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

Yes, but also you work with a notion of freedom that Arendt at least contends did not exist as a problem for ancient philosophy. However, the concept of imperium is I think important. We have a kind of model of what rulership, sovereignty and imperium consists in. We have copied this model (just as we copied a model of the senate) in the history of our political concepts. I think Arendt would agree with you. There was no concept of freedom or liberty and of liberal autonomy. There was a concept of honors and rewards, that was what justice consisted in, giving everybody his due meant, give everyone the honors and rewards due to the role they play. I am curious of what Arendt makes of freedom as a political concept for the ancients, she says it was antithetical to a philosophical life, might well be, but she does not inform us of the political in which it then presumably still plays a role.

What strikes me in the essay as interesting, is that the concept of imperium (as sovereignty) and freedom become intertwined. It becomes married to Plato's conception of the soul that consists of base desires, spirit (in the sense of a spirited, impetuous individual) and the highest faculty, reason. In Plato's conception ratio ought to rule the other two faculties. In the Christian version this becomes a bit of a problem. Conversion means a willed 'act of fate', more an act of spirit than of ratio. We beget a new problem the problem of will as the source of freedom and knowledge as the source of freedom.

It becomes a thorny issue in all of western philosophy since then and up until a century or so ago, how to reconcile knowledge and faith or knowledge and will. Kant seems to hold a very Platonic sense of freedom still, it is ratio that should rule nature. The utilitarians choose the opposite, it is after all 'pleasure and pain' that rule us. Both though have something in common, namely they are both individualized. What I think Arendt wants to do is reconceptualize freedom in a non individualized manner. how exactly I do not know but she is making the point that freedom can only exist within a community that fosters it, that gives you something to be free with. Individual freedom is not interesting for her, it is communal freedom.

I think what she does is hard because she wrote at a time before the onset of the debate on political freedom, on comunitarianism and liberalism. However, I agree I am filling in a lot, but that is how I can engage with the text and gather something from it.

what it has to do with sovereignty and why giving up sovereignty will make us free. — Ciceronianus

I do not think she thinks giving up sovereignty makes is free, but it is a step in a direction. If we assume freedom rests in sovereignty it follows that we need to establish that sovereignty and that means gain control of others. It transforms freedom into a zero sum game (I thought I read it before, I do not anymore who said it) if I am free, you are not. Freedom, seen from this perspective, leads to a war of all against all, the exact opposite of it.

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

Well, that conflict between nations may also have been (partly) caused by our conception of freedom and sovereignty. Just remembered the beef between France and the Holy roman Empire over the sovereignty of the emperor of the HRE. Lawyers have written libraries about the position of the king vis a vis the emperor.

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

I do not have shares in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. His reference to the concentration camps is in very bad taste, even criminally offensive, seeing that he lend his support to exactly that regime for so long. He does make that equation in what I think is a masterful piece of thinking on the nature of technology and the 'technification' of the world. A point which Arendt in this essay makes but with different words and a different target. The ;point being is that 'will to power' has usurped the way we view the world. For Heidegger this was a 'sinking' into an epoch in which we would appropriate everything and lost our ability to 'let things be' Arendt thought to operationalize this notion politically I think and took the concept of freedom as a target, a concept that became equated to 'will to power' as well.

To me it is interesting, but we all have our personal endeavors and interests, one no better than the other. I also do not like the name dropping, I am a child of my time too. However, in the continental tradition that was and (unfortunately) still is common practice. It is doable but it take time to get to know the discourse. In defense of it, it is a deeply historical, rather scholastic take on philosophy, not unlike law in that respect. For me though I have the same problem with the analytic tradition, the logic chopping is abhorrent and when they explain it to me in lay terms I think "óhh but could you not have said that clearly?"

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But to be frank I like to poke at sacred cows, and there's none more sacred in philosophy. — Ciceronianus

Ohh you, poking at all those poor cows! Imagine how they must feel.... ;) nahh, keep kicking against the pricks 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?

“In philosophy, genealogy is a historical technique in which one questions the commonly understood emergence of various philosophical and social beliefs by attempting to account for the scope, breadth or totality of discourse, thus extending the possibility of analysis…”(Wikipedia)

Apology accepted. Now can we address my arguments? — Garrett Travers

:cry: :rofl: :cry: :rofl:

So many here take it as a stepping stone to discuss free will. — Tobias

Banno introduced the issue of free will in the OP.

Banno introduced the issue of free will in the OP — Janus

Yeah, I know. All latched on to it. Which is fine of course, but I think the essay is richer than that. Besides, there are so many threads on free will...

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.

