Notion Of Freedom Research Articles

Thinking Transcendence: Heidegger’s Ontological Concept of Freedom

According to Hans Ruin, there are two ways to approach the examination of freedom in Heidegger’s writings: One can use the notion of freedom as a heuristic concept to interpret the entirety of Heidegger’s work as a philosophy of freedom, which was famously done by Günter Figal, or one can reconstruct Heidegger’s actual use of the notion of freedom. In my paper I’ll focus on the second approach and show that although “freedom” or, rather, “being-free” can already be found in Being and Time, his more elaborate concept of freedom as transcendence is developed in the years 1928-1930. These years are part of a time period in which Heidegger tried to develop his own positive concept of metaphysics. The main texts which show this development are the lecture course The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic and the essay On the Essence of Ground. Based on Aristotle’s twofold metaphysics—consisting of ontology and philosophical theology—Heidegger sketches his own concept of metaphysics. The fundamental ontology which plays the role of ontology is complemented by his cosmological interpretation of theology: metontology. Together, they form Heidegger’s novel notion of metaphysics: the metaphysics of Dasein. Whereas fundamental ontology is concerned with the question of Being, the main subject of metontology is world as beings as a whole. Heidegger develops his concept of transcendence, i.e., metontological freedom, which describes the connection between freedom and world, on the basis of the terms world-projection (Weltentwurf), world-view (Weltanschauung), and world-formation (Weltbildung), each describing an aspect of transcendence.

A Political Companion to James Baldwin ed. by Susan J. McWilliams

Reviewed by: A Political Companion to James Baldwin ed. by Susan J. McWilliams Douglas Field Ed. Susan J. McWilliams. A Political Companion to James Baldwin. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2017. 426 pp. $80.00. In "The Price of the Ticket," James Baldwin briefly recalls his Trotskyite years in the 1940s, recalling that he was a member of the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL). Baldwin's tantalizing reference to his political past is brushed aside by the writer, who claims, "[m]y life on the Left is of absolutely no interest. It did not last long. It was useful in that I learned that it may be impossible to indoctrinate me." As Susan J. McWilliams points out in the introduction to A Political Companion to James Baldwin, despite Baldwin's reluctance to identify with one or other political camp, [End Page 112] he emerges as "not just one of the nation's most important thinkers on matters of racial consciousness and injustice but also one of our most articulate theorists of democratic life" (6). Baldwin's work, McWilliams observes, points to "the interconnectedness of all our lives," as well as "an essential commitment to the idea that bearing witness to other human beings is a central political responsibility, and in striving to meet that responsibility we give ourselves the best chance of transformation or even salvation" (9). Across fourteen chapters, the essays in A Political Companion to James Baldwin, written by established and emerging scholars, examine the writer as activist, citizen, and democratic theorist, as well as reading his work against the civil rights movement, religion, homosexuality, and women's liberation. In "'A Most Disagreeable Mirror': Race Consciousness as Double Consciousness," Lawrie Balfour reads Baldwin against W. E. B. Du Bois's notion of double consciousness, exploring Baldwin's polyphonic voice in essays such as "Many Thousands Gone," where the writer's use of "we" provides "moments of keen insight into the psychological burdens and the moral and political implications—for all citizens—of living with the color line" (31-32). In "The Race of a More Perfect Union: James Baldwin, Segregated Memory, and the Presidential Race," P. J. Brendese argues that the writer's "insights illuminate and counter a willful innocence about the complex legacy of segregated memory in American politics in general, and the [Obama] presidential race in particular" (50). Drawing on the work of Balfour and George Shulman, Brendese recuperates Baldwin as an invaluable theorist of the role of race in American political life, just as Susan J. McWilliams in "James Baldwin and the Politics of Disconnection" points out that "[y]ears before it was common to talk about 'social construction' … Baldwin became one of social construction's greatest theorists" (100). Baldwin's complexity is explored by Nicholas Buccola in "What William F. Buckley Jr. Did Not Understand about James Baldwin: On Baldwin's Politics of Freedom," which focuses on the debate between Buckley and Baldwin at the Cambridge Union Society in 1965. Buccola rightly points out that Baldwin's suspicion of ideology was "applied across the political spectrum" (121) but nonetheless offered keen insights into the notions of freedom and liberty. As George Shulman points out in "Baldwin, Prophecy, and Politics," he is rarely recognized "as a political thinker or even contributing to the understanding of politics" (151). By focusing on his prophetic tradition, Shulman explores the ways in which Baldwin's religiosity is deeply connected to his personal political practice. While the majority of the essays collected focus on Baldwin's essays, in "Go Tell it on the Mountain: James Baldwin and the Politics of Faith," Wilson Carey McWilliams provides an insightful close reading of Baldwin's first novel in order to illuminate how the author's religious past informs his views on identity and the importance of love, a neglected theme that nonetheless courses through his fiction and nonfiction. In "The Negative Political Theology of James Baldwin," Vincent Lloyd also explores the importance of love in the writer's work by arguing that the writer "transformed, rather than rejected, his father's Christianity" (172). Drawing on Cornel West's book Democracy Matters, in "Socrates in a Different Key: James Baldwin and Race in America...

