Condition for Freedom in Society

DISCUSS THE CONDITIONS FOR FREEDOM IN SOCIETY
Introduction

Can mankind live in harmony in a free society?
Various social contract theorist of the modern era have attempted to address this in a way that shed light on the quest to establish a free nation. As is traditional in political philosophy where the past gives meaning to the present and the present makes available sound basis for predicting the future. It may thus be wise to take a brief journey through what some classic philosophers had to say about the topic. The focus here however remains on the modern social contract theorist and what they propose is the condition for freedom in society.

Social contract theory nearly as old as philosophy itself is the view that person’s moral or political obligations are dependent upon a contract agreement between them to form a society. In classical political thought, Socrates used something similar to social contract postulations to explain his reason for remaining in prison to accept the penalty of death even though escape was possible (encyclopedia of philosophy). Though examples can be drawn from the past, social contract theory is rightly associated with modern moral and political theory and the credit of its exposition bestowed upon Thomas Hobbes, after him John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau. We will also be looking at the concept of the state of nature.

The term social contract vividly captures a broad class of republican theories whose subjects are implied agreement by which people form nations and maintain social order. This by extension implies that people give up some right to a government and other authority in order to receive or jointly preserve social order.

State of Nature is a term in political philosophy used in social contract theories to describe the hypothetical condition of humanity before the state’s foundation and its monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. More broadly, it is the condition (imagined) before the rule of positive law came into being, thus representing a synonym of anarchy. The concept was made popular by Thomas Hobbes in his magnum opus- the Leviathan. He wrote that during the time men lived without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and as such is of every man against every man “bellum omnium contra omnes” (Hobbes 1651). In this state, any person has natural rights to do anything to preserve his own liberty or safety and life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” (Leviathan chapter 1).

Freedom can be viewed as the necessary conditions that guaranty the survival of man in the state of nature.

EARLIEST OPINION OF SOCIAL CONTRACT
In the early platonic dialogue, Socrates made a compelling argument about his decision to remain incarcerated while he awaits execution rather than escape and go into exile in another Greek city. He personifies the laws of Athens and speaking in their voice, explains that he has acquired an overwhelming obligation to obey the law because they have made his entire way of life and even the fact of his very existence possible. it should be noted that from the above argument of Socrates that the relationship between citizens and the laws of the city is not coerced. Then again in Plato-the Republic, Glaucon’s answer to the question what is justice is one representing a social contract explanation. He implied that justice is the conventional result of the law and covenants that men make in other to avoid these extremes. Though the above examples may seem inconsistent at first glance, but when one link both arguments, one will find that Socrates uses a social contract type of argument to show why it is just for him to remain in prison. Broadly speaking, to show the extent of commitment to an agreement, in other words commitment to an agreement is a condition for freedom in society.

SOCIAL CONTRACT IN THE MODERN ERA.
As stated earlier, Hobbes (1588-1679) was the pioneer social contract theorist of the modern era. His birth and life was characterized by chaos. First was his premature birth occasioned by his mother’s fear of the ill-fated Spanish armada which is the reason of his popular joke “fear and I are born twins”(Mbah 2006:21). Secondly, he lived during the most crucial period of early modern England’s history- the English civil war which was a product of the clash between the king and his supporters, the monarch, and the parliamentarians who demanded more power from the quasi-democratic institution of parliament. Hobbes stood as a compromise between both factions. While he rejected the concept of the divine right of kings, he also rejects the early democratic view, taking up by the parliament that power ought to be shared between parliament and the king. Hobbes position was that political authority and obligation are based on the individual self interest of members of society who are understood to be equals, with no single individual invested with any essential authority to rule the rest, while at the same time maintaining the conservative position that the monarch, which he called the sovereign must be ceded absolute authority if society is to survive. In other words, Hobbes was vying for absolutism, but one which is a product of the will of the people.