Can you address the usefulness and necessity of the genealogical method in philosophy? — Joshs

I could, if that were necessary. My critique is not of the geneological method, but of the method being used to conclude something entirely contrary to both the current definitions, as well as the predominant understanding of the concept among philosophers that, get this, are completely consistent with the current definitions in broad, public use.

What is that method? It isn't the geneoligical method, it's the fallacy of ambiguity that, oddly, still hasn't been addressed. She employed this fallacy to conlude that freedom could not be defined, despite the fact it can, and she in fact does in her extended work, numerous times, in terms that are eqully as ambiguous like: "Men are free […] as long as they act, neither before, nor after; for to be free and to act are the same." Which is not the case if said action is compelled, or is being used to compel another, or simply thinking while remaing stationary. Or: "that thought itself, in its theoretical as well as its pre-theoretical form, makes freedom disappear."..... How? Not much sense here. So, we gonna address even that one argument? Forget the other stuff, just that one argument?

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

Smartest thing I've seen on this thread so far.

"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

That points to the need for a 'guaranteed public domain' for all experiences of freedom, both public and private that requires more than legal rights but also is not possible without them.

When looking at the Shoah, the loss of this domain was not simply a loss of political power, it was the subtraction from a domain for one group for the purpose of increasing the sense of freedom for another.
One might get suspicious of the language of the will when one is on the receiving end of enthusiasts who talk about matters that way amongst themselves while loading you on to trains.

I also do not see the paradox you bring up and over which so many of the writers here trip. — Tobias

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.

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.

This has curiously not prevented folk from nevertheless taking free will as central to freedom.

Speaking roughly, Arendt seems to me to have identified a nascent freedom implicit in the capacity of a Greek citizen to take action together with their peers within their polis. Frustration with a lack of ability to act publicly was mollified by the privacy of what was under one's own control with Epictetus and the Stoics (@Ciceronianus). The slave Epictetus was unable to act for himself, and took solace in private virtues. These two aspects were brought together by Christianity; "When freedom made Its first appearance in our philosophical tradition, It was the experience of religious conversion of Paul first and then of Augustine which gave rise to it". But "...the appearance of the problem of freedom in Augustine's philosophy was thus preceded by the conscious attempt to divorce the notion of freedom from politics", and so arose the problematic view that my freedom is only won at the expense of yours. This view, that freedom is to do with personal sovereignty and not a capacity to act publicly, is the focus, I think, of Arendt's scorn (@Judaka).

Hence I agree with your "Only if we establish relationships towards others that are free, might we be free." This is the key borrowed by the Ethics Centre essay, which seeks to explain to Sovereign Citizens and their like that "Our own freedoms are contingent upon the political systems that we exist in, actively engage with, and mutually construct."

I'm please you found the essay interesting.

I find it difficult to follow her thought, distracted as I am by the names she so relentlessly drops throughout the article. — Ciceronianus

Reading Arendt is not like being led through an argument so much as inundated by it. One has to do some work to put the pieces together.

I think Arendt would agree that the Stoics emphasised virtue rather than freedom, and that she would add that private virtue was brought together with the will by Augustine to give us the fraught notion of freedom. Central to Christian concerns is the freedom to choose to go with or against the will of the Lord, who sees into one's soul and judges us on our private thoughts as much as our public actions.

I take this to be in accord with ' comment here.

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

Arendt talks of the public space, the res publica, as the domain of politics. She describes life under tyranny as a reduction of that public space, a removal of the citizen from the political. Hence "A state, moreover, in which there is no communication between the citizens and where each man thinks only his own thoughts is by definition a tyranny." Tyranny is the removal of that public space which is the habitat of freedom.

Hence Arendt is arguing for the opposite of what you suggest. In tyranny, it is not that all spheres of life are governed by the political, but that the ability to act politically is removed, that the citizen is driven from the public space back into the privacy of inaction.

Thanks for that. Seems to me a neat account of what Arendt is doing in the essay.

Banno introduced the issue of free will in the OP. — Janus

I deny that. I did mention free will in the second post, which as @Tobias noticed was a bit of a furphy. At the back of my mind was the fact that it is always fun to have a bit of controversy in a thread, and it helps to get the posts rolling in. It gives the kids something to fight over, and they get the attention of the grown-ups. See Toby helping @Garrett Travers realise that there is more to freedom than he might find in the American myth.

I'm quite enjoying this thread. But there is weeding to do.

See Toby helping Garrett Travers realise that there is more to freedom than he might find in the American myth. — Banno

That's a cute way of phrasing "See Garrett making arguments that none of us could contend with, so we just decided to insult him."

