Farewell to Freedom:
A Western Genealogy of Liberty

Riccardo Baldissone

University of Westminster Press

www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk

Published by

University of Westminster Press

115 New Cavendish Street

London W1W 6UW

www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk

Text © Riccardo Baldissone 2018

First published 2018

Cover: Diana Jarvis

Image: ‘Perseus Freeing Andromeda’, courtesy of Warburg Institute

Printed in the UK by Lightning Source Ltd.

Print and digital versions typeset by Siliconchips Services Ltd.

ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-911534-60-0

ISBN (PDF) 978-1-911534-61-7

ISBN (ePUB): 978-1-911534-62-4

ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-911534-63-1

DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book15

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This licence allows for copying and distributing the work, providing author attribution is clearly stated, that you are not using the material for commercial purposes, and that modified versions are not distributed.

The full text of this book has been peer-reviewed to ensure high academic standards. For full review policies, see:

http://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/publish/

Suggested citation:

Baldissone, R 2018 Farewell to Freedom: A Western Genealogy of Liberty. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book15. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

To read the free, open access version of this book online, visit https://doi.org/10.16997/book15 or scan this QR code with your mobile device:

to my mother, my lover, and my daughter

contaminari decere fabulasα

Il n’y a point de mot qui aît reçû plus de différentes significations, & qui aît frappé les esprits de tant de manières, que celui de Libertéβ

α [I]t is proper to contaminate stories. Terence, , introduction, modified text.

β No word was given more meanings and so variously affected humans than freedom. Montesquieu, , 1.11.2.

Acknowledgements

A book has a nominal author, but, as like any other deed, is the result of a combination that is neither simply individual nor collective. In order to do justice to all the components of this reaction, rather than compiling a list of acknowledgements one should tell a story of encounters, dialogues and gifts. For the moment, this story has to remain untold though, as it would far exceed the limited space of the present publication. To the yet virtual characters of this narration, who are at once the very real sharers of my path, goes my gratitude.

Competing interests

The author declares that he has no competing interests in publishing this book.

Contents

To the Benevolent Reader: A Preliminary Note On Quotations

Introduction

Chapter 1. Antiquities Before Christianities

1.1 Eleutheria

1.2 The Greek Constellation of Freedoms

1.3 The Roman Constellation of Freedoms

Chapter 2. The Christian World Until the Threshold of Modernities

2.1 Christianities Before the Papal Revolution

2.2 The Papal Revolution and its Aftermath

Chapter 3. High Modernities

3.1 Hobbes’ Invention of Modern Freedom

3.2 Freedom and Revolution

Chapter 4. Low Modernities

4.1 The Hegel Effect

4.2 Nietzschean Dynamite: The First Detonation

Chapter 5. Farewell To Freedom

5.1 The Dissolution of the Notion of Freedom

5.2 The Dissolution of the Subject of Freedom

5.3 In-between Autonomy and Heteronomy: Dianomy

5.4 Otherwise Than Freedom: Throughdom

Selected Bibliography

Index

To the Benevolent Reader: A Preliminary Note On Quotations

Books have many purposes: I would suggest that you use this book as a hands-on tool. This is why I not only offer you a series of reconstructions of Western notions of freedom, but I also put on the table, so to speak, the most relevant textual material for my arguments: the book is thus replete with footnotes and, more important, quotations.

Nowadays, the sheer overabundance of secondary literature and the complete reliance on translations risk keeping you away from the original sources: the former, by inflating your need for expert mediation, the latter, by boasting the independence of the text from its specific language expression. In both cases, the supposed meaning of the text is unduly detached from its written configuration and, more generally, from its context.

In this book, quotations in the original version and script are instead meant to render immediately visible to you the long and tortuous process of construction and reconstruction of texts across times, cultures and languages. Western notions of freedom, similarly to other main Western ideas, trace a path that is both convoluted – as it is often bent over its past – and discontinuous: subsequent waves of translations from Greek (and sometimes Hebrew) sources into Latin first, and into European national idioms later on, are major turning points in such a turbulent course. Moreover, deviations and jumps in the use of notions of freedom do not only result from translations and transliterations, but also from language manipulation, which only the original reference can show.[†]

The display of the transformations of freedom-related terms, both within and without specific languages, is intended to give you visual evidence of a plurality of uses that can only forcibly be reduced to the fictitious unity of a single notion of freedom. But of course, you may use this material as you wish: to verify, to take further, or to question my suggestions. However, so long as my quotations allow you an escape from the monolingual cage of contextless abstractions, their presence in the text is not useless.

[†] I write the word ‘god’ as referring to both Christian and other deities with the lower-case initial letter, whilst I write ‘God’ in quoted text when capitalised by other authors.

Introduction

Why should one read another book on freedom? First, because this is not a book on freedom (in the singular), but rather on a plurality of words, notions and concepts, around which revolve the various discourses of freedom during the last twenty-five centuries. Second, because these materials are presented and analysed in their original form, and their translation into English is problematized as an ongoing task.

Nor does the peculiarity of the book lie just in its extensive use of sources. As most relevant Western thinkers engage with one or another notion of freedom, the book is also a brief historical sketch of Western thought, and a highly unorthodox one, because it does not focus on interpretations but on the production of the theoretical lexicon.

Moreover, the book has the ambition to follow the course of Western thinking also before and after freedom, so to speak, as its narration considers Western texts before the invention of the notions of freedom, maps the long rise of freedom’s theoretical constellations, and explores the possibility of their overcoming. This possibility emerges from the very process of construction of the lexicon of freedom, whose words are often ‘fabricated in a piecemeal fashion from alien forms.’[1] More generally, by surveying the construction of new vocabularies, the book shows how intellectuals do things with words.[2]

Nowadays, we all experience, at least, the negative aspects of this construction: the widespread adoption of the neoliberal vocabulary and its definition of freedom have a tangible (and disastrous) impact on our daily lives. In particular, the neoliberal understanding of freedom as absence of interference, albeit ridiculously simplistic, is all the more effective insofar as its construction is presented, in good modern fashion, as a statement of fact. In other words, neoliberal theorists, such as Hayek, not only vulgarize Hobbes’ notion of individual freedom, but they also repeat the Hobbesian double gesture of producing a perspectival construction of reality and pretending it to be a mere description.

Moreover, our neoliberal dwarves are firmly perched not only on modern giants’ shoulders,[3] but also on more towering figures: the rudimentary notion of negative freedom can be traced back to the no less rudimentary dichotomy between acting and being acted upon, which is first systematized by Aristotle. However, this is just one possible lineage in the genealogy of the discourses of liberty: as Montesquieu reminds us, ‘no word was given more meanings and so variously affected humans than freedom.’[4] Yet, despite all this variety, the neoliberal reductionist view relies on the widely shared assumption that freedom (just like any other notion) can be defined, or, at least, can be traced to some kind of core idea.

Of course, the quest for definitions is probably as old as the processes of production of abstract terms. In particular, the systematic questioning of the Platonic character Socrates seems to be the first Western apparatus of production of theoretical abstractions. In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates questions his interlocutors about the definition of several nominalised epithets: he is never tired of asking ‘what is the good?,’ ‘what is the pious?,’ ‘what is the beautiful?,’ and so on.[5]

This language device[6] is at once a morphological, syntactical and semantic innovation: it not only produces a series of abstract entities in the Platonic text, but it opens the way for the systematic construction of entities, notions, and later, concepts as the main tools of Western thought. It is then not surprising that even long after the disappearance of Plato’s objects of concern, the enquiry into definitions still gives shape to most Western non-fiction writings.

On the contrary, this book follows a completely different path. It observes that the words of the ever-changing vocabulary of freedom are linked by a ‘complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.’[7] The book explores how these words and their similarities are composed and re-composed, and how their uses, time after time, converge towards some shared meaning.

Hence, the book does not ask the fateful question ‘what is freedom?,’ which surreptitiously affirms the existence of the entity ‘freedom,’ regardless of the plurality of its constructions. Following the Platonic scheme, the question ‘what is freedom?’ puts the cart before the horse, because it assumes the possible result of a shared practice of communication, namely, the shared meaning[8] of the word ‘freedom,’ as the precondition of the communication itself.

Actually, the notion of freedom is not even a Platonic invention, as the Greek word ἐλευθερία[9] [eleutheria] is previously attested in Pindar: Plato improves and systematizes an already active process of production of abstractions. Havelock associates this process with the construction of the first Greek written alphabetical language, which the Socratic-Platonic semantic enquiries culminate.[10]

The book argues that before this process there is no literal freedom, but just free things, and then, free humans. When the word ἐλεύθερον[11] [eleutheron], free, appears in the Homeric text,[12] it does not grammatically refer to human subjects, but it metaphorically hints to their state: for example, we now translate the Homeric expression ἐλεύθερον ἧμαρ[13] [eleutheron hēmar], literally free day, as the day of liberty, that is, the condition of freedom.

Only in the fifth century BCE, does the appearance of the word eleutheria in two Pindaric odes herald a series of neologisms, such as, for example, Thucydides’ αὐτονομία[14] [autonomia], which we now render in English as ‘autonomy.’ These terms become part of a wide constellation of locutions that construct a plurality of freedoms: a similar constellation also revolves around the Latin words liber, free, and libertas, liberty.

Later on, Christian authors such as Augustine identify a proper freedom and relocate it in the afterlife, whilst associating its mundane limited exercise with will. As compared with the Graeco-Roman and Germanic variously grounded notions of liberty and freedom, the Christian emphasis on individual salvation takes further the Stoic and Neoplatonist retreat towards interiority, and it produces a radical decontextualization of personal choice.

After the turn of the first Christian millennium, medieval theological debates focus on freedom both as a divine faculty and as a secular practice. The latter aspect is also developed by lay legal scholars and political thinkers, following the recovery of Roman law codes and Greek philosophical texts. Paradoxically, Luther and Calvin’s stress on predestination allows then the redirection towards worldly tasks of individual agency, and its unlimited expansion.

As early modern constructions of freedom emerge from a clash of religious fundamentalisms, despite their claim of absolute novelty they often recast medieval theological notions. However, seventeenth-century English parliamentary debates also revive the Roman phraseology of slavery, in order to articulate the concept of freedom as absence of dependence. This concept is formulated by Hobbes on the model of the new physics.

In the eighteenth century, Rousseau follows Hobbes in reshaping medieval mystical bodies in the form of the general will. Moreover, he redefines freedom as the obedience to a self-prescribed rule. Similarly, Kant claims absolute autonomy through a voluntary subsumption of the individual under the universal.

German idealist thinkers’ inflation of the concept of freedom reveals it as a mere hyperbole, which can be realised either as absolute compulsion or in the absence of others. Hegel endeavours instead to capture freedom within a framework of evolving historical necessity. The reaction to the Hegelian dynamic totalization opens the way to a variety of theoretical challenges to the very notions of subject and will, which are the foundations of the medieval and modern constructions of freedom.

From Stirner on, a veritable fault-line opens up in Western thought between the pursuit of a conceptual definition of liberty and the attempt to rethink freedom as the human production of novelty. Whilst Marx anchors this production to material processes, Nietzsche takes further Stirner’s questioning of ideas by challenging the unity of the Western subject.

Nietzsche’s effort to reconstruct conceptual entities as processes allows us to revise the discourses of freedom in terms of human practices. In particular, a radical shift of the very locus of freedom and autonomy results from a double change of theoretical focus: Simondon rethinks individuals as processes of individuation, and Foucault constructs subjects as processes of subjectivation.[15]

These processual approaches undermine the raison d’être of the notions of freedom and autonomy: regulative properties such as freedom and autonomy only apply to an enclosed and self-consistent entity – the individual, or the collective – as distinct from others, and they cannot fit subjectivation processes that are based on the constitutive participation with others. Hence, a new theoretical lexicon is needed to strike a dia-nomous[16] middle path between autonomous and heteronomous alternatives: such a relational third way requires likewise relational notions.

Of course, it may seem impossible to transcend the horizon of freedom: the very plurality of the discourses of liberty may rather appear to justify the hope in some understanding of freedom that transcends its pervasive neoliberal version. Nevertheless, also more articulate discourses of liberty can hardly face our current challenges, both in the public and the private sphere. For example, these discourses also still claim the freedom to exercise an absolute power over oneself – a mastery that in fact is their paradoxical cornerstone.[17]

If the discourses of freedom appear exhausted and even counterproductive, couldn’t we treasure instead the neoliberal unwitting demonstration of the performative power of words, and thus realise that other words may help catalyse other (and participative) practices? In this case, we could take advantage of our knowledge of the past to construct a different vocabulary, which may empower us to claim the life that we all deserve.[18]

[1] ‘[C]onstruite pièce à pièce à partir de figures qui lui étaient étrangères.’ In Michel Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire,’ in Hommage à Jean Hyppolite (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), 145–172, 148. Eng. trans. ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,’ in id., Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, Donald F. Bouchard ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 139–164, 142.

[2] See John Langshaw Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962).

[3] ‘Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantum umeris insidentes,’ Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are similar to dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants. In John of Salisbury, Ioannis Saresberiensis Metalogicon, J. B. Hall and K. S. B. Keats-Rohan eds. (Turnholt: Brepols, 1991), 116.

[4] ‘Il n’y a point de mot qui aît reçû plus de différentes significations, & qui aît frappé les esprits de tant de manières, que celui de Liberté.’ In Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des Loix, Tome 1 (Genève: Barrillot & Fils, 1748), 240 (11.2). Eng. trans. id., The Spirit of the Laws, Thomas Nugent trans., vol. 1 (London: J. Nourse and P. Vaillant, 1758), 212, modified translation.

[5] For example, in Alcibiades 1 130d (the same); Eutyphro 5d (the pious); Hippias Major 288a (the beautiful); Phaedo 65d (the just, the beautiful, and the good), 78d (the beautiful and the equal).

[6] Before Plato, the production of abstract terms also relies on what we would now call a process of nominalization of adjectives, such as (if we can trust Theophrastus and Simplicius) Anaximander’s ἄπειρον [apeiron], the boundless or non-determined (fr. 12 B1 Diels-Kranz), as well as participles, such as Parmenides’ ἐόν [eon], that which is, or, more commonly, being (fr. 28 B6 Diels-Kranz). Plato’s (or Socrates’) innovative intervention produces what Bergson would call a dispositif, that is, something like a device or an apparatus. Plato’s manipulation of language is particularly evident in his use of the adjective αὐτὸς [autos]. In Classical Greek, the word autos assumes the role of the Latin intensive adjective ipse when it is associated with a noun: for example, the phrase αὐτὸς ὁ βασιλεύς [autos ho basileus] may be translated as ‘the king himself,’ ‘the very king,’ or ‘even the king.’ Plato combines the word autos (neuter auto) with an adjective, which thus syntactically and semantically performs as a noun. See, for example, the phrase αὐτὸ τὸ καλὸν [auto to kalon], the beautiful itself, in Plato, Phaedo 78d. This new language mechanism can turn any predicate ‒ in the words of the Platonic Socrates, αὐτὸ ἕκαστον ὃ ἔστιν [auto hecaston ho estin], the very each thing which is, ibid. ‒ into an immutable subject.

[7] ‘[E]in kompliziertes Netz von Ähnlichkeiten, die einander übergreifen und kreuzen. Ähnlichkeiten im Großen und Kleinen.’ In Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical Investigations, G. E. M. Anscombe trans. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 32/32e.

[8] Following Wittgenstein, it would be more precise (albeit probably less clear) to say ‘a shared use of the word freedom.’

[9] Pindar, Isthmian 8 15; Pythian I 61.

[10] See Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963).

[11] In Attic Greek, eleutheros, eleuthera, and eleutheron are the masculine, feminine and neuter nominative forms of the term.

[12] Iliad 6.455; 6.528; 16.831; 20.193.

[13] Ibid., 6.455; 16.831; 20.193.

[14] Thucydides 3.46.5; 4.87.5; 8.21.1.

[15] The word ‘subjectivation,’ does not express the sense of ‘making subjective’ of the English word ‘subjectification.’

[16] The book introduces several neologisms: dianomy, dianomous, dianomize, diapoiesis, throughdom, perdividual and perdividuation; it also suggests the recovery of Greek words such as kinēsis and enthesis.

[17] Here is a clear example of such a paradoxical double standard: ‘La puissance c’est le pouvoir qu’on veut prendre sur autrui, la liberté, c’est le pouvoir qu’on veut prendre sur soi-même.’ Potency is the power that one wants to take over others, freedom is the power that one wants to take over oneself. In Denis de Rougemont, ‘Denis de Rougemont: Tel qu’en lui-même,’ Cadmos 33 (Printemps 1986), 7–23, 23.

[18] This is an explicitly political task, which is what differentiates a genealogical endeavour from a merely historical reconstruction. Just like good historians do, genealogists recognise historical narrations as (inevitable) projections onto the past. Whilst this recognition surely improves the epistemic horizon of modern historiography, it still does not transcend it: genealogists only cross the cognitive threshold of merely historical narrations when they acknowledge their own investment in the present through their reconstructions of the past, without hiding themselves behind the finger of historiographic refinement.

CHAPTER 1

Antiquities Before Christianities

1.1 – Eleutheria

The battle rages under the walls of Troy, when Hector is sent back to the city by his brother, the augur Helenus, to ask the women and elders to pray. Once in Troy, Hector also angrily rouses his brother Paris to the fight. Paris seeks reconciliation, which Hector defers to after the ousting of the Greeks, when a κρητῆρα (…) ἐλεύθερον[19] [krētēra (…) eleutheron], literally a free krater, that is, a mixing-bowl in honour of freedom, will be offered to the gods.

Homer deploys the word eleutheron not only in association with the word krētēr, bowl, but also with the word hēmar, day. In turn, the phrase eleutheron hēmar, literally, free day, in the Homeric narration is almost immediately reversed as δούλιον ἧμαρ[20] [doulion hēmar], slavish day. In all these cases, our modern reading requires a somewhat metaphorical shift from the literal translation of Homer’s lines: more precisely, we have to project onto the Homeric text our habit of constructing reality with abstract nouns, such as ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery.’

Of course, I am not refusing to translate the Homeric expressions eleutheron krētēr and eleutheron hēmar with English periphrases such as ‘the bowl to celebrate freedom’ and ‘the time of liberty’ respectively. I am rather suggesting that we resist the temptation to absolutize our current language uses as the inevitable outcome of past language transformations.

Neither was the word eleutheron necessarily to evolve as the abstract term eleutheria, nor, pace Jakobson,[21] was a pre-existing metaphorical pole to allow our hermeneutic transformation of a historically determined expression (eleutheron, free) into another expression (eleutheria, freedom) yet to appear. For sure, still at the time of Plato the shift from epithets such as good, pious, and beautiful to their nominalised forms (the good, the pious, and the beautiful, as we previously recalled) deeply puzzles Socrates’ interlocutors.

Moreover, whilst we nowadays rely on a well-established grammatical taxonomy that allows us to classify eleutheron as an adjective and eleutheria as a (derived) noun, this categorisation is yet to appear in ancient Greece. It is Plato who possibly invents[22] the first repartition of language parts as a simple dichotomy[23]: ὀνόματα [onomata] and ῥῆματα [rhēmata].[24]

Plato makes the unspecified Ξένος [Xenos], Stranger, or better, Foreign Guest[25] – the main character of his dialogue The Sophist – turn these two terms already in use into technical linguistic definitions: ‘we may call a rhēma the indication which relates to action (…) and the vocal sign applied to those who perform the actions in question we call an onoma.’[26]

The word rhēma is not part of the Homeric lexicon. Its first extant occurrence is in a seventh-century BCE poetic fragment by Archilochus, where it may be understood as a solemn announcement.[27] Only one century later, Theognis deploys it as a synonym for ‘word.’[28] However, the Platonic Guest associates rhēma with the expression of an action, so that it may appear as the first definition of a key grammar notion: the verb.[29]

The translation of the second term of the dichotomy proposed by the Guest, namely onoma, may likewise appear deceitfully unambiguous. Whilst the term has already the meaning of ‘name’ in Homer,[30] the definition of the Platonic Guest seems to refer to the logical subject of the sentence, and we may be tempted to translate this other half of Plato’s dichotomy with a later grammatical definition of a specific part of discourse: the noun, indeed.

Plato also deploys the couple onoma and rhēma in his (possibly previous) dialogue Cratylus, with the apparent meaning of ‘word’ and ‘phrase’ respectively.[31] Aristotle recovers the partition with its later sense, that one suggested by the Platonic Guest; yet, his use of the term rhēmata is closer to the logical notion of predicates than to the grammatical definition of verbs. However, in his language classification in the Poetics, Aristotle does not name adjectives, which instead appear in the Rhetoric under the broad definition of ἐπίθετα[32] [epitheta], that is, additions[33] or epithets.

If we consider existing works, it is not until the second century BCE that Dionysius Thrax grants adjectives a status (albeit not autonomous) in the grammatical arena. Dionysius is traditionally acknowledged as the author of the Τέχνη γραμματική [Tekhnē grammatikē], the art of grammar, which is the first extant Greek grammar. Whilst the Tekhnē recasts the traditional Platonic partition of rhēmata and onomata, the latter are further subdivided into three categories, the last of which is devoted to the ἐπίθετον [epitheton], that is, the addition, or epithet: Dionysius gathers under this Aristotelian label both adjectives and nouns that are used with the function of modifiers.

Only much later do adjectives emerge as independent grammatical entities. In the twelfth century, Abelard recalls adjectiua[34] as specific grammar items, which grammatically concord with the associated nouns: within flexional languages such as Greek and Latin, concord distinguishes adjectives from appositions. It is somewhat ironic that Abelard gives adjectives theoretical visibility by acknowledging them as nomina adjectiua, that is, literally, adjoining names.[35]

I am soon to show how, during the first documented wave of nominalisation in Western languages, the word eleutheria, freedom, which now we define as a noun, is derived from the word eleutheros, free, which now we define as an adjective. Yet, if a clear-cut severance between adjectives and nouns is only claimed nineteen centuries after the beginning of the Greek nominalising process, we may at least consider the possibility to construct this crucial transformation less anachronistically.

Rather than rendering the derivation of eleutheria from eleutheros with the language of later grammar, we may describe it in Aristotelian terms as the transformation of a predicate into a subject. This description likewise applies to Plato’s transformations of epithets into ideas, and we may well understand the birth of eleutheria as part of the genesis of philosophical abstractions.

Moreover, the task of rendering this transformation goes also beyond the shift, however important, from adjectives to nouns, or predicates to subjects: what is also at stake is the role of our current categories in the construction of the past. Inasmuch as we acknowledge our retrospective projections and their inevitability, the diachronic – that is, historical – differentiation of the past from the present (which is the achievement of historicism) may not be enough: we may also have to acknowledge a synchronic differentiation between the various depictions of the past in the present.[36]

However, if we observe the use of the word eleutheron, free, in the Iliad, a diachronic, or historical differentiation emerges: eleutheron does not directly characterise a specific human subject as a free subject, as we would expect according to our current use of the term ‘free.’ In Homer, eleutheron rather defines a significant object (the krater) and a portion of time (the day) as free: human subjects are only implicitly described as free, through their relation with such objects and times, which act as a sort of objective correlative[37] to the subjective condition of freedom.

Besides, though the condition of freedom is experienced individually, it is either maintained or lost as a collective endowment: by depicting the day as either free or slavish, Homer alludes to a human group and its shared condition, which depends on the result of the war.[38]

Following its appearance in the epic,[39] the term eleutheron is then related to its dichotomous counterpart doulion, slavish: the loss of the war immediately entails for all the defeated the loss of their free condition. In the Iliad, this loss is prefigured by those female prisoners that the Greeks capture during the war. The dispute over one of them, the princess Briseis, is in fact the cause of the major event in the narration, namely, the wrath of Achilles. Actually, though Briseis is part of the booty, she is treated by Achilles as a wife: Patroclus even insists that she will be formally married after the end of the war and the return to Phtia.[40]

However, only a few centuries after the composition of the Homeric poems, the grammatical association of the term eleutheros with human subjects does directly express their free condition: the first extant occurrences of this association are in the fragments of Solon.

Solon’s surviving texts witness both old and new uses of the word eleutheros. In an impressive poetic piece, Solon constructs a parallel between humans and γῆ[41] [gē], the land. On the one hand, he claims to have stripped the land of the stones that mark the condition of debt[42]: hence the land, which was a slave before, is now eleuthera, free. In this powerful image, the land is both metaphorically free, as in Homer, and literally free from its marking objects. On the other hand, Solon recalls the many formerly enslaved Athenian men, whom he proudly affirms ἐλευθέρους ἔθηκα[43] [eleutherous ethēka], I made free.

We may assign Solon’s fragments to the first half of the sixth century BCE. We have instead to wait for the first half of the following century to meet the first example of nominalisation of the term eleutheros, which appears in the text of Pindar’s eighth Isthmian ode. The poem is composed not after 478 BCE, and probably before the Battle of Plataea, where in 479 BCE a wide Greek coalition inflicts a decisive defeat on the Persian invaders.

Pindar makes an allusion to the danger hovering over Greece, and he suggests that even contemporary ills may be healed with ἐλευθερία[44] [eleutheria], which we may translate as ‘freedom.’ We may observe that the new nominalised term eleutheria is feminine, possibly following the tradition of the various Greek goddesses who personify arts and virtues. However, as the rest of the poem is devoted to mythological narrations, it is the further occurrence of the word eleutheria in Pindar’s first Pythian ode that offers us more ground for interpretation.

The new word also appears in its Ionic[45] version ἐλευθερίη[46] [eleutheriē] as part of a commemorative inscription of the Greek victory over the Persians. These verses may be those which Pausanias ascribes to Simonides,[47] but neither the author nor the dating of the text are certain.

For sure, Pindar composes the first Pythian ode in 470 BCE to sing the praises of the Syracusan tyrant Hieron, whose chariot has just won the race at the Pythian Games in Delphi. The celebration of the victory allows Pindar to hail also another major feat of Hieron, who has recently founded for his son Deinomenes the city of Aitna, θεοδμάτῳ σὺν ἐλευθερίᾳ[48] [theodmatō syn eleutheria], (endowed) with a god-crafted condition of freedom.

In the previous sentence, Pindar produces a semantic shift from the Homeric text, where the epithet theodmētos,[49] god-built, is used to commend the remarkable city walls of Troy. Pindar applies the Doric version[50] of the epithet – theodmatos – to a feature of the city of Aitna that is not material, but abstract: its condition of self-determination.

As we saw, before Pindar the Greeks describe this condition with another epithet, namely, eleutheros. We also saw that Pindar derived from this epithet the feminine term eleutheria: he can thus deploy the new word as an abstract substitute (the city’s freedom) for the Homeric concrete object (the city walls).

Pindar’s neologism seems to conflate the free determination of the tyrant Hieron – who is not only the subject, but also the client of the poem – with the self-determination of the city of Aitna.[51] This notion of free determination at its highest degree is also expressed by another neologism,[52] ἐλευθερίος[53] [eleutherios], which Pindar applies to Zeus as father of the goddess Τύχα [Tykha], Fortune. Whilst the word eleutherios is generally translated as ‘deliverer’ or as ‘liberal,’[54] in this context it seems rather to emphasise Zeus’ freedom as unlimited possibility to act, which generates a likewise unlimited (good) chance.[55]

However, it may not be by chance that the word eleutheria emerges right at the height of the Persian Wars: the new term both epitomises and catalyses the joint war effort of the Greeks, as it relies on the Homeric dichotomy of eleutheron and doulion to acknowledge the shared Greek condition of freedom from the impending Persian domination.

A further shift occurs during the Peloponnesian Wars as a mere semantic transformation of the word eleutheria, which is appealed to by the Athenians as a specific quality of their political constitution. This new meaning is first attested in the work of Herodotus, which appears around the year 425 BCE, a few decades after the composition of Pindar’s eighth Isthmian ode.

Herodotus frequently uses the new word, which he writes in the Ionic version ἐλευθερίη[56] [eleutheriē]. He generally does not apply the new term to individual subjects but to political entities; yet more important, in Herodotus eleutheriē explicitly denotes a condition of emancipation not only from an external political power,[57] but also from the rule of an internal tyranny.[58]

Moreover, Herodotus also follows the grammatical path of the nominalisation of the neuter form eleutheron: he makes Xerxes express his distrust for the military ability of the Greeks because they are ἀνειμένοι (…) ές τὸ ελεύθερον[59] [aneimenoi (…) es to eleutheron], devoted to freedom. A similar nominalisation is attested in Euripides, who deploys it in the form τοὐλεύθερον[60] [touleutheron], which is a contraction with the definite article τό [to].

However, when in Herodotus eleutheros is somewhat associated with individual subjects, it is also an expression of social status: the Median king Astyages can recognize his young grandson Cyrus because of the latter’s comparatively ἐλευθερωτέρη[61] [eleutherōterē], freer speech. Aeschylus shows the same logic at work by making the mythological character Κράτος[62] [Kratos], who embodies superior power, affirm that no one is free but Zeus.[63]

Sophocles pushes this logic to a tipping point when he acknowledges the presence of a virtual freedom even despite adverse conditions: Εἰ σῶμα δοῦλον, ἀλλ’ ὁ νοῦς ἐλεύθερος[64] [Ei sōma doulon, all’ ho nous eleutheros], if the body (is) enslaved, the thinking agent at least (is) free. As Sophocles splits the free spirit from the practical condition of freedom, he opens the way to the ethical appropriation of this notion by the philosophers.

Actually, in both Plato and Aristotle, the political and ethical aspects of the notion of eleutheria are still inseparable. In particular, Plato mocks the excess of eleutheria in the democratic πόλις[65] [polis], the city, which assigns ἰσότητά τινα ὁμοίως ἴσοις τε καὶ ἀνίσοις[66] [isotēta tina homoiōs isois te kai anisois], a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. According to Plato, only the rulers of his ideal city are to be δημιουργοὺς ἐλευθερίας τῆς πόλεως[67] [dēmiourgous eleutherias tēs poleōs], craftsmen of the city’s freedom.

Moreover, Plato contends that whenever ‘a polis with a democratic constitution [is] thirsty with freedom,’[68] the order of things is likely to be subverted: as ‘freedom spreads to everything,’[69] it undermines the priority of fathers over sons, of citizens over alien residents and foreigners, of masters over slaves, and of men over women respectively.[70]

In the Republic, Plato notoriously puts forth as a remedy to the dreaded drift of democracy towards anarchy and tyranny a doubly threefold scheme, in which the ordered parts of the individual ψυχή [psykhē], the soul,[71] mirror those of the polis. The λογιστικόν[72] [logistikon] or calculative, that is, rational soul in the head is to control the other two centres: the Homeric chest-soul θύμος[73] [thymos], which Plato renames as θυμοειδές[74] [thymoeides], spirited, and the ἐπιθυμετικόν[75] [epithymetikon], the appetitive soul that is set in the abdomen. These three inner entities correspond to the three classes of Plato’s ideal city: the ἄρχοντες[76] [arkhontes] or rulers, the στρατιῶται[77] [stratiōtai] or soldiers, and the δημιουργοί[78] [dēmiourgoi] or producers. However, later on, in the Laws, Plato also suggests a more pragmatic distribution of public roles according to a rule of proportional inequality,[79] which takes account of a variety of parameters, from virtue to wealth.

Aristotle describes eleutheria as the distinctive character of democracies according to the latter’s supporters[80]: only from this perspective ‒ he argues ‒ do the self-determination of the city and that of the citizens converge as democratic order. In other words, for Aristotle the notions of eleutheria and δημοκρατία[81] [dēmokratia], democracy, may be part of a political composition, but they do not necessarily belong together. Only in the democratic constitution is the government of the city entrusted to the eleutheroi, that is, all the free citizens.[82] This is not surprising if, as I attempted to show, the notion of eleutheria is part and parcel of both the emergence of a generic power to act and its attribution to specific human subjects.

In the first book of the Politics, Aristotle constructs on this power to act a threefold structure of domestic command of masters over slaves, husbands over wives, and fathers over children.[83] The three despotic, matrimonial and paternal forms of command differ in kind from the political command over free men, because the former are determined by nature, and thus they are not reversible.[84] In particular, domestic powers are exerted on those people whose βουλευτικόν[85] [bouleutikon], that is, deliberative faculty, is impaired (slaves), devoid of authority[86] (women), and not yet fully developed (children) respectively. On the contrary, the political command over free men depends on the constitution of the city. We may notice that it is precisely the condition of being eleutheros that grants, on the one side, the domestic right of command over slaves, wife, and children, and on the other side, the political possibility either to rule or to be ruled in public.

Aristotle even questions the relation between master and slave, but he ends up turning this factual domination into the natural expression of human hierarchical differences. Here Aristotle applies a rhetorical reversal that is similar to the apparatus devised by Plato for constructing his forms. I recalled how Plato fabricates his ideal entities by turning current epithets into abstract qualities, such as, for example, the good and the beautiful. The actual referents of these abstract qualities, that is, good and beautiful things, then become mere imperfect instances of the qualities themselves, or, in Platonic jargon, copies of their ideal models. In the Aristotelian version of this reversal procedure, the Platonic forms are replaced by the natural order.

Aristotle also follows his master Plato in devising the same partition for the outer and the inner dimensions: Aristotle’s psykhē mirrors his split domestic sphere, as ‘in it, indeed, there are by nature a ruling and a ruled part.’[87] Moreover, just as, for example, in Australian traditional culture kinship structures apply to the whole of reality,[88] for Aristotle the dichotomy between ruler and ruled casts its shadow not only on the human sphere, but on the whole cosmos:

Such a duality exists in living creatures, but not in them only; it originates in the constitution of the universe; even in things which have no life there is a ruling principle [arkhē], as in a musical mode.[89]

According to Aristotle’s crude universal projection of his authoritarian view, as the living being consists primarily of soul and body, ‘the one is by nature the ruler, and the other the subject.’[90] However, though Aristotle derives this absolute subordination from Plato,[91] he does not describe the couple of master and slave as a simple diaeretic[92] subdivision of reality, but as a more complex relation of uneven belonging:

The master is only the master of the slave; he does not belong to him, whereas the slave is not only the slave of his master, but wholly belongs to him.[93]

This is because for Aristotle a property stands in regard to its owner as a part in regard to the whole.[94] We may notice that a likewise asymmetrical and hierarchical relation of inclusion structures Aristotle’s logical works and biological classifications.[95]

Moreover, according to Aristotle, the dichotomy between ἄρχειν [arkhein], to rule, and ἄρχεσθαι [arkhesthai], to be ruled, cannot be overcome, so that even the condition of eleutheria under a democratic constitution requires an alternation of roles: τὸ ἐν μέρει ἄρχεσθαι καὶ ἄρχειν[96] [to en merei arkhesthai kai arkhein], to be ruled and to rule in turn.

A more general opposition pits ποιεῖν [poiein], acting, against πάσχειν [paskhein], being acted upon.[97] As Aristotle gives absolute priority to acting, his general notion of δύναμις [dynamis], potency, is construed as the ability to be unaffected.[98] This aspect of Aristotelian potency may even be understood as a precursor to the notion of negative freedom.[99]

It is not difficult to see that the condition of being unaffected harks back to the archaic vocabulary of war.[100] In this case, it is somewhat ironic that the concern with the physical integrity of the individual warrior, after a long detour throughout the public sphere, both as the claim of political freedom and its recasting as a philosophical category, is then gradually turned back towards the individual sphere. Euripides’ consideration that the soul of a slave may be more free than that of a free man[101] already appears to turn upside down Astyages’ approach, as reported by his contemporary Herodotus. However, it is after the collapse of the city-states that Bion, himself a former slave, goes as far as literally erasing the state of fact, when he proclaims that ‘good slaves are free, but bad men are slaves of many passions.’[102]

The polemical disconnection of freedom from actual practices, and its relocation to the inner recesses of the soul, at the same time witnesses a generalized retreat from the public sphere and produces a new individuation: the cosmopolitan[103] subjectivation of Hellenistic narrations. I will later show how in the hands of Jewish and then Christian authors, this new subjectivating path will end up producing a new social link, which appears as the result of individual choice.

1.2 – The Greek Constellation of Freedoms

As the path of freedom cannot be reduced to the transformations of a single word, I will now return to my starting point, so as to consider a veritable constellation of other terms. These terms do not simply integrate the core definition of freedom as expressed by the word eleutheria: on the contrary, insofar as morphological varieties, they are essential components of the semantic network that connects the various Greek notions of freedom. In particular, I will examine three groups of compound words, which are construed with the three prefixes ἀ-[a], ἰσο-[iso], and αὐτο- [auto] respectively.

At least since Homer,[104] the Greek language has deployed the letter α, alpha (αν [an] in front of vowels) as a prefix before words that define actions, agents, and qualities, in order to express their privation. For example, the derived English term ‘analgesic’ still characterizes drugs with the power of suppressing pain, ἄλγος [algos].

This language mechanism allows the expression of a specific free status as the absence of a determining factor. A most intriguing example is the isolated occurrence in the Iliad of the term ἄουτον[105] [aouton], unwounded. Is it not at least remarkable, the quasi-homophony of aouton with the word that defines the self (αὐτός, autos), especially considering that, in the Homeric poem of the massacres, bodily integrity appears as a most valuable asset, regardless of the ethics of ἀρετή [aretē], the virtue of the warrior?

However, the vocabulary of freedom takes further shape in the narrations of other armed confrontations. Whilst narrating the events of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides uses the word ἀνεπίτακτος[106] [anepitaktos] to define the power of acting without orders, and hence, an independent stance. The terms ἀβασίλευτος[107] [abasileutos] and ἀτυράννευτος[108] [atyranneutos] describe the condition of not being ruled by a king and by a tyrant respectively. Philo’s later construction ἀνηγεμόνευτος[109] [anēgemoneutos] produces instead a metaphorical shift towards the inner dimension, as it laments the absence of a guide for the soul.

Back to the political sphere, the words ἄναρχος[110][anarkhos], ἄναρκτος[111] [anarktos] and ἀναρχία[112][anarkhia] depict, in an often derogatory way, a state of lack of authority and command. Moreover, both the words ἀνεύθυνος[113][aneuthynos] and ἀνυπεύθυνος[114] [anypeuthynos] underline the alarming dearth of accountability of absolute rulers. The term ἄμοιρος[115] [amoiros] articulates the double nature of participation, as the latter’s absence may be understood either as being excluded (from rights), or as being exempted (from duties).

An analogous duplicity is expressed by the participle ἀφειμένος[116] [apheimenos] and by the verbal adjective ἄφετος[117] [aphetos], which may also describe the position of having been freed from all incumbencies so as to be devoted to the gods.

The prefix alpha is also deployed to denote a limitation of freedom. Euripides uses with the sense of unrestrained frankness the word παρρησία[118] [parrhēsia] ‒ from πᾶς [pas], all, and ῥῆσις [rhēsis], saying ‒ which may also be understood as ‘freedom of speech’: hence, the term ἀπαρρησίαστος[119] [aparrhēsiastos] may be translated as ‘deprived of freedom of speech.’