In his analysis, Hobbes adopted the mechanistic philosophy which pictures the universe as a complex peace of machine that needs to be set in motion. He envisaged mechanistic philosophy as capable of explaining every phenomenon in the world including human behaviour. Hobbes sought to provide a theory of human nature that would parallel the discoveries being made in the sciences of inanimate universe. He had the general view that everything in the universe is produced by anything other than matter in motion; human behaviour inclusive. So to Hobbes, such behaviour as walking, talking, and the likes are themselves produced by other actions inside of us and these other actions are themselves caused by the interaction of our bodies with other bodies which creates in us certain chains of causes and effects which are later displayed as observed human behaviour. From his point of view therefore, humans are essentially very complicated organic machines responding to the stimuli of the world mechanistically and in accordance with universal law of human nature. Hence to understand the anarchy that characterized society at that time, Hobbes needed to understand man who was the component part society was made of. He thus reduced society to man. Note that the method of reducing phenomenal to its minimal parts and composing it to explain its operation is called - the analytic synthetic method or the resolutive compositive method. In defence of his science, Hobbes in his words said: For though in all places of the world, men should lay the foundation of their houses on sand, it could not thence be inferred that it so ought to be. The skill of making and maintaining common wealth consistent in certain rules as doth arithmetic and geometry: not (as tennis play) on practice only; which rules. Rules neither poor men have the leisure, nor men that have the leisure, have the hitherto had the curiosity or the method to find out. (Leviathan chapter 20).
Hobbes view mechanistic quality of human psychology as implying the subjective nature of normative claim. For instance, the word “love’ and “hate’ are used to describe human passion and fear, that is things humans are drawn to and things they are repelled by. In the same way, the term “good” and “bad” are used to describe appetite (orme) and aversion (ophorme). The implication here is that humans are by nature drawn to objects that gives them pleasure and run away from object that gives them pain

In addition, Hobbes opined that by nature, humans are necessarily and exclusively self interested. All men pursue only what they perceive to be their own individually considered best interest. They respond mechanistically by being drawn to what they desire and repelled by that to which they are averse. Everything we do is motivated by the desire to better our own situations and satisfy as many of our own individually considered desires as possible. We are infinitively appetitive, and only at death will man stop being desirous of his pleasure. According to Hobbes, even the reason that adult care for small children can be explicated in terms of the adults’ own self interest. He claims that in saving an infant by caring for it, we become the recipient of a strong sense of obligation in one who has been helped to survive rather than allowed to die. (Encyclopedia of philosophy).

In addition to being exclusively self interested, Hobbes say that human beings are reasonable. They have in them rational capacity to pursue their desires as efficiently and maximally as possible. From these premises of human nature, Hobbes goes on to construct a provocatively and compelling argument for why we ought to be willing to submit ourselves to political authority. This he did by imagining persons in a situation prior to the establishment of society - the state of nature.

According to Hobbes, the justification for political obligation is this; it is accepted that men are naturally self interested, yet they are rational, they will choose to submit to the authority of a sovereign in order to be able to live in civil society which is conducive to their own self interest. He argues for this by imagining men in their natural state. In Hobbes hypothetical state of nature, aside from being self interested, men are also equally endowed with strength to the extent that even the strongest man can be killed in his sleep. There are unlimited resources, and yet there is no power able to force men to cooperate. Given its condition, Hobbes concluded that the state of nature would be unbearably brutal. Every man was in fear of loosing his life to another. They lacked the capacity for long term satisfaction of their needs or desire, it was a state of utter mistrust thus Hobbes assured that most people want first and foremost to avoid violent death. He maintained that the state of nature was characterized by competition (for satisfaction of desires), diffidence (endless pursuit for power) and vain glory (mans desire to be the most at everything which further deepens competition and diffidence). For this reason, Hobbes quickly concluded that it was the worst possible situation in which men can find themselves; A state of perpetual unavoidable war.

