For a liberalism of moral autonomy

The authorisation of Apple Intelligence [1] in China may have fed a paradox in some business circles: that of a Middle Kingdom more liberal than the European Union, which is seen as over-regulated. Yet authorising a technology is not enough to make a regime liberal. While European regulation may hold back innovation, it also aims to protect fundamental rights and guarantee legal certainty.

This reading reveals a narrow conception of liberalism, reduced to economic freedom alone. Liberal philosophy, however, rests above all on individual freedom and the limitation of political power. A regime that favours business while censoring opinions, repressing opponents and monitoring its citizens cannot be called liberal. Liberalism must therefore be understood as a comprehensive requirement, at once economic, political, legal and moral.

Freedom as self-ownership

Liberalism is built around a conception of the human being as an autonomous subject, endowed with the capacity to form their own judgements and to dispose freely of their own existence.

For Locke, the notion of property is not limited to the possession of external goods; it refers above all to the control individuals have over their own person, the foundation of their autonomy [2]. As early as the 16th century, the School of Salamanca had already developed this idea through the notion of dominium sui. Since individuals are sovereign over themselves [3], the legitimacy of political power rests on their consent and on its ability to guarantee natural rights. Entering society cannot, however, justify being stripped of individual freedom; established power remains limited by the very purpose on which its legitimacy rests. Freedom therefore requires that everyone enjoy a personal sphere protected from intervention by the state and the community. Benjamin Constant pointed out that part of human existence must remain outside any social jurisdiction [4]. This requirement means accepting that people make choices we disapprove of, as long as they act freely and do not infringe the rights of others.

In On Liberty (1859), John Stuart Mill sets out an essential principle: ‘the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others’. Intervening in an individual’s choices solely because the intervention would be good for them, physically or morally, cannot therefore justify restricting their freedom.

The distinction between morality and law is fundamental here. A practice may be judged morally reprehensible without having to be banned [5]. Social debates on individual freedoms and bodily autonomy illustrate this difficulty particularly well. In each of these areas, the question is whether the law should impose a particular conception of the good or guarantee the coexistence of differing convictions. The central question is to what extent individuals may dispose of their own person and direct their lives according to their own choices, provided that consent is freely given and the rights of others are respected.

Autonomy against paternalism

Liberal democracy cannot be reduced to the sovereignty of the majority. It must also protect individuals against collective decisions that unjustly encroach on their private lives. As Tocqueville stressed, each person is the best judge of what concerns only themselves [6].

Individual autonomy does not mean that all our decisions are reasonable or good. Rather, it means that we keep the ability to decide for ourselves, even when our choices displease others or seem reckless, or even shocking. This difficulty is especially apparent in contemporary uses of the notion of human dignity. Dignity can legitimately protect people against violence, humiliation and degrading treatment. It becomes problematic, however, when it is used to ban freely consented choices on the grounds that they run counter to a particular conception of the good life.

Two conceptions of dignity must therefore be distinguished. The first seeks to protect everyone against harm that others might inflict on them, while the second claims to determine, on behalf of individuals, what they are allowed to do with their own lives. While the first remains essential to safeguarding the rule of law, the second opens the way to overt paternalism [7].

The defence of individual freedom leads us to question the legitimacy of banning controversial practices such as surrogacy, recourse to prostitution, sadomasochistic practices, swingers’ ‘gang-bang’ parties or post-mortem insemination. In these areas, it is certainly necessary to fight coercion, but without presuming that the people involved are incapable of consenting.

In a society that recognises freedom as a fundamental principle, moral disapproval cannot replace a legitimate justification for coercion. The state cannot, therefore, impose a particular conception of the good merely because certain choices seem questionable, immoral or contrary to prevailing norms. Protecting individuals should strengthen their capacity to act rather than replace it [8].

For a morally neutral state

A state governed by the rule of law must, of course, not remain indifferent to certain situations. It must protect vulnerable people, guarantee freedom of consent and prevent violence. These objectives do not, however, justify imposing an official morality. The ethical neutrality of the state does not mean an absence of rules. It means that any restriction on freedom must be legitimate, necessary and proportionate to the rights it seeks to protect. In a pluralist society, the primary purpose of law is to guarantee the peaceful coexistence of individual freedoms, not to impose an official conception of happiness, virtue or the good life. It cannot dictate to individuals how they should lead their lives. This requirement is particularly important where freedom of will, privacy or end-of-life decisions are at stake, areas in which the principle of self-determination plays a central role.

Contemporary ethical controversies therefore cannot be reduced to a choice between moral approval and condemnation. Above all, they must be examined in the light of individual freedom. The fundamental task is to protect each individual against aggression, coercion and the infringement of their rights, while preventing the state, under the guise of protection, from claiming the power to decide in their place what is good for them [9]. Under the principle of self-determination, no one should be deprived of their freedom merely because their choices are contrary to their own interests.

Liberalism as a principle of emancipation

Contemporary liberalism suffers from a twofold confusion. On the one hand, it tends to reduce freedom to its economic dimension alone, as if the freedom to trade were enough to guarantee individual freedom. On the other, it too often subordinates personal autonomy to the demands of protection or to an imposed conception of dignity. Freedom, however, is not confined to the market; above all, it involves each person’s right to lead their own life. Likewise, democracy cannot be confused with the sovereignty of the majority, for collective power, no more than individual potestas, cannot legitimately override each person’s natural rights.

From Locke to Constant, from Mill to Berlin, the great liberal tradition insists that individual sovereignty is not negotiable and cannot bow to the tyranny of the majority. True political freedom lies not in the claim of the many to rule the city, but in the absolute inviolability of the personal domain, where each individual remains the sole master of their own existence. This is why the distinction between morality and law remains essential. We can disapprove of private behaviour without considering that this disapproval is enough to justify banning it.

Liberalism, then, is not simply a matter of demanding less state or defending freedom of enterprise. It rests above all on recognising the individual as a subject capable of self-government. The state must protect everyone against violence, coercion and exploitation, but it cannot systematically take the place of individuals in decisions that concern only themselves [10].

The mission of a state governed by the rule of law is not to make individuals virtuous, but to guarantee the conditions for their free coexistence. As Locke reminded us, the law must preserve and enlarge freedom rather than abolish it or restrict it arbitrarily. This requirement must, however, be understood in its full scope. Liberalism deserves its name only if it defends individual autonomy, even when personal choices disturb prevailing convictions. Only on this condition does it remain a true philosophy of emancipation.

Daniel Borrillo is a legal researcher at CERSA, Université Paris Panthéon-Assas, and an expert at GenerationLibre.

1. The generative artificial intelligence system developed by Apple. ↩
2. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1690). ↩
3. Francisco Suárez, Tractatus de legibus ac Deo legislatore (1612). ↩
4. Benjamin Constant, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns (1819). ↩
5. D. Borrillo, La morale ou le droit ?, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2024. ↩
6. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835). ↩
7. D. Borrillo, ‘Gang-bang libertins, prostitution, fin de vie… L’État doit-il limiter la liberté individuelle au nom de la « dignité humaine » ?’, Libération, August 4th 2026. ↩
8. D. Borrillo, Disposer de son corps : un droit encore à conquérir, Paris, Textuel, 2019. ↩
9. D. Borrillo, ‘L’État veut nous protéger contre nous-mêmes’, interview, Le Monde, April 28th 2005. ↩
10. D. Borrillo, ‘Fin de vie : le rôle de l’État n’est pas de décider à la place des individus’, Le Monde, June 29th 2026. ↩