Freedom and the question of institutional design

Modern society is shaped by what the philosopher Hegel calls the principle of subjective freedom. This principle means that individuals are able to claim their lives as their own and to engage in what Donald Winnicott (1971) calls creative living. Their lives and identities are no longer dictated by the needs of the group; rather the collective nature of social existence has to be rethought and redesigned so as to be responsive to a freedom for individuality. The principle of subjective freedom represents a fundamental challenge for traditional forms of authority. It is no longer possible to take authority on trust: instead both the rationale for authority and its form have to be discovered by individuals using their ability to think for themselves. This has two implications. Firstly, authority cannot be embedded in inherited tradition" instead, it has to be constructed in accordance with explicit and rationally justified argument concerning the rationale for authority. Authority thus becomes an explicit project for intentional human artifice. Secondly, the rationale for and form of authority have to be conceived in terms of how they serve the principle of subjective freedom. The question of institutional design concerns precisely how authority is to be made an explicit project for intentional human artifice. It requires us to think about what principles should shape and order a modern society. These questions are at the heart of politics in its modern sense.