The situation is however not hopeless, because men are reasonable, they can see their way out of such a state by recognizing the law of nature, which shows them the means by which to escape the state of nature turned state of war and create a civil society. He said: The passions that incline men to peace are fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth convenient articles of pace. Upon which men may be drawn to agreement (leviathan chapter 13).
The first and most important law of nature commands that each man should preserve himself and recognizing the rationality of this basic precept of reason, man can be expected to construct a social contract that will afford them a life other than that available to them in the state of nature. They thus agree to live together under common laws and create an enforcement mechanism for the social contract and the laws that constitute it. Every man thus lay down his claim to his right as long as the other man is prepared to do same. The philosophical basis of this was thus; “man should not do to others what he will not do to himself”. Please note that the essence of the social contract was to enlarge freedom which was limited in the state of nature. Hence the surrendering of rights by one base on the willingness to do same by others to a sovereign who is not a part, but a product of the contract thus becomes the condition for freedom in society according to Hobbes philosophy. He however made it clear that for the sovereign to be able to manage the state of affairs, it has to be given absolute power. When we apply this to our present society, one can conclude that the present lack of freedom of individuals to pursue that which will ensure self preservation especially in the Niger Delta which is ravaged by conflict is because both the people of the region and the federal government are still holding on to their rights of ownership which is natures gift to them. Neither is willing to lay down this nature given right and therefore they are unable to self preserve since freedom is a precondition for the pursuit of self preservation.

For Hobbes, the necessity of an absolute authority in the form of a sovereign follows from the utter brutality of the state of nature. The state of nature was completely intolerable, and so rational men would be willing to submit themselves even to absolute authority in other to escape it. Whereas for John Locke 1632-1704, the state of nature is a very different type of place and so his argument concerning the social contract and the nature of man’s relationship to authority are consequently quite different while Locke uses Hobbes methodology devices of the state of nature, as do virtually all social contract theorist, he uses it to a quite different end. His argument for the social contract and the rights of the citizens to revolt against the sovereign were largely influential to democratic revolutions such as that which led to the founding of the United States of America.

According to Locke, the state of nature, the natural condition of mankind is a state of perfect and complete liberty to conduct ones life as one best sees fit, free from the interference of others. This does not however imply a state of license to do anything one pleases. Locke’s state of nature was characterized by formal freedom, equality and universal law. Freedom in Locke’s state of nature implied the liberty to effect self preservation which comes naturally to man. Locke sums this up thus: all men are naturally in…a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit and within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man …. He has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession…. That being equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possession” (Locke, second treaty of government). Equality meant that all men are born with equal right over the provision of nature while natural law is that law which is determined by reason and states that the equality of men does not give one man the right to take the life of another even as a cost of self preservation. Though the state of nature is not one with civil authority or government to punish people for transgressions against the laws, it is not void of morality. That is the state of nature is pre-political but not pre-moral. Thus Locke’s state of nature is relatively peaceful which differs from Hobbes’. One of perpetual war described by Hobbes himself when he said “For there is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense. (Leviathan chapter 6) Though Locke’s state of nature is peaceful, it can devolve into a State of war, in particular, a state of war over property dispute. This implies that whereas the state of nature is the state of liberty where persons recognize the law of nature and therefore do not harm one another, the state of war begins between two or more men, once one man declares war on another, by stealing from him or by trying to make him his slave. Since in the state of nature there is no civil power to whom men can appeal, and since the law of nature allows them to defend their own lives, they may then kill based on their own interpretation of what constitute danger to their lives. The lack of civil authority also means that once war begins, it is likely to continue. This therefore to Locke is one of the strongest reason that men have, to abandon the state of nature by contracting together to form civil government.

Property plays an essential role in Locke’s argument for civil government and the contract that establishes it. He argues that private property is created when a person mixes his labour with raw materials of nature. For instance when one tills a piece of land and makes a farm out of it or discovers other minerals in the course of tilling with which he can produce other goods,, then one can lay claim to such a land and all that it produces. This would mean in contemporary times that the people of the oil rich Niger Delta cannot claim ownership of the land as is the case presently if they have not tilled the land and utilize the basic material of nature. Locke sees man as a proprietor of himself, whatever he produces from nature with his labour belongs to him. Locke says: Though the earth and all inferior creature be common for all men, yet everyman has a property in his own person; this nobody has right to put himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands we may say are properly his. Whatever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provide…he hath mixed his labour with…and thereby makes his property (Locke, second treaty).
Though in Locke’s state of nature, all men have equal right to property, he warns that there is a limit to how much property one can own for three reasons. First to ensure what in contemporary times is referred to as sustainable development (that is, as one appropriate nature for self preservation, one should ensure that he leaves some for others to appropriate for their own self preservation), second property owned should be commensurate to the amount of labour available to man and thirdly, property owned should be limited by spoilage. Thus he advised that to acquire more, it should be converted to money which is durable and landed properties which appreciate in value. From the on going, it is clear that property is the linchpin of Locke’s argument for the social contract and civil government because it is the protection of their property, including their property in their own bodies that men seek when they decided to abandon the state of nature.

