Tag: freedom

Education for a new liberty

Aber es bleibt wahr, daß die Art und Weise, in der entwickelte Gesellschaften die geschaftliche Arbeitsteilung organi­siert haben, eine Reihe von Fragen offen läßt, die eine auf Melioration bedachte Gesellschaft beantworten muß, wenn sie sich ihres Namens würdig erweisen will: Wie ist es möglich, Menschen auf die übrigen Tätigkeiten ihrens Lebens in einer Umgebung vorzubereiten, die absichtlich von diesen Tätigkeiten abgesondert ist? Welche Chancen gibt es für diejenigen, die nach einer Zeit der Berufstätigkeit erneut etwas lernen wollen, neue Dinge oder mehr über die Gegen­stände ihrer ursprünglichen Ausbildung? Welchen vernünftigen Sinn kann es haben, einerseits die Arbeit der Men­schen übermäßig zu determinieren und anderersiets ihre Freizeit bewußt undeterminiert zu lassen? … Welchen Sinn hat es, Menschen, die viele Erfahrungen gesammelt haben, gesund sind und arbeiten wollen, in Pension zu schicken? Diese Fragen sind nicht neu; auch läßt sich auf alle durchaus eine Antwort geben. Aber ich meine, daß wir, wenn wir unser Leben bessern wollen, begreifen müssen, daß Bildung mehr ist als die Vorbereitung auf künftige Pflichten, Arbeit mehr als eine unangenehme Last, derer man sich so schnell wie möglich entledigen muß, und Freizeit mehr als eine residuale Zeit, um den Garten zu pflegen, an den Motorrädern der Freunde zu basteln, Fußball zu spielen, Musik zu hören, aber auch sich zu langweilen, sich zu betrinken, das eigene Leben zu zerstören und das von anderen. Die Re­konstruktion des sozialen Lebens der Menschen muß die Versteinerungen einer verfehlten Arbeitsteilung überwinden. Sie zielt darauf ab, die Einheit des menschlichen Lebens wiederherzustellen, oder vielleicht zum ersten Mal überhaupt herzustellen, so daß soziale Lebenschancen einen kontinuierlichen Prozeß menschlicher Tätigkeit versprechen, der in vielfältigen Dimensionen und Weisen seinen Ausdruck findet. Der erste Schritt auf diesem Wege liegt in der Schleifung der Wälle zwischen Bildung, Arbeit und Freizeit. …

Die zentrale Aufgabe der Bildung liegt indes nicht darin, Ersatzteile für den Wirtschaftsprozeß zu produzieren, sondern menschliche Fähigkeiten zu entfalten, indem sie für vielfältige Wahlmöglichkeiten geöffnet und nicht auf angebliche Anforderungen hin getrimmt werden. Darum sollte die Erziehung junger Menschen weit und nicht eng, allgemein und nicht spezialisiert und vor allem nicht zu lang sein. [93-4]

The only legitimate aim of violent revolution

I am not in all cases and under all circumstances against a violent revolution. I believe with some medieval and Renais­sance Christian thinkers who taught the admissibility of tyrannicide that there may indeed, under a tyranny, be no other possibility, and that a violent revolution may be justified. But I also believe that any such revolution should have as its only aim the establishment of a democracy; and by a democracy I do not mean something as vague as ‘the rule of the people’ or ‘the rule of the majority’, but a set of institutions (among them especially general elections, i.e. the right of the people to dismiss their government) which permit public control of the rulers and their dismissal by the ruled, and which make it possible for the ruled to obtain reforms without using violence, even against the will of the rulers. In other words, the use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms without violence impossible, and it should have only one aim, that is, to bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms without violence possible.

I do not believe that we should ever attempt to achieve more than that by violent means. For I believe that such an attempt would involve the risk of destroying all prospects of reasonable reform. The prolonged use of violence may lead in the end to the loss of freedom, since it is liable to bring about not a dispassionate rule of reason, but the rule of the strong man. A violent revolution which tries to attempt more than the destruction of tyranny is at least as likely to bring about another tyranny as it is likely to achieve its real aims.

There is only one further use of violence in political quarrels which I should consider justified. I mean the resistance, once democracy has been attained, to any attack (whether from within or without the state) against the democratic con­stitution and the use of democratic methods. Any such attack, especially if it comes from the government in power, or if it is tolerated by it, should be resisted by all loyal citizens, even to the use of violence. In fact, the working of democracy rests largely upon the understanding that a government which attempts to misuse its powers and to establish itself as a tyranny (or which tolerates the establishment of a tyranny by anybody else) outlaws itself, and that the citizens have not only a right but also a duty to consider the action of such a government as a crime, and its members as a dangerous gang of criminals. But I hold that such violent resistance to attempts to overthrow democracy should be unambiguously defensive. No shadow of doubt must be left that the only aim of the resistance is to save democracy. [ch. 19, 414-5]

