Page 56 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

An CHANG / The unity of freedom and equality in library rights system 055

cared about personal freedom, but also paid more attention to social equality and the rights of
vulnerable groups. They advocated that the state should play a positive role to realize social justice,
mainly solving the problem of equality (L. Wang, 2009). On the inherent tension between freedom
and equality, we can get it from the differences between freedom and equality through the design
of the system (see Table 1).

Table 1. The differences between freedom and equality
Attribute of Presentation Mode of Early field
Right Nature Body Content Acquisition Value Purpose
right form operation involved
Free from Exercise of Believes in
Negative Personal Human
Freedom Individual state Efficiency individual Egoism Politics good human
right rights personality
intervention rights nature
Requirement
Positive Interpersonal of national Human Operation Egoism, Be on guard
Equality Society Cooperation of state Economics against
right rights policy generality power altruism evil
intervention

From Table 1, we can know that freedom and equality are different. Freedom is a kind of
personal right whose state is free. But equality is a kind of right about each other (Xu, 2008), so
the realization of equality of right inevitably has a social nature (B. Y. Li, 2010). Although there
are conflicts between freedom and equality, but it does not mean that we can only choose one of
them in the specific design of the system. There are several reasons: firstly, freedom and equality
have the same important political and social values; secondly, freedom and equality restrain each
other; thirdly, the tenses between freedom and equality also prove the close link between them.
Freedom is the premise of equality, and equality is the condition of freedom. It is privilege if
freedom leaves from equality, and it is tyranny if equality leaves from freedom. The two are mutual
restraint. Furthermore, the tenses between them can provide a reference for the specific system of
state construction.
The complex relationships between freedom and equality provide us a basic perspective to think
about the content of the library rights. The natural feature of library rights gives a deep imprint of
moral rights to the content, which helps to prove the justice of the library system in which freedom
and equality are compatible. On the other hand, the tenses between freedom and equality may
affect the development of the system of the library right. So it is important to know how to arrange
the two in the system of library rights in reasonable proportion, how to set the policy and system
to achieve the common value of the two. It is important to truly reflect the justice value in the
construction of the library system.