Liberty and Freedom: The Relationship of Enablement

 96 Liberty and Freedom: The Relationship of Enablement Michael YUDANIN 1. Introduction: Freedom and liberty If freedom is a capacity of embodied reason, something we have by virtue of being humans, how should it impact society? The liberal view that subscribes to the notion of universal human rights would claim that political liberty is a societal accommodation of freedom. Yet what is the nature of this relationship, and how exactly does freedom determine the shape of liberty? What are the components of the concept of liberty that accommodate the demands of freedom? Does it have to do only with the negative rights, the freedom from, or certain positive rights, the freedom to, should also be upheld by the society in order to enable meaningful freedom of its members? In this paper, I will argue that in order to accommodate the demands of freedom, to enable its meaningful expression, political liberty must not only protect the individual from undue limitations but also provide one with the means necessary to carry out free choices. Without such means, freedom will remain merely formal, lacking any essential content. Freedom, seen as the ability to choose between alternatives, can be expressed only in its social circumstances. Therefore, the means the individual has at her disposal to exercise free choice should match the character of the society in which the individual functions, and specifically its level of sophistication. In order to advance the argument, I will first clarify the concepts of freedom and liberty. This is necessary as the terms are frequently confused, and there is a considerable disagreement regarding the meaning of the conception of freedom. Specifically, I will suggest viewing freedom as the capacity to make choices between alternatives. Then we can examine what features the societal arrangement, i.e., liberty, should possess in order to accommodate freedom, emphasizing the latter’s formal and substantial aspects. In doing so, I will analyze the different levels of societal liberty as accommodating freedom along the lines of the Hegelian framework, namely as freedom in itself, for itself, and in- and for itself. I will also look at freedom from the perspective of the information theory. I will argue that we need to recognize the special role of knowledge, and hence the role of liberty in relation to knowledge in order to enable meaningful freedom. Following that, we can explore whether this special role of knowledge might give rise to certain political rights. MichaelYUDANIN:LibertyandFreedom 97 2. Clarification of concepts: The capacity to choose vs. its social accommodation The terms ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ are frequently used as synonymous, yet a distinction is made whenever needed between freedom as in “free will” and freedom as in “free speech.”1 In the first case, ‘freedom’ refers to human capacity for selfdetermination, while in the second — to social arrangement that is related to this capacity. The hitherto most thorough review of the literature on freedom undertaken by Mortimer Adler and his colleagues (Adler 1973) also suggests that two distinct aspects of freedom: freedom as individual’s capacity, Adler’s natural freedom (Ibid. 93, 107, and elsewhere), and freedom as a societal response to this capacity, either in the form of limits imposed on the individual or individual’s self-development alongside and against those limits — Adler’s circumstantial and acquired views of freedom (Ibid.). Thus, it seems that the use of distinct terms to denote these two concepts is well warranted. In what follows, I will use ‘freedom’ to refer to the assumed capacity of the individual, and ‘liberty’ — to the aspects of societal organization related to this capacity. 2.1 Freedom: Individual’s capacity to choose between alternatives2 The minimal conceptual essence of freedom would have a number of aspects. First, it must be individual, or accord with the boundary between the self — however we define it — and the outside world. Without that, the notion of liberty would not hold: there is no influence of circumstances that impact individual’s freedom without the boundary between the individual and the external world. Second, it should account for the influence of constraints against which the individual will be asserting the degree of freedom attainted. Without such constraints, the notion of acquiring a degree of freedom is meaningless.3 It is necessary to note that the constraints might vary greatly: these can be solitary confinement and fear of persecution or public mockery, as well as desires of the flesh and temptations of prejudiced thinking. Third, and the most important, freedom must include a sort of causality that is different from the one that is usually described as natural causality, i.e., causality that can be described by observable laws of nature. The essence of freedom is the causality through the self that is not completely determinable by the natural world, usually referred to as self-determination. In order to meet these criteria we can conceptualize freedom as ability to choose between alternatives. This ability can be seen as innate — in fact, it must 1 See, for example, Mill’s On Liberty (Mill 1859/2010, Chapter I, para. 12-13). 2 J. Melvin Woody in Freedom’s Embrace arrives at a characterization of freedom similar to the one given in this section through analyzing what the hypothesis of freedom would entail so it can stand the test of human experience (Woody 1998; see 19-20 for the brief outline of the approach and Parts I, pp21-64 and III, 129-228 for the development of the argument). 