The Fateful Releasement into World-Time: On the Temporality of Freedom in Heidegger, 1927-1937

Heidegger’s notion of freedom depends on an original temporality more fundamental than world-time (the time of determinism). This paper asks whether freedom means a withdrawal from world-time or a releasement into it. Being and Time discloses Dasein’s drifting-along in world-time as inauthentic. In this way, it secures freedom from determinism, but also gives the impression that authenticity, as a resoluteness, entails a withdrawal from world-time. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics shows that Heidegger is well aware of the problem of withdrawal. He focuses on the attunement of boredom, which delivers Dasein back into world-time. The tension of the authentic moment of vision is too intense to endure, therefore Dasein has to remove this tension and thus to release itself into world-time. “The Origin of the Work of Art” extends the boredom of Dasein to a metaphysical boredom of Being in general. The earth, the undifferentiated ground of Being, cannot be given at once in totality. Instead, it bears an impulse toward the work, in which Being is individuated in world-time. “The Eternal Recurrence of the Same” refigures this tension in Nietzsche’s metaphysics between creative Becoming and fixated Being and concludes that Becoming, in order to create or subsist at all, has to be “infected” by Being, thus entering world-time. Freedom is better understood as a releasement into world-time. This is a tragic event, but it is also the only way freedom may overcome the bondage of world-time: by incorporating the latter as a transient stage of its own.

“Volo, ut sis:” Freedom as Co-Disclosure in Heidegger’s Being and Time

Martin Heidegger’s concern for the notion of freedom is evident in his masterwork, Being and Time (SZ). As presented in SZ, care becomes the locus for a robust discussion of freedom, here defined as the ‘letting-be’ of others who are co-present, but with the addition of authentic solicitude. As Dasein is a being defined by care, we turn to Heidegger’s translation of a line from Augustine as our guide: “Volo, ut sis” – I want you to be what you are. For the Heidegger of SZ, authentic solicitude is that which allows us to be free for our ownmost possibilities – and to free others for theirs.

Liminality and Decolonization: Discourse Evolution in Robert A. Heinlein’s Trilogy of Liberty and Self-responsibility

This paper analyzes the mutation of Robert A. Heinlein’s (1907-1988) discourse on the question of colonialism and decolonization. The aim is to analyze his discourse evolution. In his ‘trilogy of liberty and self-responsibility’ (Starship Troopers, 1959; A Stranger in a Strange Land, 1961, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 1966). The American science fiction writer has delivered perturbing statements on the notion of freedom. Often labeled as a decadent or fascistic storyteller, Heinlein is equally acknowledged for the audacity of craftsmanship. When intersected with postcolonial studies, his narratives offer an oblique optics to the understanding of the evolution of imperialistic discourse: from unashamed colonialism to apologetic decolonization. Located between science fiction studies (SF) and postcolonial theory, the issue was addressed through the theories of Homi Bhabha, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Arnold Van Gennep. These tools were used to substantiate the claim that Robert A. Heinlein’s fiction has incorporated liminalities to sustain the decolonization process of its protagonists. The study revealed a logical continuum along the three novels: the narratives correspond to the three levels of liminality. In other words, the writer’s discourse has evolved from a conservative into a progressive view of decolonization.

