I have no idea what you're talking about. The subjugated don't give two hoots about abstract nonsense regarding appearance and the "true world" or whatever.

Not the true world, simply the world we find ourselves in. Do we really understand it? I know some folk might think they do. Anyway my point was that even if we find a rational explanation it still might be mistaken as a result of our limited knowledge. We cannot presume that the underlying nature of this world is going to appear in any way rational from our incomplete perspective.

Yeah, tell that to a black lives matter activist or a child laborer. Seriously, does this not strike you as a frankly embarrassing line of questioning?

You don't need to remind me about the suffering and injustice in the world, I am acutely aware of it at the moment. Anyway, I will fall in line with Willow on this one. I am still thinking of my own position of freedom here, it doesn't normally figure highly in my priority of subjects to contemplate.

It's a much simpler thing I'm talking about; which is that if people do not believe they are free they will not experience freedom nor will they act freely, but instead their acts will be determined by their slavery to the ideas that deny their freedom.

Do you mean(in other words) that one allows the possibility of ones self acting freely. By making this space it frees the self that it can feel and act freely, unconstrained?

That's a contradiction. If that were true, freedom would be dependent on believing in it, meaning it would not be "universal" and only a particular way, a discourse, a thought, an action, of people behaving.

In any case, no one's actions are predetermined by their outlook on freedom. Every action takes the action itself. All acts are lived. Even the person who denies they have freedom might find themselves acting otherwise to what they thought would happen. Everyone is free. All make choices, even those who think they don't have any choice. Freedom is so without the guarantee of belief in freedom. — TheWillowOfDarkness

No, you're misunderstanding. Freedom is not dependent on anything, but your personal sense and understanding of freedom is. The latter is dependent on what you think and beleive. How could it not be? Freedom cannot be dependent on anything, otherwise it is not freedom; and that is precisely what I've been saying.

I haven't said that one's actions are predetermined by their outlook on freedom; that's your misreading at work. All acts are not lived. If an act is entirely unconscious then it is not lived. Of course it is still 'gone through' by the body, but it may be utterly mechanical, or merely organic. Freedom and life are neither mechanical nor organic. Of course "all make choices" but choices my be completely mechanical; even machines can make choices in this sense.

It's not possible to give a positive conceptual account of freedom, so any account must be apophatic.

Wooooooooww, holy shit

But what in the world has belief got to do with freedom? A belief in unicorns speaks nothing as to their reality, and I don't see what a 'belief' in freedom has to do with the practice and exercise of freedom either. In any case, without specifying how belief functions to guarantee freedom - and yes, as Willow points out, you're leveraging belief as a guarantee for freedom, no matter your protestations to the contrary - all you're doing is displacing the problem. To be free, one must believe: OK but what is belief other than some kind of immaterial, 'mental' conviction, no different to one's 'belief' in UFOs and The Secret? In fact, how does your position differ from the self-help woo that is The Secret at all? — StreetlightX

The kind of belief I am speaking about is not one that is analogous with belief in unicorns or UFOs. There are beliefs you would (or should) be willing to change in a flash if evidence to the contrary becomes undeniable. There are beliefs in things for which there is no plausible evidence, which you will not drop easily because there is no evidence to disconfirm them any more than there is to confirm them. And then there are beliefs for which every moment of your life can give you all the evidence you need. And the belief in freedom is of this last kind.

Everyone naturally believes in their own inherently radical freedom. Of course this may be subjugated, but subjugation of freedom is a separate issue; it is really nothing more than the human imposition of constraints which are like natural constraints; it is is a kind of amplification of natural constraints on freedom. This becomes, then, a matter of justice, freedom hasn't been removed (it can never be entirely removed) but 'pushed down' or held back. I never denied that there are natural constraints on freedom. But it is only when other philosophical ideas like the foreknowledge of God, or the determinism or even randomness of physical processes are brought into consideration, that anyone questions whether they are 'really' free within the limits of natural constraint, as they feel themselves to be.

But to look at freedom in relation to determinism is to objectify freedom, as you seem to be doing. Is there any in-principle determinate state of affairs independent of our thoughts and beliefs as to whether we are free or not, as you would no doubt say there is when it comes to the existence of unicorns or UFOs? I would say that there is no determinate 'in itself' at all. Freedom cannot be empirically (in the intersubjective sense at least), or deductively, confirmed or disconfirmed; so how can it not be a matter concerned entirely with our thoughts, beliefs, intuitions and experience, in other words with life as lived ?

