Diane, Nate, Paul, others (?),
I should have expected that "freedom" would arise an ardent and
separate discussion, ill timed, due to my departing to-morrow. So I
should not have brought it in now. I simply wanted to point away from
that fruitless "consciousness" discussion to something really at the
core of humanity.
But then, it's strange that most discussants batten in their own
landscapes of the "freedom" notion, though well aware of the problems
of the concept. How do you, Nate, come to attribute my notion of
freedom a "transcendental nature", find it a candidate for reified
abstraction? How come you and Paul find it an empty term to be filled
with anything at one's delight? I thought I have given a very
concrete meaning to what is special in the human condition, namely
individuals being capable of symbolizing their situation in the world
beyond the immediate and being capable of acting in social and things
context in choosing options on the basis of their knowing about it,
which makes them responsible to some extent for the consequences of
their actions insofar as they could have acted otherwise. And I put
the mark "freedom" plus "responsibility" on this. The implication is
that we find such, and to a very limited extent and in very limited
scope, with very few animals other than humans, and never with
effects beyond the group living together. I must admit, that it was a
short description; it will become much clearer when we have grasp of
the semiotic function circle and the relation between the evolving
internal and external structures. But at this time, please remind my
description -- is it not clear enough? I quote what wrote and I add
now underlinings to the crucial phrases:
>00.09.06: Herder in the later 18th century conceived of humans as
>the first "Freigelassenen" (those (animals) let free) of the
>"creation" and for the continuation of the "creation", as he says in
>a jargon acceptable then, He even said God will not interfere,
>otherwise humans would not be free.
>
>00.09.07: Humans are animals that can act this or that way to some
>extent and at least in part on the basis of their knowing of context
>and its past and of their related ability to imagine possible
>futures and to some extent imagine the probable consequences of
>their acts and so their desirability from this or that point of
>view. Herder had this insight and if it had been accepted with the
>beginning of the 19th century our human world would look crucially
>different, I am sure. This is the core of freedom and, I wrote it
>already, the other face of it is responsibility. I think of
>individuals and of groups.
I try to elucidate what I hinted at with "acceptable jargon": In the
later 18th century you could not openly discuss bioevolution nor
could you openly question creationism, to use today's jargon. So
Herder choose to phrase his idea in terms of Christian language. But
the way he described creation as an ongoing process rather than
something that happened long ago was already a revolution of sorts.
And remember, he was the Lutheran equivalent of an archbishop. Even
more so, indeed, blasphemic, then, was the idea that God had created
humans in such a way that they (the humans!) should take over in the
process of "creation", so to say in the role usually attributed
exclusively to God -- his formula: humans creature, i.e. part of the
"creation" so far, and creators, i.e. in a role everything in an
evolution in fact has insofar it can play a role in the innovative
and stabilizing transactional process. And in addition, the climax of
blasphemy, God would (promise to) not interfere with what humans
chose to bring into creation because this would exactly be in
contradiction to what he wanted to, namely to let them free. "Free"
here had an exact meaning in contrast to the bindings all other
animals were woven into their environments. Herder had an absolutely
modern (20th century advanced) notion of the species-specific
complementarity of organisms and their Umwelt. In humans, due to
their capacity to symbolize, these bounds were "loosening" and
supplemented with "Besonnenheit", with something like prudence to
foresee and evaluate consequences of action and so on. This is his
explanation of the origin of culture.
In the context of his philosophy of history and his view of the
origin of language and of culture in general it is clear that he
thought this as a process and consequence of nature's evolution while
the acceptable jargon necessitated him to write: God created humans
in such a way, namely free, that they became capable of introducing
their proper innovations, namely culture, into the evolutive process.
In other words, God / nature created humans "godlike" / creators in
the ongoing natural / cultural process. And the proper innovations of
humans are such that they are based on understanding the evolutive
process to some extent, and on anyone's role in it of overlooking a
short stretch of parts of the evolutive process past, of imagining
possible future developments, considering the options for actions
favoring or inhibiting this or that course at any one point in time
in a given situation. To know and to be capable of choosing that what
shall prove "better" in an as wide as feasible range of developments
implies responsibility for those and anything touched by the
consequences of one's acts.
