Notion Of Freedom Research Articles

Freedom as a Matter of Perspective and Perception in Martin Luther's De servo arbitrio☆

AbstractMartin Luther's notion of freedom, as presented in De servo arbitrio, is often interpreted as a denial of free choice in matters of God (salvation) and as an affirmation of free choice in earthly life. This article questions this twofold distinction and argues that in De servo arbitrio Luther's notion of freedom is set into epistemic discourse in which he distinguishes between different perspectives or perceptions and reality. The article demonstrates that for Luther, freedom denotes human perception, misperception, and deception. This indicates that beneath the free choice debate lies a fundamental question of human ability to understand reality.

Freedom in Populist Radical Right Discourses: The Polish ‘Island of Freedom’ in the 2019 European Parliament Election

ABSTRACT In Europe, the populist radical right (PRR) has actively embarked on a discursive struggle over the notion of freedom – one of the underlying concepts of Western сulture. An investigation of the 2019 European election campaign of the Polish Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość [PiS]) highlights how PRR parties in power discursively construct freedom in the context(s) of the European Union (EU). In PiS’s discourse, freedom serves as an antagonistic national-populist and nativist tool that juxtaposes Polish national identity against the imagined enemies of PiS-led Poland at home and abroad.

Možnosti republikánské kritiky libertariánství

The article explores the possibilities of using civic republicanism in order to criticize Nozickian libertarianism on the ground of its own premises, especially the emphasis it puts on individual freedom. It evaluates the critique to which Nozick’s theory has been subjected to by Ian Shapiro, finding Shapiro’s objections lacking in understanding, yet valid in principle. The second line of attack is then led via the notion of freedom as non-domination (which inextricably intertwines it with democracy) and via the needs which must be satisfied in order for a state to function as a safeguard for liberty in the contemporary world of multinational corporations.

The concept of Individuality in Friedrich Meinecke’s Early Work

This article investigates the centrality of the concept of individuality in the young Friedrich Meinecke’s theory of history, positing it as a fundamental element shaping Meinecke’s historical conception. To elucidate this position, an analysis is conducted to discern the significance attributed to the principium individuationis at two critical junctures in Meinecke’s early intellectual development: firstly, in his response to the positivist assault on the German historical school, and secondly, in his endeavor to reconceptualize the underpinnings of a revitalized history of ideas between the late 1800s and the initial decade of the twentieth century. By expounding upon these aspects and contextualizing the intellectual evolution in which these ideas emerged, it is argued that the concept of individuality functioned as a theoretical refuge against what Meinecke perceived as the doctrinaire nature of worldviews incompatible with notions of freedom and spontaneity — principles he considered intrinsic to the historical mode of thought.

A notion of freedom in Le Corbusier’s architecture

A notion of freedom in Le Corbusier’s architecture

A Whole Mind, an Unconquered Eye: Self-Reliance and Freedom in Henry James’s Daisy Miller

Looking at Henry James’s literary contexts can fruitfully help shed light on his work. Brilliantly versed in the literary traditions of his time, he was influenced by American, English, French and Russian writers. This article traces the influence of Emerson’s notions of freedom, natural spontaneity, innocence and self-confidence as expressed in his essays “Nature” (1836) and “Self-Reliance” (1841) in Daisy Miller (1878), whilst it investigates the ways James’s novella articulates the all-important dichotomy of self-sufficiency (individual freedom, autonomy, innocence) vs. social conformity (fear, heteronomy, hypocrisy) at play in the narrative. Daisy is the female embodiment of self-reliance as conceptualised in Emerson’s homonymous essay – a free, innocent, uncultivated, wild, and unsophisticated spirit – and so she is never afraid. Epistemology turns out to be central to the conception of the novella, as Winterbourne and the American matriarchs are shown struggling to grasp the protagonist’s puzzling innocence and true nature. As Daisy is a wild being living in accord with Nature as conceived by Emerson, the novella is punctuated by critical moments where the heroine is most at home when enmeshed in the green world, particularly in the outdoor scenes in the Château de Chillon in the Swiss Alps, the Palaces of the Caesars, the Colosseum and the Protestant cemetery in Rome.

