Freedom

Paper presented on 23 March 2021 at Emigrantica Continues: in memory of Oleg Anatolyevich Korostelev, the International Scientific Conference organised by  A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.

Paper presented on 18 March 2021 at Biblical Interpretation and Theology Seminar, School of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Glasgow.

One of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, the philosopher Lev Shestov (1866-1938) understood the purpose of his philosophy as breaking the logical and idealistic continuity of argument. He proposed that at a time of deep crisis the human mind may acquire a new dimension which lies beyond one’s own intellectual grasp. Struck by an intrinsic connection between anxiety and death, the Russian thinker saw the aim of his philosophy as teaching us to live our lives without certainty and helping us to confront our existential fear and anxiety in the face of inevitable death. In the aftermath of his witnessing the Bolshevik Revolution, during the year of his exile from Russia, Shestov wrote a parable about receiving ‘the mysterious gift’ of ‘a new pair of eyes’ from the Angel of Death (1921). The philosopher suggested that the ‘second vision’ gifted by the Angel of Death could empower an individual human facing a life threatening situation to embrace the hopelessness, uncertainty and despair in the finite reality of his or her life. The parable of the Angel of Death, the story of Shestov’s striking discovery of a different kind of reality, which made a lasting impression on his contemporaries, extended the philosopher’s investigation beyond rational knowledge.
This new interpretation of Lev Shestov’s philosophy focuses on the notion of ‘awakening’ [pererozhdenije] as the possibility of acquiring an ‘unfathomable creative force’ that could enable the human mind to see the ‘ultimate truth’. Drawing on the interchangeable oppositions of life/ death and possibility/ impossibility in Shestov’s philosophical vision, I propose that the concept of the gift of the Angel of Death conveys his idea of the ‘created freedom’, which exists beyond a reasonably verbal form and is unspeakable.

Jüngere Formen des (Neo-)Republikanismus fordern, die politische Theorie wieder stärker herrschaftskritisch auszurichten, und wenden sich damit vor allem auch gegen den klassischen Liberalismus. Dieser Artikel zeigt am Beispiel von John Stuart Mill zunächst, dass diese Diagnose fehlgeht. Insbesondere in Mills Schriften zur Geschlechterunterdrückung lässt sich nachzeichnen, dass in der "Erfindung" des Liberalismus im 19. Jahrhundert tatsächlich Problemstellungen des historisch früheren Republikanismus aufgegriffen werden. Unter dem Eindruck der geänderten gesellschaftlich-politischen Verhältnisse sowie der neuen Perspektiven werden die republikanischen Ausgangspunkte allerdings korrigiert und weiterentwickelt. Über den Ansatz von Ronald Dworkin wird daran anschließend rekonstruiert, wie dieser die republikanisch-liberale Vor-gehensweise zurückweist und den Liberalismus grundsätzlich neu bestimmt. Es kommt zum Übergang von einem Freiheits-zu einem Gleichheitsfokus, was wichtige Folgen für die gesellschaftlichen und politischen Phänomene und Konfliktlagen hat, die thematisiert werden können. Der dritte Abschnitt dieses Artikels fragt, ob es dem Neo-Republikanismus gelingt, normative Grundlagen und Herrschaftskritik wieder enger miteinander zu verbinden. Im Gegensatz zur Selbstwahrnehmung kehrt der Neo-Republikanismus aber in seiner Theoriestruktur nicht zum früheren Republikanismus zurück. Er verbleibt vielmehr in der Theoriestruktur des jüngeren Li-beralismus und nimmt lediglich Veränderungen in den normativen Grundlagen vor, die politischen Institutionen größere Bedeutung zuweisen. Abschließend wird demgegenüber argumentiert, dass es sich lohnt, die Theoriestruktur aufzunehmen, die sich sowohl im Republikanismus wie auch im frühen Liberalismus findet und von minimalen normativen Überlegungen ausgehend mögliche Beherrschungsphänomene und-formen diskutiert.