Liminality and Decolonization: Discourse Evolution in Robert A. Heinlein’s Trilogy of Liberty and Self-responsibility

This paper analyzes the mutation of Robert A. Heinlein’s (1907-1988) discourse on the question of colonialism and decolonization. The aim is to analyze his discourse evolution. In his ‘trilogy of liberty and self-responsibility’ (Starship Troopers, 1959; A Stranger in a Strange Land, 1961, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 1966). The American science fiction writer has delivered perturbing statements on the notion of freedom. Often labeled as a decadent or fascistic storyteller, Heinlein is equally acknowledged for the audacity of craftsmanship. When intersected with postcolonial studies, his narratives offer an oblique optics to the understanding of the evolution of imperialistic discourse: from unashamed colonialism to apologetic decolonization. Located between science fiction studies (SF) and postcolonial theory, the issue was addressed through the theories of Homi Bhabha, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Arnold Van Gennep. These tools were used to substantiate the claim that Robert A. Heinlein’s fiction has incorporated liminalities to sustain the decolonization process of its protagonists. The study revealed a logical continuum along the three novels: the narratives correspond to the three levels of liminality. In other words, the writer’s discourse has evolved from a conservative into a progressive view of decolonization.

Cosmopolitan Risk, Neoliberal Un-Freedom: Transparency and Responsibility in John LeCarré’s The Constant Gardener

At the heart of both Kantian cosmopolitanism and liberal capitalism is the belief that they offer the best option for freedom from parochial curtailments of safety and liberty. On the one hand, a cosmopolitan federation of states provides the best option for freeing Europe (and, thus, the argument claims, the globe) from the violence that follows national affiliations and sovereignty. On the other hand, laissez-faire economics best ensures individual autonomy and freedom. While one focuses on the universal and the other on the individual, both understand freedom as best emerging from the disappearance of the nation-state. But, alongside both notions of freedom, cosmopolitanism and liberal capitalism both displace risk, by either attempting to eliminate it altogether in global geopolitical harmony or limiting it to an expression of personal decision-making and enterprise. As a result, the risks that accompany the expansion and operation of contemporary global capital tend to have no way to be expressed outside of historically familiar and paternalist colonial language of civilization and personal responsibility. This paper examines how John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener provides a way to think about globalized risk and responsibility outside of the limitations of cosmopolitan and capitalist discourses by making visible the differential costs both cosmopolitanism and capitalism impose on bodies and places. I argue that the novel uses explicitly cosmopolitan rhetoric of global ethical and political responsibility to critique the self-centered entrepreneurial rationalism of contemporary neoliberalism and its implications for thinking about risk in a transnational context.

Freedom to Struggle: The Ironies of Colson Whitehead

This essay explores the changing role played by the idea of freedom in the fiction of Colson Whitehead. I begin by outlining some of the significations of ‘freedom’ within American culture before and during the period of neoliberal hegemony, placing particular emphasis on trends in the word’s provenance for African Americans between the civil rights era and the time in which Whitehead is writing. I then undertake an extended comparison between Whitehead’s novels Apex Hides the Hurt (2006) and The Underground Railroad (2016). I argue that in Apex—published against the background of the Bush doctrine and the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—Whitehead treats freedom ironically. The novel both pursues and treats critically a postmodern aesthetics that envisages symbolic action on language as the primary ground of politics. The Underground Railroad, by contrast, inhabits an African American literary genre—the novel of slavery—that is strongly wedded to discourses of bondage and freedom. This novel, arriving a decade after Apex, shows Whitehead responding to changes in American society and culture—particularly the advent of Black Lives Matter and a growing public awareness of the implications of mass incarceration policies for African Americans—that seem to call for a more sincere reckoning with the notion of freedom. I conclude with a discussion of time in Whitehead, arguing that his distinctive engagement with temporality lies at the heart of the vision of freedom after neoliberalism offered by his fiction.

The act of listening is the art of giving voice: on Andile Khumalo’s Tracing Hollow traces for solo clarinet

Andile Khumalo’s Tracing Hollow traces for solo B♭ clarinet (2014) presents ‘sound’ in multiple senses as a primary parameter of musical attention. Sound in this piece exists as the typical parameters (pitch, rhythm, timbre), but also as gesture, shape, resonance, sonority and as a kind of space in which to explore one’s listening. This listening opens out onto multiple subjectivities and ultimately onto a notion of freedom.