Yes, I would say that one can certainly increase one's sense of freedom by changing one's thoughts about it.

At least, I think that is what you are referring to.

so how can it not be a matter concerned entirely with our thoughts, beliefs, intuitions and experience, in other words with life as lived ? — John

Because to think 'live is lived' is exhausted by our 'thoughts, beliefs, intuitions and experience' is to conceive of life in a horrifyingly narrow and morbidly 'intellectualist' manner. Rather than live life in ones head, life generally is concerned with the things I do, the things I say, the actions I take. And perhaps even more importantly, the things done to me, said of me, that impel me and make claims upon me; life as composed of habits, regularities, flourishes of creative engagement amongst rhythms of time and movement, punctuated with time wasting, routine, imposition, sleep, intensity, and so on. You seem to have a very weird disembodied, intellectualist notion of freedom that 'lives' entirely in one's head. It's frankly unrecognisable as anything anything to do with freedom, as classically understood. Your notion of freedom seems to turn upon some ineffable experience of warm, fuzzy feelings, the 'inner convictions' of romantic 'radical freedom'.

But freedom for the most part is not this; freedom has a decided aspect of sheer debilitation, incapacity to act in the face of a loss of 'normal' function, a sense of powerlessness that says that 'I can do nothing else but this one thing'; When a Rosa Park sits at the front of a bus, this expression of freedom is abyssal, terrifying, completely dehumanizing in every sense of the word. But it has nothing to do with how she 'feels or thinks' and everything to do with what she does. At it's limit, freedom rubs our subjectivity raw, eviscerates us, erases our particularities precisely by putting us in touch with a universal that is brutally indifferent to the quirks of our psychology and the idiosyncracises of our feelings.

Your mystical sense of 'freedom' seems on the other hand oddly suited to a modern world where, it just becomes another in a long line of inconsequential 'I really, authentically feel it, deep down in my heart of hearts and warm fuzziness!'. A kind of freedom suited for suburban moms who attend yoga class for their dose of 'authentic spirituality' ("belief will set you free, girls!"). But this seems a caricature of the ground-swallowing, incapacitation that freedom, when it presents itself in our acts, can in fact present itself as.

If you're willing to carry on the discussion in a spirit of charitability and good faith instead of narrow caricature, tendentious distortion and egregious mischaracterization then I'm happy enough to continue, otherwise I won't waste my time.
:-}

When a Rosa Park sits at the front of a bus, this expression of freedom is abyssal, terrifying, completely dehumanizing in every sense of the word. But it has nothing to do with how she 'feels or thinks' and everything to do with what she does — StreetlightX

Huh? As it relates to a discussion of Rosa Parks, freedom is a property of the spirit. We're somewhere downstream from metaphysical issues. I'm not seeing why John's view wouldn't accommodate it.

Good call. I take you to be - and this is a hack word, but I can't think of too many alternatives - a 'seeker' (rather like myself and Punshhh). I think it is safe to say that we have an intuitive sense of something greater, which we're lacking, which we need to find (hence the name). But many others will say we're just 'seeing things' - projecting, rationalising, or whatever. (An example was Žižek's criticism (or caricature) of Western Buddhism a few years back.) But basically it is animated by an aversion to the spiritual - hence the emphasis on the 'immanent', meaning (as far as I can discern) the tangible, the 'domain of the sense'. (Although it will defray accusations of 'materialism' with reference to sophistry such as 'transcendental materialism' and what not.)

Yes, for me freedom is a mystery, it points beyond both the mechanical and the organic and is like a finger pointing at an unknown moon. Not everything can be decided or accounted for by the discursive intellect. It's a remarkable irony when Streetlight refers to what I have been saying about freedom as "horrifyingly narrow and morbidly intellectualist"!

Yes, I don't see that either. Rosa Parks is a heroic spirit.

But, I don't see much, if any, relevance to what I've been saying in the rest of the post either. It all comes across to me as a bit shrill, defensive and peevish, to be honest.