Abstract: Recent versions of (neo-)republicanism call for political theory to focus more on the critical analysis of domination, which it is argued classical liberalism had forsaken. Using John Stuart Mill as an example, the present article first shows that this critical diagnosis of liberalism is mistaken. Especially in Mill's writings on gender oppression, one can observe that the "invention" of liberalism in the 19th century actually addresses problems of the historically earlier republicanism. Under the impression of the changed socio-political conditions and the new perspectives, however, the initial assumptions of the republicans are corrected and further developed. By drawing on the work of Ronald Dworkin the present article then demonstrates how he rejects the republican-liberal approach and how he fundamentally redefines liberalism. Dworkin argues for a transition from a focus on freedom to a focus on equality, and this has important consequences the kind of social and political phenomena and conflict situations he can address. The third section of the article asks whether neorepublicanism succeeds in strengthening the link between normative foundations and the critique of power again. In contrast to its self-perception, however, neo-republicanism, in its theoretical structure, does not revert to earlier republicanism. Rather, it remains within the theoretical structure of recent liberalism and merely changes some of the normative foundations and, thus, assigns greater importance to political institutions. In conclusion, it is argued that it is worth taking up the theoretical structure found in both republicanism and early liberalism and discussing possible phenomena and forms of domination based on rather minimal normative considerations.

PRESENTAZIONE. Viviamo un'era caotica, tormentata socialmente, economicamente e psicologicamente. Molte certezze che permisero finanche ai disperati sessantottini d'identificarsi con un'idea politica o religiosa sono scomparse senza che nulla abbia avuto capacità di sostituirle, se non per eccezione di un archetipo preminente di crescita monetaria che coinvolgerebbe tutti gli strati sociali, ma che in effetti ne premia pochi! Idea che, infatti, pur diffusa e nota, è propria solo dalle élite dominanti che la classificano come globalizzazione dei mercati. Globalizzazione che potrebbe avere una modesta logicità per prodotti non deperibili, ma che certo non può essere vera in tema d'agroalimentare, dunque in materia d'alimentazione umana, e ciò sia per la deperibilità dei prodotti, sia per la diversa educazione alimentare delle genti e anche, non certo ultimo concetto, per il loro fabbisogno d'alimentazioni specifiche secondo l'ambiente geografico vissuto. In questa nuova lapalissiana enorme demoralizzazione sociale, dove tutto ruota intorno al libero mercato, anche gli stessi concetti di bene e male, se pur sempre sofferenti per un certo relativismo politico-religioso, più non hanno un accettabile definito contorno. Infatti, troppi tra noi agiscono senz'alcuna certezza che le azioni compiute rispondano a canoni etici, o anche soltanto a necessari compromessi. Così, sempre più spesso nella società s'avverte la necessità di ricorrere a psicoterapeuti e psicologi capaci d'illuminarci. Sotto questo profilo potremmo ricevere aiuto anche da riflessioni sul pensiero di Baruch De Spinoza. Anche i genitori han smesso il loro sapiente lavoro dal marasma generale corrotti, e i figli, già preadolescenti, sono abbandonati in gruppi dove unica legge è l'essere "in" nel branco che rivela discordanza con ogni accadimento già precedentemente noto e codificato; ciò spingendosi sino al punto che solo l'imitazione e la forza fisica

Jacques Derrida had never written a book on "freedom." This word occurs very rarely in his writings until the late '80s; since then, he had increasingly employed it, but with circumspection. In this article, I aim to show that we can trace a thinking of freedom throughout Derrida's work and that this thinking describes a singular trajectory from the subjective freedom of the humanist history of life to the presubjective freedom of symbolic life. To this end, first, I shall explore Derrida's early deconstructive reading of the conception of subjective freedom that underpins modern philosophical and biological accounts of the living. Second, I shall focus on the conception of the other's freedom that Derrida finds at work in the symbolic machine of sovereign decision. The turning point of this trajectory, I shall argue, is the elaboration, proposed by Derrida in the late '80s, of an experience of freedom as nonknowledge that is neutralized by and yet exceeds subjective and sovereign freedom.

Concepts such as freedom cannot be measured and give material measurable results. Freedom is not measured. It leaves its philosophical imprint on independent thought. According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1 , it recedes only to leave room for political freedom The supposed absolute freedom based on the quantity of material goods and choices actually leads to the commitment of individualism. Because it is difficult to change this relationship between materialism and individualism, we focus on philosophical freedom through self-knowledge that will answer the triple question (1) what is best for me (2) what is best for you (3) what is best for community in which we negotiate a win-win-win reasoning for everyone who negotiates with another in the community Thus arises a win-win-win inner freedom with an immeasurable result, which at its limit is identified with the complete independence of the soul and the spirit

In her fifth dystopian novel, The Heart Goes Last, Margaret Atwood portrays North America in the not so far future, in the wake of a global economic crisis. Parts of the country are in the state of complete chaos, subjected to a ruthless gang rule. The solution to the system's breakdown comes in the form of the socio-economic experiment that requires from its participants relinquishing their freedom as every other month they will spend in prison. The seemingly preposterous experimental project enables Atwood to explore principal questions about the limits of our freedom in the times of an economic crisis or a neoliberal model of economy. The satirical form the novel takes, especially towards its end, helps the writer to decry people's over-willingness to give away their freedom and civil liberties in exchange for happy, uninterrupted consumption. The following article aims to demonstrate that the notion of freedom and free will permeate The Heart Goes Last, which is, in that respect, a politically and socially engaged satire.

