ICE BERLIN PART 111 ( the pot stews now)

Sometimes philosophy specialists forget or ignore the really existing scene. This is not to say that all philosophers do this. But what is this freedom and liberty that we often find ourselves debating? If there has always been a tension between everyday talk and the talk of philosophers there is also the tension between the really existing world, the perceived world and the pure world. What is this damned freedom and liberty?

According to George Bush jnr this freedom and liberty ( and all) is written clearly for all to see and feel. No questions needed and no debate. Just look at the signs on the USA concentration camps and see for yourself. Or just suffer a speech. It was said many times that if people had really read and listened critically to the words of Adolf Hitler then the Jews would not have been killed. But Jews were killed. Murdered. The same is with the present George W Bush.

Now we hear Bush talking about oil and terror and war and budgets and now he does not talk of freedom or liberty. Before all this was freedom and liberty but today ( God Bless) oil comes back. The left wing, like Chomsky, must be smiling and crying ! But this is a real issue, i think, when Berlin is discussed. What is the real existing freedom and liberty and what connection is there to oil and to politics and capitalism?

This means to ask the kind of question that tries to handle the issue of a logic within a socio-economic movement. This means to ask "What is History"? Does it move? Or is there only you and me that move? Can there be progress or can there even be a kind of logic in capitalism? Can there be a logic to such historical movements and still yet an active participative "agent" that says yes and no and acts upon this. Is there, as Vico puts foward, a kind of logic to development or history?
Or are we merely in "voluntary servitude"?
Are we merely "Amusing Ourselves to Death"?

Somewhere here there is sense in studying Isaiah Berlin even if the pot might begin to stew a bit. To argue against Maggie Thatcher and her poodle Bliar is to take these kinds of questions seriously. Can society exist?