626
PA~TISAN
REVIEW
which aspect is the more important. Secondly, even when we do decide
to distribute, there can always be reasonable doubt about what is the
relevant serial order in accordance with which we should effect the
distribution. Finally even if no single distribution is unjust, it is impossible
to establish an entirely just condition of society, for that would involve
making a complete distribution; and a complete distribution is in prin–
ciple impossible for commodities are produced in time and at no moment
are all present and available to the scrutiny of the human intelligence.
"No proposition," Jouvenel writes, "is likelier to scandalize our contem–
poraries than this one."
Those who understand Jouvenel's arguments about justice in the
same way as I do (and I am sure that there are other ways of doing
so) may well pass straight on to his discussion of liberty in the expec–
tation of finding there a more effective criticism of current radical
thought. He takes as his starting point the classical liberal conception
according to which to say that a man is free is an elliptical way of say–
ing that he is free from certain obstacles to do certain actions. He goes
on to show how this conception has at different periods been subject to
different interpretations. Originally the obstacles were thought of in
purely human terms; then they came to include natural obstacles; and
finally a negative lack of resources was seen as being on a par with a
positive obstacle. In this history many might see the fecundity of the
liberal tradition, but to Jouvenel it is its condemnation. What, however,
he really dislikes about the liberal view is not its elasticity but its in–
herent subjectivity (though he nowhere uses this word). For he appears
to be of the opinion that it is ridiculous to talk of one's being free or
unfree to do something unless one wants to do it, and equally ridiculous
to talk of obstacles being or not being in one's way, unless one i,s
aware of them. And of course if one is of this opinion, then the classical
conception of liberty, becomes to some extent or other subjective, sub–
siding into some notion like the maximization of satisfactions. Terrified
by this ghost that he has conjured up, Jouvenel again takes flight from
liberalism and seeks refuge in a conception of liberty as moral dignity.
On this view man is free if and only if he is "the voluntary executive
of his own moral judgment." But such a view is absurd: for surely
not even in the austerest periods of history has it been thought that
man was free if he could do everything that he ought to do and yet
nothing that he merely wanted to do. And not only is the view absurd
in itself, it most certainly fails to achieve the elimination of subjectivity.
For as the author himself so disarmingly admits, those with one set of
moral beliefs are likely to judge as free a system of laws which to others