The technical term ἀνεμπόδιστος [anempodistos], unhindered, may have been coined by Aristotle to render the absence of whatever obstacle to the pleasures ‘of progress towards the perfection of our nature.’[120] In the Politics, Aristotle recalls that ‘the happy life is the life that is lived without impediment in accordance with virtue.’[121]

For sure, the variety of words that construct the Greek notions of freedom with the privative alpha seems to confirm the pars destruens[122] of Benveniste’s argument on the origin of ancient European notions of freedom: the semantic plurality evoked by these terms cannot be simply traced back to the sense of being free from someone or something,[123] as according to the notion of negative freedom.

In turn, the pars costruens of Benveniste’s contention, that is, his suggestion of an ethnic bond as the original locus of the free condition,[124] clearly resonates with the Homeric use of the word eleutheron, and it is even better illustrated by the family of words compounded with the term isos, that is, equal.

Such compound words convey the various senses of sharing in a group: in turn, these senses construct freedom as a common entitlement. The Homeric lexicon includes several words that are construed with the prefix iso-: among them, the term ἰσόμορος[125] [isomoros] is claimed by the god Poseidon to describe his right to an equal share with his brothers Zeus and Hades. This divine equality is then turned into a human impossibility by Solon.

In a revealing fragment, Solon qualifies his assertion of having given the land back to the Athenian people. This restitution does not involve in any way an equal distribution[126]: on the contrary, Solon associates in his disapproval the violence of the tyrant and the imposition upon the noble of ἰσομοιρία [isomoiria], that is, the equal sharing of the land with the base.[127]

In the sixth-century writings of Aëtius, Alcmaeon of Croton is reported to have used in the fifth century BCE the word ἰσονομία[128] [isonomia], in order to illustrate the bodily balance between couples of powers such as moist and dry, cold and hot, and bitter and sweet. According to Alcmaeon, this balance is the condition for health.

As the term isonomia in Alcmaeon’s fragment may be a later addition by the scholiast, it is possible that Herodotus is the first to deploy this compound word, which he writes in its Ionic form ἰσονομίη[129] [isonomiē]. The word is construed with the term νόμος [nomos], which we may translate as ‘law,’ though it covers a wider semantic area than the English term.

Pace Schmitt,[130] only the word νομός[131] [nomos] is attested in Homer, with the meaning of ‘shared pasture,’ according to the traditional custom of sharing grazing land.[132] In its last occurrence in the Iliad, nomos undergoes a metaphorical shift, which seems to exploit its sharing in the semantic areas of growth and production: the phrase πολὺς νομός[133] [polys nomos] may thus be rendered as ‘manifold pasture (of words).’ An otherwise undocumented shift from pastoral commons to land subdivisions may be the remote antecedent to Solon’s rejection of the even repartition of isomoiria, whose principle of equality is instead recovered as a shared political standing.

Isonomiē may be somewhat rendered as ‘equality of rights,’ and Herodotus uses it to describe a political arrangement alternative to monarchy.[134] Herodotus probably coins also the term ἰσηγορίη[135] [isēgoriē], which may be translated as equal right of speech – from ἀγορᾶσθαι [agorasthai], to speak in the assembly. He uses the term to depict the Athenian democracy.

The same Herodotus may have invented a third word, ἰσοκρατέες[136] [isokratees], which in his Histories describes the equal power of women and men of the people of the Issedones. In the following book of the Histories, Herodotus probably also coins the abstract term ἰσοκρατία[137] [isokratia], which his character, the Corinthian Socles, correlates with the deliberative assemblies that are threatened by the Spartans and their local allies.

Two other terms emerge in theatrical texts. Aeschylus, while providing a foundational narrative for the Athenian polis with his trilogy Oresteia, names the result of a deliberation as ἰσόψηφος[138] [isopsēphos], that is, totalling the same amount of votes on both sides. The intervention of the chairperson Athena, the motherless goddess eponym and protector of the city, affirms then the rights of the matricide Orestes and of the new deliberative order against the traditional blood links. When Euripides writes the Phoenissae, the new order is already accepted wisdom, so that Jocasta can invite her son Eteocles to honour the goddess Ἰσότης[139] [Isotēs], Equality, because τὸ ἴσον[140] [to ison], the equal, to wit, equality, is naturally lasting among humans.

Since Homer, many compound words are construed with the already recalled term autos, which we may translate as ‘self’ or ‘the same.’ In particular, Herodotus probably also produces a combination that is most significant in regard to our enquiry, namely, the word αὐτόνομος[141] [autonomos]. The term combines the prefix auto- with the word nomos, which, as we saw, in Herodotus’ time conveys the sense of acknowledged custom, and thus, law.

Herodotus uses the term autonomos twice, and in the plural form, in order to define people who break free from sovereign power in general in the first case,[142] and from an external power in the second.[143] This double sense is analogous to Herodotus’ double use of the word eleutheriē, which, as we saw, describes both the polis’ freedom from tyrannical rule and its independence from alien powers.

The relation of the polis with a major external power is at stake in Thucydides’ neologism αὐτονομία[144] [autonomia]. Though Hobbes translates the word autonomia into English as ‘liberty’ tout-court,[145] Thucydides appears to use it to define the position of the Greek poleis in relation to Athenian political control. More than that, the condition of autonomia assumes different senses depending on the context: it may be a unilateral claim liable of punishment from the perspective of Athens as hegemonic power,[146] a claim that the Spartans encourage other poleis to pursue,[147] or even a privilege obtained by Athenian concession, as happens to the city of Samos, after a successful concerted change of political regime.[148]

More generally, it is worth noticing that in Greek classical texts both words autonomos and autonomia are applied to collective entities and not to individuals. A notable exception underlines the unique condition of Antigone, whom the chorus of Sophocles’ eponymous tragedy describes as descending to Hades still alive and autonomos,[149] that is, guided by her own moral rule.

Only in the writings of late Stoic authors do the words autonomos and autonomia come to be associated with individual freedom. In the first century, the freed slave Epictetus makes the term autonomos shift from a political to a natural attribute, as he applies it to animals too.[150] His contemporary Dio Chrysostom takes a further step by turning the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus’ call for αὐτοπραγία[151] [autopragia], that is, autonomous individual practice, into an appeal to the individual autonomy of the sage. According to Dio, even the wisest lawgiver cannot claim his [sic] autonomia,[152] because he has to adapt to political necessity: ‘Indeed Solon himself, according to report, declared that he was proposing for the Athenians, not what satisfied himself, but rather what he assumed they would accept.’[153] The individual sage can instead be properly autonomous, because he can live according to his own law, inasmuch as he follows the ordinance of Zeus, that is, the law of nature.[154]

I note here that such a convergence of individual choice and universal order will be variously re-enacted in the following centuries. However, its definition in terms of individual autonomy will only reappear in the late eighteenth century, when Kant will make his moral theory revolve around the notion of Autonomie des Willens,[155] autonomy of the will.

In the meantime, Chrysippus seems also to introduce the term αὐτεξούσιος[156] [autexousios], with the meaning of having free will: later on, Josephus gives the word a political sense too, and he probably derives from it the abstract term αὐτεξούσια[157] [autexousia].

1.3 – The Roman Constellation of Freedoms

I will now go back in time again to follow a different path, which will trace first the Latin words liber, free, and libertas, liberty, and then, a constellation of Latin terms that describe specific freedoms. As compared with the previous enquiry on Greek terms, this path will be more openly conjectural, because Roman archaic and early Republican events are generally reported by rather late written sources.

As Benveniste underlines, the very term liber splits into a generic attribute and the name of the god Liber.[158] Adrien Bruhl argues that Liber is an autochthonous deity of growth of vegetation, who only in later times specializes in viticulture, and is then identified as Bacchus/Dionysus.[159] The semantic area of ‘growth’ likewise appears to connect vegetal and human stocks, so that the term comes to be used to describe a community of liberi as an ethnic group of free men, and also, by extension, of children as legitimate offspring.[160]

Already in the fifth century BCE, the difference between a Roman liber, that is, a free man, and a servus, that is, a slave, is clearly quantifiable: the eighth of the Twelve Tables, which pin down law in writing, decrees that an act of physical violence resulting in fractured bones requires a monetary compensation, which, at three hundred asses for a freeman, is double that for a slave.[161]

However, Liber and his female partner Libera also point to another social boundary, which divides the free population into patricians and plebeians. The Roman engineer and author Vitruvius takes as an architectural example the Roman temple of Ceres,[162] Liber, and Libera or, according to Dionysus of Halicarnassus’ later attribution, of Demeter, Dionysus and Kore.[163] The temple is erected in 493 BCE, probably on the slope of the Aventine hill,[164] as a fulfilment of a vow for a military victory,[165] and it somewhat assumes the role of a plebeian counterpart to the older sanctuaries that are devoted to the traditional Capitoline triad Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus.[166]

Moreover, a goddess too shares her name with the abstract term libertas: during the Second Punic War, at the end of the third century BCE, another temple is consecrated to Libertas on the Aventine Hill,[167] which is an appropriate setting, considering its long history of association with the plebs. It is not surprising that the shrine soon takes a significant part in the confrontation between the tribunes of the plebs and the Senate, as it ends up hosting the census-tables.

At the same time, the poet Naevius links the celebrations of the god Liber to a temporary unrestrained condition that appears to unite all participants: ‘Libera lingua loquemur ludis Liberalibus,’[168] we shall speak with a free tongue at the festival of Liber.[169]

In the first century, when Livy narrates the events of the Roman Republic, the claim of aequa libertas,[170] that is, equitable freedom, seems to share with the definitions of aequum ius, equitable law, and aequae leges, equitable laws, the political meaning of the equal standing before the law of patricians and plebeians, regarded as groups and not as individuals.[171]

However, this later association of the term libertas with the fulfilment of plebeian demands[172] seems to express a further shift of sense, which transcends the traditional divide between patricians and plebeians. This is probably not so much a representation of the legal and then practical overcoming of the obstacles to the plebeian access to public offices, but the effect of the substantial loss of meaning of the term libertas under Imperial rule.[173]

I will now consider a number of other Latin words, which produce less wide-ranging definitions of freedom either through the evocation of emptiness as the absence of constraints, or with the addition of the negative prefix in-, which in the Latin language has a similar function to the Greek privative alpha.

The former cluster includes the word licentia,[174] whose semantic range goes from permission to dissolution; vacivitas,[175] emptiness; and vacatio,[176] freedom from service or duty; to the latter belongs the term impunitas,[177] freedom from punishment; and immunitas,[178] whose meaning of freedom or exemption from public services, burdens, or charges survives in the English word ‘immunity.’

Yet another negative construction of liberty is the word ‘securitas,’[179] security. It literally means freedom from care or trouble, as it is derived through the adjective securus from the two words sine, without, and cura, care.

Our current progressive lexicon still relies on Latin technical terms that describe the passage from the enslaved condition to the superior status of freedom. The word ‘liberation’ literally repeats the act of liberare, to liberate from slavery; the even more precise term ‘emancipation’ retains the linguistic traces of the Latin term emancipatio, that is, enfranchisement,[180] as the gesture of being released from the grip of the hand (ex manu capere).

The Greek emphasis on the capacity of not being subjected to someone else resonates with the Latin definition sui juris, literally of one’s own right, that is, having full legal capacity, as opposed to alieni juris, literally, of someone else’s right, that is, under the legal authority of another. This distinction appears in Gaius’ second-century law manual as a definition of the analogous unbalanced relations of master and slave, husband and wife, and father and children.[181]

In the phrase sui juris, sui is the genitive singular form of the word suus, which may be translated in English as ‘his’ or ‘one’s own.’ Yet, in another surviving fragment of the Twelve Tables, the word suus[182] most probably is not deployed with a possessive function but to denote the group of sui (in the plural), that is, the direct descendants. Benveniste argues that such an archaic use of the word suus shows that the notion of self, and that one of freedom on which it is predicated, evolved from a social grounding.[183]

Whilst, as we saw, in Greece and Rome this social grounding finds expression in the collective category of free men, Germanic languages reveal a different path: as also witnessed by the German word frei,[184] free, and its cognate freund, friend, Germanic languages produce the notion of free man as the effect of a relation of companionship. Hence, whilst the English word ‘freedom’ is nowadays interchangeable with the word ‘liberty,’ it traces quite a different semantic trajectory in time.[185]

However, the convergence of the two major morpho-semantic roots of our contemporary notion of freedom certainly owes a great deal to the Christian doctrine of individual salvation. In the next chapter, I will show how Christian thought works at decontextualizing both notions of individual and freedom by emphasising individual identity as centred on the soul, and on individual responsibility and will.

[19] Iliad., 6.528.

[20] Ibid., 6.463.

[21] Jakobson describes the supposed significative and distinctive functions of language as metaphorical and metonymical poles respectively. See Roman Jakobson, ‘Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances,’ in Roman Jakobson and Morris Halle, Fundamentals of Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1956), 53–82.

[22] Plato possibly invents the term γραμματική [grammatikē], that is, grammar: however, Plato may merely be writing words that are already in use. See Plato, Cratylus 431e; Sophist 253a.

[23] On diairesis, that is division into two parts as methodos, pursuit and thus method, see Plato, Soph. 235b–c.

[24] Ibid., 262a. In the first century, Plutarch, who is already used to our familiar plurality of grammatical entities, seeks to answer the question ‘why said Plato, that speech is composed of onomata and rhemata?’ In Plutarch, Moralia, Platonic Question X. Onomata and rhēmata are the plural form of onoma and rhēma respectively.

[25] On the word xenos, see Émile Benveniste, Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, 2 vols (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1969), vol. 1, 94. Eng. trans. id., Indo-European Language and Society (London: Faber and Faber, 1973), 77.

[26] τὸ μὲν ἐπὶ ταῖς πράξεσιν ὂν δήλωμα ῥῆμά που λέγομεν (. . .) τὸ δέ γ᾽ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῖς τοῖς ἐκείνας πράττουσι σημεῖον τῆς φωνῆς ἐπιτεθὲν ὄνομα [to men epi tais praxesin on dēlōma rhēma pou legomen (. . .) to de g’ ep’ autois tois ekeinas prattousi sēmeion tēs phōnēs epitethen onoma]. In Plato, Soph. 262a.

[27] Archilochus, fr. 52 (Diehl).

[28] Theognis, 1152; 1238b (Diehl).

[29] Whilst Plato does not further specify the association of rhēma with actions, Aristotle limits it to actions in the present, and he recurs to the compound definition πτῶσις ῥήματος [ptōsis rhēmatos], tense of the verb, for actions in other times. In Aristotle, De Interpretatione 16b.

[30] Il. 3.235; 17.260.

[31] Plato, Cra. 399b.

[32] Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.2.9.

[33] Aristotle uses the expression τὰ ἐπίθετα [ta epitheta] in its etymological meaning of ‘added things’ in Constitution of the Athenians 3.3.

[34] ‘[E]t illi adiectiua tantum dicunt ea quae aliis, id est substantiuis, per se adiunguntur,’ and they [the grammarians] call adjectives those items that are adjoined to other nouns, the substantives, in Abelard, Glossae super Peri Hermeneias 5.78.

[35] The distinction is clearly stated, among others, by Aquinas: ‘haec est differentia inter nomina substantiva et adiectiva, quia nomina substantiva ferunt suum suppositum, adiectiva vero non, sed rem significatam ponunt circa substantivum,’ this is the difference between substantives and adjectives: substantives bear their suppositum, while adjectives do not, but rather they adjoin the signified thing to the substantive. In Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.39.5 ad 5.

[36] Historicism’s diachronic differentiation overcomes the crude rendering of the past as a present in different clothes, as it were: nevertheless, given the inevitability and the variety of our retrospective projections, we would better accept as a theoretical horizon the actual plurality of diachronic constructions, rather than iterating the historicist aspiration to a potentially objective history. Historians may have dreamed of history in the singular, but they always produced histories in the plural.

[37] Eliot claims that the expression of an emotion in the form of art requires an objective correlative, that is ‘a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion.’ In T. S. Eliot, ‘Hamlet and His Problems,’ in id., The Sacred Wood (London: Methuen & Co., 1920), 92. We may consider Homer’s krater as an objective correlative to the condition of freedom, inasmuch as it evokes the latter’s celebration.

[38] Benveniste insists on the social origin of the notion of ‘free’: ‘The first sense is not, as one would be tempted to imagine, ‘to be free of, rid of something’; it is that of belonging to an ethnic stock designated by a metaphor taken from vegetable growth.’ In Benveniste, Vocabulaire 1, 324. Eng. trans. id., Indo-European, 264.

[39] Before the Homeric epic, a probable predecessor of the Greek word eleutheron is found in Minoan tablets: for example, in several Na- tablets of the series of Pylos, the word e-re-u-te-ra, possibly the neuter plural form of e-re-u-te-ro, is likewise associated with the ideogram sa denoting an object (probably flax), and it is translated by Ventris and Chadwick as ‘free allowance.’ In Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek: Three Hundred Selected Tablets from Knossos, Pylos and Mycenae, with Commentary and Vocabulary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 299. The term ereutero may ‒ but also may not ‒ relate to humans with a metaphorical shift. See Filippo Cassola, ‘ Ἐλεύθερον ‒ EREUTERO,’ in Syntheleia Arangio Ruiz (Napoli: Jovene, 1964). However, the morphological similarity does not imply an unbroken semantic continuity.

[40] We may compare the position of Briseis with Agamemnon’s treatment of Chryseis, which then triggers Apollo’s wrath.

[41] (. . .) Γῆ μέλαινα, τῆς ἐγώ ποτε / ὅρους ἀνεῖλον πολλαχῇ πεπηγότας / πρόσθεν δὲ δουλεύουσα, νῦν ἐλευθέρα [Gē melaina, tēs egō pote / horous aneilon pollakhē pepēgotas / prosthen de douleuousa, nyn eleuthera], the black Earth, from which once I removed many implanted boundary-posts, once a slave, now free. Quoted in Aristotle, Const. Ath. 12.4.

[42] Solon hints at his economico-political reform, the σεισάχθεια [seisakhtheia] or shaking off of burdens, around 594 BCE. See Aristotle, Const. Ath. 6.1.

[43] Ibid., 12.4.

[44] (. . .) ἰατὰ δ᾽ ἔστι βροτοῖς σύν γ᾽ἐλευθερίᾳ / καὶ τά [iata d’esti brotois syn g’eleutheria / kai ta], it happens to the mortals that these things too (are) healed with freedom. In Pindar, Isthmian 8 15–16. The word eleutheria is in the dative case. Patterson suggests that Pindar here consoles himself for the siding of his native Thebes with the Persian invader. In Orlando Patterson, Freedom, Vol. 1: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (London: Tauris & Co., 1991), 85.

[45] Ionic, Aeolic, Dorian, and Attic are the main variants of Classical Greek language.

[46] Anthologia Palatina 7.253.

[47] Pausanias 9.2.5.

[48] τῷ πόλιν κείναν θεοδμάτῳ σὺν ἐλευθερίᾳ / Ὑλλίδος στάθμας Ἱέρων ἐν νόμοις ἔκτισσ᾽. (. . .) [tō polin keinan theodmatō syn eleutheria / Hyllidos stathmas Hierōn en nomois ektiss’], for whom [Deinomenes] Hieron founded that city with divinely fashioned freedom, in accordance with the laws of the rule of Hyllus. Pythian 1, 61–62. Hyllus is the son of Herakles and mythical ancestors of the Dorians, to which both Sparta and Pindar’s aristocratic Boeotian family belong.

[49] θεοδμήτων ἐπὶ πύργων [theodmētōn epi pyrgōn], on the god-built city walls, in Il. 8.519.

[50] Pindar’s dialect is actually a literary product that combines the language of epic with Doric and Aeolic elements. In several cases, the Doric ᾱ [ā] substitutes the Epic and Attic η [ē].

[51] Pindar may even play on the ambiguity of eleutheria’s reference to both freedom from an external power (the Carthaginians just defeated by Hieron), and freedom granted by the oligarchic constitution from the unrestrained power of the tyrant (in this case, a veiled exhortation to Hieron).

[52] Herodotus’ mention (3.142) of the erection of an altar to Zeus Eleutherios in Samos shortly after 522 BCE is highly questionable.

[53] λίσσομαι, παῖ Ζηνὸς Ἐλευθερίου, / Ἱμέραν εὐρυσθενέ᾽ ἀμφιπόλει, σώτειρα Τύχα [lissomai, pai Zēnos Eleutheriou, / Himeran eurysthene᾽ amphipolei, sōteira Tykha], I pray you, saviour Fortune, daughter of Zeus Eleutherios, that you watch and maintain powerful Himera. In Olympian 12 1–2. The ode focuses on the unexpected turn of chance that led its addressee Ergoteles from Crete to Sicily, and to the victory at the Olympian games.

[54] See, for example, the inscription on the altar to Zeus Eleutherios at Plataea, which is likewise doubtfully ascribed to Simonides, in Anthologia Palatina 6.50.

[55] Unlike his contemporary rival Simonides, Pindar subjects even chance to the new order of Zeus.

[56] Hdt. 1.62; 1.95; 1.170; 2.102; 3.82; 3.142; 4.133; 5.2; 6.5; 7.2; 7.135; 7.147; 8.143; 9.41; 9.98.

[57] Ibid., 1.95; 1.170; 2.102; 3.82; 4.133; 5.2; 7.2; 7.147; 8.143; 9.41; 9.98.

[58] Ibid., 1.62; 3.142; 6.5; 7.135. In 7.135, the Spartan characters link their fight for self-determination against the Persians with their condition as free citizens.

[59] Ibid., 7.103.

[60] Euripides, Suppliants 438.

[61] Hdt. 1.116. The superlative form ἐλευθερωτάτη [eleutherōtatē], the freest, is to become a trope of Athenian rhetoric, as an antonomastic evocation of Athens. See Nicia’s speech in Thucydides 7.69.

[62] In the Homeric text, the word kratos has both a comparative (superiority) and absolute (power) meaning. See Benveniste, Vocabulaire 2, 71–83. Eng. trans. id., Indo-European, 357–367.

[63] ἐλεύθερος γὰρ οὔτις ἐστὶ πλὴν Διός [eleutheros gar outis esti plēn Dios]. In Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 50. Kratos operates according to Zeus’ power, which is the norm and the expression of Zeus’ new divine order.

[64] Sophocles, fr. 940, in Stobaeus, Anthologium 4.19.33 (Wachsmuth-Hense).

[65] ἐλευθερίας ἡ πόλις μεστὴ καὶ παρρησίας γίγνεται [eleutherias hē polis mestē kai parrhēsias gignetai], the city becomes full of liberty and freedom of speech. In Plato, Republic 8.557b.

[66] Ibid., 8.558c. The alliteration underlines Plato’s dismissal of freedom, which is rhetorically crafted as the ironical ascertainment of freedom’s somewhat faulty logic.

[67] Ibid., 395c. Already in Timaeus 28a Plato turns the word dēmiourgos, artisan, into the definition of his world maker: in Republic 3.395c the use of the word is further shifted towards an immaterial production, in which the guardians can be involved because they are released from all other productions. We may also notice Plato’s wordplay that endows the class of the rulers with a function that bears the name of the lowest class, namely that of the producers (dēmiourgoi).

[68] δημοκρατουμένη πόλις ἐλευθερίας διψήσασα [dēmokratoumenē polis eleutherias dipsēsasa], ibid., 8.562c.

[69] ἐπὶ πᾶν τὸ τῆς ἐλευθερίας ἰέναι [epi pan to tēs eleutherias ienai], ibid., 8.562e.

[70] Ibid., 8.562e–563b.

[71] Though the Platonic psykhē, through its Latin translation as anima, is traditionally rendered with the English word ‘soul,’ it rather gathers various and differently located bodily functions.

[72] Ibid., 439d.

[73] Ibid., 439e.

[74] Ibid., 440e.

[75] Ibid., 439d.

[76] Ibid., 339c.

[77] Ibid., 398b.

[78] Ibid., 340e.

[79] τῷ ἀνίσῳ συμμέτρῳ [tō anisō symmetrō], in Plato, Laws 5.744c.

[80] ἓν δὲ τὸ ζῆν ὡς βούλεταί τις. τοῦτο γὰρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας ἔργον εἶναί φασιν [hen de to zēn hōs bouletai tis: touto gar tēs eleutherias ergon einai phasin], and one is for a man to live as he likes; for they say that this is the function of liberty. In Aristotle, Politics, 6.1317b 11–13.

[81] The word dēmokratia is first attested in Hdt. 6.43, where it is used to describe Otanes’ proposal. For the association of eleutheria and dēmokratia, see Aristotle, Pol. 5.1310a.

[82] Aristotle specifies that there are several kinds of democratic constitutions, and the access to government of free citizens may also be partially restricted.

[83] Aristotle, Pol. 1253b.

[84] Also the constitutively unbalanced homosexual relation between free men is somewhat reversible, as the younger lover will exert a dominant role over a younger partner in due time.

[85] Aristotle, Pol. 1260a. Aristotle gives an extended definition of bouleutikon in Eudemian Ethics 1226b.

[86] The term used by Aristotle, ἄκυρος [akyros], is but an astonishing tautology: a-kyros, without authority.

[87] ἐν ταύτῃ γάρ ἐστι φύσει τὸ μὲν ἄρχον τὸ δ᾽ ἀρχόμενον [en tautē gar esti physei to men arkhon to d’ arkhomenon]. In Pol. 1260a. Aristotle develops a more complex threefold model of psykhē in his De Anima.

[88] See, for example, W. E. H. Stanner, ‘The Dreaming,’ in T. A. G. Hungerford ed., Australian Signpost: An Anthology (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1956), 51–65.

[89] τοῦτο ἐκ τῆς ἁπάσης φύσεως ἐνυπάρχει τοῖς ἐμψύχοις: καὶ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς μὴ μετέχουσι ζωῆς ἔστι τις ἀρχή, οἷον ἁρμονίας [touto ek tēs hapasēs physeōs enyparkhei tois empsykhois: kai gar en tois mē metekhousi zōēs esti tis arkhē, hoion harmonias], in Aristotle, Pol. 1254a.

[90] τὸ δὲ ζῷον πρῶτον συνέστηκεν ἐκ ψυχῆς καὶ σώματος, ὧν τὸ μὲν ἄρχον ἐστὶ φύσει τὸ δ᾽ ἀρχόμενον [to de zōon prōton synestēken ek psykhēs kai sōmatos, hōn to men arkhon esti physei to d’arkhomenon], ibid.

[91] For example, in Alcibiades 1 130a.

[92] See supra, note 23.

[93] διὸ ὁ μὲν δεσπότης τοῦ δούλου δεσπότης μόνον, ἐκείνου δ᾽ οὐκ ἔστιν: ὁ δὲ δοῦλος οὐ μόνον δεσπότου δοῦλός ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅλως ἐκείνου [dio ho men despotēs tou doulou despotēs monon, ekeinou d’ouk estin: ho de doulos ou monon despotou doulos estin, alla kai holōs ekeinou]. In Aristotle, Pol. 1254a.

[94] τὸ δὲ κτῆμα λέγεται ὥσπερ καὶ τὸ μόριον. τό γὰρ μόριον οὐ μόνον ἄλλου ἐστὶ μόριον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἁπλῶς ἄλλου: ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τὸ κτῆμα [to de ktēma legetai hōsper kai to morion. to gar morion ou monon allou esti morion, alla kai haplōs allou: homoiōs de kai to ktēma], and the term ‘article of property’ is used in the same way as the term ‘part’: a thing that is a part is not only a part of another thing but absolutely belongs to another thing, and so also does an article of property, ibid.

[95] The tree-shaped iteration of the relation of inclusion is then to influence the principled structures of medieval legal texts, which in turn are to be the model for Western treatises in general.

[96] Aristotle, Pol. 1317b.

[97] The verb paskhein appears several times in the Iliad with the meaning of ‘suffering’: in Odyssey 8.490 it is paired with the verb ἔρδειν [erdein] in the phrase ἔρξαν τ᾽ ἔπαθόν τε [erxan t’ epathon te], (they) both did and suffered. Herodotus not only deploys the Homeric couple ἔρξαν ἢ ἔπαθον [erxan ē epathon], (they) did or suffered (5.65), but he also makes Xerxes evoke the alternative choice between ποιέειν ἢ παθεῖν [poieein ē pathein], do or suffer (7.11): pathein is a form ‒ the aorist infinitive ‒ of the verb paskhein. Aristotle then often uses paskhein as a passive form of poiein: for example, in De Generatione et Corruptione 322b7; Categories 1b–2a; Metaphysics 1017a26; De Anima 429b; Physics 225b13.

[98] ἔτι ὅσαι ἕξεις καθ᾽ ἃς ἀπαθῆ ὅλως ἢ ἀμετάβλητα ἢ μὴ ῥᾳδίως ἐπὶ τὸ χεῖρον εὐμετακίνητα, δυνάμεις λέγονται [eti hosai hexeis kath’has apathē holōs ē ametablēta ē mē rhadiōs epi to kheiron eumetakinēta, dynameis legontai], all states in virtue of which things are unaffected generally, or are unchangeable, or cannot readily deteriorate, are called potencies. In Aristotle, Met. 1019a. See instead Plato, Soph. 247d–e, where dynamis defines both the capacity to affect and the capacity to be affected. As previously recalled, the ability not to be affected is the essential criterion for the Aristotelian hierarchization of both the human and the non-human world.

[99] Immanuel Kant makes use of the notions of negative, negative and positive, positive freedom in his Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, in id., Gesammelte Schriften (Akademie Ausgabe, hereinafter AA), Band 4, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1911), 446. Eng. trans. id., Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Mary Gregor ed. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 52. Isaiah Berlin later popularizes these twin notions in the Anglophone world. See id., Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958).

[100] Aristotle still describes the skills of soldiers as the ability to ποιῆσαι καὶ μὴ παθεῖν [poiēsai kai mē pathein], do and not suffer (harm). In Nicomachean Ethics 1116b.

[101] πολλοῖσι δούλοις τοὔνομ᾿ αἰσχρόν, ἡ δὲ φρὴν τῶν οὐχὶ δούλων ἔστ᾿ ἐλευθερωτέρα [polloisi doulois tounom’ aiskhron, hē de phrēn tōn oukhi doulōn est’ eleutherōtera], for many slaves their name is a thing of shame, but their soul is freer than that of a non-slave. In Stobaeus, Anthologium 4.19.39 (Wachsmuth-Hense).

[102] οἱ ἀγαθοὶ οἰκέται ἐλεύθεροι, οἱ πονηροὶ ἐλεύθεροι δοῦλοι πολλῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν [hoi agathoi oiketai eleutheroi, hoi ponēroi eleutheroi douloi pollōn epithymiōn]. Bion of Borysthenes (c. 325 – c. 250 BCE), in Stobaeus, Anthologium 4.19.42 (Wachsmuth-Hense), my italics.

[103] Stoic writers borrow from Cynic Diogenes the term κοσμοπολίτης [kosmopolitēs], citizen of the world. In Diogenes Laërtius, 6.63.

[104] See, for example, the Homeric alliterative and paratactic sequence ἀφρήτωρ ἀθέμιστος ἀνέστιός [aphrētōr athemistos anestios], clanless, lawless, hearthless, in Il. 9.63.

[105] Ibid., 18.536.

[106] Thuc. 7.69.

[107] Ibid., 2.80.

[108] Ibid., 1.18.

[109] Philo, ‘Concerning Noah’s work as a planter’ (De Plantatione) 53; ‘On dreams, that they are God-sent’ (De Somniis) 2.286.

[110] Il. 2.703.

[111] Aeschylus, Suppliants 514.

[112] Ibid., 906.

[113] Hdt. 3.80.

[114] Aristophanes, Wasps 587.

[115] Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes 733.

[116] Euripides, Electra 379.

[117] Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 666.

[118] Euripides first uses the word parrhēsia in the tragedy Hippolytus (line 424), together with the term eleutheroi, free (in the plural), as opposed to the metaphorical slavery to which one is subjected because of the wrongdoings of one’s parents. For Plato’s ironic use of the term parrhēsia, see supra, note 65.

[119] Theophrastus, fr. 103.

[120] τῶν εἰς τὴν τελέωσιν ἀγομένων τῆς φύσεως [tōn eis tēn teleōsin agomenōn tēs physeōs], in Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1153a.

[121] τὸ τὸν εὐδαίμονα βίον εἶναι τὸν κατ᾽ ἀρετὴν ἀνεμπόδιστον [to ton eudaimona bion einai ton kat’ aretēn anempodiston], in Aristotle, Pol. 1295a.

[122] Bacon describes the destructive and constructive parts of his philosophy as pars destruens and pars costruens respectively. See Francis Bacon, Novum Organum Scientiarum (London: John Bill, 1620).

[123] Benveniste, Vocabulaire I, 324. Eng. trans. id., Indo-European, 264.

[124] Ibid. Eng. trans. ibid.

[125] Il. 15.209.

[126] (. . .) οὐδὲ πιείρας χθονὸς / πατρίδος κακοῖσιν ἐσθλοὺς ἰσομοιρίαν ἔχειν [oude pieiras khthonos / patridos kakoisin esthlous isomoirian ekhein], nor [it pleased me] that the nobles had an equal share of the fertile soil of the fatherland with the base. Fr. 23 Diehl, fr. 34 West, quoted in Aristotle, Const. Ath. 12.3.

[127] Aristotle expands this argument in Politics 1281a19–20: πάντων ληφθέντων, οἱ πλείους τὰ τῶν ἐλαττόνων ἂν διανέμωνται, φανερὸν ὅτι φθείρουσι τὴν πόλιν. ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐχ ἥ γ᾽ ἀρετὴ φθείρει τὸ ἔχον αὐτήν, οὐδὲ τὸ δίκαιον πόλεως φθαρτικόν: ὥστε δῆλον ὅτι καὶ τὸν νόμον τοῦτον οὐχ οἷόν τ᾽ εἶναι δίκαιον [pantōn lēphthentōn, hoi pleious ta tōn elattonōn an dianemōntai, phaneron hoti phtheirousi tēn polin. alla mēn oukh hē g᾽ aretē phtheirei to ekhon autēn, oude to dikaion poleōs phthartikon: hōste dēlon hoti kai ton nomon touton oukh hoion t᾽ einai dikaion], when everybody is taken into account, suppose the majority share out among themselves the property of the minority, it is manifest that they are destroying the city; but assuredly virtue does not destroy its possessor, and justice is not destructive of the city, so that it is clear that this principle also cannot be just.

[128] Alcmaeon, fr. 24 B4 Diels-Kranz.

[129] Hdt. 3.80; 3.83; 3.142; 5.37. Despite the absence of evidence, Raaflaub suggests that the term may have originated much earlier, as ‘an ideal and catchword in the aristocracy’s struggle against the tyrant’s usurpation of power.’ In Kurt Raaflaub, The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece, Renate Franciscono trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 94.

[130] Carl Schmitt locates at the very beginning of the Odyssey the word νόμος [nomos] (to which he also ascribes a supposed original sense of the spatial ordering of measurement) by relying on Zenodotus’ unlikely correction of the word νόος [noos] ‒ inasmuch as different from the Attic form νοῦς [nous], that is, mind, or better, thinking and perceiving agent ‒ as nomos, in Od. 1.3. In Carl Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1950), 46; Eng. trans. id., The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, G.L. Ulmen trans. (New York: Telos Press, 2006), 76.

[131] Il. 2.475; 6.511; 15.268; 18.575; 18.587; 20.249. Od. 9.217; 10.159.

[132] ‘Le pâturage des temps archaïques est en general un espace illimité,’ in general, the pasture of archaic times is an unlimited space. In Emmanuel Laroche, Histoire de la Racine NEM- en Grec Ancien (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1949), 116.

[133] Il. 20.249.

[134] In Herodotus’ narration, the Persian nobleman Otanes clearly states the motivation for his proposal of isonomiē: οὔτε γὰρ ἄρχειν οὔτε ἄρχεσθαι ἐθέλω [oute gar arkhein oute arkhesthai ethelō], I neither want to rule nor to be ruled (3.83). As Berlin puts it, this is ‘the exact opposite of Aristotle’s notion of true civic liberty.’ In Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), XLI.

[135] Hdt. 5.78. In Attic Greek, ἰσηγορία [isēgoria].

[136] Plural feminine nominative form of ἰσοκρατής [isokratēs], having equal power. Ibid., 4.26.

[137] Ibid., 5.92.

[138] Aeschylus, Eumenides 741.

[139] Euripides, Phoenissae 536.

[140] Ibid., 538.

[141] Hdt. 1.96; 8.140.

[142] Ibid., 1.96.

[143] Ibid., 8.140.

[144] Thuc. 3.46.5; 4.87.5; 8.21.1.

[145] See Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Thomas Hobbes trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

[146] Thuc. 3.46.5.

[147] Ibid., 4.87.5.

[148] Ibid., 8.21.1. Bickerman and Ostwald compare the notion of eleutheria with that of autonomia, which they both construct as more limited than the former, because of its relation to a stronger power. See Elias Bickerman, ‘Autonomia. Sur un passage de Thucydide (I,144,2),’ Revue Internationale des Droits de I’Antiquité 5(1958), 313–344; Martin Ostwald, Autonomia: Its Genesis and Early History (New York: Scholars Press, 1982).

[149] Sophocles, Antigone 821. I owe Davide Tarizzo (and possibly, Lacan) this quote, which made me suspect the presence of other exceptions. So far, I have found two early non-political occurrences of the terms autonomos and autonomia: Xenophon (Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 3.1) praises the Spartan Lycurgus for not letting Spartan boys be autonomo[i], that is, free from their tutors’ oversight; on the contrary, Isocrates blames the very Spartan boys’ autonomi[a] (Panathenaic Oration 12.215), which he associates with the encouragement that they receive to steal from non-Spartans, provided that they can go undetected (12.211–212).

[150] οὕτως ὀρέγεται τῆς φυσικῆς ἐλευθερίας καὶ τοῦ αὐτόνομα καὶ ἀκώλυτα εἶναι [houtōs oregetai tēs physikēs eleutherias kai tou autonoma kai akōlyta einai], so much do they [the animals] desire their natural liberty, and to be autonomous and unhindered. In Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.27.

[151] See Plutarch, ‘On Stoic Self-Contradictions’ (De Stoicorum repugnantiis) 20.

[152] δῆλον οὖν ὅτι τούτων μὲν οὐδενὶ μετῆν αὐτονομίας [dēlon oun hoti toutōn men oudeni metēn autonomias], evidently, no one of these [lawgivers] had a claim to autonomy. In Dio Chrysostom, Orationes 63.4.

