{Relative Freedom}[14th January 1971]

[Redbook1:192][19710114]{Relative Freedom}[14th January 1971]

14.1.71.

            There is -- of course -- no such thing as freedom; there are simply degrees of captivity.  If civilisation is co-operation, co-operation restricts freedom; and, again, we are all prisoners of our own selves, our own experience, and we are none of us free.

            Therefore, when we talk of freedom, we talk of an acceptable degree of restriction.

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            ‘A free society is as much offended by the dictates of an intellectual oligarchy as by those of an autocrat.’

(Devlin, ‘Law, Democracy and Morality’

(1962), 110 U.Pa.Law Rev. 635 at 642

reprinted in ‘The Enforcement of Morals’ (1965), p86.

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