'Freedom' tag archive

When a notable philosopher, having established a reputation for rigorous argumentation and scholarship, directs a major new book toward a popular audience, a certain skepticism may be forgiven among those familiar with the earlier work. However welcome an accessible style may be, popular address too often gives way to the popularisation of philosophical concepts and […]

Galen Strawson, Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, the Self, Etc. (New York: New York Review of Books, 2018). 236pp., £11.99 pb., 978 1 68237 220 4 In his most recent book, apparently meant for a general audience and made up of essays previously appearing in non-scholarly publications, Galen Strawson has provided a nice recap […]

Interview noam chomsky Freedom and power Peter hallward I’d like to start by asking you about some of your basic philosophical principles, starting with your understanding of human freedom and creativity. In the modern European tradition I’m most familiar with, freedom is a dominant philosophical theme from Descartes through Rousseau to Kant. With Kant we […]

Ecology and Human Emancipation Tim Hayward Humanism vs Prometheanism The entry of ecological considerations into political thought raises new questions about the meaning of human emancipation.* In particular, traditional socialist conceptions of emancipation as a move from a sphere of necessity to one of freedom are rendered radically problematic from an ecological perspective. i As […]

Freedom’s Devices The Place of the Individual in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right John Rosentha/ The ordinary man thinks he is free if it is open to him to act as he pleases but his very arbitrariness implies that he is not free. When I will the rational, then I am acting not as a particular […]

Active Citizenship as Political Obligation Tony Skiffen Rousseau says in The Social Contract: As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the state is not far from its fall. When it is necessary to march out to […]

The Inorganic Body and the Ambiguity of Freedom Andrew Collier The universality of man manifests itself in practice in that universality which makes the whole of nature his inorganic body, (1) as a direct means oflife and (2) as the matter, the object and the tool of his life activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body, […]

Boundaries Versus Binaries: Bakhtin in/against the History of Ideas Graham Pechey Who or what is Mikhail Bakhtin? The two monographs we have on him agree on an identity: Bakhtin is a philosopher. The compliment, however well meant, could be lethal. Bakhtin was born in Orel in 1895 and died near Moscow in 1975. This bald […]

Feminism and Images of Autonomy Pauline Johnson It is by now widely accepted that feminist politics has meant the expansion of our understanding of the nature of the political. Feminism’s powerful critique of the oppressive character of traditionall y structured relations between the sexes is seen to have added new depth and meaning to the […]

Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx and Negativity Chris Arthur In 1844 a turning point occurs in Marx’s philosophical development: for the first time he makes labour the central category of his social ontology (1) position of importance it was never to lose. Productive activity, and its alienation, are thematized in that most extraordinary document containing the results […]

Personality and the Dialectic of Labour and PropertyLocke, Hegel, Marx. Chris Arthur Introduction One of the earliest objections to communism claims that ‘the complete abolition of private property’ makes no sense because people have an inalienable property in their own individuality, which comprises all those features that are peculiar to the person who has them […]

Scientific Explanation and Human Emancipation Roy Bhaskar 1. Introduction What connections, if any, exist between explanations in the human sciences and the project of human emancipation? I want to addr~ss this issue in the light of the transcendental realist reconstruction of science (2) and the critical naturalism which that reconstruction enables (3). My main target […]

r..e edom as Ihe Bfficacy of knowledge Andrew Collier In this paper, I am primarily concerned with freedom in the metaphysical sense, not with political freedom. Nevertheless, some of my examples will have political import, and I do believe that there is a relation of theoretical support between the conception of freedom which I am […]

Technology’ aDd LlbeJlaIIOD Robert Eccleshall critics of capitalism have traditionally considered technological development as subject to the control of dominant interests and thus as one aspect, albeit crucial, of a broader strategy aimed at reproducing existing social relations. In opposition to technological determinists (who hold material progress to be dependent on the number of individuals […]

him and to which he claims special access, nor ‘from a· source inside him, which he is ~ecially privileged to possess. The formula is presented to us at the start, and then it is worked upon, in front of us, in terms of sound and sight. The marve~lous feeling of release provided by the piece […]

l’reecloDl and Alienalion RossPoole 1 According to Hegel For freedom it is necessary that we should feel no presence of something else which is not ourselves. 1 Taken at face value, this makes little sense. For what are we to make of the idea of ‘feeling no presence of something else which is not ourselves’? […]

PiRSONAL AUTONOMY a: HISTORICAL MATERIALISM Richard Archer The following is largely a criticism of some of the mistakes and certain tendencies antithetical to an historical materialist conception of the world found in Eoss Poole’s paper ‘Freedom and Alienation’. (Radical Philosophy, Winter 1975). Basically the criticism is this: because Poole never entirely leaves the framework employed […]

flock; but can any claim their exertions have sufficed? Nor was it only with England and her white colonies that Berkeley was concerned. His benevolence spread to all people of the earth, and especially to the savage natives of America. At a time when these savages are showing such a want of civic or spiritual […]

TRUTH AnD PRA[TI[E Andrew [allier of scientific enquiry and experiment, this is common ground not only of all Marxist theories, but of intelligent bourgeois theories as well. Peter Binns’ paper ‘The Marxist Theory of Truth’ in Radical Philosophy 4 exemplifies what seems to have become a new orthodoxy among Marxists, as well as many bourgeois […]

his way of obviating the “victories of an excessive relativism” was to resort to the possibility of explaining diverse views. But if ‘explanation’ is to be understood as legitimation, he is no better off. The ‘relativist’ is perfectly prepared to admit differenc&,f of legitimation and characterisation co-ordinate with differences in moral view. Finally, he might […]

This article is intended to raise a number of connected issues. It concludes by suggesting that certain theories of self-organization, in particular the theory of autopoiesis developed by Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela and, latterly, Fritjof Capra, might help us to reassess how we view the relationship between discipline, subjectivity and freedom. However, the first half […]