Free Persons Research Articles

Uzależnienie jako ograniczenie wolności

Freedom is one of the qualities that distinguishes man from other beings living on earth. It is thanks to freedom that a person can take a different attitude towards life than the people around him. Freedom gives people a choice, which they often do not exercise by imitating the behaviour of others. Being a free person means, among other things, freedom from addictions and dependencies that take control of life and do not allow one to enjoy its full benefits. They are the most radical manifestation of the destruction of freedom. And it is not just addictions to drugs or alcohol, but also addictions to activities such as spending time in front of the phone, gambling, sex. As they proceed, a person respects himself less and less and becomes more and more a slave. Being in an addiction, one loses control over one's own life, one's whole functioning becomes more or less disturbed, and consequently one loses freedom. A life without addictions is happy and free from all the limitations they impose on man. Key words: freedom, addiction, drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling

Who is Haunted by the Shadow of God? Dialectical Notes on Michael Rosen's Narrative of (Failed) Secularization

ABSTRACT In The Shadow of God, Michael Rosen argues that modern moral philosophy in the tradition of German Idealism is profoundly shaped by religious views these thinkers could not overcome. However, a closer look at Rosen’s critique of Kant’s and Kantian conceptions of morality raises the possibility that Rosen’s view may itself be haunted by the shadow of God. In particular, Rosen appears to believe that a moral imperative of respect for human dignity necessarily requires a religious-transcendent grounding, such that there is no purely moral answer to the question of why such respect is owed. In relegating morality to an impersonal realm that alienates us from our personal understandings of the good, Rosen fails to recognize not only that Kantian morality is meant to alienate us from certain ends (e.g., racist or sexist), but that it is also meant to overcome alienation. This is because Kantian morality is not so much impersonal, as it is interpersonal: it recognizes us as belonging to a community of free and equal persons, who are autonomous when we morally reflect on, or even reject, certain ends.

Maroon, Fiiman, Busikondeesama: A Play on Identity in Three Speech Acts

This essay features discussions with and among Suriname Maroons engaged in cultural work about the names they choose in self-reference. Maroon is just one choice of many; others include Fiiman (free person) and Busikondeesama (hinterland person). Each name differently configures their relationships to various people, places, and ideas across time and space. These reflections question and challenge what communicative work Maroon does in figuring and prioritizing specific components of a broader cultural and historical nexus. The authors deliberately center contemporary Suriname Maroons—not only as cultural stewards but also as individuals actively involved in theorizing Maroon legacies and futures.

The right to free personal development as a manifestation of the connection between human dignity and freedom

Constitutional recognition of the worth of a human as the dominant value in the hierarchy of social ones activates the full potential of positive law to the maximum to secure it, in particular the mechanism of a general permissive type of legal regulation, which essentially presupposes freedom, and therefore the embodiment of the ideal of a free human person. The specificity of such regulation is expressed in the process of its social and contextual characteristics, namely, in the description of the scope and boundaries. Accordingly, it has been established that the development of the general permissive idea in the twentieth century shifted to the plane of “recognition of the worth of human dignity”, so the study of freedom within its interrelationship with human dignity forms the first approximate idea of the subject coverage of the general permission (as the basis of appropriate regulation). It has been established that such an interrelation is justified in the regulatory (international, national) and doctrinal context at the level of values and individual rights. It has also been proved that this interrelation is most clearly visible in the right to the free development of a person, which becomes a kind of “intersection”, the main point where dignity and freedom “are connected”.The national recognition of this right in the constitutions of different states has been investigated, in particular as the goals of the state; the highest values; the foundations of the political system and social peace; the personal independency right, including in the system of other personal rights. The peculiarities of its interpretation in German jurisprudence as an “unnamed”, “independent fundamental right to freedom”, which has been developed in two aspects: a) the general right of a person – its “comprehensive protection” from public and private interference, “strengthening” (additional) guarantee of human dignity (which promoted the formation of a kind of human rights methodology – “theory of spheres”). Its nature is analyzed from the point of view of the “human person essence (core)” and its components: human dignity, the fundamental right to informational self-determination, the right to life and limb; b) general freedom of action, which extends the sphere of defending freedom that is not covered by special constitutional rights.It has been found that this right was secured internationally with the expansion of its scope at the expense of the subject matter – the right of the people to self-determination. The constitutional practice of recognition of the right to free personal development in Ukraine has been analyzed and it is presumed to project the basic sphere of the generally permissive type of legal regulation

