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Freedom of knowledge
Johannes Gutenberg took the idea of printing by moveable type and turned it into a publishing system. In doing so he changed the world. If you told him in 1468 – the year he died – that the Bible he had published in 1455 would undermine the authority of the Catholic Church, power the Renaissance and the Reformation, enable the Enlightenment and the rise of modern science, create new social classes and even change our concept of childhood, he would have looked at you blankly. But there lives among us today a man who has done something similar, and survived to see the fruits of his work.
He is Tim Berners-Lee, and he conceived the system for turning the internet into a publishing medium. Just over 15 years ago – on August 6, 1991, to be precise – he released the code for his invention on to the internet. He called it the world-wide web, and had the inspired idea that it should be free so that anyone could use it.
(John Naughton, Observer published in New Zealand Herald, 21 August 2005, A8)
LIBERALISM: A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
The Historical Context
15th – 18th Century
The spread of literacy and printing
Freedom of thought and speech
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. John Milton (1644) Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty on Unlicensed Printing
18th Century Enlightenment
the ideas of liberalism led to democratic politics
Enlightened intellectual periods
Greece in the 5th and 4th C BC
Cairo, Damascus, Constantinople, Baghdad A.D. 7-9th C
China and India at different times in the first millennium
Questions
Why didnt these periods of enlightenment produce democracy?
What else is needed to ensure that democracy becomes the political system?
Liberalisms Role
Expanding economy not sufficient
Democracy requires commitment to freedom of thought and to the toleration of that freedom
19th Century Classical Liberal ideals
(John Stuart Mill)
Social contract government
Parliamentary institutions
Citizenship
Freedom of speech and the press
Tolerance
Impartial law
Human rights
Merit and hard work rewarded
Reason not superstition
Individual freedom
Human agency
Public – private division
Separation of church and state
Influential Writers
John Locke (1689) Second Treatise on Civil Government
limits to the authority of the ruler
Adam Smith (1776) An Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations
restrictions on government cause economic prosperity
John Stuart Mill (1869) On Liberty
The individual is sovereign
Alexis de Tocqueville (1833) Democracy in America
Civil society (1831) – see Gustafson, pp16-7
The actions of individuals acting together for their own interests and in the interests of the community creates a workable relationship between individuals and society. (
John Stuart Mills Concerns about Democracy
1. Liberty and Tyranny
Concern
The tyranny of the autocrat
Replaced with
The tyranny of the majority
The tyranny of public opinion
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
On Liberty, Chapter One
2. Reason and Debate
Concern
Reason must be tested not merely asserted
Reason that puts itself on trial (Kant)