Free On Balance

2 Pages 453 Words

Free on Balance

What does one mean when he/she makes the statement, “John is more free than Richard”? Joel Feinberg suggests that making such a statement means grouping different kinds of freedoms together. A more complete statement is perhaps; “John is freer on balance than Richard.” Free on balance means that all one’s freedoms are, in a sense, summed up, and that a certain value may be given to all one’s freedoms as a collective group.
The fact that this grouping may be inappropriate is demonstrated by the difficulty in comparing someone who is free to do x but not y with someone else who is free to do y but not x. To logically choose which person is freer (on balance) requires an assessment of freedom x and freedom y and a placing of value on both. For example, if a person is free to leave the house but not free to make criticism of anything he/she sees, saying he/she is less free than someone else who cannot leave the house but can make any criticisms he/she wishes simply means that the freedom to criticize is more valuable than the freedom of movement. This point is important philosophically because one problem with “free on balance” statements is that they are inherently formal, or ambiguous, and therefore cannot stand alone, but rather needs other values to assist in the “ranking” of freedoms. Feinberg points out that the values used to supplement a free on balance comparison “…are not external to freedom in the manner of such independently conceived rival ideals as justice and welfare,” instead, they are an internal filling-in of the ambiguity of most “free on balance” ideas.
A relevant philosophical application of such an idea might be looking at a noise pollution debate as a conflict of freedoms of a different nature. The freedoms in conflict are 1) the freedom of a person to listen to what he/she wants to listen to, at whatever volume grants maximum satisfaction for that individ...