Deconstructing gender identity through transformative learning

The theory of transformative learning and its notion of freedom, that we are not trapped by one way of looking at the world or being in the world, fosters a fundamental re-ordering and radical questioning of how one thinks or acts. As a theory of adult learning, it emerged from the women’s movement in the US, echoing what it means to become a transformation learner, realising how societal norms and expectations due to gender roles have defined and limited one’s way of being. The purpose of this paper is to provide greater insight into deconstructing gender identity through transformative learning by questioning gender binaries through premise reflection. The paper begins with an overview of (1) Judith Butler’s ideas on gender and deconstructing gender as well as (2) Jack Mezirow’s notion of transformative learning theory. This sets the stage for (3) bringing Butler’s and Mezirow’s ideas into conversation, setting the backdrop for a (4) discussion regarding the implications of such a conversation, reflecting on an existing approach from Christine Jarvis.

Internet, the Paradise Lost of comics? Observations on the constraints behind publishing webcomics, based on interviews with francophone authors

Digital comics, especially when published online, such as on blogs or social media, are often associated with notions of freedom and unlimited possibilities and limits. This idea is widely shared in the media, and it is common to encounter headlines such as ‘Instagram, comics paradise?’ (Beaux-Arts Magazine), ‘comics have found a new Eldorado in Instagram’ (CNews), ‘comics are particularly well suited to Instagram’s visual format’ (Numéro) and ‘what if Instagram is the network best suited for comics?’ (Nouvel Obs). This idea is shared by the artists themselves, as it appears clearly in their speeches and self-representations. This contribution, based in part on more than thirty interviews with francophone digital cartoonists, aims to question this alleged ‘total freedom’. First, it investigates the reasons for this common representation of a wider freedom associated with digital comics more than books, mainly due to the absence of editorial filters. Then, it shows how, instead, a significant number of filters apply that challenge the purported freedom of digital media. These filters are varied in nature and relate to very different issues, such as the difficulty of getting paid when distributing only online, which leads to the self-restriction of signing a contract with publishers or the need to establish partnerships with institutions; the website and platforms’ general conditions of use; and simply the lack of time and material due to the absence of a sustainable economic structure, among other factors. Finally, the contribution focuses on the specific limitations imposed by social media, as many contemporary digital comics are posted on Instagram: the interface, terms of use and algorithm have massive effects on the content, style, drawings themselves and narrative construction.

Свобода и справедливость в правовом осмыслении

It is a response to the article by V. A. Belov and O. Yu. Skvortsov «Justice vs Freedom = Law: Antagonistic Contradiction and its Solution» (Statute [Zakon]. 2023. No. 2–3). The author examines positive and negative aspects of the concept of justice, emphasising its natural law orientation and ideological proximity to the school of «revived natural law». Another positive aspect of the proposed concept is the recognition of human freedom and justice as inalienable attributes of law. The very idea of opposing justice to freedom is regarded as controversial. The author argues that such opposition does not make sense, because it does not allow to think without contradictions of the very notion of freedom. The «narrow», socio-centrist interpretation of justice has no satisfactory theoretical justification and must be reformatted. The author offers for discussion his own concept of justice in law based on a communicative approach, interactive methodology and the principle of mutual legal recognition. Arguments in support of this view on the nature of justice are derived not only from philosophical and sociological research but also from evolutionary theory, biology and neuroscience. The basic idea is to justify the existence of two fundamental traditional values that underlie human conceptions of justice: the value of the human person and the value of society. Their optimal coexistence is possible only on the basis of the realisation of the principle of mutual legal recognition and the mutual rights and obligations arising from it. In the realisation of this principle lies the idea of justice. Law is born not in a struggle between justice and freedom, but in a struggle for justice and freedom.

Van homo ludens naar homo oeconomicus

Contrary to the received view that the success of neoliberalism was mainly the result of a radical change in the economic policy of Western welfare states in the seventies and eighties of the 20th century, this success can be understood as the product of a long-term, slow, and largely unwitnessed cultural transformation. In this process the homo ludens of the counterculture of the sixties gradually changed into the homo oeconomicus of neoliberalism, political democracy was replaced by market democracy, and our notion of freedom as guaranteed by the state and realized in the public sphere substituted by individual freedom from the state. This new freedom redefines the individual as human capital in a constant condition of competitiveness and precarity.

