From: "Bob Malecki" <malecki-AT-mail.bip.net>
Subject: SV: M-TH: Re: free will
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 18:05:11 +0100






>On Wed, 11 Feb 1998, James Heartfield wrote:
>
>> Your (Hugh's) reading of the passage from Marx is, I think, wrong, at
>least as
>> far as you can go in that short rendition. The problem is that you paint
>> the relationship between freedom and necessity analytically as a
>> definition between the two, as if the question was answered by
>> indicating the boundary between them, where one ends and the other
>> begins. This, I suggest is the reason that especially anglo-American
>> philosophy has grappled so fruitlessly with the freedom/necessity
>> counterposition.
>
>I do not think that is what Hugh was doing, but supposing that it was, I'm
>not sure what the problem with doing that would be. In the ordinary manner
>of speaking, the concept of freedom means that I could do otherwise, that
>it doesn't have to be, that it's not necessary. To show that I can be free
>even if what I do must be done that way, that I have no choice or no
>choice to choose otherwise than I do, that would require a new notion of
>freedom. I don't think any other philosophical tardition has done better
>wwith handling this than the Anglo-American one, certainly not the Germans
>or the French.
>
>>
>> I think I am right in saying that the original quote from Engels is that
>> freedom is the recognition of necessity and the leap from necessity, ie
>> in coming into consciousness of itself, (human)necessity is transformed
>> into freedom.
>
>Yeah, that's right. And it sure is helpful to say taht, isn't it? Once I
>recognize that I cannot do otherwise that "cannot do otherwise" becomes
>freedom, which apparently no longer implies "can do otherwise."
>
>>
>> By contrast the english freedom/necessity problematic is rigidly
>> definitional. Freedom is the space in which round pegs rattle in the
>> necessity of their square holes. But freedom must contain necessity as a
>> subordinate moment, otherwise it is not freedom, to put it in Hegelese.
>>
>
>I suppose you will say that I am being boringly definitional, although in
>fact I am just rareding on an implication of the commonsense notion of
>freedom and not offering a definition of it. But suppose we say taht
>feedom must contain necessity asa  subordinate moment. What does that
>meand and how does it help? If we cannot do otherwise, in what sense are
>we free?
>
>> Marx's more prosaic formulation was that the boundary between freedom
>> and necessity changes - he used the example of an ocean, that at one
>> moment represents a barrier to men's travels, and at the next becomes a
>> means of their travels (by the development of navigation).
>>
>Sounds like compatibilism: we're free, even though we cannot do otherise,
>in the sense that we can sometimes act to get what we want. That is a
>respectable and time-honored solution, nothing dark and Hegelian about it,
>but many find it unsatisying, and I can see why. As I said before, if what
>we want is determined, how we are any more free than if we were run by
>electrodes in our brains?
>
>> This relates back to the previous discussion on agency. I say Marx's
>> critique of the limitations of bourgeois freedom is not a rejection of
>> the idea of freedom per se. On the contrary, it only makes sense in that
>> it reveals the limited idea of freedom on the market, and therefore the
>> broader conception of freedom in social revolution. Marx is not aiming
>> to demolish freedom, but to save it from the cramped and truncated
>> conditions it subsists under in a capitalist society.
>>
>
>This is certainly true.


Justin's reply here is exactly what I mean when Jim leaves his thesis
hanging in the air without any class content. Justin I believe is trying to
say I accept the present options of "freedom" that society gives me and thus
work inside of those bounds.

That is because he is looking at it from and individualistic perspective
rather then a class perspectice. Marx did say also that "the working class
has nothing to lose but its chains"..Obviously this is counter-posed to the
present rather flumy discussion going on here...

Warm regards
Bob Malecki




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