A ANTROPOLOGIA RELIGIOSA DE DOSTOIÉVSKI

O presente artigo pretende apresentar o debate entre os autores russos Fiódor Dostoiévski e Nikolai Tcherchinévski realizado na Rússia na década de 1860. Apresentando teses distintas, Dostoiévski desenvolve uma abordagem da condição humana fundamentado no cristianismo ortodoxo vivenciado pelos camponeses. Por outro lado, Tchernichévski[1] sustenta um olhar racionalista e utilitarista a respeito do humano reunidos sob o título de “egoísmo racional”. A partir deste debate, a hipótese a ser justificada consiste na possibilidade de depreender uma antropologia religiosa elaborada por Dostoiévski, na qual a noção de liberdade é compreendida no seio de inquietações religiosas.[1] Optaremos por usar a grafia Tchernichévski no corpo do texto. Grafias diferentes somente serão usadas se assim constarem nas referências bibliográficas.

Between Leibniz and Kant: The Political Thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt

In his early text, The Limits of State Action, Wilhelm von Humboldt raises the Kantian question of the permissibility and legitimate extent of political and juridical coercion, as his contribution to a debate amongst Kantians launched by the publication in 1785 of Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In arguing for a minimal state, concerned exclusively with internal and external security of its members but not at all with their felicity, Humboldt inflects Kantian political thought in the direction of a liberal laissez-faire state, in marked contrast to the strong interventionism that his fellow-Kantian Fichte derived from similar Kantian grounds. The article argues that the underlying conception of the individual retained by Humboldt has markedly Leibnizian traits, namely the notion of freedom as the spontaneous unfolding of a highly personal, monadic developmental trajectory toward perfection, which ought not to be impeded or homogenized by unnecessary state intervention. Humboldt thus represents not only a ‘rightist’ libertarian reading of Kant, but a particular appropriation of significant Leibnizian themes. His combination of these sources is compared with that of other contemporary theorists like Hufeland and Fichte.

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE’S EXISTENTIALISM: A SETBACK TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION IN OUR CONTEMPORARY WORLD?

Existentialism is the product of the World I and World War II. Existentialism gives importance to the lived human experience rather than given. According to Sartre each one of us is endowed with unlimited freedom. That is to say that everyone is totally free. However, this statement may question the limits of every individual’s freedom of choice. As human beings, social and physical constraints cannot be overlooked in the way in which we make our choices. Freedom is not an ability to act. Freedom is rather to be understood as a characteristic of the nature of consciousness (that is as spontaneity). Sartre introduces his notion of freedom as amounting to making choices, and indeed not being able to avoid making choices. His conception of choice can be understood with reference to an individual’s original choice. For example in matters of education, each individual person is allowed to make his/her own choices regardless of any other circumstances or situations. A person’s transformed life is a result of his/her prudent use of freedom in essence seeking understanding. Essence always gets refined and renewed by the freedom of choice determination. Man’s/woman’s existential condition is not a state of alienation from his/her essential nature rather it is a realization of who s/he is. However, the question remains: Is it possible for human beings to make choices without the possibility of making some errors? In educational issues, the subject matter of existentialist classrooms should be a matter of personal choice. In existential terms, lecturers, teachers, instructors, tutors are supposed to view the individual as an entity within a social context in which the learner must confront others' views to clarify his or her own views. This paper is going to give a bird’s eye view of Sartre’s notion of existentialism which is mainly based on freedom and responsibility and see its impact on education particularly as far as morality is concerned.Â

Freedom in Kurdistan Society- In the light of social contract theory John Locke

The notion of freedom as reaction against oppression and injustice returns to Seventeen and eighteen century. At that time European philosophy concerned with individual rights, particularly after France revolution freedom was a concept which was placed in the constitutions, besides of America independence revolution and writing constitution based on the individual freedoms. Because freedom is rel ated to law, therefore, free society is a society in which ruling law, human rights and freedom are respected. (Hegal) said that the only thing I am not free from it is my freedom. This makes clear that fact there is nobody who surrenders willingly to his inextricable and essential right which is freedom. Free individual means free thought, free thought and behavior lead to invention and change toward progress and civilization. ( John Locke) who is considered as forefather of the idea of civil society believes that it is necessity for creating a civil society human rights and public freedoms should be guaranteed.

