Scope and limits of freedom and how to achieve it
Introduction
In this essay an extensive analysis of the concept of "freedom" will be glimpsed, based on two key questions that will guide reflection. Which are what are the scope and/or limits of freedom? And is it possible to think of freedom as a means for a subsequent purpose, or on the contrary as an end in itself? In sum of the above, it will be contrasted with the conception of freedom of three authors seen during this semester in the course.
Developing
What is the Liberty? A word that over time has always been relevant, but the notion of this has been very relative during the same. Its meaning, which at first glance can be completely objective, that after a brief analysis it turns out.
Freedom according to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (RAE), in its first meaning, defines it as “F. Natural faculty that man has to act in one way or another, and not to work, so he is responsible for his actions.”(RAE, 2019), it must be emphasized that this meaning is used in this writing for its description, reflection and subsequent contrast to the interpretation that each author to review gives to this concept.
For Nietzsche, it seems that there is a line of coherence referring to what could be the philosophical "perspective", in addition, that what he discovers as "metaphysical deception" to humanity, has a path of reverting for a solution to the human problemof counterfeit values. For its transformative objectives, Nietzsche will need to appeal to uncompected subjects to carry out what he points out as “great policy”, luck of the renovating process of the deception values promised by all those utopian processes that try to establish on earth an egalitarianism incontrast to the exaltation of the individual potential of man. Thus, "free spirits" must also be strong and autonomous spirits, capable of facing all kinds of misadventures, which among other things, will force them to "get away from the community, stay alone, live outdoors and inhabit provisional houses, doingFrom the desert his new home ". Certainly, under the budgets required by Nietzsche to carry out their human training process in their "process of great policy", none of the subjects who are at hand could serve, the moment that all of them are impregnated by the valuescultural assumed from an early age. We will return in the final chapter to this circumstance of conceptual synthesis in the work Nietzscheanthought.
Indeed, the philosophers, the „free spirits‟ with the news that the „old God has died‟ we feel as reached by the rays of a new aurora;With this news our heart overflows, admiration, feeling, waiting. There is the horizon clear again, even if it is not yet clear enough;There are our ships willing to sail, towards all dangers;There is all new audacity that is allowed to those who seek knowledge, and there is the sea, our sea open again, maybe there was never a "open" open. (Nietzsche, 1882)
J. Stuart Mill raises the principle of freedom;which is that the person has freedom of action in everything that does not affect others, that is, "about himself, about his body and on his spirit, the individual is sovereign" (Mill, 1859) in addition, thePhilosopher differentiates two types of actions: those that only interest and affect those who perform it and those that interest and affect others, which are seen in “from the behavior of an individual only one part is justiciable by society, thewhich refers to others ”(Mill, 1859), this legitimist the only reason that the community has to impose limits on any of its members, that is, that harms other members.
The only purpose for which power can be exerted on a member is to avoid harming others. No one can be forced to perform or not to perform certain acts even if it was the opinion of others. (Mill, 1859)
Everything that stifles human individuality is despotism, whether the name with which it is disguised. (Mill, 1859)
Marx understood freedom as the total control over the alienated forces of man. Freedom in this conception has two aspects: first, being able to master nature, through the development of productive forces, and second, the elimination of the power of alienated social forces. In this way, it is the man who controls. Man is the only actor and author of the story. Freedom determines its own destiny;Freedom is self-determination. But this freedom is understood as collective freedom. This Marx ideal is obviously incompatible with pluralism. Marx’s freedom opposes the irrationality of chance. In this sense, capitalism is condemned and seems contradictory that Marx has said that the domain of man of his destiny would be achieved through a participatory democracy. It is not if we know that Marx understood by democracy a variety of collectivism – strong enough to subordinate the plans and life objectives of all individuals to a collective plan and a set of collective objectives. In short, it offers participation, but not freedom as individual autonomy. The article thus reveals essential truths of Marxism not well known in the West due to the great ignorance of the genuine tradition of this philosophy. Marx saw freedom, not as individual and negative, but as collective and positive: as the