3 An argument for the impossibility of absolute freedom can be found in Woody 1998, 85-112. For our purposes, it would suffice to say that there would be no need for a conception of freedom if there were no constraints upon it: the Emerald City needs no color word for green.  98 be seem as innate, as without it the discussion of freedom would be meaningless. Yet it does not have to have any specific content, as such content would be, at least potentially, determinable by a variety of factors. An important aspect of the analysis of freedom as the capacity to choose, thoroughly addressed by Locke, is identifying the factors that constrain available choices, and specifically the role of understanding (perception/thinking) in our judgments. Not only physical constraints are at play here, our thoughts also influence our choices. If one has little idea about traffic signs, his choice might well be influenced — at times, at a considerable costs and inconvenience — by this lack of knowledge. A person who is convinced that “theory” signifies something vague and uncertain is likely to choose a different course of action when called to decide on the matters of nature than a person who is familiar with how science functions. As Locke puts it, “without understanding, liberty (if it could be) would signify nothing [...] he that is at liberty to ramble in perfect darkness, what is his liberty better than if he were driven up and down as a bubble by the force of the wind?” (Locke 1691/1959, §69, 361). I will try to show that wandering in the twilight is also quite problematic. 2.2 Liberty: Societal accommodation of freedom If freedom is a capacity natural to human beings, society ought to address it: since society is comprised of individuals, their constitution, both mental and physical, is of an essence for social arrangements.4 There will be, thus, a societal accommodation of freedom, or liberty. Liberty would be established to allow for the optimal expression of freedom to the extent possible within the constraints imposed by the necessities of living in a society. Hence, a discussion on liberty can proceed in two planes: the constraints on individual freedom and the enablement of its development. The aspect of constraints is reflected in the circumstantial view of freedom (Adler 1973, 93, 107, and elsewhere), as well as in the concept of negative liberty explicated by Berlin in his Two Concepts of Liberty (Berlin 1969/2002b). It is also clear that the notion of negative liberty accommodates the conception of freedom as choice that, following Woody, has been proposed in this paper. If the ability to choose between alternatives is natural to individuals, protecting this choice seems to be natural to societies. Yet liberty that focuses on the enablement of freedom, liberty that is equally necessary for accommodating freedom, does not seem to be adequately addressed in the literature. Berlin, most certainly informed by the social upheavals to which he had been a witness since he was seven years old, opposes to negative freedom the notion of positive freedom (Berlin 1969/2002b, 178), or freedom to (Berlin 1998/2002, 326). 4 This seems to be the assumption behind political philosophy since the times of Plato’s Republic. Plato’s view of people as impressible by stories led him to impose censorship in his ideal city (Plato, 386a-389a in Plato 1997, 1022-1026). Similarly, Locke in Two Treatises of Government argues against the views of his opponent Filmer regarding whether men are born free or not; both see in it the basis for how the government is to be organized (see, for example, Locke 1689/1988, Book I, §2, 142; Book II, §4, 269; and elsewhere). MichaelYUDANIN:LibertyandFreedom 99 Positive freedom starts with the question “Who governs me?” as opposed to “What are the limits of the control others can exercise over my choices?” that is central to negative freedom. The development of this view, per Berlin’s observations, inevitably leads us to base our judgments on the conception of the self. Bhagavad Gita’s detachment, Aristotle’s virtues and Stoics’ self-discipline (see review in Adler 1973), and Kant’s discussion on autonomy of the will as opposed to the heteronomy of desires (Kant 1785/1998 and Kant 1797/1996) can serve as examples of this approach. These sources seem to stress individual development rather than social arrangements; even educational treatises written within this tradition do not rise to the level of society at large.5 And yet many modern political movements act according to the notion of positive liberty: furthering the “real” freedom of the “real” self, be it the rational nature, nation, soul, or another similar concept that is claiming to be truer and higher than the perishable flesh and ignorant calculations of the individual. The examples Berlin repeatedly brings are those of inquisition, communism, fascism, and nationalism of different sorts; in our times we can add to the list religious fanaticism not organized hierarchically and, peculiarly enough, the almost-religious belief in the highest truth of the mysteriously invisible hand of the free market, that among its ardent proponents seem to evolve from a metaphor into a value in itself. It is clear that this notion of positive freedom can be used to limit and crash the mere notion of freedom as the realization of the ability to choose among alternatives.6 Is the exclusion of positive freedom from the domain of liberty warranted? Berlin has been criticized extensively for this move. The most interesting criticism, in the context of this paper, comes from MacCallum (MacCallum 1967). He claims that freedom involves a triadic relation: it is always of somebody, from something, and to do something (Ibid. 314). In other words, freedom always has an agent, its