But, I'm still open if any of you would like try where Banno and Toby have failed miserably.

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.

I admire @Tobias' forbearance.

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

Even funnier bit is, the above sentence is, still yet, another example of you avoiding my arguments. And there is much to understand.

Even funnier yet is, Arendt has very ambiguous views on freedom that she can't clearly define for herself, except in various forms of negation, or by perceptions of the word sovereignty, which she rather stringently holds as a political concept without ambiguity, oddly, informed primarily by the ideas that have accompanied the concept of freedom throughout history that she finds questionable, particularly in regards to the Christianity informed concept of freedom, leaving her with very little in the way of something interesting to present. Nothing new, nothing unaddressed in philosophy, or neuroscience for that matter. So, yes, you're right, I offered specifically the view that she has attempted to critique and has not been successful in doing so in a manner that couldn't be addressed with logic and science.

It was your second post, you're right; but because it came before anyone had responded, it seemed to be part of the OP, albeit a kind of afterthought.

Yeah, I'm being a pedant.

So, yes, you're right... — Garrett Travers

Best end there.

That'd be good for you.

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,

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

This is how children deal with arguments.

I'll recapitulated my contention with the Arendt's position:

Claim: "“…it becomes as impossible to conceive of freedom or its opposite as it is to realize the notion of a square circle.”

Rebuttal: Not true, definitions of freedom: the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint/ absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government/ the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved. These def. are in keeping with the predominant views on freedom in philosophy including Hegel, Kant, Mill, Locke, etc.

Her justification?: "our own lives are, in the last analysis, subject to causation and that if between past and future there should be an ultimately free ego in ourselves, it certainly never makes its unequivocal appearance in the phenomenal world, and therefore can never become the subject of theoretical ascertainment."

This is woo woo. The body is controlled by the brain and the brain is a part of the body that provides executive function that allows for limited agency in decision making, critical thought, memory retrieval, etc. that has been traditionally mistakened as the ego. The body is an independetly observable fact of phenomenal reality. There is no separation. The mind and body are a singular unit. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2017.00431/full

Definitions of will: the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action/ control deliberately exerted to do something or to restrain one's own impulses/ a deliberate or fixed desire or intention/ the thing that one desires or ordains/ make or try to make (someone) do something or (something) happen by the exercise of mental powers/ intend, desire, or wish (something) to happen.

In other words, the sum total of all actions or thoughts possible, within the context of man's evolutionary domain of existence, and the emergence of all actions and thoughts thereof.

Natural strictures both impede action and thought, as well create the domain within which action and thought can emerge at all - think of walking in space, not our domain. Thus, we are limited by nature, but our will is still free to emerge within the context of the environment we are evolutionarily adapted to exist within.

Another assertion: "It is not scientific theory but thought itself, in its pre-scientific and prephilosophical understanding, that seems to dissolve freedom on which our practical conduct is based into nothingness."

It is not scientific theory (rationally excogitated method of inductive observation) but thought (rational excogitation), in its pre-scientific (before rationally excogitating a rationally excogitated method of inductive observation) and prephilosophical (before the rationally excogitated method of inductive observation that gave rise to the other rationally excogitated method of inductive observation mentioned before), that seems to dissolve freedom (acting, speaking, and thinking without hindrance), on which our practical conduct is based (predicated on via rational excogitation resulting from thinking and speaking without hindrance) into nothingness (how so?). Indescribable, this statement.

"The ancient, ignorant, uninformed understanding of freedom dissolves freedom, thus we should conclude that is the strongest argument in the case of freedom."

Her argument for this assertion?: That the concept has been "distorted" as a result of "transposing it from its original field, the realm of politics and human affairs in general, to an inward domain, the will, where it would be open to self-inspection."

So, now we have both an ambiguity fallacy, as well as an etymological fallacy, you see that? She hopes to retain the old definitions of freedom apropos politics and "human affairs in general," another exercise in ambiguity, and away from self-inspection because freedom emerges from Augustine and has primarily been a topic in politics...

Hm, no shit? You mean the one area of life where humans have always had the ability to simply be free from the application of human upon human force constantly revoked from them in the name of the sovereignty of those doing the revoking? Is that where this topic has been most discussed? Would have never believed, that such a contradiction in practice that endured for so long, and still does so, could have ever come to the point of being precisely the domain in which the ignorant masses of people first decide to talk about saying "fuck this."

