Freedom emerges together with individualism. The scope for autonomous individual action is not infinite, but there is a huge difference between the latitude of personal responsibility and initiative in modern man and the member of a tightly knit tribal community.
The Culture-Questioning Human
Perhaps the most telling sign of this stark distinction is the fact that modern man will be tolerated if he calls his community into question. In fact, in some sense, a large part of our life is dedicated to calling our community into question, at least insofar as scientific progress, economic transformation, and the attendant political, social, and cultural changes are concerned.
The modern free individual is engaged in constantly rebuilding his social environment. Within a generation social institutions may alter their status from taboo-protected totem to laughing stock (think marriage or religiousness) or vice versa (think homosexuality).
Pre-modern man is a chess piece obeying the logic of a game that he has been handed. Modern man is still a chess piece; however, in the kind of chess game that he is being moved about he plays a part in defining the rules.
Culture- Shaping Man - Political Involvement and the Inscription of Meaning into Social Life
Modern man uses politics to inscribe his own patterns of meaning into the world. His pride is not restricted to playing an ordained game well but extends to writing the play himself or acting as its critic.
Modular Man
The Culture-Questioning Human
Perhaps the most telling sign of this stark distinction is the fact that modern man will be tolerated if he calls his community into question. In fact, in some sense, a large part of our life is dedicated to calling our community into question, at least insofar as scientific progress, economic transformation, and the attendant political, social, and cultural changes are concerned.
The modern free individual is engaged in constantly rebuilding his social environment. Within a generation social institutions may alter their status from taboo-protected totem to laughing stock (think marriage or religiousness) or vice versa (think homosexuality).
Pre-modern man is a chess piece obeying the logic of a game that he has been handed. Modern man is still a chess piece; however, in the kind of chess game that he is being moved about he plays a part in defining the rules.
Culture- Shaping Man - Political Involvement and the Inscription of Meaning into Social Life
Modern man uses politics to inscribe his own patterns of meaning into the world. His pride is not restricted to playing an ordained game well but extends to writing the play himself or acting as its critic.
Modular Man
He fragments social life into countless private building blocks that by his choices may be arrayed and rearranged in infinite permutations. He alters himself according to the modules he wishes to connect with. In his relation to society, he is no longer assuming a role that has been written for him to act it out, instead he becomes an autonomous, experimental, and creative agent; he tries to author society himself, or at least co-author his station in it and the episodes in which he appears. Man's identify become variable, accordingly his comportment is productive of a permanent series of changes, consisting of countless acts of self-assertion. More on modular man.
I have written repeatedly and copiously on the resultant need for new ways of handling issues of justice. And in a free society, justice is a crystallisation of political pressures. That is why politics is foundational under advanced freedom.
I have written repeatedly and copiously on the resultant need for new ways of handling issues of justice. And in a free society, justice is a crystallisation of political pressures. That is why politics is foundational under advanced freedom.
Roundaboutness of Politics within the Division of Labour - A Thought on General Rules For Special Players
This is a thought which occurred to me when I was pondering the observation that only relatively few people actively participate in politics. So why then is the engine of politics always running at high-speed and making such a great impact on our lives all the time?
It takes only a minority to supply an economy with a sufficient number of entrepreneurs, who, in turn, set in motion a disproportionate thrust of economic activity. This is why it is important to maintain economic freedom, even if, actually: precisely because, only relatively few people, owing to the majority's lack of entrepreneurial experience, can relate to the need of it.
It takes only a minority to supply an economy with a sufficient number of entrepreneurs, who, in turn, set in motion a disproportionate thrust of economic activity. This is why it is important to maintain economic freedom, even if, actually: precisely because, only relatively few people, owing to the majority's lack of entrepreneurial experience, can relate to the need of it.
We are facing an analogous situation with respect to the politically active person, the political entrepreneur, if you like. While there should be no entry barriers to political participation among the full-aged population in a free society, novelty, change, and significant adaptation, either by bold leaps or due to perseverant plodding, in the political field can be left to comparatively small numbers of society's members - not unlike the business of baking bread which does not employ an overwhelmingly large amount of workers, yet does play an important role within the overall division of labour.
Politics takes place within a general division of labour. This deserves to be noted not least because it helps us understand the roundabout way in which politics necessarily works in a functioning democratic culture. i.e a freedom-regarding political order. The idea of direct democracy or self-government as an unmediated expression of the will of the people is a case of words running ahead of reality.
There can be no such thing as the instantaneous rule of the people. However, implying its possibility is a popular straw-man used to denigrate democracy. He who appreciates politics's suffusion within a division of labour is more sensitive to the necessarily roundabout nature of freedom-regarding democratic politics.
