DOCSLIB.ORG

Anselm's Theory of Freedom

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Anselm's Theory of Freedom Anselm's Theory of Freedom Thomas Gwozdz Saint Joseph Seminary College (LA) This article is a discussion of Saint Anselm’s understanding of man as created in a state of original justice, the loss of that justice in the Fall and its restoration in redemption and grace. Before the Fall, man’s original justice was an original freedom, namely, the pure inability to sin. By means of an accidental feature in human beings called freedom of choice between alternatives, man lost his original inability to sin. In fact, after the Fall man is unable not to sin. He has lost the gift of justice, no longer has an upright will, and is rendered powerless with respect to freedom. Against one’s will, man now experiences all kinds of inordinate desires and temptation. Yet Anselm argues that temptation is ultimately impotent with regard to man’s inner freedom which has been restored by the redemption and an all pervading grace. Man once again has uprightness of will. The miracle of it all is that God restores to man what man willingly chose to desert in the first place, namely, an original freedom, i.e., the will to choose the right thing. The discussion ends with the problem of grace and freedom: if God’s grace is so pervading, how in fact is an act of free choice really an intrinsically human act. In his book Will in Western Thought, Vernon Bourke submits this definition of freedom as the very essence of the will: . that power or condition of an agent which enables him to act, or refuse to act, and to do so in ways which he determines, without compelling restraints from forces external to, or internal to, his personality.1 It seems, however, that this notion of free will is not to be found in the tradition of the early Greeks, at least not explicitly. Plato speaks of freedom in terms of political and social freedom and Aristotle never once suggests that the genus of willing is freedom.2 As a matter of fact, for Aristotle, it is doubtful whether there is a theory of will at all, let alone a notion of freedom. There is a notion of choice but it seems to be reduced to an intellectual preference, i.e., a kind of reasonable desire that issues forth necessarily in action as the last step in a process of deliberation by the practical intellect. "Choice is either desiderative reason or raciocinative desire."3 Etienne Gilson seems to agree with this position when he says that, "It remains a fact that Aristotle spoke neither of liberty nor free will."4 Albrecht Dihle in his paradoxically named book The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity argues that the authors of classical antiquity prior to Augustine lacked any vocabulary and for the most part any conception of the will. For both 1 Vernon Burke, Will in Western Thought (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), 79. 2 Ibid., 80. 3 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 1139 b 3 , trans. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing Co., 1962). 4 Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, trans. A.H.C. Downes (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936) 307. The Saint Anselm Journal 7.1 (Fall 2009) 1 Plato and Aristotle, reason is what motivates, and it motivates independently of any other faculty.5 Mary T. Clark in her book Augustine, Philosopher of Freedom says that "after Aristotle there is a confusion of free choice with spontaneity by Epicurus and then the establishment of a rigorous doctrine of universal determinism by the Stoics."6 If freedom and free will are not explicitly treated in Plato and Aristotle and are confused with spontaneity and determinism in Epicurean and Stoic doctrines, it is somewhat ambiguous as to what their explicit origin in thought is. Nevertheless, freedom and free will are vividly presented in the writings of the early Eastern Fathers of the Church, in Clement of Alexandria,7 Origen,8 and Gregory of Nyssa.9 Here, however, freedom of will is found together with the notion of God's grace in a constant dialectic "like two poles of one and the same reality."10 With Augustine, the themes of freedom, free will and grace which are seen in the Fathers of the Eastern Church enter the West and with them more philosophical insight and distinction. For Augustine, freedom is fundamentally a quality of the will which enables one to do what one ought to do according to God's will.11 It is a freedom to do the good, an original freedom given to man with creation. However, Augustine's own psychological struggle made him realize that something had gone wrong and the will "does not will in its entirety."12 Rather, it is in a tug-of- war between what it wants and what in fact it wills. What had gone wrong was the Fall after which man was rendered powerless to choose the good. His original freedom was taken away, and from then on the will was systematically turned from doing what was right. Freedom from then on was experienced as the ability to sin or not to sin, and the will being radically misdirected from its original thrust was in need of grace. God's grace was necessary to restore what was lost and thereby render man once again able to choose the good. According to Augustine, the grace needed does not destroy free will but "changes the will from a bad will to a good will"13 without which change "we are powerless to perform good works of a salutary nature."14 Hence, God's grace brings about our power to will the good as well as cooperates in our free acts of willing. 