Сущность правовой социализации личности в концепции Н.Е. Чижова

The present study examines the concept of legal socialization of personality, outlined by the Russian legal scholar N.E. Chizhov (1853–1910). The author carries out the study of aspects of the inclusion of personality in the system of public relations, its legal socialization, based on the history of human development. At different stages of the development of society, N.E. Chizhov characterizes the development of law, which is an internal, spiritual source of a person. The scientist concludes that only by turning to himself, a free person can be imbued with an ethical law (the basis of which is duty and conscience), and then build his practical life activity, in which there will be a healthy, reliable right that protects the individual and gives strength. The author of the article concludes about the demand in modern conditions scientific knowledge of N.E. Chizhov. In the development of his concept for the modern personality, it is proposed to realize such social and moral values as faith, love, patriotism, self-esteem.

Historical genomes elucidate European settlement and the African diaspora in Delaware

The 17th-century colonization of North America brought thousands of Europeans to Indigenous lands in the Delaware region, which comprises the eastern boundary of the Chesapeake Bay in what is now the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.1 The demographic features of these initial colonial migrations are not uniformly characterized, with Europeans and European-Americans migrating to the Delaware area from other countries and neighboring colonies as single persons or in family units of free persons, indentured servants, or tenant farmers.2 European colonizers also instituted a system of racialized slavery through which they forciblytransported thousands of Africans to the Chesapeake region. Historical information about African-descended individuals in the Delaware region is limited, with a population estimate of less than 500 persons by 1700 CE.3,4 To shed light on the population histories of this period, we analyzed low-coverage genomes of 11 individuals from the Avery's Rest archaeological site (circa 1675-1725 CE), located in Delaware. Previous osteological and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence analyses showed a southern group of eight individuals of European maternal descent, buried 15-20 feet from a northern group of three individuals of African maternal descent.5 Autosomal results further illuminate genomic similarities to Northwestern European reference populations or West and West-Central African reference populations, respectively. We also identify three generations of maternal kin of European ancestry and a paternal parent-offspring relationship between an adult and child of African ancestry. These findings expand our understanding of the origins and familial relationships in late 17th and early 18th century North America.

:Duty to Self: Moral, Political, and Legal Self-Relation

:<i>Duty to Self: Moral, Political, and Legal Self-Relation</i>

The Moral Habitat

<i>The Moral Habitat</i>

AI-to-Human Actuation

Imagine a near-future smart home. Home-embedded visual AI sensors continuously monitor the resident, inferring her activities and internal states that enable higher-level services. Here, as home-embedded sensors passively monitor a free person, good inferences happen randomly. The inferences' confidence highly depends on how congruent her momentary conditions are to the conditions favored by the AI models, e.g., front-facing or unobstructed. We envision new strategies of AI-to-Human Actuation (AHA) that empower the sensory AIs with proactive actuation so that they induce the person's conditions to be more favorable to the AIs. In this light, we explore the initial feasibility and efficacy of AHA in the context of home-embedded visual AIs. We build a taxonomy of actuations that could be issued to home residents to benefit visual AIs. We deploy AHA in an actual home rich in sensors and interactive devices. With 20 participants, we comprehensively study their experiences with proactive actuation blended with their usual home routines. We also demonstrate the substantially improved inferences of the actuation-empowered AIs over the passive sensing baseline. This paper sets forth an initial step towards interweaving human-targeted AIs and proactive actuation to yield more chances for high-confidence inferences without sophisticating the model, in order to improve robustness against unfavorable conditions.

СЛОВО-ОБРАЗ «СЧАСТЬЕ» В ЛИРИКЕ М. И. ЦВЕТАЕВОЙ

The article examines literary realization of the topic happiness, one of the main topics in the culture. The author describes features of the word happiness in the poems by M. Tsvetaeva written in various periods of her creativity through semantic and stylistic analysis. In the poetry by M. Tsvetaeva, happiness is a fulfilling spiritual life of a free person not limited within social stereotypes.

Cultural-Symbolic World Picture of the Latin Christian Middle Ages: the Cultural Dimension Proper. Part I

