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12 - Freedom and rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

By
Richard Dagger
Edited by
Andrew Dobson  and
Robyn Eckersley
Richard Dagger
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science Arizona State University
Andrew Dobson
Affiliation:
The Open University, Milton Keynes
Robyn Eckersley
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Summary

‘[T]hat ill deserves the Name of confinement that hedges us in only from Bogs and Precipices.’ These words, from §57 of John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, have long posed a challenge to those who hold that a firm commitment to negative liberty – that is, to liberty understood as the absence of interference, impediment or restraint – is one of the defining features of liberalism. To be sure, Locke goes on to acknowledge that ‘Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others’; but this liberty, he insists, ‘cannot be, where there is no law’ (Locke 1965 [1689–90]: 348). The challenge, then, is to show either that Locke is wrong, because the laws and hedges that keep us from falling into bogs or over precipices really do deprive us of liberty, or that he is not the arch-liberal he is so often taken to be.

Locke's words also pose a second challenge, however, one which is more pertinent to the concerns of the present volume. To put it simply, does Locke gives bogs and precipices their due? Is it not possible that bogs and precipices, as parts of nature, have interests and perhaps even rights of their own – rights that require the hedging in or confining of human beings, not so that we may live freely, but so that bogs and precipices may?

Type
Chapter
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Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge , pp. 200 - 215
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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  • Freedom and rights
    • By Richard Dagger, Department of Political Science Arizona State University
  • Edited by Andrew Dobson, The Open University, Milton Keynes, Robyn Eckersley, University of Melbourne
  • Book: Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge
  • Online publication: 06 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511617805.013
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  • Freedom and rights
    • By Richard Dagger, Department of Political Science Arizona State University
  • Edited by Andrew Dobson, The Open University, Milton Keynes, Robyn Eckersley, University of Melbourne
  • Book: Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge
  • Online publication: 06 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511617805.013
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Freedom and rights
    • By Richard Dagger, Department of Political Science Arizona State University
  • Edited by Andrew Dobson, The Open University, Milton Keynes, Robyn Eckersley, University of Melbourne
  • Book: Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge
  • Online publication: 06 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511617805.013
Available formats
×