Freedom's Just Another Word

that means so many things

Freedom is a word with so many meanings that it almost has no meaning.

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose
Nothin', don't mean nothin', honey, if it ain't free, no no
Yeah, feelin' good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues
You know feelin' good was good enough for me
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee

My Freedom, My Choices

is the title of an essay in the June 26th issue of The New York Review.

“Both having choices and making choices are largely what count these days as being, indeed feeling, free.”

Is that what freedom means to you? Yes or No, please read on.

The NY Review essay is an important read for those of us trying to ferret out the meaning over time (and in the present) of the word “freedom” (and its close cognate, “liberty”).

The author (David Bell) of the essay (alias book review) then points out that Rosenfeld’s book, The Age of Choice, contrasts the current view of freedom as choice (as in the quotation above) with the history of the word and concept of “freedom”.

She (Rosenfeld) cites a poem by Wordsworth¹ that has a totally different slant:

Freedom, for Wordsworth, had a lofty, inescapably moral content, connected to essential issues of evil and good and grounded in Christian faith. It imposed heavy obligations on those fortunate enough to enjoy it. It was not the ability to choose whatever one wanted but the ability to act without restraint for the general good.

Thus, we are launched onto a search for the meaning of “freedom” over past centuries. It should be noted that the definition just given fits neatly into the philosophy that Jeffrey Rosen has presented as the foundation for the United States Constitution.

Rosen also mentions Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, one of the best-selling books of all time. As we all know, we are now at the beginning of the 250th anniversary of the events surrounding the American Revolutionary War, culminating with the adoption of the new Constitution. Common Sense was published in January of 1776. In the shadow of all of this, and in light of current events, I think it is worthwhile to offer this segment of the review:

Rosenfeld’s second book, Common Sense: A Political History (2011), aimed to expose the constructed nature of another concept largely taken for granted: common sense. She argued that only in the eighteenth century did philosophers and theologians develop rigorous arguments to show that all people—even those with no formal education—had the mental capacity to exercise sound judgment. What they lacked in learning, they made up for in “common sense.” Without such confidence in common people, Rosenfeld maintained, social elites would never have conceded them the vote. But should we treat common sense as an unalloyed good? Well before Donald Trump claimed to be leading a “revolution of common sense,” Rosenfeld provocatively asked whether, in the modern age, the quality might be overrated and serve to disguise regressive and repressive populist agendas.

Many (perhaps most) of the Founders were skeptical of or even hostile to the idea of democracy. Thomas Jefferson famously said, "Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights."² He was therefore in favor of public education and a free press.

Hence the Constitution created a republic, not a democracy. Nevertheless, it relied on the idea expressed in the Wordsworth poem, that freedom entailed “the ability to act without restraint for the general good.“ Capitalism was in its infancy. Adam Smith, despite his wonderment at the “invisible hand” was warning of its moral shortcomings. Today’s worship of individual accomplishment has undermined the premise of the Constitution that persons of good faith would act in the common good.

The essay on Rosenfeld’s writings does a good job of explaining the evolution of our market economy. The essay also marks the turning point away from thinking about freedom as involving an obligation to act for the general good.

Early feminists, especially John Stuart Mill and his companion [and wife] Harriet Taylor, linked the “subjection of women” to the denial of choice—not just in the political realm but in social and economic ones as well. It was on this foundation that Mill based his more general theory of liberty…

Rosenfeld also mentions 1872 as one of the pivoting points away from social responsibility toward individual choice: the introduction of the so-called Australian ballot. “That year something remarkable happened in the town of Pontefract in West Yorkshire: an election for Parliament took place by secret ballot.“ Prior to that time, voters made their choices known by open outcry, and could be held accountable for their choices by the community. With the new system, voters could express their preferences with no fear of retribution. The good of the community was no longer the overriding consideration.

There is much more,, which I leave to the reader who wishes to explore. The essay concludes that

The Age of Choice wants [and fails] to suggest a way forward out of our present dilemmas. What it has accomplished is to show, with brilliance and originality, just how deep those dilemmas are.

Some Other Views of Freedom

The most important of these ideas (in my mind) is the story of Kondiaronk, as told in the wondrous book The Dawn of Everything. Before I go down that rabbithole, allow me to mention one other book.

Freedom’s Dominion

In the book Freedom’s Dominion, we learn that “freedom” can be construed to mean the freedom to enslave someone. From the enslaved person’s point of view, that probably does not feel like freedom.

"That government is best which governs least" is a phrase coined by Henry David Thoreau in his essay on Civil Disobedience. This distaste for government oversight, which we might today call “libertarian”, has sometimes (incorrectly) been said to be descended from the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson. who strongly supported individual rights (i.e. choice, or freedom). Although Jefferson (following John Locke and David Hume) believed in limited government, he also emphasized the need for government to protect the rights of individual citizens.

Freedom’s Dominion is a fascinating story of the friction between the freedom from government oversight and the power of government to protect individual freedom. Cowie (or his editor) uses the strange euphemism of “White” in his subtitle where he means “Southern”.

Native American Ideas Shaped Enlightenment Thinking on Freedom and Liberty

Many important ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers (e.g. Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Jefferson) came either directly from (or by a misunderstanding of) American culture. By “American” I refer to the original meaning of that word, which indicated the people (and culture) Native to the Americas. Many of the European philosophers refer to a “State of Nature” and point to the American “savages” as an example of people living in such a state. In reality, the American Natives were far more sophisticated in many ways than were the Europeans.

The weighty book The Dawn of Everything has a long essay on this topic, in their chapter on Wicked Liberty: The indigenous critique and the myth of progress. I will follow up with another post on that topic. Modern ideas of freedom may have originated in what we now call “the land of the free” long before there was a United States to have a national anthem.

Allow me to share just one example from the book. On page 52, they quote Lahontan (formal name: Louis Armand de Lom d’Arce, Baron de la Hontan}, who was deputy to the Comte de Frontenac, Governor-General of New France.

During his decade of service in Canada, Lahontan had spent much time listening to and interviewing the Wendat leader Kondiaronk, who had probably been to France, and who clearly understood European culture. This quotation is from a publication of Lahontan issued in Amsterdam after he returned to Europe.

They [the American Natives] think it unaccountable that one man should have more than another, and that the rich should have more respect than the poor. In short, they say, the name of savages, which we bestow upon them, would fit ourselves better, since there is nothing in our actions that bears an appearance of wisdom.

A more thorough exploration of the impact of American ideas will have to await a future post.

1. It is not to be thought of that the Flood
Of British freedom, which, to the open sea
Of the world’s praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flowed…
That this most famous Stream in bogs and sands
Should perish; and to evil and to good
Be lost for ever….
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held.

2. https://www.loc.gov/collections/thomas-jefferson-papers/articles-and-essays/selected-quotations-from-the-thomas-jefferson-papers/#:~:text=%22Whenever%20the%20people%20are%20well%20informed%2C%20they,relied%20on%20to%20set%20them%20to%20rights.%22