subject; a limit, at least a potential one; and an object, its goal. What Berlin refers to as a negative freedom, claims MacCallum, is the freedom from, yet it is meaningless without the freedom to, Berlin’s positive freedom: what does freedom from censorship mean to an agent who is not about to read or write any books? The recent communitarian treatment of positive freedom adds more substance to this claim. Without the rich context of culture, society, and history, with only the most basic and simple forms of decision making at her disposal, the individual isn’t free but is a rather shallow and narrow atomistic entity that cannot meaningfully carry out the choices.7 Berlin’s response seems to be quite convincing. There is a sense in which breaking from the chains of oppression has meaning without any particular course of action planned — the sense of being able to choose without repercussions, i.e., freely (Berlin 1969/2002a, 36n; Berlin 1998/2002, 326). The desire of a person to be free 5 6 7 See, for example, Kant’s Education (Kant 1803/1964), the primary focus of which is the individual. Berlin most famously notes it; his selection of examples adds historical validity to this view. See, for example, Berlin 1998/2002, 328. See, for example, Taylor 1992, 40-41 and throughout Chapter I. Other prominent communitarians are surveyed in Etzioni 1998.  100 in the sense of being able to carry out his choices can be compared to the desire of a deaf person to regain the ability to hear: the question of to, i.e., what specifically he wishes to hear as a reason to regain hearing, would be immaterial. And yet MacCallum’s critique and the communitarian concerns, as many other responses to Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty,8 point out an important corollary of having negative liberty as the sole meaning of liberty, important specifically in the context of seeing liberty as freedom’s social accommodation. If society’s role is only to make sure that freedom as choice is not limited beyond what is necessary for its own maintenance, where would the contents for this capacity, the contents necessary to distinguish the alternatives of choice and make informed choices, come from? Freedom of the press seem somewhat problematic, to say the least, in a society where the vast majority is illiterate and Internet is inaccessible. Mere literacy would not be enough either if the choices to be made require understanding of advanced concepts and the ability to analyze complex data: consider the decision for or against coal-powered plants, when done by people whose knowledge of natural sciences is vague. Moreover, noting that by making choices freedom can shape itself through setting the circumstances for its own future application, we will arrive at the understanding that specific contents can lead it to limit or deny itself. Arguably, naïve fellows taught to respect authority, exposed to nicely packaged ideas of absolutism and denied access to alternative concepts, whether by censorship or by the lack of acquired ability to follow sophisticated argument, might well deny their natural freedom. Mere negative liberty, which, in the context of our distinction between freedom and liberty, can be better deemed protective liberty, would not be enough to accommodate the inherent human capacity for choice at the societal level — it will leave it empty of adequate content.9 From here, society’s role in accommodating freedom cannot be confined to making sure that no unnecessary limits are imposed on individuals’ capacity to choose their course of action. Nor would it have much to do with Berlin’s idea of positive freedom. In order to provide an adequate response to this basic element of human nature, society has to ensure that the alternatives of choice are present and accessible, and that the individual is equipped with what is needed to make rational choices — that the form of freedom receives content over which it can be exercised. This can be deemed enabling liberty, and as such it complements the protective (negative) liberty. 3. Freedom and liberty: The relationship of enablement The concept of freedom as a capacity to choose between alternatives has a number of consequences. First, it requires constraints. A choice can be made only when we have a number of specific alternative courses of action; the fact that these are specific alternatives and that there is a finite number of them both enables and limits 8 9 See survey in Berlin 1969/2002a. Putterman also argues for taking into consideration the content of freedom while analyzing Berlin’s views (Putterman 2006, 421, 425, 438). MichaelYUDANIN:LibertyandFreedom 101 our choice. From here, the number and the quality of choices would be in a positive correlation with the degree of freedom, yet this degree will never be absolute. Second, to realize itself, freedom needs access to alternatives and should be capable of making choices. If no alternatives are available, choice is impossible. If the agent is incapable of making the choice, it is equally impossible. Yet modeling freedom after a subject in a psychological experiment who is requested to choose between three alternatives regarding which she has all the relevant information would be highly misleading; it is what Taleb deemed ludic fallacy, seeing human interaction with all its complexities as a sort of simple game with well-defined rules (Taleb 2007). Having access to information about alternatives, as well as the ability to process such information and understand the consequences of choice are necessary if we are to talk about real choices made in the complex world of any human society, ancient Greece as modern Denmark. And this is where enabling liberty becomes