Zola-Ink-Spots

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

ICE BERLIN PART 11 ( the plot thickens)

Yesterday a few beginnings were made with berlin and the theme of positive freedom or liberty. But Berlin also wrote about a "Negative Freedom" which is commonly seen to be one essential aspect for a democracy. Yet at the same time we find many already saying that Berlin is but another brick in the wall of right wing and "ruling class" ideology. How might we think on this and work with this in terms of today? One way is to take a quick look at Zygmunt Bauman ( the respected Polish and UK professor ). He wrote :-

" To be an individual does not necessarily mean to be free. The form of individuality on offer in late-modern or postmodern society, and indeed most common in this kind of society - privatised individuality - means essentially unfreedom. ... ...( page 63) ...
That freedom which has been declared to arrive is the aspect of the human condition to which Isaiah Berlin gave the philosophical name of Negative Freedom ; an aspect which in popular use has been spelled out as FREEDOM TO CHOOSE, and in its popularist version as LESS STATE, MORE MONEY IN THE POCKET ( as Margaret Thatcher unforgettably excpressed it the liberty TO GO TO A DOCTOR OF MY CHOICE AT A TIME OF MY CHOICE) This really existing freedom is explained by the absence of constraints imposed by a political authority... " (page 72) The words from Bauman above are from his book " In Search of Politics" 1998, Polity Press.

Without going against Bauman we can quickly see that this kind of really existing freedom ( this icy negative freedom) is but another FREEDOM SO LONG AS YOU CAN AFFORD IT.
No wonder that left wing types fail to fall into the Berlin bunker.

16 comments:

toby lewis said...: Surely Berlin was keen on redistribution to an extent? If you're going to hammer both Negative and Positive freedom -provide us with the alternative, Zo! Advocacy of a minimal government of a non-interventionist nature in people's lives can be combined with a state that provides basic services. Getting the balance is difficult but we must do our best to find a way of doing so. I'd say Berlin was too harsh on Positive Liberty myself, and the flaws of the Thatcherite mentality you suggest, can be kept in check by individuals exercising personal restraint. Yet the crucial thing is to reach positive liberty through education as a free thinker and not by state imposition.; 11:47
toby lewis said...: Got to go now. Have fun over the next few weeks and I'll revisit your threads and Berlin to see if we can get some life out of the wonderful learning of Isaiah. I bet we can.; 11:49
zola a social thing said...: Good luck Toby
see you after you pass those exams.; 12:13
Anonymous said...: There's a moment in one of Berlin's interviews - I'm afraid it'll take me ages to find the reference - where one really gets a sense of what Berlin cared about. It's a passage that sticks with me. I never can seem to erase it.

Berlin takes you close up to a railway-siding in war-time Europe; right up alongside the cattletrucked Jews, destined for the concentration camps. Thus located, Berlin unfolds his table, allowing you a glimpse of the way he does forensics, uncovering a 'crime against humanity' that we all so often miss.

The German guards often lied to their 'passengers', telling them that they were off to a better place. I guess this boiled down to the need to keep the 'cargo' pliable.

To the extent, though, that it saved many of the victims anguish, preventing potential pain, one could justify such a lie on utilitarian grounds; humanitarianism of a perverse - or, rather, grossly insufficient - sort.

For Berlin, though, whatever the obvious crimes going on here, the lying was an important one too. In 'kid'-ding these people, in robbing them of their adulthood, in denying them the chance of controlling - or at least coming to terms with - their destiny, their dignity, something essential to humans, was denied to them all over again.

Berlin used the example to illustrate how even a benign utilitarian calculus could be 'freedom diminishing' in all sorts of ways.