For democracy to work well it needs to work in roundabout fashion. Democratic politics is improved by a political division of labour that separates specialists from non-specialists, producers from consumers, operators from users etc.
Political Proliferation of Freedoms - Political Products and Popper's World 3
Liberty encourages people to form their own opinions, thus abetting disagreement and intellectual tension in society. The proliferation of individual political views among the ordinary population creates a new dimension in human history altogether.
Political Debate Is a Creative Process that Changes and Multiplies Our Perceptions of Reality
Politics is part and parcel of Popper's World 3, which contains the products of the human mind (both
Indeterminacy of the Results of Politics - Intended Unintendedness
This is an important observation pointing us to the natural indeterminacy of politics in a free society. We will discover implications of our political decisions that emerge gradually and whose comprehension takes special effort and often a lot of time, like scientific advances. The catch-cry of "unintended consequences" is easily misused by overemphasising negative implications, and omitting from the picture the fact that we cannot move toward progress unless hazarding unintended consequences, negative and positive. Of course, it is true that political decisions may be unwise and detrimental and that greater circumspection might spare us negative unintended consequences. But then, there are virtually no decisions that man can take that are void of unintended consequences. Our most productive and benign activities generate unintended consequences whose gradual investigation is the mainstay of scientific progress and advancement in human knowledge.
In short: in raising the spectre of unintended negative consequences, liberals seek to wean us from the political habit and hope to gain our support for principles instead of politics to shape society. But there are no principles that could replace the human desire and need to discover and experiment with her social world. Politics is part of the human condition, influencing the set of norms that rule us - which is what politics is about - is built into man's equipment for survival.
Politics and Science - An Affinity
By insisting on an open-ended discovery process in science and politics we intend, as it were, unintendedness, i.e. we intend to admit unintended consequences. Rigid social systems and ideologies aspire to a certain world without unintended consequences.
Man is too intelligent to subscribe to a simplistic uniform conception of freedom.
Man is torn between too much and too little freedom. An absolute lack of freedom is impossible owing to the constitutive individualism of the human animal. A person will always take action to increase his freedom, which is the same as trying to change the surrounding to accommodate one's wishes and needs. No form of oppression and other-directedness can be complete enough to reduce the freedom of a person to nil, unless that person is physically annihilated. In his efforts to be free, that person will encounter opposition from inanimate structures, animals and human beings, and he will make more or less intense efforts to defend his freedom against the resisting forces.
Also, there can never be total freedom. Being individuals, people are bound to have different views of freedom. Moreover, they have diverging interests to accommodate, which means that - even granting a common understanding of the term - they will at least interpret the logical implications and practical consequences of freedom differently, which will tend to lead to considerable denominational variations, so that by way of evolutionary selection and mutation people not only interpret the a common semantics of freedom differently but eventually attach distinct meanings to the term.
Anthropological Aspects - Anthropogenic Freedom and Sociogenic Freedom
Man is born capable of anthropogenic freedom - a set of dispositions to act according to his volition. In fact, you cannot be a human being without acting out anthropogenic freedom - meaning: to undertake action that can be triggered only by your intending to. Being born into a position in the universe that no one else can take, a person establishes her individuality by following her innate anthropogenic dispositions, i.e her unique propensities to engage in acts corresponding to the her volition - acts of initiative and disobedience, acts representing disagreement with or deviance from alternatives conceived by others.
Politics - A Competition between Self-regarding Freedom and Other-regarding Freedom
Of self-regarding, self-centred origin, efforts at personal (anthropocentric) liberty are apt to engender conflicts with others striving similarly, so that freedom is pitted against freedom. Mutual influencing (politics) may start off rather crudely, with one party killing or suppressing another, but more moderate forms of taking influence develop alongside, and thus man is embarked upon a long journey towards sociogenic freedom, a state where the norms observed in a community are such as to grant maximal anthropogenic freedom to all simultaneously. Thus, freedom is not an unmitigated form of personal behaviour but based on conduct strongly restrained by customary social norms.
Politics is about working out sociogenic freedom. The politics of freedom is the art of restricting any particularistic freedom to establish the most efficient set of admissible moves in a comprehensive game of mutually compatible personal freedom.
Continued here.
Politics takes place within a general division of labour. This deserves to be noted not least because it helps us understand the roundabout way in which politics necessarily works in a functioning democratic culture. i.e a freedom-regarding political order. The idea of direct democracy or self-government as an unmediated expression of the will of the people is a case of words running ahead of reality.
