John Locke: Liberty Prosperity, Health And Happiness
1800 Words8 Pages
“Liberty, Prosperity, Health and Happiness”
Under the basic assumption that we are not constrained by the walls of imprisonment, liberty is an ever-present abstraction within our daily lives. Liberty is seen manifested within our realm with the availability of choices presented to us. Nevertheless, liberty is the engine that exerts choices. If we expand on the notion that liberty fuels choice, logic would guide us to the generalization that liberty is also encompassed with freedom. Woven all together, liberty is the freedom to exert choices without interruption of any other force that seeks to hinder it. Therefore, at its innermost layer, liberty emanates from the inclusion of will.
The great English philosopher John Locke expanded on such core with a philosophical layer where, “all men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.” Consequently, our founding father Thomas Jefferson no doubt inspired by Locke expanded on the same very core tenet with a political ideology. He wrote that the “rightful liberty is unobstructed action…show more content… Choices correspond to selecting alternatives which is none other than “the logical consequence of scarcity”. As an individual, we are at liberty to choose a particular good within nature but not without evaluating the cost of opportunity. Due to economizing behavior, we choose purposely which is an option not possible without liberty. Liberty allows an individual to optimize resources, but it is not without sacrifices. As result of seeking alternatives that produce the greatest benefit, we give up a degree of liberty due to the interdependent of others to meet our needs. The cooperation between individuals within a society drives the formulation of the regulations of social