I need help explaining this qoute... "True Liberty Dignifies Man, misuse of Liberty Debases him."?

Question

this subject is ethics or moral philosophy...

Answer 1

The exercise of freedom is meant be directed towards a particular end-- and that end is virtue.  If freedom is not directed toward this end, the result is loss of freedom itself and the diminishment of humanity's capacity to fulfill the purpose of its essential nature.

Answer 2

True liberty is a detachment and gives man a supernal free spiritedness and outer worldly mystique.

So called earthly liberation accords all rights to be as obnoxious they so desire. Huge difference.

Answer 3

I did a Google search of that exact phrase as you worded it, and came up with nothing. Who said it?

It sounds wonderful, and perhaps it could be explained, but it seems backward to my way of thinking.

Man dignifies himself by gaining liberty.

According to Renaissance thinking, culminating in the political philosophy of Locke and the Founding of America, "liberty" is in the recognition of "individual sovereignty." Locke never said that; he only said that political liberty under any government must be in "common sovereignty."

But America's Founders recognized that individuals, who are the "governed" in the phrase "the consent of the governed," cannot give to the "common" sovereignty what they do not own as individuals to give.

"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..."

http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm

The liberty of the individual, each of whom is a sovereign representative of Man, is best served under the system of common sovereignty, because it rids him of the need to be his own police, judge, jury, and executioner. It rids him of the need to be his own army and navy.

So perhaps it is true that Man is dignified by the political recognition of liberty as defined by "individual sovereignty enabled under the concept of common sovereignty."

But how does an individual, or a government, "misuse" such a thing as liberty? To perform an act that is not ethical or moral is to act against the idea of liberty itself, and therefore is not a mis-use of it, but a total abnegation of it.

Answer 4

Man is a social animal.  We band together and we seek the comfort and stability of society rather than each of us choosing a solitary existence. In order to live in any society, there cannot be complete and unfettered liberty in which every individual is allowed to do whatever he pleases.  In order that the society functions, there must be rules that protect the life, limb, and property of those that make up the society.  There must be conventions and ceremonies and norms that serve to define the distinctiveness of any society, and, even though all of this may not be legislated, all of it is highly necessary;  for cohesion is a necessary and indespensible component of human society.

In his essay "On the Social Contract," the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau starts out saying that "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."  What is meant is that, when we come into the world, we have no understanding, indeed, not even any cognition, about the society into which we were born. But, almost immediately, the mores and values of the society begin to be taught to the child, so that he may function within it.  If the child learns and practices that which the society determines as acceptable, then there is no problem.  But should some developmental, environmental or other "deficiency" render the child unable or unwilling to follow the societies rules, then he is deemed "antisocial," to varying degrees (depending on the level of societal disruption resultant of his malconformance) and dealt with accordingly.

All of this is to say that, surely liberty is a high ideal, and certainly a people should afford as much of it as possible to the individuals of its society---but liberty, in any group setting is a double-edged sword.  Should the individual use the liberty he is given to inflict disruption upon his society, then he debases himself by his inability to live within the natural state of the human being with others of his kind.