I find criticisms of NuLab nannyish controllery a little excessive at times. (Always enjoyable, though...). I think NuLab often do mean well. No injunction of Godwin's law is necessary here, Nu Lab are not Nazi guards. But: Berlin's example of exposing what, intuitively, we find wrong about being treated as 'kids' often returns to me at such points.; 13:26
zola a social thing said...: Butwhatif : Would you agree that this side of Berlin is a bit idealist and Romantic?
I ask this because of the inevitable link that will come with Karl Marx ( as Berlin wrote rather much of Marx)and the related issue of a kind of romantic streak before and beyond their writings.
Perhaps I am anticipating a thread here but nowt wrong with that sometimes.

Interesting that you use the word intuition. ("intuitively").
Anyway lots there for me to think about more. And i will.; 15:13
Anonymous said...: Berlin's relationship to Romanticism is complex.

I guess one could claim his life-long mission was to bring the 'Counter-Enlightenment' (he coined the term, it's claimed) and the Enlightenment back firmly into tension with one another; with neither seeking the death of other; instead, managing to tame the excesses of each other.

Somewhere, for Berlin, between deMaistre's counter-reaction, and the horrors of a Benthamite Panopticon/Huxleyite Brave New World lies a media via; a postion he thinks it worth us struggling for.

Ever the master of dichotomies, running alongside the Enlightenment/CE one in Berlin is another, perhaps the more fundamental one: that between 'monism' and 'pluralism'.

Berlin claims the Enlightenment is an off-shoot of a long-enduring 'monism' that has plagued Western thought; a tradition, a way of thinking about things that is traceable as far back as Plato.

Monism is the belief that there is a 'master key', one proper route for humanity, one overriding human good. For the E, especially in it's later utilitarian form, materialism, worldly pleasure and pain, and its rational calculation, have become the new overarching deities.

Vico and Herder first throw a spanner into the works. (I'm not kidding: this is exactly how the 'history of ideas' goes in Berlin, usually. Yet, as he always says - and it applies well concerning all those other dichotomies - simplification is not always misplaced, can often be used for illumination.)

Things have never been the same since since those two thinkers. It was these two historicists who first unleashed the challenge to Enlightenment monism.

Herder for one. Largely out of nationalistic sentiment and pride - given that it was the haughty, imperialistic French who conveyed the Enlightenment esprit (judge by the Germans to be shallow and materialistic; soulless); a 'spirit' that wholly denigrated things 'Germanic', their customs and ways, their spirituality, religiosity, their 'soul'. (It's here Margalit and Buruma wonderfully connect up early German CE thought to the similar stains of humiliated, reactive 'othering' of Western modernity that comes from Islamist thinkers like Qutb.)

Vico, largely through historical research, brought into Western consciousness appreciation of the diversity of history, how different times and places come up with very different answers as to how we should live.

For Berlin, then, the virtue in Herder and Vico is that once we listen to them, absorb them into our world view, the Enlightenment stands a far greater chance of becoming more pluralistic; recognition of the often incommensurable, unmeasurable and incomparable ends that humans might seek; recognition that allowing everyONE to find their own path, blossom in their own idiosyncratic way.

And so this, he then sets against a rather monistic Enlightenment, one that he sees easily turning into an oppressive totalitarianism ('being forced to be free' and all that).

The dichotomies do break down, though, or should that be, they interpenetrate: especially in the sense that the Romantic urge for 'self-mastery' also can take a more 'positivistic', prescriptive, uniform, monistic cast. He admits this, in the Two Concepts of Liberty essay. This is the case for Belrin especially when the 'unit' of concern for these Romantics becomes, not the individual, but the group; where cultural pluralism at the global level gets enforced, or reproduced, by cultural homogeneity at the domestic level. (There's a big debate in the IB literature about where he stood on this: if, when negative liberty extended to individuals began to produce rather uniform societies, then whether on Berlin's own showing this is a threat to pluralism globally. John Gray extends this IB puralistic approach to groups, claiming that it means seeing individualism as one competing, incommensurable good; most IB followers don't, however. Claiming that individual freedom, for Berlin is the base-line.)

