Freedom
piero scaruffi
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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