It is interesting, though, how a discussion that started off about the existence of common themes in PM has zeroed in on the issue of freedom.

I’m not. You’re confusing the social, cultural and lived practice of the idea of freedom (or rather consciousness)is equated with having freedom under your argument. Do remember in one of our earlier discussions when you claimed that removing the “grounding myth” would amount to a loss of freedom?

You position considers freedom dependent on believing one is free. Reject the idea of this “grounding myth,” of the transcendent, a person with be without freedom. I remember you outright stating it— that if there was no such “grounding myth,” that there easn't even a possibly of anyone being free. We must have this “grounding myth,” this belief in freedom, else we will be without freedom and irrevocable damage will be caused to our lives.

Believe or you will burn in Hell as a slave, metaphorically speaking.

All acts are lived. Our worlds and lives are bigger than what we are immediately aware of in one moment. At this very moment, I am doing many more things than just concentrating on this post, some of which are are the result my earlier choices, many of which I did not do by thinking: “And now I will use my freedom to do this.” To say the unconscious is not lived is manifestly untrue. People are affected by what they aren’t aware of all the time.

Any action we take involves some part of the world we aren’t presently aware of. When I think about what letter I need to type next, I’m far more than that thought and my body is doing countless things I’m not aware of in that thought. Living freedom doesn't depend on the thought of it. Such an argument is for one who locates life only in the present idea of their consciousness (e.g. "I'm free" ) rather than wider world that extends beyond their thoughts.

Yes, for me freedom is a mystery, it points beyond both the mechanical and the organic and is like a finger pointing at an unknown moon. Not everything can be decided or accounted for by the discursive intellect. It's a remarkable irony when Streetlight refers to what I have been saying about freedom as "horrifyingly narrow and morbidly intellectualist"! — John

This... rather ironic. You are the one trying to narrow down life to the discursive intellect here. What do you say to say when we point out that life is more than thought? You claim it's not life, as if lives were restricted to the immediately present consciousness experience:

All acts are not lived. If an act is entirely unconscious then it is not lived. Of course it is still 'gone through' by the body, but it may be utterly mechanical, or merely organic. Freedom and life are neither mechanical nor organic. Of course "all make choices" but choices my be completely mechanical; even machines can make choices in this sense. — John

This is to outright suggest there is no life beyond what you term the "morbidly intellectualist," as if life were only what we were present aware of.

What in the world is 'spirit'? It is another completely underdetermined and fuzzy feel good word? As if Parks were not driven by the real, material circumstances in which her community were being treated as second class citizens, as if she wasn't contesting - in a literal manner - the appropriation of space and time (a bus seat, in this case), as if she wasn't responding to the incapacities which defined her societal position. But no, far better, apparently, to think of her acts in terms of 'spirit' and 'authenticity' and 'belief'; psychological weasel words that absolve you of actually engaging in 'life as actually lived', with history, with space and time.

It is interesting, though, how a discussion that started off about the existence of common themes in PM has zeroed in on the issue of freedom. — John

It's not that surprising. After all, you - and not just you, to be fair - have literally had nothing of interest or of substance to say about this thing you call post-modernism to begin with.

Certainly, nothing of much interest to you, it would seem. And yet you have 'participated' in the vacuity nonetheless.

Also I have to admit, I can't really read the words 'radical freedom' without giggling a little, no thanks to these which were doing the rounds a while back:

I think it is safe to say that we have an intuitive sense of something greater, which we're lacking, which we need to find (hence the name). But many others will say we're just 'seeing things' - projecting, rationalising, or whatever. — Wayfarer

More like you fail to describe yourselves. You take you own lacking and apply to the rest of the world. Rather than understand you are lacking, that you need to find new knowledge, a new discourse or a new understanding, you proclaim this lack is a failure of existence itself.

Supposedly, there is no meaning unless people find something more, a failure not of the self (which can be remedied by becoming a more ethical person, gaining understanding, etc.,etc.) but of existence. No matter what exists, it will not be enough. Everything is meaningless in-itself.

What in the world is 'spirit'? It is another completely underdetermined and fuzzy feel good word? — StreetlightX

You don't need that word to understand what the vision of the free society is. It's helpful, though.

