Safety and Security
Files
Description
People talk about a trade-off between security and liberty. But what do they mean by security? We know what's at stake in the definition of liberty—the difference between positive liberty and negative liberty, and the old distinction between liberty and license. We know something of the distinction between liberty as a generic category and particular liberties that may be regarded as basic or described politically under the category ‘civil liberties.’ We try to be clear about ‘liberty’, because it may make a difference to the trade-off. But we almost never address the question of what ‘security’ means. Although we know it is a vague and ambiguous concept and although we should suspect that its vagueness is a source of danger when talk of trade-offs is in the air, still there has been little or no attempt in political theory to bring any sort of clarity to the concept. There is of course an immense literature on national security and also on collective security in the theory and study of international relations. But these concepts are not quite the same as the security I have in mind. The idea of collective security operates at the wrong level; it concerns security as among the nations of the world (or various subsets of them) as determined by institutions, alliances and the balance of power, whereas I am interested in security conceived of as an attribute of individuals and populations. And national security conveys ideas about the integrity and power of the state itself as an institutional apparatus, which may or may not be related to the idea of ordinary citizens being more secure. Maybe ‘homeland security’ is a better term. ‘Human security’ is another phrase in increasingly common use. In this chapter I shall try to address some of the theoretical issues that a proper analysis of the concept of security—serviceable, for example, for the purposes of a liberty/security trade-off—might involve.
Source Publication
Civil Liberties, National Security and Prospects for Consensus: Legal, Philosophical and Religious Perspectives
Source Editors/Authors
Esther D. Reed, Michael Dumper
Publication Date
2012
Recommended Citation
Waldron, Jeremy, "Safety and Security" (2012). Faculty Chapters. 1575.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1575
