{"id":316983,"date":"2026-06-08T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=316983"},"modified":"2026-06-02T17:45:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T16:45:02","slug":"what-is-freedom-for-nations-and-persons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/06\/what-is-freedom-for-nations-and-persons\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Freedom for Nations and Persons?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where Do We Go from Here?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1 Jun 2026 – <\/em>Why are democratic freedoms under attack in the US and worldwide?\u00a0 Why does it appear that democracy is failing or has failed?\u00a0\u00a0 What will it take to restore human freedom and dignity?\u00a0\u00a0 The United Nations was founded in 1945 on the principle of \u201cthe sovereign equality of nations.\u201d\u00a0 The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights was published in 1948 declaring, in effect, \u201cthe sovereign equality of all persons.\u201d\u00a0 Philosopher Paul Tillich asserts that democracy is a way of life that does justice to the dignity of every human being, that is, to their freedom, equality, and indivisible \u201cfraternity\u201d (1990, 135).<\/p>\n

Is there not a contradiction between the \u201csovereign equality of nations\u201d and the \u201csovereign equality of all persons\u201d? The first fragments humanity; the second unites us. The first denies freedom, while the second makes freedom possible. Below we will see why the first is ultimately a declaration of war while the second represents an authentic declaration for global democracy.<\/p>\n

For Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant in the 18th<\/sup> century, legitimate government that does justice to the dignity of every human being is predicated upon the principles of right, that is on the universal moral principles within which each person has a dignity that must be protected by law. Rousseau called this moral basis for government \u201cthe General Will,\u201d which he distinguished from \u201cthe will of all.\u201d\u00a0 The General Will is a priori; it is the moral framework that grounds democracy.\u00a0 The \u201cwill of all\u201d can be anything; the people might vote to abolish democracy and replace it with an authoritarian leader as they did, for example, in Nazi Germany in 1933 or in the USA in 2025.\u00a0 The Constitution must be designed in such a way as to preserve the General Will and guard against subversion by the will of all.<\/p>\n

A number of democratic theorists have argued that the core principle in democracy is the idea of the autonomy of citizens (e.g., Held 1995, Gewirth 1996).\u00a0 Gewirth argues that legitimate government combines the goods of \u201cfreedom\u201d and \u201cwell-being\u201d for all its citizens. Freedom maximizes their ability to set life-goals and pursue these with reasonable chances of success. Well-being means that health, education, housing, social security and other goods are provided by the governmental system so that freedom can be empowered in persons in a reliable and predictable manner.<\/p>\n

J\u00fcrgen Habermas (1979) has demonstrated the intrinsically social character<\/em> of all human life which is constituted through the medium of language: \u201cthe process of individuation through which [the ego] emerges runs through the network of linguistically mediated interactions\u201d (1992, 170). Held argues that there are \u201cseven clusters of [socially mediated] rights\u201d that enable the autonomy of citizens: \u201chealth, social, cultural, civic, economic, pacific, and political rights\u201d (1995, 191). Both thinkers argue that vast economic disparity within a society that aspires to be democratic represents an impossible impediment to the promotion of autonomy, equality, and freedom among citizens. Philosopher of democracy, Robert A. Dahl concludes that, \u201cthe presumption of Personal Autonomy, joined with the Idea of Intrinsic Equality, helps to provide a sturdy foundation for democratic beliefs\u201d (1989, 88).<\/p>\n

According to these thinkers and many others, therefore, the popular propaganda meme that \u201cfreedom\u201d means \u201cless government\u201d and fewer regulations is false. All seven clusters of rights require governmental and social authority for their realization and protection. The outdated model of democracy in which government is a regulating force over the people understood as a collection of individuals pursuing their own aims is, therefore, incorrect. Government is not an alien force imposed upon previously existing individuals to keep order. It is an intrinsic part of our common, socially-constructed humanity. Self and other, individual and society, arise together in experience. Selfhood is a socially constructed aspect of the whole.<\/p>\n