Having established that the reason for civil society is the protection of property, he argues that man gave up their right to arbitrariness but not self preservation. In Locke’s argument, men first formed a society before forming a government while in Hobbes; it was straight from state of nature to government which involves the giving up of rights absolutely to a sovereign who is a beneficiary. In Locke, the existence of government is not independent of the consent of the people, thus sovereignty lies with society while in Hobbes, it lies on an individual or a group of individuals. Locke emphasized the purpose of government when he said “the great and chief end, therefore of men uniting into common-wealth, and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property” (Locke, second treaty). Unlike Hobbes’ state of nature which was solitary, Locke’s was not a condition of individuals, rather, it was populated by families. What he calls “conjugal society” (par 78). Giving that the end of “men uniting into common wealth” (124) is the preservation of their wealth and preserving their rights, their lives, liberty and well-being, Locke gives condition under which the contract can be broken and men are justified in resisting the authority of a civil government. This is when the executive power of government degenerates into tyranny, such as by dissolving the legislature and thereby denying the people the ability to make law for their own preservation, and then the resulting tyrant puts himself into a state of nature and specifically into a state of war with the people. The people then have the same right to self defence as they had before making a compact to establish society in the first place. In other words, the justification of the authority of the executive component of government is the protection of the peoples’ property and well-being, so when such protection is no longer present, or when the king becomes a tyrant and acts against the interest of the people, they have a right, if not an outright obligation to resist his authority. The social contract can then be dissolve and the process to create society begun anew. The implication here is that government must execute the laws properly, must be in tune with the law of nature and those in government must be subordinate to the law. The summary of the above argument is that the conditions necessary for freedom according to Locke’s philosophy is the rule of law.

John Jaques Rousseau 1712-1778 lived and wrote during what was arguably headiest period in the intellectual history of modern France - the enlightenment. There is no record of his achievement except that he was a journalist who wrote many articles and once won an essay competition. He was described by one writer as “one of the bright light of the intellectual movement of the time”. At the time Rousseau wrote, capitalism was a well established phenomena. In his second discourse, he described the historical process by which man began in a state of nature and over time progressed into civil society. According to Rousseau, the state of nature was a peaceful and quixotic time. People lived solitary and uncomplicated lives. Here few needs were easily satisfied by nature, because of the abundance of nature and the small size of the population, competition was non existence and persons rarely even saw one another much less had reason for conflict or fear. Moreover, Rousseau described man as morally pure and naturally endowed with the capacity of pity and therefore was incapable of harm. Put simply, man in Rousseau’s state of nature had no capacity to reason, has compassion and self pity for his fellow man and was asocial.

With time, humanity faced certain changes, population increased; the means by which people could satisfy their needs had to change. Gradually, people started living together in small families and later small communities. Then, division of labour was introduced albeit between and within families. Later, discoveries and inventions made life easier giving rise to leisure time. Such leisure times further led people to make comparison between themselves and others, resulting to public values, leading to shame and envy, pride and contempt. Most importantly however, according to Rousseau was the invention of private property which constituted the pivotal moment of humanity’s evolution out of a simple, pure state into one characterized by greed, competition, vanity, inequality and vice. For Rousseau, the advent of property engendered man’s fall from the state of purity as God made him in the state of nature to corruption that now characterized man. Hence, “man born free now live in chain.

