The Concept of Freedom: An Indian Reaction

Abstract

DR. MORTIMER J. ADLER's book The Concept of Freedom' is with justice claimed to be the most comprehensive and objective study of twenty-five centuries of discussion and controversy about freedom. The Institute for Philosophical Research, which has been engaged in this task of examining treatises dealing with Western thought on freedom, has literally provided an encyclopedia. Adler points out that there is a large group of authors for whom slavery and imprisonment furnish examples of the lack of freedom. There are others who consider that the freedom of a man has nothing to do with such outward circumstances such as being a slave or a prisoner. Indeed, they go to the extent of asserting that very often the master or the tyrant, rather than his slave or the prisoner, is to be the object of compassion as truly a slave. For instance, the great Greek philosopher Epictetus lived the whole of his life as a slave in bondage. The question is, therefore, whether a free man is a person who has no master but himself and can do with his life as he wishes or as he ought and is able to dispose of the fruits of his labor for his own benefit.