relevant. In order to clarify what enabling liberty should consist of, it would be beneficial first to briefly address its boundaries. Enabling liberty cannot provide goals for choice, neither can it guide toward preferring one choice or group of choices over another. Equality, morality, and other values can do just that. However, none of these accommodates choice qua choice. A chess example would help here, as this game seems complex enough to exemplify issues from the world of human interaction. Teaching somebody to play chess would entail familiarizing her with the rules of the game, i.e., the moves pieces are allowed to make — the alternatives of choice. Theoretically, this is enough, as everything else can be derived analytically from the rules. However, if our neophyte is to confront an opponent within a week, mere communication of rules is far from being enough. Forks, pins, defense and attack strategies, etc. would be of real value and will certainly enhance one’s ability to play a meaningful game of chess. However, this would not be enough either, as alone it will not help the player to evaluate the options and choose the best one. Criteria for appraising alternative moves and selecting the best one, as well as guidance for applying these criteria and formulating new ones, would be of high value. All this together will make a good chess player without pushing her in one specific direction — enabling rather than directing. While real life-choices are much more complex and consequential than chess moves, the example does demonstrate the three main elements necessary for enabling liberty: access to alternatives, tools for the analysis of alternatives, and methods for developing criteria for evaluating the strategies of choice and forming new ones. These three elements of enabling liberty can be seen as related to knowledge: knowing what the alternatives are, knowing what they mean, and knowing how to evaluate them. Yet before these elements are analyzed as progressing levels of freedom, it is necessary to recognize knowledge’s unique role in its enablement. While mentioned by Berlin, Adler, Woody, Sen (Sen 1999), and others, knowledge has never been assigned a unique place in the freedom discourse. However, it seems that its role is distinct from all other enabling factors. These factors, e.g., physical conditions, can be hardly overestimated in their importance, but none of them seems to be necessary for carrying out free choices. It can be argued, as Berlin does in 102 Two Concepts of Liberty and elsewhere, that the freedom of the Stoic is limited — but it still can be validly called freedom. The Stoic deliberately limits his choices to avoid constraints, thus proving that many important factors, including, most notably, physical and legal conditions, can be discarded when one restricts his realm of choice. Yet without the knowledge of the alternatives the choice is not only difficult — it is impossible. Hence, knowledge constitutes a necessary pre-condition for the realization of freedom: knowledge provides it with contents, without which freedom cannot be carried out in the world, as minimal as it might be. Not knowing what the options are equals to not being able to choose.  MichaelYUDANIN:LibertyandFreedom 103 to providing data, where data is understood in terms of the information theory as entities that can potentially be interpreted (Floridi 2010, 23-24). Such role can translate into a wide spectrum of social action. On the one end stand voting rights and other ways to express political will, infrastructure for the freedom of movement, etc. On the other — establishing and maintaining public libraries, ensuring that media is not monopolized — or, better, stays non-monopolizable,11 and providing Internet access for all. All these offer avenues for implementing choices: the first step in enabling freedom. However, data is meaningless when the means of its interpretation are lacking — this is easy to see if we think of a text in a language unknown to us. Similarly, libraries are useless to the illiterate, and the web — to those who have neither means nor the skills necessary to make meaningful use of it. 4. Three levels of liberty 4.2 Understanding alternatives: freedom for us as information The three levels of knowledge mentioned above can be looked upon as the development, or unfolding, of freedom in the Hegelian sense (Hegel 1807/1977), as well as in terms of the information theory. Analyzing the development of freedom along Hegelian lines enables tracing the essential connection between social liberty and individual freedom. Looking at the levels of knowledge through the lenses of the information theory allows better understanding of the possible ways of accommodating freedom in social practice. 4.1 Access to alternatives: freedom in itself as data The most basic level of enabled freedom is access to alternatives. Without accessible alternatives of choice, freedom forever remains merely formal, unrealizable capacity. Some alternatives are accessible to us by virtue of our human nature — the classical example that seems to occur to any philosopher discussing the subject is raising a hand or not doing so. This, however, means little for the purposes of human freedom, as similar alternatives are accessible to any mammal. To understand this level of freedom better, we can see it addressing freedom as potential: access to alternatives provides options that are necessary for implementing choice, yet no more than that. Having alternatives accessible is a necessary condition for carrying out free action — yet by no means sufficient. It is also necessary that the agent understands the alternatives of choice as alternatives of choice. Without this