — Liberty's first stone: Locke's argument that the magistrate's sword can compel outward conformity but never the inward belief that salvation requires — so conscience is the one province the state…
2. One Very Simple Principle — Mill builds the fence: the one principle meant to settle every case of society's power over the individual — coercion only to prevent harm to others — and the discovery, pressed hard, that the line…
3. The Liberty of Thought and Discussion — Mill's defence of free speech, made at full stretch: even the opinion we are certain is false must be free, because we may be wrong, because a true belief unchallenged dies into dead dogma, and…
4. Experiments in Living — Mill's case for individuality — that a life chosen is worth more than a life copied, that variety is the engine of progress, and that we may reason with a person but never force him for his own good…
5. The Open Door and the Prison Within — Rousseau returns to voice the older, deeper freedom: not the absence of interference but mastery of oneself — the citizen who obeys the general will is freed from his own appetites, even "forced to…
6. The Man Who Owns Himself — Nozick's libertarian challenge: the fence is set too low. If each person owns himself — body, talents, and labour — then taxing his earnings to help others is forced labour, and the basketball star…
7. The Cell and the Verdict — Foucault's challenge to the whole framework: the free individual the fence protects is not a natural given but a product of disciplinary power — trained, observed, normalized into self-surveillance.…

Part of the Symposium course library.