[153] Σόλωνα μέντοι καὶ αὐτὸν εἰρηκέναι φασὶν ὡς αὑτῷ μὴ ἀρέσκοντα εἰσηγεῖτο Ἀθηναίοις, ἀλλ’ οἷς αὐτοὺς ὑπελάμβανε χρήσεσθαι [Solōna mentoi kai auton eirēkenai phasin hōs hautō mē areskonta eisēgeito Athēnaiois, all’ hois autous hypelambane khrēsesthai]. Ibid., 3.

[154] τῆς φύσεως νόμος [tēs physeōs nomos], ibid., 5. Whilst Dio is generally associated with the Second Sophistic, in this text he shares with Stoic authors the notion of the necessary convergence of individual will towards natural law.

[155] Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, AA 4, 433.

[156] ποιῶν καὶ τὸ αὐτεξούσιον μετὰ τῆς ἀνάγκης [poiōn kai to autexousion meta tēs anagkēs], acting out also the freedom of choice along with necessity, Chrysippus, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta 2.975. The epithet ἐξούσιος [exousios] and the noun ἐξουσία [exousia] seem to be Thucydidean coinages (see, for example, 1.38), which cover the semantic range from undue license to right: the Platonic Socrates plays on this ambiguity when he sarcastically evokes the ἐξουσία τοῦ λέγειν [exousia tou legein], license to speak of Athenian citizens, in Gorgias 461e.

[157] Flavius Josephus, De bello Judaico 2.134. Josephus uses the term to underline two exceptions to the otherwise disciplined behaviour of the Essenes.

[158] Benveniste, Vocabulaire 1, 322. Eng. trans. id., Indo-European, 263. Actually, a third use of the word liber relates to the inner bark or rind of a tree, especially in its use as a writing support: the term then comes to identify both a division of a written text, and a book tout court.

[159] See Adrien Bruhl, Liber Pater. Origine et expansion du culte dionisiaque à Rome et dans le monde Romain (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1953).

[160] In the Roman ancient marriage formula, the father of the bride addresses the future husband with the words ‘liber(or)um quaesundum causa (or gratia),’ to obtain legitimate children.

[161] ‘MANU FUSTIVE SI OS FREGIT LIBERO, CCC, [SI] SERVO, CL POENAM SUBITO.’ In Carl Georg Bruns, Fontes Iuris Romani Antiqui (Freiburg: Mohr, 1887), 28.

[162] Vitruvius, De architectura 3.3.

[163] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 6.94.

[164] Alfred Merlin, L’Aventin dans l’Antiquité (Paris: Fontemoing, 1906), 94.

[165] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 6.94.

[166] The Aventine Hill, which the 493 BCE Lex Icilia de Auentino publicando subdivides into small plots for the plebeians, may be considered as the counterpart to the patrician Palatine Hill.

[167] Livy 24.16.

[168] Wallace Martin Lindsay ed., Sexti Pompei Festi De verborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli epitome (Leipzig: Teubner, 1913), 103.

[169] This eulogy of unrestrained behaviour is paradoxically expressed with a chain of alliterations.

[170] Livy 4.5.

[171] Apparently, the only two applications of the notion of aequa libertas to individuals are attested in Terence’s recasting of Menander in Adelphoe 2.1.29, and in Quintilian, Declamatio 301.

[172] See, for example, Livy’s depiction of the institute of provocatio, the appeal to the people’s assembly to contest capital punishment, as unicum praesidium libertatis, the only stronghold of freedom, in 3.55.

[173] When Augustus claims in his Res Gestae ‘rem publicam (. . .) in libertatem vindicavi,’ he just deploys a standard expression, which Wirszubski renders as ‘I worked for the public good.’ In Charles Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome During the Late Republic and the Principate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 116.

[174] From the Latin verb liceo. See Plautus, Trinummus 4.3.27.

[175] Plautus Curculio 2, 3, 40.

[176] Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico 6.14.

[177] Ibid., 1.14. As adverb impūne (archaic orthography impœne), see Plautus, Mostellaria 5.2.59.

[178] Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico 6.14. As adjective immunis, see Plautus, Trinummus 2.2.75.

[179] Cicero, Letters to Atticus 4.18.

[180] The word mancipium, ‘taking by hand,’ defined the taking possession of a purchase: conversely, according to the Twelve Tables, the enfranchisement of the son from paternal authority was performed as a triple act of selling: ‘si pater filium ter venum duit, filius a patre liber esto.’ If the father sells the son three times, be the son freed from the father. Quoted in Gaius 1.132.

[181] ‘Nam quaedam personae sui iuris sunt, quaedam alieno iuri sunt subiectae.’ For some persons have jurisdiction upon themselves, and some are subjected to the jurisdiction of others. Ibid., 1.48.

[182] ‘Si intestato moritur, cui suus heres nec escit, adgnatus proximus familiam habeto,’ if a man dies intestate, and if he has no heir who is a suus [that is to say, one of the closed group of immediate descendants], the nearest [male] agnate kinsman shall inherit. In Ulpian, Regulae 26.1.

[183] Benveniste, Vocabulaire I, 333. Eng. trans. id., Indo-European, 272.

[184] Supposedly derived from the proto-Germanic term *frija, from the supposed Indo-European term *pryos.

[185] See Benveniste, Vocabulaire 1, 327. Eng. trans. id., Indo-European, 267. See also Richard Broxton Onians, The Origins of European Thought: About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951).

How to cite this book chapter:

Baldissone, R 2018 Farewell to Freedom: A Western Genealogy of Liberty. Pp. 1–35. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book15.a. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

CHAPTER 2

The Christian World Until the Threshold of Modernities

2.1 – Christianities Before the Papal Revolution

Though Philo’s short treatise ‘Every good man is free’[186] does not seem particularly original, it is a veritable compendium of Stoic and Neoplatonist ideas, which are composed[187] with the author’s Jewish beliefs. Hence, when Philo quotes Sophocles: ‘God is my ruler, and no mortal man,’[188] he means the god of the Bible. Whilst after two millennia of Christianities we no longer notice this shift, Philo’s writings immediately precede early Christian texts, and subsequent Christian authors are eager[189] to follow Philo’s appropriation of classical culture.[190] For example, Eusebius makes an ample excerpt of the essay,[191] and Ambrose paraphrases it without quoting its author.[192]

Philo constructs his text on the doubling of the notions of freedom and slavery over body and soul: as bodily freedom is a matter of chance ‒ he argues ‒ we can only be concerned with the freedom of the soul. Sophocles’ quote is thus supporting Philo’s view that freedom consists of acting as διάδοχος[193] [diadokhos], that is, vicar (a representative) of god.

The condition of vicariousness to god is to be transferred by Christian authors to the pope as his prerogative,[194] whose exclusiveness is then to have a huge political relevance from the eleventh century onward. In the meantime, Philo, by taking further Aristobulus’ philosophical interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures, opens the way to the recasting of classical thought in religious terms,[195] and he also gives a religious twist to the lexicon of freedom.

In particular, Philo turns isegoria,[196] which originally describes the citizens’ right to speak in the assembly, into a generic intercourse on terms of equality, which becomes evidence of the freedom of the good man [sic], inasmuch as the latter speaks freely to other likewise virtuous men. And whilst the term autopragia,[197] as we saw, is a Stoic coinage that depicts the independence of individual action, Philo grounds it on the Platonic eternal order and happiness of all divine things, which he first reads as belonging to the Jewish god.

This is why, when Philo quotes a few lines uttered by Heracles in another tragedy by Euripides, we may somewhat share the experience of Borges’ prophetic spectator, who sees appearing together on stage with Aeschylus’ second actor the multitude of the Hamlet, Faust and Macbeth to come.[198] For us, the Euripidean quotation evokes a similar, but more sinister crowd:

Roast and consume my flesh, and drink thy fill

Of my dark blood; for sooner shall the stars

Go ’neath the earth, and earth go up to heaven,

Than thou shalt from my lips meet fawning word.[199]

Philo’s paradigmatic use of Heracles’ proud stubbornness lets us glimpse a spectral gathering of martyrs to come: all those who are to die, in the name not only of Christian principles, but also of their subsequent recastings, such as the modern versions of freedom.

However, in the first version of Christianity, which Paul puts in writing, there is neither space for pride nor for change, because ὁ καιρὸς συνεσταλμένος ἐστίν[200] [ho kairos synestalmenos estin], the opportunity is shrunk. The creature, whilst waiting to be shortly ‘freed from the slavery of death into the freedom of the splendour of the children of God,’[201] is better to remain as she is: the free person, as a free person; the slave, as a slave.[202]

For Paul, as for Philo, freedom is no longer grounded on a contextual relation, but elsewhere. However, as Paul is unconcerned with Philo’s theoretical subtleties, this grounding takes the shape of a simple association: οὗ δὲ τὸ πνεῦμα κυρίου, ἐλευθερία [hou de to pneuma kyriou, eleutheria], where the spirit of the lord (is, there is) liberty.[203]

Even more than Paul’s doubtful theoretical proficiency, this immediate conflation of freedom and god renders him not too sensitive to the problematic cohabitation of individual free will and omnipotence. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, which is the veritable Christian foundational text, he even allows himself a double quip in (unintentional) Platonic fashion: he reminds his fellow Christians that before their conversion they were slaves to sin, but ἐλεύθεροι (…) τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ [eleutheroi (…) tē dikaiosynē] free from righteousness.[204] By playing again with language, Paul intimates: ἐλευθερωθέντες δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας ἐδουλώθητε τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ[205] [eleutherōthentes de apo tēs hamartias edoulōthēte tē dikaiosyne], by having been freed from sin, you have been enslaved to righteousness.

Moreover, after having warmly encouraged his fellow πνευματικοί[206] [pneumatikoi], that is, spirituals, to duly comply with their various bodily duties ‒ as slaves, to their masters, as wives, to their husbands, and as sons and daughters, to their parents ‒ Paul is happy to inform them that ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’[207]

As we all know, Paul’s prognostication of the impending παρουσία[208] [parousia], the (second) coming of Jesus, fails to actualize: it takes instead two centuries to have Origen push Paul’s ultimate vision of ὁ θεὸς [τὰ] πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν[209] [ho theos (ta) panta en pasin], god all in all, to its logical consequences. Origen radically undermines the Gnostic doctrine of the predestination of the pneumatikoi[210] by emphasising, rather than god’s omnipotence, god’s presence in all as the necessity for ἀποκατάστασις[211] [apokatastasis], the restitution or salvation for all. Of course, Origen’s notion of apokatastasis also paradoxically undermines the Christian rationale for granting freedom of choice, namely, eternal punishment.[212]

Origen studies in Alexandria under the guidance of the philosopher Ammonius Saccas. Though we have no work by Saccas, his influence on Western thought is also witnessed by another of his students, whose teachings originate a major wave of speculation in Western thought: Plotinus.

Plotinus is unusually conscious of the limits of language and he distrusts its written form. It is his pupil Porphyry who reorganises Plotinus’ notes into the structure of the six books of the Enneads. Having acknowledged this crucial intervention, we may say that Plotinus’ Enneads culminate in the treatise on the Good, or the supreme entity. This unrelated First principle cannot be properly defined by expressions such as τὸ ἐλεύθερον καὶ τὸ ἐπ’ αὐτῷ[213] [to eleutheron kai to ep’ autō], freedom and self-disposal, which imply ‘an action towards something else.’[214]

We may notice that Plotinus does not denote the ability to act without constraints with the term eleutheria, but with technical expressions such as τὸ αὐτεξούσιον[215] [to autexousion], ἀνεμποδίστως[216] [anempodistōs], and ἀκωλύτως[217] [akōlytōs]. By underscoring that even philosophical terms are unable to grasp the One, Plotinus breaks[218] with the philosophical tradition that privileges φάσις [phasis], affirmation, over ἀπόφασις [apophasis], negation, to put it in Platonic terms.[219] In doing so, despite being anything but sympathetic to Christian beliefs, Plotinus also opens the way to the apophatic,[220] that is, negative speculation on the Christian god.

After two more centuries, when the Christians are no longer persecuted, Augustine of Hippo is far more cautious than Origen in dealing with the notion of human freedom, as he is aware of both the doctrinal and political implications of the debate on the role of divine grace. The African bishop is thus contented with stating that ‘our wills themselves are included in that order of causes which is certain to God, and is embraced by His foreknowledge.’[221]

Augustine also predicts that libertas, freedom, ‘which is never true if not blessed,’ [222] will replace liberum arbitrium, free will: ‘therefore the first freedom of will was to be able not to sin; the newer will be much greater, not to be able to sin.’[223] As to the present, for Augustine free will is just one of the bona media, medium goods, ‘because we can also make a bad use of it’[224]: only the good use of free will is a virtue, and thus one of bona magna, the great goods, of which ‘no one can make a bad use.’[225]

One century later, with Christianity as the state church of the Roman empire, the Byzantine emperor Justinian repeals Origen’s truly charitable notion of apokatastasis, which gains the Alexandrian Father (retrospectively) and his later followers suspicion and condemnations.[226] At the same time, Justinian has a pool of jurists compile a body of work that collates Roman legal materials, so that he commits the Latin terms liber and libertas to the care of the parchment of the codices, and to the medieval imagination to come.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, the last Western copies of the Justinianic codes disappear into the depths of monastic archives, together with the knowledge of the Greek language: from the Visigoth Romania[227] of the Iberian south, Isidore of Seville takes charge of collecting the relics of classical culture in his Etymologies. This compendium prefigures medieval miscellanies, and it also keeps memory of omnium una libertas,[228] the freedom common to all. But it is another phrase from Isidore’s Sententiae, ‘gemina est praedestinatio,’[229] predestination is twin, that is to be used ‒ nearly three centuries later ‒ as a contentious reference in a renewed debate on free will.

In the ninth century, the Saxon monk Gottschalk relies on Isidore’s twin predestination to claim that god has already sealed the destiny of both the damned and the saved. Eriugena reacts by denying the possibility of applying to god the categories of the finite world, such as the time-bound notion of prefiguration.[230] Eriugena thus revives in Christian terms Plotinus’ reluctance to define the One, through the mediation of the late Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite,[231] whose work he translates into Latin.[232]

When Gottschalk dies in the late 860s, he is denied the sacraments, because until the end he continues to uphold his doctrine of predestination, a version of which will later split Western Christianity. In 871, another Saxon, Alfred, is crowned king of Wessex. Shortly after, he requests the Bishop Wærferð of Worcester to translate into his vernacular language the Dialogues of Gregory the Great: the Bishop renders the Latin word libertas with the local term ‘freodome,’[233] which inaugurates the literal path of freedom.

2.2 – The Papal Revolution and its Aftermath

Eriugena’s application of syllogistic reasoning to religious disputes is revived two centuries later by Anselm, who also engages again with the notion of libertas, liberty. By this time, namely, the eleventh century, this term is inextricably associated with another word: Pope Gregory VII proudly invokes libertas ecclesiae,[234] the liberty of the church. Gregory thunders: ‘We hold it to be far nobler to fight on for a long time for the freedom of the holy Church than to be subjected to a miserable and diabolical servitude.’[235]

The pope does not simply demand for the church freedom from the intervention of the emperor, who is traditionally used to appoint bishops: the claimed liberty entails also a far more proactive stance for the church and its head, the pope.[236] Papal claims are expressed in a series of juridical declarations, which state new rules for the election of the pope,[237] reorganise the church as a hierarchical structure, and even excommunicate the emperor: these juridico-theological proclamations set the institutional lines of the Gregorian Reform, which is more appropriately defined by Rosenstock-Huessy as Papal Revolution.[238]

The papal revolutionaries immediately appeal to god to justify the newly claimed authority of the pope, both within and without the church.[239] The freedom they demand for the church is thus grounded on a transcendent terrain, similarly to the freedom that Christian authors grant to the individual faithful. However, here the subject of freedom is a collective, which is construed as a single subject with the pope as its head.

The construction of the church as corpus Christi, that is, the body of Christ, has been a common trope at least since Augustine[240]: in the twelfth century, the church first becomes by the pen of Peter Lombard caro mystica,[241] mystical flesh, and then, with a significant metonymical shift, corpus mysticum, mystical body. Hence, the proactive freedom of the church, as affirmed by Gregory VII, finds soon a juridico-theological embodied form: the mystical body of the church, which predates by five centuries Hobbes’ Leviathan.

On the one hand, this juridico-theological body inherits the ethical freedom of the individual Christian subject: on the other hand, the entitlement of the pope, as head of the mystical body of the church, to unlimited sovereignty,[242] returns to the notion of freedom an immediately political dimension. More than that, the new church also produces a transformation of the political dimension itself.

It is worth recalling that the Papal Revolution begins in the eleventh century. At that time, the political space is no longer the mere play of power, which allows the exercise of the unlimited eleutheria of the tyrant, or the demos, as well as the republican libertas of the Roman populus, and then of Roman emperors: from Constantine onwards,[243] it is the backing of divine authority that provides Christian rulers with their a posteriori legitimation.

The gist of the papal revolutionaries is to extend the temporal reach of this legitimating device: if the divine investiture blesses powers that are already in place, why can’t god bestow its confirmation on a power that is yet to be?[244] Of course, this very confirmation is not understood as prefiguring a novel settlement, but as claiming the restitution of the divinely prescribed order: the papal revolutionaries are confident that they are following a preordained path rather than anticipating a new order of things.

The action of such a powerful retrospective anticipation, as it were, is not limited to god’s representatives, who, in turn, can also invest third parties with the same authority: a notably early example is the 1066 Norman invasion of England, which is duly achieved under the auspices of the new church.

This papal endorsement is later to be indirectly witnessed by the Magna Carta (also later defined as libertatum, of freedoms), which twice states, in its first and last articles, ‘quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit,’[245] that the English church shall be free. Here the condition of freedom acknowledges at once the autonomy of the English church from royal authority, and its subordination to the pope.

Back in the 1070s, as a side effect of the Papal Revolution, the text of the Justinianic compilations of Roman law reappears in the course of archival researches. The recovered codes quickly become the object of a new legal discipline, and they have a notable impact upon the reorganisation of canon law too.[246] Moreover, a few decades after the rescue of Roman law codes, also the bulk of the extant texts of the Aristotelian corpus that were lost to the Christian West begins to be translated into Latin from Arabic and Greek sources: the work of translation will span nearly a century.

In the meantime, Abelard, who is the veritable maître à penser of the twelfth-century renaissance, spearheads a new understanding of theology as a theoretical discipline.[247] Under the scrutiny of the irrepressibly inquisitive Abelard, the theoretical construction of the new freedom of god’s representatives on earth ends up affecting its bestower: following Augustine’s suggestion of the superior freedom of the blessed, even god’s freedom is made the object of inquiry.[248]

The inquiry is then to be structured around the two poles of potentia absoluta, absolute power, and potentia ordinata, ordered power. Whilst this distinction comes from the juridico-theological debate over papal injunctions, it acquires a specific theological sense in the discussion of the possible limitations to god’s freedom to act. In particular, in the thirteenth century Aquinas defines as absolute power ‘quod attribuitur potentiae secundum se consideratae,’[249] that which is attributed to power as considered according to itself; he calls instead ordered power that which is attributed to divine power ‘secundum quod exequitur imperium voluntatis iustae,’[250] according to what is put into act under the command of a just will. At any rate, Aquinas accepts that even god is under the double constraint of logical contradiction[251] and of the irreversibility of past events.[252]

However, freedom is a renewed object of inquiry not only as an attribute of god, but also as its reverberation in the creature. On the one hand, in his Commedia Dante puts into verse Aquinas’ notion of libero arbitrio, that is, free will; on the other hand, he describes his own attachment to freedom as a civic virtue, just like in Classical times. Here is how, in the Commedia, the fictionalised Vergil introduces the lifelong political exile Dante to Cato the Younger, who commits suicide because of the fall of the Roman Republic: ‘libertà va cercando, ch’è sì cara, / come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta.’[253] Liberty he goes searching, that’s so dear / as who renounces life for it well knows.

In 1323, just a few years after Dante’s visit to the Afterlife,[254] in the text of William of Ockham the participle conceptus[255] shifts from its usual adjectival to a nominal function, so that its meaning likewise shifts from ‘conceived’ to ‘concept.’ Since then, it is possible ‒ at least hypothetically ‒ to consider freedom as a concept, without producing an anachronism.[256]

Shortly after, god’s freedom is involved in a conflict of faculties, which results from the problematic conflation of absolute will and absolute reason. This difficulty is first expressed in juridico-grammatical terms, when, in the fourteenth century, Gregory of Rimini makes a distinction between lex indicativa, (a law stated in the indicative mode as an objective statement of fact that only implies an injunction), and lex imperativa (a law that enjoins a direct command in the imperative mode).[257] Gregory relies on the authority of Hugh of St Victor for maintaining that natural law is indicativa, because even if god did not exist, the injunctions of natural law would be in place anyway. This argument is to become famous ‒ and even infamous ‒ in its seventeenth-century appropriation by Grotius.[258]

Gregory’s juridico-grammatical nomenclature stands as a rare and precious manifestation of the grammatical underpinning of theoretical categories. However, contemporary innovative notions of freedom are less the effect of the speculation on absolute divine faculties, than of the double recovery of Aristotelian and Roman law texts: the legal reconsiderations of the word liber, free, open new juridico-political perspectives.

Aquinas strives to recast Aristotelian theories in Christian terms; Marsilius of Padua seeks instead to revive Aristotle’s political thought. In particular, Marsilius reads the contemporary condition of Italian city-states through the Aristotelian reflection on the polis: ‘civitas est communitas liberorum,’[259] the city is the community of free men [sic]. Marsilius reiterates Aristotle’s excision from the deliberative community of slaves, women, immigrants, and children: however, his recovery of the classical notion of ascending political rule reverses the juridico-theological constructions of the descending nature of power.

In the same context, namely, fourteenth-century Italy, the jurist Bartolus derives from the Roman notion of popular self-determination the legal acknowledgement that a free city ‘sibi princeps est,’[260] is its own prince. In turn, probably with an eye to his own place, Bartolus’ Perugian pupil Baldus follows his master in recovering the notion of populus liber, free people, which in the Iustinianic Corpus describes an independent population living outside of the boundaries of the Roman Empire: Baldus deliberately applies the definition of free people to contemporary Italian cities that lie instead within imperial jurisdiction, in order to grant them legal standing.[261] In doing so, Baldus keeps shifting the notion of communal freedoms (which Imperial-leaning jurists recast as regalia et consuetudines,[262] that is, regal prerogatives and customs) from autonomy towards independence.

Moreover, the lay Baldus not only collaborates in Bartolus’ juridical construction of the people as collective subject of freedom, but he also recasts this very people in the hegemonic language of juridical theology: following the appropriation of the juridico-theological notion of mystical body by emperors and kings, he endows the body of the citizenry with a mystical double too: ‘properly speaking, the people is not [a plurality of] men [sic], but a collection of men [sic] into a single mystical and abstract body.’[263]

Both Bartolus and Baldus search Roman law for a juridical expression of the practice of Italian self-governing cities, just as Machiavelli is then to look at Roman historiography to give this practice a political expression.[264] Nevertheless, following the Byzantine compilations, for Baldus, after the Roman lex regia,[265] the people is no longer invested with suprema potestas, the highest power, and cities only ‘fill in their territory the place of the emperor.’[266]

On the contrary, Machiavelli shows no concern for old and new imperial powers: his ethical and political model is the Roman Republic. Moreover, Machiavelli not only follows Livy and his late celebration of republican virtues: he also revives Polybius’ systematization of Thucydides’ cyclical construction of history.[267] However, whilst both Thucydides and Polybius seem to leave almost no room for accidental or voluntary change, Machiavelli equally distributes the causes of historical transformations between necessity and chance.[268] The space of chance allows human elettione,[269] a choice that more often than not implies a departing from the virtuous path: yet, the freedom of choice is also the opportunity to imitate the examples of classical virtue.

Machiavelli’s appeal to antiquity is a common trait of humanist[270] scholarship, which in his times bifurcates into the evocation of the classics and the construction of the narrative of primitive Christianity by religious reformers: a third way is to be opened in the second half of the sixteenth century by Justus Lipsius, who will attempt to reconcile Stoicism with Christian doctrine. In the meantime, in 1532 the French friar François Rabelais devises a sneering version of monastic reformation that propounds a peculiar notion of unlimited freedom.

Rabelais tells us that the life of the hosts of the newly-founded Abbey of Thélème[271] is not spent following laws, statutes, or regulations, ‘mais selon leur vouloir et franc arbiter,’[272] but according to their own wish and free will. The whole monastic rule of Thélème consists in just one clause: ‘Faictz ce que Vouldras,’[273] do what you want.

Rabelais is confident that people who are free, well-born, and well-bred are naturally driven towards virtue and away from vice.[274] Only when they are subjected to tyranny, do they turn aside from their good disposition in order to shake off the yoke of servitude.[275] Not only is Rabelais’ representation of the good nature of a selected human group to attain in time anthropological breadth: just a few decades later, his considerations on the effects of tyranny are given political expression by Étienne de La Boétie.

In the mid-sixteenth century, right before the deflagration of the religious conflict in France, and similarly to Machiavelli, La Boétie completely bypasses the juridico-theological approaches to freedom[276] by immediately reconnecting with the Classical tradition of ethico-political thought.[277] In particular, La Boétie grounds on the Plutarchian exaltation of virtue his vindication of freedom, which he presents under the paradoxical issue of ‘servitude volontaire,’[278] voluntary servitude.

According to La Boétie, freedom needs not to be learned, as it is an original condition that even transcends the boundaries of the human species. It is rather the rule of the French monarch that results from a ‘monstre de vice,’[279] a monstrous vice, namely the voluntary renunciation by French subjects of their freedom: hence, they could dissolve the power of the king by simply ceasing to obey him.[280]

After La Boétie’s untimely death, Calvinist pamphleteers appropriate his argument in their attacks on the Catholic king. They also probably exploit the familiarity of their readers with the notion of voluntary servitude to sin, which Calvin derives from Paul.[281]

Arguably, the failure of the conciliarist[282] attempt to challenge the absolutely hierarchical structure of papal power from within the church clears the way for a different confrontation, which is staged as the clash of diverging doctrinal interpretations. As previously recalled, the Reformation is presented as a restoration of the original Christian message, which ‒ Calvin complains ‒ ‘was detained in the cloisters of monks for almost a thousand years.’[283] In particular, Luther appeals to Augustine in order to support his notion of servo arbitrio,[284] slave will, which he pits against libero arbitrio, free will. And just to be sure, he admonishes rebel peasants that ‘baptism does not make men free in body and property, but in soul.’[285]

Luther recasts a Pauline line[286] as two contradictory statements: ‘The Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none. The Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.’[287] Luther then proceeds to solve in good Scholastic fashion[288] the apparent contradiction by claiming the dichotomy between the ‘spiritual, inward, new man [sic]’[289] and ‘the fleshly, outward, old man [sic],’[290] as the effects of the human twofold nature, namely, spiritual and bodily.

Following a long-standing claim that we already found in Sophocles,[291] Luther relies on Paul[292] to re-enact in Christian terms the construction of two absolutely severed spheres of human action, which allow inner freedom to coexist with absolute external obedience. According to Luther, works are ‘res insensatae,’[293] that is, literally, thing without senses, and thus dead,[294] and they do not belong to the inner sphere of the soul, which is only governed by faith and words: as in the inner Christian ‘operibus non habet opus,’[295] there is no work for works, he is released from commandments and laws, and he is therefore free.

Conversely, the Christian is free to obey without compromising his inner freedom. Nevertheless, whilst Paul invites his fellows to obey as a merely temporary acceptance of a condition that is soon to be overcome, Luther makes a distinction of Gnostic flavour between a minority of true Christians and a majority of crooked ones.[296] For Luther, the inevitably limited number of good Christians justifies the need for a policing force,[297] and it motivates his allegiance to authority qua authority: and this allegiance is to have dire effects in German history. In a similar way, Calvin rhetorically asks why Paul at once exalts freedom[298] and invites slaves not to pursue emancipation,[299] if not because ‘spiritualis libertas cum politica servitute optime stare potest,’[300] spiritual liberty is perfectly compatible with political slavery.

Nonetheless, the very notion of servo arbitrio, slave will, may appear to undermine human responsibility, which is required to justify the Christian doctrine of sin and guilt, as well as secular punishment. This is why Calvin embraces the notion of voluntaria servitus,[301] voluntary servitude (to sin), which underscores the natural depravity of human beings, but which also makes them accountable for choosing to follow their evil inclination.

Among its evil tendencies, the human spirit ‘aegre se subiici sustinet,’[302] hardly allows itself to be subject. Calvin praises the subjection of children to parents because it is most easily endured, and it makes humans later accept every kind of legitimate subjugation, as the same principle regulates all.[303] Here Calvin not only insightfully describes authoritarian family relations as the apparatus of production of individual unfreedom,[304] but, similarly to La Boétie, he acknowledges human resistance to subjection as a natural ‒ albeit, in his view, negative ‒ propensity.

It will fall to Hobbes to set this original freedom beyond good and evil, as it were: ‘all men[305] equally, are by Nature Free.’[306] Though such Hobbesian affirmation bears a strong resemblance to traditional appeals to natural law, it is already part of a new theoretical framework, where nature is no longer an ethical and ontological grounding, but a mere factual arrangement.

[186] The original title is Περὶ τοῦ πάντα σπουδαίον ελεύθερον εἶναι [Peri tou panta spoudaion eleutheron einai]; in Latin, Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit. This work is properly only the second part of a larger one: Philo himself alludes to the title of the first and missing half, Περὶ τοῦ δοῦλον εἶναι πάντα φαῦλον [Peri tou doulon einai panta phaulon], Every bad man is a slave. In Philo, Philo, vol. 9, F. H. Colson trans. (London: Heinemann, 1941), 1–101.

[187] Here I am using the operation of composition in the sense that Deleuze and Guattari give to the French term agencement. By conjoining Greek philosophy and Jewish Scriptures, Philo does not simply construct a new interpretation of both of them, but he produces a new theoretical object. See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Mille Plateaux: Capitalisme et schizophrénie, 2 (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1980), 10. Eng. trans. id., A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Brian Massumi trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 10.

[188] θεὸς ἐμὸς ἄρχων, θνητὸς δ’ οὐδείς [theos emos arkhōn, thnētos d’ oudeis], in Philo, ‘Every good man is free,’ 20. This line is partially quoted by Aristotle in Eudemian Ethics 1242a, with Ζεύς [Zeus] for θεός [theos]. It is not known from what play it comes: Brunck places it among the Incerta Fragments (n. 89). It may be not by chance that Aristobulus of Alexandria, a Jewish apologist who predates Philo’s philosophical interpretation of Jewish Scriptures, openly admits his substitution of theos for Zeus in a line by Aratus, assuming that the latter really intends theos for Zeus. In Eusebius of Caesarea, Praeparatio Evangelica 13.12, Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca, (hereinafter PG), J. P. Migne ed. (Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1857–1866), vol. 21, 1102.

[189] This eagerness to recover Classical thought is particularly evident from Clement of Alexandria on, though even Gregory of Nazianzus the Theologian makes use of Platonic ideas and imagery without being aware of their source. Moreover, many Fathers feel guilty for this eagerness, inasmuch as they are caught in a double bind between their interest in classical literature and their devotion to the Scriptures: consider, for example, the famous reproach that god makes in a dream to Jerome: ‘Ciceronianus es, non Christianus!’ You are a Ciceronian, not a Christian! In Jerome, Epistola 22.30, Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina, (hereinafter PL), J. P. Migne ed. (Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1844–1855), vol. 22, 416.

[190] The enthusiasm of Christian authors for Philo is to become a thorough appropriation: in the Byzantine Catenae, quotes from the Jewish apologist are headed with the lemma Φίλωνος ἐπισκόπου [Philōnos episkopou], ‘of the bishop Philo.’ In David T. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1993), 3. Only Buddha fares better than Philo as an outsider in the Christian camp, when he is canonised in the double shape of the saints Barlaam and Josaphat ‒ a rendering of ‘Bodhisattva’ through the middle Persian ‘Budasif.’

[191] Eusebius, Praep. Evang. 8.12, PG 21 644–649. Eusebius reports the whole account of the life of the Essenes, which Philo (§§ 75–91) describes as an example of Stoic life.

[192] Ambrose’s letter 37 to Simplicianus is in large part a kind of paraphrase of Philo’s essay. In Ambrose, Epistola 37, PL 16 1083–1095.

[193] Philo, ‘Every good man is free,’ 20.

[194] In his 30th letter, Gelasius recalls that he is acclaimed pope in 492 with the sentence ‘Vicarium Christi te videmus,’ we see you as the vicar of Christ. In A. Thiel ed., Epistolae Romanorum Pontificum Genuinae, vol. 1 (Brunsberg: E. Peter, 1868), 447.

[195] Reale even suggests that Philo first constructs Platonic ideas as the thoughts of god. See Giovanni Reale, A History of Ancient Philosophy, vol. 4, J. L. Catan trans. (New York: SUNY Press, 1990), 172.

[196] Philo, ‘Every good man is free,’ 38.

[197] Ibid., 20.

[198] Here is Borges’ analysis of the Aristotelian passage on Aeschylus’ novel use of a second actor: ‘Con el segundo actor entraron el diálogo y las indefinidas posibilidades de la reacción de unos caracteres sobre otros. Un espectador profético hubiera visto que multitudes de apariencias futuras lo acompañaban: Hamlet y Fausto y Segismundo y Macbeth y Peer Gynt, y otros que, todavía, no pueden discernir nuestros ojos.’ With the second actor, dialogue and the undefined possibilities of the reaction of one character to the other came in. A prophetic spectator would have seen that multitudes of future appearances accompanied him: Hamlet and Faust and Segismundo and Macbeth and Peer Gynt and others our eyes cannot yet discern. In Jorge Luis Borges, ‘El pudor de la historia,’ in id., Obras Completas 1923–1972 (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1974), vol. 1, 755. Eng. trans. ‘The Modesty of History,’ in id., Other Inquisitions, Ruth L. C. Simms trans. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), 168.

[199] πίμπρη, κάταιθε σάρκας, ἐμπλήσθητί μου / πίνων κελαινὸν αἷμα· πρόσθε γὰρ κάτω / γῆς εἶσιν ἄστρα, γῆ δ’ ἄνεις ἐς αἰθέρα, / πρὶν ἐξ ἐμοῦ σοι θῶπ’ ἀπαντῆσαι λόγον. [pimprē, kataithe sarkas, emplēsthēti mou / pinōn kelainon haima· prosthe gar katō / gēs eisin astra, gē d’ aneis es aithera, / prin ex emou soi thōp’ apantēsai logon]. Euripides, Fragment 2 from the Syleus, translated by F. H. Colson, in Philo, ‘Every good man is free,’ 24–25 (modified Greek text).

[200] ‘Time is short,’ recites a more conventional and less literal translation of this passage in Paul, 1 Corinthians 7.29 (Nestle-Aland).

[201] ὅτι καὶ αὐτὴ ἡ κτίσις ἐλευθερωθήσεται ἀπὸ τῆς δουλείας τῆς φθορᾶς εἰς τὴν ἐλευθερίαν τῆς δόξης τῶν τέκνων τοῦ θεοῦ [hoti kai autē hē ktisis eleutherōthēsetai apo tēs douleias tēs phthoras eis tēn eleutherian tēs doxēs tōn teknōn tou theou], in Paul, Romans 8.21 (Nestle-Aland).

[202] Slaves are kindly invited to obey their masters μετὰ φόβου καὶ τρόμου [meta phobou kai tromou], with fear and trembling, in Ephesians 6.5 (Nestle-Aland). However, while waiting for eternal freedom, even the visionary Paul has to concede something to pragmatism, and accept the more modest opportunity of emancipation from slavery: ἀλλ᾽ εἰ καὶ δύνασαι ἐλεύθερος γενέσθαι, μᾶλλον χρῆσαι [all’ ei kai dynasai eleutheros genesthai, mallon khrēsai], but if there is the possibility to become free, it is better to use it. In 1 Corinthians 7.21 (Nestle-Aland).

[203] Paul, 2 Corinthians 3.17 (Nestle-Aland).

[204] ὅτε γὰρ δοῦλοι ἦτε τῆς ἁμαρτίας, ἐλεύθεροι ἦτε τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ [hote gar douloi ēte tēs hamartias, eleutheroi ēte tē dikaiosynē], when you were slaves to sin, you were free from righteousness, in Paul, Romans 6.20 (Nestle-Aland).

[205] Ibid., 6.18.

[206] Paul, Galatians 6.1 (Nestle-Aland). Paul does not use the word ‘Christians.’ After its success among the Gnostics, the term pneumatikoi will know a renewed fame in its Italian medieval translation ‘spirituali,’ which will define the Franciscan followers of the original rule of Francis.

[207] οὐκ ἔνι Ἰουδαῖος οὐδὲ Ἕλλην, οὐκ ἔνι δοῦλος οὐδὲ ἐλεύθερος, οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ· πάντες γὰρ ὑμεῖς εἷς ἐστὲ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ [ouk eni Ioudaios oude Hellēn, ouk eni doulos oude eleutheros, ouk eni arsen kai thēly: pantes gar hymeis heis este en Khristō Iēsou]. In Galatians 3.28 (Nestle-Aland). In a similar sense, the Gospel will promise: ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς [hē alētheia eleutherōsei hymas], truth will free you. In John 8.32 (Nestle-Aland).

[208] See Paul, 1 Corinthians 15.23 (Nestle-Aland); 1 Thessalonians 2.19, 3.13, 4.15, 5.23 (Nestle-Aland); 2 Thessalonians 2.1, 2.8, 2.9 (Nestle-Aland).

[209] Paul, 1 Corinthians 15.28 (Nestle-Aland).

[210] Gnostic authors use the Pauline term pneumatikoi to denote a specific set of people who are predestined to salvation: also Tertullian comes to use the word in a similarly discriminatory sense.

[211] Whilst the term apokatastasis is attested in Acts 3.21, the notion of universal salvation is possibly anticipated by Paul, then openly claimed by Origen (for example, in De Principiis 3.1.15), and by Gregory of Nyssa in Oratio Catechetica XXVI.

[212] I anticipate here a poignant comment by Nietzsche: ‘Wir haben heute kein Mitleid mehr mit dem Begriff “freier Wille”: wir wissen nur zu gut, was er ist — das anrüchigste Theologen-Kunststück, das es giebt, zum Zweck, die Menschheit in ihrem Sinne “verantwortlich” zu machen, das heisst sie von sich abhängig zu machen. . .’ ‘We no longer have any sympathy nowadays for the concept of “free will”: we know all too well what it is ‒ the shadiest trick theologians have up their sleeves for making humanity “responsible” in their sense of the term, which is to say dependent on them. . .’ In Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Antichrist: Die vier grossen Irrthümer § 7; Digital Critical Edition at http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/GD-Irrthuemer-7; Eng. trans. id., The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, A. Ridley and J. Norman eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 181, modified translation.

[213] Plotinus, Enneads 6.8.4.

[214] εἰς ἄλλο ἐνέργειαν [eis allo energeian], ibid., 6.8.8.

