Chapter on "Politics" (2) -- Anthropocentric and Sociogenic Freedom -- Preliminary Conclusions

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Continued from here.

I am working my way toward differentiating politics as such, politics prior to the emergence of modern freedom, and politics under a regime of liberty.

From my post King George I - From Anthropocentric Liberty to Sociogenic Liberty:

The Georgian era deserves a prominent place in the growth-history of freedom - it is part of the historic hinge connecting anthropogenic and sociogenic liberty.

For more, see this reminder of George I: an unlikely free market poster boy.

We can learn a number of lessons from contemplating the Georgian period, most notably that politics and the state are of the essence in order for freedom to expand and settle into the depth structure of culture and society.

The other lesson to be learned from a period that was both enormously conducive to the growth of freedom, and at the same time still overcrowded with situations of unfreedom:

We may develop notions of ideal freedom to our heart's content, but in reality freedom can never be complete; she must grow, and being the result of a tug-of-war between the equally powerful human propensities of individualism and collectivism, she must grow crookedly - her nature demands it.

It is misleading to conceive of liberty as a process of steady approximation toward ever more complete freedom, like filling a basin by and by with some uniform liquid until it is full to the brim.

We ought to challenge and, indeed, reverse the claim that freedom is indivisible - to the contrary, she is necessarily discontinuous, contracting and growing along with states of affairs detrimental to aspects of freedom some of us may consider important and inviolable.

Imagine a continuum with no freedom on one end and total freedom on the other. Both extremes are impossible.

Anthropocentric freedom

Human beings are endowed with capabilities, an urge, and the need to act autonomously.

If I were to face Hitler, I might spit at him - that is anthropocentric liberty, the ability to act at one's own discretion, even under conditions highly restrictive of free, personally spontaneous conduct. Man is capable of autonomous action, in considerably larger measure than any other animal. This makes him an agent seeking to expand liberty. In acting out this propensity, man may subdue, oppress, and enslave other human beings - and actually has done so copiously for the longest period in human history.

Sociogenic freedom

Then there is a quantum leap. The age of sociogenic liberty sees an entirely new form of human culture. Liberty is no longer chiefly a matter of personal inclination, skill and luck; it is now the result of the manner in which we all generally relate to one another by heeding certain rules and refraining from certain forms of conduct. Liberty becomes a social convention or set of practices, a network of rules that are being generally observed. Liberty advances from being a highly restricted personal option to being a social tool liberating (vast numbers of) an entire population.

The continuum of freedom

It is due to the eternal presence of anthropocentric liberty that there can never be a complete absence of freedom. Think of the man spitting Hitler in the face.

And it is due to sociogenic liberty that there can never be total freedom. Put differently, total freedom is conceptually impossible - in a free society people are free to disagree, and disagree they will. Not only will people have different ideas of freedom, there will be people who challenge and violate what others may unanimously regard as representing freedom.

Freedom is an ongoing process of finding out what freedom means, and what she can and what she must bear.

On the continuum of freedom there is a middle stretch, far away from "no freedom" and far away from "total freedom". It is the range, within which robust (not all conceivable nor all desirable) criteria of liberty are being fulfilled, so that we have an open access society (civil society), which in turn is characterised by considerable independence of individuals and their (private) organisations from arbitrary transgression by other citizens and especially by specialists in violence and governance.

Continued here.