FROM METAPHYSICS TO LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY
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he continued, "all for the miserable vainglory of having it believed that
whatever has not yet been discovered and comprehended can never be dis–
covered and comprehended hereafter."
And yet-here, finally, is the ethical thesis my title promised-it seems
to me downright indecent to make one's living as an academic if one does
not, as those who despair of the possibility of honest inquiry
can
not,
acknowledge what
c.r.
Lewis once described as our "tacit professional
oath never to subordinate the motive of objective truth-seeking to any sub–
jective preference or inclination or any expediency or opportunistic
consideration." And now, I hope, you see the pertinence of those words of
Emerson's with which I began.
Richard Garner:
Thank you. Now, we will hear from Tibor Machan,
Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. His most recent book is
Private Rights and Public fllusioltS.
His talk is titled "The Two Ways of
Liberali sm."
Tibor Machan:
For those in the West, especially the U.S., the various
understandings of the term "liberalism" can be rather frustrating, even
annoying, since the word "liberty" has had not just analytic but a good deal
of normative, even emotive significance. So how one uses it is going to mat–
ter to many people and will call forth considerable rebuke from those who
offer a different rendition. Although it is utopian to believe that we will
arrive at the perfect identi ty of meaning of any term, especially one wi th
normative
implications~ince
each of us has a stake in getting our idiosyn–
cratic ways recorded just so-it borders on corruption to try to win one's
ethical or poli tical disputes by perpetrating blatant conceptual revisions.
"Liberalism" in popular U.S. political parlance has come to mean in
the USA the championing of a strong welfare state. Why call this "liber–
alism"? Is this some kind of sleight of hand? (The same could be suspected
of the current use of the kin concept "rights," when some claim we have
a basic " right" to welfare, health care, etc.) Political mileage can be gained
from persuading a good many folks, ones who do not practice independent
thinking on such matters, to pick up on the implications of such revision–
ist linguistics. Thus, "freedom" or "liberty" seems, at times, to be used to
mean just the opposi te, namely, involuntary servitude; and "rights," too, has
come to mean legally enforceable obligations, not liberty, freedom from
other people's intrusive conduct upon oneself, as it once did.
Still, one can also find a respectable enough tradition in Western political
thought that supports the current use of "liberal" in American politics–
although less so of "rights." I have in mind what has come to be called the
idea of positive freedom-which is used to mean the condition of being
enabled to reach a desired or desirable goal, as in "the truth shall set you free."
