64 Global Ethics for Leadership
ative and positive freedom, “freedom from” and “freedom for”. Under
the conditions of modernity there “freedom from” seems to have priority
over “freedom for”. Freedom means mostly liberty from any restriction
that hinders the realisation of one’s own will, the pursuit of one’s own
happiness, the exercise of one’s own power. Under the conditions of
modernity freedom is not understood as limited but as expanding. The
expansion of freedom is its dominant feature.
Expansion of knowledge, expansion of power, expansion of wealth,
expansion of autonomy are the dominant fields of this expansive charac-
ter of freedom under the conditions of modernity. The progress of sci-
ence and technology, the concentration of political power, the orienta-
tion towards economic growth and the interest in personal self-
determination are the primary spheres of this understanding of freedom.
Inequality seems to be an inevitable outcome of the use of freedom in
such an expansive way. Knowledge is distributed unequally, political
power constitutes the difference between those in government and those
who are governed, economic growth creates growing social discrepan-
cies, the ideal of personal self-determination is bound to social and eco-
nomic preconditions that are distributed unequally.
These consequences of the expansive concept of freedom take on
very different forms in different parts of the world, but there are no
places where they would be completely unknown. We know from histo-
ry two major concepts to set limits to these consequences. One concept
is the public order concept. In this concept it is the state that defines
what would be an “excessive” use of freedom. It answers to our human
inclination to care for safety before caring for freedom.^33 This concept
includes a tendency towards “law and order”, it limits eventually even
33
Cf. Jonny Steinberg. A Man of Good Hope. Johannesburg / Cape Town 2014,
XV: “In his every decision, the imperative to be free tussles with the imperative
to be safe. On his Shoulders rests the incessant burden of dodging his own mur-
der.” This is said about the Somalian refugee Asad Abdullahi who lives in
Blikkiesdorf / Cape Town and started a little shop in his one-room shack togeth-
er with his wife.