There can be no such thing as the instantaneous rule of the people. However, implying its possibility is a popular straw-man used to denigrate democracy. He who appreciates politics's suffusion within a division of labour is more sensitive to the necessarily roundabout nature of freedom-regarding democratic politics.
For democracy to work well it needs to work in roundabout fashion. Democratic politics is improved by a political division of labour that separates specialists from non-specialists, producers from consumers, operators from users etc.
Political Proliferation of Freedoms - Political Products and Popper's World 3
Liberty encourages people to form their own opinions, thus abetting disagreement and intellectual tension in society. The proliferation of individual political views among the ordinary population creates a new dimension in human history altogether.
Political Debate Is a Creative Process that Changes and Multiplies Our Perceptions of Reality
Politics is part and parcel of Popper's World 3, which contains the products of the human mind (both
(1) unembodied objects such as abstract entities (and, most probably, universals), mathematical entities, social institutions and objective knowledge, andMore here.
(2) embodied entities that are products of human design, engineering and production such as buildings, books, clothes, money, and art works considered as human objects.
Indeterminacy of the Results of Politics - Intended Unintendedness
This is an important observation pointing us to the natural indeterminacy of politics in a free society. We will discover implications of our political decisions that emerge gradually and whose comprehension takes special effort and often a lot of time, like scientific advances. The catch-cry of "unintended consequences" is easily misused by overemphasising negative implications, and omitting from the picture the fact that we cannot move toward progress unless hazarding unintended consequences, negative and positive. Of course, it is true that political decisions may be unwise and detrimental and that greater circumspection might spare us negative unintended consequences. But then, there are virtually no decisions that man can take that are void of unintended consequences. Our most productive and benign activities generate unintended consequences whose gradual investigation is the mainstay of scientific progress and advancement in human knowledge.
In short: in raising the spectre of unintended negative consequences, liberals seek to wean us from the political habit and hope to gain our support for principles instead of politics to shape society. But there are no principles that could replace the human desire and need to discover and experiment with her social world. Politics is part of the human condition, influencing the set of norms that rule us - which is what politics is about - is built into man's equipment for survival.
Politics and Science - An Affinity
By insisting on an open-ended discovery process in science and politics we intend, as it were, unintendedness, i.e. we intend to admit unintended consequences. Rigid social systems and ideologies aspire to a certain world without unintended consequences.
Man is too intelligent to subscribe to a simplistic uniform conception of freedom.
Man is torn between too much and too little freedom. An absolute lack of freedom is impossible owing to the constitutive individualism of the human animal. A person will always take action to increase his freedom, which is the same as trying to change the surrounding to accommodate one's wishes and needs. No form of oppression and other-directedness can be complete enough to reduce the freedom of a person to nil, unless that person is physically annihilated. In his efforts to be free, that person will encounter opposition from inanimate structures, animals and human beings, and he will make more or less intense efforts to defend his freedom against the resisting forces.
Also, there can never be total freedom. Being individuals, people are bound to have different views of freedom. Moreover, they have diverging interests to accommodate, which means that - even granting a common understanding of the term - they will at least interpret the logical implications and practical consequences of freedom differently, which will tend to lead to considerable denominational variations, so that by way of evolutionary selection and mutation people not only interpret the a common semantics of freedom differently but eventually attach distinct meanings to the term.
Anthropological Aspects - Anthropogenic Freedom and Sociogenic Freedom
Man is born capable of anthropogenic freedom - a set of dispositions to act according to his volition. In fact, you cannot be a human being without acting out anthropogenic freedom - meaning: to undertake action that can be triggered only by your intending to. Being born into a position in the universe that no one else can take, a person establishes her individuality by following her innate anthropogenic dispositions, i.e her unique propensities to engage in acts corresponding to the her volition - acts of initiative and disobedience, acts representing disagreement with or deviance from alternatives conceived by others.
Politics - A Competition between Self-regarding Freedom and Other-regarding Freedom
Of self-regarding, self-centred origin, efforts at personal (anthropocentric) liberty are apt to engender conflicts with others striving similarly, so that freedom is pitted against freedom. Mutual influencing (politics) may start off rather crudely, with one party killing or suppressing another, but more moderate forms of taking influence develop alongside, and thus man is embarked upon a long journey towards sociogenic freedom, a state where the norms observed in a community are such as to grant maximal anthropogenic freedom to all simultaneously. Thus, freedom is not an unmitigated form of personal behaviour but based on conduct strongly restrained by customary social norms.
Politics is about working out sociogenic freedom. The politics of freedom is the art of restricting any particularistic freedom to establish the most efficient set of admissible moves in a comprehensive game of mutually compatible personal freedom.
Continued here.
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