A democratic polity must be an integrated web of institutions, organizations, movements, groups, ideas and communications composed of individuals within which the vast diversity of persons and ideas are unified through a governmental, social, and civic framework. The \u201ccoercive nature of law\u201d cannot therefore be its fundamental quality, if properly understood. Rather (as philosopher of law, HLA Hart, 1961, put it) the law formally constitutes and empowers people<\/em> in dozens of ways to actualize their autonomy as citizens and integral participants within the web of society. Democratic government is not a limitation on freedom, rightly understood, but engenders an integral dimension of actualized human freedom.<\/p>\n

What emerges is a concept of democratic autonomy and equality in which freedom is understood as an inseparable aspect of our social nature as persons-in-society. It is the feeling or awareness of being empowered and validated in relationship to others within a governmental, social, and cultural context that condones, certifies, and enhances that feeling. In short, freedom reflects the quality of one\u2019s relationships. It is not an independence prior to those relationships.<\/p>\n

Can this consequence of authentic democratic polity be intentionally cultivated? It has often been pointed out that even Robinson Crusoe on his island survived and flourished because he remained a social being<\/em> drawing on his education and the other trappings of civilization to flourish within his physical isolation. In 1861, John Stuart Mill declared: \u201cThe first question in respect to any political institution is how far they tend to foster in the members of the community the various desirable qualities, moral and intellectual.\u201d The qualities of the persons in a community emerge inseparably from their political institutions that frame their existence.<\/p>\n

This is indeed the key question that most democracies have failed to ask. Yet in no society are children given the authority of full participation in civic life because they have not grown to sufficient adult autonomy to be able to participate responsibly. How is such autonomy to be measured? \u00a0Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg famously studied the growth process toward autonomy during the 1980s and, like dozens of other thinkers working in the same field of human growth, produced a schemata of human growth that is important to note.<\/p>\n

Kohlberg (1984) posited six stages of moral\/cognitive growth. From early childhood stages that culminate in a \u201cgood boy\/girl\u201d conformity that he called \u201cStage 3,\u201d we grow beyond this to a stage in which we see right action as following social laws and doing our duty<\/em> (stage 4). Beyond this we move toward an emerging autonomy<\/em> in which we see ourselves as an individual within a \u201csocial contract,\u201d and within which we can critique even the call to \u201cduty\u201d (stage 5).\u00a0 Nevertheless, true autonomy (the ability to think for oneself under the guidance of universal principles of consistency, coherence, and universality) does not arise until stage 6. At this stage, moral reasoning involves abstract principles of human rights, justice, and equality that can serve as a critique of the surrounding social norms and place the individual in a relation of thoughtful autonomy to those norms.<\/p>\n

The implications of such findings are immense for social thought, education, and democratic theory. In the United States (and likely most other nations), the majority of citizens have not grown beyond stage four in which they see thought, morality, and action as requiring \u201cobedience to authority.\u201d\u00a0 They respond positively to authoritarian leaders and not to invitations to dialogue and debate the great issues confronting society as a whole. It is no accident that one of the first things fascist regimes do upon the assumption of power is target intellectuals\u2014those persons who understand the complexity of issues and who are often willing to challenge blind obedience to authority.<\/p>\n

Freedom is a priority for immature people in the sense that they believe it means the capacity and \u201cright\u201d to live from impulses and inclinations as a separate, individual being.\u00a0 Hence, since government and society are thought of as external<\/em> to their privatized individuality, the idea of obedience to external governmental authority only indirectly impacts their individuality. Nevertheless, at least since the work of Kant in the 18th<\/sup> century, many of those who have grown to intellectual autonomy (Kohlberg\u2019s stage 6) understand that freedom is a function of our socially grounded being<\/em>, and that personal freedom requires a discipline of \u201cself-legislation\u201d inseparable from living as a socially-grounded person. Hence, freedom is connected with the life-trajectories of persons that sublimate impulses and inclinations to self-governance under the sway of guiding purposes and principles. In Freedom\u2019s Right, <\/em>Alex Honneth declares:<\/p>\n

