Perhaps a community which fosters a desire for it — Ciceronianus
Expound on that, would you? I've never heard of it. — Garrett Travers
Reading Arendt is not like being led through an argument so much as inundated by it. — Banno
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. — Banno
The idea is that the Persians invented the idea of progress. As opposed to the Hebrew view where you're born ignorant and have to learn about good and evil, Persians, specifically Zoroastrians, believed you're born with this knowledge and it's your responsibility to choose goodness over evil. It's not a one time choice, but something that's before you every day. — frank
Where in the Hebrew outlook, you can tell if someone is good or evil by their health and wealth status (indicating God's covenant based promise), for Persians, outward status doesn't tell you anything. A person could be rich, but if they aren't choosing good every day, they're evil. — frank
This shows up in Christianity, which received Persian ideas which had already been absorbed by the Jews. You can see that the Persian view is sort of proto inwardness. — frank
frank
So, a bit like Plato's anamnesiac idea of recalling the forms which are already embued in your memory banks that simply need to be triggered, eh? — Garrett Travers
Thanks a bunch for indulging my curiosity. — Garrett Travers
Perhaps a community which fosters a desire for it, instead. Free from, would make more sense than free with, I think. I find it hard to conceive of a community which fosters freedom as we think of it now--or at least as I think of it. Perhaps those damn Romantics, with their emphasis on individuality, bear some responsibility for this perspectives. I like to poke at them now and again, as well. — Ciceronianus
She specifically mentions a number of logical challenges to the idea of volition. Her approach is: this crap is taking place in the realm of philosophy, and this is why: people became ensnared by theology and so fail to see the wisdom of the Greeks (which is actually a Hegelian insight, not Greek, but anyway,) — frank
:lol: :up:Stop it, Harry. You can't will that rational assessment freely like that. Others are required to provide that freedom to you in the form of not impinging it with violence, and vice versa. — Garrett Travers
She asks how a free community is thinkable, in which you ar efree with others. We think of a free community in terms of isolated individuals free from interference by others. — Tobias
She asks how a free community is thinkable, in which you are free with others. We think of a free community in terms of isolated individuals free from interference by others. — Tobias
She asks how a free community is thinkable, in which you ar efree with others. We think of a free community in terms of isolated individuals free from interference by others. — Tobias
The matter of capabilities and resources appears immediately when enough people associate with each other to share or not share them. Declaring all to be equal may be one way to begin but hardly is adequate for the struggles such a life must engage with.
And when the forces of tyranny do gather their capacity to cancel freedom, the strength to resist comes from those capabilities being alive and well. That work doesn't happen by simply establishing a set of rules. — Paine
what does she mean? — Ciceronianus
That would be the exercise of sovereignty in favor of freedom, at least to an extent. — Ciceronianus
Or does she speak of individuals renouncing any claim to sovereignty of some kind over others, e.g. someone claiming his/her individual freedom.rights have priority over the freedom/rights of others? — Ciceronianus
Perhaps she's recommending we refrain from engaging in such conflicts? Is that what she's touting, using Epictetus as an example? — Ciceronianus
"Freedom needed, in addition to mere liberation, the companyof other men who were in the same state, and it needed a common public space to meet them a politically organized world, in other words, into which each of the free men could insert himself by word and deed." — Garrett Travers
In other words, freedom requires first the experience of being liberated from the forces of nature or man's arbitration, then to conceptualize and value it, to thereby be enacted in word and deed. So, she actually concedes my position, oddly enough. — Garrett Travers
The nature of this insufficiency can be approached from many different points of view. Kierkegaard said that freedom was the ability to do things. Living as an individual requires more than setting up a boundary.