Democracy vs the rule of the majority

[T]here is also a kind of logical argument which can be used to show the inconsistency of any of the particular forms of the theory of sovereignty; more precisely, the logical argument can be given different but analogous forms to combat the theory that the wisest should rule, or else the theories that the best, or the law, or the majority, etc., should rule. One particular form of this logical argument is directed against a too naive version of liberalism, of democracy, and of the principle that the majority should rule; and it is somewhat similar to the well-known ‘paradox of freedom’ which has been used first, and with success, by Plato. In his criticism of democracy, and in his story of the rise of the tyrant, Plato raises implicitly the following question: What if it is the will of the people that they should not rule, but a tyrant instead? The free man, Plato suggests, may exercise his absolute freedom, first by defying the laws and ultimately by defying freedom itself and by clamouring for a tyrant. This is not just a far-fetched possibility; it has happened a number of times; and every time it has happened, it has put in a hopeless intellectual position all those democrats who adopt, as the ultimate basis of their political creed, the principle of the majority rule or a similar form of the principle of sovereignty. On the one hand, the principle they have adopted demands from them that they should oppose any but the majority rule, and therefore the new tyranny; on the other hand, the same principle demands from them that they should accept any decision reached by the majority, and thus the rule of the new tyrant. The inconsistency of their theory must, of course, paralyse their actions. Those of us democrats who demand the institutional control of the rulers by the ruled, and especially the right of dismissing the government by a majority vote, must therefore base these demands upon better grounds than a self-contradictory theory of sovereignty. [ch. 7, 134-5]

Freedom: Liberalism vs Libertarianism

Although the political theory which I call protectionism is not connected with any of these tendencies, and although it is fundamentally a liberal theory, I think that the name may be used to indicate that, though liberal, it has nothing to do with the policy of strict non-intervention (often, but not quite correctly, called ‘laissez faire’). Liberalism and state-interference are not opposed to each other. On the contrary, any kind of freedom is clearly impossible unless it is guaranteed by the state. [ch. 6, 121]

The paradox of freedom

Now this argument which tries to show that ‘liberty’ is the same as ‘a liberty’ and therefore the same as ‘law’, from which it follows that the more laws, the more liberty, is clearly nothing but a clumsy statement (clumsy because it relies on a kind of pun) of the paradox of freedom, first discovered by Plato …; a paradox that can be expressed by saying that unlimited freedom leads to its opposite, since without its protection and restriction by law, freedom must lead to a tyranny of the strong over the weak. This paradox, vaguely restated by Rousseau, was solved by Kant, who demanded that the freedom of each man should be restricted, but not beyond what is necessary to safeguard an equal degree of freedom for all. [ch. 12, 296]

To remain human

Once we begin to rely upon our reason, and to use our powers of criticism, once we feel the call of personal responsi­bilities, and with it, the responsibility of helping to advance knowledge, we cannot return to a state of implicit submission to tribal magic. For those who have eaten of the tree of knowledge, paradise is lost. The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism. Beginning with the suppression of reason and truth, we must end with the most brutal and violent destruction of all that is human. There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. If we turn back, then we must go the whole way—we must return to the beasts.

It is an issue which we must face squarely, hard though it may be for us to do so. If we dream of a return to our child­hood, if we are tempted to rely on others and so be happy, if we shrink from the task of carrying our cross, the cross of humaneness, of reason, of responsibility, if we lose courage and flinch from the strain, then we must try to fortify our­selves with a clear understanding of the simple decision before us. We can return to the beasts. But if we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure, using what reason we may have to plan as well as we can for both security and freedom. [ch. 10, 218]

The subversiveness of freedom

The enemies of freedom have always charged its defenders with subversion. And nearly always they have succeeded in persuading the guileless and well-meaning. [ch. 6, 97-8]

Democracy cannot create freedom

Popper did not regard socialism or capitalism or any economic system as an end in itself. He thought that such systems are to be valued—and evaluated—primarily as means toward freedom. The same holds true for political systems. Even democracy should be valued as a means to another end. It may well help us to preserve freedom, but it can never create freedom if we ourselves do not care for it. [187]

Cultural objectivism

Some laws and customs can be very cruel, while others provide for mutual help and the relief of suffering. Some countries and their laws respect freedom while others do less, or not at all. These differences are most important, and they must not be dismissed or shrugged off by a cultural relativism, or by the claim that different laws and customs are due to different standards, or different ways of thinking, or different conceptual frameworks, and that they are therefore incommensurable or incomparable. On the contrary, we should try to understand and to compare. We should try to find out who has the better institutions. And we should try to learn from them. [46]

God: the ultimate guarantee for man’s freedom?

For instance, it was one thing for a circumscribed group of intellectuals to discuss atheism, as had happened up to now, quite another to arrange for its popular diffusion and propaganda via a publishing campaign like that attempted without great success by adherents of the Radical Enlightenment. It was one thing for the different Christian denominations and the great revealed religions to be split by bloody and incomprehensible theological controversies. It was another matter entirely to posit point blank the idea of establishing a new universal and natural religion common to all the peoples in the world, a religion that was rational—devoid of dogmas, churches, hierarchies, and priests—and that would take hold first among the élites and then among the rest of the population. This implied the existence of a God who was very far away and frankly uninterested in human events, and whose sole function was that of granting the ultimate guarantee for man’s freedom and responsibility and none whatsoever for the authority of any Church. [xii]