Freedom is the glowing lava that wells up between subject and object.
Where lava is cooling new territories emerge. There you mean to smell the spirit of freedom and liberty. New markets are growing there, established on the cooling lava. But Freedom and liberty are not consumable, are no substance to swallow, inhale or inject.
It is much easier to describe the missing of freedom than freedom itself.[1] Ecstasy[2] is not freedom. Ecstasy in binges of intoxication, or whatever could alternate our minds, show us a hint of freedom and liberty, but the hangover follows often.
The lava of freedom swells between subject and object.
The lava of freedom and liberty wells up from the dichotomy. But how about the other side? I want them both. Freedom is always beyond, on the other shore, and when you are over there, freedom is already on this side, but you are over there.
A gap of freedom always opens up between subject and object. Before this lava of freedom solidifies as rock solid, we must repeatedly seize our opportunity. This applies to the individual and to society, every day, every moment and again and again!
The lava of freedom glows between what is to come and what has been.
The lava of freedom quickly cools and becomes rigid. Freedom is living in the here and now. Freedom is fleeting, like human life itself. Freedom and the here and now are infinitesimal.
I am always a subject and an object at the same time, a thinking real being. Subject and object are the two sides of the same medal. You are not able to click them together at their ends. You cannot.[3]
In the subject, freedom is never determined. Subjectively, we always have a choice. Even in the most hopeless situation under the sword of the executor, we can direct our thinking to this or that. Whether the objective world is determined or not is beyond our ability to decide. Whether God plays dice or not is beyond our understanding.
If I imagine the world as objects that can all be clearly described mathematically, then I will only ever come across objects that can be simulated on the computer. I will never recognize the subject, even though it was always there, in this process of seemingly subjectless recognition.
You always have freedom. Freedom is unattainable but always within reach. But without a daily will to gain freedom, your life is futile.
Isn’t freedom greater outside the walls of a prison than locked up and enslaved?[4] Yes, freedom is also a gift of the objective, for I am young, beautiful, strong, popular and independent. As a gift of the objective, freedom is also what wants to be won together.
Can freedom be achieved collectively or even as a society? Most people expect freedom for themselves. How large is the minority for whom society as a whole is the goal of their social action?[5]
The volatility of freedom can damage the common will to freedom. The common will can stifle freedom.
John Stuart Mill[6] postulated that individual freedom may only be curtailed where the freedom of another is threatened. Climate change threatens the younger generation. Can the freedom of the elderly be restricted because they have already consumed so much of the environment in their lives and left it to harm? Can the freedom of the rich, who behave more damagingly to the environment than the poor, be restricted?
At what point is it justified for the claims of an individual or a small minority to threaten or diminish the freedom and security of many people?
Are trans women allowed to use the protected space of women? Can the claims of the few take precedence over the claims of the many? How essential does this claim have to be so that it can affect the rights of many? How many and which potentially dangerous people can society lock up to protect itself from real or perceived danger? How many unjustly imprisoned people a society is entitled to torture and kill?
Can society demand the life or death of an individual, in war or on the scaffold?
Freedom and security are opposites, freedom is cold and hot at the same time. Freedom is cold because it offers no security and hot because it threatens to burn you.
Freedom and security are offered as a promise whose necessity and attainability wants to shape and control every life. Is there no disparity between security and freedom? Ideologies and leaders promise both.
Leader or Idea? Since the times of Abraham and Akhenaten, ideas have been more alive and powerful than any person. They lasted for centuries, and Jewish ideas even for three millennia. Ideas are powerful; leaders overestimate themselves and are grossly overestimated. That’s how we humans are.
More than ideologies, leaders can cannibalize people’s desires and fears. A leader can enslave me. Can I preserve my freedom over ideas? Do I?
The pure truth warrants a lonely death.
The pure idea of freedom is a deceptive joke of hope.
For Spinoza’s ethics freedom lies in the same place as the adequate ideas and reality. But isn’t freedom always infinitesimal like the here and now? For Spinoza, freedom is not infinitesimal, on the contrary infinite.[7]
Freedom bubbles up like lava from the gap between the subjective and the objective. Lava cools quickly.
A collective freedom, gaining freedom as a collective, seems difficult. And yet there are societies that offer people more and others that offer terribly less freedom.
Sucht is a conditionality of our freedom, our existence and our thinking. Let’s talk about addiction, extasy, intoxication, liberty and freedom. Drugs often promise to be a tangible path to freedom, especially for young people. Dancing on the volcano is tempting. The glowing lava only seems dangerous to others. But I am invulnerable, young, strong and free.
[1] Freiheit, the German word means both Liberty and Freedom. German philosophers difference between Freiheit zu and Freiheit von. We will come back to that later.
[2] The German word Rausch points to intoxication and exstasy of all kind as well. Rauschen is the sound caused bei the power of the Wind
[3] However, Spinoza thinks God already did it. He sees the individual as part of immanence, in which subject and object unite in divine infinity.
[4] How free was Alexei Navalny, who was poisoned by the Russian state and murdered in custody?
[5] How big is this minority in my soul and how big is it in society?
[6] John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873, British utilitarian, political economist and social theorist
[7] Spinoza’s critical thinking method ends here. Spinoza seems to see a satisfying idea of salvation in being suspended and part of the divine infinity. This is the source of the mystical interpretation of Spinoza that is so popular today. The idea of redemption turns Spinoza’s holism into the obscure. But Spinoza rightly shows that truth and freedom lie in the same place.