The ability to question social orders and demand proof of their moral legitimacy is the basis for the whole perspective of justice; therefore, individual self-determination, i.e., the power to arrive at one\u2019s own judgments, is not just some contingent human quality, but the essence of our practical-normative activity\u2026. It is no longer clear what it would even mean to demand a just social order without simultaneously calling for individual self-determination. Therefore, the fusion between conceptions of justice and the idea of autonomy represents an achievement of modernity that can only be reversed at the price of cognitive barbarism (2014, 17).<\/p>\n

An authentic democratic society is one characterized by the \u201cperspective of justice.\u201d
\nAnd the very legitimacy of that society requires citizen growth to Stage 6 autonomy, the capacity to arrive at judgments that critically evaluate the norms and conditions of society from the point of view of further growth, evolution, and self-realization. It is just such autonomous critical activity that the authoritarian personality of Stage 4 repudiates as destructive of \u201cthe nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The questioning of a one-dimensional affirmation of existing conditions is perceived by the authoritarian personality as undermining the certainty and legitimacy of the authority that gives their lives the capacity to execute a meaningful duty under direction of these conditions. Military service is perhaps the most obvious paradigm of such ideologized obedience. In the United States military service is considered exemplary public service. To \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d is to restore an unquestioned authority to power that quashes the doubt and uncertainty exacerbated by the mature evolutionary questioning of present circumstances in the name of a higher legitimacy or more comprehensive justice and freedom.<\/p>\n

This more insightful concept of freedom as a quality of the whole of society in which the individual personality participates was not readily available in the 18th<\/sup> century when the great democratic revolutions were taking place and when the US Constitution was written. The 18th<\/sup> century was also a time when the world appeared vast and hence necessarily divided into independently governed territories. It often took one to two months to cross an ocean from one continent to another. By the early 20th<\/sup> century, a more insightful understanding of freedom was possible.<\/p>\n

The world had shrunk due to increased speeds of transportation and communication. Just as the 18th<\/sup> century fostered an erroneous individualism with regard to government so it cultivated a fragmented nationalism with regard to this or that world territory. As Boswell and Chase-Dunn express this: \u201cnationalism is legitimated by the same ideological forces that promote individualism as a constitutive element of global culture\u201d (207).<\/p>\n

Both are erroneous, since both are products of an outdated view of the human situation. (The nation-state system is called \u201cWestphalian\u201d because it was framed at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, nearly 400 years ago.) By the 20th<\/sup> century, a more correct view was emerging called the \u201csovereignty of humankind.\u201d As Zen Buddhist scholar Masao Abe puts it: \u201csovereignty rests precisely with all mankind in the sense of one self-aware entity which has become profoundly aware of itself as \u2018mankind\u2019\u201d (1985, 249). The holism today that is beginning to emerge within human awareness in the 21st<\/sup> century was intimated in the early 20th century through the work of such thinkers as Jan Smuts in Holism and Evolution <\/em>(1926) and the political thought of John Dewey during this same period. Smuts sees the evolutionary holism of the Cosmos as bringing \u201cfreedom\u201d into the world in ever greater holistic forms. \u00a0And both thinkers connect freedom with the mature human \u201cpersonality\u201d as a central ideal for society (strikingly similar to the idea of intellectual and moral autonomy sketched above).<\/p>\n

Dewey declares that \u201cin every individual there lives an infinite and universal possibility; that of being a king and priest.\u201d He declares, \u201cFrom this central position of personality result the other notes of democracy, liberty, equality, fraternity\u2014words which are not mere words to catch the mob, but symbols of the highest ethical ideal which humanity has yet reached\u2014the idea of personality is the one thing of permanent and abiding worth, and that in every human individual there lies personality\u201d (1993, 62-63).<\/p>\n

The three great values of democracy (liberty, equality, and fraternity) live directly intertwined with the ideal of a social personality that transcends egoistic individuality and unites people in social freedom \u00a0(themselves wholes within the greater wholes of society, Earth, and the Cosmic order). Freedom arises from the holism of the human personality, human civilization, and Cosmic creative evolution. Just as we encounter an immature individualism within nations<\/em> in people who fail to recognize the social and evolutionary character of personality and its freedom, so in the world system of sovereign nation-states we encounter the sentiment called \u201cthe self-determination of nations.\u201d\u00a0 Nations want to be respected as \u201csovereign\u201d because they seek to determine their own destinies.\u00a0 This idea appears as deluded as it is impossible.<\/p>\n

