Us economists, we are used to the concept of opportunity costs, and we love pointing out that opportunity costs are everywhere.
Part of my job when I teach principles of economics is to point this out relentlessly and throughout the semester – that no matter what you do in life, there are costs and consequences.
But there are those, we learn in today’s blog post, who may choose to not acknowledge the fact that there are trade-offs:
Consider the following moral clashes: Negative liberty v. positive liberty; liberty of the individual v. the safety and security of the community, group, or nation; deference to authority v. individual autonomy; sanctity and piety v. skepticism, curiosity, and irony.
Berlin maintained that every ideal listed above, on either side of each clash, is worthwhile. He then divided the human world into two broad human types—those who recognize these clashes and accept the need for trade-offs to negotiate them, and those who refuse either to recognize or accept the need for such choices. In an essay written a few years before “Two Concepts of Liberty,” Berlin adapted a saying by the Greek poet Archilochus—“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”—in order to flesh out the contrast
https://www.persuasion.community/p/isaiah-berlin-and-the-tragedy-of
Should one optimize for the liberty of the individual? What a stupid question, you might say. Of course one should. But ah, what if the liberty of the individual puts the safety and security of the community, the group or the nation at risk? Then, in that case, should one optimize for the liberty of the individual, or the safety of the community?
If this sounds too abstract, consider the problem of gun control in the United States of America.
What about individual autonomy? Should one optimize for it, even when it goes up against showing deference to authority? Consider the right to protest, for example. Should one optimize for it, even when it goes up against showing deference to authority?
What about sanctity and piety versus skepticism, curiousity and irony?
The point that Isaiah Berlin was making in this, his most famous essay, was the fact that even something as worthwhile as liberty comes at a cost. The negative and positive dimensions of liberty are “in deep tension with each other”, and optimizing for one often means giving up on the other:
The ordinary resources of empirical observation and ordinary human knowledge … give us no warrant for supposing that all good things, or all bad things for that matter, are reconcilable with each other. The world that we encounter in ordinary experience is one in which we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally absolute, the realization of some of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice of others. … If, as I believe, the ends of men are many, and not all of them are in principle compatible with each other, then the possibility of conflict—and of tragedy—can never wholly be eliminated from human life, either personal or social.
Berlin, Isaiah. “Two concepts of liberty.” In Liberty Reader, pp. 33-57. Routledge, 2017.
The optimization of one’s particular “monism” is ultimately both a failed as well as dangerous pursuit. There are other truths in the world, and other people have other ideals. When one’s ideals and one’s goals go up against someone else’s, there is a “clash of values”.
Resolving these clashes isn’t easy or exciting. But not resolving them, or worse, defeating to the point of subjugation those who dare oppose your own one true way hasn’t ended well:
“But you must believe me, one cannot have everything one wants—not only in practice, but even in theory. The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction [and] blood….”
https://www.persuasion.community/p/isaiah-berlin-and-the-tragedy-of
Or, in the language of this blog, yes, sure, be clear about what you’re optimizing for. But also ask if that is the only worthwhile goal in life, and ask if it’s absolute and total attainment is worth it. Even if you say it is worth it, relative to what?
And hey, remember: the truth lies somewhere in the middle!
EconForEverybody 