5 Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). See pages 20–67 for a detailed study in Ancient Greece of the lack of any notion of will as separate from an intellectual or non-intellectual context. 6 Mary T. Clark, Augustine, Philosopher of Freedom: A Study in Comparative Philosophy (New York: Desclee Co., 1958) 17. 7 Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, VI, 12 in The Writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1956). 8 Origen, Contra Celsum, 5, 12 trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: University Press, 1965). 9 Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson in The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 66, 114. 10 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James Clarke & Co., Ltd., 1957), 197. 11 Augustine, De libero arbitrio, III, 18,52 trans. Robert P. Russell in The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 59 (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1968). 12 Augustine, Confessions, VIII, 9 trans. John K. Ryan (New York: Doubleday Image Books, 1960). 13 Augustine, De gratia et libero arbitrio trans. Robert P. Russell in The Fathers of the Church , Vol. 59 (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1968) 15, 31. 14 Augustine, De gratia, 17, 33. The Saint Anselm Journal 7.1 (Fall 2009) 2 Augustine's contribution to an understanding of the nature of freedom, will, and grace in the context of man's original state, sin, and redemption is monumental. He focused in directly on the will and its freedom as the source of free choice. It is the direction of the human will guided by grace rather than the cognitive process of practical reason that issues forth in free acts. In this way, the emphasis on freedom and the will entered the mainstream of Christian philosophy in the West—an emphasis which Anselm of Canterbury inherited and continued together with a penetrating philosophical analysis. This paper will discuss the notions of freedom, free choice, will, and grace as developed by Anselm, especially in the De Libertate Arbitrii and the De Concordia III. However, reference will be made to other works in the Anselmian corpus in order to flesh out the picture. In order to understand Anselm's treatment of freedom and grace in the order of creation, sin and redemption, it is necessary as a preliminary to focus in on the concepts of rectitude and justice which thread through the treatment. According to A.E. McGrath, Anselm's understanding of justice is derived from Augustine for whom God is the justissimus ordinator who orders the universe according to his will.15 In the De Trinitate, Augustine calls God the highest justice who orders all things according to weight, measure, and number which in turn mirror God's justice as the supreme exemplar. But, not only is God's justice mirrored in the physical order of creation, it also prescribes the moral order, i.e., how men are to act according to free choice. God's justice, then, is reflected in the human will as the right order men ought to choose. This is man's rectitude of will.16 In this sense, justice and rectitude are synonymous terms which refer to God's will for both the physical and moral orders of his creation. They are primarily attributes of God and only secondarily of creation and human affairs as they participate in God's will. This Augustinian vision of God's justice and rectitude mirrored in creation is reflected in Anselm when he defines truth as rectitude perceptible only to the mind and justice as right ordering of things according to the will.17 What Anselm seems to be saying is that there is a right order in creation, i.e., a state of affairs that ought to be.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Phil102: Intro to Philosophy: Knowledge & Reality
    PHIL102: INTRO TO PHILOSOPHY: KNOWLEDGE & REALITY section 3, schedule #22716 MW 4:00-5:15 pm in EBA 343 Dr. Robert Francescotti Office Hours (Arts & Letters, 438): Monday 5:45–7 pm, Wednesday 12:30–1:30 pm, & Thursday 2–4 pm Office phone & e-mail: 619-594-6585, [email protected] COURSE DESCRIPTION This course satisfies the Philosophy & Religious Studies section of the Humanities requirement of the Foundations of Learning component of the General Education requirements. - description in SDSU’s General Catalog: Introduction to philosophical inquiry with emphasis on problems of knowledge and reality. Students are encouraged to think independently and formulate their own tentative conclusions. - a fuller description of my section: You will learn about the philosophical method by exploring some main areas of philosophical interest. The first issue we will discuss is whether God exists. We will consider a few arguments designed to show that God exists along with an argument that aims to show that God does not exist. This first section of the course is a good introduction to the structure of argumentation (an essential tool of the philosophical method). Then we will investigate the Free Will debate. Science has shown that much of our behavior is the result of factors beyond our control. The environment in which we were raised obviously greatly affects our behavior. Non-conscious mental activity and genetic factors are also thought to play a major role. Of course, the state of one’s brain is a major culprit as well. However, if our actions are the result of these factors, which seem largely out of our control, then in what sense can we be considered “free”? And if we do not act in a truly free manner, then can we be held responsible for our actions? Many people believe that in addition to the body, there is some immaterial aspect to our being.
