Obedience and freedom
our experience of our selves but of reality itself. When we interact with other people a kind of interactive space is formed. When we talk about love we both have differences in perspective because of difference in experience but we agree that we are pointing ultimately towards the same thing. The process of conversation is to weed out the differences in perception to create a consensus about what reality is to the best of our knowledge. Thus, to the extent that we need other people to form our sense of selves and the validation of reality, no freedom could be said to exist without buying into the social groups we all are a part of that allow constantly for these validating exchanges. Wittgenstein put this idea perhaps best in his exploration of the beetle in the box, yet I think he is right also to show that there are limits to how far consensus can take you in trying to understand reality. There comes a point where the difference in perspectives become irreconcilable and we have to trust ourselves as we understand our perceptions, motivations and experiences better than everyone else, and unless we have some obvious perceptive condition, there is no reason to believe that the other person is any more right then you are, so you have to come down on the side of yourself. In some sense then, while we do need other people to shape our perceptions of the world, there comes a point of grim freedom where we have to exercise individual discretion. The third area where we can see necessary restriction allowing for the advancement of individual freedom is in our inheritance of language and systems of thought. This is particularly relevant to language that governs our understanding of abstract ideas and values rather than language that simply points to an object which has a less immediate impact of our perception of the thing. Throughout the twentieth century philosophers showed that first language, then systems of thought, profoundly warp our perceptions of the world. However, we ultimately have to rely on others to have done the analytical leg work on these ideas for us as, if we had to go back to first principles on everything, we would get nowhere. In some sense, having a structure to wrap your life around, even if it is proven to be ultimately arbitrary is better than no structure, as at least you have an organizing principle. This was Aristotle’s great genius about the labour-saving power and necessity of abstractions. Thus, if we are to make progress in thought we need to accept the restrictions of the groundwork that our society has built up. Otherwise, we live in a world of total chaos. A great example of how crucial leaning into pre-existing systems of knowledge is in science. Einstein could not have got to relativity were it not for Pythagoras. At every stage, logical consistencies are built on top of one another, then once internally complete become invisible such that you do not have to return to the first principles of mathematics at each stage. Thus, though we may be surprised that, with our evolution-forged minds, we are be able to comprehend such complicated science, we are only able to do this as we only deal with one level at a time. However, I think that Foucault et al. have slightly overexaggerated the power of language and systems of thought in limiting the possible perceptions we can have. Indeed, it is common to feel the ‘dearth of mortal words’ and have experiences and emotions that we struggle to describe : language cannot totally rule out other comprehensions. Indeed, all the language we use was made by someone at some point so the individual should be sceptical and act against it when it feels restrictive. However, without language, though the extent of its restriction might be exaggerated, the individual would be rudderless, allowing no prospect of either personal or social progress.
The fourth area where we can see a necessary degree of restriction allowing for freedom is in the structure of desire. In Civilization and its Discontents , Freud argued that civilization causes us psycho logical unease because it prevents us too much from the expression of our ‘id’ desires. However,
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