With our democracy under attack, I decided to reread Isaiah Berlin’s Freedom And Its Betrayal. Back in the early 1950s, Isaiah Berlin delivered a series of six lectures on the six enemies of human liberty. Berlin’s insights are just as true now as when he expressed them over 70 years ago.
Some of the “enemies” on Berlin’s list are a little surprising. You wouldn’t think that Rousseau, who championed freedom–“Man is born free but everywhere is in chains”–would undermine human liberty. But Berlin shows Rousseau’s hatred of elites leads to less freedom, not more.
Hegel presents a different problem. Hegel believed the Universe moved in directions humans could not affect. He believed History determined our fates, not individual choices. Hegel’s theories of the momentum of History, the development of ideas from one generation to another that change the economic, social, and political order in a relentless fashion, diminish human liberty because the State becomes the key instrument of Power and all patterns.
Comte Henri De Saint-Simon “was the greatest of all the prophets of the twentieth century. His writings and his life were confused and even chaotic. He was regraded in his own lifetime as an inspired lunatic.” (p. 105). Saint-Simon believed that the government of societies depended on elites who used a “double morality.” “…elites…understand the technological needs of their time; and that, since the majority of human beings are stupid…what the enlightened elite must do is to practice one morally themselves and feed their flock of human subjects with another.” (p. 107). Sound familiar?
All six of these thinkers tried to improve the human condition, but decided to sacrifice human liberty to do it. Autocratic methods, giving Government more power over citizens, limiting rights, are all strategies promoted by these historical figures who factor in our present politics. If you want to trace the origin of many of the autocratic ideas impacting us today, Freedom And Its Betrayal will lay it all out for you. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Note to the Second Impression — v
- Editor’s Preface — ix
- Introduction — 1
- Helvetius — 11
- Rousseau — 27
- Fichte — 50
- Hegel — 74
- Saint-Simon — 105
- Maistre — 131
- Notes — 155
- Index — 175
I see the internet gods have once again decided to print your queue all at once. **sigh**
As far as enemies of human liberty go, I understand there’s this creep who bragged about walking in on the dressing rooms of fifteen-year-old girls who now says he will be the protector of women…he will protect them whether they want him to or not. I think a fitting punishment for that would be to lock him in a room with Diane and Katie for half an hour, which should be more than enough time for them to settle his hash.
Democracy has always been fragile, but we really don’t need to add narcissistic sociopaths added to the mix.