understanding, possible courses of action remain alternatives only in themselves (an sich), much as an embryo that is “in itself a human being, [but] it is not so for itself” (Hegel 1807/1977, §21, 12) — and hence the freedom of choice remains unrealized. Following Hegel, we can think of a slave who has all the necessary means for the insurrection accessible, yet does not perceive these as means for the insurrection since he does not see himself as free to revolt — and hence, in our terminology, has mere access to alternatives for choice yet does not see them as such.10 In terms of the societal accommodation of freedom, enabling liberty here ought to make sure that the alternatives are present and accessible. This is akin 10 See Hegel’s discussion on freedom in Oriental society (as he understood it, of course) in Hegel 1837/1953, Ch. 1. The Idea of Freedom, 23-24. Information stands for well-formed meaningful data (Floridi 2010, 2). As such, it is qualitatively different from data which by itself is neither well-formed not meaningful for its users. Similarly, at the second level of freedom’s enablement the alternative courses of action are not merely accessible but also understood by the agents as possible ways to act. Here the alternatives are for me (für mich), I can understand them as something that can be pursued. This is the second necessary step toward freedom’s realization, as it is impossible to choose something not seen as a possible alternative. Understanding alternatives as such constitutes significant progress when compared to the mere access to alternatives. There is a qualitative difference between having a legal ability to vote and knowing that you can vote: when, where, and how; having a library in town — and knowing that it is available for you; having access to the Internet — and using it. At the first glance, it might seem that having access to the alternatives of choice and understanding them as possible courses of action is enough to realize freedom. Yet it is not. Complex alternatives require more than mere encounter to understand what their value is, they necessitate more than just having information to make a meaningful choice. Without means to analyze the information, the “web of mutual relations,” information has little meaning; without such relations “you are left with a pile of truths or a random list of bits of information that cannot help to make sense of the reality they seek to address” (Ibd., 51). One might know that Nietzsche wrote a poem named Vereinsamt, and even be able to get its full text on the computer screen in seconds and read it; and yet not being accustomed to reading poetry will make the prospect of enjoying it impossible, and the choice –meaningless. One might know how to vote in general elections, have a full right to do so, and not fear any repercussions; but if she has no ways of understanding — not merely reading, but understanding — the programs of the candidates and the possible consequences of these programs, voting loses its meaning as a choice made between alternatives and becomes an exercise in a skewed game of chance. A person can have full 11 Its seems like we are witnessing the creation of non-monopolizable media through the combination of Internet technology and its skillful use by millions of people around the world. 104 access to all publicly available information on global warming, but if his chemistry education was limited to one semester of re-hashing definitions from the textbook, as a result of which he perceives natural sciences to be a sort of opinionating regarding things that has little to do with the real world, he will not be able to appreciate the information and make meaningful choices in regards to it. One might be aware of two possible choices, yet not even fathom that the whole situation can be re-conceptualized by applying a new paradigm to it, thus increasing the number of alternative actions. Modern liberal democracies have political freedoms enshrined as laws of the land and thus protective liberty in place. They also usually succeed in providing data to their citizens and equipping them with the way to turn it into information, for example, through public libraries and literacy. Yet, as shown above, this is not enough for making meaningful choices on complex matters and hence it does not properly accommodate freedom. The situation is akin to Hegel’s Greeks who were conscious of freedom, yet did not see “man as such” as free (Hegel 1830/1971, §482, 239; Hegel 1837/1953, 23). Their freedom, consequently, was partial and accidental, where one is seen free thanks to something external, e.g., place of birth, rather than her own human nature. Freedom here is not the essence of life but rather one bit of reality among many — just like alternatives of choice are “bits and pieces” of information, separate from each other and not integral in their role as alternatives of choice to the rest of the fabric of life. Charles Taylor analyzes this situation as resulting from the dismantling of the traditional society, where every person was placed in a specific station in life, with its roles and responsibilities, accompanied by a full repertoire of knowledge necessary to living his life. These certainly were restrictive, and yet “at the same time as they restricted us, these orders gave meaning to the world and to the activities of social life” (Taylor 1992, 3). When the traditional society is replaced by the mere freedom for us, the place of meaning remains void, our reasoning cannot be but merely instrumental (Ibid., 8-9; see also Lyotard 1984), and our freedom — only partial and not fully human. 