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I feel like your statement kind of might just boil down to "things I like are freedom, things I don't like are not freedom".
From an objective point of view, we absolutely have more sexual freedom right now than people in the West did 150 years ago.
You're just parroting the progressive line that more choices equal more freedom. When those choices lead to societal decay, it’s not freedom, it’s chaos. Your 'objective' view is just moral relativism dressed up as enlightenment.
Or literally 1984: “Freedom Is Slavery” because, according to the Party, the man who is independent is doomed to fail. By the same token, “Slavery Is Freedom,” because the man subjected to the collective will is free from danger and want.
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No, I'm just using the normal, everyday meaning of the word "freedom", the one that can be stated as "the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action". In that sense, we are undoubtedly sexually more free than people were 150 years ago. If you prefer a different definition of "freedom" that's fine, this is just a semantic argument after all. My point, though, is that I did not say what I said because I have some kind of progressive ideology. I said it because it's objectively true if you use the normal, most common, everyday "man in the street" kind of definition of the word "freedom".
Sexual freedom is not a real thing in the individualistic sense, because sex isn't really an individualistic activity. We should judge sexual freedom by whether society's norms more easily feed into what makes people happy in the long run, not by the theoretical freedom of activity.
It's unclear by that standard that western societies are sexually freer today or in 1875 or 1950 or whenever.
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When OR decriminalized drug use were the addicts freer? It seems they had fewer options as they were slaves to their addiction. They possibly have an additional choice, homeless addict living in a tent (this was an option before too), but far more choices are now unavailable to them, as we see how challenging it is to move on from homeless and drug abuse.
Did it make the larger society around them freer or do they too now have fewer places to be free of homesless addicts living in tents.
Individuals have alway had the 'freedom' to be lustful degenerates if they were willing to face the opprobrium that went with it.
Yes. Some of them just used this extra freedom to make decisions that made them less free. But the decriminalization itself made them freer. They just didn't necessarily make good choices with that freedom. Part of what freedom is, is that it sometimes allows people to make decisions that make them less free in the long run. That does not mean that it is not freedom, though.
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Since when has license being equivalent to freedom become "objective"?
Exactly. The conflation of license with liberty is the hallmark of a society that’s lost its moral compass. Freedom isn’t the absence of restraint; it’s the presence of virtue.
I think the word you’re looking for is not freedom but “agency”!
Mao Zedong was extremely agentic, but I wouldn't call him free. These are fairly distinct concepts.
You'd have more of a point if you said "self-actualization" but I'd argue that's far closer to the historical meaning of freedom than unrestrained whim.
By agency I mean the capacity to make new choices free of undue influence or restrictions. I realize the modern definition has shifted slightly and some people now use “agentic” as a synonym to someone who regularly takes novel action, but I mean it more in the Webster sense:
I would add, [especially over one’s self]
Maybe “volition” is the best word but sadly low usage
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No, the presence of virtue is virtuousness. Freedom is something different.
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"This is not liberty, this is license" has always been a tyrant's excuse.
That's just ad hominem. Who gives a shit if it's a tyrant's excuse?
Is it true? Whatever the answer it, it certainly doesn't seem "objective".
The tyrant is a tyrant because he's taking away your liberty, in this case by claiming it is not liberty at all, but "license" (which is liberty that he doesn't like).
I won't claim this dynamic never happens, that would be silly, but you're not really engaging with the idea if you think it can only be invoked in this sense.
Burke, whom it would seems farcical to call a tyrant, summed up the issue pretty tightly in my opinion:
There may be some platonic ideal of some other way in which it is invoked, but in practice any time someone says "this is not liberty, it is license", it's because they don't want you to have liberty.
Burke, indeed, is explicitly saying that -- he's saying that people who don't "put moral chains upon their own behavior" (meaning the French, apparently) are not qualified for liberty.
And the fact the French he was talking about did push things so far it destroyed them and Europe doesn't move you at all?
Why would it move me? If indeed he was correct and the French weren't worthy of liberty, it does not change what liberty is. That some people, allowed liberty, will destroy themselves and others with the latitude thye have, does not make liberty into "not liberty".
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'Anything goes' has always been the rallying cry of those who want to tear down civilization. Tyrants and anarchists both love to twist language to suit their ends. Call it license or call it degeneracy, either way, it’s not freedom worth defending.
When one uses the word "freedom" in its most common, everyday meaning of "the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action", that's not twisting language, that's just using the most common, everyday meaning of the word. I would argue that it's actually more of a twisting of language to use the word "freedom" to mean something more philosophical, like you are doing. But in any case, this is just a semantic argument.
Is slavery to the passions coercion?
Who are you to claim everyone's equally slaved to such passions?
I feel like completely inventing claims out of thin air like this kinda defeats the purpose of this forum and is specifically against the rules. What possesses you to do that?
My question has absolutely no bearing on how widespread this phenomenon is, I'm just asking if it counts. Since you know, it's fairly well known issue that requires some clarification.
It certainly does- what are "the" passions?
If you're going with the answer of "lust and degeneracy" (which is what I believe you were implying, and what it directly says upthread) that's just "stop liking what I don't like" with the letters rearranged. While you've correctly identified every other response to that argument are [more sophisticated] "no, also fuck you"s, the argument they contain- that being "who decides, and why should the failure of others to control themselves be my problem; and the fruits of my virtue redistributed, stolen at gunpoint, to benefit those without?"- hasn't been answered.
In a sibling comment, you quote
but I am more qualified for civil liberty because I have that disposition. So your "license", that you might demand I forfeit for the salvation of others, is at the same time inherently granted to me simply by being better at this than most people are, thus claiming I don't deserve this liberty is little more than theft.
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