The present paper is a continuation of the previous publication by the author in this journal devoted to the cultural-symbolic world picture of the Latin Christian Middle Ages. Unlike the previous one, this second text reproduces the historical “picture” of the era with an emphasis not on the ontological, but on its proper cultural expression. The author as a philosopher is not so much focused on the “fact” (this is the business of historians) as on the “meaning”, taking care of the meaningful modeling of the age as a cultural phenomenon. The first part of the study is presented, devoted to the medieval culture of governance as a symbolic culture of powerful social relations.In the Preamble, considering the “fabric-textual” mythologem of “human–text–world”, the conceptual background of the study is outlined, the author’s latest revision of the general formula of the medieval cultural-symbolic picture of the world as a picture of the history of personal salvation culture is proposed, the study subject is specified, and the circle of “guides”-predecessors is defined.In § 1, the role and significance of the “vertical salvation” and its sacred nature for the Christian consciousness are considered. The creation fundamentals for transformation of the vertical into a symbolic hierarchy of medieval society are determined. With respect to a few of key philosophical and by itself jural monuments of the era, the concept of the Middle Ages as an age of absolutization of the pure Idea, therefore, of the absolutization of personal existence, is illustrated.§ 2 examines the questions of hierarchy, power, and freedom in view of their levels and options of realization in medieval society. The problems of social personalization of the “upper” and the “lower” inhabitants of the symbolic hierarchical ladder, the relationship between the hierarchical rungs, the logic of their “filling” and the per-level freedom of a medieval person on the scale of “domination–submission” have been solved. The “epochal” status of a Christian as a spiritually free person has been captured.

Freedom, dialogue, and education in a democratic school

This article is based on two interviews between Jim Rietmulder, the founder and lead staff at The Circle School (in Harrisburg, PA), and Ana Marjanovic-Shane, an Independent Scholar and a Co-Editor of this Special Issue. We discuss and examine the daily practice and the philosophical approach of a particular democratic school as we discuss democratic education in general. The main purpose of these interviews has been to introduce democratic education and explore the place for dialogic pedagogy in a democratic school, where the students are free to choose what to study, when to study, in what ways they want to study, with whom they want to study, etc. What happens to dialogic pedagogy if the students are not engaged around the same topics together? The question is whether the students’ legitimate status of free persons with equal rights of opinion and decision-making also creates opportunities and conditions for the students to engage in the critical dialogic examinations of the world, of their life and learning, and of their desires, motivations, and values.

J. Savulescu&amp;apos;s &amp;quot;The God Machine&amp;quot; as a Moral Agent and the Problem of Responsibility

This article is devoted to the issue of moral responsibility in connection with artificial intelligence technologies. In recent years, artificial intelligence has been actively developing towards greater autonomy, which makes the philosophical analysis of artificial moral agency extremely relevant. The relevance of the work is also determined by the increasing spread of artificial intelligence in professional areas, including those related to the adoption of responsible managerial, financial, etc. solutions. The main object of research in the article is a thought experiment — the project of the so-called “The God Machine” by the Western philosopher J. Savulescu, which allows us to turn to such an important aspect as the possibility of the influence of artificial intelligence on the development of human moral consciousness, since modern technologies, along with projects of biological moral human enhancement, claim the ability to create artificial moral agents. The authors give a comprehensive analysis of this project, correlating it with other concepts of modern analytical philosophy of consciousness, incl. Н. Frankfurt. The theoretical focus of the study is directed to the concepts of responsibility and freedom as key in formulating the criteria of moral agency. At the same time, the article considers the features of the implementation of the criteria of moral agency in relation to artificial intelligence. The article assesses the viability of J. Savulescu&amp;apos;s project, in particular: to what extent artificial intelligence like the The God Machine can be considered as a moral agent, whether a person can acquire the characteristics of a moral, responsible and free person with the help of such an artificial mediator, and to what extent such projects contribute to the moral enhancement of mankind. It also points to the risks of paternalistic interference in the development of morality. Separately, the phenomenon of moral dilemmas is considered in connection with the problems of embedding artificial intelligence in the life of modern society, as well as the logical aspects of decision-making in the context of moral conflicts. The conclusion is formulated about the key importance of the category of responsibility for modeling the relationship between man and artificial intelligence in machine ethics.

The Anti-Vaxxer as a Moral Equal

In this article, I argue that in portending potentially fatal harm to immunocompromised others, certain vaccine-hesitant views create a paradox for democratic deliberation on public health matters. In this paradox, either vaccine-hesitant views entailing potential harm to others are entertained as legitimate public health policy, or these views are disallowed, excluding discussion of competing harms from the deliberative process. In either case, the result is a deliberative process in which some group is not treated with the consideration owed to free and equal persons as required by the terms of democratic membership. I argue for capitalizing on and refining certain epistemic traits exhibited by anti-vaxxers to address vaccine-hesitant views and minimize this paradox. However, I make the case that this paradox cannot be completely resolved, so we should focus on certain demands of justice to protect the most vulnerable.