[215] Ibid., 6.8.5. The term is allegedly introduced by Chrysippus: see note 156.

[216] [A]nempodistōs (ibid., 6.8.8) is the adverbial form of the Aristotelian term anempodistos, that is, unimpeded.

[217] [A]kōlytōs (ibid., 6.8.8.) is the adverbial form of the expression ἀκώλυτος [akōlytos], unhindered, which is probably another Platonic coinage, in Cra. 415d.

[218] A previous and different break is the Sceptic notion of ἀφἀσία [aphasia], which introduces a third possibility between affirmation and negation. See Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.20.

[219] In Plato, Soph. 263e, the Guest defines the two possible kind of discourses as φάσις [phasis], affirmation, and ἀπόφασις [apophasis], negation.

[220] ἀποφατικός [apophatikos], negative, as opposed to καταφατικός [kataphatikos], affirmative, appears in Aristotle, Cat. 12b. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite is probably the first Christian author who associates the two terms with θεολογιαί, [theologiai] the discourses about god, in De mystica theologia 3: Τίνες αἱ καταφατικαὶ θεολογίαι, τίνες αἱ ἀποφατικαί [Tines hai kataphatikai theologiai, tines hai apophatikai], Concerning the affirmative and the negative discourses about god. In Pseudo-Dionysius, De Mystica Theologia, PG 3, 1032.

[221] ‘Et ipsae quippe nostrae voluntates in causarum ordine sunt, qui certus est Deo ejusque praescientia continetur,’ in Augustine, De Civitate Dei 5.9, PL 41, 150.

[222] ‘[L]ibertas, quae quidem nulla vera est, nisi beatorum.’ In Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.15.32, PL 32, 1238.

[223] ‘Prima ergo libertas voluntatis erat, posse non peccare; novissima erit multo major non posse peccare.’ In Augustine, De Correptione et Gratia 1.12, PL 44, 936.

[224] ‘[Q]uia et male illo uti possumus.’ In Augustine, Retractationes 1.9, PL 32, 598.

[225] ‘[M]ale uti nullus potest.’ Ibid.

[226] The Byzantine emperor Justinian manages to have the doctrine of apokatastasis anathematized by the Synod of Constantinople of 543. Ten years later, he obtains that the bishops gathered for the Fifth Ecumenical Council restate the anathema, though in a slightly limited form. See The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553: With Related Texts on the Three Chapters Controversy, Richard Price ed. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009).

[227] Pirenne recalls that the term ‘Romania’ appears in the fourth century to denote all the countries conquered by Rome. In Henri Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne (Paris: Alcan, 1937). Eng. trans. id., Mohammed and Charlemagne, Bernard Miall trans. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1939).

[228] Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 5.4.1, PL 82, 199.

[229] Isidore of Seville, Sententiae 2.6, PL 83, 606. Isidore means that there is predestination of both the saved and the damned.

[230] See John Scotus Eriugena, Iohannis Scotti de divina praedestinatione, Goulven Madec ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978).

[231] The sixth-century author of the Corpus Areopagiticum or Corpus Dionysiacum pseudonymously identifies himself as ‘Dionysios,’ probably in order to attribute the work to Dionysius the Areopagite, Paul’s Athenian convert mentioned in Acts 17.34.

[232] Eriugena epitomises even better than Alcuin the ninth-century renaissance, and, together with Hilduin, he is a rare example of a Greek-conversant early medieval Northern European scholar.

[233] ‘Qui cum magnis virtutibus cresceret, a praedicto domino suo libertate donatus est,’ because he [Honoratus] grew in great virtue, he was granted freedom by his aforesaid Lord, in Gregorius Magnus, Dialogi 1.1, PL 77, 156. Old English translation: ‘ða se Honoratus weox ⁊ þeah mid mycclum mægnum, oþ þæt æt nyxstan he wæs ᵹearad mid freodome fram his hlaforde þam forecwedenan,’ in Bischofs Wærferth von Worcester, Übersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen, Hans Hecht ed. (Leipzig: Wigand, 1900), 11–12.

[234] Gregory VII is not claiming religious freedom: this notion, which was probably invented by Tertullian (Apologeticum 24.6, PL 1 418), will be rather deployed later on, against the new centralised church.

[235] ‘Nobilius tamen esse dignoscitur multo tempore pro libertate sanctae Ecclesiae decertare, quam miserae ac diabolicae servituti subjacere.’ In Gregory VII, Epistola 3, 1081 to Bishop Altmann of Passau, in Registrum, PL 148, 607.

[236] Tellenbach underlines that the notion of libertas ecclesiae not only implies for the Church the freedom from alien interference, ‘but also freedom to carry out its mission, the conversion of the world ‒ and this last necessarily [my italics] involves the leadership of the world.’ In Gerd Tellenbach, Church, State and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest, R. F. Bennett trans. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970), 184.

[237] Bull In nomine Domini, in the name of the Lord, promulgated by Pope Nicholas II in 1059. In Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Legum, sectio IV; Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum, vol. 1, Ludwig Weiland ed. (Hanover: Hahn, 1893), 539–541.

[238] See Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Out of Revolution: Autobiography of Western Man (Providence: Berg, 1993).

[239] As the new papal power is exclusively grounded on a (religious) doctrine, the Papal Revolution may be understood as the first Western attempt to put into practice Plato’s intimation to found the polity on principles. In this case, we may well say that Gregory VII and his fellows not only invent revolution, but also Western politics as we know it.

[240] ‘[I]n societatem corporis Christi, id est, in Ecclesiam stabilem et sempiternam.’ In Augustine, Contra Adimantum Manichaei discipulum 14.3, PL 42, 152.

[241] Peter Lombard, in Commentarius in Epistolam I ad Corinthios, PL 191, 1642; Sententiarum libri quatuor 4.8, PL 192, 857.

[242] This entitlement clearly appears in Innocent III’s political use of the expression plenitud(o) potestatis, fullness of power, which Innocent claims for himself as pope, together with the juridical role of iudex (. . .) ordinarius singulorum, ordinary judge of all, in Epistola 277, PL 214, 843.

[243] The emperor Constantine I both legalises Christianity and promotes the 325 Council of Nicaea, which promulgates the first uniform Christian doctrine.

[244] The possible influence of the experience of religion-based Islamic political entities on the Papal Revolution is yet to be explored. I attempted to suggest some links between Islamic and Christian medieval juridical theology in my essay ‘Mystical Bodies and Bodies of Law: On Juridical Theology and the (Re)Foundations of the West,’ in Fables of the Law, Daniela Carpi and Marett Leiboff eds. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 111–134.

[245] Magna Carta, in Charles Bémont, Chartes des libertés anglaises (1100–1305) (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1892), 27 and 39.

[246] The rearranging of both Roman and canon law follows a new systematic pattern: as Berman recalls, ‘in contrast to the earlier Roman jurists and the earlier Greek philosophers, they [medieval Roman and canon law scholars] supposed that they could prove by reason the universal truth and universal justice of authoritative legal texts.’ In Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983), 140.

[247] As Abelard invents theology as we know it, we do not easily detect the radical novelty of his approach, which instead gains him the implacable hostility of Bernard of Clairvaux: Bernard even sarcastically defines Abelard’s theology as stultologia, that is, stupidology. See Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola 190, PL 182, 1054. For the notion of a medieval renaissance, see Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927).

[248] Abelard, Sic et non, Quaestio XXXIV: Quod Deus non habeat liberum arbitrium, et contra (Yes and No, Question 34: That God has no free will and against), PL 178, 1394–1395.

[249] Aquinas, Sum. Theol. 1.25.5 ad1.

[250] Ibid.

[251] Ibid., 1.7.2 ad 1, 1.25.3 co.

[252] Ibid., 1.25.4.

[253] Dante, Purgatorio 1.71–72.

[254] Dante sets his travel to Hell, Purgatory and Paradise in the year 1300.

[255] William of Ockham, Summa Logicae, 1.1.

[256] Despite philosophy textbooks generally ascribe to Socrates the invention ‒ or even, alas, the discovery ‒ of the concept, neither the Platonic Socrates, nor Plato, nor Aristotle have terms that correspond to what we now call concept (for sure, they deploy the Homeric term νόημα [noēma] ‒ sometimes translated as ‘concept’ ‒ to describe a generic object of thought as opposed to an object of sensation). In Classical Latin, the term conceptus (from the verb concipere, to take hold, to become pregnant, and then, to comprehend) in its nominal masculine form defines a collection, a pregnancy, and a sprouting; it is also attested in the plural neuter form concepta, with the meaning of ‘conceived things’: see, for example, ‘mente concepta,’ things apprehended with the mind, in Quintilian 8.5.2; ‘corpora et concepta,’ material objects and objects of thought, in Firmicus Maternus, Matheseos 4.1. In 1323, Ockham appears to recover the latter meaning in a more techical sense, when he emancipates the word conceptus from its attributive role.

[257] Gregory of Rimini, dist. 34, q. 1, a. 2, in responsione ad obiectionem 2 corollarii in id., Super Primo et Secundo Sententiarum, Augusto Montefalco ed., 2 vols (Venezia: Lucantonio Giunti, 1522), vol.2, fol. 118v (J).

[258] Grotius’ sentence ‘etiamsi daremus (. . .) non esse deum,’ even if we would concede that there is no god, grants him the accusation of atheism in disguise. In Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis (Paris: Nicolaus Buon, 1625), Prolegomena XI.

[259] Marsilius of Padua, Defensor Pacis, Richard Scholz ed., 2 vols, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Fontes Iuris Germanici Antiqui in usum scholarum separatim editi (Hannover: Hansche Buchandlung, 1933), 67 (1.12.6).

[260] Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Commentaria ad Digestum Vetus (Venezia: Battista Torti, 1520), fol. 133r (4.4.3, n.1).

[261] This creative manipulation of Roman legal material is not unusual: for example, thirteenth-century jurists first apply the term persona, person, to the corporation via a creative interpretation of three passages of the Corpus Iuris Civilis, D.46.1.22, D.4.2.9 and D.35.1.56.

[262] See the conditions of the 1183 peace of Constance, in which the militarily defeated emperor Frederick I presents the prerogatives of de facto free Italian communes as his munificent dispensations. In Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Legum sectio IV, vol. 1, 411–418, 412.

[263] ‘Nec obstat quod Glossa dicit in [D.3.4.7] quod populus non est aliud quam homines, quia debet intelligi de hominibus collective assumptis, unde homines separate non faciunt populum, unde populus proprie non est homines, sed hominum collectio in unum corpus misticum et abstractive sumptum, cuius significatio est inventa per intellectum,’ and it does not matter that the gloss on [D.3.4.7] says that the people is nothing other than men, because that should be understood as meaning men taken collectively, so that separate individuals do not make a people and thus properly speaking the people is not men, but a collection of men into a single mystical and abstract body, whose meaning has been discovered by the intellect. In Baldus de Ubaldis, Lectura in VI–IX libros Codicis (Lyon: Johannes Siber, 1498), fol. 236r (7.53.5), quoted in Joseph Canning, Ideas of Power in the Late Middle Ages, 1296–1417 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 154, modified translation.

[264] See Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi di Nicolo Machiauelli cittadino, et segretario fiorentino, sopra la prima deca di Tito Liuio [Discourses on the first decade of Livy] (Roma: Alberto Blado, 1531).

[265] Lex regia is a definition in the Corpus Iuris Civilis that accounts for a series of acts, which legally justify the transfer of power from the Roman people to the emperor: the most relevant one is the Lex de Imperio Vespasiani (law regulating Vespasian’s authority), which is officially ratified by the Roman Senate on 22 December 69.

[266] Baldus de Ubaldis, Super Decretalibus (Lyon, Pierre Fradin, 1551), fol. 28v (1.2.13, n.3) quoted in Joseph Canning, The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 116.

[267] Machiavelli recovers Polybius’ notion of άνακύκλωσις [anakyklōsis], cycle (of political constitutions). See Polybius 6.9.

[268] ‘Non di manco per che il nostro libero arbitrio non sia spento, iudico potere essere vero che la Fortuna sia arbitra della metà delle attioni nostre, ma che ancora ella ne lasci gouernare l’altra metà o, poco meno a noi.’ Nonetheless, so that our free will is not extinguished, I deem it may be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one half of our actions, but it also allows us to govern the other half, or nearly so. In Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe (Roma: Alberto Blado, 1532), 33 (XXV).

[269] Machiavelli, Discorsi, fol. 2r (I.1).

[270] Of course, the very term ‘humanist’ may be problematic, inasmuch as it hides local and temporal specificities: for example, the label of humanist scholar may be stretched so as to apply to a tenth-century French scientist such as Gerbert of Aurillac, a fourteenth-century Italian poet such as Dante, a fifteenth-century German thinker such as Cusanus, and a sixteenth-century French writer such as La Boétie.

[271] The noun ‘Thélème’ is the French version of the Greek word θέλημα [thelēma], with which the Seventy traditional translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek render as ץֶפֵ֫ח [chephets], pleasure, in Ecclesiastes 12.1.

[272] François Rabelais, La vie tres horrificque du grand Gargantua, pere de Pantagruel iadis composee par M. Alcofribas abstracteur de quinte essence (Lyon: François Juste, 1534), sig. N1v-N2r (194–195).

[273] Ibid., sig. N2r (195).

[274] ‘[G]ens liberes/ bien nez & bien instruictz, conversans en compaignies honestes, ont par nature un instinct & aguillon: qui tousjours les pousse a faictz vertueux, & retire de vice: lequel ilz nommoient honneur.’ Ibid.

[275] Iceulx quand par vile subiection & contraincte sont deprimez & asserviz: detournent la noble affection, par laquelle a vertuz franchement tendoient, a deposer & enfraindre ce joug de servitude.’ Ibid.

[276] This approach is all the more extraordinary, considering that La Boétie is a jurist and a Christian.

[277] La Boétie has a first-hand knowledge of Greek and Latin texts: for example, he publishes his French translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus.

[278] Étienne de La Boétie, De la servitude volontaire ou Contr’un, Malcolm Smith ed. (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1987).

[279] Ibid.

[280] I explored the connections between La Boétie’s classical sources and his extraordinary political proposal in my essay ‘With Teeth and Nails: The Embodied Inservitude of Étienne de La Boétie,’ in Performing the Renaissance Body, Sidia Fiorato and John Drakakis eds. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016).

[281] In the last edition of the Institutio, Calvin recovers the Pauline image of Romans 6.17 through the mediation of Bernard of Clairvaux. However, the notion of voluntary slavery to sin is already in Philo.

[282] Between the fourteenth and the sixteenth century, the conciliarist reform movement within the church claims the supreme authority of an Ecumenical council.

[283] ‘[M]ille fere annis postea in claustris monachorum retentum fuit,’ in Jean Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis (Geneve: Robert Estienne, 1559), 96 (2.3.5).

[284] See Martin Luther, De servo arbitrio [1525], in id., D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe, hereinafter WA), 120 Banden (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–2009), Band 18, 600–787.

[285] ‘[D]ie tauffe macht nicht leyb und gut frey, sondern die seelen.’ In Luther [1525], Widder die stürmenden bawren (Against the storming peasants), which is best known as Wider die räuberischen und mörderischen Rotten der Bauern (Against the murderous, thieving hordes of peasants), WA 18, 357–361, 359. Eng. trans. in E.G. Rupp and Benjamin Drewery eds., Martin Luther, Documents of Modern History (London: Edward Arnold, 1970), 121–126, 123.

[286] See Paul, 1 Corinthians 9.19.

[287] ‘Christianus homo omnium dominus est liberrimus, nulli subiectus. Christianus homo omnium servus est officiosissimus, omnibus subiectus.’ Luther, De Libertate Christiana [1520], WA 7, 49–73, 49.

[288] The systematic method of composing apparent contradictions in the Scriptures can actually be traced to Abelard’s Sic et non.

[289] ‘[S]piritualis, interior, novus homo,’ in Luther, De Libertate Christiana, WA 7, 50.

[290] ‘[C]arnalis, exterior, vetus homo,’ ibid.

[291] Of course, whilst the Sophoclean claim for the liberty of the spirit despite the enslavement of the body expresses an emerging sense of human solidarity, its Lutheran recasting, to echo Marcuse, captures instead the real unfreedom within the concept of freedom. See Herbert Marcuse, ‘Ideengeschichtlicher Teil’ in M. Horkheimer ed., Studien über Autorität und Familie (Paris: Alcan, 1936). Eng. trans. id., ‘A Study on Authority,’ in id., Studies in Critical Philosophy, Joris De Bres trans. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973).

[292] ἀλλ’ εἰ καὶ ὁ ἔξω ἡμῶν ἄνθρωπος διαφθείρεται, ἀλλ’ ὁ ἔσω ἡμῶν ἀνακαινοῦται ἡμέρᾳ καὶ ἡμέρᾳ [all’ ei kai ho exō hēmōn anthrōpos diaphtheiretai, all’ hō esō hēmōn anakainoutai hēmera kai hēmera]. Though the outer part of us is wasting away, the inner part of us is being renewed day by day. In 2 Corinthians 4.16 (Nestle-Aland).

[293] Luther, De Libertate Christiana, WA 7, 56.

[294] In the contemporary German version of the treatise, Luther writes ‘todte ding,’ a dead thing. In Luther, Von der Freiheit eines Chistenmenschen, WA 7, 20–38, 26.

[295] Luther, De Libertate Christiana, WA 7, 53. In my translation, I attempted to render in English the iteration in the Latin expression, which is nearly a pun: here, Luther follows Augustine’s usage to say that ‘[the Christian] does not need works.’

[296] ‘[U]nter tausent kaum ein recht Christ ist,’ among thousands there is scarcely one true Christian. In Luther [1523], Von welltlicher uberkeytt wie weytt man yhr gehorsam schuldig sey (On mundane authority to what extent it should be obeyed), WA 11, 245–281, 251.

[297] Luther bluntly defines the prince as ‘Gottis stockmeister und henker,’ god’s jailer and hangman, ibid., 268.

[298] Paul, Gal. 5.1.

[299] Paul, 1 Cor. 7.21.

[300] Calvin, Institutio 4.20.1.

[301] Ibid., 2.3.5.

[302] Ibid., 2.8.35.

[303] ‘Ad omnem ergo legitimam subiectionem ab ea quae facillima est toleratu, nos paulatim assuefacit Dominus: quando est omnium eadem ratio.’ From that subjection which is most easily endured, the Lord gradually accustoms us to every kind of legitimate subjection, the same principle regulating all, ibid.

[304] Already in the 1380s, Wycliffe writes: ‘Þe moste vnfredom is vnfredom of synne.’ In John Wycliffe, Of Dominion, in id., The English Works of Wyclif, F. D. Matthew ed. (London: Trubner & Co., 1880), 282–293, 286.

[305] Here the masculine declination of humanity owes more to grammatical convention than prejudice: as surprising as it may seem, Hobbes points out that historically determined social practices are the source of gender arrangements. See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of A Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (London: Andrew Crooke, 1651), 102–103 (2.20).

[306] Ibid., 111 (2.21).

How to cite this book chapter:

Baldissone, R 2018 Farewell to Freedom: A Western Genealogy of Liberty. Pp. 37–63. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book15.b. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

CHAPTER 3

High Modernities

3.1 – Hobbes’ Invention of Modern Freedom

The fourth-century scholiast Sopatros recalls that the entrance of Plato’s Academy bears the injunction ἀγεωμέτρητος μηδεὶς εἰσίτω [307] [ageōmetrētos mēdeis eisitō], nobody ignorant of geometry shall enter. Sopatros also duly explains this legendary objective correlative[308] to Plato’s appreciation of geometry: ignoring geometry means not being equal, that is to say, not being just, ‘because geometry observes equality (ἰσότητα, isotēta) and justice.’[309]

We may reasonably doubt that Hobbes shares Sopatros’ ethical appreciation of geometrical equality, which the very Plato most probably ignores,[310] and which is only to be revived by socialist utopias. If we are to believe Aubrey, Hobbes’ awakening to the call of geometry rather follows a procedural path, which is as simple as it is revealing:

Euclid’s Elements lay open, and ’twas the 47 El. libri I. He read the proposition. By G‒, sayd he (…) this is impossible! So he reads the Demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a Proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back to another, which he also read. Et sic deinceps, that at last he was demonstratively convinced of that trueth. This made him in love with Geometry.[311]

In dejected[312] seventeenth-century Europe, which is devastated by wars of religion, Hobbes is not the only thinker who seeks solace in the certainty of geometrical procedures: such is the fascination of natural philosophers with Euclid that texts which range from physics to philosophy, and from law to politics are construed more geometrico, that is, following the demonstrative method of Euclidean geometry.

This path is opened by the new physics: for Galileo, the book of the universe ‘is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures.’[313] Twenty-eight years later, Hobbes, who, according to Aubrey,[314] in the meantime befriends Galileo in Florence, devises an astounding definition of freedom:

LIBERTY, or FREEDOME, signifieth (properly) the absence of Opposition; (by Opposition, I mean externall Impediments of motion;) and may be applyed no lesse to Irrationall, and Inanimate creatures, than to Rationall.[315]

Hobbes’ conflation of the animate and inanimate spheres takes further Galileo’s construction of the physical world as an assemblage of geometrical bodies. In particular, Hobbes generalises the Galilean principle of inertia,[316] according to which the removal of external impediments would allow a body to move (or rest) indefinitely.[317] This principle turns upside down, so to speak, ancient and medieval physical theories, which explain motion as the result of the intervention of either natural or violent forces.[318]

In Galilean physics ‒ and even more so in its Newtonian reformulation ‒ the condition of either rest or uniform motion of a body is prior to its alteration as a result of external interventions: in a similar way, Hobbesian freedom precedes the obstacles that may impede the path of her bearer. Hobbes insists on the external nature of these obstacles:

But when the impediment of motion, is in the constitution of the thing it selfe, we use not to say it wants the Liberty; but the Power to move; as when a stone lieth still, or a man is fastned to his bed by sicknesse.[319]

Hobbes’ absolute separation of internal and external factors allows him both to operate an absolute distinction between freedom and power, and to formulate an entirely negative definition of freedom. Moreover, as he gathers under the same category of bodily movements physical and political phenomena, his notion of freedom applies to human relations a universal rule of physical reality.

We may compare Hobbes’ assimilation of human intercourses to mere physical interactions with Aristotle’s universal generalisation of the human dichotomy between ruler and ruled. In the latter case, Aristotle naturalises a human relation of domination by extending its effect over the whole cosmos, which he thus anthropomorphises.[320] On the contrary, Hobbes reifies, as it were, human dealings, which are construed on the model of the interaction of bodies in the new physics.[321]

By producing his novel concept of human freedom as a necessarily imperfect instance of the inhuman model of the inertial condition, Hobbes reiterates with a different content the previous theological construction of human freedom as the necessarily imperfect replica of its divine archetype.

Moreover, the similarity between the new physicalist and the old theological construction of freedom is not limited to structural analogy. According to Galileo’s mouthpiece Salviati, the human knowledge of mathematical propositions, such as those which ground the new physics, is as absolute as the divine one.[322] In this regard, human understanding is only extensiuè,[323] that is, extensively inferior to its divine model.

Salviati insists that such a consideration does not diminish at all divine knowledge, just as god’s omnipotence is not limited by the acknowledgement ‒ already made by Aquinas ‒ of the irreversibility of past events.[324] We saw that within Scholastic speculation potentia ordinata, the ordered power of god, is not limited but coherent with its determined scope: in an analogous manner, in the new sciences, the unsurpassable certainty of mathematical propositions sets the conditions for creator and creatures alike.

Yet, the freedom of the creatures to act is constrained not only by their limited knowledge, but also by their very plurality. As Hobbes conceives of freedom as the ideal removal of all external impediments, he understands human interactions only as reciprocal limitations: and because his ideal inertial condition is unattainable, he transposes it into the imaginary past of the original state of nature, where the very unconstrained liberty to act of each and every human being becomes an obstacle to the activity of the others.

Similarly to Aquinas,[325] Hobbes acknowledges this liberty as the fundamental right of self-preservation[326]: nevertheless, whilst Aquinas, in good Aristotelian fashion, makes this plurality of rights naturally converge towards the common good, for Hobbes the common good is pursued through the voluntary devolution of individual rights to the sovereign, similarly to the legend of the Roman lex regia.[327]

The resulting Commonwealth ‘is One Person, of whose Acts a great Multitude, by mutual Covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the Author (...) And he that carryeth this Person, is called SOVERAIGN.’[328] Hobbes suggests that the Catholic church, or the ‘Kingdome of Darknesse, may be compared not unfitly to the Kingdome of Fairies’:[329] however, his own Leviathan too seems to revive the medieval tradition of mystical bodies by conflating in a new national shape a legal fiction of Roman Imperial jurisprudence and the anthropomorphic representation of papal power.

Moreover, Hobbes’ freedom is unmanageable because it is unlimited, so that its voluntary renunciation appears as reasonable. It is not difficult to recognise the striking similarity of such a reasonable surrender to Hobbes’ own submission to the compelling power of Euclid’s geometrical demonstrations.[330] This compelling power of rational procedures is understood by Hobbes ‒ and by not a few of his fellow natural philosophers ‒ as the natural solution to the contemporary civil and religious conflicts.

3.2 – Freedom and Revolution

A notable exception to seventeenth-century natural philosophers’ instrumental acceptance of rational compulsion is the Spinozan recovery of the Platonic identification of virtue, knowledge and goodness with blessedness: in the closing proposition of his Ethica, Spinoza turns upside down Hobbes’ instrumental submission to necessity:

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself. We do not enjoy blessedness because we keep our lusts in check. On the contrary, it is because we enjoy blessedness that we are able to keep our lusts in check.[331]

It is probably not by chance that the Spinozan notion of blessedness appears to be modelled on the practice of political freedom as a reward to itself: the seventeenth-century Dutch democratic experience surely also inspires Spinoza’s sardonic observation that ‘there is nothing more difficult than to take away freedom from men [sic] to whom it has once been granted.’[332]

It would be difficult to imagine anything more distant from Spinoza’s stance than Luther’s admonition to German rebel peasants not to mix spiritual freedom with bodily and property issues, and this matter becomes urgent in seventeenth-century England too, as local commoners take religion seriously enough to demand the practical application of evangelical principles. By pitting common freedom against particular freedom, and common preservation against self-preservation, Winstanley recasts the Biblical definition of freedom as the common enjoyment of the earth:

There are two root[s] from whence laws do spring. The first root you see is common preservation (…): and this is the root of the tree magistracy, and the law of righteousness and peace (…). The second root is self-preservation (…). And this is the root of the tree tyranny, and the law of unrighteousness.[333]

Though Winstanley’s attack on the notion of self-preservation challenges both the Scholastic tradition and its Hobbesian recasting, it does not escape their theological framework. Far less radical English authors instead request to limit the power of the king by recovering Gaius’ Roman notion of self-determination, which they transpose into the concept of right as a limitation to the arbitrary power of the sovereign. The contrast between Roman emperors and senators is revived in seventeenth-century English parliamentary debates, and the Roman phraseology of freedom and slavery is deployed to articulate the notion of freedom as absence of dependence.[334]

The attacks on absolute monarchy eventually find their champion in Locke, who also brings to the new-born individual, as it were, the gift of a whiff of incense, which puts on hold his [sic] freedom to commit suicide as a violation of god’s ownership of all creatures.[335] Locke’s appeal to god’s ultimate jurisdiction over his products is just one in an endless series of theological recoveries. More than that, and also following Toulmin’s suggestion,[336] we should rather speak of a series of theological filiations, because early modern constructions of nature as the objective realm of facts just shift the focus of enquiry from the object of heated (and deadly) theological clashes, that is, the Christian god, to god’s product, namely, the created world.[337] It is then not surprising that theology lurks, as Schmitt reminds us,[338] also behind notions apparently beyond suspicion, such as that of the general will.

Actually, the notion of volontez generales,[339] general wills, enters the philosophical debate as a proper theological conception, because Malebranche devises it to describe the motivations of god’s actions, when these actions follow the general laws that god himself established. By contrast, Malebranche has recourse to the notion of god’s volontez particulieres,[340] particular wills, in order to explain the rare occurrence of miracles.

Montesquieu, who admires Malebranche as a charming writer,[341] mentions volonté générale[342] as the general will of the State, whilst theorising the tripartition of legislative, executive and judiciary powers[343]: political liberty, that is ‘the right of doing whatever the law permits,’[344] can only be secured by this separation of state functions. Yet, Montesquieu also specifies that ‘[i]n a state, that is to say in a society where there are laws, liberty can consist only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.’[345] This slightly disquieting definition may appear to recast the paradoxical convergence of freedom and necessity.

We saw that such a convergence first appears in Western thought as the Stoic collapsing of individual action and universal natural rules.[346] However, though Montesquieu does not underrate the influence of natural factors, he understands the obligation imposed on citizens by law as the result of a specific legal arrangement rather than of a universal rule whatsoever: hence, the phrases ‘what we ought to will’ and ‘what we ought not to will’ simply denote the specific content of laws.

Citizens are not only free to do what is permitted by law, but, depending on the political constitution, they may also choose their legislators. According to Montesquieu, the historical practice of democracy has shown that most citizens are able to choose their representatives, but, for the most part, they are not competent enough to be elected[347]: hence, they share in the expression of the general will only by proxy, so to speak.

In 1755, seven years after the publication of De l’Esprit des Loix, Diderot follows Montesquieu and retorts to the raisonneur violent,[348] the violent reasoner ‒ a thinly veiled representation of Hobbes ‒ that ‘the question of natural rights is far more complicated than it appears to him; that he sets himself up as both judge and advocate, and that his tribunal may be incompetent to pronounce on this matter.’[349] Diderot then appoints as competent court the whole human species, because, he argues, the general good is the only passion of humankind,[350] whose general will is always good[351] and never wrong.[352]

I just recalled that Montesquieu adopts the expression ‘general will’ ‒ which Malebranche previously attributes to god ‒ in order to describe the mundane and specific general will of the state. Diderot radicalises Montesquieu’s mundane shift by appealing to the general will of humanity regardless of any human institution. Given such a radical deconstruction of both divine and human authorities, Rousseau endeavours to produce a renewed body politic.

Rousseau’s ideal body politic obeys neither god nor the sovereign, but only itself, because ‘obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is freedom.’[353] This is indeed a notable theoretical step, which produces a new notion of freedom.

Rousseau inherits from previous speculation the theological idea of ‘moral freedom, which alone makes man [sic] truly the master of himself’[354]: yet, he puts this moral freedom to work in a new theoretical space, where the human collective can freely flourish:

As long as several men [sic] in assembly consider themselves to be a single body, they have but one will which is concerned with their common preservation and general well-being. In this case, all the forces of the State are vigorous and simple and its principles are clear and luminous; there are no embroilments or conflicts of interests; the common good clearly reveals itself everywhere, and it requires only good sense to be perceived.[355]

On the one hand, it is not difficult to recognise in Rousseau’s unified social body, similarly to Hobbes’ Leviathan, another unwitting avatar of the mystical body of medieval juridical theology.[356] Unlike the Leviathan though, Rousseau’s body politic revives the self-governing practice of Italian communes, as represented by Baldus’ mystical body of the citizenry. This practice of self-determination is then somewhat recovered after the Reformation in the city of Genève,[357] of which Rousseau himself is a citizen.[358]

However, whilst actual self-governing practices rely on ongoing negotiations, Rousseau’s bold gesture erases this space of mediation by equating freedom and obedience through the identity of the body politic.[359] As Joseph de Maistre detects with his usual malevolence, ‘there is something equivocal if not erroneous here, for the people which command are not the people which obey.’[360] Because the same collective body is at once the lawmaker and the legal subject, this immediate reflexivity forces the collective into the role, in the words of Menander and Terence, of heautontimoroumenos,[361] or self-punisher.

Both Stirner and Marx will soon recognise in this internalisation of control the moral and political burden of the Reformation. Rousseau’s extraordinary equation of obedience and freedom not only transfers this internalising process from the personal to the social sphere, through the metaphor of the body politic: his new equivalence also reconfigures the relation of freedom with necessity, which since the Stoics grants the convergence of individual choices and universal laws.

Nevertheless, as Rousseau replaces necessity with the common good, he transcends the deterministic horizon of the Stoics: moreover, as his notion of common good is not theologically determined, he also escapes Christian teleology. Rousseau’s appeal to the general well-being reiterates Marsilius’ recovery of the Aristotelian political horizon, which he pushes beyond Aristotle and Marsilius’ excisions, towards the radical identification of the whole people with itself.

However, regardless of the actual feasibility of this ambitious task,[362] the Platonic and Aristotelian notion of mastery still shapes Rousseau’s theoretical framework: ‘Just as nature gives every man [sic] an absolute power over all his bodily members, the social contract gives the body politic an absolute power over all its human members.’[363] Here the Platonic absolute command of the soul over the body is transposed into the language of natural philosophy, and it is then deployed, in good Aristotelian fashion, as a metaphor for political relations.

We may recall that Aristotle conceives of political relations as the variety of arrangements among eleutheroi, the free male citizens. Because, according to Aristotle, the exercise of command over these free male citizens is not justified by nature, political constitutions may vary broadly. Rousseau’s wider notion of free citizens affords him a wider constituency than Aristotle’s: however, his evaluation of different political arrangements similarly relies on expediency.

Kant deeply admires Rousseau, who would probably be perplexed by the reason adduced by his Prussian follower: ‘After Newton and Rousseau, God is justified.’[364] Kant specifies in the same note that the merit of Newton and Rousseau is the discovery of the underlying order of physical and moral matters respectively: whilst after Newton ‘comets run in geometrical courses,’[365] Rousseau is credited with the recovery of humans’ ‘deeply hidden nature.’[366]

We may say that in the previously quoted 1765 note, Newton and Rousseau personify, so to speak, Kant’s double concern with natural science and morals. Kant himself recalls how the reading of Hume’s objections to metaphysical concepts interrupts his ‘dogmatic slumber’ in both fields: as a matter of fact, the Lutheran Pietist Kant cannot bear Hume’s atheist dismissal of both the god-given individual identity and the likewise god-given universality of non-mathematical knowledge.[367] However, rather than appealing to traditional theological arguments, Kant reacts to the Humean threat by mobilising his twin tutelary theorists.

In the late seventeenth century, Newton constructs absolute space and time as abstract containers of the whole reality and immediate expressions of the Christian god.[368] A hundred years later, in a move that resembles the Lutheran internalisation of religion, Kant has the human subject internalise Newtonian space and time as abstract frames of all possible experience.[369] Kant defines internalised space and time as the conditions of possibility for human knowledge: they ‘do not belong to the reality of things, but only to our representations.’[370]

Kantian space and time are no longer assimilated to god’s apparatus of sense as in Newton, but they become the forms of human sensibility. These forms are ideal in a sense that Kant calls transscendental,[371] transcendental, because it precedes and allows all possible experience. Such transcendental quality grants at once the identity of the knowing subjects and the immediate universalisation of their knowledge as the effect of their common knowing tools.

Kant considers also freedom in a transcendental sense:[372] transscendentale Freiheit,[373] transcendental freedom, is a causality alternative to that of the laws of nature.[374] Similarly to the Aristotelian immobile moving,[375] transcendental freedom is a necessity of reason,[376] and by acting in parallel to natural causality,[377] it grants the ongoing possibility of practical freedom.[378]

Kant takes the opportunity to address practical freedom in his answer to the question ‘What is Enlightenment?’[379] This famous answer may be understood as a recasting of Luther’s argument about freedom of conscience in terms of the free use of rational thought.[380] At first, Kant’s reversed adaptation of the Lutheran distinction between inner and outer man to the public and private sphere respectively may appear puzzling: Kant claims the freedom to make ‘public use of one’s reason.’[381] Yet, the Kantian freedom in public is very close to the liberty of the Lutheran inner man, because Kant redefines the public sphere as the virtual space of scholarly debate: in this space, individual freedom is as unrestrained as in the Lutheran individual conscience.

However, it is Rousseau’s equation of freedom with the obedience to a self-imposed rule that allows Kant to give expression to transcendental freedom as a universal moral law, whose categorical imperative is: ‘Act as though the maxim of your action were to become, through your will, a universal law of nature.’[382]

It is not difficult to recognise in such a famous Kantian statement a rationalisation of the Christian Golden Rule: ‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.’[383] The Kantian reformulation of evangelical law substitutes the Golden Rule’s horizontal connection between the subject and the other subjects ‒ who are assimilated to the former’s perspective[384] ‒ with the vertical connection to the universal moral rule.[385]

In order to define the character of the will as ‘supreme law-giver,’[386] Kant gives new life to the Stoic interpretation of the classical term autonomia, that is, autonomy: ‘Autonomy [Autonomie] of the will is the property the will has of being a law to itself (independently of every property belonging to the object of volition).’[387] Eighteen centuries after Dio, and thirteen centuries after Augustine, Kant puts to work the Rousseauan freedom as self-imposition in order to give a new solution to their old dilemma: how to reconcile the freedom of the individual will with the universal order of things.

By making absolute the divide between produced and received norms, Kant also revives in moral terms the classical Greek opposition between acting and being acted upon: in order to express the latter condition for a moral subject, Kant deploys the term Heteronomie,[388] heteronomy, which is probably his coinage. However, Kant’s notion of heteronomy also includes the subjection to one’s interests and principles, and in general, to means that are not also universalizable ends.[389]

The Kantian individual subject is autonomous inasmuch as he[390] thinks and wills in universal terms. If we compare this formulation with Augustine’s description of all our wills as thoroughly known to god,[391] we may detect a paradigmatic shift from the horizon of god’s personal foreknowledge to the modern universal order of things: Kant constructs morals on the injunction to participate in this universal ordering.

The key to Kant’s construction may be found in an article published a few years later, in 1793: there, Kant boldly states that ‘man [sic] thinks of himself by analogy with the Deity’[392] when considering the effort to realise ‘a world in keeping with the moral highest ends.’[393] As god’s will is always in accord with reason, inasmuch as the human subject pursues the same accord, he is not only following the universal moral law, but he is acting as a veritable law-maker.

There is a certain grandiosity in the Kantian moral appropriation of Rousseau’s equation of freedom with self-imposition: if compared to Galileo’s contention that human beings share the same divine understanding of mathematical propositions, Kant’s claim to universal law-making pushes the human sharing with god beyond mere knowledge, and well into the realm of practices.

We may anticipate here that Adorno, who is well aware of the ‘grim path of Lutheran duty,’[394] to quote Berlin, argues that the Kantian subjects are free ‘in so far as they are aware of and identical with themselves; and then again, they are unfree in such identity in so far as they are subjected to, and will perpetuate, its compulsion.’[395]

We may also consider Hegel’s critique of Fichte’s hyper-Kantian stance: it is the very attempt to attain absolute freedom from heteronomy that leads to absolute compulsion.[396] However, in order to fully appreciate this critique, we need to step down from the rarefied abstractions of German idealism towards the actual revolutionary statements of freedom, to which Kant (and Hegel) wants to give theoretical expression.

