Is Modern Liberty Moral Debauchery?

This weekend I saw on TV a pop music video where they were selling the idea of sexual liberty, with a homosexual tone. The chorus would insist on the word "liberty! liberty!" from beginning to end. The song was in Spanish, and I couldn't retell the name of it. Anyways, I'm not interested in promoting it; just mentioning it to make my case.

This idea of linking liberty to sexual license has always produced discomfort in me, especially because I don't see this value anywhere in any major religion or spiritual philosophy. Contrariwise, sexuality is usually seen as base, immoral, destroyer of the bond between human beings with the higher being of God. The idea can't be proved empirically, but it happens that every major religion, from India to the Americas, rebuffs sexuality as something unworthy of a transcendent life. But because we like the word "liberty", because we link it to the highest values we strive for in the West, the discourse that tries to link liberty with sexual license disturbs me profoundly, because it forces me to choose between liberty and spirituality, and nothing can be further from the truth. The point of spirituality is to truly free the human spirit from the bonds that incarcerate it to its material condition. If the discourse of sexual license as liberty is true, we are forced to deduce that spirituality enslaves us, or liberty is a base and unworthy thing. I reject that conclusion. Instead, I want to bring to notice another discourse that is very old indeed, but no less true.

The solution to this problem was offered by Plato, in his Laws, book III. There he debates the virtuous middle path between liberty and slavery, where liberty is the condition under democracy and slavery the condition under monarchy. He considers both extremes vicious and contrary to prudent moderation that leads to true, elevated happiness. In 694a he speaks of "the just middle between slavery and liberty". A strange thought, isn't it? We are taught that slavery is always bad, always deplorable. But what kind of slavery is he talking about? Not the institution of slavery, that's for sure, but the acceptance of the higher truths of virtue that moderate the inclinations of the individual's will. This is a very old debate, but by presenting it this way he has illuminated me on this issue (like most of the time when I read Plato).

From Hobbes onward we have taken liberty to be to do whatever we want without interference from external things. But Hobbes does not follow that: the more liberty the better for us. Contrariwise the government is formed to regulate our liberty and solve the collective action dilemma that would lead us to self destruction. Plato and Hobbes agree on something essential: more liberty is not always better. I agree with those terms. The difference is that for Hobbes, individuals cannot be trusted to be sociable unless they are compelled by an extraordinary external force, whereas for Plato the cultivation of a virtuous life lead to self regulation and the enjoyment of true happiness and true liberty. 

The problem with Hobbes' notion is that he does not give us a solution to the problem of excessive liberty that does not imply frustrating it. The less government interference, the more liberty we enjoy, because we can do with our bodies whatever we want: hence, sexual license. This is one of the more paradoxical conclusions from Hobbes' Christian thought. But Plato, two thousand years before, already gives us the solution. If liberty in the abstract sense is a good thing, an aspect of the virtuous life, excessive liberty, in order to be bad for us, has to be something else. We call it licentiousness or debauchery, and it cannot be termed with true liberty without reducing it to an absurd concept. Why? Because true liberty is always moderate, prudent, self-regulating, conscious of divine truths, respectful of God and the aspect of God within us. All of these sexual licentiousness destroys, debasing the body, divorcing it with all its spiritual potentials. 

In this sense we have to see slavery not as oppression, but as moderation. In what sense? The Arabic word Islam gives us a hint: it means "voluntary submission to God," the origin of all universal truths and of all spirituality. If in all major religions God commands against sexual license, and also in pagan thinkers like Plato the same conclusion is reached, we have to accept that, empirically or not, all relevant spiritual traditions guide human beings through another path, and to another end than that portrayed in modern secular ethos and its sexual licentiousness. This not only includes homosexuality, but any kind of excessive practice of sexual life, like pornography.

I even claim that modernity is cheating on all of us. Excessive sexuality never produces true happiness, and the joy enjoyed by so many who live like this is an illusory comfort for a life void of spiritual content, of transcendent meaning. Contemporary capitalist, secular and modern values are contrary to ancient and universal wisdom. The idea that sexual license is liberty is derisory, and we should rebuff it whenever we find it expressed.