With the introduction of property, inequality became pronounced. Some have property, while others are forced to work for them and thus began the development of social classes. with the turn of events, those who have property realized that it would be in their interest to create a government that would protect private property from those who do not have it, but can see that they might be able to acquire it by force. So government was established through a contract which intent was to guaranty equality and protection for all even though in reality, it was meant to propagate the inequality brought about by private property. In other words, the contract’s claim to be in the interest of everyone equally is really in the interest of the few who have become stronger and rich as a result of the development of private property. Thus like Locke, Rousseau see the state as meant for the propertied. This is the naturalized social contract which in Rousseau’s view is responsible for the conflict and competition from which modern society suffers. In other words, inequality is a fundamental source and cause of conflict in society. Note that inequality can be vertical (i.e. between individuals) or horizontal (i.e. between groups). Going by this philosophy, one can attribute the crises in the Niger Delta to the inequality the people have been subjected to. Having established the state of affair, Rousseau proposed a normative aspect of his philosophy of what ought to be. In his social contract, Rousseau attempted to respond to the sorry state of affair and to remedy the social and moral ill that have been produced by the development of society (capitalism). Rousseau though a lover of the system believes that it is the contradiction set by it that threatens to destroy it. In the social contract, Rousseau begins with his most quoted line by scholars “man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains” (Rousseau 1762:49). This statement was meant to bridge the gap between his descriptive work the second discourse and his prescriptive work the social contract. Rousseau’s premise was that humans are essentially free, and were free in the state of nature but the “progress” of civilization has substituted subservience to others for that freedom through dependence, economic and social inequalities and the extent to which we judge ourselves through comparison with others. Please note that in Rousseau’s state of nature, all men depended on nature and not on their fellow man. Since a return to the state of nature is neither feasible nor desirable, the purpose of politics is thus to return freedom to us, thereby reconciling who we truly and essentially are with how we live together. This was the problem Rousseau’s social contract sought to address. How can we be free and live together? Or simply, how can we live together without succumbing to the force and coercion of others. Rousseau maintains that we can achieve this by submitting our individual particular will to the collective or general will created through agreement with other free equal persons. Like Hobbes and Locke before him, and in contrast to the ancient philosopher Aristotle, Rousseau believed that all men were made to be equals. Therefore no one has a natural right to govern others and therefore the only justified authority is the authority that is generated out of agreement or covenant. The social contract in Rousseau was formed differently from that of Hobbes and Locke, in that man first formed an association in which his right like in Hobbes was totally surrendered but differed in the sense that it was surrendered to the association created by the people upon whom sovereignty was bestowed. Note that in Locke, submission of right was partial.

Most basic of the social pact is the agreement to come together and form a people, a collectivity which by definition is more than different from a mere aggregation of individual interest and wills. This act, where individual persons become a people is in Rousseau’s words “the real foundation of society” (59). Through the collective renunciation of the individual rights and freedom that one has in the state of nature, and the transfer of these rights to the collective body, the sovereign is formed, but is made up of free and equal persons whose directions is the good of all considered together. So just as individual wills are directed towards individual interest, the general will once formed, is directed towards the common good understood and agreed to collectively. Like Locke, Rousseau’s social contract contains also the idea of reciprocated duties. That while the sovereign is committed to the good of the individuals who constitute it, and the individual is likewise committed to the good of the whole. As a result, everyone is made to conform to the general will. This according to Rousseau is a condition for freedom in society. Note please that while in Hobbes, both government and sovereign was fused, in Rousseau and Locke, it was separated.

