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3 comments

• Comment Link Thursday, 25 November 2010 18:07 posted by Scott Payne

  Trev,
  
  Beautiful pictures. Thanks for sharing. The Big Picture is a great site. Such a great twist on the modality of online story telling which has become so largely text-based.
  
  I wonder if you could clarify a bit what Hegel had in mind when he spoke of freedom. My context for asking is the concern I expressed in my original essay that the postmodern striving towards freedom as an end in itself has the potential pitfall of caching out as escapism, at least in political terms.
  
  To some degree, I remain skeptical that in socio-political terms there is really any such thing as freedom in an intrinsic or perennial sense. The postmodernists were right to locate our struggle within context, but then seemed unwilling to really grapple with consequences of that realization.
  
  The immediate jump is to a conclusion of nihilism. But I don't think that needs to be the case. If our struggle is inherently contextual (no freedom from context, just an endless shifting of contexts), then ought we not to ask the question how do we navigate those contexts in a maximally beneficial manner? Can we not judge some contexts to be better than others? Does our contextual existence necessarily lead us down the path of relativism?
  
  Obviously, my sub-text here is that it doesn't and that a contextual struggle can still be a meaningful struggle. But I worry that by focusing on freedom as an end in itself, we wind up (to go integral for a moment) engaged in a sort of typological absolutism. We go all in on eros (freedom, broader contexts, and a greater multiplicity and access to contexts) and forget the importance of agape (relation, union, the integration and sense making of those contexts).
  
  All of which should be qualified by saying that I'm speaking about our state of affairs in the relative world. Political theorizing has very little to say (at least at this point in time) about what freedom we might realize in a spiritual fashion via transcendence.
• Comment Link Thursday, 25 November 2010 19:51 posted by Trevor Malkinson

  Scott, thanks for the inquiry, this is an important question. The word freedom is a pretty loaded signifier (esp. given its connection to/use within the American context)so it's worth trying to get a little clearer about what Hegel might've had in mind when he used the term.
  
  Firstly, I would say that I (deeply) share your trepidation around the escapist possibilities of freedom as an end in itself. But before talking about that, let's look at Hegel's view (or what I understand of it). Hegel saw human evolution/development as ultimately the embodied unfolding of Geist or Spirit-in-action. So Hegel's vision is a deeply spiritual one; in the Phenomenology he says that creation (or the big bang), "is a conscious self-mediating process- Spirit emptied out into Time; but this externalization, this kenosis, is equally an externalization of itself".
  
  So within this cosmic journey of Spirit's own self-unfolding back to full knowledge of itself within its own creation, I would say freedom for Hegel might sound something like this (in my interpretation):
  
  1) Freedom is the coming to full awareness of our ultimately self-determining nature.
  
  2) Freedom is the increasing identity with a dimension of ourselves (Spirit) that is always radically free.
  
  Hegel traces this freedom through various civilizations and historical stages, showing its partialities and its growth. He talks about the Persian Empire and other empires where only the ruler is free. Then about Greek democracy, where more people are free, but not all, and where people were still mainly identified with habits or customs or the polis (thus not yet free). Skipping ahead, Hegel argues that, "It was first the Germanic peoples, through Christianity, who came to the awareness that every human is free by virtue of being human, and that the freedom of spirit comprises our most human nature".
  
  For Hegel, Spirit (and freedom) comes to full self-knowledge with the "knowledge of the universal as essentially in the individual. This is the message for which all previous ages were thirsting". So for Hegel we're fully free when we come to understand that the universal (Spirit) is fundamentally within our individual. As Charles Taylor summarized it in his book on Hegel, "for the mature Hegel, man comes to himself in the end when he sees himself as the vehicle for the larger Spirit" (450).
  
  In my view, one of the biggest problems with so much of postmodern philosophy (which I adore in so many ways), stretching back to Karl Marx and going all the way through to Deleuze and so much of the radical left, is that this ultimate dimension/context of Spirit in Hegel's philosophy was rejected or cut out in the name of atheism or materialism or a strict immanentism etc. So it opens the door for what I consider one-sided, confused or regressive realizations/expressions of freedom (Bataille is a good example, god bless him). As Chris says in the discussion section of his article 'The News of the Republic', "I think non-religious political movements (either capitalist or revolutionary) tend to go very bad".
  
  Hegel's view is unabashedly eschatological, a view that's been on the outs for awhile, but I think it's at least worth peering through this lens once in a while when viewing pictures such as the ones above. A divinely infused human awakening to our essential nature, thus throwing off everywhere the yoke of tyranny, dominance and oppression, so that our true nature might live and shine? Just might be.
  
  Was that at all helpful? Feel free to ask me some more specific questions or to direct the discussion in ways useful to your own inquiries.
• Comment Link Saturday, 27 November 2010 22:38 posted by Bergen Vermette

  Was just reading this interesting piece on the BBC:
  
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11849259
  
  After reviewing the history of protest, Goldfarb asserts that protests today are essentially "ineffective" and a "way of exercising one's ego".
  
  Its an interesting point and makes sense in light of recent protests that have accomplished little in the way of change - the Iraq war protests in the 2000s, and the protests against European spending cuts more recently, for example.
  
  I think the reason protests have become less effective is that we (people protesting in the West) generally have it pretty good. We might get peeved over a particular issue, and we may take to the streets to "make our voices heard", but politicians have learned that after a day or two of marching we'll all just go away.
  
  This kind of makes sense given how good we have it. There's no impetus for a sustained pressure on government, let alone the kind of pressure that puts it all on the line - imagine risking everything and going to jail or overthrowing our leaders in a bloody revolt. We're not willing to do that (and it's entirely understandable given our high standards of living), things just aren't bad enough. And without the possibility of this kind of protest, leaders don't feel any pressure to listen - there's no consequences not to.
  
  As Goldfarb says: "political leaders tolerate marching but don't fear it".
  
  Anyhow, we're in an interesting situation. How can citizens affect change when it's not worth risking it all?