Only Diane of the present discussants kept responsibility together
with freedom and blamed Nate for having it left out. I must confess
the latter made me a bit sad, doubts about my capability of
communicating, of peoples' competence in reading, of how hard it is
to exit the rails of thought habits, of the way academic discussions
so often stick to keywords and their precast meaning rather than
listen to what is said. I think it essential to see that in this
view, responsibility is not something added, whether based on
transcendental principle nor on simple calculation that it is better
in the long run. Or could you entertain a conception of God without
the component of responsibility? With the ability to change the
course of events the accountability for a good course of events is
automatically implied. Obviously not in the all-encompassing way
attributed usually to Go; but clearly insofar as action that could
have been known or reasonably suspected at the time of acting was
instrumental in bringing about disaster or humanity. The wider the
insight in the course of events goes, the larger the sphere of
responsibility. So "good for" cannot be restricted to humans
themselves but must also include everything the acting humans can
conceive as possibly being subject to their influence by their
doings. Also it cannot be restricted to individuals; for most human
action really influencing the course of the world is done
collectively. There may be leaders, planners etc.; but such can only
be relative, for leaders are not leaders without followers.
Let me add a couple of remarks to details in the intent of
emphasizing important points or avoiding more misunderstandings.
Diane touched the poetical in connection with my remark that I
believed freedom and responsibility to be more at the heart of a
pertinent understanding of the human condition than "consciousness".
What you say about the role of the heart or the poetic, the
emotional, the subtleness of understanding etc. I can agree very
much. Yet I would try to be careful of how to distinguish and combine
head and heart and as subtly as possible to avoid simply mixing the
two. The "two", I say, because of linguistic coercions -- there is no
real or concrete cognition without emotional and valuational parts,
there is no emotion or valuation without cognitional moment. If
anything, these are not two "things", abstractions reified", but a
multidimensional scale of qualities of states of humans in their
environment. These basic concepts of psychology are entirely
fictional. Here is the influence of language to be researched so
pervasive that the experts don't even see the problem and think what
they say on color names if valid all over.
Also, Diane wrote:
>here, i think it is a mistake to assume that if a 19thC thinker had been
>taken to task, this world would be different, because even Herder composed
>in a context of kinds of ignorance enabled by his own historical
>situation.
Sure, Herder as much as anybody thought in context. I am a fan of his
not because i think he tells the truth or anything alike, but because
he pointed out a very serious mistake in the understanding the course
of human history, including history of ideas, the human condition
altogether: the preference for the fixed, the eternal, the truth
tel-quel; or simply for the neglect of the becoming and demise of
everything. And he proposed very essential basics for another
understanding. He was the first to suggest and elaborate a completely
new conception of the world and the human condition after, say
Platon's Timaeus world which is still reigning today the doings of
scientists and politicians alike. We can know today enough about the
evolutive nature of the cosmos, and everything on Earth that it is
high time to rethink so much. I could tell you anything I do without
reference to Herder. But I am standing on his shoulders and with him
I could get a much clearer understanding and means of embedding it in
history of ideas than I was able to before I read him. No, Diane, I
do not "lift text out of history and plant it into a different
context". What I try to do is to use Herder's abstractions about the
course of the world and use them as tools to research and conceive of
the human condition on various horizons.
Should I refrain from using one thinker of the past of a scope of
insight in anthroplogical subject matter unheard of from any other,
simply because the tradition of philosophy and other field has not
read him sufficiently and has been unable to grasp his potential
impact? And because of that nearly nobody knows about him?
I hope it has become clear for all readers that the four world views
and images of humans aka the human condition (a) to (d) I have
sketched are sort of options. Options (a) to (c) have been chosen in
fact and influenced largely and deeply the cultural and political
events in the Western world and beyond. I mean these conceptions
summarize the essence of respective complexes of attitudes,
knowledge, feelings, strategies to gain knowledge, to make
techniques, to lead politics, to operate in everyday situations with
one's families, friends and wider groups; these complexes are reals,
very complicated ones, too complex to oversee; therefor the need for
summarizing formulations. Once formulated in this or that more or
less comprehensive aspects, they also guide the actions and
communications of people largely. And these three world views guide
the course of the world in a highly problematic manner as has become
increasingly clear in the last few decades to almost anybody with
open eyes some reasonable common sense. In response to this I proffer
semiotic ecology and propose to consider and elaborate option (d)
genuine to it; I think for good reasons.
Nate wrote:
>Second, I am with the line of reasoning forwarded by Foucault and Rose in
>that in liberal democracies the central way a population is governed is
>through freedom. The 19th century debates are interesting here, there was
>no ethical romanticism involved the central question was how as a society
>should we govern. Giving freedom a trancendental quality and ignoring that
>it is a particular way to rule a population seems to ignore its material
>existence.