Today some 194 sovereign nation-states operate within a global economic, political, institutional, civilizational, and environmental framework that pervasively impacts decisions made by each government within this matrix of forces. There is no escaping this civilizational matrix and no such thing as self-determination within it. Actions taken by each fragment impact all the others, depending on the size of the nation and the significance of its action. The on-going war of aggression against Iran by Israel and the United States underlines this inescapable principle. The entire world is thrown into shortages of fertilizer, fuel, and other necessities. From these actions, uncontrollable inflation is taking place worldwide, along with possible, global economic depression.<\/p>\n

The Westphalian system itself serves to structurally divide these sovereign territories from one another and emphasize their fragmentation. David Held writes: \u201cThe competition among states was driven not just by the ambitions of rulers and internal or domestic considerations, but also by the very structure <\/em>of the international system: individual states, pursuing their own security, had to be prepared for war, a process which itself generated insecurity in other states, which sought to respond in kind\u201d (1995, 54). In a number of writings, Immanuel Kant had already pointed out that the greatest contradiction to human freedom was war, and that the structure of the world system was that of a war-system: \u201cAs a matter of fact,\u201d Kant writes, \u201cthe establishment of a universal and enduring peace is not just a part, but rather constitutes the whole, of the ultimate purpose of law\u201d (1965, 128).<\/p>\n

Freedom of individual nations, within this system, is impossible, because freedom is a social phenomenon arising from the relations between the parts of a whole, just as autonomous personalities emerge from their empowering relationships and the social matrix within which they are being nurtured. As Alan Gewrith (1996) put it simply, legitimate government forms a \u201ccommunity of rights\u201d supplying both well-being and freedom to its population. He makes clear, in this context, that well-being is a necessary component of freedom. Hence, freedom arises from the holistic quality of the entire community.<\/p>\n

Exactly the same dynamic applies to the collection of individual sovereign nation-states. The freedom of each is inseparable from the freedom of all, just as it is within a democratic society. Do national communities and cultures possess a potential for evolutionary development comparable to that of individual persons?\u00a0 Most surely they do.\u00a0 And yet this development is compromised on every side by relations of wealth and poverty, by economic imperialism, international debt, the competition of nations for markets, war preparations, and the struggle for national well-being, power, and prestige.<\/p>\n

If all nations could be embraced within a global economy designed to work for the common good of all, would their freedom be empowered?\u00a0 If the world transcended the war-system and the two trillion US dollars now spent by nations to pursue an illusive security, would their freedom be enhanced?\u00a0 Under the present world system, the idea of self-determination of nations remains on the level of Kohlberg\u2019s Stage 4 of moral and intellectual development. The nations are under the illusion that they are independent from the whole.<\/p>\n

Nations think of themselves as separate individual entities rather than as nodes within the civilizational matrix of humanity.\u00a0 They think in authoritarian terms of \u201cwho has the power with which I should align my self-interest?\u201d They do not see themselves as an utterly significant and necessary field of activity within the greater field of human civilization.\u00a0 Hence, it is impossible for them to be free and self-determining. The freedom of self-determination is the freedom to actualize the potential of the part within the embrace of an empowering whole. It is only the united whole of civilization that can bring freedom to the nations.<\/p>\n

Jean Jacques Rousseau, as noted above, expressed a somewhat similar insight in the language of the 18th<\/sup> century. The human political ideal is \u201cto find a form of association the defends and protects the person and goods of each associate with all the common force, and by means of which each one, united with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before\u201d (1974, 23).\u00a0 Like his contemporary John Locke, he imagines an illusory individual freedom prior to government, but at the same time he realizes the absolute necessity of human association that ideally must preserve and enhance this freedom. He is wrong that there is an individual human freedom prior to our social nature and participation in community with others. He is right that we can find a form of association that brings freedom to each part within the whole precisely because that collective freedom embraces the whole within the moral framework of what he called \u201cthe General Will.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Constitution for the Federation of Earth<\/a> provides precisely this General Will for human civilization as a whole. It assures the development of each human personality within the embrace of the whole and also enshrines the integrity of each individual nation within the whole. In Twenty-first Century Democratic Renaissance<\/em> (2008), philosopher Errol E. Harris traces the development of democratic theory from the ancient Greeks to the present. He concludes that democracy as conceived within this history is not possible today<\/em> within nation-states. We have moved to global level with global problems and issues that today defeat efforts at democracy within all so-called sovereign nations.<\/p>\n