    [Show full text]
  • On Flew's Compatibilism and His Objections to Theistic Libertarianism
    On Flew’s Compatibilism and His Objections to Theistic Libertarianism 2015/25 115 Kaygı Uludağ Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Felsefe Dergisi Uludağ University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Journal of Philosophy Sayı 25 / Issue 25│Bahar 2015 / Fall 2015 ISSN: 1303-4251 Research Article Araştırma Makalesi Hakan GUNDOGDU* Doç.Dr. | Assoc.Prof.Dr. Gazi University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Philosophy, Ankara-Turkey [email protected] On Flew’s Compatibilism and His Objections to Theistic Libertarianism Abstract Flew strongly defends a compatibilist thesis in the free will debate before going on to totally object to theistic libertarianism. His objections basically rely on his compatibilism embracing the notion of agent causation, which is not very common in compatibilist theses. Since he is a strong proponent of ordinary language philosophy, he also holds that linguistic analyses can certainly solve the free will problem as well as many other problems of philosophy. In doing so, he first uses the paradigm cases based on our common sense experience and then assumes the verity of principle of alternative possibilities. This study attempts to show, on the one hand, that there are some serious difficulties in both his justification of compatibilism and his objections to theistic libertarianism, and on the other hand, that he cannot easily defend both at the same time. Keywords Antony Flew, Compatibilism, Free-Will, Agent, Causation, Theistic Libertarianism, Paradigm Case Argument, Principle of Alternative Possibility. * This study was funded by the Scientific and Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK): 2219 / 1059B191400716. On Flew’s Compatibilism and His Objections to Theistic Libertarianism 116 2015/25 1.
    [Show full text]
  • A Brief Appraisal of Behavioral Economists' Plea for Light Paternalism
    Brazilian Journal of Political Economy, vol 32, nº 3 (128), pp 445-458, July-September/2012 Freedom of choice and bounded rationality: a brief appraisal of behavioral economists’ plea for light paternalism ROBERTA MURAMATSU PATRÍCIA FONSECA* Behavioral economics has addressed interesting positive and normative ques- tions underlying the standard rational choice theory. More recently, it suggests that, in a real world of boundedly rational agents, economists could help people to im- prove the quality of their choices without any harm to autonomy and freedom of choice. This paper aims to scrutinize available arguments for and against current proposals of light paternalistic interventions mainly in the domain of intertemporal choice. It argues that incorporating the notion of bounded rationality in economic analysis and empirical findings of cognitive biases and self-control problems cannot make an indisputable case for paternalism. Keywords: freedom; choice; bounded rationality; paternalism; behavioral eco- nomics. JEL Classification: B40; B41; D11; D91. So the immediate problem in Libertarian Paternalism is the fatuity of its declared motivation Very few libertarians have maintained what Thaler and Sunstein suggest they maintain, and indeed many of the leading theorists have worked with ideas in line with what Thaler and Sunstein have to say about man’s nature Thaler and Sunstein are forcing an open door Daniel Klein, Statist Quo Bias, Economic Journal Watch, 2004 * Professora doutora da Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie e do Insper, e-mail: rmuramatsu@uol. com.br; Pesquisadora independente na área de Economia Comportamental e Psicologia Econômica, e-mail [email protected]. Submetido: 23/fevereiro/2011. Aprovado: 12/março/2011. Revista de Economia Política 32 (3), 2012 445 IntrodUCTION There is a long-standing methodological tradition stating that economics is a positive science that remains silent about policy issues and the complex determi- nants of human ends, values and motives.
    [Show full text]
  • Happiness and Economic Freedom: Are They Related?
    SHS Web of Conferences 28, 01109 (2016) DOI: 10.1051/shsconf/20162801109 RPTSS 2015 Happiness and economic freedom: Are they related? Ilkay Yilmaz1,a, and Mehmet Nasih Tag2 1Mersin University, Department of Economics, Mersin University, 33342 Mersin, Turkey 2Mersin University, Department of Business Administration, Mersin University, 33342 Mersin, Turkey Abstract. In this article we investigate the linkage between economic freedom and happiness (subjective well-being). We attempt to understand which economic institutions (rule of law, limited government, regulatory efficiency, open markets) have influence on subjective well-being. For this purpose we use a panel dataset and analyze the effect of economic freedom on subjective well-being while using various control variables such as government expenditures as percentage of GDP, human development, social support, freedom of choice and generosity. Our pooled FGLS estimations indicate that all pillars of economic freedom have a strong influence on the average subjective well-being in society. Three of these pillars, namely rule of law, regulatory efficiency and open markets, positively affect subjective well-being. To our surprise we have found a negative relationship between limited government and subjective well- being. This might be due to the situation that reducing the size of government possibly leads to lower government expenditures and higher unemployment, which in turn results in lower subjective well-being. 1 Introduction if any, increase the level of subjective well-being in a country. The literature on the relationship between As the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises economic institutions and economic growth suggests that explained in his magnum opus, human action can be good governmental institutions foster economic growth defined as the striving for happiness.
