CFP: Philosophy of Political Freedom, XXVIII WORLD CONGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY OF LAW AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 16-21 July 2017, Lisbon (original) (raw)
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True freedom involves choices whose scope is not limited in advance by a particular dogma. When we attempt to understand it, a number of questions arise. It is unclear, for example, how the openness of real choice can fi t into the organized structures of political life. What prevents the expressions of freedom from disrupting this life? What sets limits to their arbitrariness? The general question here concerns the adaptability of freedom to a political context. In this paper, I argue that freedom is inherently political because its origin is social. It gains its content from the multiple interactions that make up social life.
Political Freedom Cannot Be a Single Freedom
Introduction: Freedom in general may be the word familiar to most, but it is a concept still misunderstood and misused at a time, when dictators, single-party regimes, military coup leaders and so forth alike assert popular support by claiming the mantle of some concepts like democracy, freedom, etc. Yet the idea of freedom has prevailed through a long and turbulent history in practice and theory as well. It is no wonder then that the term " freedorh " was first and foremost attached in the ancient world to the distinction between slaves and free persons. As for Greeks, to be free often indicates not to be a slave or, in other words, not to be constrained by the conditions of slavery. This is the most frequent meaning of the word even in Aristotle's Politics: when Aristotle used the word " free, " he usually employed it in the sense of the opposite to being a slave.1 On the other hand, in the modem context, although, the concept of liberty is wide and indeterminate, and its very indeterminacy is part of our understanding of the term, at least in one principle is common that is called being constrained as Thomas Hobbes believes that freedom is absence of obstacle in a material perspective. Although the history of freedom concept may be helpful to perceive the concept of freedom in different terms, writer, in this paper, attempt to analyze the term in another view externally and internally, not historically. Based on this view, to better understand the concept of freedom in general and the concept of political freedom in particular, it seems the division of political freedom in two different concepts in area of political philosophy can be helpful. In the course of describing, developing, and clarifying such freedom in the political sense it is necessary to think about this issue deeply. To do this, we need to go back to a much more basic level of discussion of political freedom than is usual in discussions of the general issues of that. In other words, it can be vital to locate and consider the various elements of the freedom in the political sense and examine their interrelationships. In doing this it is important_to go beyond the conceptual boundaries imposed by automatic acceptance of traditional or usual assumptions. We need to explore whether other means of political freedom may exist or be developed in addition to the means of control relied upon internal and external concepts.
The Oxford Handbook of Freedom
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016
Debates about freedom traditionally focus on a few central themes. The chapters of this volume update those debates and launch new ones. Whether the freedom worth pursuing is one or many, whether it conflicts with equality, whether it can be secured by the institutions of the modern state, and whether it is compatible with a deterministic understanding of the universe are some of the central questions that animate the chapters in this volume. Our contributors show both that we have made real progress in our understanding of the many faces of freedom and its enabling conditions, and that threats to our freedoms remain various, serious, and real.
Political Freedom as an Open Question
AVANT, 2019
This essay diagnoses the condition of contemporary liberal democracies. It assumes that the current crisis of democracy is not the result of an external ideological threat, but it is the result of the lack of a coherent vision of democracy itself. The author recognises that the key symptom of the contemporary crisis is the decreasing involvement of citizens in public life and their growing reluctance to participate in public debate. He claims that the reason for this is the increasing social polarisation. The article considers two forms of polarisation: vertical (on the line: politicians-voters) and horizontal (on the line of ideological social divisions). The first form is illustrated by Colin Crouch's considerations, while the second one by Fareed Zakaria's thoughts. What finds its manifestation in both cases is the phenomenon of citizens' resignation from participation in the public debate; in the first case it is because of the lack of faith in the effectiveness of this type of opinion-giving mechanism, while in the second case it is because of the lack of recognition of other political and ideological options in society. These reflections are concluded in the postulate that the basic task facing democracy today is to maintain the public sphere as open as possible, i.e. not excluding any ideological position in advance. This kind of conclusion is illustrated with the concepts of Chantal Mouffe (political perspective) and Helmuth Pless-ner (philosophical-anthropological perspective).
The Antinomies of Freedom: An Introduction
Ongoing struggles over what "freedom" means are themselves an integral part of politics aiming to achieve it. It is one of the concepts that seem to be always already there, old as human history, a universal idea expressing our ability to choose as we wish to choose, simply because we wish so. However, it is subject to a historical change; the ancients were oblivious to the concept of freedom and the idea of political liberty is a recent phenomenon. Since pursuing the whole history behind this concept would be an arduous task as there are hundreds of senses, I will focus on the two irreconcilable concepts of liberty, and the antinomies embedded in them. The negative and the positive concept of liberty, conceptualized by Isaiah Berlin (1958), are representative of the historical change and what's more, they have contrasted visions regarding the aim of politics. We tend to believe that freedom begins where politics ends and think of it as the harmony between our desires and will, and yet one can argue, like Hannah Arendt ("What is Freedom?", 1961), that "The raison d'étre of politics is freedom and its field of experience is action" (146). What I want to achieve in this paper is to answer the question of what can we make of this antinomy between the two concepts of freedom, respectively advocated by Berlin and Arendt.