The American and French revolutions institutionalise liberty’s foundational status.[397] Unfortunately, the more freedom arises as the banner of constituent[398] political powers, the more it is constrained within a network of limitations. Apparently, this is just a side-effect of the extraordinary reversal of horizon that changes the role of law from the formulation of what is permitted to the delimitation of what is forbidden. Nevertheless, one may suspect that the very narrative of the transition from authoritarian to democratic institutions is above all a theoretical weapon of the new progressive constituent powers, in their struggle to replace previous constituted powers.[399]

This suspicion is soon to be raised: in the next chapter, I will show how German thinkers push to the limit the modern concept of freedom, and in so doing they reveal it as a mere hyperbole,[400] which can be realised either as absolute compulsion or in the absence of others.

[307] The text by Sopatros is part of a scholium to a speech by Aelius Aristides, in Aristides, W. Dindorf ed. (Leipzig: G. Reimer, 1829), vol. 3, 464.

[308] Plato’s choice of recently invented geometry as a model for merely cognitive operations hardly seems to fit Eliot’s definition of the objective correlative as a formula for an emotion: yet, Plato’s relegation of emotions to a lower level of reality is itself highly emotionally charged. See supra, note 37.

[309] ἡ γὰρ γεωμετρία τὴν ἰσότητα καὶ τὴν δικαιοσύνην τηρεῖ [hē gar geōmetria tēn isotēta kai tēn dikaiosynēn tērei], in Aristides, 464.

[310] For sure, we may at least register Plato’s association of geometrical equality with perfection: for example, in Timaeus 33b the sphere is presented as the most perfect geometrical form because of the equal distance of all its points from the centre.

[311] John Aubrey, ‘A Brief Life of Thomas Hobbes, 1588–1679’ [1681], in id., Aubrey’s Brief Lives, O. L. Dick ed. (London: Secker and Warburg, 1950), 150.

[312] In his genealogical sketch of the metaphor of the sphere in Western thought, Borges depicts the seventeenth century as ‘desanimado,’ dejected. In ‘La esfera de Pascal,’ Obras Completas I, 638. Eng. trans. Borges, ‘Pascal’s sphere,’ in id., Selected Non-Fictions, Eliot Weinberger ed. (New York: Viking, 1999), 353.

[313] ‘Egli [il libro dell’universo] è scritto in lingua matematica, e i caratteri son triangoli, cerchi, & altre figure Geometriche,’ in Galileo Galilei, Il Saggiatore (Roma: Giacomo Mascardi, 1623), 25. Eng. trans. (excerpts) in Stillman Drake, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1957), 238, modified translation.

[314] ‘When he [Hobbes] was at Florence, he contracted a friendship with the famous Galileo Galileo [sic].’ In Aubrey, Brief Lives, 157.

[315] Hobbes, Leviathan, 107 (2.21).

[316] Galileo first formulates this principle in his August 14, 1612 letter to Mark Welser: ‘e però rimossi tutti gl’impedimenti esterni, un graue nella superficie sferica, e concentrica alla terra, sarà indifferente alla quiete, & à i mouimenti verso qualunque parte dell’orizonte: & in quello stato si conseruarà, nel qual una volta sarà stato posto,’ all external impediments removed, a heavy body on the spherical surface concentric with the Earth will be indifferent to rest and to movements toward any part of the horizon, and it will remain in the state in which it has been put. In Galileo Galilei, Istoria e Dimostrazioni intorno alle Macchie Solari e loro Accidenti (Roma: Giacomo Mascardi, 1613), 50. Eng. trans. in Galileo Galilei and Cristoph Scheiner, On Sunspots, Eileen Reeves and Albert Van Helden trans. (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2010), 125. There is an uncanny similarity between Galileo’s construction of the indifference of horizontal motion as a middle term between upward and downward motion and Calvin’s treatment of ἀδιάφορα [adiaphora], indifferent things as a middle term between good and evil ones. As Borges puts it, ‘[q]uizá la historia universal es la historia de la diversa entonación de algunas metáforas,’ perhaps universal history is the history of the various intonations of a few metaphors. In Borges, ‘La esfera de Pascal,’ in id., Obras Completas I, 638. Eng. trans. id., Selected Non-Fictions, 151.

[317] ‘When a Body is once in motion, it moveth (unless something else hinder it) eternally,’ writes Hobbes in Leviathan, 4 (1.2). Galileo never states the principle of inertia in a general form, such as the 1644 Cartesian formulation: ‘unamquamque rem, quatenus est simplex & indivisa, manere quantum in se est in eodem semper statu, nec umquam mutari nisi à [sic] causis externis.’ Everything, insofar as it is simple and undivided, remains, as far as it is left to itself, always in the same state and never changes except by external causes. In René Descartes, Principia Philosophiae (Amsterdam: Louis Elzevir, 1644), 54 (2.37).

[318] In the text that we call Physics, Aristotle constructs the distinction between natural and violent motion: the notion of impetus, which may be traced to the sixth-century thinker John Philoponos, then suggests the possibility of a temporary shift of balance between the two kinds of motions.

[319] Hobbes, Leviathan, 107 (2.21).

[320] Hobbes himself blames ‘the Schools,’ that is, Aristotelian Scholasticism, for ‘ascribing appetite, and Knowledge of what is good for their conservation, (which is more than man has) to things inanimate, absurdly.’ Ibid., 4 (1.2).

[321] ‘Life it selfe is but Motion,’ ibid., 29 (1.6).

[322] [D]i quelle poche, intese dall’intelletto humano, credo che la cognizione agguagli la diuina nella certezza objettiua,’ I believe that the cognition of those few ones [geometrical and arithmetical propositions] that are understood by the human intellect is equal to the divine cognition in objective certainty. In Dialogo sopra i due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo (Firenze: Giovan Battista Landini, 1632), 96. Eng. trans. id., Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic & Copernican, Stillman Drake trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 103, modified translation. Salviati expresses Galileo’s position in the contemporary debate on the status of mathematical demonstrations, which are variously understood as inferior, equal or superior to the syllogistic demonstrations of natural philosophy.

[323] Ibid. Eng. trans. ibid.

[324] Queste son proposizioni comuni (. . .) che punto non detraggono di maestà alla diuina sapienza, si come niente diminuisce la sua onnipotenza il dire, che Iddio non può fare, che il fatto non sia fatto,’ these are common propositions, which do not detract from the majesty of divine wisdom, just like saying that God cannot undo what is done does not diminish his omnipotence, ibid. Eng. trans. ibid., modified translation.

[325] ‘[Q]uaelibet substantia appetit conservationem sui esse secundum suam naturam,’ any substance desires the conservation of its own being according to its nature, in Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1–2.94.2 co. Aquinas’ principle is not derived from Aristotle, but it rather extends to all entities the Stoic notion of ὁρμή [hormē], or impulse towards self-preservation. According to Chrysippus, this impulse is common to all animals, and it relies on οἰκείωσις [oikeiōsis], the recognition and appreciation of that which is literally at home, that is, appropriate to oneself. See Diogenes Laertius 7.85.

[326] ‘THE RIGHT OF NATURE, which Writers commonly call Jus Naturale, is the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature,’ in Hobbes, Leviathan, 64 (1.14).

[327] We may observe that whilst the legal fiction of Vespasian’s jurists relies on the Roman people’s political entitlement, which in Republican times they share with the Senate (Senatus Populusque Romanus, abbreviated as SPQR), Hobbes’ political fiction evokes the yet unacknowledged political entitlement of the people.

[328] Hobbes, Leviathan, 88 (2.17).

[329] Ibid., 386 (4.47).

[330] Aristotle already witnesses a similar will to submission in the shape of a reasonable surrendering when he quotes the Pythagorean Philolaos, who is probably happy to admit that εἶναί τινας λόγους κρείττους ἡμῶν [einai tinas logous kreittous hēmōn], some arguments are too strong for us. In Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1225a.

[331] ‘Beatitudo non est virtutis praemium, sed ipsa virtus; nec eadem gaudemus, quia libidines coercemus, sed contra quia eadem gaudemus, ideo libidines coercere possumus.’ In Baruch Spinoza, Ethica 5.42, in id., Opera, C. Gebhardt ed. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter-Verlag, 1925), Band 2, 592. Eng. trans. id., Ethics in id., Complete Works, Michael L. Morgan ed. and trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002), 382.

[332] ‘[N]ihil difficilius, quam libertatem hominibus semel concessam iterum adimere.’ In Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Opera, Band 3, 74. Eng. trans. id., Theological-Political Treatise in id., Complete Works, Michael L. Morgan ed. and trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002), 438.

[333] Gerrard Winstanley, ‘The Law of Freedom in a Platform,’ in id., Winstanley: ‘The Law of Freedom’ and Other Writings, Christopher Hill ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 315–16.

[334] See Quentin Skinner, ‘A Third Concept of Liberty,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 117 (2002), 237–68.

[335] Locke clearly expresses this notion whilst arguing about slavery: ‘For a Man [sic], not having the Power of his own Life, cannot, by Compact, or his own Consent, enslave himself to any one,’ in John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Peter Laslett ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 284.

[336] See Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York: Free Press, 1990).

[337] We may say that early modern thinkers transcend divisive denominational theologies by means of a renewedly ecumenical theology of nature, which is spearheaded by the two new Galilean sciences (the forebearers of the science of materials and kinematics respectively).

[338] See Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie. Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1922), Eng. trans. id., Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, George Schwab trans. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985).

[339] Nicolas Malebranche, Traité de la nature et de la grâce, in id., Œuvres complètes, vol. V (Paris: Vrin, 1976), 32. Eng. trans. id., A Treatise on Nature and Grace (London: John Whitlock, 1695), 25.

[340] Ibid. Eng. trans. ibid. See also Premier Eclaircissement, ibid., 147–148. Eng. trans. First Explication, ibid., 160–161.

[341] ‘Si le Père Malebranche avoit été un ecrivain moins enchanteur,’ if Father Malebranche had been a less charming writer, in Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, Discours sur les motifs, in id., Œuvres complètes, Tome 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), 57.

[342] ‘[N]’étant, l’un que la volonté générale de l’Etat,’ one [the legislative power] being no more than the general will of the state, in Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des Loix, Tome 1, 247 (11.6). Eng. trans. id., The Spirit of the Laws, vol. 1, 218.

[343] ‘Il y a dans chaque Etat trois sortes de Pouvoirs, la puissance Législative, la puissance exécutrice des choses qui dépendent du Droit-des-gens, & la puissance exécutrice de celles qui dépendent du Droit Civil.’ In every state there are three sorts of power: the legislative power, the executive power in respect to things dependent on the law of nations, and the executive power in regard to matters that depend on the civil law. Ibid., 244 (11.6). Eng. trans. ibid., 215, modified translation.

[344] ‘La Liberté est le droit de faire tout ce que les Loix permettent.’ Ibid., 241 (11.3). Eng. trans. ibid., 213, modified translation.

[345] ‘Dans un Etat, c’est-à-dire, dans une Société où il y a des Loix, la liberté ne peut consister qu’à pouvoir faire ce que l’on doit vouloir, & à n’être point contraint de faire ce que l’on ne doit pas vouloir.’ Ibid. Eng. trans. ibid, modified translation.

[346] It may be argued that the Platonic Socrates first affirms the convergence of personal and general good: nevertheless, Socrates is not specifically concerned with personal freedom, and he rather describes himself as subjected to his daimon. As previously recalled, the problem of personal autonomy only emerges with the reduction of the Greek citizen to the subject of Hellenistic kingdoms.

[347] ‘Comme la plûpart des Citoyens, qui ont assez de suffisance pour élire, n’en ont pas assez pour être élûs; de même le Peuple, qui a assez de capacité pour se faire rendre compte de la gestion des autres, n’est pas propre à gérer par lui-même.’ As most citizens, who have sufficient ability to choose, have not enough ability to be chosen, so the people, who are capable of calling others to an account for their administration, are incapable of conducting the administration themselves. In Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des Loix, Tome 1, 15–16 (2.2). Eng. trans. id., The Spirit of the Laws, vol. 1, 14, modified translation.

[348] Denis Diderot, ‘Droit naturel,’ in Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnare Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers (Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton, Durand, 1755), vol. 5, 115–116, 116. Eng. trans. id., Diderot: Political Writings, J. Hope Mason and R. Wokler eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 17–21, 19, modified translation.

[349] ‘[Q]ue la question du droit naturel est beaucoup plus compliquée qu’elle ne lui paroît; qu’il se constitue juge & partie, & que son tribunal pourroit bien n’avoir pas la compétence dans cette affaire.’ Ibid. Eng. trans. ibid.

[350] ‘[L]e bien de tous est la seule passion qu’il ait,’ the good of all is the only passion that it [humankind] has, ibid. Eng. trans. ibid, modified translation.

[351] ‘[L]a volonté générale est toûjours bonne,’ ibid. Eng. trans. ibid., 20.

[352] ‘[L]a volonté générale n’erre jamais,’ ibid. Eng. trans. ibid, modified translation.

[353] ‘[L]’obéissance à la loi qu’on s’est prescrite est liberté.’ In Jean Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social (Amsterdam: Marc Michel Rey, 1762), 39 (1.8). Eng. trans. id., The Social Contract and The First and Second Discourses, Susan Dunn ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 167, modified translation.

[354] ‘[L]a liberté morale, qui seule rend l’homme vraiment maître de lui,’ ibid. Eng. trans. ibid.

[355] ‘Tant que plusieurs hommes réunis se considerent comme un seul corps, ils n’ont qu’une seule volonté, qui se rapporte à la commune conservation, & au bien-être général. Alors tous les ressorts de l’Etat sont vigoureux & simples, ses maximes sont claires & lumineuses, il n’a point d’intérêts embrouillés, contradictoires; le bien commun se montre par-tout avec évidence, & ne demande que du bon sens pour être apperçu.’ Ibid., 232–233 (4.1). Eng. trans. ibid., 226, modified translation.

[356] See Henri de Lubac, Corpus mysticum. L’Eucharistie et l’Église au Moyen Âge, 2nd ed. (Paris: Aubier, 1949). Eng. trans. id., Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, Gemma Simmonds with Richard Price and Christopher Stephens trans. (London: SCM, 2006).

[357] We may well consider Genève as Calvin’s headquarters.

[358] During his life, Rousseau habitually signs his books as Jean Jacques Rousseau, citoyen de Genève, citizen of Genève.

[359] Rousseau does not think of an always homogeneous totality: ‘Pour qu’une volonté soit générale, il n’est pas toujours nécessaire qu’elle soit unanime.’ That a will may be general, it is not always necessary that it should be unanimous. In Du contrat social, 51 (2.2). Eng. trans. id., The Social Contract, 171.

[360] ‘Il y a sûrement ici quelque équivoque s’il n’y a pas une erreur, car le peuple qui commande n’est pas le peuple qui obéit.’ In Joseph de Maistre, De la souveraineté du peuple (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), 91. Eng. trans. Study on Sovereignty, in id., The Works of Joseph de Maistre, Jack Lively ed., (London: Allen & Unwin, 1965), 93–129, 93.

[361] Ἑαυτὸν τιμωρούμενος [Heauton timōroumenos], the self-punisher, is the title of both a comedy by Menander and its Latin recasting by Terence.

[362] Rousseau himself is aware of the problem: ‘il n’a jamais existé de véritable Démocratie, & il n’en existera jamais,’ there never has existed, and never will exist, any true democracy. In Rousseau, Du contrat social, 148 (3.4). Eng. trans. id., The Social Contract, 201.

[363] ‘Comme la nature donne à chaque homme un pouvoir absolu sur tous ses membres, le pacte social donne au corps politique un pouvoir absolu sur tous les siens,’ ibid., 60 (2.4). Eng. trans. ibid., 174, modified translation.

[364] ‘Nach Newton u. Rousseau ist Gott gerechtfertigt.’ In Immanuel Kant, Bemerkungen zu den Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen, AA 20, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1942), 59. Here is the whole note in English: ‘Newton saw for the very first time order and regularity combined with great simplicity, where before him disorder and [a] poorly matched manifold was found; and since then comets run in geometrical courses. Rousseau discovered for the very first time beneath the manifold of forms adopted by the human being the deeply hidden nature of the same and the hidden law, according to which providence is justified by his observations. Before that the objections of Alfonso and Manes still held. After Newton and Rousseau, God is justified, and henceforth Pope’s theorem is true.’ In Immanuel Kant, ‘Remarks in the Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime,’ in id., Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and Other Writings, P. Frierson and P. Guyer eds. and trans, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 65–202, 104–105.

[365] ‘[L]aufen Cometen in geometrischen Bahnen.’ Ibid., 58. Eng. trans. ibid., 104.

[366] ‘[D]ie tief verborgene Natur.’ Ibid. Eng. trans. ibid., 105.

[367] As Weber recalls, ‘the mere worldly respectability of the normal Reformed Christian (. . .) was felt by the superior Pietist to be a second-rate Christianity.’ In Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, T. Parsons trans. (London: Routledge, 2001), 83. See David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 3 vols (London: John Noon/Thomas Longman, 1739–40).

[368] ‘[T]here is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite Space, as it were in his Sensory, sees the things themselves intimately, and throughly perceives them, and comprehends them wholly by their immediate presence to himself,’ in Isaac Newton, Opticks (London: W. and J. Innys, 1718), 345. See also id., Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Alexandre Koyré and I. Bernard Cohen eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).

[369] See the section on Transscendentale Ästhetik (Transcendental Aesthetics) in Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, second edition (hereinafter B), AA 3, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1911). Eng. trans. id, Critique of Pure Reason, P. Guyer and A. W. Wood eds. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

[370] ‘Raum und Zeit nicht zur Wirklichkeit der Dinge, sondern nur unserer Vorstellungsart gehören.’ Note added by Kant on his copy of the first edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (hereinafter A) at page 37. In Kant, AA 23 (Berlin: Reimer, 1955), 24.

[371] Kant, A 12. In AA 4, 23. Eng. trans. id., Critique of Pure Reason, 133.

[372] ‘Freiheit im transscentendalen Verstande,’ in Kant, B 475, AA 3, 309. Eng. trans. ibid., 485.

[373] Ibid. Eng. trans. Ibid.

[374] ‘Die Causalität nach Gesetzen der Natur ist nicht die einzige, aus welcher die Erscheinungen der Welt insgesammt abgeleitet werden können. Es ist noch eine Causalität durch Freiheit zu Erklärung derselben anzunehmen nothwendig.’ Causality in accordance with laws of nature is not the only one from which all the appearances of the world can be derived. It is also necessary to assume another causality through freedom in order to explain them. Ibid., 308. Eng. trans. ibid., 484.

[375] In order to avoid the regressus ad infinitum (infinite regression) of the causal chain, Aristotle postulates the necessity of an origin to all motion, τὸ πρῶτον κινοῦν ἀκίνητον [to prōton kinoun akinēton] (Met. 1073a), which William of Moerbeke rightly translates as primum movens immobile, that is, first immobile moving (being kinoun a present participle, and akinēton in the neuter gender). Whilst Aquinas follows this translation, other authors use the definition of motor immobilis, that is, immobile mover (in the masculine gender): see, for example, Duns Scotus, In VIII libros Physicorum Aristotelis quaestiones, et expositio, quaestio 8.2.6 and quaestio 8.3.1.

[376] For Kant, the necessity of reason also transcends the personal sphere and becomes political: ‘Eine Verfassung von der größten menschlichen Freiheit nach Gesetzen, welche machen, daß jedes Freiheit mit der andern ihrer zusammen bestehen kann, (nicht von der größten Glückseligkeit, denn diese wird schon von selbst folgen) ist doch wenigstens eine nothwendige Idee.’ A constitution providing for the greatest human freedom according to laws that permit the freedom of each to exist together with that of others (not one providing for the greatest happiness, since that would follow of itself) is at least a necessary idea. In Kant, B 373, AA 3, 247. Eng. trans. id., Critique of Pure Reason, 397.

[377] ‘(. . .) ob Freiheit der Naturnothwendigkeit in einer und derselben Handlung widerstreite, und dieses haben wir hinreichend beantwortet, da wir zeigten, daß, da bei jener eine Beziehung auf eine ganz andere Art von Bedingungen möglich ist als bei dieser, das Gesetz der letzteren die erstere nicht afficire, mithin beide von einander unabhängig und durch einander ungestört stattfinden können.’ (. . .) whether freedom and natural necessity in one and the same action contradict each other, and this we have answered sufficiently, when we showed that since in freedom a relation is possible to conditions of a kind entirely different from those in natural necessity, the law of the latter does not affect the former; hence each is independent of the other, and can take place without being disturbed by the other. Ibid., 377. Eng. trans. ibid., 545, modified translation.

[378] ‘Es ist überaus merkwürdig, daß auf diese transscendentale Idee der Freiheit sich der praktische Begriff derselben gründe,’ it is especially noteworthy that it is this transcendental idea of freedom on which the practical concept of freedom is grounded. Ibid., 363. Eng. trans. ibid., 533.

[379] See Immanuel Kant, ‘Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?,’ originally printed in 1783 in the Berlinische Monatsschrift.

[380] In chapter II I recalled Luther’s double thesis of ‘The Freedom of a Christian’: ‘A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.’

[381] ‘Der öffentliche Gebrauch seiner Vernunft.’ In Kant, ‘Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?,’ AA 8, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1923), 33–42, 37. Eng. trans. id., ‘An answer to the question: What is enlightenment?’ In id., Practical Philosophy, Mary J. Gregor ed. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 11–22, 18.

[382] ‘[H]andle so, als ob die Maxime deiner Handlung durch deinen Willen zum allgemeinen Naturgesetze werden sollte.’ In Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, AA 4, 421. Eng. trans. id., Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, 31 (modified translation). Similarly to the Platonic Good, the Plotinic One, and Eriugena’s Christian god, the Kantian moral imperative has no specific content, but it is ‘ein leeres Gedankending,’ an empty thought-entity (B 475, AA 3, 309), as Kant writes in regard to transcendental freedom.

[383] Matthew 7.12, New Revised Standard Version.

[384] One may wonder whether we rather deserve some kind of Diamond Rule: do to others as they would have you do to them.

[385] Kant’s verticalisation of morals is analogous to Luther’s verticalisation of religion.

[386] ‘[O]berst gesetzgebend,’ in Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, AA 4, 432. Eng. trans. id., Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, 40.

[387] ‘Autonomie des Willens ist die Beschaffenheit des Willens, dadurch derselbe ihm selbst (unabhängig von aller Beschaffenheit der Gegenstände des Wollens) ein Gesetz ist.’ Ibid., 440. Eng. trans. ibid., 47 (modified translation).

[388] The term ‘heteronomy’ is construed, on the model of its counterpart ‘autonomy,’ by conjoining the Greek words ἕτερος [heteros], other (of two), and nomos, law. Ibid., 433. Eng. trans. ibid., 41.

[389] Whilst Kant recasts the Aristotelian dichotomy of doing and suffering in moral terms, he also recovers Stoic universalism by requiring his autonomous individual to act as a universal legislator.

[390] The Kantian reasoning subject is a male one. For example, within the household the absence of conflict results less from reciprocity than from the hierarchical complementarity of gender roles, so that, according to Kant, the pair should be governed by the understanding of the man and the taste of the wife. See Immanuel Kant, Bemerkungen zu den Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen, AA 20, 1–192. Eng. trans. id., Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, Goldthwait J. T. ed. and trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960).

[391] See supra, note 221.

[392] ‘[D]enkt sich der Mensch nach der Analogie mit der Gottheit,’ in Kant, ‘Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis’ (On the common saying: that may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice), AA 8, 279. Eng. trans. id., Practical Philosophy, 283, modified translation.

[393] ‘[E]ine Welt, den sittlichen höchsten Zwecken angemessen.’ Ibid. Eng. trans. ibid.

[394] Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism (London: Chatto and Windus, 1999), 94.

[395] Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, E. B. Ashton trans. (New York: Continuum, 1973), 299.

[396] See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Über die wissenschaftlichen Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts, seine Stelle in der praktischen Philosophie und sein Verhältnis zu den positiven Rechtswissenschaften, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), Band 2, 434–530. Eng. trans. id., Natural Law: The Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law, Its Place in Moral Philosophy, and Its Relation to the Positive Sciences of Law, T. M. Knox. trans. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975).

[397] Whilst the specific freedom of women is not acknowledged by the new revolutionary institutions, Olympe de Gouges claims it publicly in her momentous 1791 Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne, Declaration of the rights of woman and the female citizen: ‘La Femme naît libre et demeure égale à l’homme en droits.’ Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. See Olympe de Gouges, Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne, Emanuèle Gaulier ed. (Paris: Mille et une nuits, 2003). Eng. trans. in John R. Cole, Between the Queen and the Cabby: Olympe de Gouge’s Rights of Woman (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 30–34.

[398] The twin notions of pouvoir constitué, constituted power, and pouvoir constituant, constituent power, are developed by Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès in Qu’est-ce que le Tiers état? (Paris: 1789). Eng. trans. id., What is the Third Estate? M. Blondel trans. (London: Pall Mall Press, 1963).

[399] Nietzsche observes: ‘Die liberalen Institutionen hören alsbald auf, liberal zu sein, sobald sie erreicht sind: es gibt später keine ärgeren und gründlicheren Schädiger der Freiheit, als liberale Institutionen. (. . .) Dieselben Institutionen bringen, so lange sie noch erkämpft werden, ganz andre Wirkungen hervor; sie fördern dann in der Tat die Freiheit auf eine mächtige Weise.’ Liberal institutions stop being liberal as soon as they have been attained: after that, nothing damages freedom more terribly or more thoroughly than liberal institutions. (. . .) As long as they are still being fought for, these same institutions have entirely different effects and are actually powerful promoters of freedom. Götzen-Dämmerung: Streifzüge eines Unzeitgemässen § 38; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/GD-Streifzuege-38; Eng. trans. id, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, 213.

[400] Heller and Fehér contend that ‘the freedom of Marxian communism is the freedom of liberalism realized in full and for everyone’ in Agnes Heller & Ferenc Fehér, The Grandeur and Twilight of Radical Universalism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1991), 198. If this holds true, Marx simply boasts to realise the liberal hyperbole.

How to cite this book chapter:

Baldissone, R 2018 Farewell to Freedom: A Western Genealogy of Liberty. Pp. 91–117. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book15.d. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

CHAPTER 4

Low Modernities

4.1 – The Hegel Effect

Let Hegel recapitulate the last section of our previous path:

The principle of freedom emerged in Rousseau, and gave to man [sic], who apprehends himself as infinite, this infinite strength. This furnishes the transition to the Kantian philosophy, which, theoretically considered, made this principle its foundation.[401]

Though Hegel too sets freedom as the practical and theoretical centre of reality, he is not contented with Kant’s foundational move, and he complains that the Kantian principle of freedom is indeterminate, because it is merely formal.[402]

According to Hegel, abstract universality is still incomplete, and it requires another step, which is determination: in his words, ‘I do not merely will – I will something.’[403] Moreover, as determination is as one-sided as abstract universality, a further moment is needed, in which this determination is superseded and idealised as a concept. Hegel contends that we already possess the concept of freedom in the experience of friendship and love:

Here, we are not one-sidedly within ourselves, but willingly limit ourselves with reference to an other, even while knowing ourselves in this limitation as ourselves. (…) Thus, freedom lies neither in indeterminacy nor in determinacy, but is both at once.[404]

This is why Hegel characterises freedom as being (with) oneself in another.[405] He applies this peculiar formulation not only to interpersonal dealings, but also to the sphere of social relations.

Hegel describes as the immediate unity of the universal with the singular the Greek experience of freedom as being with oneself in the wider sphere of the polis.[406] However, as the Greek citizen has to yield to the accidental will of the majority, his relation as a singular to the whole is not yet satisfactory. From his Christian and modern perspective, Hegel laments the lack of subjectivity (Subjektivität) of classical Greek ethics, and he imputes to Plato the inability to combine with his ideas ‘the knowledge, wishes, and resolutions of the individual.’[407]

It is then not surprising that Hegel welcomes the Stoic conception of freedom as a universal notion, but he also objects that this is ‘just the Notion of freedom, not the living reality of freedom itself.’[408] According to Hegel, it is only the religious, that is, Christian notion of absolute Spirit that shows by comparison the finitude of the previous natural human Spirit: thanks to this comparison, ‘man has won a wholly free foundation within himself, and established for himself another relation to nature, namely, that of being independent from it.’[409]

In Hegel’s Lutheran[410] anthropology, similarly to Kant’s, ‘man [sic] is a free being inasmuch as Spirit,’[411] and the task of his inner side is to resist the natural impulses of his outer side. He has precisely the duty to free himself: according to Hegel, ‘the doctrine of original sin, without which Christianity would not be the religion of freedom, has this meaning.’[412]

Hegel is adamant: it is by doing his duty, that he is with himself and free.[413] And he adds: ‘The merit and exalted viewpoint of Kant’s moral philosophy are that it has emphasized this significance of duty.’[414] However, it is fair to notice that Hegel’s duty is to be accomplished within a system of right, which he defines as ‘the realm of actualized freedom, the world of the spirit produced by itself, just like a second nature.’[415] It is within this system that one can freely be with oneself.

From this perspective, whilst the bond of duty may appear as a restriction of freedom, it only affects it in an abstract sense, and it rather constrains natural urges and arbitrary will. Hegel contends in Pauline fashion that duty frees the individual from dependence on natural impulses,[416] and, perhaps more surprisingly, from the depression (Gedrücktheit) that engulfs the same individual ‘as subjective particularity in the moral reflections on what ought to be and what might be.’[417] Moreover, duty frees subjectivity from its self-enclosure and its inability to be actualised. This is why Hegel can triumphantly affirm: duty ‘is the attainment of [our] essential being, the acquisition of affirmative freedom.’[418]

At any rate, regardless of his theological slant, Hegel endows the notion of freedom with a historical path. Of course, Hegel also subordinates the various historical constructions of freedom to an evolutionary task: yet, each and every historical understanding of freedom is recovered as a necessary contribution to this progression.

If compared with the mighty and complex Hegelian narrative, Benjamin Constant’s contemporary comparison of ancient and modern freedom may appear simplistic.[419] We may even suspect that he exploits the French topos of the quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, which shakes the Académie française in the late seventeenth century.[420] For sure, Constant reiterates the opposition between past and present to better establish his endorsement of the modern notion of freedom. Nevertheless, unlike the debaters of the seventeenth-century querelle, Constant does not claim the superiority of his view, but he rather argues that the different senses of freedom are the expressions of different historical contexts.

Despite ‘[t]he metaphysics of Rousseau,’[421] Constant thus invites his audience to accept the evidence of an unbridgeable historical gap: ‘we can no longer enjoy the freedom of the ancients, which consisted in the active and constant participation in collective power. Our freedom must consist of the peaceful enjoyment of private independence.’[422]

We may observe that Constant shares with Hegel the devaluation of the individual agency of Greek citizens, who are anachronistically described as being thoroughly subjected to the control of the magistrates.[423] These alleged ancient constraints allow Constant to underline the modern gain of individual independence as a more than fair compensation for the modern loss of direct political participation.

This very claim of modern individual independence leaves Max Stirner unconvinced though: he rather contends that whilst liberalism promises the emancipation from personal domination, it actually enchains individuals to the impersonal mastery of abstract values, ideas, and norms.

Stirner attends the lectures of both Friedrich Schleiermacher and Hegel, and he detects in the latter’s theoretical constructions the Lutheran strategy of appropriation of reality.[424] Compared with puritanical Calvinism, which works by excluding the mundane in order to purify the church, Lutheranism is more radical, as it ‘sets about annihilating the mundane altogether, and that simply by hallowing it.’[425]

On the contrary, liberal thinkers boast their emancipation from religion. Yet, according to Stirner, they only dismiss the name of the divine whilst retaining its predicates: they just replace religious clericalism with moral clericalism.[426] Stirner acerbically remarks: ‘On this account the priestly spirits of our day want to make a “religion” of everything, a “religion of liberty,” “religion of equality,” etc.’[427]

Stirner quotes Luis Blanc, who contends that in France also, at the time of the restoration, ‘Protestantism becomes the background of ideas and customs.’[428] Stirner argues that more generally, ‘[p]olitical liberty, this fundamental doctrine of liberalism, is nothing but a second phase of – Protestantism, and runs quite parallel with “religious liberty”.’[429]

Stirner agrees with Hegel: ‘Freedom is the doctrine of Christianity.’[430] Nevertheless, from his non-religious perspective, this association undermines the very notion of liberty. However, he also treasures the Hegelian recovery of history:

Must we then, because freedom betrays itself as a Christian ideal, give it up? No, nothing is to be lost, freedom no more than the rest; but it is to become our own, and in the form of freedom it cannot.[431]

Let me underline Stirner’s assertion as a veritable turning point in our genealogical path. We may consider our route as the drawing of several constellations of words, some of which can be rendered tout court in English with the terms ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty.’ Whilst the majority of the authors here considered support one or the other notion of freedom, some of them caution against the abuse and the excess of freedom itself. For example, Plato’s ironic handling of eleutheria is somewhat mirrored by de Maistre’s caustic treatment of the Rousseauan liberté. However, no one before Stirner asserts that the very notion of freedom is not enough.

More than that, Stirner does not propose a substitute concept for freedom. He is dissatisfied with freedom (Freiheit) both as a specific notion and as an idea in general: for Stirner, ideas such as truth, freedom, humanity, and justice, inasmuch as they are severed from their producers, exert an impersonal power over humans that is no less despotic than personal domination.

More than a century before Derrida,[432] Stirner depicts Western thought as a chain of substitutions: ‘Criticism smites one idea only by another, such as that of privilege by that of mankind, or that of egoism by that of unselfishness.’[433] On the contrary, Stirner does not look for a better concept, but he rather attempts to depict a different attitude, which escapes the simply negative approach of the ‘freedom addicts’ (Freiheitssüchtige).[434]

Similarly to La Boétie’s human being, Stirner’s human subject, whom he names as ‘unique one’ (Einzige) to underscore his [sic] absolute singularity, is originally (ursprünglich[435]) free, so that ‘he [sic] does not need to free himself first,’[436] but he has rather to positively accept his property (Eigentum). Just as La Boétie’s subjects need only acknowledge their own political power in order to revoke their allegiance to the tyrant, Stirner’s labourers need only to recognise the ownness (Eigenheit) of their economic power in order to get rid of their employers: ‘they would only have to stop labour, regard the product of labour as theirs, and enjoy it.’[437]

Stirner insists that ownness ‘is not in any sense an idea like freedom, morality, humanity, and the like: it is only a description [Beschreibung] of the ‒ owner.’[438] Of course, one may doubt whether Stirner’s claim to merely describe the unique owner (Eigner) relieves him from the suspicion of prescribing another moral rule.[439]

Marx and Engels appear bitterly resentful of Stirner’s lexicon, and of his use of synonymy (Synonymik)[440]: in particular, they point out the overlapping of the semantic areas of ‘proper’ and ‘peculiar,’ which occurs in German words such as Eigentum, property as possession, and Eigenschaft, property as attribute, and which is a feature common to European languages in general.

Marx and Engels inflict on the body of Stirner’s text an orthopaedic operation of semantic policing, which somewhat anticipates Carnap’s disciplining of Heidegger’s prose[441]: despite a tradition that harks back at least to Aristotle, they require that the notions of Eigentum and Eigenshaft should be kept apart, as a condition of producing meaningful statements. However, their corrective intervention is triggered by a more substantial anomaly, namely the unrestrained attack that Stirner levels at modern thought: ‘How can one try to assert of modern philosophy or modern times that they have reached freedom, since they have not freed us from the power of objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit)?’[442]

Marx and Engels instead strive to determine in historical and social terms the supposedly objective basis of reality[443]: they maintain that Stirner dangerously mistakes symptoms for causes,[444] and they plainly dismiss him, with the whole lot of Hegel’s left-wing followers, or young Hegelians (Junghegelianern), as conservatives (Konservativen).[445] Yet, it may not be by chance that under the pressure of Stirner’s rebuttal of ideas, Marx and Engels put forth their captivating definition of communism, not as an ideal, but as ‘the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.’[446] As to actual causes, Marx is categorical:

[T]he exchange of exchange values is the productive, real basis of all equality and freedom. As pure ideas they are merely the idealized expressions of this basis; as developed in juridical, political, social relations, they are merely this basis to a higher power.[447]

As a consequence, Marx underlines that modern equality and freedom ‘are exactly the opposite of the freedom and equality in the world of antiquity, where developed exchange value was not their basis, but where, rather, the development of that basis destroyed them.’[448]

However, Marx further specifies that the modern system of equality and freedom, which is nothing else than the exchange or money system, cannot but necessarily produce ‘inequality and unfreedom [Ungleichheit und Unfreiheit].’[449]

In the meantime, Mill’s nearly contemporary essay On Liberty[450] adopts a more optimistic stance towards current experiences of freedom: in particular, Mill scrutinises civil or social liberty, and he sets out to elucidate ‘the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual.’[451]

Though Mill does not ignore historical and cultural[452] references, and he dismisses the fiction of the social contract, he focuses on the quite abstract relation between government and the governed. However, this traditional Hobbesian framework is irreversibly transformed by Rousseau’s paradoxes, which ‒ Mill quips ‒ did ‘explode like bombshells in the midst, (…) forcing its elements to recombine in a better form and with additional ingredients.’[453]

Mill himself provides us with a recombining principle: ‘the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.’[454] Moreover, Mill is not afraid to cross the Rubicon of negative freedom, as he understands the harming of others not only as the result of someone’s action, but also of someone’s inaction.[455]

Mill also challenges the notion of freedom as absolute self-determination, both at the individual and the collective level. On the one hand, he underscores the unacceptability of selling oneself into slavery as a necessary limit to personal choice: a person willing to sell himself would contradict ‘the very purpose which is the justification of allowing him [sic] to dispose of himself.’[456] This argument is far from being a merely rhetorical exercise, especially considering the contemporary definition of waged work as waged slavery.[457] On the other hand, Mill questions the very Rousseauan identity of the people with itself as an absolute justification for government: whilst dealing with the possibility of legal coercion of the liberty of thought and political discussion, he utterly denies ‘the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government.’[458]

In the following years, Marx, who seems already unimpressed with Mill’s economic work,[459] only rarely comes back to the topic of freedom. A notable exception is a long letter in which he strongly reacts to the programme of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany. In particular, he disagrees with the party’s declared intention to free the German state. Marx instead retorts:

Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it; and even today, the forms of state are more free or less free to the extent that they restrict the ‘freedom of the state.’[460]

Three years later, Engels claims an equivalence of definitely Stoic (if not Lutheran) flavour, which he also ascribes to Hegel: ‘freedom is the insight into necessity [die Einsicht in die Notwendigkeit].’[461] To my knowledge, the closest Hegelian statement is in the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences in Outline: ‘Generally speaking, the highest independence of man is to know himself as totally determined by the absolute Idea; this is the consciousness and attitude that Spinoza calls amor intellectualis Dei [the intellectual love of God].’[462]

4.2 – Nietzschean Dynamite[463]: The First Detonation

Stirner’s lines of flight from Hegel reach for fairly different outcomes: whilst his vertiginous theoretical contraction towards an unrepeatable singularity seems to be somewhat mirrored by Kierkegaard’s notion of ‘hiin Enkelte,’[464] that single one,[465] Nietzsche carries further Stirner’s rejection of ideas, though he never acknowledges it.[466]

Nietzsche is even too aware of his extraordinary eccentricity:

What separates me most deeply from the metaphysicians is: I don’t concede that the “I” is what thinks. Instead, I take the I itself to be a construction of thinking, of the same rank as ‘matter,’ ‘thing,’ ‘substance,’ ‘individual,’ ‘purpose,’ ‘number’: in other words to be only a regulative fiction with the help of which a kind of constancy and thus ‘knowability’ is inserted into, invented into, a world of becoming. Up to now belief in grammar, in the linguistic subject, object, in verbs has subjugated the metaphysicians: I teach the renunciation to this belief. It is only thinking that posits the I: but up to now philosophers have believed, like the ‘common people,’ that in ‘I think’ there lay something or other of unmediated certainty and that this ‘I’ was the given cause of thinking, in analogy with which we ‘understood’ all other causal relations.[467]

This is a veritable vindication of Hume’s dissolution of the subject over Kant’s Ptolemaic counter-revolution:[468] Nietzsche then pushes it further as a radically pluralist suggestion, which subverts all the constructions of the Western subject as a single and hierarchized entity, from Plato[469] onwards:

The assumption of the single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects on whose interplay and struggle our thinking and our consciousness in general is based? A kind of aristocracy of ‘cells’ in which mastery resides? Certainly an aristocracy of equals which together are used to ruling and know how to command? My hypotheses: The subject as multiplicity (…).[470]

It is possible to understand Nietzsche’s inner aristocracy of peers as an internalisation of Classical Athenian democratic[471] practice, in which each eleutheros alternately obeys and commands.[472] As compared to the Platonic threefold functional repartition of both polis and psykhē, Nietzsche’s pluralist and democratic model of the mastering subject better mirrors the ideal body of Platonic rulers than the Platonic logistikon, or rational soul, which is an immediately unified function of command.