    [Show full text]
  • Review Essay LIBERTARIAN PATERNALISM IS an OXYMORON
    Copyright 2005 by Northwestern University, School of Law Printed in U.S.A. Northwestern University Uw Review Vol. 99, No. 3 Review Essay LIBERTARIAN PATERNALISM IS AN OXYMORON Gregory Mitchelt I. THE EVITABILITY OF CHOICE-FRAMING PATERNALISM 1248 II. USING PATERNALISM TO MAXIMIZE LIBERTY, NOT WELFARE 1260 III. THE REDISTRIBUTIVE CONSEQUENCES OF LIBERTARIAN PATERNALISM 1269 IV. CONCLUSION 1276 In Libertarian Paternalism Is Not an Oxymoron, Professors Sunstein and Thaler set out to show that state control over the structure of choice op- tions can improve the welfare of citizens without reducing personal auton- omy.' A public or private institution that adopts the perspective of the "libertarian paternalist" will "steer people's choice in directions that will improve the choosers' ovm welfare" but will not prescribe or proscribe any particular choices.^ This limited regulation of choice behavior should be Associate Professor, Florida State University College of Law, and Visiting Associate Professor, University of Virginia School of Law. The author tnay be contacted by e-mail at [email protected] or by regular mail at Florida State University College of Law, 425 West Jefferson Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32306-1601. I appreciate the helpful comments on a draft by participants in the N.Y.U. Collo- quium on Market Institutions and Economic Processes, Amitai Aviram, Paul Edelman, Chris Guthrie, Steve Hetcher, Adam Hirsch, Jon Klick, Mae Kuykendall, Peter Oh, Jim Rossi, Phil Tetlock, Mike Van- denbergh, and particularly Richard Thaler. ' See Cass R. Sunstein & Richard H. Thaler, Libertarian Paternalism ts Not an Oxymoron, 70 U. CHI. L. REV. 1159, 1160 (2003) ("We propose a form of paternalism, libertarian in spirit, that should be acceptable to those who are firmly committed to freedom of choice on grounds of either autonomy or welfare.").
    [Show full text]
  • Aquinas and the Question of God's Existence: Exploring the Five Ways
    International Journal of Philosophy and Theology June 2018, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 19-32 ISSN: 2333-5750 (Print), 2333-5769 (Online) Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved. Published by American Research Institute for Policy Development DOI: 10.15640/ijpt.v6n1a3 URL: https://doi.org/10.15640/ijpt.v6n1a3 Aquinas and the Question of God’s Existence: Exploring the Five Ways Dr. Damian Ilodigwe1 Abstract Without doubt, St Thomas Aquinas was the greatest of the medieval philosophers. Aquinas was a prolific writer and he made contributions to virtually every area of Philosophy and Theology. His account of the existence of God is perhaps the best known aspect of his work. This is especially true of the celebrated five arguments he adduced in demonstration of the existence of God. In exploring Aquinas‟ Five ways, which some commentators regard as Aquinas‟ substantive contribution to Philosophy of religion, our contention is that they demonstrate the possibilities as well as the limits of natural theology, so far as while Aquinas does not deny that natural reason can establish the existence of God he nonetheless maintains that there are aspects of God‟s nature that can be known only through the means of divine revelation. Consequently unless we take into account the double emphasis on the possibilities and limits of natural theology, we are sure to underestimate the contemporary relevance of Aquinas‟ Five ways. Keywords: Aquinas, God’s Existence, Cosmological Arguments, Ontological Arguments, Anselm 1. Preamble Without doubt, St Thomas Aquinas was the greatest of the medieval philosophers. Aquinas was a prolific writer and he made contributions to virtually every area of Philosophy and Theology.
