Pages

Friday 16 March 2018

It isn’t new is it?


The philanthropy was what he most hated: all these expensive plans for moral forcible feeding, for compelling everybody to be cleaner, stronger, healthier and happier than they would have been by the unaided light of Nature...

Don't you think it's glorious to belong to the only country where everybody is absolutely free, and yet we're all made to do exactly what is best for us?

Edith Wharton - Twilight Sleep (1927)

7 comments:

Sackerson said...

a) About the US and b) everyone is not absolutely free - many begin a long way behind the starting line. Today it's the likes of the mega-rich Koch brothers who warble about freedom and punt money into academia to promote their agenda.

Sam Vega said...

As Rousseau famously said, sometimes it is necessary to force people to be free.

I could almost respect a master who self-consciously tried to force me to be free. It's the ignorant servants of that idea - those who never consciously understood it - that are truly objectionable.

A K Haart said...

Sackers - to my mind corrupt notions of freedom have money poured into them from a vast array of sources.

Sam - yes Rousseau was in a sense right, although I don't think many people want to be free and maybe we can't want it too much because social complexity requires restrictions on freedom.

Sackerson said...

I had a go at unpicking the notion of "freedom" a while back, perhaps you can take up the baton:

https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/three-levels-of-freedom.html

A K Haart said...

Sackers - excellent. Did you ever take it further?

I'm not keen on ideas about freedom although they have to be used in many situations. To my mind there is a problem when we suggest that certain individuals or groups desire freedom because too often that doesn't seem to be what they pursue. It looks more like competition but not competition for more freedom, as if competing is an end in itself. Maybe worth developing as a set of ideas but difficult.

Sackerson said...

AKH - Thought you might have seen it before, the approach I used opens a can of worms and maybe ends up as a book. My core contention as I say is that "freedom" has several aspects and much futile argumentation arises from confusing one with another. It's tied up with identity and the very strong feelings around that. Thought you might be someone who could develop it.

A K Haart said...

Sackers - I just sent you an email.