Also, I wonder when concepts of individual freedom really started to take hold. Perhaps after the development of the printing press that precipitated the Reformation, which precipitated the scientific revolution, which precipitated the Enlighten, all as the result of the mass proliferation of philosophical materials allowing access to the wider public to such materials, and thereafter the development of the concept of individual freedom as opposed to freedom for the Absolute Monarchs, who declared their own sovereignty against foreign invaders who would seek to violate their rights that citizens were only privy to by decree of the Crown and Clergy, that led to the American and French Revolutions. Not really making a case that the concept of freedom is "dissolved" or completely relegated to politics. History tells the exact opposite story: that the more the concept of the sovereignty of the individual has expanded, the more freedom has been achieved in the world as a result.

Meaning, free public domains require the recognition of individual sovereign boundaries as a primary, and the public domain is thereby created as a result. Protected, yes if need be by the state, but the vast majority of the time is seen to by the rational discretion of individuals respecting eachother's boundaries as a tacit understanding.

The current, non-atavistic, approach to freedom as a philosophical concept is much more broad, sophisticated, logically informed and supported, scientifically informed and supported, and is more beneficial for the human race than this attempt to negate human will by relegating it to the confines of ancient thought.

You guys can contend with this, I'll be back in the morn. If you don't contend with this and instead insult me, as has been the custom thus far, I'll take that to mean you couldn't argue with my assessment. Oh, and I'm happy to expound on any of the above mentioned issues that I have with the paper.

The SEP says Augustine's will is basically self control. He was reacting against Manichean fatalism.

City of God appears to be anti-political, but it was a response to accusations that Christianity was responsible for the decline of Rome.

I think that when Rome fell, focus naturally went inward. Christianity followed that trend rather than causing it. So it was a massive shift in external conditions that shaped the way we think about volition.

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.

↪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

For me the issue is undecidable as well and therefore interesting ;) Many, if not all philosophical issues are undecidable and dwelling on them is only enriching when it opens up different perspectives on the topic at hand. The strategy of taking a different 'tack' so to speak is actually also true for the analytic tradition, that attempts to dissolve philosophical questions by demonstrating they are products of 'bewitchment by language'.

I agree with your conception if freedom as only possible with constraint and therefore not being absolute. In the philosophical language I embrace, thinking through freedom leads to a dialectic because it brings into view the necessity of constraint. I do not think Arendt would isagree with you per se though. Sartre might... but Arendt I think not as she locates freedom inside a community, which automatically brings constraints into view. Her point seems to me to be that unmooring freedom from community leads to all kinds of paradoxes, one of which being that my 'will to freedom' clashes with yours. This problem has been the problem John Rawls eventually tried to deal with.

For me, not that anyone cares, the issue was immediately decidable. "Can the will overcome and act against itself." Can a tree be taller than itself? Can an ocean be deeper than itself? Or since action is involved: Can a woman get deeper than herself? Can a child get moreplayful than himself? At the same time and in the same respect.

Randt used this "will can't act against itself therefore it's not free" argument using a blatantly absurd construct, as above.

One day... one day I will learn how to properly spell the referred-to author's name.

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

I am sure to take you up on that offer when I will finally arrive once in the land down under! :100:

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

Ahhh, yes. That is indeed her starting point and actually, her end point. Freedom and will have become conjoined in a way that is on the face of it logical but has historical roots. Nonetheles... the notion of free will only asserts that the will is free, not that it itself cannot make unfree. In other words, I might not be able to act against my own will, that would require a second will, also being mine, and that would be rather absurd, but that will that commands me, is indeed free in a sense. It is free to choose to choose the objects of its desire. I believe such is Sartre's view, but I might be wrong. I would still argue against that notion, because I think it is determined by all kinds of societal and biological processes, but strictly speaking it does not follow from the fact that will is about commanding, that it itself cannot be free.

Come to think of it, the opposite may also be asserted I thin with an equal amount of credibility: the will must itself be free because it determines the structure of dictating and commanding. It follows from her characterization of the will.

So a free will, in the sense of being uncontrolled by something else, would be possible if we accept her assertion. It is trivial of course because what most people ask is actually not whether they have 'free will' but whether they have control over their own will, so precisely if their will is not free ;)

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

Why would she be wrong if we also accept your statements as correct? I do not think you are in disagreement. Maybe about whether the philosophical life as an inward life started with the fall of Rome or whether it is older. I think it is older, because of Aristotle's rumination of some unmoved mover, thinking only itself. So the philosophical circle as something going on inside thought is recognizable, but even if it was indeed your sociological explanation... is that deadly to her argument? I do not think she holds the Greek conception to be superior, if only because according to her the Greeks had no philosophical problem of freedom. We do.

One day... one day I will learn how to properly spell the referred-to author's name. — god must be atheist

No harm done I assure you. ;)