560
PARTISAN REVIEW
The admonition that one must beware of what one wishes for
because the wish may be granted provides a cautionary tale for any
application of the third concept of liberty to concrete historical circum–
stances. The interpretation of liberty as the freedom to create the iden–
tity of the self suggests an illusion that such a creation is a liberation
from history. While it may mark a liberation from a particular set of his–
torical circumstances, it can never provide a liberation from the limits
which the new configuration of historical circumstances sets upon the
possibilities of individual or group transformation.
ANY
CONCEPT OF LIBERTY
functions in a context of plural values. The choice
for the priority of liberty involves a balance with other values. Indeed, one
justification of the priority of liberty is that only in a free society can there be
an open and critical examination of competing values so that an optimal bal–
ance can be reached. The justification of freedom presupposes some value
that can be assigned to the ends for which freedom is a means.
In the effort to realize a balance among plural values, there is always
the possibility that liberty, like competing values such as civic order or
economic equality, will be subject to compromise for the achievement of
an optimal societal outcome. The person who would strive for freedom in
the sense of personal independence has weighed this achievement against
the values of the condition of dependence, often .security of status and
paternalistic guidance. Similarly, the community that insists on freedom of
speech recognizes that there are some values connected with the bound–
aries of free speech, whether these are drawn in terms of the protection of
privacy, the defense of standards of morality, or even the recognition of
the necessities of national security. A society which adopted a conception
of liberty under which liberty could never be constrained would probably
so undermine its own social cohesion that it would not be able to realize
the practice of liberty. The exercise of liberty always involves some calcu–
lation of the benefits to be realized weighed against the costs.
The creation of any new group identity in the context of identity pol–
itics involves some weighing or balancing of the advantages and disad–
vantages of any particular choice. Accordingly, those who champion
liberty as the exercise of free choice in the creation of a group's identity
must evaluate the consequences and prices of every particular choice as
set against alternative paths for the realization of the ends and interests
of the members of the group. The application of the third concept of lib–
erty in practice necessarily requires the recognition that all human ideals
are limited because human society can never be a monolithic expression
of a single value, but embodies plural values.
