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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.
