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110 | Tae PrıLosorry or Eco-PoLıtics
behaviour to emulate and condemn. This influences not only our
choices, but also our desires and the limits of the knowledge we can
acquire as well. Consider how many and what kinds of people (alive
and dead) one must meet in order to be able to form an opinion on the
goodness or baseness of a possible way of life. Even more obvious is
the connection amongst individual choices in the case of decisions with
the greatest consequences for our lives: when we choose a partner or
companions. How could we choose each other independently of each
other? Can a person even make a choice if they is not chosen by the
others, i.e., accepted as one of themselves?
If we have recognised that aiming towards autonomy connects us to
our peers instead of separating us, we ought also to accept that
individuals, always needing each other’s help, have only two states to
choose from: they can compel their peers’ recognition or they can
voluntarily support each other in the attainment of their goals. ‘These,
however, are of many kinds and their simultaneous achievement is
practically impossible. How can one reconcile mutually exclusive ways
of life and contradictory goals, if their representatives have to share the
same set of resources? Can a mutual agreement be avoided in such cases?
But is not the freedom of the decision of conscience endangered by the
power which in such cases must be granted to the institutions and bodies
that watch over the common good?
‘The atrocities in centuries past of governments appealing to the
common good and acting in the service of common goals have repeatedly
convinced the supporters of freedom that in politics nothing is more
important than the protection of the individual from those who rule
over him/her. Society is free insofar as it is able to impose strict limits
on those who exercise public power, control them and, if necessary, expel
them. Since the Age of Enlightenment, the view that the institutions
performing public tasks have no right to choose goals instead of
individuals or to give preference to some ways of life over others has
gradually become dominant in the Western world. ‘The state, therefore,
has to remain neutral in the debates on the nature of good and evil. The
role of civil servants and authorities is limited to judging the justness of
citizens’ behaviour. The judgement of their goodness is none of their
concern.
For a long period, the main aim of liberal democracy was for the
citizens of the state not to have to come to an agreement on the goals
of the good life. It is, of course, also possible that relative social peace
was ensured precisely by an unspoken agreement on basic social goals.