Though Aristotle too is unsatisfied with Plato’s specific tripartition of psykhē,[473] he accepts that whilst inner faculties may and do conflict, they are ultimately subjected to the calculative function in the pursuing of the good.[474] Hence, also in Aristotle the functional differences within psykhē do not require any negotiation, because they are hierarchically ordered by nature. On the contrary, the multiplicity of Nietzsche’s inner peers is not the expression of different natures: and because their fair composition is not pre-determined by a hierarchy of functions, we may suppose that, just like in the outer world, also in Nietzsche’s inner republic of masters ‘being fair is consequently difficult and demands much practice and good will, and very much very good spirit.’[475]

We may notice that Nietzsche too shares Plato and Aristotle’s binary logic of either doing or suffering: however, as he understands any order whatsoever as a produced cultural effect, he rejects not only the Classical notion of nature and its pre-established order, but also their theological and scientific reshapings. In turn, as Nietzsche radically undermines the various historical groundings of the notion of necessity, he inevitably questions also the status of freedom.

However, Nietzsche not only keeps on claiming his own freedom, but he also argues that ‘the freedom from every sort of conviction, the freely-looking-ability, belongs to strength.’[476] This is why he insists that the levelling trend of liberal institutions damages the cause of freedom. Nevertheless, Nietzsche also acknowledges that the struggle for liberal institutions always promotes freedom, and he adds: ‘On closer inspection, it is the war that produces these effects.’[477] He even goes alarmingly close to his Christian bêtes noires when he endorses a notion of freedom defined as ‘[b]eing ready to sacrifice people for your cause, yourself included.’[478]

This definition is somewhat puzzling, as Nietzsche shares neither the Platonic nor the modern passion for principle-driven transformations. As we saw, seventeenth-century revolutionaries cultivate this passion in its still religious attire: after a revolutionary deist stage in the eighteenth century, transformative political practices move then under the umbrella of so-called secular ideologies, such as socialism and nationalism, which both gain Nietzsche’s disdainful scorn. Nietzsche strives to see beyond ideological justifications a more general dynamic of conflict: and he infers that war teaches people to be free, that is, ‘having the will to be responsible for oneself.’[479] This redefinition of freedom ignores the role of participation in collective activities and its powerful transformative effects,[480] which Nietzsche instead recaptures within the narrative of self-mastery.

Such a recapture is all the more surprising, if we consider that Nietzsche ferociously mocks free will as a ridiculous attempt to mimic god as causa sui, that is, his own cause:

[T]he longing to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for your actions yourself and to relieve God, world, ancestors, chance, and society of the burden – all this means nothing less than being that very causa sui and, with a courage greater than Munchhausen’s, pulling yourself by the hair from the swamp of nothingness up into existence.[481]

However, Nietzsche does not limit himself to mockery, which he also combines with a construction of human inner and outer dimensions as reflecting each other. We may understand this reflection as a twisted replica of the Platonic and Aristotelian mirroring of the polis and the psykhē: Nietzsche’s depicts freedom through Classical lenses, but without the justifications of the Classical order:

‘Freedom of the will’ ‒ that is the word for the multi-faceted state of pleasure of one who commands and, at the same time, identifies himself with the accomplished act of willing. (…) L’effet c’est moi: what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and happy community: the ruling class identifies itself with the successes of the community. All willing is simply a matter of commanding and obeying, on the groundwork, as I have said, of a society constructed out of many ‘souls.’[482]

Here Nietzsche not only improves, as I suggested, the correspondence between Plato’s ordered polis and psykhē, but he also strips bare the hierarchical orders of both polis and psykhē of their epistemic rationalisation.

The reconsideration of human inner and outer dimensions is also the task of Bergson, who is likewise not afraid to redefine freedom. He contends that all the controversies between the determinists and their adversaries on the topic of freedom imply a ‘previous confusion of duration with extension, of succession with simultaneity, of quality with quantity’[483]: Bergson precisely sets out to dispel this undue mixture.

His first step is to construct this confusion as the impingement of the outer world of matter upon the inner world of consciousness. Bergson observes that modern scientific thought divests ‘matter of the concrete qualities with which our senses clothe it, colour, heat, resistance, even weight’[484]: that which is left is the space without bodies and without quality.

Moreover, Bergson pits the homogeneity of the outer space against the ‘radical heterogeneity of deep psychological facts, and the impossibility for any two of them to be completely similar, because they are two different moments in a story.’[485]

As compared with outer objects’ multiplicity, which is quantitative inasmuch as it relies on the numeric identity of bodies in space, the multiplicity of the states of consciousness is qualitative, because these very states are neither clearly distinct from each other nor computable. Time itself is linear and computable when it is spatialised on the model of the outer world, whilst it is a qualitative duration when it is modelled on the inner experience.

Bergson does not reject altogether the spatialisation of time, but he rather restricts its application. In particular, he gives a qualified answer to the question whether time can be adequately represented with space:

Yes, if you are dealing with time flown; no, if you talk about the time flowing. Now, the free act occurs in the time which is flowing and not in time which has already flown. Freedom is therefore a fact, and among the facts that we observe there is none clearer. All the difficulties of the problem, and the problem itself, arise from the desire to endow duration with the same attributes as extension, to interpret a succession by a simultaneity, and to express the idea of freedom in a language into which it is obviously untranslatable.[486]

This impossibility of translating the idea of freedom into a language of extension becomes evident when Bergson publicly meets Einstein in Paris,[487] and their debate turns up a dialogue of the deaf: Einstein’s notion of time as the fourth dimension of the physical world leaves no space for a parallel construction of time as duration, which is again[488] downplayed to a subjective perception[489] of objective reality.

Yet, the challenge to Einstein’s deterministic approach comes also from within his own discipline in the very language of extension: when, four years after his encounter with Bergson, this challenge takes the shape of the new quantum physics, Einstein appeals to his Spinozan god[490] in Pascalian clothes: ‘[quantum] theory yields a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One. In any case I am convinced that he does not throw dice.’[491]

The Danish physicist Niels Bohr is unimpressed with Einstein’s theological preoccupations, and apparently, he invites him not to tell god what to do. Unlike Einstein, Bohr accepts quantum uncertainty (which limits the precision of the measurement of couples of physical variables such as position and momentum) as a feature of ‘a novel situation unforeseen in classical physics and irreconcilable with conventional ideas suited for our orientation and adjustment to ordinary experience.’[492]

Paradoxically, right when the new researches of physics demand the reconsideration of modern science’s deterministic stance, most contemporary economists hold fast to the absolute certainty of quantification and formal computing methods.[493] The effort of the economists to attain a scientific status for their theories revolves around a new anthropological specimen, which already in 1883 Devas defines as homo oeconomicus.[494]

Actually, the human subject of Economics is not that new, as he[495] not only inherits Benthamic utilitarianism and Hobbesian social atomisation, but his rational computing ability may even be traced to Aristotle’s (and Plato’s) calculating agent. More than that, Adorno and Horkheimer go further back in time until they reach Odysseus: ‘The cunning loner is already homo oeconomicus.’[496]

Nevertheless, Odysseus’ freedom of choice and planning ability arouse the surprised admiration of the other characters, as well as of bards and audiences of Odysseus’ stories. On the contrary, the modern homo oeconomicus is made to perform in the wasteland of the Market as a new Everyman, whose behaviour is expected to set a universal paradigm for modern subjects.

This expectation is shared by a small group of intellectuals who meet on 8 April 1947 in the Swiss resort of Mont Pèlerin[497]: they are determined to save ‘that most precious possession of Western Man, freedom of thought and expression.’[498] In particular, they uphold the banner of private property and a competitive Market, because they are firmly convinced that ‘without the diffused power and initiative associated with these institutions it is difficult to imagine a society in which freedom may be effectively preserved.’[499]

[401] ‘Das Prinzip der Freiheit ist aufgegangen und hat dem Menschen, der sich selbst als Unendliches faßte, diese unendliche Stärke gegeben. Dieses gibt den Übergang zur Kantischen Philosophie, welche in theoretischer Hinsicht sich dieses Prinzip zugrunde legte.’ In G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie III, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971), Band 20, 308. Eng. trans. id., Lectures on the History of Philosophy vol. 3, E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson trans. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1896), 402.

[402] Hegel criticises Kantian formalism in general: ‘Der Mangel der Kantischen Philosophie liegt in dem Auseinanderfallen der Momente der Absoluten form,’ the defect of Kant’s philosophy consists in the falling asunder of the moments of the absolute form. Ibid., 386. Eng. trans. ibid., 478.

[403] ‘Ich will nicht nur, sondern will Etwas.’ In G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), Band 7, 53. Eng. trans. id., Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Allen W. Wood ed., H. B. Nisbet trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 40.

[404] ‘Hier ist man nicht einseitig in sich, sondern man beschränkt sich gern in Beziehung auf ein Anderes, weiß sich aber in dieser Beschränkung als sich selbst. (. . .) Die Freiheit liegt also weder in der Unbestimmtheit noch in der Bestimmtheit, sondern sie ist beides.’ Ibid., 57. Eng. trans. ibid., 42.

[405] Bei-sich-selbst-sein im Anderssein.

[406] Within my narration, the evocation of Hegel’s reflection on the evolution of freedom in Western thought operates as a sort of mise en abyme, as it recapitulates history within a recapitulation of history.

[407] ‘[D]as Beruhen, Wissen, Wollen, Beschließen des Individuums.’ In G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie II, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971), Band 19, 129. Eng. trans. id., Lectures on the History of Philosophy vol. 2, E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson trans. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1894), 114–115.

[408] [A]uch nur der Begriff der Freiheit, nicht die lebendige Freiheit selbst.’ In G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), Band 3, 158. Eng. trans. id., Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, A. V. Miller trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 122, modified translation.

[409] Ein Fragment zur Philosophie des Geistes (1822–5), in M. Petry ed., Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1978), vol. 1, 93.

[410] Hegel also explicitly claims his religious affiliation: for example, in the 3 April 1826 letter to Karl Sigmund von Altenstein, the Prussian Minister for Religious and Educational Affairs, Hegel defines himself as ‘a professor who prides himself on having been baptized and raised a Lutheran, which he still is and shall remain.’ In G. W. F. Hegel, The Letters, Clark Butler and Christiane Seiler trans. and eds. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), 532.

[411] ‘Als Geist ist der Mensch ein freies Wesen.’ In Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, Werke 7, 69. Eng. trans. id., Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 51, modified translation.

[412] ‘Die Lehre von der Erbsünde, ohne welche das Christentum nicht die Religion der Freiheit wäre, hat diese Bedeutung.’ Ibid. Eng. trans. ibid, modified translation.

[413] ‘[I]ndem ich sie [Pflicht] tue, bin ich bei mir selbst und frei.’ In doing my duty, I am with myself and free. Ibid., 251. Eng. trans. ibid., 161.

[414] ‘Es ist das Verdienst und der hohe Standpunkt der Kantischen Philosophie im Praktischen gewesen, diese Bedeutung der Pflicht hervorgehoben zu haben.’ Ibid. Eng. trans. ibid.

[415] [D]er verwirklichten Freiheit, die Welt des Geistes aus ihm selbst hervorgebracht, als eine zweite Natur.’ Ibid., 46. Eng. trans. ibid., 35, modified translation.

[416] Hegel does not intend to get rid of natural impulses, but rather to subordinate them to the aim of happiness: ‘gesetztz und sollen teils einer dem andern zum Behufe jenes Zwecks, teils direkt demselben ganz oder zum Teil aufgeopfert werden,’ partly they are to be sacrificed to each other for the benefit of that aim, partly sacrificed to that aim directly, either altogether or in part, modified translation. In G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse III, Die Philosophie des Geistes, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), Band 10, 299–300. Eng. trans. id., Philosophy of Mind: Translated from the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, William Wallace trans. (New York: Cosimo, 2008), 99 (§ 479).

[417] ‘[A]ls subjektive Besonderheit in den moralischen Reflexionen des Sollens und Mögens.’ Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, Werke 7, 298. Eng trans. id., Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 193.

[418] [S]ie [Pflicht] ist das Gelangen zum Wesen, das Gewinnen der affirmativen Freiheit.’ Ibid., 298. Eng. trans. ibid., 193.

[419] See Benjamin Constant, De la liberté des anciens comparée a celle des modernes (On the liberty of the ancients compared to that of the moderns), speech delivered at the Athénée Royal in Paris in 1819, in id., Œuvres Politiques de Benjamin Constant, C. Louandre ed. (Paris: Charpentier, 1874), 258–286. Eng. trans. ‘The Liberty of the Ancients compared with that of the Moderns,’ in id., Political Writings, Biancamaria Fontana ed. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 308–328.

[420] The querelle des Anciens et des Modernes pits Boileau against Perrault: on the other side of the Channel, it is echoed by Swift’s Battle of the Books.

[421] ‘La métaphysique de Rousseau,’ Constant, De la liberté, 273. Eng. trans. id., ‘The Liberty of the Ancients,’ 319–320.

[422] ‘[N]ous ne pouvons plus jouir de la liberté des anciens, qui se composait de la participation active et constante au pouvoir collectif. Notre liberté, à nous, doit se composer de la jouissance paisible de l’indépendance privée.’ Ibid., 268. Eng. trans. ibid., 316, modified translation.

[423] According to Constant, with the notable exception of Athens, ‘[t]outes les actions privées sont soumises à une surveillance sévère.’ All private actions are subjected to a severe surveillance. Ibid., 261. Eng. trans. ibid., 311, modified translation.

[424] Stirner complains that the Hegelian system is ‘the extremest case of violence on the part of thought, its highest pitch of despotism and sole dominion, the triumph of mind, and with it the triumph of philosophy.’ In Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own (hereinafter Ego), David Leopold ed., Steve Byington rev. trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 69.

[425] ‘[D]as Weltliche ganz und gar zu vernichten sich anschickt, und zwar einfach dadurch, daß er es heiligt.’ In Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (hereinafter Einzige) (Leipzig: Wigand, 1845), 119; Eng. trans. Ego, 83.

[426] Stirner ‘quotes’ Proudhon: ‘Man is destined to live without religion, but the moral law (la loi morale) is eternal and absolute. Who would dare today to attack morality?’ Eng. trans. Ego 46. See Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, De la création de l’ordre dans l’humanité ou principes d’organisation politique (Paris: Librairie de Prévot, 1843), 38.

[427] ‘Die pfäffischen Geister unserer Tage möchten deshalb aus Allem eine „Religion” machen; eine “Religion der Freiheit, Religion der Gleichheit, u.s.w.“,’ in Einzige, 103; Eng. trans. Ego, 72–73.

[428] ‘Le protestantisme devint le fond des idées et des moeurs,’ in Luis Blanc, Histoire des dix ans. 1830–1840, vol. 1 (Paris: Pagnerre, 1841), 138.

[429] ‘Die politische Freiheit, diese Grundlehre des Liberalismus, ist nichts als eine zweite Phase des – Protestantismus und läuft mit der “religiösen Freiheit” ganz parallel.’ In Einzige, 140; Eng. trans. Ego, 96.

[430] ‘Freiheit ist die Lehre des Christentums.’ Ibid., 206; Eng. trans. ibid., 142.

[431] ‘Müssen Wir etwa, weil die Freiheit als ein christliches Ideal sich verrät, sie aufgeben? Nein, nichts soll verloren gehen, auch die Freiheit nicht; aber sie soll unser eigen werden, und das kann sie in der Form der Freiheit nicht.’ Ibid., 207; Eng. trans. ibid., 143.

[432] See Jacques Derrida, ‘La structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines’ in id., L’écriture et la différence (Paris: Seul, 1967), 409–429. Eng. trans. ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’ in id., Writing and Difference, Alan Bass trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 278–294.

[433] ‘Es schlägt die Kritik eine Idee nur durch eine andere, z. B. die des Privilegiums durch die der Menschheit, oder die des Egoismus durch die der Uneigennützigkeit.’ In Einzige, 478; Eng. trans. Ego, 315, modified translation.

[434] Ibid., 216; Eng. trans. ibid., 148, modified translation.

[435] Ibid; Eng. trans. ibid., 149.

[436] ‘[E]r braucht sich nicht erst zu befreien.’ Ibid; Eng. trans. ibid.

[437] ‘[S]ie dürsten nur die Arbeit einstellen und das Gearbeitete als das Ihrige ansehen und genießen.’ Ibid., 153; Eng. trans. ibid., 105.

[438] ‘[S]ie denn überhaupt keine Idee ist, gleich der Freiheit, Sittlichkeit, Menschlichkeit u. dgl.: sie ist nur eine Beschreibung des ‒ Eigners.’ Ibid., 225; Eng. trans. ibid., 154.

[439] Stirner’s indictment of all severed ideas not only transcends critique and its game of substitutions, but it also dismisses epistemology in the name of a local and analogical ethics, which prescribes nothing but a vertiginous contraction towards the sphere of intervention of the Einzige, the unique one. Stirner’s bold rejection of conceptual generalisation is unprecedented in Western philosophical thought: his theoretical retraction within the sphere of his unique singularity may be somewhat compared to the religious gestures of the Christian κένωσις [kenōsis], the self-emptying of Jesus (Phil. 2.7), and the Kabbalistic םוצמצ [tzimtzum], the self-contraction of the Hebrew god.

[440] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Die Deutsche Ideologie, in id., Gesamtausgabe (hereinafter MEGA), Band 1.5 (Glashütten im Taunus: Verlag Detlev Auvermann KG, 1970), 207–211. Eng. trans. id., The German Ideology, in Marx & Engels Collected Works (hereinafter MECW), vol. 5, Clemens Dutt, W. Lough and C. P. Margill trans. (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975), 228–231.

[441] See Rudolf Carnap, ‘Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache,’ in Erkenntnis 2 (1): 219–241 (1931). Eng. trans. ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language,’ A. Pap trans., in A. J. Ayer ed., Logical Positivism (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1959), 60–81.

[442] ‘Wie kann man von der neueren Philosophie oder Zeit behaupten wollen, sie habe es zur Freiheit gebracht, da sie Uns von der Gewalt der Gegenständlichkeit nicht befreite?’ In Einzige, 114; Eng. trans. Ego, 79.

[443] In a note to the 1890 German edition of the Communist Manifesto, Engels remarks that in spring 1845, Marx had already worked out the fundamental proposition that economic production constitutes the foundation for the political and intellectual history of any epoch.

[444] ‘Jacques le bonhomme macht das idealistische Symptom zur materiellen Ursache,’ Jacques le bonhomme [Stirner] transforms the idealist symptom into the material cause. In Marx and Engels, Die Deutsche Ideologie, MEGA 1.5, 117. Eng. trans. id., The German Ideology, MECW 5, 136.

[445] Ibid., 9. Following the ironic trope put forth by Marx himself in Der 18te Brumaire des Louis Napoleon, this tragic dismissal finds its farcical repetition in 1981, when Habermas labels Foucault and Derrida as ‘Young Conservatives.’ See Jürgen Habermas, ‘Modernity versus postmodernity,’ New German Critique (22), 1981, 3–14, 13.

[446] ‘[D]ie wirkliche Bewegung, welche den jetzigen Zustand aufhebt.’ In Marx and Engels, Die Deutsche Ideologie, MEGA 1.5, 25. Eng. trans. id., The German Ideology, MECW 5, 49.

[447] ‘[D]er Austausch von Tauschwerthen ist die productive, reale Basis aller Gleichheit und Freiheit. Als reine Ideen sind sie blos idealisirte Ausdrücke desselben; als entwickelt in juristischen, politischen, socialen Beziehungen sind sie nur diese Basis in einer andren Potenz.’ In Marx, Grundrisse, MEGA 2.1.1 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1976), 168. Eng. trans. id., Grundrisse, Martin Nicolaus trans. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), 245.

[448] ‘Die Gleichheit und Freiheit in dieser Ausdehnung sind grade das Gegentheil der antiken Freiheit und Gleichheit, die eben den entwickelten Tauschwerth nicht zur Grundlage haben, vielmehr an seiner Entwicklung caput gehn.’ Ibid. Eng. trans. ibid.

[449] Ibid., 172. Eng. trans. ibid. 249.

[450] John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (London: John W. Parker and Son, 1859).

[451] Ibid., 7. For Locke’s religious motivation against self-alienation, see note 335.

[452] As to one’s cultural allegiances, Mill observes that ‘the same causes which make him a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin.’ Ibid., 35.

[453] Ibid., 85.

[454] Ibid., 22.

[455] ‘A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction,’ Ibid., 24.

[456] Ibid., 184.

[457] In this regard, Mill mentions von Humboldt’s requirement that ‘engagements which involve personal relations or services should never be legally binding beyond a limited duration of time,’ ibid., 185. Here von Humboldt somewhat echoes Aristotle: ὁ γὰρ βάναυσος τεχνίτης ἀφωρισμένην τινὰ ἔχει δουλείαν [ho gar banausos tekhnitēs aphōrismenēn tina ekhei douleian], for the banausos [roughly, one who does manual work for money] is under a sort of limited slavery, in Aristotle, Pol. 1260b.

[458] Mill, On Liberty, 33.

[459] See Marx, MEGA 2.6, 703.

[460] ‘Die Freiheit besteht darin, den Staat aus einem der Gesellschaft übergeordneten in ein ihr durchaus untergeordnetes Organ zu verwandeln, und auch heurig sind die Staatsformen freier oder unfreier im Maas worin sie die “Freiheit des Staats” beschränken.’ In Marx, Kritik des Gothaer Programms, MEGA 1.25 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1985), 5–25, 21. Eng. trans. id., Critique of the Gotha Programme, Peter and Betty Ross trans., in MECW 24 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989), 75–99, 94.

[461] ‘Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the insight into necessity.’ Engels adds: ‘Blind ist die Notwendigkeit nur, insofern dieselbe nicht begriffen wird,’ necessity is blind only in so far as it is not understood. This second sentence is a quote from G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse I, Die Wissenschaft der Logik, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), Band 8, 290. Eng. trans. id., The Encyclopaedia Logic, Part I of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991), 222. A few lines later, Engels specifies: ‘Freiheit besteht also in der, auf Erkenntniß der Naturnotwendigkeiten gegründeten Herrschaft über uns selbst und über die äußere Natur.’ Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity. In Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, MEGA 1.27 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1988), 217–580, 312. Eng. trans. id., Anti-Dühring, Emile Burns trans., MECW 25 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975), 1–309, 105–106.

[462] ‘Überhaupt ist dies die höchste Selbständigkeit des Menschen, sich als schlechthin bestimmt durch die absolute Idee zu wissen, welches Bewußtsein und Verhalten Spinoza als den amor intellectualis Dei bezeichnet.’ In Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse I, in id., Werke 8, 304. Eng. trans. id., The Encyclopaedia Logic, 233. The reference here is to the mind’s love of god, in which, according to Spinoza, our freedom, salvation, and blessedness consist. See Spinoza, Ethica 5.36 scholium. In a similar way, in the Introduction to the Philosophy of History, Hegel puts forth the unequivocally theological claim that the Spirit finds its freedom in necessity alone.

[463] ‘Ich bin kein Mensch, ich bin Dynamit.’ I am not a man [sic], I am dynamite. Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce homo: Warum ich ein Schicksal bin § 1; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/EH-Schicksal-1; Eng. trans. id., The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, 143–144, modified translation. Of course, as a philologist, Nietzsche reads in the word ‘dynamite’ also the meaning of its Greek source dynamis, potency, which motivates the choice of the explosive’s name by its inventor Alfred Nobel.

[464] Søren Kierkegaard, preface to To opbyggelige Taler [two upbuilding discourses] (Copenhagen: Philipsen, 1843); Eng. trans. in id., Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Howard Vincent Hong and Edna Hatlestad Hong trans. and eds. (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 5.

[465] See Martin Buber, Between Man & Man, Ronald Gregor Smith trans. (London: Fontana, 1966), 46 on.

[466] See Karl Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought, David E. Green trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). The mature Nietzsche only comes to admit an affinity with Spinoza.

[467] ‘Was mich am gründlichsten von den Metaphysikern abtrennt, das ist: ich gebe ihnen nicht zu, daß das “Ich” es ist, was denkt: vielmehr nehme ich das Ich selber als eine Construktion des Denkens, von gleichem Range, wie “Stoff” “Ding” “Substanz” “Individuum” “Zweck” “Zahl”: also nur als regulative Fiktion, mit deren Hülfe eine Art Beständigkeit, folglich “Erkennbarkeit” in eine Welt des Werdens hineingelegt, hineingedichtet wird. Der Glaube an die Grammatik, an das sprachliche Subjekt, Objekt, an die Thätigkeits-Worte hat bisher die Metaphysiker unterjocht: diesem Glauben lehrte ich abschwören. Das Denken setzt erst das Ich: aber bisher glaubte man, wie das Volk, im “ich denke” liege irgend etwas von Unmittelbar-Gewissem und dieses “Ich” sei die gegebene Ursache des Denkens, nach deren Analogie wir alle sonstigen ursächlichen Verhältnisse “verstünden”.’ Nachgelassene Fragmente (hereinafter NF) Mai-Juli 1885, N. 35[35]; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1885,35[35]; Eng. trans. in Friedrich Nietzsche, Writings from the Late Notebooks (hereinafter WLN), Rüdiger Bittner ed., Kate Sturge trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 20–21.

[468] Following Kant’s own suggestion, textbooks define his proposed internalisation of Newtonian space and time as his Copernican revolution, by analogy with the notorious definition of the astronomical reversal of the rotating position of the sun around the earth devised by Copernicus. Yet, as Copernicus’ move undermines the anthropocentrism of the Ptolemaic astronomical model, the Kantian reversal is more akin to a Ptolemaic counter-revolution, because it makes the whole reality rotate, so to speak, around human transcendental subjectivity.

[469] Plato’s hierarchical tripartition of psykhē, which disciplines the plural legacy of Homeric inner senses, is not radically challenged until Stirner’s emptying and Nietzsche’s pluralisation of the subject.

[470] ‘Die Annahme des Einen Subjekts ist vielleicht nicht nothwendig; vielleicht ist es ebensogut erlaubt, eine Vielheit von Subjekten anzunehmen, deren Zusammen-Spiel und Kampf unserem Denken und überhaupt unserem Bewußtsein zu Grunde liegt? Eine Art Aristokratie von “Zellen”, in denen die Herrschaft ruht? Gewiß von pares, welche mit einander an’s Regieren gewöhnt sind und zu befehlen verstehen? Meine Hypothesen: das Subjekt als Vielheit (. . .).’ NF August-September 1885, N. 40[42]; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1885,40[42]; Eng. trans. Nietzsche, WLN, 46. One year after, Nietzsche quotes this hypothesis in literal terms: ‘ “Seele als Subjekts-Vielheit”, the soul as a subject-multiplicity. Jenseits Gut und Böse, § 12; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/JGB-12; Eng. trans. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, R. P. Horstmann and J. Norman eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 14.

[471] As I attempted to show, Classical democratic practice should be understood as an extended oligarchic direct government. Modern democratic practices, which are mostly indirect ones, do rely on a further extended constituency, but they do not question the model of preliminary excision: just like in Classical Greece, modern entitlement precedes its own exercise.

[472] We saw that for Aristotle this alternance is necessary, as a result of the dichotomy between ruling and being ruled. Nietzsche appears to be caught within the same alternative whilst dealing with the issue of self-overcoming in his Zarathustra: ‘Was überredet das Lebendige, dass es gehorcht und befiehlt und befehlend noch Gehorsam übt?’ What persuades the living to obey and command, and to still practice obedience while commanding?’ In Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra II: Von der Selbst-Ueberwindung; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/Za-II-Ueberwindung; Eng. trans. id., Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Adrian Del Caro and Robert B. Pippin eds., Adrian Del Caro trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 89.

[473] See Aristotle, De Anima 432a.

[474] πότερον γὰρ πράξει τόδε ἢ τόδε, λογισμοῦ ἤδη ἐστὶν ἔργον· καὶ ἀνάγκη ἑνὶ μετρεῖν· τὸ μεῖζον γὰρ διώκει· [poteron gar praxei tode ē tode, logismou ēdē estin ergon; kai anagkē eni metrein; to meizon gar diōkei;] in fact, it is now the work of calculative reason whether to do this or that; and it is necessary to operate just one kind of measurement, because the best option rules. Ibid., 434a.

[475] ‘[B]illig sein ist folglich schwer und erfordert viel Übung, <viel> guten Willen und sehr viel sehr guten Geist.’ Morgenröthe § 112; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/M-112; Eng. trans. Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter eds., R. J. Hollingdale trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 67, modified translation. Nietzsche understands calculation and its logical tools as the historical result of a long-lasting attempt to impose a specific order onto the chaos of reality: ‘wir, längst bevor uns die Logik selber zum Bewußtsein kam, nichts gethan haben als ihre Postulate in das Geschehen hineinlegen: jetzt finden wir sie in dem Geschehen vor (. . .). Die Welt erscheint uns logisch, weil wir sie erst logisirt haben.’ Long before logic itself came to our awareness, we did nothing but insert its postulates into events: now we discover them in events (. . .). The world appears logical to us because we first logicised it.’ (My translation) NF Herbst 1887, N. 9[144]; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1887,9[144]

[476] ‘Die Freiheit von jeder Art Überzeugungen gehört zur Stärke, das Frei-Blicken-können. . .’ Der Antichrist § 54; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/AC-54; Eng. trans. Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, 53, modified translation.

[477] ‘Genauer zugesehn, ist es der Krieg, der diese Wirkungen hervorbringt.’ Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung: Streifzüge eines Unzeitgemässen § 38; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/GD-Streifzuege-38; Eng. trans. ibid., 213.

[478] ‘Dass man bereit ist, seiner Sache Menschen zu opfern, sich selber nicht abgerechnet.’ Götzen-Dämmerung: Streifzüge eines Unzeitgemässen § 38; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/GD-Streifzuege-38; Eng. trans. ibid., 213.

[479] ‘Dass man den Willen zur Selbstverantwortlichkeit hat.’ Ibid. Eng. trans. ibid, modified translation.

[480] These transformative effects are nothing short of the participative production at once of oneself, of collectives, and of realities at large. Pace Nietzsche, the outcome of this participative production is not necessarily freedom, as the fascist aftermath of the First World War will soon demonstrate.

[481] ‘[D]as Verlangen, die ganze und letzte Verantwortlichkeit für seine Handlungen selbst zu tragen und Gott, Welt, Vorfahren, Zufall, Gesellschaft davon zu entlasten, ist nämlich nichts Geringeres, als eben jene causa sui zu sein und, mit einer mehr als Münchhausen’schen Verwegenheit, sich selbst aus dem Sumpf des Nichts an den Haaren in‘s Dasein zu ziehn.’ Jenseits von Gut und Böse § 21; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/JGB-21; Eng. trans. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 21.

[482] ‘“Freiheit des Willens” — das ist das Wort für jenen vielfachen Lust-Zustand des Wollenden, der befiehlt und sich zugleich mit dem Ausführenden als Eins setzt (...) L’effet c’est moi: es begiebt sich hier, was sich in jedem gut gebauten und glücklichen Gemeinwesen begiebt, dass die regierende Klasse sich mit den Erfolgen des Gemeinwesens identificirt. Bei allem Wollen handelt es sich schlechterdings um Befehlen und Gehorchen, auf der Grundlage, wie gesagt, eines Gesellschaftsbaus vieler “Seelen”.’ Ibid., § 19; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/JGB-19; Eng. trans. ibid., 19–20.

[483] ‘[U]ne confusion préalable de la durée avec l’étendue, de la succession avec la simultanéité, de la qualité avec la quantité.’ Henri Bergson, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (Paris: Alcan, 1889), VIII. Eng. trans. id., Time and Free Will, F. L. Pogson trans. (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1910), XIX–XX, modified translation.

[484] ‘Bref, on dépouillera la matière des qualités concrètes dont nos sens la revêtent, couleur, chaleur, résistance, pesanteur même, et l’on se trouvera enfin en présence de l’étendue homogène, de l’espace sans corps.’ Ibid., 156. Eng. trans. ibid., 205.

[485] ‘[L]’hétérogénéité radicale des faits psychologiques profonds, et l’impossibilité pour deux d’entre eux de se ressembler tout-à-fait, puisqu’ils constituent deux moments différents d’une histoire.’ Ibid., 152. Eng. trans. ibid., 200, modified translation.

[486] ‘[O]ui, s’il s’agit du temps écoulé; non, si vous parlez du temps qui s’écoule. Or l’acte libre se produit dans le temps qui s’écoule, et non pas dans le temps écoulé. La liberté est donc un fait, et, parmi les faits que l’on constate, il n’en est pas de plus clair. Toutes les difficultés du problème, et le problème lui-même, naissent de ce qu’on veut trouver à la durée les mêmes attributs qu’à l’étendue, interpréter une succession par une simultanéité, et rendre l’idée de liberté dans une langue où elle est évidemment intraduisible.’ Ibid., 168. Eng. trans. ibid., 221, modified translation.

[487] Bergson and Einstein publicly meet on April 6th, 1922 in Paris, at the Société française de philosophie.

[488] Einstein’s relativity principle may be understood as repeating and expanding the performance of Newtonian laws as conservation principles.

[489] ‘Il n’y a donc pas un temps des philosophes,’ hence, there is no time of the philosophers, Einstein dismissively replies to Bergson’s claim of a philosophical notion of time. And he adds: ‘il n’y a qu’un temps psychologique différent du temps du physicien.’ There is only a psychological time that differs from the physicist’s. In ‘La Theorié de la relativité: séance du 6 avril 1922,’ Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie 22(3) 1922, 364.

[490] ‘Ich glaube an Spinozas Gott [sic], der sich in der gesetzlichen Harmonie des Seienden offenbart,’ I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists. Albert Einstein, 24 April 1929 cable to Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein. In Einstein Archives, item 33–272. Eng. trans. in New York Times, 25 April 1929, p. 60, col. 4.

[491] ‘Die Theorie liefert viel, aber dem Geheimnis des Alten bringt sie uns kaum näher. Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, daß der nicht würfelt.’ Einstein, 4 December 1926 letter to Max Born, in Albert Einstein, Max Born and Hedwig Born, Briefwechsel 1916–1955 (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1972), 98. Eng. trans. The Born-Einstein Letters; Correspondence between Albert Einstein and Max and Hedwig Born from 1916 to 1955, Irene Born trans. (New York: Walker, 1971), 90 (modified translation).

[492] Niels Bohr, discussions with Einstein on ‘Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics’, in P. A. Schilpp, Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 235.

[493] Hayek and Keynes are the two most notable exceptions to this nearly general rule.

[494] Devas first deploys the expression homo oeconomicus in 1883, whilst commenting on Mill’s writings. See Charles Stanton Devas, The Groundwork of Economics (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1883), 27.

[495] The Latin term homo is masculine.

[496] ‘Der listige Einzelgänger ist schon der homo oeconomicus.’ In Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente [1947] (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag GmbH, 1969), 69. Eng. trans. id., Dialectic of Enlightenment, Gunzelin Schmid Noerr ed., Edmund Jephcott trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 48, modified translation. Adorno and Horkheimer’s description of Odysseus as ‘Urbild eben des bürgerlichen Individuums,’ just the prototype of the bourgeois individual (50; Eng. trans. 35), is hardly more than a crude retrospective projection. At least, Marx, as a good Hegelian, does not project into the past a simple identity, but an evolutionary series: see, for example, his image of the anatomy of the ape as a biological metaphor of the analysis of precapitalistic economy in Marx, Grundrisse, MEGA 2.1.1, 40.

[497] Among the participants at the meeting, we may recall Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Walter Eucken, Karl Popper, Michael Polany, and Milton Friedman.

[498] Mont Pèlerin Society, Statement of Aims. https://www.montpelerin.org/statement- of-aims

[499] Ibid.

How to cite this book chapter:

Baldissone, R 2018 Farewell to Freedom: A Western Genealogy of Liberty. Pp. 119–165. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book15.e. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

CHAPTER 5

Farewell to freedom

5.1 – The Dissolution of the Notion of Freedom

In twelfth-century Thessalonica, the archbishop Eusthatius quotes the mocking sentence ἐλευθέρα Κέρκυρα· χέζ᾽ ὅπου θέλεις[500] [eleuthera Kerkyra: khez’ hopou theleis], Kerkyra [Corfu] is free: shit wherever you want. Certainly, he cannot imagine that his words are to become the ferocious depiction of a construction of freedom yet to come: the reduction of liberty to the mere absence of obstacles to individual action.

