The true meaning of Freedom?...

af_thefragile

Firstly i was wondering if anyone of ye know any good books which discuss what freedom really is and what it means to us.

Then, i we could discuss about Freedom itself here.
To help the dialectics i've got a few questions to begin with...

- Is freedom a right or a privilege? Is every person born free or is he bound under certain duties and authorities?

- How would you describe freedom? Is there something as true freedom or is it just a romantic notion? Like getting a little political here, say a person living in a socialist state is bound by certain laws and duties towards the state itself. The proletarian is working under the bureaucrats but can he consider himself a free man despite him living hand to mouth he's still getting all of his basic life needs catered after?

- What does freedom really mean to us? Is it something we ought to fight and die for to achieve like in the Braveheart/William Wallace sense or again is it something that we don't necessarily need to bother about as long as our needs are being catered for by the higher authority (as in the socialist state mentioned before).

Joe1919

Freedom is a huge area of Political Philosophy and is usaully covered in books on this subject . It is often tied in with social contract or other theory,in terms of us giving up some of our liberty in order to enjoy the protection of the state.
There is the negative idea of freedom (e.g. JS Mills classic but difficult text 'On Liberty' available online),i.e. I should be allowed freedom provided I do no harm to others.
There is also a positive idea of freedom i.e. people can only be free if they have the resources and education to be free and hence the state/society must interfere. Rouesseau said 'people should be forced to be free! '
Isaiah Berlin states that total freedom and total equality is not compatible. One must always be traded off or comprimised against another.e.g. Making society more equatable often involves restricting the freedom of people to become very rich.

There is also controversy when it comes to rights. Jeremy Bentham argues that rights are 'nonsense on stilts' and to some extent sees them as social constructs. They do not exist in nature. In nature, might is right. Any rights we have are giving to us by the society or the state, who has the power to enforce these rights in law by the legitimate use of violence if necessary. There are no natural rights. We never see a mouse demanding his rights from a cat.

When it comes to freedom, sometime its easier to just discuss the particular case than to try to apply some type of theory to justify a particular position. This is often called 'particularism'. However most people like to see how particular cases fit in with overall theories or principles. Our 'common law' system to some extent works like this, as particular cases and judgements in higher courts become precedents.

Joycey

There is also a positive idea of freedom i.e. people can only be free if they have the resources and education to be free and hence the state/society must interfere. Rouesseau said 'people should be forced to be free! '
Isaiah Berlin states that total freedom and total equality is not compatible. One must always be traded off or comprimised against another.e.g. Making society more equatable often involves restricting the freedom of people to become very rich.

Im about to start studying for a political philosophy exam and one of the Qs was something about the difference between negative and positive rights. I understood them differently though Im almost definitely wrong, as I say havent actually studied them yet...

I thought that a negative right (much more common) was something where I have a freedom from something, like I have a right to be free from oppression, or not to be harmed or kidnapped or deprived of food or seeing my family or whatever.

Then a positive right is where Im entitled to something real, like a basic supply of food to live on, if your a libertarian then whatever I mix my labour with etc.

My problem understanding it was coming from the fact that in my version you can make any positive right a negative right and vice versa, so I think you probably had it

Joe1919 wrote: »

There is also controversy when it comes to rights. Jeremy Bentham argues that rights are 'nonsense on stilts' and to some extent sees them as social constructs. They do not exist in nature. In nature, might is right. Any rights we have are giving to us by the society or the state, who has the power to enforce these rights in law by the legitimate use of violence if necessary. There are no natural rights. We never see a mouse demanding his rights from a cat.

I knew Mill was opposed to rights but I didnt know where it was from, what book/essay are you getting this from?

I have to say I think the whole discourse of rights is rediculous as well. The idea that its possible to have multiple "inalieble" rights, let alone that these somehow existed in nature before we made them explicit :rolleyes:. I really dont see how anybody can take libertarians seriously when they base their entire notion of justice on these make believe "universal rights" and that the entirety of the world is property: private or unclaimed, and then on top of this they think that the most important of these rights are the property rights...