Indeed, it is the latter, illiberal aspects of Herder (where Herder ends up far less the individualistic pluralist, far more the enforcer of cultural diversity at the global level through oppressive German cultural uniformity) that have been pointed out by some critics. Which I guess leads on to the larger question, for me.

I guess that is whether Berlin only supps so well with figures of the Counter Enlightenment given how he over-sanitises them so well before sitting down with them. (Mark Lilla, if I remember, in a symposium on Berlin, noted nicely how the Herder he knows is not Berlin's Herder.)

Yes, Berlin was a Romantic of sorts. He loved the pluralism that he thought they fought for; he thought they had a far superior take on the immaterial things in life which make us humans tick - dignity, self-mastery, attachments to tribe and identity etc.

Whether he managed to pull off his over-riding mission - preserving the achievements of the Enlightenment (liberty of sorts, equality, progress and rationality), and holding them in creative tension with the insights of the Counter-Enlightenment ... I guess in this pluralistic world there's definitely going to be more than one answer to that question.

Rambling, far too much rambling. Ignore at leisure. But you got me thinking Zola.; 17:05
Anonymous said...: Posted this downstairs by mistake.
**********************************
I have been to Auschwitz many times and one of the things that always strikes me is that this 'factory of death' was set up to spare the blushes of the poor Einzatzgruppen Kommandos who were having to kill face-to-face.
'Bach-Zelewski was worried about this method's traumatizing effects on his men. Himmler recorded in his diary the General's concerns: "And he said to me, 'Reichsfuhrer, these men are finished for the rest of their lives. What kind of followers are we producing here- either neurotics or brutes?'"; 18:13
Anonymous said...: America needs an existential revival. Apparently.; 18:51
zola a social thing said...: Again thanks Butwhatif. I guess we are beginning to get a few words and themes together.
Maybe the trick will be to try and keep our useage and dialogue together as much as possible.
Enlightenment
Counter-Enlightenment
Rationality

I say this not to slow down or to pretend towards specialisms. I say this because often a few chats around these central words and terms isd useful.

Rationality for example. This is usually considered to be as much a "thinking" conscious thing as anything else. The "decision-making" and the "choice" but the affective human and social-body might just ignore such stuff. hence my attempted humour with me wicked willy. ( especially on a summer beach watching the pretty women go by and pretending to read a book).

Again mention has been made of Vico in the context of Berlin. Vico is rarely discussed I feel. But this brings us into the Berlin that discusses historical movements or the problem with such an idea.

Also the science of Enlightenment. I think it was Nagel who critiqued Berlin about the loss of scientific explanation in Berlin.

I am struggling to keep a thread that can be participative.
But this is a warm up.

Perhaps questions would be useful for ALL of us.
This before we even try to agree what Berlin "really said".
If I sound negative here I have said things badly.; 20:26
anticant said...: Cunning old Zola! You are a dab hand at manoeuvreing others into doing your homework, aren't you?

Negative liberty is freedom FROM. Interference, primarily. The Nanny State and all that. Censorious prudishness. Prying neighbours. Etc.

NuLab "mean well"? The road to hell is paved with good intentions!

Money buys freedom? As Thatcher immortally said, the Good Samaritan wasn't only a nice man - he had MONEY as well!; 20:27
zola a social thing said...: Good morning Anticant : Attacking me now are you? OK. Your words are like water rather than solid. Water off a ducks back mate.

If I am getting others to do my homework then I guess I am, in your eyes, at least good at something. Thanks for that compliment.

Concerning your "definition" of negative liberty all I can is that your words make sense although they add nothing to my Zygmunt Bauman quotation on my original post. Yes Anticant I had, in different ways, already said just that and more. It was good that you studied my original post and repeated a part of it. Thanks.

Perhaps the issue is this : Really Existing liberty versus apparent or abstract liberty. All too often Berlin, I feel, gets away from the really existing situation. This is why many leftist positions have not taken Berlin too seriously.; 07:19
anticant said...: No, I wasn't 'attacking' you Zola, old friend. Merely making a merry little quip about the characteristic way you operate.