Why Not Happiness? Marx’s Notion of the Free Life

It has recently been claimed that Marx’s aspiration to achieve happiness by reducing human suffering makes it possible to dismantle the conceptual walls between his approach, contemporary socialist approaches, and Eastern and Western perceptions of happiness. In contrast, this essay argues that Marx’s notion of freedom not only cannot be conceived as a means of achieving happiness but actually contradicts the possibility of happiness. The essay instead interprets the dialectical negation of the ideal of happiness in a way intended not to reinforce the walls between Marx’s approach and different worldviews but to reveal a common denominator relevant to different streams of nineteenth-century thought on this subject. Marx’s own conclusion that satisfaction is not a natural purpose of human existence originates in a dialectical approach regarding human needs that expresses radical criticism toward the hierarchical binary conception of pleasure and pain and of physical and spiritual needs.

Свобода и справедливость в правовом осмыслении

It is a response to the article by V.A. Belov and O.Yu. Skvortsov “Justice vs Freedom = Law: Antagonistic Contradiction and its Solution” (Statute [Zakon]. 2023. No. 2-3). The author examines the positive and negative aspects of the concept of justice offered by them, emphasising its natural law orientation and ideological closeness to the school of “revived natural law”. Another positive aspect of the proposed concept is the recognition of human freedom and justice as inalienable attributes of law. The very idea of opposing justice and freedom is regarded as controversial. The author argues that justice must not be opposed to freedom, because this opposition does not allow to think without contradictions of the very notion of freedom. The “narrow,” socio-centrist interpretation of justice has no satisfactory theoretical justification and must be reformed. The author offers for discussion his own concept of justice in law, based on a communicative approach, dialogical methodology and the principle of mutual legal recognition. Arguments in support of this view on the nature of justice are derived not only from philosophical and sociological research but also from evolutionary theory, biology and neuroscience. The basic idea is to justify the existence of two fundamental traditional values that underlie human conceptions of justice: the value of the human person and the value of society. Their optimal coexistence is possible only on the basis of the realisation of the principle of mutual legal recognition and the mutual rights and obligations arising from it. In the realisation of this principle lies the idea of justice. Law is born not in a struggle between justice and freedom, but in a struggle for justice and freedom.

Union collective action, social movement unionism and worker freedom in New Zealand

Freedom of association can include the right of labour unions to take collective action in the interest of their members. In this regard, it is presumed that unions increase worker freedom. However, there is little literature on how worker freedom as self‐actualization is linked to union collective action involving coalition‐building with civil society. This article uses the notions of freedom according to Berlin (1969) and MacCallum (1967) to assess the meaning of such coalition‐building for worker freedom. It then employs a radical democratic perspective (Laclau and Mouffe 2001) of union engagement with the Just Transition in New Zealand to explore how unions enhance worker freedom.

Dr. Jekyll ile Bay Hyde Eserinin Türkçe Çevirisinin Karnavalesk Bir İncelemesi

Mikhail Bakhtin, a prominent Russian philosopher of the 20th century, contributed to the field of philology and literary studies by propounding conceptions in several domains one of which is the foremost term ‘carnivalesque’. As it is a locution related to the ‘carnival’, it is of utmost significance to define this term. The ‘carnival’, deriving from the Lantern period at the time of the Romans, is a phenomenon in which all the rules in our daily lives, restrictions, regulations, and hierarchical forms are put aside; everyone is free and there are no restrictions in this sphere. The aim of this study is to read and analyse the Turkish translation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – with its full name –in the light of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque approach, and the Turkish translation of the work is evaluated particularly by taking Bakhtin’s main categories of the term ‘carnivalesque’, which are free and familiar interaction between people, eccentric behaviour by which the human nature in the work is revealed, and carnivalistic misalliances, all of which are considered to be abstract notions of freedom and equality. While taking the carnivalesque way of thinking into consideration, specifically the diverse characteristics of the protagonist in the novel are brought forth such as being respectable and well-liked but also hideous and depraved in conformity with the free and unrestricted world of the carnival.