4.3 Evaluating alternatives: freedom in and for itself as knowledge According to Hegel, the ultimate realization of Spirit (Geist) is in its being in-andfor-itself (An- und Fürsichseiende), where it realizes that in-itself and for-itself are two moments of its existence (Hegel 1807/1977, §804, 490). Applied to freedom, this is reflected in a human being who realizes herself as free qua human being, realizes freedom as the nature of humanity (Ibid., §482, 240). It entails a vantage point from which the ability to choose and the alternatives of choice are seen as part of one realm — the realm of freedom. This leads us to knowledge. In terms of the information theory, knowledge would refer to a “web of mutual relations that allow one part of it to account for another [... in which ] information starts providing that overall view of the world which we associate with the best of our epistemic efforts” (Floridi 2010, 51). Applied to freedom, knowledge would mean having a rich context against which the alternatives can be evaluated. The context here includes methods for evaluating  MichaelYUDANIN:LibertyandFreedom 105 the alternatives as well as means to formulate these methods; methods for arranging information in such a way that it would make proper historical or otherwise factual background for the choices under consideration; being able to ask a number of meta-informational questions — questions about the relevance, usefulness, reliability, possible interpretations, level of details, and veracity of information (cf. Floridi 2010, 48, 52). Knowledge here is not merely understanding something but comprehending its meaning. Knowledge goes beyond the ability to manipulate information, beyond comparing n alternatives over scale s. The full meaning of enabling freedom is in providing the resources that enable and empower human beings to think: to raise questions of value and meaning and have the resources needed to answer them as such. Freedom empowered by knowledge is the freedom to read a poem while being able to put it in the context that allows the reader to appreciate it. It means understanding that evolution is not a subject of belief but, as scientific theory, of support or falsification by empirical observations. It entails not only knowing that different parties are soliciting votes and that each one of them has certain ideas and agenda, but being able to understand these agendas in their historical context, see them as elements of a particular political system that accords specific privileges to elected officials, and understanding what is the depth of their impact on the course the country is about to take after the elections. Moreover, the rich context here increases the freedom not only by giving it meaning but also by enabling and empowering the agent to look not merely at the available alternatives and evaluate them but also to evaluate the paradigm with which she construes the situation of choice and, if desired, come up with the new one. The context here enables a metachoice, a choice of the strategy of choice, as opposed to acting within the model given by habit or tradition. Here lies the principal difference between the suggested view of liberty as freedom’s enabler and the solutions usually proposed by the communitarian thinking. The argument proposed above leads to the considerations that seem to be behind the ancient Greek ideal of a well-rounded person and the Confucian chüntzu (Confucius & Waley 1989, specifically Book II). However, this level of freedom’s unfolding in the social realm is yet to be attained by liberal democracies. Moreover — it seems that the development of education and the public discourse after World War II have been moving in the opposite direction (Lyotard 1984). Yann Martel reflected on similar issues during a session of Canadian parliament to which he was invited: [...] to think of the arts as mere entertainment to be indulged in after the serious business of life, that — in conjunction with retooling education so that it centres on the teaching of employable skills rather than the creating of thinking citizens [italics mine – MY] — is to engineer souls that are post-historical, post-literate and pre-robotic; that is, blank souls wired to be unfulfilled and susceptible to conformism at its worst — intolerance and totalitarianism — because incapable of thinking for themselves and vowed  106 to a life of frustrated serfdom at the service of the feudal lords of profit.12 In order to accommodate freedom, liberty is to make sure that knowledge is fostered and developed by the educational system. This, not in order to answer the call of the “real self,” as with Berlin’s positive freedom, but to allow for the real, meaningful, human choice. 5. Conclusion: From meaningful freedom to political rights The analysis of freedom attempted above leads to the conclusion that there are two aspects of the societal accommodation of freedom. The first focuses on making sure that the interference with the choice made by individuals is minimal; rather than the traditional name of negative liberty, it can be better called protective liberty to reflect its meaning. The second aspect is as necessary to make freedom shine as the first one. Since the capacity to choose is formal, it needs contents to be realized, contents about which the decisions are to be made. Enabling liberty comes to make sure that the individual can make meaningful choices. As such, it needs to address three levels of freedom as choice making — and these levels seem to be translatable into specific political rights. First, in order to enable freedom, access to the alternatives among which the choice will be made should be provided. In our society it can be translated into the protection of access to information and provision of such access — and to the respective political