My apologies if my few remarks added nothing to what you said in your original post. Presumably once the Master has spoken, that settles it for good and all?

I am afraid that I do not take 'leftist positions' as seriously as you and some other posters here do, and I certainly don't regard the Left, or any of its innumerable factions, as the be-all and end-all of politics.

It is this constant harping on the superior insights and righteousness of "the Left" which is making me rapidly lose interest in your and others' postings.

No hard feelings, but I really do have other furrows to plough. So I'm signing off here, with best wishes to you all.; 08:42
Anonymous said...: It's a shame Anticant signed off, since he doesn't have Berlin's concepts completely right. Arguably, they're far more interesting than that.

If I were to say, for instance, "I would love to be free FROM the weaker part of my character, I would love it to stop INTERFERING with my life" - then I'm making a statement that has far more to do with liberty of the positive kind, than with negative liberty.

Injecting 'freedom from' or 'no interference' into any statement, AC, doesn't simply make you a 'negative liberty' kind of guy.

By the way: this don't seem like homework, to me. I thought it was you, not Zola, who reckoned it was time to give Berlin a fair hearing, given how much he came up in dispute between the two of you, and given how much you had championed him, used him for authority. Yet, Berlin would well accept life is short, and, given the countless worthwhile ways of being human, slap you on the back as you dash to furrows and burrows new.; 13:08
zola a social thing said...: Thanks Butwhatif : I agree it is a shame that Anticant leaves this debate. I hope he will not leave all debates with Awks.

While you are here Butwhatif : The term "counter Enlightenment" seems to me to be sometimes easy to get and yet sometimes rather tricky.
Is there a counter-movement WITHIN the Enlightenment itself ( is science, for example always sowing seeds of a kind of phoenix?), or

Is there a counter Enlightenment which is an almost seperate entity and opposed?

Or both of these?

For me much of the deabte on this kind of question helps me to understand just what people mean when they discuss Berlin and/or his working arena which remains working today.; 15:09
Anonymous said...: It's a good question, Zola, and something that maybe is highly relevant today.

The E/CE dichotomy, as erected by Berlin is, as he often admits, a gross simplification. He collects rationality (especially means-end/Weber's 'Zweck-' rationality), measurement, universlaism, control and prediction, empiricism, calmness, materiality, reductionism, economism, forward-looking visions (blending into historical inevitabilism) together; and then constructs all their opposites into a starkly opposed package.

Berlin, no enemy of 'the Enlightenment', maybe here only did exactly what others had done before him. Arguably and plausibly, there never was any 'one' Enlightenment; its coming into being as a coherent, monolithic (and devilish) entity was usually constructed by others, as they began their 'othering' of these ideas, erecting a straw-man against which to construct their opposite identity; performed by what then would be critics-of-elements-of-currents-of-thoughts-of the messy, inchoate things that constituted enlightenments. Hardly as sexy - if you get me drift.

Here's Berlin's entry on 'The CE' in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas. (I'm sure it's his entry.) It captures the ideas, the narrative, and the style, found in his essays proper.

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-11; 15:47
zola a social thing said...: Hello Butwhatif : Sexy? Me? You? Us? Wow. Like that i do.

I sometimes ask myself this same kind of question with that banal and bland term globalisation. But even when i do that there remains some sense to that term.
I struggle now after a very quick reading of your post. I must travel in 2 hours by night train to helsinki and I return on Saturday morning.

I have posted another thread part 111 already today. But again i did this because, as you have already now commented upon "historical inevitability" and all that is also involved. I suspect that critiques here are also different from post s one and two. ( maybe they merge?)

Shit that man berlin - what did he do in his free time ?

But Butwhatif I cannot think of a better guy to leave my risky site with then you right now.
When i return I will erupt if the shit hits the fan without me being there.; 17:10

Zola-Ink-Spots

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

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