Commentary: Is Civil Liberty an Illusion?

Question:

Is civil liberty an illusion or is truly guaranteed by society?

Society has the power over an individual, it certainly may limit his/her freedom, but because it has power over others, it may also provide and expand one’s freedom. Therefore, power that society controls does not have only restrictions, but also may include the expansion of freedom, considering that it can prevent the tyranny of some individuals to constrain the freedom of others (p.4).

Furthermore according to Mill, freedom is not the organizing element of society. Thus, an essential element of society is its power over the individual, the power of collective identity (p.1). However, it is impossible not to agree that this power usually had destructive consequences of freedom. If necessary, power contains within itself the possibility of suppression, although not indispensable fact of suppression. If this possibility of suppression protects the individuum from the violence of others, it even would be a tool of freedom. Thus, people can act freely inasmuch as, they are aware of a protected public power from private violence. Hence, to determine the limits of the power of society does not mean, to determine the boundaries where civil liberty begins.

Inaccuracy of the definition is clear from how he notes that there is a free society, the course of his thoughts is as follows. Civil liberty, he said, begins where ends the power of society over the individual (p.1). Ipso facto, the more civil liberties are developed then the more constricted would be the power of society over an individual. Let us assume that society has no authority over the individual. For Mill, one must recognize that in such a state, civil liberty would be ideally high. This idea is purely anarchical. Assume for a moment that this idea is correct. Although one may ask: in this powerless (anarchist) society, where, according to Mill's logic, we should recognize the ideal of civil liberty?, Would there actually exist some kind of freedom?

According to Mill, the response would be negative. Precisely, society is not considered as free if an individual has no freedom of thought and expression, freedom to live as he/she wants, freedom of association (p.12), and only then society would be conceded free if all of these types of individual freedoms are absolute and equally indifferent to all its members (p.11). Accordingly, majority of mankind did not and still does not know what freedom is; such a statement can be stated inasmuch as the content of civil liberty had been defined quite arbitrarily.

Moreover in life, an individual is protected only with the establishment of certain rights that constitute the content of civil liberty. However, that guarantee is more formal than real (i.e., façade), since the law would not be determined by an individuum but via common law and protected within the the state. The real guarantee of a free existence is only in the internal need of an individual; only the spiritual essence of the person creates the need for rights, which he/she continually would try to defend. Thus this way, society and government would recognize the individual rights and might preserve their implementation.