Godsdienst in het onderwijs in Zuid-Afrika en Nederland: Een vergelijkende studie

Religion in education in South Africa and the Netherlands: A comparative study. The aim of this article is the reconstruction and comparison of the historical evolution of the place and role of religion in education in South Africa and in the Netherlands. The article commences with an overview of the historical evolution of the place and role of religion in education, up to the present, and a discussion of the dissatisfaction and objections which could be and which have been levelled against the current situation. The Netherlands has followed a more accommodating policy and practice regarding religious beliefs and diversity than the international norm. While South Africa can learn much from the Dutch approach to the problem of religion in education, this approach has also been challenged in recent times. In both systems, controversy about the accommodation of religion in education has given rise to tension between the notions of freedom, tolerance and accommodation, on the one hand, and the acknowledgement of human rights and the need for social cohesion on the other. Other considerations to be taken into account in this regard are the downsides of providing a partisan, confessional type of education that could hinder learners in maintaining themselves in the outside world. The trend in modern society is towards individualised belief systems, not collective ones. And the warning to be heeded is that the line between education and indoctrination is thin. The current Dutch model, despite the problems that it currently encounters, could provide direction in respect of all these issues.Contribution: The article concludes with an educational-philosophical perspective regarding the question as to how educationists and educators could guide learners to a state where they can independently decide about their personal religious orientation, given the fact that they are now living in a time when relativism prevails, also in terms of religion and faith.

A Critical Analysis of Sartre’s Freedom Philosophy --A Study of “Why Write?”

Jean-Paul Sartre is regarded as a leading figure in the 20th-century philosophy due to his great contributions to the theories on existentialism and freedom. One of Sartre’s notable works—“Why Write?” sheds light on his philosophical contemplations on freedom and free will. On Sartre’s upcoming 117 birthday, we make an in-depth analysis into “Why Write?” in an attempt to critically and better learn about Sartre’s Freedom Philosophy. Sartre embraces absolute freedom, a consequence of which, according to Sartre, is full responsibility. However, his notion of freedom is still interspersed with contradictions if we take what he has said about absolute freedom and full responsibility into careful consideration.

Homes for Today and Tomorrow: Britain’s Parker Morris Standards and the West Ham Experimental Scheme

Late 1950s Britain witnessed an unprecedented affordability of consumer goods which, along with a comparative increase in wages for the lower paid, led to a close convergence of middle- and working-class living standards. The home became the eminent site for the expression of this affluence, confirmed in its role by the government publication in 1961 of Homes for Today and Tomorrow, usually known as the Parker Morris Report. This new report on space standards argued for flexibility in the design of the home, which it associated with notions of freedom, individuality, and choice. The report sought to move away from standardized layout plans and from the prevailing view of housing tenants as uniform, undifferentiated subjects. This paper focuses on the building of an experimental housing project at West Ham, the first to espouse Parker Morris ideals. It does so in order to explore the difficulties involved in realizing these aspirations for housing adaptable enough to allow for acquisitiveness and individual freedom, and to ask why the recommendations of the report seemed so controversial.

‘The Golden Thread of Freedom’: Impulses for Considerations on the Relations between the Trinitarian Ontology and Social Reality in the Work of D. C. Schindler

The article presents the founding elements of the social and political thought of American philosopher and theologian David C. Schindler. The main aim of the article is to examine possible relations between Schindler’s work and the philosophical concept of ‘Trinitarian ontology’. It focuses on Schindler’s approach towards liberalism and analyses his critique of the modern conception of freedom. It suggests that the main pillars of his idea of the social order might be found in the notion of reality as the symbolical order, the conception of human beings as fundamentally relational, and the renewal of the traditional notion of freedom as rootedness in goodness. It concludes with the suggestion that the proper understanding of social reality requires certain ‘social ontology’, the metaphysical interpretation of social life as a part of a broad cosmological order which symbolically manifest the beauty of the source of being. And it is the social ontology based on the notion of freedom and relationality which analogically reflects the main principles of Trinitarian ontology.

Development as freedom? Insights from a farmer-led sustainable agriculture non-governmental organisation in the Philippines

This study addresses freedom, work and organisation by problematising Amartya Sen’s pluralistic notion of (development as) freedom through a fieldwork study of a Filipino non-governmental organisation that promotes sustainable agriculture. In this context, peasant farmers face increasing threat from intersecting agrarian and climate crises, exacerbated by mainstream economic paradigms for agricultural development. For Sen, development encompasses the process of expanding the ‘substantive freedoms’ of people (freedom to), and removing sources of ‘unfreedom’ (freedom from). However, it is not clear in Sen’s work how such freedoms are relationally constituted and thus the manner of the ‘labour of agential becoming’ at the core of Sen’s thought. We therefore ask: how do agroecological work and organisational practices of grassroots development promote freedom for small-scale farmers under climate threat in the Global South? Our analysis identifies a novel form of freedom – labelled ‘freedom with’ – defined as a set of relational, multi-actor capabilities and organising practices that constitute alternative, future-oriented ways of doing and being. ‘Freedom with’ enables us to better understand how and why the labour of agential becoming works, offering a theoretical extension of Sen’s notion of freedom with implications for debates in our field on sustainability and beyond-capitalist organising.

Contemplative Freedom in the Anthropocene: Inspiration from Sloterdijk

Contemplative Freedom in the Anthropocene:Inspiration from Sloterdijk Jessica Ludescher Imanaka (bio) What new meaning of freedom can be found in the Anthropocene,1 and how can it be accessed in support of ethics and justice regarding environmental issues? It is clear that the current and future conditions of the Anthropocene will engender problems of ethics and justice of unprecedented nature and magnitude, requiring reconceptualizations of theories and praxes. As freedom has remained a core value and constituent concept in numerous theories of ethics and justice, at least in the West, it is worth considering the future of freedom in the Anthropocene. The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has proposed provocative possibilities for such reconceptualizations that prove fecund because his theories deal explicitly with ecological crises while drawing from diverse and opposed political perspectives. In a short book called Stress and Freedom, Sloterdijk reimagines the meaning of freedom, as interacting with stress in what I show to be a mutually transformative process. Freedom paradoxically retreats from stress so as to brave it with noble liberality. Such reconfigurations of freedom become more lucid once its interrelationship with stress is considered in connection with Sloterdijk's provocative environmental writings. This article sketches a vision for contemplative freedom based on the writings of Sloterdijk. I here explore his suggestive concept of freedom, as freedom from stress and "availability for the improbable" (Sloterdijk 2016b, 54), and exhibit its interconnection with his account of the demands placed upon us by the "Great Catastrophe" of ecological crises (Sloterdijk 2013, 44). I begin by articulating Sloterdijk's theory of society as a "stress integrated force field" in Stress and Freedom (Sloterdijk 2016, 6) and analyze this view in light of environmental stresses, which generate stressful freedom. Although Sloterdijk does not articulate the meaning of freedom explicitly in the context of environmental issues, I draw out the environmental implications. I then examine Sloterdijk's account of freedom in relation to stress and reveal the interactive dimensions of this relationship, arguing that his view of freedom transcends the left/right divide. I show how Sloterdijk draws from both leftist and conservative [End Page 297] conceptions of freedom but then moves beyond them with a Nietzschean twist. Sloterdijk's notion of freedom may be linked with his ideas of anthropotechnics, especially when stress and freedom are brought into dialectical interplay. I reveal the contemplative dimensions of his account of freedom, highlighting how freedom's dynamic tension with stress holds potential for fruitful reengagement with ecocrises. Integrating ideas from several of Sloterdijk's texts, I sketch a vision of contemplative freedom oriented toward a becoming-human anew in the Anthropocene. Proposing some reconfigurations of this vision, I conclude with Sloterdijk's hope for monogeistic co-immunity. Stressful Freedom in the Anthropocene In Stress and Freedom, Sloterdijk draws upon stress theory to propose that "the large-scale political bodies we call societies should be understood primarily as stress-integrated force fields" (2016b, 6). Societies find cohesion and "synchronization of consciousness" in response to stress-provoking stimulations, which are mainly propagated by the media (7). The media system produces agitating stimuli, which it continually updates and disseminates, generating topics of "concern" that bind the society symbolically (7–8). The book eventually focuses on a modern conception of freedom, which Sloterdijk attributes to Rousseau's view of freedom as the contemplative retreat from social persecution, an account that amounts to an individualistic removal from social reality and its stresses. Stress is defined as a kind of unfreedom, freedom as a form of nonstress. Sloterdijk's account of stress-induced unity appears to apply most easily to cultural similarity and identification, though he suggests it pertains to multicultural societies. It also could explain how subnational and transnational societies emerge, as groups bond over their shared sense of stress priorities and apprehension of what is stressful. Popular media vary intranationally as well as internationally. For example, political parties bond over perceived threats posed by the opposing tribe, and countries ally with each other in response to inimical forces. However, this account of the formation and maintenance of social cohesion remains incomplete by itself, since other elements, not least historical and legal ones, contribute to the formation and...