    [Show full text]
  • MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY NEO-THOMIST APPROACHES to MODERN PSYCHOLOGY Dissertation Submitted to the College of Arts and Sciences Of
    MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY NEO-THOMIST APPROACHES TO MODERN PSYCHOLOGY Dissertation Submitted to The College of Arts and Sciences of the UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theology By Matthew Glen Minix UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON Dayton, Ohio December 2016 MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY NEO-THOMIST APPROACHES TO MODERN PSYCHOLOGY Name: Minix, Matthew G. APPROVED BY: _____________________________________ Sandra A. Yocum, Ph.D. Dissertation Director _____________________________________ William L. Portier, Ph.D. Dissertation Reader. _____________________________________ Anthony Burke Smith, Ph.D. Dissertation Reader _____________________________________ John A. Inglis, Ph.D. Dissertation Reader _____________________________________ Jack J. Bauer, Ph.D. _____________________________________ Daniel Speed Thompson, Ph.D. Chair, Department of Religious Studies ii © Copyright by Matthew Glen Minix All rights reserved 2016 iii ABSTRACT MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY NEO-THOMIST APPROACHES TO MODERN PSYCHOLOGY Name: Minix, Matthew Glen University of Dayton Advisor: Dr. Sandra A. Yocum This dissertation considers a spectrum of five distinct approaches that mid-twentieth century neo-Thomist Catholic thinkers utilized when engaging with the tradition of modern scientific psychology: a critical approach, a reformulation approach, a synthetic approach, a particular [Jungian] approach, and a personalist approach. This work argues that mid-twentieth century neo-Thomists were essentially united in their concerns about the metaphysical principles of many modern psychologists as well as in their worries that these same modern psychologists had a tendency to overlook the transcendent dimension of human existence. This work shows that the first four neo-Thomist thinkers failed to bring the traditions of neo-Thomism and modern psychology together to the extent that they suggested purely theoretical ways of reconciling them.
    [Show full text]
  • Mankind and the Freedom of Choice in Zoroastrian Scripture
    The following short paper was submitted to the Inter-Religious Working Group on Human Rights as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The paper, together with contributions from other faiths, was published and distributed to religious organizations in North America. Mankind and the Freedom of Choice in Zoroastrian Scripture By Kersi B. Shroff Zarathushtra, the Prophet of ancient Iran, says in his Gathas, the divine songs of reverence to Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord: O Mazda, from the beginning you created soul and body. You granted man the mental power and knowledge. You placed life in the physical body and gave mankind the power to act, speak and guide. You wished that everyone should choose his or her own faith and path freely. (Yasna 31, verse 11, translated from the Avestan language). The significance of the verse is that having been given the faculties to make the right or free choice, mankind must bear the consequence of that choice. The theme of freedom of choice is replete in the Gathas. In Yasna 30, verse 2, Zarathushtra urges mankind to decide with ‘sucha manangha’ (an open mind) and make a clear choice ‘avaenata’ (between the two paths) of the good or evil: Listen with your ears the highest truth, consider it with an open mind carefully and decide each man and woman personally between the two paths, good and evil. A French scholar thus remarks on individual freedom manifested in the Gathas: Freedom of thought, a zealous sense of self-respect, magnanimity in religion, a sharp intellect, and a zest and fervour for principles of ethics,..
    [Show full text]
  • Gray Isaiah Berlin.Indb
    1 The Idea of Freedom What Montesquieu means by liberty is not to be found in his formal— and commonplace— definition of this concept as consisting in the right to do what the laws do not forbid, but in his exposition of other social and politi- cal ideas which throw light on his general scale of values. Montesquieu is, above all, not a thinker obsessed by some single principle, seeking to order and explain everything in terms of some central moral or metaphysical category in terms of which all truths must be formulated. He is not a monist but a pluralist, his virtuosity reaches its highest peak, he is most himself, when he tries to convey a culture or an outlook or a system of values different from his own and from that of the majority of his readers. Isaiah Berlin, ‘Montesquieu’1 The idea of freedom that animates all of Berlin’s work, like his system of ideas as a whole, is at once much more original, and far more subversive of received intellectual tradition in philoso- phy, than is commonly perceived. It is a commonplace that Berlin cautions against ‘positive’ conceptions of freedom which view it in terms of rational self-determination, or autonomy, and that he does so in favour of a ‘negative’ account of freedom in which it is conceived as the absence of constraints imposed by others. Less well understood are Berlin’s reasons for preferring a negative con- ception of freedom. Few would accuse Berlin of denying that free- dom may legitimately be conceived in terms of autonomy, since his acknowledgements that there have in the history of thought been such conceptions are too frequent, and too unequivocal, to 42 • Berlin be ignored; but his grounds for thinking that positive views of freedom are inherently flawed, and so perennially liable to abuse, are little understood.
