Freedom

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Freedom

• piero scaruffi

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Individual Freedom

• Free will
• Social and natural conditioning
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau we are born free, but
  every social interaction after birth results in a
  progressive loss of freedom ("L'homme est né
  libre, et partout il est dans les fers")

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Social Freedom

• Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" (1651) "a free man is
  he that in those things which by his strength and
  wit he is able to do is not hindered to do what
  he hath the will to do (negative liberty
• Helvetius' "De l'esprit" (1758) "The free man is
  the man who is not in irons, nor imprisoned in a
  gaol, nor terrorized like a slave by the fear of
  punishment" (negative liberty)
• John Locke and Adam Smith negative liberty

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Social Freedom

• Rousseau individual freedom is achieved through
  participation in the process whereby one's
  community exercises collective control over its
  own affairs in accordance with the general will
  (positive freedom)
• Hegel and Marx positive liberty
• Rudolf Steiner's "Die Philosophie der Freiheit"
  (1894) "To be free is to be capable of thinking
  one's own thoughts - not the thoughts merely of
  the body, or of society, but thoughts generated
  by one's deepest, most original, most essential
  and spiritual self, one's individuality"

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Social Freedom

• Erich Fromm's "The Fear of Freedom" (1941)
  Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty" (1958)
  distinction between "freedom from" (negative
  freedom, e.g. freedom from religious persecution)
  and "freedom to" (positive freedom, e.g. freedom
  to achieve one's aspirations, having the power
  and resources to fulfill one's potential)
• Fromm negative freedom marks the beginning of
  humanity as a self-aware species free from animal
  instincts

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Democratic Freedom

• Freedom vs Liberty vs Anarchism vs Democracy

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