Friedrich Hayek, who inspires and organises the 1947 Mont Pèlerin meeting, claims that ‘while the uses of liberty are many, liberty is one.’[501] Hayek has no doubt: his univocal concept of liberty ‘describes the absence of a particular obstacle—coercion by other men [sic].’[502]

Hayek specifies: ‘The difference between liberty and liberties is that which exists between a condition in which all is permitted that is not prohibited by general rules and one in which all is prohibited that is not explicitly permitted.’[503] Moreover, because Hayek embraces the teleological narrative of eighteenth-century revolutions, he constructs the relation between liberties and liberty as a historical progression.

I recalled that eighteenth-century revolutionary constitutions boast of replacing the acknowledgement of specific liberties with the horizon of individual freedom, which only finds its limits in legal norms. I will attempt to show how this teleological construction of the relation between liberties and liberty is the specific modern contribution to a rhetorical move, with which Aristotle at once challenges and confirms the position of his master Plato.

Aristotle confronts Plato’s affirmation of the univocality of the good with an ascertainment of fact: good is said in many ways. More precisely, Aristotle makes a comparison with another plurality: τἀγαθὸν ἰσαχῶς λέγεται τῷ ὄντι[504] [tagathon isakhōs legetai tō onti], the good is said in as many ways as being, that is, the word ‘good’ is used in as many senses as the word ‘is.’

Yet, Aristotle hastens to submit this recovered plurality to a hierarchical order. In the triumphant incipit of the book Gamma of Metaphysics, Aristotle claims a specific being of which science is possible: τὸ ὂν ᾗ ὂν[505] [to on hēi on], being insofar as being, or, with a Latin expression, being qua being.

At the very beginning of my narration, I recalled how Plato constructs his new notion of form with a likewise new language device, which works by nominalising epithets: for example, when Plato writes auto to agathon,[506] the good itself, he produces the unheard-of idea of the good. Whilst Aristotle rejects the Platonic idea of the good,[507] he accepts the presence of a common notion of good in all good things, each of which can be considered hēi agathon,[508] insofar as good.

Arguably, the difference between the thought of Plato and Aristotle may be reduced to the distance between these two language mechanisms: however, regardless of the way we understand their difference, both these language constructions perform as apparatuses of capture[509] of multiplicity.

All along Western history, this trap of words is made to perform again and again: it is this iron cage that Stirner denounces and Nietzsche indefatigably dismantles:

Let us be more careful than Descartes, who remained caught in the trap of words. Cogito is, of course, just one word: but it signifies many things: many things are a manifold, and we crudely grasp at it in the good-faith belief that it is one.[510]

Just a few decades later, Wittgenstein’s treatment of the word Spiel, game, echoes Nietzsche’s warning about the Cartesian cogito:

Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games.’ I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? — Don’t say: “There must be something common, or they would not be called ‘games’ ” — but look and see whether there is anything common to all. — For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. (…) I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than ‘family resemblances’ [Familienähnlichkeit]; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way. — And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family. [511]

The detection of more literal family resemblances prompts the first chance conversation of Wittgenstein with his relative Hayek, whilst the two young officers travel back from the war front in 1918.[512] However, Hayek recalls a much later encounter too, and it is possible to imagine his older cousin Wittgenstein somewhat lecturing him:

Don’t say: “There must be something common to all the uses of the word ‘liberty,’ or they all would not be called ‘liberties’” but look and see whether there is anything common to all.—For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but (…) a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.[513]

In this case, it is also possible to imagine that Hayek would hardly be impressed by Wittgenstein’s apocryphal statements. This is not only because the univocality of freedom is a condition and not a result of Hayek’s discourse, and it is therefore impervious to argument: more generally, Hayek shares with a plethora of authors (some of whom we have previously encountered) a specific modernist bias that hails the emergence of contemporary features and categories as long overdue occurrences.

To say that ‘liberty is one’ means not only to erase the plurality of current uses of the word ‘liberty’ ‒ as Wittgenstein would notice ‒ but also to force the plurality of past trajectories of freedom-related words within the bottleneck of one of the modern definitions of freedom. The latter teleological construction is obviously unknown to Plato and Aristotle, as it transcends the cyclical understanding of time in Classical thought.

Hence, whilst Aristotle may well be supposed to write ‘freedom is said in many ways,’ he would not detect the emergence of freedom qua freedom as a historical occurrence. This alleged detection is a specific modern invention, which takes various shapes: we already saw that such variety roughly ranges from Constant’s qualified acknowledgement of historical differences, to the claim of an evolutionary path of freedom, in Hegel as well as in Hayek.

However, even within the narrow horizon of de-historicised notions, J. L. Austin contends that ‘“freedom” is not a name for a characteristic of actions, but the name of a dimension in which actions are assessed.’[514] In turn, Austin does not spare freedom a ruthless assessment, which he runs in parallel with his consideration of the notion of truth:

We become obsessed with ‘truth’ when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with ‘freedom’ when discussing conduct. So long as we think that what has always and alone to be decided is whether a certain action was done freely or was not, we get nowhere: but so soon as we turn instead to the numerous other adverbs used in the same connexion (‘accidentally’, ‘unwillingly’, ‘inadvertently’, &c.), things become easier, and we come to see that no concluding inference of the form ‘Ergo, it was done freely (or not freely)’ is required. Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal.[515]

Austin’s pitiless conclusion may easily apply to the contemporary recovery of the merely negative Hobbesian notion of freedom. At least, Isaiah Berlin’s recasting of the Kantian distinction between negative and positive freedom[516] does not pretend to exhaust the whole panorama of liberties: yet, Berlin claims that, as compared with the other senses of the word, the negative freedom from interference and the positive freedom to be one’s own master are ‘central ones.’[517] More than that, in order to delimit the notion of freedom, Berlin appeals to tautology: ‘Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty.’[518]

Similarly to Hayek’s assertion of liberty’s oneness, this tautological statement risks re-enacting, under the shape of semantic delimitation, the long-lasting rhetorical strategy which, at least from Plato on, works to reduce the plurality of words, and of the notions that these words construct, to single abstractions: in this case, whatever the expression, liberty is liberty. Moreover, despite Berlin raising no claim to completeness, his very description of the two alleged central senses of freedom with the opposite adjectives ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ tends to constrain a rich and complex history within a dichotomous frame.[519]

Berlin even suggests that whilst positive and negative notions of freedom developed in divergent, and eventually conflicting, directions, they are ‘no more than negative and positive ways of saying much the same thing.’[520] Here Berlin actually revives the ancient Greek horizon of doing and suffering, in which the verb paskhein, suffering, is used as the passive form of poiein, doing: the negative freedom of mē paskhein, not being acted upon, is no more than the negative way of affirming the positive freedom to act (poiein).

If I am allowed to play with images, I am afraid that Berlin’s thin[521] black-and-white conceptual varnish may end up coating, as it were, the thick strata of colourful overlaying frescoes, of which my narration sketched a sort of ἔκφρασις[522] [ekphrasis], which is the Classical practice of describing in words a work of art. Following Nietzsche, who reinvented genealogical enquiries by shifting their object from human beings to human intellectual products, my writing effort reproduced with a twist the ekphrastic rendering of art by attempting to make visible constellations of words.[523]

At this point, it is worth noticing that neither Nietzsche’s nor my genealogical constructions are mere philological researches. As Austin suggests, we have to acknowledge that words do not only report something, but they also do something[524]: given the words’ performative ability to make things happen, my narration is also a path of the making-happen of a variety of freedoms.

In turn, these various understandings of freedom and freedoms variously shape their bearers both on paper and in practice. Of course, the mapping of this shaping effect far exceeds the limits of my brief excursus on freedom. However, the final steps of this path will need to take account of recent reconsiderations of Western subjects and their construction.

5.2 – The Dissolution of the Subject of Freedom

In his 1958 main doctoral thesis, Gilbert Simondon challenges Aristotle’s rendering of individuals: he attempts at ‘knowing the individual through the individuation rather than the individuation from the individual.’[525] Simondon’s change of focus from the individual to individuation takes further a shift from entities to processes, which in modern times may be traced at least to Hegel.[526]

Moreover, Simondon not only dismisses the logical and chronological priority of the supposed principle of individuation over the actual process of individuation, but also claims that such a process cannot occur in a vacuum: ‘the compresence of some other being is necessary in order for individuation (…) to happen.’[527]

For Simondon, the presence of others can trigger further individuations because each individuated entity always carries a pre-individual, or natural portion, which is not yet determined,[528] and which ‘directly communicates with the other pre-individual realities that are contained within the other individuals’[529]: Simondon calls transindividuelle,[530] transindividual, the relation between these pre-individual portions, and he takes sexuality as an example of further individuation through this relation with the others.

We may recall that Hegel similarly resorts to love as an example of his definition of freedom as being with oneself in another. In particular, Hegel makes appeal to a relation of interpenetration (Durchdringen[531]), which also allows him to represent multiplicity (Menge[532]) in both humans and things. Simondon’s transindividual relation always already penetrates individuals, because it directly connects each of them through their non-determined components.

Simondon’s very understanding of individuation may help us to recover inner and outer multiplicities, which are instead erased by the construction of both individuals and collectives as self-contained and homogeneous entities. In modern times, the sharing of this alleged self-contained and homogeneous condition allows the transfer of attributes from individual to collective entities and vice versa: for example, the property of freedom can be shifted from small to big subjects, from the individual body to the body politic.

On the contrary, Simondon conceives of the transindividual as a relation that cuts across individuals.[533] This notion challenges the absolute separation between the inner and outer dimensions of individuals themselves: hence, it displaces the very locus of freedom, because the subject of any freedom whatsoever gets blurred.[534]

Similarly to Simondon’s change of focus from the individual as an entity to individuation as a process, Foucault replaces the subject with processes of subjectivation. He first explores subjectivation in the negative sense of subjugation, especially as the effect of total institutions such as asylums, hospitals and prisons[535]; he then reconstructs processes of subjectivation in the proactive meaning of the care of self, particularly in the Ancient world.[536]

According to Foucault, subjectivation processes are always part of a field of relations of power, that is, the strategies to determine the conduct of others: the ordinary condition of possibility of such relations of power is shared (albeit generally unequally) freedom, which makes possible both one’s attempt to control another and this other’s resistance. When the practices of freedom are extremely limited or absent, the immobilisation of the relations of power may be defined as a state of domination. In this case, liberation and liberation struggles are necessary to regain freedom: however, Foucault warns that ‘[l]iberation opens a space of new power relationships, which must be controlled by practices of freedom.’[537]

On the contrary, the care of self not only produces subjectivity without an external imposition, but it also transcends the reactive stage of resistance and liberation. However, in Foucault’s analyses, the care of self seems undistinguishable from self-mastery, or, at least, care (souci) seamlessly turns into mastery (maîtrise), and vice versa.[538]

This indistinction should not be surprising though, as the Platonic Socrates first directs to Alcibiades the very expression σαυτοῦ (…) ἐπιμεληθῆναι[539] [sautou (…) epimelēthēnai], to take care of yourself, as an invitation to submit to his love not in the way of physical but spiritual subordination: in this case, Alcibiades will be able to take care of his own education with the help of his master (and lover) Socrates.

The care of the self, as invoked by the Platonic Socrates, does not exclude at all an external master, which will also soon take the more abstract shape of guiding principles. Moreover, we saw that, according to Aristotle, the mastery of the self is just the specific inner articulation of a wider system of power, in which the free male subject subjugates not only his wife, his sons, and his slaves, but first and foremost his own psykhē.

I also recalled that de Maistre suspects a sort of undeclared doubling of Rousseau’s self-determined people, because, as a matter of fact, the people who command are not the people who obey: in turn, de Maistre could be reminded that such a surreptitious duplication also affects the self-mastering practices of modern individual subjects, because the self that commands can hardly be the self that obeys.

As we saw, Plato pre-empts this conundrum with his inner partition of psykhē,[540] whose calculative component by nature rules over the other ones: and also for Aristotle, there is no contradiction in the subjugation of one’s own psykhē, which is split into a ruling and a ruled part.

The problem of which controls which within the self resurfaces instead with the Lutheran recovery of the contraposition of inner and outer man [sic], which opens the way for the Cartesian expulsion from the mind of the lower constituents of the Classical psykhē: as the Cartesian ethic cleansing confines these lower parts within the body, the mind is left undivided.[541] Three centuries later, this dichotomous settlement is radically challenged: Simondon’s change of priority from individuals to individuation, and Foucault’s construction of subjects as subjectivation processes shift and disseminate the holder of freedom and autonomy.

Whilst this processual construction overcomes the simplistic modern understanding of both individual and collective subjects, it also calls for the resemantization of freedom’s lexicon, if not a new vocabulary, which would strike a relational middle path between autonomous and heteronomous alternatives: such a third way could at last express our participation in the life of each other.

Unfortunately, it appears that Western thinkers typically depict this reciprocal participation, at best, with a language of physical compenetration, as shown by the previous Hegelian example.[542] This poor and naïve substantialism is the legacy of the language of war[543] in our theoretical abstractions, which likewise froze, as it were, in the shape of logical oppositions[544] the existential experience of armed conflicts.

Friend and enemy[545] are undoubtedly the dark precursors[546] of our conceptual categories, well beyond the mere political space: it is up to us not only to further clarify this legacy, but also to recover and expand practices that exceed this rudimentary construction of our realities. And if these practices do not find expression in the language of the Western canon, we are to look for a lexicon that escapes the black and white logic of friend and enemy, master and slave, and ruler and ruled.

Moreover, it is not just an emerging theoretical framework that calls for a resemantization of freedom’s lexicon: contemporary political practices seem to anticipate theories in seeking for alternatives to the traditional horizon of freedom. For example, if we consider the political activities of the Occupy movement, we realise that neither the movement’s boundaries, nor its collective identity, nor the role of specific participants are clearly defined once-and-for-all. By merging the vocabularies of Simondon and Deleuze, we may say that this movement results from the interplay of sub-and trans-individual multiplicities.

As the lexicon of freedom only relates to individuated entities, it is blind to the processes of becoming of such multiplicities. In particular, the notions of autonomy and heteronomy, however intended, more or less explicitly presuppose an individuated, delimited and at least temporarily enduring identity to which either applies. Because Occupy deliberately produces itself as a plurality of processes, any attempt at theoretically framing this movement in terms of autonomy versus heteronomy simply erases its practices.

The issues here at stake are not simply definitions, but practices of political participation. People involved with the Occupy movement explicitly reject the traditional reductionist logic that shapes Western political entities. They do not conform to a single common identity, and they rather jointly construct their commonalities by engaging in similar activities. By doing so, they set a double challenge to the Western political canon, as they also take charge of their own subjectivation path. Their multiplicity may well be rendered with the recovered notion of multitude[547]: yet, a multitude cannot be constrained within the dichotomy between autonomy and heteronomy.

Of course, no political process actually demands a change of the political lexicon rather than a restatement, or a reassessment, of well-established values and notions: if we look back to the most significant – and traumatic – transformations of modernities, the anticipation of the future as novelty and the recovery of the past as restitution intertwine and play erratically their games of substitution.

Here are just a few examples: the catachrestic repetition of the past has seventeenth-century English revolutionaries staging themselves as Biblical characters, and eighteenth-century French regicides dressing in Roman togas; conversely, twentieth-century Bolshevik administrators pay tribute to novelty by getting caught in the modernist proliferation of their inscrutable acronyms. As to more recent times, the extraordinarily productive experimentations of the long sixties welcome a mishmash of languages, well before the notion of postmodernism captures differences within a style; these differences are then modulated by the ongoing neoliberal revolution within its recovery of seventeenth-century individual atomisation.[548]

5.3 – In-between Autonomy and Heteronomy: Dianomy

Language makes us feel its power not only on what it expresses, but also on what it ignores. New words are needed, if any, not to fill empty spaces, but to make new places, and not just on paper. By thinking and tinkering with Classical Greek words, we may craft a wedge to open a gap as wide as possible between autonomy as independence from others and heteronomy as dependence on others: as an alternative to both prefixes ‘auto-’ and ‘hetero-,’ the prefix ‘dia-,’ that is, ‘through’ or ‘between,’ may suggest a condition of constitutive sharing with others. This would provide us with a whole series of new terms, from the noun ‘dianomy’[549] to the adjective ‘dianomous,’ and to the verb ‘dianomize.’[550]

In Classical Greek, the verb διανέμω [dianemō] expresses the sense of (fair) distribution, or spreading as a kind of participation: we may recall the similar notion of isomoiria. Aristotle uses the phrase διανέμειν ἑαυτόν[551] [dianemein heauton] with the reflexive and figurative meaning of distributing oneself among friends. In turn, the word διάνομος [dianomos] defines an open-air water channel, as opposed to a subterranean one, and it may possibly suggest by analogy an unconcealed link.

Nevertheless, neither of the terms dianemō and dianomos is able to convey the sense of a relation that is not preceded by its terms. Maybe, this sense is still brewing, so to speak, and one may wonder whether, in the meantime, my suggested neologisms ‘dianomy,’ ‘dianomous,’ and ‘dianomize’ likewise risk evoking just the in-between metaphorical space defined by previously extant entities.

Here, the search for words that could replace dichotomous constructions of freedom reveals the more general absence of a language of relations.[552] Western languages all construct the posteriority of relations in regard to the entities that they connect: in other terms, the very construction of sentences produces entities whose identity precedes the relations that they establish with each other. It is from Hegel and, more consequently, from Nietzsche on, that this language attitude emerges as both a horizon and a limitation.

Nietzsche is not afraid to challenge Western grammatical constructions and the universe of sense that they produce. In particular, he reverses the grammatical and logical priority of the subject over the action: ‘there is no “being” behind the deed, its effect and what becomes of it; “the doer” is invented as an after-thought – the doing is everything.’[553]

Heidegger seems to follow this logic when he peremptorily affirms that ‘[h]uman freedom no longer means freedom as a property of man [sic].’[554] Yet, he immediately adds: ‘but vice versa: man [sic] as a possibility of freedom.’[555] The latter statement echoes Heidegger’s contention that ‘man [sic] is just a manager of freedom,’[556] which, in turn, seems to urbanise in advance, as it were, the later rural image of man [sic] as the shepherd of Being.[557]

Heidegger’s reversal of the traditional relation between humans and freedom is a good example of the chain of substitutions that characterizes Western thought inasmuch as it is metaphysical thought. At least, if compared with Kant’s transcendental relocation of time and space from the outer to the inner dimension, the Heideggerian recollection of the centrality of freedom and Being in regard to humans is as de-anthropomorphizing as the assertion of heliocentrism: hence, it could more rightly claim the definition of Copernican revolution than its Kantian predecessor.

However, we may wonder whether we really need another and more radical re-centring of freedom: on the contrary, we may well choose to take our start from Nietzsche’s intimation ‘the doing is everything.’ Actually, whilst addressing the specific action of thinking, Nietzsche himself comes to reconsider the relation between doer and doing:

‘Thinking,’ as posited by the theorists of knowledge, simply doesn’t occur: it is a quite arbitrary fiction (…) The ‘mind,’ something that thinks (…), this conception is a derivative, second consequence of the false self-observation that believes in ‘thinking’: here first an act is imagined that doesn’t occur, ‘thinking,’ and secondly, a subject-substratum is imagined in which every act of this thinking, and nothing else, originates: i.e., both doing and doer are fictions.[558]

Unfortunately, Nietzsche never finds the mental time to elaborate on these dazzling notes, as he stops writing just over a year later. However, we may well suppose that his deconstruction of the notions of doer and doing is somewhat integrated, after one century, by the reconstructive effort of Michel Serres:

Instead of creating an abstraction based on substantives – that is, on concepts or verbs (meaning on operations) – or even from adverbs or adjectives modifying the substantive or the verb, I abstract toward, by, for, from, and so on, down the list of prepositions. I follow them the way one follows a direction: one takes it and then abandons it. It’s as though the wise grammarian who named them ‘prepositions’ knew that they preceded any possible position.[559]

Serres not only follows prepositions in his explorations, but he also makes prepositions explicitly point out the direction of his route, by using them as material to conjoin new terms: for example, his neologism ‘syrrhesis’ (syrrhèse)[560] combines the Greek words σύν [syn], with, and ῥεῦσις [rheusis], flowing, in order to convey the notion of the confluence of a multiplicity of turbulent fluid paths[561] that constitute the living organism, in alternative to the notion of system.

We may take further Nietzsche’s and Serres’ theoretical and linguistic strategies in our attempt to transcend the dichotomous language of freedom. In particular, whatever the definition of freedom, we may notice that, in general, its modern exercise seems located either in the inner individual recesses, or on the boundary that separates both individual and collective subjects from each other. In this area of friction seem likewise to take place coercion and resistance, command and insubordination, conflict and negotiation.

This geometry of subjects is a legacy of post-Homeric Greek thought: Greek writers make the gods vacate the human inner auditory space,[562] and move them to the outer visible space of written texts.[563] More precisely, Plato recovers the gods’ function of command within the inner space of each human as the highest level of her psykhē: at the same time, by hierarchically subordinating the other parts of the individual psykhē to the calculative element, Plato allows this very human to become ἕνα (…) ἐκ πολλῶν[564] [hena (…) ek pollōn], out of many, one.

In this regard – at the risk of oversimplifying things – we may understand modernities as a double contrasting and overlapping movement: a first major wave that, from Hobbes and Descartes on, reiterates the Platonic subject’s enclosure, which is enhanced by the secession of the mind from the body; and a later minor wave (albeit powerfully affirmative), which, from Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche on,[565] shows an inner plurality at work by resonating with other pluralities.[566]

It is to the first wave to claim with ambivalent success[567] a condition of freedom; the second wave would rather invite each and every human to participate in negotiating our condition, which I tentatively rendered with the neologism ‘dianomy.’

As the term ‘dianomy’ is crafted on the model of the words ‘autonomy’ and ‘heteronomy,’ it shares with them the emphasis on the compound’s second element, which derives from the Greek expression nomos. Hence, the new coin may appear to confirm the traditional Western focus on abstract entities and properties.

I recalled in Chapter 1 the variety of uses of the word nomos, from custom to order and law. Plato plays on this ambiguity when his Socrates uses Hermogenes’ belief that words are the product of nomos as custom, in order to derive the twisted conclusion that the office of word-maker (ὀνοματουργός,[568] onomatourgos) is to be entrusted to the νομοθέτης[569] [nomothetēs], that is, the law-giver. However, Socrates wants this legislator supervised in his word-making activity by the actual expert in words, the dialectician (διαλεκτικός,[570] dialektikos), namely, himself and his fellow philosophers.

The Platonic dialectician can claim the knowledge of names inasmuch as they pertain to their objects τῇ φύσει[571] [tē physei], by nature. On the contrary, in my effort as onomatourgos I can only rely on the series of narrations of word-making activities that I have accumulated so far. However, I hope that by showing this very series, I have also made visible some of the external limits of our current vocabulary as a space of possibilities.

More specifically, if use defines words, then by selecting uses of the various notions of freedom in relevant Western texts I also amassed a repertory of delimitations of the very definitions of freedom. Of course, the various notions of freedom share these delimitations with their respective theoretical frameworks: in particular, I recalled that modern geometries of subjects generally locate freedom either within the individual or on her outer boundary, which is also the insurmountable limit between the singular and the plural.

From within this geometrical framework, also the claims of the absolute singularity of the subject, such as those put forth by Stirner and Levinas,[572] end up confirming that the actual relation with the other only comes after individuation: even when Levinas bravely claims heteronomy as the vital constituent of psychic life,[573] he does not go beyond a different ranking of the priorities of the individual subject, who is called to acknowledge ‘[l]’antériorité de la responsabilité par rapport a la liberté,’[574] the anteriority of responsibility with respect to freedom.

However, Levinas also strives to articulate human reciprocal interaction beyond the Hobbesian model of negative freedom, as a participation through affection: ‘The one affected by the other – an-archic traumatism or inspiration of the one by the other and not by a causality that strikes, in a mechanical way, a matter subjected to its energy.’[575] More than that, the participation with the other trespasses the boundary of delimiting surfaces, because it occurs as an incorporation[576]: Levinas dares to claim ‘l’autre en moi,’[577] the other in me.

We may compose this remarkable attempt to force the Western language of entities from within, as it were, together with a theoretical construction from without: following Nietzsche’s attempt to open a way out of entity-based Western speculation, Deleuze and Guattari extend beyond the mental sphere Bergson’s notion of qualitative multiplicities.

We saw that, according to Bergson, qualitative multiplicities do not define a numerical plurality of entities, which only populate the physical world. However, Bergson himself opens the way to the overcoming of this dualism: he suggests a third approach, which is our repositioning in ‘[t]he duration wherein we act.’[578] Such a duration is not a represented time, but the time in which our bodies perform as a centre of action: according to Bergson, ‘if the divisibility of matter is entirely relative to our action thereon,’[579] the absolute opposition between a consciousness with inextensive sensations and an extended multiplicity turns into an infinite number of degrees between spirit and matter.

Deleuze and Guattari take further Bergson’s questioning of the radical heterogeneity of inner psychic and outer physical phenomena: their multiplicities no longer concern numerical unity ‘as subject or object, natural or spiritual reality, image and world.’[580] They also shape this theoretical recasting as a practical invitation: ‘Don’t be one or multiple, be multiplicities!’[581]

Similarly to Hegel and Simondon, Deleuze and Guattari take love as an example of reciprocal participation:

What does it mean to love somebody? It is always to seize her in a mass, extract her from a group (…) and then look for her own packs, the multiplicities that she encloses within herself, and which are perhaps of a totally different nature. To join them to mine, to make them penetrate mine, and to penetrate hers. Heavenly nuptials, multiplicities of multiplicities.[582]

I underlined the shortcomings of the lexicon of penetration as an image of reciprocal participation: Deleuze and Guattari themselves attempt to obviate these shortcomings by referring to the concept of transduction,[583] which for Simondon at once reveals and constitutes the individual. More important, they propose the notion of agencement,[584] which we may translate as ‘composition.’[585]

The notions of transduction and composition are examples of relations that do not simply connect pre-existing terms, but which reconfigure these very terms, or, in philosophical jargon, their ontologies.[586] In this perspective, participation with others would necessarily imply a reciprocal transformation, which we may also conceive of as a partial one, given the inner pluralisation of subjectivities.

Pushing further Levinas’ image of the incorporation of the other, we may visualise the transformative aspect of participation as the incorporation of partial others. In turn, we may rephrase Aristotle’s figurative distribution of oneself among friends as the latter’s incorporation of some of one’s partial selves. Yet, all these operations seem to imply a sort of impossible multiple identity: in particular, they may evoke a mental trait that Lucien Lévy-Bruhl confines within his notion of primitive [sic] mentality.[587]

Lévy-Bruhl asserts that primitive mentality implies a ‘mystical participation,’[588] that is, the ability to be ‘at once themselves and something other than themselves.’[589] Nevertheless, we might have to extend the grip of such a mental condition from primitive to current times,[590] in order not to ignore the everyday occurrence of psychological identifications in the relation of children with peers and adults, of pupils with teachers, of readers and audiences with novel, theatre, movie, television, and internet characters, of followers with intellectual, artistic, political, and religious leaders, and of course, of lovers with each other.

For example, Freud pays particular attention to processes of identification, which, at first, he is inclined to consider as a disturbance to psychoanalytic therapy. He then gradually becomes aware that the relation between patient and psychoanalyst has to rely on the patient’s identification of the psychoanalyst with some significant other. Freud mentions this identification as Übertragung, a word whose German uses range from the transmission of a disease to broadcasting, and which in this case we render in English as ‘transference.’

Freud himself recalls: ‘A few days earlier I had explained to the patient that the earliest experiences of childhood were “not obtainable any longer as such,” but were replaced in analysis by “transferences” and dreams.’[591] In turn, Freud also acknowledges a reverse identification (from the psychoanalyst to the patient), which he defines as Gegenübertragung,[592] countertransference.

More generally, and pace Lévy-Bruhl, we may say that the notion of being at once oneself and something other than oneself[593] does not necessarily describe a mystical state: it may also be a way of rendering in the language of identity the participative aspect of our relation with ourselves, with others, and with the world at large.

However, this very participation can be better expressed than in the language of identity. As previously recalled, we may construct our realities as processes rather than states: in particular, instead of defining participation ‒ with the words of Lévy-Bruhl ‒ as being at the same time oneself and another, we may think of participation as the process of incorporating another. In this case, we may consider the incorporations of partial others as operations of the process of individuation.

It is worth noticing that such a depiction of individuation processes is not a normative model, which prescribes an ideal world of undisturbed human compresence. On the contrary, this construction does not exclude at all manipulation, conflict and violence: it rather allows better following of human interactions through and beyond the alleged boundaries of individual identity.

The processes of psychological identification are clear examples of human interactions that move through, so to speak, these alleged personal boundaries.[594] In particular, the moving-through of identification processes may be regarded as a movement and a transformation at once, and this indistinction is well rendered by the Classical Greek word κίνησις[595] [kinēsis]: as unfortunately our derivative word ‘kinetic’ (and its use in modern physics) is instead limited to spatial motion,[596] it would be worth recovering the original Greek expression. The incorporation[597] of partial others could then be construed as the kinēsis, that is, the process of movement and change, of individuation.

We saw that, according to Simondon, individuation processes never stop because of the ongoing communication between pre-individual, that is, non-determined components within each human being: we may say that Deleuze and Guattari’s construction of multiplicities somewhat extends this communication beyond the pre-individual components.

We may likewise extend Simondon’s transindividual relation between pre-individual components to all kind of partial others, under the processual shape of a transindividual kinēsis, which we may render with the term ‘transindividuation,’ as suggested by Bernard Stiegler.[598] We may also consider Stiegler’s construction of objects and techniques as human prostheses,[599] so that the notion of human interactions and incorporations may also encompass the non-human sphere. We may then understand the incorporation of partial others, both as humans and non-human prostheses, as the kinēsis of transindividuation.

5.4 – Otherwise Than Freedom: Throughdom

I previously recalled that the claims of freedom rely on the postulate of identity boundaries: in turn, only if these boundaries are supposed to pre-exist the relations with others, can freedom be claimed as the possibility to act without interference by others.

Given this ontological priority of entities over relations,[600] the various notions of freedom have been playing a major role in orienting, for good or bad, the actions of individual and collective subjects. If we instead refuse to ignore that others are always already participating in one’s actions, different notions are required to help orient our constitutive reciprocal participation.

We saw that human actions may be rethought within a processual framework: rather than proceeding from individual and collective subjects, these actions may then be understood as shaping subjectivities by incorporating partial others, both as humans and non-human prostheses, in an ongoing transindividuation process.

In this case, a regulative property (such as freedom) that requires an enclosed and self-consistent entity (such as the individual or the collective) would no longer fit transindividual processes, which are based on the constitutive participation with others: transindividuation could only be oriented by a likewise dynamic and processual trend. We may then consider defining this trend with the word ‘liberation’: yet, Foucault rightly underlines the merely reactive character of the notion of liberation,[601] which is also necessarily subordinated to its scope, that is, the attainment of a condition of freedom.

If we want to express the sense of a proactive trend, which may orient the ubiquitous processes of transindividuation towards a more balanced reciprocal participation, we may have to invent a new term: as transindividuation processes cut through the boundaries of identities, following Serres’ invitation to emancipate prepositions, I would suggest the neologism ‘throughdom.’[602]

The Oxford English Dictionary reminds us that the word ‘through’ derives with metathesis[603] from the Old English forms ðurh and þurh – probably on the model of the noun þrúh, a channel for water[604] or a hollow receptacle for a dead body – and it expresses ‘the relation of transition or direction within something from one limit of it to the other: primarily in reference to motion in space, hence in various derived senses.’[605]

In the compound term ‘throughdom,’ the reference of the preposition ‘through’[606] to motion, which is also a hint to spatialised time, may appear to conflict with the state suffix ‘-dom,’ which is employed to form nonce-derivatives with the literal sense of ‘condition,’ but also with the figurative sense of ‘domain.’[607] Yet, whilst the suffix ‘-dom’ is otherwise only added to nouns and adjectives, its combination with the preposition ‘through’ further shifts the sense of the resulting compound, from a domain defined by an identity or a property, to a space of relations.[608]

In the course of this narration, I showed how fundamental theoretical novelties resulted from the deliberate misapplication of that which we a posteriori categorise as language mechanisms. Here I would just recall the example of Plato’s momentous application of the epithet autos to another nominalised epithet,[609] in order to give shape to ideal notions.

Whilst my neologism ‘throughdom’ may be similarly understood as the effect of the misapplication of a current rule of word formation, I certainly do not expect it to have the same brilliant future as Plato’s coinages: rather, I will be contented if it will prove itself useful just as a theoretical tool.[610]

As a word, throughdom would be defined by its uses in language acts. Moreover, according to the logic of participation as reciprocal affection, these uses would variously affect the very word ‘throughdom,’ which would then be better addressed in the plural form, as ‘throughdoms.’ Similarly to Wittgenstein’s games, throughdoms would form a family of words.

Of course, Wittgenstein’s word ‘game’ – just like any other current word – can escape the Platonic-Socratic defining apparatus of capture, because its different uses exceed a single definition: in other terms, we understand the word ‘game’ – just like any other current word – not because we rely on its definition,[611] but because we are able to detect the similarities between its various uses. On the contrary, a new word cannot count on already existing language involvements: it has to be tested in possible contexts.

Rather than proposing a definition of the word ‘throughdom,’ I will show then the notion of throughdom at work, so to speak, in various possible scenarios. These examples will attempt to illustrate how throughdom may help to address the blind spots of the discourses of freedom, both in the public and the private sphere.[612]

I previously suggested constructing human and non-human interactions as an ongoing transindividual kinēsis, that is, a movement and a transformation at once, which incessantly trespasses the alleged boundaries of identities. Moreover, I underlined that I was not proposing a normative model, but rather a more flexible theoretical tool, which, for example, may help to address the current mass incorporation of images, behaviours, and techniques carried by social media.

From the various perspectives of freedom, such a mass phenomenon appears unquestionable, as it is the result of free individual choice. Yet, this very individual choice is exerted on a very limited set of opportunities, which are more and more previously selected according to the detected preferences of the choosing user. In turn, such progressive restriction of horizon is an expression of a more general rhetorical approach, which relies less on verbal and iconic techniques of persuasion than on the mere presence of the offer on the relevant stage. The discourses of freedom offer no argument for addressing these marketing strategies,[613] which exploit the very preferences of the user. The transindividual construction of interactions may instead help to open at last a negotiation on the modalities of the ubiquitous kinēsis, and the notion of throughdom may be then deployed to orient this negotiation in a participatory direction.

I also previously claimed that the use of the opposing categories of autonomy and heteronomy erases recent political practices, such as those of the Occupy movement. More generally, the notions of autonomy and heteronomy are blind to the practices of commoning, that is, the joint construction of commons. Within the traditional entity-based Western theoretical framework, commons pre-exist their acknowledgement as shared features: moreover, modern economic theories generally describe commons as residues of previous economic arrangements. On the contrary, commons do not simply relate to their stakeholders as joint properties, but as ‘relational social frameworks’[614] that reconfigure their very participants. This key relational aspect is overlooked by the dichotomy of autonomy versus heteronomy: it instead becomes visible on the horizon of transindividuation, where participation, following Levinas, is understood as reciprocal affection, and it means not only joining the game, as it were, but also reshaping both rules and players.[615] Here the notion of throughdom may be used to negotiate a fair participation.

Moreover, a processual construction of human and non-human interactions would allow us also to reconsider the notion of entitlement. We saw that a specific freedom often defines an entitlement of the individual in the public sphere. For instance, we may or may not be free to vote, to cross a national boundary, or simply to stay where we are: each entitlement is the effect of a specific legal identity, to whose acquisition it is thus subordinated.[616] Nevertheless, if we no longer think in terms of individuals but of processes of individuation, or better, transindividuation, an entitlement would no longer necessarily precede its own exercise.

As a matter of fact, the joint emergence of exercise and entitlement occurs whenever sudden transformations exceed procedures and force orders. For example, in the case of the Occupy movement, no ID card is required to join the occupation of Zuccotti Park: the entitlement to occupy takes shape as soon as the occupiers participate in placing their bodies and objects within the occupied place. In other words, the new collective entitlement to occupy the square takes shape right at the moment of its actual exercise: the occupiers’ participation in the occupation may be construed as the constituent[617] exercise of their very entitlement to occupy.

Yet, when the New York occupiers are forcibly evicted, their appeal to the Supreme Court to be allowed to resume the occupation is rejected because, according to the appointed judge, ‘they have not demonstrated that they have a First Amendment right to remain in Zuccotti Park, along with their tents, structures, generators, and other installations.’[618]

As rights are incessantly produced and reproduced, both as the effect of legislation and interpretation, it would be crucial to provide a theoretical ground for claiming de jure[619] the transformative effect of the occupation of Zuccotti Park, which is already transformed de facto by its occupiers. This transformation goes well beyond the local circumstances (albeit relevant) of the sudden change of use of a central square in downtown Manhattan. Inasmuch as throughdom may be appealed to as a means of composing the occupation of the square with its worldwide extensions as an immediately constitutive process, which jointly transforms the occupiers and the occupied place, it can effectively support the demand to renegotiate previously acknowledged rights and titles. In other words, the notion of throughdom as participative transindividuation may help to construct the coupling of exercise and entitlement as a valid legal criterion: and of course, this coupling may uphold and justify not only ephemeral occupations, but also more lasting arrangements.

In other words, throughdom may be used to help translate transformation through participatory practices into legal entitlement. In this case, entitlement could also take shape together with participation itself: the participation in the process would entitle the participant to be a participant, as it were. Borrowing from Levinas’ language, we may say that making participation accompany entitlement means allowing the other to take responsibility for herself.

Whenever participatory practices emerge together with any new entitlement,[620] they vindicate the present against past and future: the sudden emergence of new participatory practices may well express the openness of reality, before the fishing net of causal nexuses is cast on this very reality by the subsequent interpreters of time flown, to echo Bergson. Novel participation may not only remind us – with Heraclitus – that we cannot step twice into the same river,[621] but also – with Wittgenstein – that the family resemblances between word uses constantly shift, thus also shifting the rules of each language-game (Sprachspiel)[622] in which our words are at play.

Furthermore, I recalled that the processes of transindividuation transcend the separation between the supposedly natural bodily boundaries of the individual and her cultural prostheses (from hunting devices to writing and smartphones)[623]: inasmuch as the notion of throughdom may be invoked to negotiate a more balanced participation in these processes, it may also help humans and animals, plants and bodies of water, places and gods to join the negotiation about their reciprocal relations, and thus, about their very identities.[624]

Finally, by putting throughdom to work in the so-called private sphere, we may at last further restructure the Aristotelian architecture of domestic power. At the moment, as regards power exerted upon others, this radical renovation work is still under way: slavery is only abolished de jure; where gender equality is formally acknowledged, it is generally yet to be realised; and though children’s plain subjection to adults is challenged at least by the notion of the former’s best interest, the exercise of physical violence upon minors is not even legally limited all over the world, and it is forbidden altogether in just one third of nation states.[625]

But worst of all, the unrestrained exercise of power over one’s self remains unchallenged, and it is even universally praised by an approving commonwealth that goes from Nazis to anarchists: freedom as self-mastery is still happily exerted at the willing expenses of each of us. If it is still difficult to detect the frightening family resemblance between the mastery of the self and the mastery of a slave, a woman, or a child, then probably our current notions of the self are in dire need of some sort of emancipation.