Apparently Marx, Mill and Burke (sp?) are all opposed to rights, and all for different reasons. Would like to read the relevant sections in each of them. Id imagine Nietzsche wouldnt be too fond of them either, what with the whole belief in fundamental inequality and all.

Has anyone ever come across an essay by Nozick called "Why Wordsmith Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism"? I got so angry when I was reading it, how did such an idiot gain recognition and acceptance? What a tool.

Heres the link: http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n1-1.html

O'Coonassa

And we will be free
And people will see
That when we are free
That's the way we should be
(we must be free!)
The glue! the glue! i can't find the glue!
(we must be free as the wind)
If i was at the concert now, i'd be ripped!
(we were free when we were born)
I could tighten my headband for an extra rush
During jerry's guitar solo
Then i could go to a midnite show of 200 motels!
(we were born free, but, now we are not free anymore!)
"opal, you hot little bitch!"
"you can take this pin n' hang it in yer ass!"
"you ain't the devil!"
"where's my waitress?"
But we wanna be free
An' were gonna be free

Yes, we want to be free and we're gonna be free
... did you know that
Free is when you don't have to
Pay for nothing
Or do nothing
We want to be free
Free as the wind

Frank Zappa ~ Teenage Wind.

Joe1919

Joycey wrote: »

Im about to start studying for a political philosophy exam and one of the Qs was something about the difference between negative and positive rights. ........

You are correct in what you say about rights but I was talking in my first paragraph about negative and positive liberty (freedom) and not rights so be careful not to confuse the two. Mills view of liberty is considered as negative in terms of liberty being free from constraint. The idea of positive liberty is quite controversial.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/ and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/

Jeremy Bentham's view of rights is a very useful start point in terms of a discussion on rights. He 'throws down the gauntlet' so to speak but his views can be challenged.
For example, it can be argued that we as humans have by nature an idea of rights and dignity......its a categorical a priori ( Kants categorical imperative etc.)
Hegel and communitarians would also argue that society and culture comes before the individual. It's a fallacy to see ourselves just as material individuals. Our very way of thinking comes from language, which is public. There are no private languages (Wittgenstein). We are born into a culture and society which is very real and if ways of thinking about rights are part of this culture, then these have at least some reality.
Hegel also has great views in his master/slave dialect about recognition and that recognition of the right of existence of the other comes from a 'struggle to the death' and is an essential part of our consciousness. Francis Fukuyama devotes many chapters to this in his 'end of history'. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/fukuyama.htm

A modern defender of rights is Dworkin http://web.syr.edu/~kkhardin/dworkin.html

There are plenty of websites referring to 'nonsense on stilts' such as
http://www.mwillett.org/Politics/utility.htm and
http://books.google.ie/books?id=Jn0OAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA151&lpg=PA151&dq=nonsense+on+stilts&source=bl&ots=tRy0rJjkdU&sig=hZcnLeOV1w9mqYks1ra3lJ_TXvY&hl=en&ei=cqQKSrDBJJzMjAe2tY2zCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7

Finally Robert Nozick is in my impression is a right wing liberal in the American sense, in terms of the rights of the rich to keep their property (and not have to pay taxes to support the poor) etc.

Joe1919

O'Coonassa wrote: »

Free is when you don't have to
Pay for nothing
Or do nothing

I lived in a flat with a guy like that once (Pay for nothing,Or do nothing) but we had to kick him out.

Joycey

Joe1919 wrote: »

You are correct in what you say about rights but I was talking in my first paragraph about negative and positive liberty (freedom) and not rights so be careful not to confuse the two. Mills view of liberty is considered as negative in terms of liberty being free from constraint. The idea of positive liberty is quite controversial.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/ and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/

Yeah, your dead right, thanks, Il take a look at those links.

For example, it can be argued that we as humans have by nature an idea of rights and dignity......its a categorical a priori ( Kants categorical imperative etc.)

Not too sure about that at all. For instance, if we take rights as being some form of ethical imperitive (thou shalt not deprive this person of enough water or whatever), and that all humans have some innate sense of dignity or a desire for 'justice' or some such motivation to act ethically, then why should we give preference to some abstract set of rights which only emerge through our being able to articulate them? Its much more plausible that the drive to act ethically came before there being "rights" which accord to us.

