In the previous course, we explored why freedom and responsibility are crucial to addressing social problems. We will now delve deeper into this point by showing how Frédéric Bastiat views the evils that afflict societies and their solution.

Liberals have sometimes been criticized for ignoring evil and constructing the utopia of pure and perfect freedom in an ideal world. This criticism is absolutely unfounded regarding our author.

No one can ignore the evil that reigns in the history of human societies: injustices, wars, and suffering. We would like to eliminate these evils. This is, moreover, the object of a large part of modern philosophies, from Rousseau to Heidegger, through Hegel and Marx.

Evil is not only a definitive reality but it also has a role to play in history and in human action, says Frédéric Bastiat. It can be reduced, but certainly not completely eradicated, because that would mean killing freedom and responsibility. So where does evil come from, what is its role, and how can it be prevented?

To answer these questions, Bastiat will proceed to analyze human action. This, indeed, can lead to both good and evil.

Evil first stems from our imperfection. To choose freely is to run the risk of making a bad choice, says Bastiat. Indeed, we can be deceived in many ways, even about our own needs and interests. Man is fallible; he is prone to err in understanding the play of economic laws or to divert them from their end.

Therefore, it is the imperfection of reason that is the main limit of men and which remains at the origin of our sufferings. If evil stems from human weakness and not from freedom itself, nor from free trade, the remedy is not in the suppression of freedom or exchange but in responsibility itself, since it is the source of all experience. This principle of responsibility is as follows: I quote Bastiat:

Through this natural sanction, man learns, discovers, corrects himself, progresses, and improves. In other words, responsibility is a principle of perfectibility and progress, as we have seen in the previous course.

If a person bears the consequences, good or bad, of their decisions, they will tend to improve by learning from experience. Therefore, individual responsibility, which is the great educator of people, according to Bastiat, is the fundamental principle underlying the regulation of behaviors and societies, and must be allowed to act.

Evil generates suffering, and suffering prompts us to recognize our faults or errors, bringing us back onto the right path. It is through the knowledge of evil that we progress.

It is because humans risk making mistakes or acting wrongly and suffering the consequences that they are encouraged to be responsible. He will then strive to anticipate the hazards that could strike him in order to protect himself.

Thus, it is clear that Bastiat is far from being blind. He does not deny the existence of evil. Man is weak, prone to error and fault. Nowhere will one find Bastiat denying the fact that the exercise of individual freedom is associated with the possibility of error, including the possibility of an unreasonable or senseless choice.

He simply asserts that if the source of evil lies in the absence of freedom, the remedy is in freedom itself, and more specifically in the full and entire exercise of personal responsibility.

But if the misuse of freedom is at the origin of our woes, its proper use is the remedy, that is, the full and entire exercise of personal responsibility, based on the right of property. Social regulation, therefore, passes through responsibility, not through the intervention of the State in all areas, which is one of the great sources of spoliation and thus of evils.

Contrary to Rousseau, who seeks to eradicate evil through collective institutions, Frédéric Bastiat defends the possibility of evil and error, without which there is no freedom or individual responsibility. For it is this that alone allows, through a process of discovery, for progress and the reduction of social evils. It must be clarified that this development of progress through responsibility is by no means automatic. It is not at all, as with Hegel or Marx, a sort of natural or historical determinism, which would miraculously or mechanically lead to harmony and progress. It is about a gradual and indefinite reduction of evil, rather than its definitive elimination.