My guess is status and position were more important in Graeco-Roman times than freedom. Julius Caesar was assassinated because he usurped the authority and honors, the imperium, of the Senate, not because the people of Rome longed to be free. His much wiser grand-nephew created a new form of government, the Principate, in which the form of the rights and privileges historically held by the Senate was preserved and honored, while actual authority was held by Augustus and his successors. — Ciceronianus
what it has to do with sovereignty and why giving up sovereignty will make us free. — Ciceronianus
That began to change, though, and my guess is that concerns regarding freedom as we understand it now began to arise in the conflict among nations and sects that arose when theocracy failed. Just a guess, though. — Ciceronianus
I don't find him interesting, I'm afraid. I confess I find it very hard to read his work--his student, the young woman he seduced while her teacher, who wrote the essay being discussed in this thread, was a model of clarity in comparison to him. I find him, to the extent I can understand him, to be romantic, mystical, muddled; inclined to obfuscate if it suits his purposes, inclined to pontificate, a "self-infatuated blowhard" as it seems Don Idhe called him in reviewing his rhapsodic musings on the Parthenon while ranting about modern technology (Heidegger was apparently not content with merely likening the manner in which the Jews were killed by the Nazis in the camps to the mechanisms employed in modern agriculture in his critique of technology--his only mention of the Holocaust, apparently).
H.L. Mencken used to call William Jenning Bryan "the Great Mountebank." I feel much the same about Heidegger. — Ciceronianus
But to be frank I like to poke at sacred cows, and there's none more sacred in philosophy. — Ciceronianus
So, can you address the fallacy of ambiguity that accurately characterizes Arendt's argument? Here's a source on it that I already posted, just in case you need it: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Ambiguity-Fallacy — Garrett Travers
Can you address the usefulness and necessity of the genealogical method in philosophy? — Joshs
One thing I am certain of is that there is no freedom without constraint, so there is no absolute freedom. The idea that my freedom can cancel yours is unjust; I don't think it's hard to see that. — Janus
"The rise of totalitarianism, its claim to having subordinated all spheres of life to the demands of politics and its consistent nonrecognition of civil rights, above all the rights of privacy and the right to freedom from politics, makes us doubt not only the coincidence of politics and freedom but their very compatibility." — ToothyMaw
I also do not see the paradox you bring up and over which so many of the writers here trip. — Tobias
I find it difficult to follow her thought, distracted as I am by the names she so relentlessly drops throughout the article. — Ciceronianus
how can those who live under the thumb of totalitarianism, in which all spheres of life are dominated by the political, be thought to be free at all? — ToothyMaw
Banno introduced the issue of free will in the OP. — Janus
See Toby helping Garrett Travers realise that there is more to freedom than he might find in the American myth. — Banno
Funny bit is, you've offered the very view that is critiqued by Arendt, without so much as recognising this, let alone comprehended her article, or replying to it. — Banno
Dude, where have you actually addressed the article? Where have you quoted, interpreted, elucidated, expounded, or recounted in such a way that anyone would have cause to suppose you understood what was going on here? Or even read the text.
And until you do something of that sort, until you find it within yourself to talk about the topic of this thread, then your bitching about our not addressing your supposed arguments is hollow.
You've been presented with an alternative to your pedestrian, unconsidered view of freedom. You might have made use of it to better your understanding. You might have made some effort to see freedom from a different perspective, then given some consideration to your own views and reconsidered them, perhaps altering them, perhaps reviewing them entirely, or perhaps extending the very small arsenal of arguments you have at your disposal in their defence. Instead, you are being boring, — Banno
↪Tobias Yes, there are so many threads...for me the issue is undecidable, and thus of little interest. I only took it up because I thought the attempt to deny free will was somewhat lame; it is not freedom which is hard to understand, it is will.
One thing I am certain of is that here is no freedom without constraint, so there is no absolute freedom. The idea that my freedom trumps, and thus can cancel, yours is unjust; I don't think it's hard to see that. — Janus
Well spotted! This was indeed a thought that occurred to me while reading the text, rather than one found in it. For your efforts in making such a close reading of the text, you win a bottle of Laphroaig, which you may collect when next over this way. — Banno
The line that urged the thought upon me was "it must appear strange indeed that the faculty of the will whose essential activity consists in dictate and command should be the harborer of freedom". Asking if one is free to act against one's own will is a way of bringing out the contrary relation between will and freedom that is Arendt's starting point. Indeed, as you say, the question presupposes a notion of freedom Arendt rejects, and hence in disagreeing with the question folk are agreeing at least in part with Arendt, that freedom is not consequent on will. — Banno
She's pretty throughly wrong.
The Greeks abhorred the idea of being free from a community, one assumes because it meant vulnerability. Therefore they didn't explore the idea of an inward locus of control and the moral responsibility that is dependent on that idea.
There's nothing superior about the Greek outlook. And "freedom from" requires context for meaning. — frank
One day... one day I will learn how to properly spell the referred-to author's name. — god must be atheist
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