What is this moral freedom business?
Part 4 Solving the government’s problem under agency as freedom
All governments have two main tasks to fulfill, regardless of their culture or political system - provide sufficient personal freedom for people to conduct daily affairs, and maintain social order so that personal freedom can be exercised and the culture can function. Personal freedom is freedom to buy and sell, make choices about work and leisure. Social order is conducted via law and regulation and custom and etiquette. Civil society also functions as a mechanism of social control, as a transmitter of values. Governments have to provide for both tasks simultaneously.
Ci Jiwei describes two ways of securing agency for individuals – agency as freedom and agency as identification. It is this ability to exercise individual agency that contributes to a sense of human dignity – that one’s thoughts and hopes are considered in the world.
Both ways are valid approaches to securing dignity if they function as intended. Both can fail. But there is an aspect to agency as freedom as a social stabilizer that makes the government’s job of providing for freedom and order much easier. I want to discuss that here.