This was something I started long ago and now have no idea why I saved it as a draft, or where I wanted to go with it. Just posted because I don't want to delete it, but it doesn't make a lot of sense.....

Philosophy, The Basics by Nigel Warburton. Can't remember how I came across the existence of this book, but when I did I looked it up on Amazon and ordered a used copy from someone. I think a lot of Amazon's success stems from their willingness to allow people to sell their old shit. Anyway, I got this book, mainly because I tried Kant, Locke and others, and the shit is just too complicated for me. It may be because I think I need to start at the wrong place. What interests me is the different aspects of liberty in society, and I have been trying to get a basic understanding of existentialism, because a lot of the questions these people try to address concerning individual liberties raise further questions about basic existence.

So, halfway through Warburton's work he mentions Isaiah Berlin, and an essay he did called Two Concepts of Liberty. Very interesting, maybe even easier to understand than Mill. He has this to say...

Men are largely interdependent, and no man's activity is so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in anyway. `Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows'; the liberty of some must depend on the restraint of others.

A lot of people do not stop to consider this. I always try to relate the stuff I read on this topic to what Ayn Rand was trying to say in her writings. For instance, in Atlas Shrugged, to get away from the helpless masses that demanded the services of the men behind the companies that really make things happen, such as railroad, steel, and others, these same men hide away in a remote part of the country and start making lives for themselves. Of course, they have conveniently at their disposal all the natural resources they could want in a small area, but they join collectively to make life interesting and fruitful for themselves. They hide away from the collective masses, only to collect in a secluded commune.


What is freedom to those who cannot make use of it? Without adequate conditions for the use of freedom, what is the value of freedom? First things come first: there are situations, as a nineteenth century Russian radical writer declared, in which boots are superior to the works of Shakespeare; individual freedom is not everyone's primary need.

We cannot remain absolutely free, and must give up some of our liberty to preserve the rest. But total self-surrender is self-defeating. What then must the minimum be? That which a man cannot give up with out offending against the essence of his human nature. What is this essence? What are the standards which it entails? This has been, and perhaps always will be, a matter of infinite debate.

I am not so sure about the statement that 'total self-surrender is self-defeating'. The sentiment is essential correct, but it implies that every individual strives to avoid total self-surrender. I don't think this is true. I have seen too many that, for whatever reason, seem to be content with self-surrender. The dangers are evident if one is willing to look, that a person content with such an existence runs the risk of another willing to exploit them. The fact of these dangers doesn't postulate that the contented person will be aware of or care about such dangers. They will support a submissive existence simply by their allowance, and there are those that understand this, and use it as a justification to exploitation. Not a big deal for anyone other than the exploited individual, but when it works this way on a massive scale, as it is even today with the 'spiritual leaders' of the world, people that don't care for such an existence find it necessary to come to the aid of the oppressed simply because there is a danger the oppression will affect those not willing to submit.