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To coerce a man is to deprive him of freedom - freedom from what? Almost every moralist
in human history has praised freedom. Like happiness and goodness, like nature and reality, it is
a term whose meaning is so __ (21)__ that there is little interpretation that it seems able to resist.
I do not propose to discuss either the history of this protean word or the more than two hundred
senses of it recorded by historians of ideas. Instead, I propose to answer a core question: what is
the area within which the subject - a person or group of persons - is or should be left to do or be
what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons?
I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with
my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act
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unobstructed by others. If I am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise do, I am
to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond a certain minimum, I
can be described as being coerced, or, it may be, enslaved. Coercion is not, however, a term that
covers every form of inability. If I say that I am unable to jump more than ten feet in the air, or
cannot read because I am blind, or cannot understand the darker pages of Hegel, it would be
eccentric to say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced. Coercion implies the deliberate
interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act. You lack
political liberty or freedom only if you are prevented from attaining a goal by human beings.
__(22)___ incapacity to attain a goal is not lack of political freedom. This is brought out by the
use of such modern expressions as “economic freedom” and its counterpart, “economic
slavery.” It is argued, very plausibly, that if a man is too poor to afford something
___ (23)___ there is no legal ban - a loaf of bread, a journey round the world, recourse to the
law courts - he is as little free to have it as he would be if it were forbidden him by law. If my
poverty were a kind of disease which prevented me from buying bread, or paying for the
journey round the world or getting my case heard, as lameness prevents me from running, this
inability would not naturally be described as a lack of freedom, least of all political freedom. It
is only because I believe that my inability to get a given thing is due to the fact that other human
beings have made arrangements whereby I am, whereas others are not, prevented from having
enough money with which to pay for it, that I think myself a victim of coercion or slavery.
___(24)____, this use of the term depends on a particular social and economic theory about the
causes of my poverty or weakness. If my lack of material means is due to my lack of mental or
physical capacity, then I begin to speak of being deprived of freedom (and not simply about
poverty) only if I accept the theory. If, in addition, I believe that I ___(25)____ in want by a
specific arrangement which I consider unjust or unfair, I speak of economic slavery or
oppression. The nature of things does not madden us, only ill will does, said Rousseau. The
criterion of oppression is the part that I believe to be played by other human beings, directly or
indirectly, with or without the intention of doing so, in frustrating my wishes. By being free in
this sense I mean not being interfered with by others. The wider the area of non-interference is,
the wider my freedom is.
【題組】25. (A) have been made (B) am baffled (C) am being kept (D) go astray
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