In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the world is divided between three warring superstates: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Each is governed by a totalitarian ideology: ‘IngSoc’ (English Socialism) in the case of Oceania and ‘Neo-Bolshevism’ in the case of Eurasia. Orwell tells us that the third ideology, that of Eastasia, is “called by a Chinese name usually translated as Death-worship, but perhaps better rendered as ‘Obliteration of the Self’”.
Those chilling words, the obliteration of the self, have stayed with me ever since I first read them as a teenager. They also came to mind when I read an essay by Graham Tomlin for Prospect magazine. Tomlin is an Anglican theologian and bishop. Not one to duck a challenge, he presents an argument against John Stuart Mill – specifically the Victorian philosopher’s influence on “our contemporary ideas of freedom”.
This is how Tomlin sums up those ideas:
“It is never justifiable to interfere with another person’s freedom to ensure their happiness, wisdom or well-being because that is to determine what that person’s well-being is. Freedom is defined as liberty of conscience, thought, feeling and opinion, as ‘liberty of tastes and pursuits … doing as we like … without impediment from our fellow creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them’.”
Liberals of Left and Right may differ among themselves as to how big a role the state should play in facilitating our freedom, but that’s a disagreement about means not ends.
Tomlin reminds us of “another, older view of freedom”:
“Found in classical literature, this version sees liberty not as freedom from the limitations and social expectations that stop us following our self-chosen desires, but freedom from the ‘passions’.”
Drawing upon both the classical and the Christian traditions, Tomlin’s definition of freedom is in sharp contrast to Mill’s:
“True liberty is, therefore, freedom from internal urges such as greed, laziness or pride that turn us in upon ourselves rather than outwards towards God and each other… It is not so much freedom for ourselves, but freedom from ourselves: freedom from self-centred desires, or the crippling self-absorption that makes us think only of our own interests. It is freedom to create the kind of society where we are more concerned with our neighbours’ well-being than our own.”
In the Gospels, Jesus is asked “who is my neighbour?” Tomlin argues that Mill’s philosophy implies the following answer: “[my neighbour is] at best a limitation; at worst a threat to my freedom.” In Tomlin’s view of freedom, however, “my neighbour becomes… a gift – someone without whom I cannot become someone capable of the primary virtue of love.”
The Bishop presents a powerful challenge, not just to Mill, but also to the way we live our lives today. On the whole I agree with it – and yet Orwell’s words continue to nag away at me.
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