Modern Political Theory

Freedom, one of our most(prenominal) common and powerful concepts, is used (and misused) with extraordinarily little appreciation of its signifi stoogece. Not only is clean-handeddom poorly mum, but we are falsely confident that we do understand it (Dudley 24). One of my main goals in this paper, therefore, is to explain it. In order to do so, in viewence ought to be understood or conceived by comparison.In preparation for these interpretations, the paper leave behind run across very presently the two most important conceptions of lightdom on which Mill and Nietzsche build. The first and less comprehensive of these two is that of liberalism. The second, which is much comprehensive than that of liberalism, is that of Nietzsche. The purpose of this paper is to consider the relationships between the conceptions of liberty developed by Mill and Nietzsche. These conceptions, while undeniably different, are complementary.Nietzsche believed that freedom is one of the fundamental p roblems. But not freedom understood in conventional or semipolitical terms. Freedom for Nietzsche depends upon both clean virtue and intellectual virtue, yet it is neither exercised in or nor achieved through political living. That does not mean that Nietzsches account of freedom is devoid of political implications. To the contrary, his peculiar identification of freedom with philosophy and mastery reflects a rank order of set in which political liberty and legal slavery are essenti aloney indistinguishableboth, from the perspective afforded by the commanding heights above political heart where the free spirit dwells, are equally forms of unfreedom.Addressing a serious word to the most serious, Nietzsche connects freedom to devotion to the truth (BGE 25). While he warns philosophers and friends of knowledge most the temptation to martyrdom involved in suffering for the truths sake (BGE 25), he nevertheless indicates that the truth is worth seeking for those fit for freedom and solitude. Whereas scientific knowledge serves life by fostering ignorance, philosophical knowledge seems to undermine life by estranging the knower from society.Whereas the scientist, a lover of ignorance from Nietzsches perspective, is destined to a pleasant unfreedom, the philosopher, in Nietzsches sense of the term a lover of truth, achieves an excruciating freedom through fidelity to his vocation. This fidelity consists in a measured skepticism directed toward all doctrines, accompanied by a prudent withdrawal from political life.The free spirits knowledge and freedom are not the highest of which human beings are capable. The highest awaits the advent of a new species of philosophers (BGE 42-44). These future philosophers are especially characterized by the risky experiments they undertake. They probably will be friends of truth and very likely will love their truths, but, Nietzsche insists, they will certainly not be dogmatists (BGE 43).By this he does not mean that the new ph ilosophers will lack beliefs they hold to be true, but rather that they will stop from insisting that what is true for them must be a truth for everyman. Yet so far from reflecting a leveling doctrine that celebrates the equality or haughtiness of all opinions, Nietzsches understanding of dogmatism is rooted in the profoundly gamy view that only the higher type of man is fit to hear, and to live in accordance with, the highest insights (BGE 30).While the free spirit remains the new philosophers herald and precursor (BGE 44), there is a chasm on the opposite side between the freedom of the free spirit (der Freie Geist) and the freedom of the falsely so-called free spirits, that is, the freethinkers (Freidenker), the democrats, all the goodly advocates of modern ideas (BGE 44). Free thinkers reveal their unfreedom in their basic inclination to see aristocratic political life as the root of all suffering and misfortune.Nietzsche discovers in the democratic interpretation of politic al life the same offense against truth that he guides Plato perpetrated, for it is a way of standing truth happily up on her head (BGE 44). Democratic freethinkers, wishing to spread material prosperity, guarantee comfort and security, pee-pee universal equality, and most characteristically abolish suffering, are blind to the rank order of human types and hence enslaved to ignorance.What is so terrible from Nietzsches point of view in the promotion of democratic, bourgeois notions of the good is not simply that the democratic interpretation of man is false but rather that, like Socrates theoretical interpretation of public and Christianitys religious interpretation of the world, the democratic interpretation cripples those of high rank by poisoning the air that free spirits breathe.The free spirit is educated and high-sounding not by material prosperity but by deprivation, not by comfort and security but by fear and isolation, not by equality but by slavery, not by the abolition of suffering but by the release of everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in man, and not by enjoyment but by malice against the lures of dependence that lie hidden in honors, or money, or offices, or enthusiasms of the senses (BGE 44). Nietzsche knows of no interest that supersedes, recognizes no right that limits, and sees no good beside that of the higher type. This is not a matter of calculation but of principle.Embracing as his own the struggle to return truth to her feet and restore her dignity, Nietzsche defends truths honor by challenging not only Plato but Christianity, the form in which reality has conquered Europe. The struggle against Christianity has opened up tremendous new possibilities it has created in Europe a magnificent tension of the spirit, the like of which has never yet existed on earth.Note that Nietzsche not only makes philosophy, and its political reflection in Christianity, responsible for the worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors, but, in proclaiming that with so tense a bow we can now shoot for the most distant goals, he also finds in philosophy the source of his highest hope (Dudley 31). That most distant goal, which he speculates is only now coming into view for good Europeans, and free, very free spirits, among whom he classes himself, is a philosophy of the future.Platonism and Christianity granted human beings a sense of security as individuals. Christianity did this by promising a beatific afterlife as a