How, If at All, Is Freedom Valuable?

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It is important to distinguish between freedom’s kinds of values, because in defining a system of government, the attitude towards freedom is a key component. If freedom has no independent value, different schools of political thought might have the standpoint, that we should not value freedom at all, only the things that it is means to. Some might think that they know better what is good for people, and feel justified in constraining people’s freedom. We intuitively value freedom, and usually do not even notice, that we have it, because it woven through so much of our everyday life. We take freedom for granted, even though in some countries it is not so trivial. It is not enough to feel that freedom is our basic right, but to understand why it is so important, and why freedom can not be replaced by the specific ends one might think it is means to. I will argue, that freedom does have independent value. First I will talk about the non-independent value of freedom, and look at the different independent values, then concentrate on the non-specific instrumental value. I am going to look at claims where Dworkin and Kymlicka were wrong, and evaluate Ian Carter’s standpoint. We can define freedom in a positive or a negative manner. The former would be related to self-realization and being free from internal obstacles, while the latter definition concentrates on being free from external constraints, that is no one interfere with our freedom, at least not arbitrarily, since we need some rules to live in a society. In this essay, I will assume a negative concept. Philosophic value may be split into two types of value. Non-independent value, which is specific instrumental value. If something has non-independent value, it is valuable in re... ... middle of paper ... ...t of the condition of the mankind, it involves learning, and the outcome is discovering the yet unknown. And it seems that progress is the highest when freedom is present, in other words we can not get the most out of ourselves if we have constraints. So by the definition of progress we are unable to say what good is it going to make us, but it will do something generally valuable. So freedom is indeed valuable. Not many argues against the nonindependent value of freedom, since there are a lot of values for which freedom is essential. In my view, freedom is independently also valuable, because we might not know exactly what good is it going to do for us, but Works Cited The Independent Value of Freedom Ian Carter Ethics Vol. 105, No. 4 (Jul., 1995), pp. 819-845 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Article Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/2382113

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