“Uncertainty makes us free”. Liberalism, risk and individual security

Abstract

Security associated with 'the state′ easily is imagined only in terms of a 'Hobbesian′ problematic of the transfer of rights to a sovereign. Yet internal to liberal government is a 'Benthamite′ concern with security as the provision of a calculable environment in which rational actors may plan. A central dilemma arises within liberalism over what are optimal levels and forms of calculability. Modernist government demands scientific predictability, universality and rationality. This clash with traditional liberal visions of individual freedom is envisaged as fundamentally incompatible with a future that is 'excessively′ calculable and thus not open to enterprise. Through an historical analysis of insurance, the paper traces the contours of this struggle over security-calculability, and how this genealogy has shaped the current tension between risk and uncertainty in ways not readily grasped by the idea of a 'risk society′.