honor for the proper conduct of this life. Platonism gave the individual the hope that individual limitations could be transcended by rational insight which, when fully developed, could transport the soul to an experience of the ultimate, atemporal reality. Christianity and Platonism offered the individual a sense that the activities of this life were meaningful by referring them to unchanging realities outside life.The Platonic-Christian interpretation of individual existence is, in a sense, already dead, concord to Nietzsche. The members of the modern world do not really experience their lives as meaningful as a consequence of these traditions extraworldly visions. But modern human beings who contain come to believe that this world is the only world, this life the only life the individual will ever experience, are likely to be disturbed by this insight. Our Platonic and Christian background has given us the sense that our activities have meaning, yet the ground of that meaning no longer seems available.Nietzsches version of this critique of liberalism is unuttered in his word of honors of decadence. For the decadent subject, it turns out, is precisely one whose will fails to be self-determining. Free volition is reserved for, and is the determining characteristic of, the noble subject, with whom Nietzsche contrasts the decadent. Nietzsches discussions of decadence and nobility can thus fruitfully be understood as addressing the question of the necessary requirements of a free will.Nietzsche also recognizes, like Mill, that even the most freely willing subject remains incompletely free, and that an adequate account of freedom must therefore discuss the activities that provide a liberation that willing cannot. Nietzsches account of the limitations of willing is implicit in his critique of nobility. The noble subject manages to will freely, but nonetheless remains externally determined and so incompletely free.This incomplete freedom of nobility is overcome only by those individuals and communities able to develop the stance that Nietzsche characterizes as tragic. Nietzsche understands the development of the tragic stance required by freedom to depend upon philosophy. He thus add togethers with Mill that freedom is not only treated in philosophical works, but also produced through philosophical practice.Mills discussion of liberty focuses on when society whitethorn impose constraints on individuals, rather than on the nature of constraint. Accordingly, hi s discussion generally refers to intentional, rather than unintentional, constraints on individuals. Nevertheless, Mill believes that tradition and traditions are constraining. To the extent that these are the unintentional results of human life, he is committed to the view that some constraint is unintentional.Mill has argued that the social tyranny of others which takes place in moral coercion, custom, and tradition is one of the most important constraints that hoi polloi face today (Mill 1956 7). For instance, if people express their views that homosexuality or polygamy ought to be allowed, but their neighbors and employers strongly take issue (even though the government does not), they may be constrained in their actions and lifestyles. Finding work may be more difficult access to housing may be blocked. They may feel themselves compelled to move to other cities or countries to live. Thus, though early liberalism placed great emphasis on the limitation of freedom by physical constraint, it is false to maintain that it has only done this.Mill is simply much more sensitive than Nietzsche in recognizing that social pressure may be more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself (Mill 1956 7). Further, Mills view has been dominant amongst liberals. Morality, custom, tradition, and the law are viewed as constraints on peoples freedom. One is less free to the extent that he or she is constrained by any of these institutions.The implication of the preceding expanded concept of constraint is that any narrow or dependant model of liberal freedom can no longer be defended. Once the Pandoras box of constraints is opened, the thrust and momentum of this view is not to be detoured. The burden will always be placed on the person who claims not to see an obstacle by those who claim t o see the obstacle and claim that their activity is hindered, retarded, or impeded by that obstacle.Some liberals have tried to stem this tide, but they fight an overwhelming flood. The thrust of liberalism is such that if an obstacle can be humanly removed, then it will be seen as inhibiting someones freedom if it is not removed. The upshot is an enormous extension in the number and kinds of constraints to which people are thought to be subject. The implications of this are of the first importance.There remains one essential aspect of the liberal determination of when constraints may be imposed on other individuals. How directly or indirectly may individuals impose injuries on themselves or others without being legitimately subject to restraint in the name of freedom? To decide this issue is part and parcel of the liberal attempt to define a sphere of privacy as opposed to publicity a semiprivate realm of freedom, in which people may act, think, and relate to consenting others wi thout constraints imposed by others. In this private realm, and only in this private realm, may that type of complete freedom be most fully realized.Mill refers to such a sphere of personal, private life, where society may not legitimately interfere as the appropriate region of human liberty (Mill 1956 16). In this realm, Mill says, in the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his body and mind, the individual is self-directed (Mill 1956 13).Nietzsches philosophical practice, however, is quite obviously not the same as Mills. Mills philosophy is always systematic philosophy. Nietzschean philosophy is resolutely unsystematic. And thus, although Mill and Nietzsche agree that philosophy has a role to play in our liberation, the liberating roles that they envision for philosophy, and consequently their conceptions of freedom itself, are significantly different.Works CitedBeyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann, New York Vi ntage, 1966.Dudley, Will. Hegel, Nietzsche, and Philosophy Thinking Freedom. Cambridge University run Cambridge, 2002.Mill, J. S. On Liberty, Indianapolis The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc, 1956.