ІНКЛЮЗІЯ, ДЕМОКРАТІЯ І ВЛАДА В КОНТЕКСТІ ПОЛІТИЧНОЇ СУБ’ЄКТИВАЦІЇ

The essence of politics as a conflict sphere of human existence is revealed. On the example of the concept of the political, K. Schmitt demonstrated the importance of the dilemma of inclusion/exclusion as fundamental to political life. The heuristic potential of the «friend-enemy» distinction for understanding the political and its characteristic attributes: publicity, conflict, and emergency are revealed. In the article, politics is defined as a revolutionary, groundless and distributed space for the joint realization of the human in man. It appears as a way of cultivating a free person. The anthropological dimension of politics allows us to reveal the logic of political subjectivation as an individualization of the universal. The purpose of the article is to study politics as a space of inclusion, in which political subjectivation is carried out through the individualization of the universal. The works of domestic and foreign authors were used to consider the problem raised in the article. The research is based on the principles of such methodological approaches as critical, interdisciplinary, systemic and comparative analysis, as well as on general scientific principles of objectivity and historicism. The potential of distinguishing between politics and the police as two forms of social existence is analyzed. If politics has as its consequence and result inclusion, the manifestation in public space of the presence and voice of the marginalized, then the police unfolds in a consensus-structured environment of power, identities, places and statuses. Inclusion is characterized as the essence of a political process, the task of which is to revise the foundations of beingamong-others and involve more people in the debate about the common good. A distinction is drawn between inclusion and integration. If the first is carried out as a political process, then the second is a consequence of depoliticization. Political inclusion is presented as a process of formation of a distributed unity, the configuration of distribution and the whole of which is the subject of a dispute, the conditions of which are ensured by democracy.

Снятие проблемы совместимости детерменизма со свободой воли

This article is an attempt to question the very correctness of the term free will. The problem of the compatibility of determinism with free will is indicated, which seems to be valuable. Further, it is proposed to clarify the term free will, and not the term determinism, for it is the belief in free will that is being tried to preserve, since it is considered valuable. The author points out that what makes free will valuable is the responsibility for the past and the control of the future. It is assumed that a free person controls the future and is responsible for the past. The question is whether the term free will is not superfluous when we can speak about the freedom of the agent, and whether, in principle, will can have the property of being free. The author argues that freedom is an anthropological concept that is not applicable to will. The article provides evidence that the freedom of a person is not to do as one pleases, but to act precisely on the basis of one's motives, even those that one shares with society as its member, even those that are generated by rational thinking. Three meanings of the term will are considered, namely, will as a proper synonym for freedom with a different connotation, as a complex of motives, and as a function of higher nervous activity. Focusing on the last two, the author compares the power of will in the meaning of the function of the higher nervous activity with such a condition of freedom as the ability to be the source of one's actions. Flexibility of will in the meaning of a complex of motives compares such a condition of freedom as the ability to do otherwise. The author also points out the possible significance of free will as the spontaneity of will and emphasizes its anti-value. He proposes to abandon the use of the term free will and to replace it with the term internal freedom of the agent,and, in relation to will, to apply such descriptions as strength or flexibility, depending on the meaning of the term used: in the meaning of the function of higher nervous activity or in the meaning of a complex of motives. Finally, the author points to the fact that determinism is a condition of the agent's freedom. The author criticizes semi-deterministic concepts as a way to try on responsibility with indeterministic episodes generated by the spontaneity of will. The author considers two semi-deterministic concepts: where the causality gap occurs after the decision is made, but only in a certain percentage of cases the action is carried out, and where the causality gap occurs before the decision is made, but only when the opposite motives are equal. The author, arguing that the spontaneity of will is antivaluable, sees no point in such a reconciliation, and even sees harm, since, in the author's opinion, it is determinism that gives the agent of freedom more freedom, and therefore more responsibility.

Договоры в трудовом и гражданском праве: вопросы единства и дифференциации

It is noted that the employment contract has historically emerged as a civil contract. It is indicated that in Roman private law it was a contract for the employment of a free person’s labor force for a period under which one person, the locator (from Latin – landlord), placed at the disposal of another, the tenant, his labor force, his labor (operae) for a certain remuneration (hiring a worker, coachman, etc.). The features that distinguish the labor contract from civil law contracts, in particular, the fact that in an employment contract the subject is the work itself, and not its result, as well as the element of subordination of one party to the employment contract to the other. The cases of joint legal regulation of labor relations by the norms of labor and civil law are indicated. The article analyzes such issues as the construction of the so-called “labor agreement”, as well as the issue of representation in labor relations, in particular, cases of concluding an employment contract with a minor employee under the age of fourteen and limiting the civil capacity of an employee who, due to addiction to gambling, alcohol abuse or narcotic drugs, puts his family in a difficult financial situation. position. Cases are established when civil legal relations may arise between the parties to the employment relationship. It is noted that the legal regulation of social and labor relations should not be based on the independence of the person performing labor activity, as this is characteristic of the method of civil law regulation of social relations related to labor. The necessity of applying the developments of civil servants on the invalidity of transactions to labor contracts and the implementation of the principle of good faith, which determines, among other things, the inadmissibility of abuse of law, is indicated. The conclusion is substantiated that the establishment of unifying signs of labor and civil law contracts corresponds to the practice of applying labor law norms and contributes to the development of the science of labor law.

