Freedom

piero scaruffi

2

Individual Freedom

• Free will

• Social and natural conditioning

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau: we are born free, but every social interaction after birth results in a progressive loss of freedom ("L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers")

3

Social Freedom

• Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" (1651): "a free man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do“ (negative liberty

• Helvetius' "De l'esprit" (1758): "The free man is the man who is not in irons, nor imprisoned in a gaol, nor terrorized like a slave by the fear of punishment" (negative liberty)

• John Locke and Adam Smith: negative liberty

4

Social Freedom• Rousseau: individual freedom is achieved

through participation in the process whereby one's community exercises collective control over its own affairs in accordance with the ‘general will’ (positive freedom)

• Hegel and Marx: positive liberty

• Rudolf Steiner's "Die Philosophie der Freiheit" (1894): "To be free is to be capable of thinking one's own thoughts - not the thoughts merely of the body, or of society, but thoughts generated by one's deepest, most original, most essential and spiritual self, one's individuality"

5

Social Freedom

• Erich Fromm's "The Fear of Freedom" (1941) & Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty" (1958): distinction between "freedom from" (negative freedom, e.g. freedom from religious persecution) and "freedom to" (positive freedom, e.g. freedom to achieve one's aspirations, having the power and resources to fulfill one's potential)

• Fromm: negative freedom marks the beginning of humanity as a self-aware species free from animal instincts

6

Democratic Freedom

• Freedom vs Liberty vs Anarchism vs Democracy