full and unlimited self-realization of the human ‘essence-species’ in history. The realization of freedom was, in his opinion, a process of freeing people from the domination of things, both in the form of physical need and in the form of requisified social relations. Finally, the most specific characteristic of Marx’s conception of freedom was its invariably historical approach to the problem. His vision of freedom was part of his general philosophy of history;In fact, it constituted its most important part because, as will be shown, freedom was conceived in it as the transcultural evaluation standard, the only common criterion to measure historical progress between different modes of production and different social systems “nobody fights;At most fight the freedom of others. Freedom has always existed, but sometimes as a privilege of some, other times as the right of all.”(Marx, 1848)
In other words, Marx followed Hegel in the elaboration of ‘a historicophy of freedom’, that is, a broad vision of history as a dialectical process of developing freedom. In this philosophy, freedom was defined as the total self-realization of the ‘species-being’ of man (Gattungswaes), as the most true possibility of development of human nature, of the development of its inherent abilities and its potential wealth. In turn, development was conceived as the dialectical movement of self-determining alienation. This concept, basic throughout Marx’s philosophy, assumes – in a few words – that to develop itself, one must externalize their forces and submit to alienation, because only in this way it can what is potential, latent, reachself-conscious.
In contrast to what is raised by Marx, Adam Smith states that the freedom of individuals to pursue their interests as they deem appropriate, and to negotiate with other people will also have to do so according to what they seem convenient, it constitutes the key to arrivingto discover beneficial systems for cooperation and social exchange.
Each individual is always striving to find the most beneficial investment for any capital that has […] when guiding that activity so that it produces a maximum value, he seeks only his own benefit, but in this case as in others an invisible hand conducts itto promote an objective that did not enter into its purposes […] By pursuing its own interest, it will frequently encourage society much more effectively than if you in fact try to encourage it. (Smith, 1776)
Friedrich Hayek support in the twentieth century that no third party can know all the relevant information to adequately decide how you or I should manage or spend our resources, or what opportunities are within our reach and which of them we should take advantage of: in essence, a third notYou can know what you or I should do4.Why not? What is the information that supposedly is missing? Hayek asserts that others do not know – and they cannot know – what are our goals and aspirations and what is the true order of relative importance that they have for us, they cannot know exactly what our resources are and what their relative grades are andAbsolute scarcity, they cannot know what opportunities our particular local circumstances give us and cannot know what our scale of values is, including their relative hierarchy.
Hayek became famous for sustaining this position, and perhaps today his main exponent is considered, but at each step he relied on arguments developed by Adam Smith about two centuries ago. Smith formulated his case by resorting to three arguments intimately linked to each other. In the first place there is his argument of local knowledge: since each one has a unique knowledge of their “local” situation, including their own objectives, desires and opportunities to have, each individual is therefore the best positioned person to adopt by themselvessame decisions about the courses of action that must continue to achieve its objectives. Here is the argument in Smith’s words: “What will be the type of local industry where its capital can be invested and whose production can be of a maximum value is something that each person, given their circumstances, can obviously judge much better than anypolitical or legislator ”(RN IV.II.10) 5 (Otteson, 2006)
conclusion
Based on all of the above, you can conclude and make a consensus among the different notions of each author that freedom works as a way for a major purpose, although for each writer that superior or transcendental writer is different, since each oneIt has a different worldview and therefore perceive freedom and the capital purpose that flows divergently. But, not for that reason a vision is better or more successful than the other but depending on the objectives that one pursues an approach or another will better adapt.
Bibliography
- Marx, k. (1848). Communist Manifesto.
- Mill, s. (1859). On Liberty.
- Nietzsche, f. (1882). The Gaya Science.
- Otteson, j. R. (2006). Adam Smith and Freedom. Cepchile.
- RAE. (14 of 12 of 2019). Royal Spanish Academy. Obtained from http: // www.RAE.it is/
- Smith, a. (1776). The Wealth of Nations.
- Walicki, a. (1988). Karl Marx as a philosopher of freedom. Critical Review, a Journal of Books and Ideas.
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