Deliktna odgovornost liječnika u rimskom pravu

The subject of this paper is non-contractual liability of physicians in Roman law. Contrary to the common perception of Roman society, where “only a physician can commit homicide with complete impunity” (Plinius, Nat. Hist. 29,8), parallel to the development of medicine, rudimentary stages of a physician's liability for damage through negligence also evolved. Through the interpretation of available legal sources, focusing particularly on situations concerning slaves and free persons as patients, the forms of legal protection of patients are primarily determined. Special attention in the central part of the paper is devoted to the problem of causality and the development of fault-based liability. The last part of the paper examines the forms of compensation for damage, based on which conclusions are finally drawn about the extent of the development of medical liability ex delicto.

Review: The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging, by Rebecca Wanzo

Review: <i>The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging</i>, by Rebecca Wanzo

Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South by Warren Eugene Milteer Jr.

Reviewed by: Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South by Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. Scarlet Jernigan Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South. By Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. [xii], 363. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-6439-2; cloth, $95.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-6438-5.) In Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South, Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. expands on his book North Carolina's Free People of [End Page 772] Color, 1715–1885 (Baton Rouge, 2020) to provide a needed overview of the "collective lives of free people of color" in the South (p. 11). He rejects older scholarship by Ira Berlin and others who asserted that free persons of color were "'slaves without masters'" who existed between "'abject slavery'" and "'full freedom'" (p. 11). Instead, Milteer contends that free people of color "experienced a freedom that was contested yet worth defending" (p. 12). "Intersecting social hierarchies" of "wealth, gender, occupation, reputation, and religion" resulted in diverse behaviors among free persons of color and a "complex assortment of relations" with white southerners (pp. 2, 4). Seven chapters and a conclusion span from the colonial era to Reconstruction. In chapters 1 and 2, the author compares the lives of free people of color in the colonial South with their counterparts in other empires, noting discrimination along with diversity, complexity, and flexibility. During the American Revolution, "unsettled social landscapes" led to either opportunity or oppression (p. 52). In chapters 3 and 4, Milteer examines the next forty-some years, as white people "struggled to determine the proper place for free people of color" (p. 69). Despite "unprecedented attacks," free persons of color and their allies tempered the success of those who sought to make race the sole criterion to determine status (p. 71). Cross-racial bonds of kinship, community, worship, and business held, and free people of color "found ways to convey their societal importance" (p. 116). They founded separate organizations when "working with whites as equals was not possible or desirable" (p. 122). Chapters 5 and 6 begin with the Nat Turner rebellion, which allowed progressively more radical proslavery whites to push free people of color into an "increasingly inferior legal status" (p. 184). Yet the rebellion did not result in a "revolutionary change in the ways average white southerners thought about" free persons of color (p. 138). In the decades leading up to the Civil War, free people of color could still "find justice in a system not designed for their benefit" as they actively defended their rights (p. 180). In chapter 7's examination of the Civil War, Milteer shows that free persons of color pursued divergent paths based on their complex and layered identities. Utilizing county court minutes, apprenticeship bonds, state legislative records, wills, newspapers, and pension files, Milteer focuses on the realities of day-to-day life instead of the contents of legal codes or extremist rhetoric. He cites Melvin Patrick Ely's Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War (New York, 2005) as an important precursor to his work. Milteer characterizes white southern behavior toward free people of color as "fluid," contradictory, and far from monolithic (p. 5). Free persons of color were vital to society and the economy, and radicals sought—unsuccessfully—to push them to the margins. Milteer concludes that many "find understanding the South before 1865 much easier if we can simplify the social hierarchy," but he argues that doing so offers a skewed picture of reality (p. 254). The author skillfully reveals the sometimes-intersecting values of whites and free people of color, as well as "inconsistencies between the law and everyday behavior," and then provides a framework for understanding them (p. 255). [End Page 773] Scarlet Jernigan Piedmont University Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association