From the foregoing, Rousseau’s philosophy stipulates that for man to be in society, he must be a part of the decision that affect him as an individual and not as a group. Citizens must make laws themselves and not through representatives. This would mean an extremely strong and direct democracy, as on cannot transfer ones will to another to do with it as they please as in the case of representative democracies. That is to say that if a law made is expected to be binding, then all those who are expected to obey such a law must be in agreement to the making of such law. This will then mean that another reason why there is no freedom in Nigeria is because the laws were made without the contributions of all. Take our constitution for instance, the opening line of our constitution says “we the people of Nigeria”…whereas the people were not a part to its making. It then would mean that for Nigerians to have freedom to pursue self preservation, we must revisit the constitution in such a way that every citizen must be a part of the constitution that binds them. But how is that feasible in a country as vast and ethnicized like ours? Bear in mind please that according to Rousseau, the successful application of the general will depend on the coming together periodically of the entire democratic body where each and every citizen decide collectively and with at least near unanimity on how to live together. The implication here would then be that even well establish democracies like that of the United States of America would not satisfy Rousseau’s concept of democracy. Rousseau also propose that freedom in society requires separation of power. That is to say that the law making body should not be the one that executes it. In other words, the judiciary ought to be independent. Note also that one reason Locke feared for the continuance of peace was because of the absence of a body to interpret the law. Are we not then in a state of nature where every administration that comes in interprets the laws to suit their purpose. This will by extension mean that we as Nigerians are not keeping to the tenets of the cosmic law because we lack the freedom to pursue the means of self preservation. And finally according to Rousseau, for man to be free, he must not live in the opinion of others. Americans are referred to as pragmatist because by principle and by action they only apply that which works for them and jettison that which does not. The implication here is that a people must recognize what system works for them both as individuals and as a group and apply such for there to be freedom. Our society today copies all that we see the west do. For instance, it has been proven by the election of June 12, 1993 that open ballot system works for us, but we have failed to continue in it with a reason as flimsy as it being primitive. Whereas, the real reason is that we are trying to catch up with the west- copying without considering utility.

In conclusion, Rousseau’s contract theory together form a single, consistent view of our moral and political situation. We are endowed with freedom and equality by nature, but our nature as been corrupted by our contingent social history. We can over come this corruption however, by invoking our free will to reconstitute ourselves politically which is good for us both individually and collectively. This is also a condition for freedom.

More recent social contract theorist have also rendered their opinion to the topic. For instance, John Rawls in his book “A theory of Justice” proposed two determinants of freedom in society. First he said that each person in society is to have as much civil liberty as possible as long as everyone is granted same liberty. This means that there should be equal opportunity available to everyone to pursue self preservation. Secondly, that while social and economic inequality can be just, they must be available to everybody equally. That is no one is to be on principle denied access to greater economic advantage and as such, inequality must be to the advantage of everyone. In other words, conditions for freedom in society implies that economic inequalities are justified on the basis that the least advantaged member of society is in any case better off than he would have been under alternative arrangement. Put simply, justice and inequality must be evenly distributed. While for David Gauthier, freedom in society requires that we apply constraint in dealing others.

Conclusively, in attempt for man to up hold the first and most important law of nature which is self preservation, he needs to go after those things that are of necessity to his continual existence. Following this, he brings trouble upon himself and this trouble now prevent him from actualizing his aim to self preserve. In other to ensure his continual existence, he goes into a social contract with the aim of restoring and expanding his freedom. Thus to ensure this, he must be willing to lay down claims to his rights as long as others are willing to do the same, he must as a matter of necessity be subjected to law, a law which he must be in agreement to, he must respect the general will and give precedence to it, he must not interfere with the process of law. In that after agreeing to a law, he must allow the law to take its course and he must not live his life based on the dictates or opinion of other people.

REFRENCES
GAUTHIER D. 1990, Moral Dealing, Contract, Ethics and Reason, Cornell University Press.
HAMPTON J. Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 1986.
HOBBES T. 1651, The Leviathan. www.wikipedia.com\thomashobbes.
KAWKA G. S Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, Princeton University, 1986.
LOCKE J. Two Treatise of Government and a letter concerning toleration. Yale University Press. 2003.
MURKHI R. Political Thought, SBD Publishers India 2007.
MUKHERJEE S. AND RAMASWAMY S. A History of Political Thought, Plato to Marx. Asoka .A.K. Ghosh Prentice Hall, India, 2007.
RAWLS, J. 1971, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press.
ROUSSEAU J.J The Basic Political Writing, Trans Donald Hacket Publishing Company, 1987.
SABINE S. and THORSON: The History of Political Theory (4th edition), Mohan Primlani New Delhi, 1973.
The trial and Death of Socrates.
Plato the Republic.