    [Show full text]
  • The Five Ways from Summa Theologiae (Part I, Question 2) by Thomas Aquinas (~1265 AD) Translated by Brian Shanley (2006)
    The Five Ways from Summa Theologiae (Part I, Question 2) by Thomas Aquinas (~1265 AD) translated by Brian Shanley (2006) Question 2. Does God Exist? Article 1. Is the existence of God self-evident? It seems that the existence of God is self-evident: 1. Things are said to be self-evident to us when knowledge of them is naturally present in us, as is clear in the case of first principles. But, as Damascene says at the beginning of his book, “knowledge of the existence of God is naturally implanted in everyone.” Hence the existence of God is self-evident. 2. Things are said to be self-evident that are grasped as soon as the terms are grasped … ; for if I know what a whole is and what a part is, then I immediately know that every whole is greater than any of its parts. But if I understand what the name ‘God’ signifies, then it follows immediately that God exists. For by the name is signified “that than which a greater cannot be signified.” Now something is greater when it exists both in reality and in the intellect, rather than only in the intellect. Therefore, since when I understand this name ‘God,’ he immediately exists in the intellect, it follows that God must also exist in reality. Hence the existence of God is self- evident. 3. The existence of truth is self-evident, since someone who denies that there is truth concedes its existence: for if there is no truth, then it is true that there is no truth.
    [Show full text]
  • Libertarian Nudges
    Missouri Law Review Volume 82 Issue 3 Summer 2017 - Symposium Article 9 Summer 2017 Libertarian Nudges Gregory Mitchell Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Gregory Mitchell, Libertarian Nudges, 82 MO. L. REV. (2017) Available at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr/vol82/iss3/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at University of Missouri School of Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Missouri Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Missouri School of Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Mitchell: Libertarian Nudges Libertarian Nudges Gregory Mitchell* ABSTRACT We can properly call a number of nudges libertarian nudges, but the ter- ritory of libertarian nudging is smaller than is often realized. The domain of libertarian nudges is populated by choice-independent nudges, or nudges that only assist the decision process and do not push choosers toward any particu- lar choice. Some choice-dependent nudges pose no great concern from a lib- ertarian perspective for rational choosers so long as there is a low-cost way to avoid the nudger’s favored choice. However, choice-dependent nudges will interfere with the autonomy of irrational choosers, because the opt-out option will be meaningless for this group. Choice-independent nudges should be of no concern with respect to irrational actors and in fact should be welcomed because they can promote the decision competence fundamental to libertari- anism, but choice-dependent nudges can never truly be libertarian nudges.
    [Show full text]
  • Balancing Freedom of Speech
    University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law DigitalCommons@UM Carey Law Faculty Scholarship Francis King Carey School of Law Faculty 1979 Balancing Freedom of Speech David S. Bogen University of Maryland School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, and the First Amendment Commons Digital Commons Citation Bogen, David S., "Balancing Freedom of Speech" (1979). Faculty Scholarship. 669. https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/669 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Francis King Carey School of Law Faculty at DigitalCommons@UM Carey Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UM Carey Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Maryland Law Review VOLUME 38 1979 NUMBER 3 ©Copyright Maryland Law Review, Inc. 1979 BALANCING FREEDOM OF SPEECH* David S. Bogen** The symbol for justice - a blindfolded goddess holding scales - is particularly appropriatein free speech cases, for when courts engage in balancing interests, they often do not know what they are weighing or even, sometimes, which way the scale tilts. The Supreme Court uses several criteria to determine whether a law violates the guarantee of freedom of speech contained in the first amendment. The test most frequently used, and most vociferously criticized, is the balancing of interests,' which requires the Court to weigh the importance of the interest advanced by the challenged governmental action against the degree to which it restricts expression. When the ideas were expressed through actions that have consequences additional to those stemming from the exposition of the ideas, even Justice Black, the most noted spokesman for the "absoluteness" of the first amendment, found himself "balancing." 2 When conduct that is not constitutionally protected is entangled with speech, regulation of the unprotected conduct may simultane- ously suppress speech.
    [Show full text]