I have denied already that my notion of freedom / responsibility is
in any way "transcendental". If you insist, please explain your
understanding of "transcendental". The essential distinction between
the thinking of Kant and Herder is that Herder refutes conceptions
having lost connection with the concrete. Thus he thinks Kant has not
at all given metaphysics an new base and provided a solution for the
pseudo-problem of the cleft between the empirical and the rational,
but rather proceeded with fiction written in that strange language of
Transcendentalese. That cleft already is metaphysical fiction, has no
real referent; witness that not only unreasonable animals but also
more or less unreasonable or reasonable humans conduct their life
more or less adequately by using both their senses and their reason
in more or less successful cooperation. Kant appears to have second
thought late in his life. But his "opus posthumum" has not widely
been discussed and is too fragmentary to be capable of having
influence.
I don't understand your second sentence above. Don't misunderstand
Herder's thought as Romanticism. I would say the sociological and
politological discussion of freedom has been lead largely separate
from the freedom and the restrictions of freedom an individual can
enjoy and must suffer. That is so, imho, because the philosophers
have no realistic psychology and the psychologists have voluntarily
renounced dealing with the problem because it does not fit into their
mechanistic picture. This has also have the effect that the
prevailing notion of "freedom" for the individual today is that a man
can do what he wants to do, provided that he does not immediate and
obvious heavy damage to life and personal possessions of others (he
may today still "freely" do almost any damage to the public
possession or resources and to other humans' personal dignity). If
anything, this, to me, is suspicious of Romanticism.
Diane rightly wrote:
>but i also agree with alfred, that freedom and responsibility
>are "qualities" that can be cultivated, not transcendent ways of "being"
Nothing to add. Except perhaps a question: would this not be the
prime task of families and education?
Nate proceeded:
>To say or pretend there is a natural state called freedom where
>there are no masters just seems wrong.
Did I say that? Maybe I could be so understood. I said, or I wanted
to say: the evolutions have brought humankind in a position where
their role in the evolutive process has changed in comparison to any
other kind of structure brought about as a condition in that process,
namely changed in respect to the scope and the diversity of
symbolization both in any one's human individual internal (mind) and
external-environmental (culture) domains. Human's acts matter. They
matter in their consequences. And humans can oversee part of the
whole thing including their role in it. So at least you could
summarize me as saying that there is a "natural /cultural" state
called responsibility.
As to masters things may be a bit more complicated. There are masters
and there must be masters. Only any master ambition should find a
master, reciprocally and all around. To be master is a role to be
delegated and to be retracted when it threatens to become particular
or even absolute. Today's "democracy" has degenerated into an arena
to satisfy particular interest. In contrast, there is the idea of
human dignity. In my framework, I think, this is just the acceptance
of any other's freedom to act plus responsibility for the
consequences for anybody acting with consequences, no matter whether
he stands his responsibility. If this is a good idea then anybody
should also have a master role in relation to others. This may
consist in trying to tell that other about the probable consequence
of his/her actions. We are approach here the core of the idea of
democracy, a very demanding discussion indeed. But as far as I see
the above is another way of expressing Dewey's notion of democracy.
No, Paul, "freedom / responsibility" in the sense proffered is not an
empty projection surface. Rather it's a very concrete descriptions of
a crucial aspect of humans in their world. I have not forgotten your
question re "concrete". A long piece is half written, I have deferred
sending it because it will be easier and more fruitful to discuss it
on the background of how the function circle operates semiotically.
Meanwhile, there has been enough reference to "concrete" in various
contexts that you should be able to make sense of my use of it. I
understand your "a negation of a negation is positive" etc. in terms
of mathematics and of symbolic logic; but I have no idea what it
could mean in reference to concrete things.
And I think it is not ideologically charged in the way I conceive of
freedom / responsibility. Simply, :-), because that conception is not
generally known and has barely or never been discussed in any broader
community I know of, :-(. So far, I have only a paper in German on
that part of SemEco, and it's a bit dated; though some of the
thoughts are also in my Herder paper, a bit condensed. Philosophers,
ethics people in particular, have traditionally focused on that last
principle to be decisive of good or bad. Ethics has explicitly been
kept separate from knowledge of subject matter. On purpose? ;-) ?
Even Deweyans often tend to separate epistemology and ethics; they
could know better and some try. Dewey himself has almost in vain and
very lonely fighted this separation. But valuation is of relations
between states of subject matter in relation to some valuator, isn't
it? What else? "Freedom / responsibility" may become ideology imbued
as soon as it is discussed and people with invested interests will
see they would have much harder to harvest results of their mastering
efforts. This is unavoidable. But could we not carefully distinguish
between what is factual or general in such debates and what is in the
perspective of particular interests?
I have enough of discussing endlessly around terms and their
definitions as long as their understanding, in addition to historical
fixations, is mostly ad hoc and according to interest and only
selectively related to other terms and not embedded in an overall
view, an evolutive view, of the human condition.
Alfred
-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch Website: http://www.psy.unibe.ch/ukp/langpapers/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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