not enough; a liberal society puts positive value on them as essential to well-being and as marks of a high civilization. The real argument for political freedom, he though, is that it produces and gives scope to a high type of moral character.
To hear public questions freely discussed, to have a share in political decisions, to have moral convictions and to take the responsibility for making them effective are among the ways in which reasonable human beings are produced. The reason for constructing this kind of character is not that it serves an ulterior end but it is an intrinsically human, civilized kind of character. In On Liberty (1859) Mill writes, “If it were felt that the free development of individuality is one of the leasing essentials of well being; that it is not only a coordinate element with all that is designated by the terms civilization, instruction, education, culture, but is itself a necessary part and condition of all these things; there would be no danger that liberty should be undervalued.”3
Rousseau was also concerned with the moral man of liberty. As he writes, “The central theme of the Contract social is the attempt to put into political terms the concept of freedom in society. Basic to his concept of freedom is his idea of natural man and natural rights. The liberty this theory leads him attribute to natural man is so boundless, so absolute that nothing but a complete chance in psychological constitution can produce a capacity for political life.”4 Moral liberty stems from his own nature which according to Rousseau is naturally right.
Men have an innate revulsion against suffering according to Rousseau. The common basis of sociability is not reason but feeling. Natural man was an animal whose behavior was purely instinctive; any thought whatever is depraved. Consequently, the natural man was neither moral nor vicious. He was not happy but neither was he unhappy. Obviously he had no ...