right to information. This right, though, cannot remain a mere abstraction: just like the right to travel translates into a transportation infrastructure and legal arrangements, the right to access information ought to be expressed in accessible and adequate informational infrastructure. Moreover, it does not merely mean access to data banks but also access to processed and organized sources that will help in processing the information. This idea is not as new as it might sound, and it might be traced to Mill’s view of society’s role as the repository of information related to social experiments (Mill 1859/2010, Chapter V, para. 18). Public libraries were the beginning of this process, which today seems to require unimpeded web access, equality of Internet content protected by law, and protecting sources like Wikipedia from the encroachment of interest groups and political players. Moreover, it would seem imperative for societies committed to the ideals of freedom to disseminate knowledge and information that will help people in countries where access to information is restricted in making informed and knowledgeable choices; this is principally different from governmental propaganda, as the dissemination of information meant here is not committed to this or that particular position. The second political right that comes to mind is the right to education that provides knowledge, as opposed to one that merely equips students with skills. As 12 The quotation is taken from the website where Yann Martel is tracing his project of sending a different book to the Prime Minister of Canada every two weeks. As of time of writing this paper, he has mailed 101 books yet received no significant feedback. MichaelYUDANIN:LibertyandFreedom 107 primary means of enabling the members of society to construct alternative courses of action and evaluate them, education, in order to answer the call of freedom, should match the complexity of choices the individuals are expected to face. The more complex society is, the higher should be the quality of education. The alternatives individuals confront in modern society develop and change rapidly. Therefore, mere supply of facts and specific criteria for evaluating alternatives would not be adequate for today’s world — hence the need to teach how to learn, or to provide the individual with the means to acquire, produce, and disseminate new knowledge; and to be aware of herself as being able and needing to do that. To summarize, if we are to accommodate natural freedom at the societal level, it is not enough to protect it from interference. 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Wu-TsoLIN:TheProfessionalMoralityoftheDocumentaryFilmmaker 109 The Professional Morality of the Documentary Filmmaker Wu-Tso LIN 1. Why need professional morality of documentary? What is documentary? Can documentary film tell truth? How it tell us the truth? These questions related to the working mindset of documentary filmmakers. While looking for an appropriate documentary topic, the first consideration came to the director’s mind and inspire his passion as well as to search out a topic other people care about. But what do people care about? For example, to begin with humanitarian issues are at the forefront of the global consciousness, such as human being worrying about the future and maintaining a sustainable way of life, world peace and human rights (such as Palestine), social experiments, gender equality, racial equality, the balanced distribution of wealth and resources, moving personal experiences and interviews with specialists, historical background. Secondly political issues are hotly debated in most corners of the world, and the director often to film the sensitive situation between different cultural believes, political inclinations and seek to find possible solutions to political tension. For example, the issue of Taiwan’s 228 incident, the bloody crackdown against the local Taiwanese people that occurred in 1949 is a little known event in Taiwanese history that would be an ideal topic for the documentary. Another prime example would be the political suppression of aboriginal culture all throughout the American continent and land grabbing by government and big business causing the rapid depletion of the rainforest. Thirdly, environmental issues in this day and age are pressing concerns, such as greenhouse gases causing rising temperatures, depleting our nonrenewable resources, the use of biological and chemical weapons, the dangers surrounding nuclear power facilities, continue finding sustainable and reusable energy, current environmental pollution events such as the island of plastic garbage in the Pacific or nuclear accident of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in Japan. Finally, such as financial issues, any evidence to support your case, conspiracy theory, status quo, hidden camera( privacy rights), above of all are the topics which the documentary filmmakers love to process. We have to care about the moral problem before our documentary filming. For any kind of professions has internally guidelines of practice that members of the profession must follow, to prevent exploitation of the customer and preserve the integrity of the profession. This is not only for the benefit of the customer but also the benefit of those belonging to the profession. This is so called morality that allow the profession to define a standard of conduct and ensure that individual practitioners meet this standard, by disciplining them from the professional body if they do not practice accordingly. This allows those professionals who act with conscience to practice in the knowledge that they will not be undermined commercially by those