There are certain monkeys (beginning with M I think but I cant remember their name), who will rebel against the alpha male if he is perceived by the group to be acting unfairly towards a weaker member. Now I would argue that it is absurd to say that these monkeys have "rights", its more that any "rights" which we it may appear that they have, are simply codes of ethical behaviour which have been made explicit by an entity capable of abstraction. To say that whatever our articulation of these codes of behaviour are are "universal" or "inalieble" is absurd in my view.

Also, in the real world, discourse which involves these absolute, inalieble rights may very well lead to much more inhumane action then some conception of what should accord to humans which is not purportedly universal or inalieble. For instance, when there are going to be countries fighting over scarce supplies of water, it does no good if both peoples are simply saying "we have an inalieble right to this water", because there will be no progress, no flexibility, no recognition that the world is not as clear cut as our abstract principles would like it to be.

Im currently reading a book by an autistic woman called Temple Grandon who revolutionised the way cattle are slaughtered in America. She claims that autistic people see the world in a way much more similar to animals then typical people do, in that they are much more visual thinkers as opposed to linguistic or abstract. This leads to their thinking being much more grounded in reality then would someone who is constantly mediating the real world through language. One of the many examples she gives of how the typical thought processes of humans lead to far worse situations then a more practical/concrete outlook, is the stipulation which is in place in American slaughterhouses that there are certain codes of animal treatment, whereby if a single one of them is violated, the entire plant gets shut down. Now while this is a good idea in theory, because it should eliminate the mistreatment of animals, what actually happens is a slaughterhouse gets shut down for one or two violations, appeals are made, the inspectors withdraw their aligations, the slaughterhouse reopens and it goes back to violating the codes but the inspectors dont come as often or inspect as closely any more.

What she proposes is a system where 95% of animals must be slaughtered humanely, this actually leads to reprisals by authorities if people are in violation, and in many cases much more then 95% end up being slaughtered humanely... This all strikes me as being exactly analgous to the discourse on rights. It is rediculous to assume that the real world is going to accord to our abstract ideas of how it should be. In such cases as the example I gave earlier, where neither state can fully supply their populous with water so one side just ends up taking the entirety of the supply and you get a war, would it not be better to allow 95% of the population of the two water? If you accept that this would be better, then why do we need talk about these abstract "irriducible" rights that dont influence our behaviour in the real world?

A modern defender of rights is Dworkin http://web.syr.edu/~kkhardin/dworkin.html

Il have a look at this.

Finally Robert Nozick is in my impression is a right wing liberal in the American sense, in terms of the rights of the rich to keep their property (and not have to pay taxes to support the poor) etc.

Yep, hes a complete asshole. What I cant get over is that they actually teach him as a mainstream thinker, even in this country. One of the biggest reasons I chose not to do political philosophy for postgrad. They dont teach any kind of neo-marxist or any other kind of radical left wing theorist but they teach this nutcase who can barely even construct a plausible argument.

Joe1919

The problem is that individual rights are very hard to defend, especially for utilitarians. However, Kant's philosophical system of "Always treat people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end" (part of the categorical imperative) can give an argument for rights, if you accept his moral system. However, as you have mentioned 'motivation', Kants philosophy is weak in terms of giving a motivation.

Now Robert Nozick is American and would be influenced by the tendency to support utilitarianism. However, utilitarianism (greatest happiness principle) causes real problems especially in terms of spreading a little happiness by possibly suggesting the taking of wealth from the rich and giving to the poor. But the American Constitution is highly influenced by John Locke and his (whig's) defence in the rights of people to own and keep their property.

However, Nozick has found a solution to this by combining utilitarianism with Kants deontological system and treating 'rights as a side constraint' thus giving him the best of both worlds.

Thus the right to keep ones property is a side restraint and is more important than the spread of wealth and happiness (according to Nozick's side constraints). A similar argument was used to preserve slavery at one time. The slaves were the property of their masters and their masters had a right to their property.

................................................

Incidentally, Wittgenstein was thought by some to autistic. e.g. http://autisticsymphony.com/wittgenstein.html

Also, Nozick to be fair to him, seems to defend the rights of animals.
http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/nozick01.htm