The only route to a world in which the values of a developing personality within the framework of liberty, equality, and fraternity flourish and blossom is the route of democratic world government under the Earth Constitution. Freedom is a civilizational phenomenon. It emerges from the holism of the human personality within the matrix of society, planet, and Cosmos.\u00a0 The very structure of the cosmos embeds all individual parts within holistic fields that are embraced by ever greater fields up to the Cosmic whole itself. Freedom for both persons and nations, as Jan Smuts declared, is a product of holism. There is no authentic human freedom, for persons or for nations, without ratification of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.<\/p>\n

Citations:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Abe, Masao (1985). Zen and Western Thought.<\/em> University of Hawaii Press.<\/p>\n

Boswell, Terry and Christopher Chase-Dunn, The Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism. <\/em>Lynne Rienner Publishers.<\/p>\n

Dahl, Robert A. (198 ). Democracy and Its Critics. <\/em>Yale University Press.<\/p>\n

Dewey, John (1993), The Political Writings. <\/em>Hackett Publishers.<\/p>\n

Gewirth, Alan (1996). The Community of Rights. <\/em>University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\n

Habermas, J\u00fcrgen (1992). Postmetaphysical Thinking. <\/em>The MIT Press.<\/p>\n

Harris, Errol E. (2008). Twenty-first Century Democratic Renaissance<\/em>. Institute for Economic Democracy Press.<\/p>\n

Hart, HLA (1961). The Concept of Law. <\/em>Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

Held, David (1995), Democracy and the Global Order. <\/em>Stanford University Press.<\/p>\n

Honneth Alex (2014). Freedom\u2019s Right. <\/em>Columbia University Press.<\/p>\n

Kant, Immanuel (1965). The Metaphysical Elements of Justice. <\/em>Library of the Liberal Arts.<\/p>\n

Kohlberg, Lawrence (1984). The Psychology of Moral Development, Volume Two. <\/em>Harper & Row.<\/p>\n

Martin, Glen T., ed. (2016), Constitution for the Federation of Earth. <\/em>Institute for Economic Democracy Press.<\/p>\n

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1974) The Social Contract. <\/em>New American Library.<\/p>\n

Smuts, Jan (1986). Evolution and Holism. <\/em>The Gestalt Journal Press.<\/p>\n

Tillich, Paul (1990). Theology of Peace. <\/em>Westminster\/John Knox Press.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Dr. Glen T. Martin:
\n– Member, <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/em><\/a>
\n– Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
\n– Founder\/Chairperson Emeritus, Program in Peace Studies, Radford University
\n– President, World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA);
\n– President, Earth Constitution Institute (ECI)
\n– Author of twelve books and hundreds of articles concerning global issues, human spirituality, and democratic world government; a recipient of many peace awards.
\n<\/em>www.earthconstitution.world<\/em><\/a> \u2013 Email: <\/em>gmartin@radford.edu<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 Jun 2026 – Where Do We Go from Here? – Why are democratic freedoms under attack in the US and worldwide?\u00a0 Why does it appear that democracy is failing or has failed?\u00a0\u00a0 What will it take to restore human freedom and dignity?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":307534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1924,725,2797,276,2307,3527,328,2376,125,2013,124,2259,481,3742],"class_list":["post-316983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-authoritarianism","tag-culture-of-violence","tag-culture-of-war","tag-democracy","tag-democratic-world-federalists-dwf","tag-earth-constitution","tag-freedom","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-freedom-of-the-press","tag-religious-freedom","tag-united-nations","tag-universal-declaration-of-human-rights","tag-warfare","tag-world-parliament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316984,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316983\/revisions\/316984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}