Freedom granted at a ruler’s mere will is not real freedom.
Evidence
The slave has no property in his goods or person, no liberty to direct his own agency. He is a tool at the disposal of his master. The thought that a slave might live comfortably, but never freely, provided an important argument against absolutists, who insisted that European, and especially English, monarchy, although absolute, is also limited and benign. England, they held, is replete with popular liberties, representative institutions, and the rule of law, so that the equation of absolutism with despotism was a Whig caricature. To square this circle, absolutists relied on the idea of concessio (concession): liberties were the historic grants or franchises of generous princes. And this was the rub, according to their critics. However practically and contingently free I may be, and comfortable under benevolent despots, such liberty cannot have the moral, juridical, or psychological character of true liberty if it exists at the mere will of the ruler. Freedom must be grounded in transcendent right, not in grace and favour. — , Second Treatise of Government and A…, 39
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The concessio/concession distinction separates de facto comfort from morally grounded liberty — the same fault line running through debates over rights as revocable grants today.
- XREF: connects to: A courtier’s duty is to flatter the ruler’s whim, not the thing itself; Gesture and claimed rebellion do not constitute genuine freedom. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 272; Freedom means autonomy of choice, not success in obtaining one’s ends. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1154 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Gesture and claimed rebellion do not constitute genuine freedom.
#corroborates(0.95) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 272 - A ruler who acts by private will forfeits all right to obedience
#corroborates(0.95) — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 188 - Sovereign will is by definition arbitrary and inconsistent by nature
#corroborates(0.90) - A courtier’s duty is to flatter the ruler’s whim, not the thing itself
#complicates(0.85) - Authority presupposes freedom in those subjected to it
#complicates(0.85) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 4948 - A lightly governed colony remains unfree if rulers hold arbitrary power.
#corroborates(0.80) — Frank Lovett, Republicanism, 20 - Freedom means autonomy of choice, not success in obtaining one’s ends.
#complicates(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1154