The matter of capabilities and resources appears immediately when enough people associate with each other to share or not share them. Declaring all to be equal may be one way to begin but hardly is adequate for the struggles such a life must engage with. — Paine
I think a community can, as a community, as a nation, assert its commitment to the freedom of all its members/citizens. The U.S. does that and has done that since its foundation; so have other nations (France, most notably, since the Revolution). So that in itself is quite "thinkable." It's apparent, in fact, so I assume that's not what she refers to, and this of course raises the question--what does she mean? — Ciceronianus
And when the forces of tyranny do gather their capacity to cancel freedom, the strength to resist comes from those capabilities being alive and well. That work doesn't happen by simply establishing a set of rules. — Paine
Yes, one needs first 'liberation'. In slavery one is not free. However, you hold on to some 'true requirement', as if that is enough. For her that is not enough. That is where her essay gets interesting. — Tobias
I do not know if that is true, but quite frankly I do not care, because if I get hung up there I miss the rest of her essay. Perhaps it is hyperbole, god knows. — Tobias
I provided an example of the phenomenon you mentioned, not addressing the process that is involved in such a phenomenon failing against forces that would oppose it. Nor is it a topic of what is being discussed here, although interesting. — Garrett Travers
In reality Rousseau's theory stands refuted for the simple reason that "it is absurd for the will to bind itself for the future"; a community actually founded on this sovereign will would be built not on sand but on quicksand. All political business is, and always has been, transacted within an elaborate framework of ties and bonds for the future such as laws and constitutions, treaties and alliances all of which derive in the last instance from the faculty to promise and to keep promises in the face of the essential uncertainties of the future. 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. That the faculty of will and will-power in and by itself, unconnected with any other faculties, is an essentially nonpolitical and even anti-political capacity is perhaps nowhere else so manifest as in the absurdities to which Rousseau was driven and in the curious cheerfulness with which he accepted them.
That comment evades the problem of the sufficiency of declaring individual freedom that I referred to.
That topic is integral to Arend's argument: — Paine
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.
That the faculty of will and will-power in and by itself, unconnected with any other faculties
Arendt is saying that if the principle of individual sovereignty was sufficient for the life of freedom, it would not lead to the absurdities noted in Rousseau's version of it. — Paine
She also, again, makes many claims, among which is the impossibility of freedom to be defined, and the inherent contradictions in the concept of individual freedom, which are also assertions that simply do not make sense. For the reason I just explained, or have already explained with definitions and explanations that are consistent with the modern philosophical approach to freedom. — Garrett Travers
She defines freedom as action ,or praxis, which is prior both to reason- intellect and to the will. — Joshs
the appearance
of freedom, like the manifestation of principles, coincides with the performing act. Men are free as distinguished from their possessing the gift for freedom as long
as they act, neither before nor after; for to be free and to act are the same.” — Joshs
"Politics", in the Greek sense of the word, is therefore centered around freedom, whereby freedom is understood negatively as not being ruled or ruling, and positively as a space which can be created only by men and in which each man moves among his peers. Without those who are my equals, there is no freedom, which is why the man who rules over others—and for that very reason is different from them on principle—is indeed a happier and more enviable man than those over whom he rules, but he is not one whit freer. He too moves in a sphere in which there is no freedom whatever.
The will does the enacting, but is it responsible for the choosing? I take Arendt's point to be the somewhat pedantic one that choosing is not an act of will but rather that willing is the enactment of the choice. Perhaps we should talk of free choice rather than free will. In any case we are in agreement that the notion of free will is problematic.It is free to choose to choose the objects of its desire. — Tobias
The principle, and hence freedom, is found, then, not in thought or in will but in action. And action occurs in the public sphere, not the private.For, unlike the judgment of the intellect which precedes action, and unlike the command of
the will which initiates it, the inspiring principle becomes fully manifest only in the performing act itself... Men are free as distinguished from their possessing the gift for freedom as long as they act, neither before nor after; for to be free and to act are the same.
Yes it can, but this assertion as a kind of motto is not worth anything. It has to provide that ground in practice. The USA in her time nominally supported freedom but there were many social groups disenfranchized even more so than now — Tobias
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