The Promise of Enlightenment and the Incalculability of Freedom: A Consideration of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Critique of Enlightenment in Relation to Ratzinger’s Notion of Freedom

The Promise of Enlightenment and the Incalculability of FreedomA Consideration of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Critique of Enlightenment in Relation to Ratzinger’s Notion of Freedom Mary Frances McKenna (bio) In contemporary minds, reason and freedom distinguish the modern period from its predecessors.1 The modern Enlightenment’s development of reason is credited with the West’s technological advancement, and, the associated material progress has established the technological-scientific era as superior to prior periods of thought. Likewise, the Enlightenment’s development of the idea of freedom as the freedom of the individual is understood to be progress as against the perceived constraints of what came before. Notwithstanding the positive light in which the Enlightenment’s notions of reason and freedom are viewed today, significant problems and contradictions with these notions are evident. This article seeks to offer some lines of thought on elements of the ambiguous outcomes of Enlightenment thought on reason and freedom and on how the promise of the Enlightenment can become a lived experience. I do so through a consideration of the critique of Enlightenment reason offered by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno that holds that thought contracted to simply a tool that systemizes what is immediately to hand. This critique is then evaluated in the light of Joseph Ratzinger’s (Pope [End Page 114] Emeritus Benedict XVI’s) notion of freedom and his assertion that freedom, as revealed through God’s self-Revelation in Jesus Christ, is the structural form of all being. Needless to say, only a limited consideration of their respective thought can be under taken here, which cannot do full justice to the breadth of the arguments made. The analysis demonstrates that the additional element of love—God’s self-Revelation—shows us a part of reality not available through philosophical reflection and orients reason and freedom away from power to the truly human: love means freedom truly is freedom and not ultimately power. Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment: Thought in Relation to Pragmatism and Truth Enlightenment Promise and Outcome In Dialectic of Enlightenment Horkheimer and Adorno set out to explain why humanity is engaged in a new kind of barbarism in contradiction to the Enlightenment promise of delivering, through the advancement of thought, “a truly human state.”2 The paradox of the outcome of Enlightenment thinking, as Horkheimer and Adorno see it, is that while it enables humanity to provide for itself in a manner never before achieved, at the same time “the individual is entirely nullified” by the overwhelming nature of the same economic forces that both provide for it and that humanity in fact serves. A more just world is made possible by the same forces that place power over the many in the hands of the very few. Progress and regress occur in parallel. Horkheimer and Adorno’s Jewish heritage meant that they could not ignore the destructive element of Enlightenment thought no matter how blinding the material progress produced.3 The fragility Horkheimer and Adorno identified within modern enlightenment is that technologically advanced, educated societies, which viewed themselves as enlightened, were nonetheless vulnerable to and did fall “under the spell” of despots and their incomprehensible senselessness.4 [End Page 115] Importantly, Horkheimer and Adorno did not give up on the promise of the Enlightenment. Rather, they sought instead to identify how the hope can be fulfilled. A positive concept of enlightenment was their ultimate goal. The promise of the Enlightenment, based on the advancement in thought, is, Horkheimer and Adorno argue, on the one hand to free humanity from fear of the unknown, from myth and fantasy, and on the other hand to make humanity masters of nature. To achieve the fullness of the promise of Enlightenment thought patterns, they sought to heal its blindness to its own actions. That healing required the untying of the knots created by Enlightenment pursuit of the mastery and domination of nature which, they argued, had received its high point with Kant, Sade, and Nietzsche: with them, Horkheimer and Adorno contend, the subjugation of everything natural to the subject culminates in the subject’s “domination of what is blindly objective and natural.”5...

Between philosophy and state: Hegel’s dialectic of the institutionalization of freedom

Hegel considers, in his system of philosophy, different specifications of freedom; he distin?guishes between subjective, objective and absolute freedom. I am interested, in this paper, primarily in the dialectics of objective freedom, which Hegel introduces in his Philosophy of Law, in order to point out the problematics of the historicity of objective freedom, and to argue that the concept of freedom gains the quality of true historicity only at the level of the absolute spirit. This will allow me to open the space, within my argument, for presenting the thesis about the dialectical gap which is present in Hegel?s understanding of the perfection of freedom at two different levels of his system: in the state as attaining the concreteness of freedom in the domain of the objectivity of the spirit, as well as in the apparently apoliti?cal notion of freedom in the sphere of the absolute spirit, that is, in the sphere of concrete thinking, the sphere of philosophy itself.