Theodor W. Adorno published in the decades of the 40s and 50s a few items that are sort of a beginning for future studies on popular music. Although the tone was especially critical, ideas and arguments of Adorno today are still used, also in the field of popular music, as critical to the marketability of certain music as strongly rationalist current musical analysis.

Matthew Arnold declared that Leo Tolstoy's work is meant not to be encountered as a piece of art, but rather as a piece of life. Tolstoy himself sought to engage authentically with the human condition and to interrogate that which animates human action and the major historical events his day. In War and Peace, this historical inquiry was primarily concerned with Napoleon's military and cultural invasion of Russia. In this essay I will consider Tolstoy’s philosophy surrounding free will and human agency as a multi-faceted exploration: first, to investigate the intellectual history of the concept of free will within the Western tradition, dating from antiquity to the Reformation; second, to consider those historical events of 1812 which comprise a large portion of War and Peace, namely Napoleon’s military and cultural invasion of Russia, that which inspired Tolstoy to consider his own philosophy on historical causation and human agency; and finally as a look into the development of the characters and events of the novel by which Tolstoy makes his own philosophy manifest.

E.M. Forster‟s “The Machine Stops” is a classic piece of dystopian literature where he creates a world regulated by an all powerful and omnipotent machine. The story unfolds at a time when the surface of the earth has lost its hospitable condition and human beings are propelled to adopt a life devoid of direct touch with the outer environment. The feeling of isolation, alienation and spiritual void is realized through the character of Kuno and his attempts to make sense of his existence. Much of the tension arises from Kuno‟s inability to belong to the „mechanical‟ way of life and his hunger for satisfaction beyond that machine-made world. What happens when the illusion of stability and order breaks and people are left with their free will constitutes the conflict of the short story. Human resources and its management in a completely technological world are reflected throughout the novella establishing the conflicts and concerns of the post-modern world. Bringing in Sartre‟s existential philosophy, this paper attempts to argue that the climactic scene of the short story reflects the existential horror felt by the characters. This paper will incorporate existentialism as a lens through which one can unravel the apocalyptic vision of the world that finds manifestation in the short story.

The paper explores the problem of death as a central issue of every eschatology, including the Catholic one. Death as a phenomenon and anthropological fact shapes the beginnings of the Old Testament' Eschatology, sharpening its statement in the New Testament' theology crucis. During the history of theology, the theology of death remained within the frame of its interpretation as a consequence of sin and unwanted fate, whereby its positive connection to freedom was left out. Only thanks to some of the contemporary approaches that place death in direct relation to freedom (Moltmann, Rahner, Boros), observing it as a conscious act of an individual, both death and freedom, although at first opposed, become the categories that, observing theologically, transform themselves. In conclusion, the paper attempts to answer the question regarding freedom to die, in the light of some contemporary eschatological debates, and to place the awareness of death in the context of freedom and life, not opposing them.

Therapeutics and Salvation: Freud and Schelling on Freedom proposes a new conceptual perspective on the history of the philosophy of freedom. The book focuses on Sigmund Freud’s theory of freedom, and its fundamental, yet uncharted, connection with the groundbreaking philosophy of the unconscious of F.W.J Schelling. The analysis radically challenges conventional liberal and rationalistic conceptions of freedom in psychoanalysis. The main argument of the book is that Freud formulated his theory of human nature with Schelling’s basic philosophical architecture, in particular Schelling’s concept of freedom, but, at the same time, subverted Schelling’s search for a new theology in the end of the latter's philosophical career. The detailed comparison of Freud’s work with the philosophy of Schelling backtracks a momentous shift from Schelling’s late theo-philosophy, at the endpoint of German Idealism, to the secular system of Freud, in which human reality ousted godly revelation and therapeutics replaced divine salvation. By delineating the move from Schelling’s God-subject relations to Freud’s human-subject relations, the book offers a new perspective on the historical evolution of German Idealism into modern secular thought.

