Mutual liberty is an idea first coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835 work Democracy in America. In effect, Tocqueville was referring to the general nature of American society during the 19th century. It appeared to him, at least on the surface, that every citizen in the United States had the opportunity to participate in the civic activities of the country. Another way to look at mutual liberty is by accounting for the collective free wills of every rational being in a community. Even though the notion of mutual liberty was introduced by Tocqueville, it was John Stuart Mill who greatly expanded it. Mill believed that the most proper occasion for mutual liberty was in a community governed by the consent of the governed, i.e., a republic. And according to Mill, it is only in a republic where members of all political factions can participate. It has been said that a republic is the form of government that divides people least. This statement pertains greatly to mutual liberty. Unlike positive and negative liberty, mutual liberty encompasses all citizens. It makes no distinction between political preference and social status. Mutual liberty pervades all sectors of society, from the homeless man on the street to the premier of the state. It is the process through which a general sense of morality gets exerted on the widest range of people in any given communal setting.
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Famous quotes containing the words mutual and/or liberty:
“If one considers how much reason every person has for anxiety and timid self-concealment, and how three-quarters of his energy and goodwill can be paralyzed and made unfruitful by it, one has to be very grateful to fashion, insofar as it sets that three-quarters free and communicates self-confidence and mutual cheerful agreeableness to those who know they are subject to its law.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The English, besides being “good haters,” are dogged and downright, and have no salvos for their self-love. Their vanity does not heal the wounds made in their pride. The French, on the contrary, are soon reconciled to fate, and so enamoured of their own idea, that nothing can put them out of conceit with it. Whatever their attachment to their country, to liberty or glory, they are not so affected by the loss of these as to make any desperate effort or sacrifice to recover them.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)