The freedom of liberty

In the half-century of reflection on freedom that I have explored in the two essays of which this is the second, something very peculiar has happened. The liberal theory started in a spirit of modesty: the claim to be free to live by one's own will. Freedom was on the defensive and its theory restrained. As reflection evolved, however, the theory was unbound and the idea of liberty shed its modesty. It came to include means on top of rights while finding no way to say what would be enough. Simultaneously, the world evolved. The competition collapsed with the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe in 1989. Freedom was no longer on the defensive and therefore no longer for that reason in need of modesty. Nor was modesty any longer contained in its theory. The freedom of the liberty school has become a freedom capable of promoting itself in a style, assertiveness and volume of voice that can border on aggressiveness. It has become a voice with a potential of righteousness that is potentially dangerous to the cause of freedom. That, I think, is because we in the free world may have fallen prey to what Aristotle long before our time saw to be a false conception of liberty.