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PARTISAN REVIEW
the religious bonds with which one is tied at birth is considered apos–
tasy or a form of betrayal of one's own soul within traditional religions.
(The harsh edict against the life of Salman Ahmed Rushdie is not derived
from his criticisms of Muslim sancta, which would be judged as blas–
phemy or heresy, but is based upon the fact that these derogations by a
person born into Islam represent the more severe crime of apostasy.)
In tracing the spectrum along the direction of liberalism, the decisions
of nationality or of religion are conceived as voluntary choices which
may overcome any historical givens in the situation. The transfer of
national allegiance or of religious bonds is permissible and even obliga–
tory from a liberal perspective if it reflects the free commitments of the
agent. From this perspective, the obligations that are binding by refer–
ence to one's nationality or "station and its duties" are to be accepted
or rejected in the light of the individual's own sense of moral standards
that transcend the historically given condition.
The third concept of liberty emerges even more clearly through
sketching the polarity between the liberal and the conservative ends of
the spectrum in the context of educating the succeeding generation. The
conservative stresses the importance of education as binding the next
generation to the traditions and values of its heritage. The liberal
emphasizes education as a way of developing an individual who will
freely create his own identity. An extreme end of the spectrum from the
liberal perspective would assert that just as a child is brought up with–
out an inherited decision on choice of spouse or vocation, he could be
raised "neutrally" on options of religion and nationality. Thus, in accor–
dance with the third concept of liberty, the child should be raised "neu–
trally," without being previously obligated, conditioned, or compelled
by a particular tradition, so that he would be free to choose his own
national self-identification and his own religious identity.
In a further extension, the third concept of liberty would allow for
choices of one's language, gender, genes, or history. Thus, in replacing
to the highest degree possible the "given" by the "taken," an educa–
tional strategy could be to try to raise the child in a neutral language
(like a universal language of mathematical logic) so that the choice of
this important shaper of identity could be freely exercised. (The greatest
modernist novelist of the twentieth century, James Joyce, sought vainly
to free himself from service to the King's English by writing his last
work,
Finnegans Wake,
in his own, created, multilingual vocabulary.)
There is an emerging consensus that children should not be educated
in ways which brand sexual stereotypes into their work and play. On the
other hand, the idea that the formation of sexual identity itself should