On freedom in the times of Economic Crisis – A Close Reading Of Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes Last

In her fifth dystopian novel, The Heart Goes Last, Margaret Atwood portrays North America in the not so far future, in the wake of a global economic crisis. Parts of the country are in the state of complete chaos, subjected to a ruthless gang rule. The solution to the system's breakdown comes in the form of the socio-economic experiment that requires from its participants relinquishing their freedom as every other month they will spend in prison. The seemingly preposterous experimental project enables Atwood to explore principal questions about the limits of our freedom in the times of an economic crisis or a neoliberal model of economy. The satirical form the novel takes, especially towards its end, helps the writer to decry people's over-willingness to give away their freedom and civil liberties in exchange for happy, uninterrupted consumption. The following article aims to demonstrate that the notion of freedom and free will permeate The Heart Goes Last, which is, in that respect, a politically and socially engaged satire.

Visiones de la libertad. Acerca de la cuestión central en Simmel

Desde su primer libro sociológico, Sobre la diferenciación social, de 1890, hasta su libro póstumo de 1918, Intuición de la vida. Cuatro capítulos de metafísica, Georg Simmel se explaya acerca de la noción de libertad. La cuestión es recurrente también en sus obras principales. Sin embargo, a lo largo de su producción, el autor desarrolla diferentes acepciones y dimensiones del concepto de libertad en relación con las tendencias a la diferenciación e individualización propias de las sociedades modernas en las que el principal símbolo está dado por el dinero. El presente artículo reconstruye y analiza tales diferentes significados de libertad, con especial atención a sus usos sociológicos. Finalmente, se sugiere considerar el concepto de libertad como cuestión central e hilo conductor de la totalidad de la obra del autor berlinés.

La contribución de vintilă horia A la filosofía de los derechos humanos

Este artículo explora un aspecto de la obra de Vintilă Horia no estudiado hasta ahora: su filo- sofía de los derechos humanos. A pesar de que la primera formación universitaria de Horia fue jurídica, su trabajo se decantó por la vía de la literatura y de la filosofía mayormente. La idea de libertad será central en la primera etapa de su obra enfocada desde la perspectiva de las “ciencias humanas”. En su segunda etapa, “holística”, la libertad seguirá siendo el eje de su reflexión, pero desde una mirada que integra también las “ciencias naturales”. Su aproximación “holística” a la cuestión de la libertad desembocará en una reflexión sobre los derechos humanos de acuerdo con la cual el verdadero “defensor” de los mismos no es el Estado, sino alguien que está fuera y tiene una especial capacidad para captar la esencia de lo humano y los peligros que la amenazan: el novelista.

Democratic ‘freedom’ in Myanmar

ABSTRACTIn Robert Dahl’s work on ‘polyarchy’, democratic ‘freedom’ is liberty from the abuses of the state and freedom for citizens to formulate and express their preferences. This meaning of freedom is central to contemporary scholarship on democratization. At the same time, freedom has also been a key concept for activists and leaders involved in Myanmar’s long democratic struggles. Yet, when freedom is referred to by Burmese activists and democratic leaders, does this entail support for liberty or freedom of the type outlined by Dahl? This article argues that Berlin’s distinction between ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ freedoms can help to clarify overlaps and divergence in notions of freedom. When exploring ‘negative’ democratic freedoms, such as freedom from government restrictions on speech or association, there is considerable overlap between the visions of Burmese activists and democratic leaders and the key elements of Dahl’s democratic freedom. In considering ‘positive’ freedoms, however, there is more divergence. Amongst activists and democratic leaders in Myanmar, there is a focus not on freedom as the exercising of own entitlements but rather on freedom for moral conduct; freedom to bear to the responsibilities and discipline of democracy.

Sur la soumission au pouvoir. Convergences et differences entre le Discours de la servitude volontaire d’Etienne de La Boétie et la pensée politique de Paul Ricœur

Cette étude procède à une lecture du Discours de la servitude volontaire d’Etienne de La Boétie, en s’attachant à mettre en lumière les convergences et les écarts avec la pensée politique de Paul Ricœur, autour du concept central de volonté. A partir des notions voisines de “dénaturation” et de “pathologie,” se déploie un parcours qui vise à contribuer à instituer le peuple, en regard de l’Etat, par une politique ravivée par l’amitié. Mais une différence sépare les deux penseurs quant aux ressources de la volonté. Cela se traduit au sujet de la notion de liberté, conçue comme absolue chez La Boétie, tandis que Ricœur met l’accent sur sa contingence en lui préférant le terme de capacité.