As if Parks were not driven by the real, material circumstances in which her community were being treated as second class citizens, as if she wasn't contesting - in a literal manner - the appropriation of space and time (a bus seat, in this case), — StreetlightX

Nobody thinks she wanted that particular seat. Her action was highly symbolic.

But no, far better, apparently, to think of her acts in terms of 'spirit' and 'authenticity' and 'belief'; psychological weasel words that absolve you of actually engaging in 'life as actually lived', with history, with space and time. — StreetlightX

Lol. You're protesting that we should the think of the Civil Rights Movement in terms of physics. So yea.. .let's do that. A rationalist approach is going to land us where it always has landed us... determinism. How about some empiricism?

Do remember in one of our earlier discussions when you claimed that removing the “grounding myth” would amount to a loss of freedom? — TheWillowOfDarkness

No, can you provide a direct quote or citation?

You position considers freedom dependent on believing one is free. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I have tried to disabuse you of this erroneous reading several times but it's not sinking in. Once again, my position is that one can be said to be free in principle regardless of whether one believes it; but one will not live that freedom if one denies it. This is really not different in spirit to Heidegger's notion of authenticity.

I remember you outright stating it— that if there was no such “grounding myth,” that there easn't even a possibly of anyone being free. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't remember saying that. It's possible I did. But again, provide the quote. Whether I would agree with such a statement would depend on what it is taken to mean. Tell me exactly what you take it to mean and I'll tell you if I agree with it.

All acts are lived. Our worlds and lives are bigger than what we are immediately aware of in one moment.To say the unconscious is not lived is manifestly untrue. People are affected by what they aren’t aware of all the time. — TheWillowOfDarkness

How could an act rightly be said to be lived if there is absolutely no awareness of it at all? Of course people are affected by what they are unaware of all the time, and they may or may not be more or less aware of those affects; in other words they may or may not live them. If people are, and remain, totally unaware of them, then the affects cannot rightly be said to be 'lived'; to say that they are lived would seem to be a complete contradiction.

Any action we take involves some part of the world we aren’t presently aware of. When I think about what letter I need to type next, I’m far more than that thought and my body is doing countless things I’m not aware of in that thought. Living freedom doesn't depend on the thought of it. Such an argument is for one who locates life only in the present idea of their consciousness (e.g. "I'm free" ) rather than wider world that extends beyond their thoughts. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I haven't denied that, have I? Do you claim that you live the countless processes of your body at every moment? If you do, then you are working with a different definition of 'lived' than I am; in which case this discussion is going nowhere. I haven't said that you have to be thinking "I am free" at any moment in order to be free in that moment. That would be a simple-minded reading indeed.

This... rather ironic. You are the one trying to narrow down life to the discursive intellect here. What do you say to say when we point out that life is more than thought? You claim it's not life, as if lives were restricted to the immediately present consciousness experience:

All acts are not lived. If an act is entirely unconscious then it is — TheWillowOfDarkness

Nonsense; where have I said that thought, belief, intuition and experience are confined to the discursive intellect, or even confined to processes that can be explicated by the discursive intellect; that is precisely the opposite of what I am contending. I don't know, Willow; what's the point of discussing with you if you can't even get what I am saying straight.

Lol. You're protesting that we should the think of the Civil Rights Movement in terms of physics. — Mongrel

Lol. You think this.

Nobody thinks she wanted that particular seat. Her action was highly symbolic. — Mongrel

Sure - symbolic with respect to what? Her historical circumstances? The way the black community was being treated, both in terms of 'lived actions', and codified at the level of law? Nah, must be all that spirit stuff, the stuff that really matters. Authenticity and all that. Heidegger the Nazi knew all about that. Maybe Parks should have just meditated her way to freedom, had a real feeling, intuition, experience of it. She could have just 'thought' her way there.

Lol. You think this. — StreetlightX

WTF?

Sure - symbolic with respect to what? — StreetlightX

The perception of her humanity. We're done here.

Yes, for me freedom is a mystery, it points beyond both the mechanical and the organic and is like a finger pointing at an unknown moon. — John

I think you're talking about mokṣa, spiritual liberation. That has never been much part of the Western intellectual tradition in my view. It is present elliptically - if you understand something about it, then you can see the traces of it in Western thought (see for instance Greg Goode's analysis of non-dualism in Western philosophy.) I think it has been suppressed in the Western tradition (going back to the formation of the Roman church, in all likelihood). And it's why Alan Watts was correct in calling it a 'taboo' in his book of that name -and why what you're interested in is counter-cultural.

