Vision Of Freedom Research Articles

Kellogg's Six-Hour Day: A Capitalist Vision of Liberation through Managed Work Reduction

Historians have recently tried to explain why the century-long work-reduction movement ended in the 1940s. A history of Kellogg's Six-Hour day program reveals that the loss of business and management support contributed to this demise. Mainstream corporations such as Kellogg's once thought that managed work reduction would save capitalism, and they developed a capitalist vision of freedom from work remarkably similar to recent socialist writings. But Kellogg's management reversed course and ultimately opposed the Six-Hour day. Instead they developed more conventional corporate views: that industrial progress is defined by more work for more people, that increasing the number of jobs is a primary economic goal (but not the responsibility of the individual firm), and that work can be perfected to become the most satisfying part of life.

Radicalism and Reverence: The Political Thought of Gerrard Winstanley. By George M. Shulman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. 269p. $35.00.

One of the most undeservedly neglected political theorists of the seventeenth century, Gerrard Winstanley is a fascinating figure who wrote broadly and creatively on issues that appear surprisingly modern to his present-day readers. His theoretical approach to the English revolution knit together such diverse concerns as Puritanism, the emerging market economy, and the dilemmas of radical politics. His strong commitment to both personal autonomy and collective action led him towards an alternative to the Puritanism, market institutions, and political violence that he analyzed. In his incisive new book, George Shulman examines the life and work of this important thinker. He traces Winstanley's movement from theorizing about God and the 'rebirth' of the self to active leadership of the 'diggers', a group of radical activists who occupied not yet enclosed common lands. As Winstanley both used and moved beyond his own Puritan heritage, he was able to confront the social and political realities of his time in a language that related them to psychological experience. His richly metaphoric language, and the vision of freedom it embodied, joined psychological, social, and political dimensions of life. By imaginatively reconstructing Winstanley's unified approach to the 1640s, this book seeks to illuminate what was at stake at that time and relate it to contemporary debates about the self, politics, and language. Shulman creates a conversation across time about questions that still animate thinkers today.

環境倫理学からみたエネルギー戦略の未来像

環境倫理学からみたエネルギー戦略の未来像

The Decline of Privacy in Private Law

behaviour but its suitability for state control. A society may accept the moral principle that promises ought to be kept, but out of respect for the value of privacy object to the application of legal sanctions for breach of every promise. The principle of privacy delineates a realm of conduct which the state cannot justifiably regulate. This principle plays a central role in liberal political theory, since it colours many liberals' conceptions of personal freedom. Isiah Berlin identifies this link in his description of the predominant conception of liberty in liberal philosophy: ... there ought to exist a certain minimum area of personal freedom which must on no account be violated; for if it is overstepped, the individual will find himself in an area too narrow for even that minimum development of his natural faculties which alone makes it possible to pursue, and even to conceive, the various ends which men hold good or right or sacred. It follows that a frontier must be drawn between the area of private life and that of public authority.1 Thus privacy, in the sense of freedom from public regulation, provides the essential condition for liberty. Although liberal philosophers have been primarily concerned with encroachments upon individual choice by the criminal law, the argument in favour of an area of private life immune from legal interference applies equally to contractual and tortious obligations, but with one significant difference. In the context of criminal and constitutional law, the individual's right to privacy can be enshrined in law with the consequence that the state is under a correlative legal obligation not to interfere with an individual's chosen way of life. In private law, however, where the dispute lies between individuals, appeals to the value of privacy always contemplate the rejection of all legal rights and duties. This paper has several aims. The first section distinguishes two conceptions of privacy in private law, which are united in their purpose of providing justifications for the exclusion of legal rights, yet quite separate in their fundamental vision of freedom of the individual. The paper then notes the frequency ofjudiial appeals to both of these conceptions of privacy. It is then argued that these rhetorical appeals to the value of privacy conceal a fundamental incoherence in legal reasoning. This incoherence indicates that

Egmont and the Vision of Freedom

The critic of Goethe's Egmont is constrained to move cautiously. He may bear in mind Goethe's charming response to the sixteen-yearold Fritz von Stein, who told him in a letter he was reading the play for a second time: Es freut mich, daB Dir 'Egmont' zum zweiten Male gefillt. Das Stuck ist so oft durchgedacht, daB man es auch wohl ofters wird lesen konnen (November 16, 1788). It certainly appears that on the many occasions when Goethe turned to this material, from the original drafts in 1773 and 1775 to the final version in 1787, he was never satisfied with the revision of individual scenes or episodes but struggled to work out and think through again and again the implications of the drama as a whole. Nevertheless, readers and theatergoers alike have responded to the play with a considerable sense of unease. Schiller, in his review of September 20, 1788, in the Jenaer Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, put into words some of the objections which have echoed in the vast critical literature since. Does Egmont have the stature of a tragic hero? Do we see in his case that tragic dilemma, that moment of desperate choice, which normally sets in motion the sequence of tragic action? Aristotle, in Book VI of the Poetics, required of tragedy that it be an imitation not of persons but of action and life, of happiness and misery. All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of activity, not a quality.l Schiller recognizes no such dramatic action around which the drama is constructed:

Wojciech Słomski. Personalistyczna wizja wolności. Wokół koncepcji wolności osoby ludzkiej Emmanuela Mouniera [The Personalist Vision of Freedom: Examining Emmanuel Mounier's Concept of Personal Freedom

There is considerable discussion in contemporary philosophical inquiry concerning the problematics of personalism. Among these inquiries is the book of Wojciech Słomski, a professor of philosophy at the Higher Institute of Psychotherapy and Rehabilitation in Warsaw, entitled The Personalist Vision of Freedom: Examining Emmanuel Mounier's Concept of Personal Freedom. This is the second edition (corrected and enlarged) of the book which once appeared under the title Personal Freedom According to Emmanuel Mounier in 1996. The new additions are the first chapter, in which the author introduces E. Mounier as a man and philosopher, as well as chapter five, which deals with the role and significance of freedom. This is rounded off by the remaining chapters. The book, therefore, is composed of six chapters and the bibliography.

The Vision of Freedom in the Settlement of America*

IT IS THE GOODLIEST and most pleasing Territorie of World, for Continent is of a huge and unknown greatness. Richard Hakluyt, first great press agent of discovery, penned those lines in 1 5 8 5. Within half a century great tide of migration to North was in full swing. I looked other day at some advertisements which proclaimed availability of American lands. still was a new product in 1600 and this copy was intended to bring hopeful and ambitious artisans to new world. There were in those days no inhibitions upon copywriter. His layout was bad, his typography atrocious. His vocabulary and spelling were some times original but his words carried conviction. one of these, William Penn described attractive land in America which had been settled upon him by King. another conditions for new planters in Territories of His Royal Highness, Duke of York were set forth in glowing terms. Notably customers were assured that In all Territories of His Royal Highness, Liberty of Conscience is allowed, Provided such Liberty is not converted to licentiousness, or disturbance of others. . And there seems something almost prophetic in assurance that the several townships have liberty to make their peculiar laws. .. Let us look at advertisements that lured settlers to Old Dominion. Among these 17th Century documents you will find 17th Century perspective. John Streater in 165 5 printed for Giles Calvert at BlackSpread Eagle at West end of Pauls a tract for silk industry. His method, as this excerpt showed, was different and even more labor-saving than viscose and acetate processes of silk producers of modern Virginia. Nevertheless workers of Richmond, Waynesboro, Covington and Roanoke-or of Parkersburg and Nitro in West Virginia-may find parallel in this ringing copy of Mr. Streater: