Freedom from Reality

D. C. Schindler

Description

It is commonly observed that behind many of the political and cultural issues that we face today there are impoverished conceptions of freedom, which, according to D. C. Schindler, we have inherited from the classical liberal tradition without a sufficient awareness of its implications. Freedom from Reality presents a critique of the deceptive and ultimately self-subverting character of the modern notion of freedom, retrieving an alternative view through a new interpretation of the ancient tradition. While many have critiqued the inadequacy of identifying freedom with arbitrary choice, this book seeks to penetrate to the metaphysical roots of the modern conception by going back, through an etymological study, to the original sense of freedom.

Schindler begins by uncovering a contradiction in John Locke’s seminal account of human freedom. Rather than dismissing it as a mere “academic” problem, Schindler takes this contradiction as a key to understanding the strange paradoxes that abound in the contemporary values and institutions founded on the modern notion of liberty: the very mechanisms that intend to protect modern freedom render it empty and ineffectual. In this respect, modern liberty is “diabolical”—a word that means, at its roots, that which “drives apart” and so subverts. This is contrasted with the “symbolical” (a “joining-together”), which, he suggests, most basically characterizes the premodern sense of reality. This book will appeal to students and scholars of political philosophy (especially political theorists), philosophers in the continental or historical traditions, and cultural critics with a philosophical bent.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Political Ideologies
• Moral Philosophy
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Ethics

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268102647
• Langue: English

Extrait

Freedom from Reality
CATHOLIC IDEAS FOR A SECULAR WORLD
O. Carter Snead, series editor
The purpose of this interdisciplinary series is to feature authors from around the world who will expand the influence of Catholic thought on the most important conversations in academia and the public square. The series is “Catholic” in the sense that the books will emphasize and engage the enduring themes of human dignity and flourishing, the common good, truth, beauty, justice, and freedom in ways that reflect and deepen principles affirmed by the Catholic Church for millennia. It is not limited to Catholic authors or even works that explicitly take Catholic principles as a point of departure. Its books are intended to demonstrate the diversity and enhance the relevance of these enduring themes and principles in numerous subjects, ranging from the arts and humanities to the sciences.
FREEDOM
from REALITY
The Diabolical Character
of Modern Liberty
D. C. SCHINDLER
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
Copyright © 2017 by the University of Notre Dame
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Schindler, D. C., author.
Title: Freedom from reality : the diabolical character of modern liberty /
D.C. Schindler.
Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2017] |
Series: Catholic ideas for a secular world |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2017030365 (print) | LCCN 2017042736 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780268102630 (pdf) | ISBN 9780268102647 (epub) |
ISBN 9780268102616 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 0268102619 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Liberty—Philosophy—History.
Classification: LCC B105.L45 (ebook) |
LCC B105.L45 S43 2017 (print) | DDC
123/.5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017030365
∞ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
Add to both edition’s copyright page: This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
For Jeanne
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: What Is Good?
Part I. John Locke and the Dialectic of Power
1 Locke’s (Re-)Conception of Freedom
2 The Political Conquest of the Good in the Second Treatise
Part II. Modern Liberty as a Flight from the Real
3 The Basic Shape of Modern Liberty
4 Symbolical Order and Diabolical Subversion
5 A “Society of Devils”
Part III. Retrieving the Origin as the Essence of Freedom
6 Starting Over and Starting After:
A First Foundation in Plato and Aristotle
7 Plato: The Golden Thread of Freedom
8 Aristotle: Freedom as Liberality
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The etymological connection between the words “symbolical” and “diabolical” was first made known to me nearly twenty years ago in the title of a section of the book Leben in der Einheit von Leben und Tod , by German philosopher Ferdinand Ulrich. That discovery opened up, among other things, what turned out to be a new way to think about the problem of freedom in modernity. The present book is the fruit of those reflections.
I wish to thank Mark Shiffman for reading the chapters on Locke and offering several helpful suggestions, and my father, David L. Schindler, who went through the entire manuscript and discussed it with me. Conversations with my colleagues at the John Paul II Institute in Washington, DC—Fr. Antonio Lopez, Michael Hanby, Nicholas Healy, Fr. Paolo Prosperi, David Crawford, Margie McCarthy, Joseph Atkinson, and, again, my father David L. Schindler—on the various cultural, metaphysical, and theological themes that are addressed in this book have been invaluable. There is nothing that can substitute for probing questions from those with whom one shares a basic vision of reality.
The staff at the University of Notre Dame Press has been delightful to work with; it is rare to meet with such a happy combination of courtesy and competence as I found in director Steven Wrinn, managing editor Rebecca DeBoer, production and design manager Wendy McMillen, and copy editor Scott Barker. I wish to offer special thanks to the series editor, Carter Snead, for his encouragement and support in this project.
Above all, I would like to express gratitude to my wife, Jeanne Heffernan Schindler, who introduced me to the unexpected joys of political philosophy, and of course to the deep reality of communal existence. This book is dedicated to her.
Introduction
What Is Good?
This book aims to dig as deeply as possible into the philosophical roots of the problematic modern conception of liberty and to propose an alternative way of thinking about freedom in the light of what is uncovered. The sense of what we take to be the problem is nicely captured in the following oft-quoted passage from G. K. Chesterton’s Heretics :
We are fond of talking about “liberty”; but the way we end up talking of it is an attempt to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about “progress”; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about “education”; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good.
The modern man says, “Let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace unadulterated liberty.” This is, logically rendered, “Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it.”
He says, “Away with all your old moral standards; I am for progress.” This, logically stated, means, “Let us not settle what is good; but let us settle whether we are getting more of it.”
He says, “Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lies the hopes of the race, but in education.” This, clearly expressed, means, “We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it to our children.” 1

Now, it has become clear, since Chesterton’s time, that his description of the “modern man” needs to be qualified in a number of ways: there is a sense in which modern man cares a great deal about morality and religion, and no longer advocates “unadulterated liberty” with the same naive enthusiasm Chesterton seems to ascribe to him. Indeed, there are just as many instances of summary and unapologetic restraints placed on liberty, in a manner that can be described as specifically modern. Nevertheless, Chesterton’s observations hit on something essential, which has become if anything even more evident than it was when he first recorded them, namely, that we have separated what we mean by freedom from a substantial notion of the good, and we have in fact turned it thereby into a substitute for the good; that this substitution comes to expression not just in our explicit discussions of freedom, but more generally in our institutions and “values,” and in a variety of other cultural phenomena; and, finally, that this substitution entails a fundamental logical incoherence, which is to say that it both expresses and gives rise to patterns of fragmentation and contradiction. At the same time, however, we will suggest in this book that an eclipse of the good from the horizon that defines the operation of the human will entails a radical shift in perspective that tends to hide the very problems this incoherence generates, or to cast them as irrelevant for all intents and purposes. To reflect on what this means, and what implications it has, is one of the primary goals of our exploration here.
To reflect properly on what is at issue and what is at stake requires, among other things, a resistance to this tendency, which may be characterized in this context as a reduction to pragmatic or political concerns as finally determinative. It is an oversimplification, but it is not altogether false, to say that the movement from the classical to the medieval and then to the modern period in the philosophical approaches to freedom is a movement from the ontological or metaphysical to the moral, and then to the political 2 —what it means to be free was asked initially as a question concerning a mode or state of being, then a question concerning the use and operation of the power of the will, and finally a question concerning the configuration of power (being—will—power). This description is certainly an oversimplification, because in a certain respect the question of freedom always at least implicitly includes all three dimensions at once, regardless of which particular dimension re ceives the primary focus, and also because a departure from metaphysical roots entails a distortion of both the moral and the political, isolated as separate realms. In the fragmentation that results, each comes to have both too much and too little significance; each encroaches on the others even as it surrenders its own proper meaning. However this may be, to the extent that the description hits the mark it means that we have tended increasingly to begin, so to speak, on the surface in our reflections on the question of freedom. But one cannot even understand the surface properly except from the perspective of the depths. It is accordingly our aim to trace the issues that arise in the question of the nature of freedom to their metaphysical roots. The extent to which the aim succeeds, and the value of the fruit the effort bears, is of course something that others will have to judge.
A basic presupposition of this book—which will have to justify itself over the course of the investigation—is that an adequate approach to the notion of freedom will have to include three features: (1) it must understand freedom primarily in ontological terms; (2) it must recognize an essential connection between freedom and the good ; and (3) it must see relation to the other as an intrinsic part of the meaning of freedom. These three features, of course,