Whereas, post-modernism is, by and large, the philosophical attitude of Western secular academia, so the two views are chalk and cheese.

It's funny that Rosa Park's action was her refusal to act, to give her seat. She was sitting in the 'colored' section of the bus when she was asked to give up her seat to a white person because the bus was overcrowded, her action started the Civil Rights movement here.

I don't think that a reduction of the terms of human agency to what comprises it can encapsulate what she did, but we read about it, and we can appreciate how much guts it must have taken for her to refuse. She wasn't the first, others had also refused to give up their seats, it but her case got picked up to run through the courts since they thought it had the best chance of prevailing.

Early start of the postmodern movement...a turn in thought.

Really, I was just referring to the transcendent, whatever we might think that is. It could be 'God', 'moksha', nirvana, or otherwise.

Apropos of your many times avowed interest in Gnosticism Berdyaev offers an interesting discussion of the difference between religion for the masses and for the "spiritually aristocratic". Here is a part:

From this point of view the Gnostics are of particular interest. A great number of them truly belong to the "aristocracy" of the spirit. but they seem to have been unable to reconcile themselves to the "democracy" of the Christian Church. The question is not whether or not they are in the right. The Church had profound reasons for opposing and condemning them, for had the Gnostics won the day Christianity would never have been victorious. It would have been transformed into an aristocratic sect. But the question which Gnosticism raises is a profoundly disturbing one which is always with us, and has its importance even today. Revelation and absolute truth are both distorted and assimilated, according to the make-up and spiritual development of the persons receiving them. Are we bound to consider as absolute and unchangeable that form of the Christian revelation which was intended for the average man? Must the more spiritual, complex, and subtle type of man, who has in some measure received the great gift of Gnosis, be brought down to a lower level and perforce rest content with a reduced spirituality for the sake of the masses, and in order that he may share in the fellowship of the Christian people?....Can the path which leads to the acquiring of the Holy Spirit and to spiritual perfection and holiness be regarded as the sole criterion of spiritual life and the only source of spiritual Gnosis?

The question of the religious significance of human gifts and giftedness is a profoundly difficult one. It was a question which the Gnostics had to face and it also confronted Clement of Alexandria and Origen, who were themselves also Gnostic Christians. It was a question too for Solovyov, and in our own time it is still there for the Christian consciousness to grapple with. It is part of the problematics of Christianity. Must the question of Christian consciousness and knowledge be solved in a "democratic" spirit with a view to the requirements of average humanity, or will a more "interior" solution, beyond the comprehension of the masses, be possible and be allowed by authority? " I have given you milk" says St Paul, "not solid food, for ye could not bear it; and ye cannot bear it even now, for ye are yet carnal."
"Democratic Christianity feeds on "milk", because it attends to "the flesh" and, moreover, the Church is right in acting thus. But this fact does not solve the problem of the possibility of other fare for those whose spiritual hunger is still unsatisfied.- Freedom and the Spirit 1935

This might be veering a bit off-topic, but on the other hand maybe it has to do with the problem of the relationship between doctrine and the freedoms of both worship and vision, in just the kind of way that Postmodernism would not understand it.

I wonder what Post Modern freedom, being so based on abstruse conceptual technologies as it is, sees itself as having to offer the common intellectually unsophisticated man or woman (for whom it certainly could be nothing other than sheer "gobbledygook") in place of "democratic" religion?

I can almost taste the venom or see it dripping from the screen.

The point is, as I'm trying to say, that many of the European post-modernists are conscientiously, avowedly securalists or a-theological and there's little use butting heads about it. I am interested in writers such as Berdyaev but I think such topics belong in the Philosophy of Religion forum.

Yeah, I guess I did go off the rails a wee bit there, which is my wont. Oh well...
O:)

But, I think the point is that there are no materialistic models of freedom that are not what a libertarian would understand as an account of a much diluted notion of freedom. Perhaps there are some non-secular existentialist accounts....

Anyway, when these discussions devolve to talking past one another as they nearly always do, it's probably better to let it go, I guess, but I'm a slow learner.
;)