Finally published 34 years after his death, Foucault's book Confessions of the Flesh sheds new light on the debate about freedom and power that shaped the reception of his works. Many contributors to this debate argue that Foucault's theory of power did not allow for freedom in the 'genealogical phase,' but that he corrected himself and presented a solution to the problem of freedom in his later works, especially through his reflection on ancient ethics and technologies of the self in volumes two and three of History of Sexuality, as well as the concept of parrhesia. In contrast to this view, I argue that Confessions of the Flesh shows that a concept of freedom as self-critical hermeneutics that aims at identifying a foreign power within the subject was only developed in Foucault's analysis of Christian practices of penance and confession. This interpretation of Confessions of the Flesh opens a new field of inquiry into the genealogy of critique and both the repressive and emancipative effects of truth-telling and juridification.

ABSTRACT This study (N = 143) examined the effects of freedom threat on cognitive structures, using recycling as its topic. The results of a 2(Freedom Threat: low vs. high) × 2(Postscript: restoration vs. filler) plus 1(Control) experiment indicated that, relative to the control condition, high freedom threat created a boomerang effect for the targeted attitude (recycling) as the attitude and behavioral intention changed in the opposite direction to the one advocated in the message. For the associated but untargeted attitude (energy conservation), reactance effects were less pronounced. Furthermore, a restoration postscript was examined as a reactance mitigation strategy. The restoration postscript was effective for high-but not low-threat messages. In attitude change research, there are instances of persuasive campaigns that have failed to induce change in the direction advocated (e.g., Backer, Rogers, & Sopory, 1992; Hornik, 2002). Moreover, some campaigns have resulted in atti-tude change directly opposite to the position advocated (e.g., Hornik et al., 2001), producing boomerang effects. One theory explaining these adverse effects is the theory of psychological reactance (TPR; J. W. Brehm, 1966). The TPR posits that freedom-threatening messages lead to reactance, which negatively affects persuasion. Research examining the effects of freedom-limiting messages (e.g., Rains & Turner, 2007) suggests that the failure of many campaigns can, indeed, be attributed to reactance. A new direction in the TPR has been the examination of restoration, defined as a strategy designed to reduce the perception of freedom threat, or, in other words, to obviate the effects of reactance (e.g., Miller, Lane, Deatrick, Young, & Potts, 2007). A simple restoration postscript, suggesting that individuals still have the freedom to make a decision, has been found to reduce the perception of the freedom threat (Miller et al., 2007). However, the relationship between restoration postscripts and persuasion has not been examined.

This study aims to find out how literature moves from the postmodern thought, flourished until the 1990s, to the post-postmodern phenomenon. The study traces the evolution of this new phase as depicted in Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections (2001) and Freedom (2010). It proposes these two works as examples of how over the past two decades, literature shifted from postmodernist fiction's irony and skepticism that presents novels as "literature of emergency" to ethical objectivism and neo-realism (Franzen, 2002, p. 258). The purpose of the study is twofold. Firstly, it examines Franzen's deployment of elements such as the subjective perception of truth, self-restraint, control, and knowledge, which he utilizes to understand reality. Secondly, it explores his employment of narrative tools (e.g., omniscient narrator, metafiction, intertextual dialogue) against postmodern fragmentation and deconstruction. By doing so, Franzen, this study demonstrates, reflects post-postmodernism's core realist ideas that stress pragmatic interactions with the characters and readers' cognizance of reality and encourage engagement with the narrative's language to rework the novel's social and cultural authority. These post-postmodern narratives reference fictional texts, real-life people, and authentic historical events that exemplify various models, simulations, and patterns of reality within and beyond the text, creating a mediated experience that enables communication with and understanding reality.

The themes of the existential crisis have been central in taking up their work in different domains of human experience and exhibit the force of departure from the so-called standardized norms and values of a society. These themes have been taken up by many authors of African American origin. This paper attempts to represent and explain the theme of alienation through an in-depth analysis of Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The crisis of identity, gender, consciousness, and everything seemingly comes to question in the powerful narratives of these kinds of writings. One such African American author is Maya Angelou. She is one of those who take these themes with great force and tries to free herself from the shackles of the so-called canonized versions of human values and seeks to explore a world in which she recreates an establishment of her new perspectives and freedom of humanity. The paper concludes by showing the struggles for recognition and self-awareness and developing onto a stronger woman pushed by her feeling of alienation.

1. UMKC Law Rev. 1992 Summer;60(4):665-715. Allocating medical resources and Medicaid: raising the issues from a psychological jurisprudential perspective. Campbell E, Murphy-Berman V, Berman J. PMID: 11659951 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] MeSH Terms: ...