For sure, if it weren’t for the endless restatements of the value of self-mastery from Plato on,[626] it wouldn’t be difficult to acknowledge that individual self-determination is an autocratic affair, whether it follows authoritarian or libertarian rules. Otherwise, we could easily detect traditional authoritarian self-mastering’s side effects, which range from neuroses to dissociations; and the more recent emphasis on mastering oneself through impersonal rules and personal initiative would appear related to the rise of autisms, and to the pervading depressions.[627]

Without the series of Platonic avatars, in the first case, that is, the traditional authoritarian relations, we could observe the substitution of psychic centre for psychic centre as a sequence of indoctrinations, enlightenments and conversions; and in the second case, namely, the new regime of impersonal control, we would be able to notice that the double movement of the technicization of institutional power structures and the responsibilization of individuals empties the outer space of intentions, which, in turn, become a forced performance in the inner space. We could then realise that the neurotic and dissociated reactions to psychic invasion in the authoritarian world are being partially replaced in many contemporary contexts by the retreat from relations and psychic investments.

Unfortunately, whatever the context, the discourses of freedom are simply unable to question the absolute power of the self over itself[628] ‒ a mastery that in fact is their paradoxical cornerstone. It is the power of self-determination that defines the Platonic-Aristotelian free male subject, to whom emancipated subjects are, at best, assimilated in time: this is why the request of self-mastery not only accompanies Classical oligarchic freedom, but it also appears as a conquest of modern emancipation.

We saw that de Maistre reproached Rousseau for collapsing together the roles of ruler and ruled in a new autocratic collective subject, and that his reproach likewise applies to the modern autocratic individual subject. However, we also saw that we may bypass this modern blind alley by re-socialising the self within transindividuation[629] processes: we may then rethink our inner court as a heterogeneous assembly,[630] whose composition varies incessantly, as it makes room for various constitutive prostheses[631] and partial others. As this assembly thus extends itself, its rights, and its responsibilities beyond the mere individual sphere, the notion of throughdom may help to orient its negotiations towards a more balanced participation. In turn, this radical renovation of our inward architecture[632] may afford us a way out of both the authoritarian subject’s paranoid hybris, and the desolated detachment of the depressed, who is exhausted by the weight of the world that she has to carry alone. If I may rephrase Foucault, it will be for practices of throughdom to produce a new balance, as soon as we unlock the last stronghold of unrestrained power and unfreedom: ourselves.

θαυμάζω καὶ αὐτὸς πάλαι τὴν ἐμαυτοῦ σοφίαν καὶ ἀπιστῶ.[633]

How to cite this book chapter:

Baldissone, R 2018 Farewell to Freedom: A Western Genealogy of Liberty. Pp. 119–165. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book15.e. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

[500] Eusthatius of Thessalonica, Eusthatii Commentarii (Commentary on Dionysius Periegetes), in Geographi Graeci minores, Karl Müller ed. (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1861), vol. 2, 309.

[501] Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 19.

[502] Ibid.

[503] Ibid. Hayek specifies: ‘While every law restricts individual freedom to some extent by altering the means which people may use in the pursuit of their aims, under the Rule of Law the government is prevented from stultifying individual efforts by ad hoc action.’ In Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), 54.

[504] Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1096a.

[505] Aristotle, Met. 1003a. Whilst we are familiar with the Aristotelian formula ‘A insofar as A,’ the use of the word ᾗ [hēi], insofar as, in philosophical texts is reported by Simplicius since Empedocles (Physika 1, 243–44, fr. 31 B17.12 Diels-Kranz). In Charmides 171b, Plato gets as close as possible to the Aristotelian repetition to come: τὸν ἰατρόν, ᾗ ἰατρικός ἐστιν [ton iatron, hēi iatrikos estin] the physician, insofar as he is a physician (literally, the medical doctor, insofar as he is ‘doctoral’). To my knowledge, Aristotle first deploys the language apparatus that is to become the formulaic expression of essence in Eudemian Ethics 1228b: τοῖς παιδίοις ᾗ παιδία [tois paidiois hēi paidia], to children insofar as children.

[506] See, for example, Plato, Parm. 134b–c.

[507] See, for example, Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1217b.

[508] See, for example, Aristotle, Prior Analytics 49a.

[509] Deleuze and Guattari consider the State as an ‘[a]pparatus of capture — the semiological operation par excellence,’ which ‘constitutes a general space of comparison and a mobile center of appropriation.’ In Deleuze and Guattari, Mille Plateaux, 555; Eng. trans. id., A Thousand Plateaus, 444–445. Here, Plato’s and Aristotle’s language functions may be understood as constituting a general space of comparison among theoretical entities, which are appropriated within the discourse of identity through either their identification with themselves or with one of their attributes.

[510] ‘Seien wir vorsichtiger als Cartesius, welcher in dem Fallstrick der Worte hängen blieb. Cogito ist freilich nur Ein Wort: aber es bedeutet etwas Vielfaches: manches ist vielfach und wir greifen derb darauf los, im guten Glauben, daß es Eins sei.’ NF August-September 1885, N. 40[23]; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1885,40[23] (my translation). Though Nietzsche does not explicitly consider the concept of freedom under this light, he is convinced that ‘[z]unächst thut die absolute Scepsis gegen alle überlieferten Begriffe noth,’ [w]hat’s needed first is absolute scepticism towards all received concepts. And he adds: ‘(wie sie vielleicht schon einmal Ein Philosoph besessen hat — Plato: natürlich <hat er> das Gegentheil gelehrt — —).’ (something perhaps possessed by one philosopher — Plato: of course, he taught the opposite — —).’ NF April-Juni 1885, N. 34[195]; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1885,34[195]; Eng. trans. Nietzsche, WLN, 13.

[511] ‘Betrachte z.B. einmal die Vorgänge, die wir ‘Spiele’ nennen. Ich meine Brettspiele, Kartenspiele, Ballspiele, Kampfspiele, usw … Was ist allen diesen gemeinsam? – Sag nicht: “Es muß ihnen etwas gemeinsam sein, sonst hießen sie nicht ‘Spiele’” – sondern schau, ob ihnen allen etwas gemeinsam ist. – Denn wenn du sie anschaust, wirst du zwar nicht etwas sehen, was allen gemeinsam wäre, aber du wirst Ähnlichkeiten, Verwandtschaften, sehen, und zwar eine ganze Reihe. (. . .) Ich kann diese Ähnlichkeiten nicht besser charakterisieren, als durch das Wort ‘Familienähnlichkeiten’; denn so übergreifen und kreuzen sich die verschiedenen Ähnlichkeiten, die zwischen den Gliedern einer Familie bestehen: Wuchs, Gesichtszüge, Augenfarbe, Gang, Temperament, etc. etc. – Und ich werde sagen: die ‘Spiele’ bilden eine Familie.’ In Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical Investigations, G. E. M. Anscombe and R. Rhees eds., G. E. M. Anscombe trans., 2nd ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), §§ 66–67, 31–32/31e–32e.

[512] See Friedrich Hayek, ‘Remembering My Cousin, Ludwig Wittgenstein,’ in Encounter, August 1977, 20–22.

[513] Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical Investigations, §§ 66–67, 31e–32e, modified text.

[514] John Langshaw Austin, ‘A Plea for Excuses,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, vol. 57 (1956–1957): 1–30, reprinted in id., Philosophical Papers, J. O. Urmson and Geoffrey Warnock eds., 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 175–204, 180.

[515] John Langshaw Austin, ‘Truth,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 24 (1950): 111–128, reprinted in id., Philosophical Papers, 117–133, 130.

[516] See Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty.

[517] Ibid., 6.

[518] Berlin goes on: ‘not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.’ Ibid., 10.

[519] Though Quentin Skinner transcends Berlin’s pairing of negative and positive freedom, I am afraid that even the addition of a third concept of liberty is not enough to do justice to the richness of his own historical enquiries. See Skinner, ‘A Third Concept of Liberty.’

[520] Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, 16.

[521] Gilbert Ryle famously applies the adjectives ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ to the notion of description: ‘thick description is a many-layered sandwich, of which only the bottom slice is catered for by th[e] thinnest description.’ In Gilbert Ryle, ‘The Thinking of Thoughts: What “Le Penseur” is doing,’ University Lectures, no. 18, 1968, the University of Saskatchewan. Borrowing Ryle’s term, we may say that a Nietzschean genealogy produces a thick narration about notions and concepts.

[522] The word ekphrasis is first documented in Τέχνη ῥητορική [Tekhnē rhētorikē], The Art of Rhetoric, 10.17, which is attributed to Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

[523] Classical ekphrasis knows only of figurative art, of which it accepts the representative conventions: Foucault’s more recent ekphrasis of Las Meninas in Les Mots et les Choses follows Velasquez in directing our attention out of the represented scene. Perhaps my ekphrastic rendering of abstract terms may rather be likened to a verbal transposition of abstract art, such as Malevic’s squares or Pollock’s drippings.

[524] See John Langshaw Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962).

[525] ‘[C]onnaître l’individu à travers l’individuation plutôt que l’individuation à partir de l’individu.’ In Gilbert Simondon [1958], L’individu et sa genése physico-biologique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964), 4.

[526] For example, in the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel declares his intention ‘die festen Gedanken in Flüssigkeit zu bringen,’ to bring fixed thoughts into a fluid state. In Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Werke 3, 37. Eng. trans. id., Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, 20.

[527] ‘[I]l faut qu’il se crée une présence avec quelqu’autre être que lui pour que l’individuation (. . .) puisse apparaitre.’ In Gilbert Simondon, L’individuation psychique et collective à la lumière des notions de forme, information, potentiel et métastabilité (Paris: Aubier, 1989), 197.

[528] Simondon recovers Anaximander’s notion of apeiron, the boundless or non-determined, in order to describe the inexhaustible natural residual within each individuated entity.

[529] ‘[E]lle communique directement avec les autre réalités préindividuelles contenues dans les autres individus.’ In Simondon, L’individu et sa genése physico-biologique, 249.

[530] Ibid., 250.

[531] Hegel describes this reciprocity as ‘Durchdringen des Durchdringens,’ penetration of the penetration, in the visionary section of the Logic Die Auflösung des Dings, the dissolving of the thing, where he develops the notion of reciprocal porosity as a sort of Leibnizian vertigo. In G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, Werke 6, 146. Eng. trans. id., The Science of Logic, G. Di Giovanni trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 435.

[532] Ibid., 145. Eng. trans. ibid, modified translation (aggregate).

[533] ‘[L]e transindividuel, n’étant pas structuré, traverse l’individu,’ the transindividual, as it is not structured, cuts across the individual. In Simondon, L’individuation psychique et collective, 195.

[534] From this perspective, we may construct as predecessors to Simondon’s operation the inner pluralisation of Dostoevsky’s characters; Nietzsche’s multiplication of inner masters; Freud’s acknowledgement of psychological plurality, which is an extraordinarily productive move, though it is ultimately subordinated to the univocality of the reality principle; and Mikhail Bakhtin’s rendering of the psychology of each Dostoevskian character as a combination of я и другой [ya i drugoi], I and an other, and the claim of her незавершенность [nezavershennost], unfinalizability, which opens towards the reconsideration of both freedom and responsibility. In Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics, C. Emerson trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 302.

[535] See Michel Foucault, Folie et déraison: histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (Paris: Plon, 1961), Eng. trans. History of Madness, Jean Khalfa ed., Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa trans. (London: Routledge, 2006); Naissance de la clinique: une archéologie du regard médical (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963), Eng. trans. id., The Birth of the Clinic, Alan Sheridan trans. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973); Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), Eng. trans. id., Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Alan Sheridan trans. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).

[536] See Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1976–1984). Eng. trans. id., The History of Sexuality, 3 vols., Robert Hurley trans. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978–1986).

[537] ‘La libération ouvre un champ pour de nouveaux rapports de pouvoir, qu’il s’agit de controlêr par des pratiques de liberté.’ In Michel Foucault, ‘L’éthique du souci de soi comme pratique de la liberté’ [1984], in id., Dits et Écrits IV (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 708–729, 711. Eng. trans. in id., ‘The ethics of the concern of the self as a practice of freedom,’ in id., Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth: The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, vol. 1, P. Rabinow ed. (New York: The New Press, 2006), 281–301, 283–284, modified translation.

[538] Foucault underlines that in ancient Greece ‘être libre signifie ne pas être esclave de soi-même et de ses appétits, ce qui implique qu’on établisse à soi-même un certain rapport de domination, de maitrise, qu’on appelait archê – pouvoir, commandement,’ to be free means not being a slave to oneself and one’s appetites, which means that with respect to oneself one establishes a certain relationship of domination, of mastery, which was called arkhē, or power, command.’ Ibid., 714. Eng. trans. ibid., 286–287.

[539] Plato, Alcibiades I 120c.

[540] Whilst in the Phaedrus and in the Republic irreducible inner differences are accounted for by a hierarchy of metaphorical characters and functions respectively, in the Theaetetus (189e) the Platonic Socrates depicts the act of thinking as the dialogue of psykhē with itself. This diachronic pluralisation makes room for inner reflection without questioning the unity of the inner hierarchical command.

[541] ‘[M]ens autem plane indiuisibilis,’ while the mind (is) utterly indivisible, in René Descartes, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Paris: Michel Soly, 1641), 109 (5.19). Eng. trans. id., Meditations on First Philosophy, John Cottingham ed. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 119.

[542] The absence of a language of participation is powerfully underlined by the unobstructed parataxis of Jean-Luc Nancy’s beautiful formula être singulier pluriel, being singular plural. See Jean-Luc Nancy, Être singulier pluriel (Paris: Galilée, 1996). Eng. trans. id., Being Singular Plural, Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O’Byrne trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).

[543] We may also observe that the language of penetration not only harks back to warfare (and hunting practices), but it also shapes a traditional male construction of sexuality.

[544] As previously recalled, Hegel remarkably attempts to mobilise the Western language of identity by making each entity internalise the relation of opposition, which, nonetheless, by doing so he restates and generalises.

[545] Schmitt even appeals to this crude dichotomy as ‘seinsmäßige Wirklichkeit,’ reality according to its being. In Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (München: Duncker & Humblot, 1932), 16. Eng. trans. id., The Concept of the Political, George Schwab trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 28, modified translation.

[546] Deleuze defines as précurseur sombre (dark precursor) the operator that links heterogeneous series. In Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 156. Eng. trans. id., Difference and Repetition, Paul Patton trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 119. Here I am rather considering that the link between the dichotomies of friend versus enemy and master versus slave is already partially obscured by Aristotle, who justifies slavery as the effect of a natural condition of inferiority. See Aristotle, Pol. 1260a.

[547] The term ‘multitude’ enters the lexicon of modernities in the seventeenth century with its Latin version multitudo, which Hobbes depicts as the disordered – and thus blameful – counterpart to the notion of people. On the contrary, Spinoza’s positive resemantization of multitudo is later confirmed by its recent reclaiming (especially in the writings of Toni Negri) as a non-totalising alternative to ‘people.’

[548] In 1990, after a decade of neoliberal hegemony, Deleuze detects behind the affirmation of individual freedom the emergence of the societies of control: borrowing from the Simondonian lexicon, Deleuze maintains that such a novel regime operates through an ongoing modulation, as opposed to the disciplinarian stable casting of both individuals and collectives. See Gilles Deleuze, ‘Postscript sur les sociétés de contrôle,’ L’Autre Journal, n.1, Mai 1990, 111–114. Eng. trans. id., ‘Postscript on the societies of control,’ October, vol. 59 (Winter, 1992), 3–7.

[549] Dianomy, inasmuch as in-between of the self and the other, may well be the place where we all are always already staying, since our primal maternal entanglement. This glorious participation goes well beyond our nine-month inhabitation of the maternal body, as shown, for example, by Melanie Klein’s notion of part objects (which unfortunately she herself recaptures within the teleological narration of the individual).

[550] The prefix ‘dia-’ may likewise help to strike a middle path between other dichotomous compound words, and the notions that they express. For example, the composition of this preposition with the Greek term ποίησις [poiēsis] in the neologism ‘diapoiesis’ may help to extricate us from the binary logic of autopoiesis and allopoiesis, as construed by Maturana and Varela, following George Spencer-Brown’s operation of drawing a distinction. See George Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969); Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, De Máquinas y Seres Vivos (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1972).

[551] Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1171a3.

[552] Simondon proposes the notion of transduction as an attempt to face the lack of a language of relations. Transduction allows the co-emergence of terms and relation: ‘Les termes extrêmes atteints par l’opération transductive ne préexistent pas à cette opération.’ The ultimate terms that are obtained through the transductive operation do not preexist this operation. In Simondon, L’individu et sa genése physico-biologique, 19.

[553] ‘[E]s giebt kein “Sein” hinter dem Thun, Wirken, Werden; “der Thäter” ist zum Thun bloss hinzugedichtet, — das Thun ist Alles.’ Zur Genealogie der Moral I § 13; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/GM-I-13; Eng. trans. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, Keith Ansell-Pearson ed., Carol Diethe trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 26.

[554] ‘Menschliche Freiheit heißt jetzt nicht mehr: Freiheit als Eigenschaft des Menschen,’ in Martin Heidegger, Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie (Freiburger Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1930), Gesamtausgabe (hereinafter GA), Band 31 (Frankfurt: Verlag Vittorio Klostermann, 1982), 135. Eng. trans. id., The Essence of Human Freedom: An Introduction to Philosophy, Ted Sadler trans. (London: Continuum, 2002), 93.

[555] ‘[S]ondern umgekehrt: der Mensch als eine Möglichkeit der Freiheit.’ Ibid. Eng. trans. ibid, modified translation. The form of Heidegger’s statements, which are part of his lectures on Schelling’s theodicy of freedom, may be compared to that of a Schellingian reversal: ‘Das Leben ist nicht Eigenschaft oder Produkt der thierischen Materie, sondern umgekehrt die Materie ist Produkt des Lebens,’ life is neither a product nor a property of living matter, but vice versa: living matter is a product of life. In Friedrich Schelling, Von der Weltseele, in id., Werke, vol. 1 (München: Beck und Oldenbourg, 1927), 568.

[556] ‘Der Mensch ist nur ein verwalter von Freiheit.’ Ibid., 134. Eng. trans. ibid, modified translation.

[557] ‘Der Mensch ist der Hirt des Seins.’ In Martin Heidegger, ‘Brief über den “Humanismus”’ [1946], GA 9, 313–364, 342. Eng. trans. id., ‘Letter on “Humanism”,’ Frank A. Capuzzi trans., in id., Pathmarks, William McNeill ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 239–276, 252, modified translation.

[558] ‘“Denken,” wie es die Erkenntnißtheoretiker ansetzen, kommt gar nicht vor: das ist eine ganz willkürliche Fiktion (. . .) “Der Geist,” etwas, das denkt, (. . .) diese Conception ist eine abgeleitete zweite Folge der falschen Selbstbeobachtung, welche an ‘“Denken” glaubt: hier ist erst ein Akt imaginirt, der gar nicht vorkommt, “das Denken” und zweitens ein Subjekt-Substrat imaginirt in dem jeder Akt dieses Denkens und sonst nichts Anderes seinen Ursprung hat: d.h. sowohl das Thun, als der Thäter sind fingirt.’ NF November 1887-März 1888, N. 11[113]; http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1887,11[113]; Eng. trans. Nietzsche, WLN, 222.

[559] ‘Au lieu d’abstraire à partir des substantifs, c’est à dire de concepts, ou des verbes, c’est à dire des opérations, et même des adverbes ou des adjectifs qui sont à côté du substantif ou du verbe, j’abstrais “vers,” “par,” “pour,” “de,” etc. le long des prépositions. Je les suis comme on emprunte une direction: on la prend puis on la laisse. On dirait que le sage grammairien qui les a baptisées ainsi devinait qu’elles précédaient toute position possible.’ In Michel Serres, Éclaircissements: Cinq entretiens avec Bruno Latour (Paris: Éditions François Bourin, 1992), 157. Eng. trans. id., Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time, R. Lapidus trans. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 106. The focus on prepositions is not just an issue of expression for Serres, who adds: ‘Once I have worked out the maritime map of these spaces and times that precede any thesis (meaning position), I can die. I will have done my work.’ Ibid.

[560] Michel Serres, ‘Le point de vue de la bio-physique,’ Critique, Mars 1976, 32(346), 265–277, 268.

[561] Serres takes turbulence as a model: ‘Turbulence isn’t a system, because its constituents fluctuate, fluid and mobile. Rather, it is a sort of confluence, a form in which fluxes and fluctuation enter, dance, crisscross, making together the sum and the difference, the product and the bifurcation, traversing scales of dimension. It recruits at the very heart of chaos by ceaselessly inventing different relations; it returns to it as well.’ In Serres, Conversations, 107.

[562] Whilst the Homeric characters directly listen to the commanding voice of the gods, Plato (Cra. 391d–392b) and Aristotle (Nic. Eth. 1178b), at best, use the gods and their reported statements as a rhetorical reference. See also Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1976).

[563] At the time of Plato this transformation is under way, and the characters of his dialogues still know Homer by heart. In the meantime, the Platonic Socrates (Cra. 425d) rhetorically suggests making an instrumental use of gods, similar to their deployment ex machina on stage, where they appear to solve playwrights’ intractable dilemmas.

[564] Plato, Rep. 443e.

[565] The Nietzschean text is tinged with the nostalgia for a resonance that is yet to come, and whose objective correlatives are collective subjects such as immoralists and Hyperboreans.

[566] As previously recalled, it may be argued that Hegel opens the way to the philosophical acknowledgement of our inner irreducible plurality, albeit captured within the rhetorical trope of opposition.

[567] The current disasters of economic and political freedom are only surpassed by the effects of their past and present absence: is up to us to construct a way out of this pincer.

[568] Plato, Cra. 389a. In the text, ὀνοματουργοῦ, onomatourgou, singular masculine genitive form.

[569] Ibid.

[570] Ibid., 390c. In the text, διαλεκτικόν, dialektikon, singular masculine accusative form.

[571] Ibid., 390e.

[572] Levinas claims that the subject at stake is ‘moi et non pas le Moi,’ which in English may be rendered as ‘myself and not my Self.’ In Emmanuel Levinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 163. Eng. trans. id., Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Alphonso Lingis trans. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 127, modified translation.

[573] ‘Inspiration, hétéronomie – le pneuma même du psychisme.’ Inspiration, heteronomy – the very pneuma [vital breathing] of the psyche. Ibid., 160. Eng. trans. ibid., 124, modified translation.

[574] Ibid., 157. Eng. trans. ibid., 122, modified translation.

[575] ‘L’un affecté par l’autre – traumatisme an-archique ou inspiration de l’un par l’autre et non pas causalité frappant, sur le mode mécanique, una matiére soumise à son énergie.’ Ibid., 158. Eng. trans. ibid., 123, modified translation.

[576] Levinas uses the term incarnation, incarnation or incorporation, in order to express both conditions of etre-dans-sa-peau, being-in-one’s-skin, and avoir-l’autre-dans-sa-peau, having-the-other-in-one’s-skin. Ibid., 146. Eng. trans. ibid., 115.

[577] Ibid., 160, original italics. Eng. trans. ibid., 125.

[578] ‘[L]a durée où nous agissons,’ in Henri Bergson, Matiére et Memoire (Paris: Alcan, 1903), 205. Eng. trans. id., Matter and Memory, N. M. Paul and W. Scott Palmer trans. (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 186.

[579] ‘Mais si la divisibilité de la matière est tout entière relative à notre action sur elle,’ ibid., 245. Eng. trans. ibid., 219.

[580] ‘[L]’Un comme sujet ou comme objet, comme réalité naturelle ou spirituelle, comme image et monde.’ In Deleuze and Guattari, Mille Plateaux, 14. Eng. trans. id., A Thousand Plateaus, 8.

[581] ‘Ne soyez pas un ni multiple, soyez des multiplicités!’ Ibid., 36. Eng. trans. ibid., 24. Deleuze himself contextualises his work in relation to the thinkers of his generation: ‘In all of us you find themes like multiplicity, difference, repetition. But I put forward almost raw concepts of these, while others work with more mediations.’ In Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, M. Joughin trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 88.

[582] ‘Que veut dire aimer quelqu’un? Toujours le saisir dans une masse, l’extraire d’un groupe (. . .) et puis chercher ses propres meutes, les multiplicités qu’il enferme en lui, et qui sont peut-être d’une tout autre nature. Les joindre aux miennes, les faire pénétrer dans les miennes, et pénétrer les siennes. Célestes épousailles, multiplicités de multiplicités.’ In Deleuze and Guattari, Mille Plateaux, 49, my italics. Eng. trans. id., A Thousand Plateaus, 35, modified translation.

[583] See, for example: ‘Une transduction d’états intensifs remplace la topologie.’ Transduction of intensive states replaces topology. Ibid., 26. Eng. trans. ibid., 17. See also supra, note 552.

[584] Deleuze and Guattari’s more detailed expression is ‘agencements collectifs d’énonciation,’ collective compositions of enunciation. Ibid., 13. Eng. trans. ibid., 7, modified translation.

[585] Following Brian Massumi’s translation, the French term agencement is generally rendered in English as ‘assemblage’: yet, the English word ‘composition’ better conveys the sense of the verb agencer as not merely bringing together, but also as the way in which various elements are combined and arranged together.

[586] Ontology ‒ a word that since Jacob Lorhard’s Ogdoas scholastica (St. Gallen: Georg Straub, 1606) defines the discourse about the answers to the Platonic question ‘what is it?’ ‒ may well be performative just like any other discourse: if this is the case, ontology itself is always already an ethics, which sets the configurations of the world as veritable injunctions. Of course, for example, Galileo and Newton do not prescribe bodies to fall, but they rather surreptitiously enjoin people to construct their relations with bodies, and with themselves inasmuch as bodies, according to a hierarchy of primary and secondary qualities. As we saw, Hobbes is quick to follow this injunction, and to take it further.

[587] See Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieures (Paris: Alcan, 1910). Eng. trans. id., How Natives Think, Lilian Ada Clare trans. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1926).

[588] ‘[P]artecipation mystique,’ ibid., 81. Eng. trans. ibid., 80 (modified translation).

[589] ‘[Ê]tre (. . .) à la fois eux-mêmes et autre chose qu’eux-mêmes.’ Ibid., 77. Eng. trans. ibid., 76 (modified translation). Lévy-Bruhl, who is trained as a philosopher, may be seen as unwittingly mapping the boundaries of Western ontology through the description of its supposed other, namely the so-called primitive.

[590] Already in 1921, though Jung appropriates Lévy-Bruhl’s notion of participation mystique, he observes that ‘it occurs not at all infrequently among civilized men [sic].’ In Carl Gustav Jung [1921], Psychological Types, Godwin Baynes trans. (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1946), 572–73.

[591] ‘[I]ch hatte ihr einige Tage vorher erklärt, “daß die ältesten Kindererlebnisse nicht mehr als solche zu haben sind, sondern durch ‘Übertragungen’ und Träume in der Analyse ersetzt werden”.’ In Sigmund Freud, Die Traumdeutung, in id., Gesammelte Werke, vol 2–3 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1961), 1–642, 190. Eng. trans. id., The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, James Strachey ed., vol. 4, The Interpretation of Dreams, first part (London: Hogarth Press, 1953), 184.

[592] Freud, 7 June 1909 letter to Jung, in Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung, Briefwechsel, W. McGuire and W. Sauerländer eds. (Zurich: Buchclub Ex Libris, 1976), 254–256, 255. Eng. trans. id., The Freud/Jung Letters: The Correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, W. McGuire ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 230–232, 231.

[593] This state is commonly addressed as one’s imitation of another: yet, since Plato the mimetic relation produces both the split between models and copies and the a priori severance of good copies from bad ones. We may instead recover the Platonic notion of μέθεξις [methexis], participation (for example, in Parm. 132d), provided that in a relation of participation with another, this second term, unlike the Platonic form, would be affected too.

[594] On the contrary, it is the absolutization of individual boundaries that justifies the selective segregation of prisons and asylums, whose inmates are generally a scandalously disproportionate sample of the total population. As Wittgenstein reminds us: ‘Kannst du die Grenzen angeben? Nein. Du kannst welche ziehen.’ Can you give the boundary? No. You can draw one. In Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical Investigations § 68, 33/33e.

[595] ὥστε κινήσεως καὶ μεταβολῆς ἔστιν εἴδη τοσαῦτα ὅσα τοῦ ὄντος [hōste kinēseōs kai metabolēs estin eidē tosauta hosa tou ontos], there are as many kinds of kinēsis and metabolē (change) as uses of ‘is.’ In Aristotle, Physics 201a. According to Aristotle, the difference between kinēsis and metabolē is that the latter also includes the changes from non-subject to subject (generation), and from subject to non-subject (death). Ibid., 225a–b.

[596] The modern term ‘locomotion,’ that defines the action or power to change position in space, literally expresses one of the three aspects of Aristotelian kinēsis, that one κατὰ τόπον [kata topon], that is, according to place. Ibid., 225b.

[597] I use here the word ‘incorporation’ because it is etymologically and semantically linked to the body, just like the word ‘incarnation,’ but without the latter’s strong theological association with the becoming flesh of the Christian god, and unlike the word ‘introjection,’ which Ferenczi devises in 1909 as a more general notion than transference. The sharp distinction between the notions of incorporation and introjection, which is theorised by Maria Torok and Nicolas Abraham, and somewhat acknowledged by Derrida as a clinical necessity, is not useful to my purpose of naming the operation of constitutive participation in general. See Sándor Ferenczi, Introjektion und Übertragung (Leipzig und Wien: Franz Deuticke, 1910), Eng. trans. Introjection and Transference in id., Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, Ernest Jones trans. (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1916); Maria Torok and Nicolas Abraham, Cryptonymie: Le verbier de L’Homme aux loups (Paris: Aubier Flammarion, 1976). Eng. trans. id., The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonymy, Nicholas Rand trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

[598] Bernard Stiegler, La technique et le temps 2. La désorientation (Paris: Galileé, 1996), 278. Eng. trans. id., Technics and Time 2: Disorientation, Stephen Barker trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 243.

[599] See Bernard Stiegler, La technique et le temps 1. La faute d’Épiméthée (Paris: Galileé, 1994). Eng. trans. id., Technics and Time 1: The Fault of Epimetheus, Richard Beardsworth and George Collins trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

[600] It may be objected that the exercise of collective freedoms requires not only the absence of interference with the collective subject, but also relations between individuals that allow their collective action: however, at least since Plato, these relations are subordinated to the very identity of the collective body, which is generally construed as an individual on a wider scale.

[601] Of course, liberation too is said in many ways, as Aristotle would put it: yet, other uses of the word, such as, for example, in its chemical or physical sense of ‘emission,’ would hardly fit our semantic context.

[602] Whilst the claims of freedom endorse the possibility of being and acting as oneself, the notion of transindividuation makes clear the impossibility of being and acting as just oneself. As throughdom turns this impossibility into the possibility of a fair participation, it may be thought as taking further Simondon’s reconsideration of the moral act in the light of his novel processual approach: ‘un acte qui n’est que lui même n’est pas un acte moral,’ an act which is nothing else than itself is not a moral act. In Simondon, L’individu et sa genése physico-biologique, 298.

[603] The metathesis of þruh for þurh occurs already circa 1300: ‘Bote þu þruh þin milde mod bringe me out of sunne.’ In Prayer to Virgin 8, Old Eng. Misc. (1872), 195. In OED, ‘through prep. and adv.’

[604] This use of the word þrúh is similar to one of the uses of the Greek term dianomos.

[605] OED, ‘through prep. and adv.’

[606] Whilst the word ‘through’ evokes the language of penetration and its subordination to pre-existing entities, its use as a generative tool is meant to challenge this subordination.

[607] The OED lists ‘alderdom, Anglo-Saxondom, boredom, Christendom, cuckoldom, dukedom, earldom, freedom, kingdom, martyrdom, popedom, sheriffdom, thraldom, wisdom, etc.’ In OED, ‘-dom, suffix.’

[608] In this sentence, ‘of relations’ is meant to be a subjective genitive: relations generate the space.

[609] More precisely, we may say that the word autos in its neuter form auto is applied by Plato with the function of predicate to another predicate, which is turned into a subject.

[610] In a 1972 conversation with Foucault, Deleuze remarks: ‘une théorie, c’est exactement comme une boîte à outils. Rien à voir avec le signifiant. . . Il faut que ça serve, il faut que ça fonctionne. Et pas pour soi-même.’ A theory is exactly like a box of tools. It has nothing to do with the signifier. It must be useful. It must function. And not for itself. In ‘Les intellectuels et le pouvoir,’ entretien de Michel Foucault avec Gilles Deleuze, in Michel Foucault, Dits et Écrits II, 309. Eng. trans. ‘Intellectuals and power: a conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze,’ in Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, Donald F. Bouchard ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 208.

[611] Augustine famously notices the disconcerting distance between the definition and the uses of a word: ‘quid est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.’ What is time then? If no one asks of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.’ In Augustine, Confessiones 11.14, PL 32, 816.

[612] The feminist slogan ‘the personal is political,’ which in the long sixties is also widely endorsed within radical movements, bravely challenges the dichotomy of private and public spheres. Whilst the identification of the two dimensions exposes the practical limits to theoretical freedom, it also carries the same ambiguity as the eighteenth-century declarations of rights, in which a prescription – man ought to be free – appears as a description of a state of fact – man is free. It is the very distinction between description and prescription in the modern constitution, to echo Latour, that, pace Hume, forces the ‘ought’ to appear as an ‘is.’ The explicit performativity of the discourse of throughdom may help challenge the divide between private and public without the pitfalls of modern surreptitious prescriptions in form of descriptions.

[613] For example, considering the current compenetration of advertising and social communication, it is remarkable that international human rights laws do not even mention the notion of freedom from information.

[614] David Bollier and Silke Helfrich, ‘Overture,’ in id. eds., Patterns of Commoning (Amherst, MA: Commons Strategy Group, 2015), 3.

[615] The notion of freedom may still be used productively, inasmuch as it overlaps with the notion of participation as reciprocal affection.

[616] It may be argued that human rights, by realising the legal condition (albeit non-binding) of a universal entitlement, overcome this limitation: nevertheless, also in this case, universalisation means assimilation to a perspective that is surreptitiously elevated to the condition of standard.

[617] This constituent exercise of entitlement may be understood as an extension beyond the sphere of Constitutional law of Sieyés’ notion of pouvoir constituant, constituent power. See Sieyès, What is the Third Estate?

[618] Supreme Court of the State of New York, Waller versus City of New York, Index No. 112957/2011, 4.

[619] The legal (de jure) acknowledgement of the mutual belonging of participation and entitlement would play a performative role in the reconstruction of both participation and entitlement.

[620] From this point of view, there is no difference between the storming of the Bastille and the occupation of Zuccotti Park.

[621] See Heraclitus, fr. 22 B91 Diels-Kranz.

[622] Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical Investigations § 7, 5/5e.

[623] Cultural prostheses include Zuccotti Park occupiers’ ‘tents, structures, generators, and other installations’ that I previously recalled, and also their ‘becoming-microphone.’

[624] Obviously, non-human participation always needs human mediation: for example, scientific experts represent objects in Latour’s expanded Parlement des Choses, The Parliament of Things. See Bruno Latour, Nous n’avons jamais été modernes. Essai d’anthropologie symétrique (Paris: La Découverte, 1991), 194. Eng. trans. id., We Have Never Been Modern, C. Porter trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 142. It is up to us to expand the range of human mediators beyond the traditional lot of the Vestals of metaphysics: philosophers, theologians, and scientists. For example, I suggested elsewhere including as parliamentary mediators also historians/genealogists, by acknowledging their traditional role of qualified representatives of the dead.

[625] According to the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, only one tenth of the world’s children have full legal protection from corporal punishment. See www.endcorporalpunishment.org/progress/countdown.html

[626] Following Deleuze’s suggestion to reverse Platonism with Plato’s own words, I am to turn Plato’s very argument about the subject against Western thought as Platonism: οὐκοῦν τούτων πάντων αἴτιον ὅτι αὐτοῦ τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ ἕκαστον τὰ αὑτοῦ πράττει ἀρχῆς τε πέρι καὶ τοῦ ἄρχεσθαι; [oukoun toutōn pantōn aition hoti autou tōn en autō hekaston ta hautou prattei arkhēs te peri kai tou arkhesthai?] And is not the cause of this to be found in the fact that each of the principles within him [being the Western traditional subject obviously male] does its own work in the matter of ruling and being ruled? In Plato, Rep. 443b.

[627] See Alain Ehrenberg, La Fatigue d’être soi: Dépression et société (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1998). Eng. trans. id., The Weariness of the Self, David Homel trans. (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010). Perhaps, we may now be able to make sense of Hegel’s cryptical hint to depression (see supra, 95), and even to see that the owl of Minerva may fly either after dark or before dawn, according to our chosen perspective.

[628] Plato captures differences by setting different entities in a hierarchical order: we saw that, in so doing, he turns the many into one, as it were, both in the polis and in the individual psykhē. Whilst we are generally able to recognise the Platonic operation of reductio ad unum and its effects in the outer sphere of social and political relations, we are yet to clearly detect this operation and its effects in the inner sphere. The power of the self over itself often does not even appear as a power: it has first to become visible as a power, so that the negotiation on the conditions of its exercise could be opened.

[629] The vocabulary of subjectivation is in no less need of renovation than that of freedom: the term ‘transindividuation’ is ultimately built upon Cicero’s translation of the Greek term ἄτομος [atomos], that is, non-divided, which he literally renders in Latin as in-dividuum (De Finibus 1.17). We saw that Simondon chooses to challenge this indivisibility with the word ‘transindividual,’ in which the Latin preposition ‘trans,’ that is, beyond, bridges the gap between individuals. Deleuze and Guattari later somewhat trace back this path, which they make bifurcate before the Ciceronian negative addition, and their dividuals express subjectivities that are less and more than the individual (Mille Plateaux 421). Yet, Deleuze soon detects that neoliberal apparatuses of capture exploit the dividual condition to extract information and exert control (‘Les sociétés de contrôle’): in particular, as Antoinette Rouvroy and Thomas Berns point out (‘Gouvernementalité algorithmique et perspectives d’émancipation. Le disparate comme condition d’individuation par la relation?’ Réseaux 1/177 (2013), 163–196), the process of dividual fragmentation is being intercepted by new digital strategies, each of which divide et impera, that is, divides and rules by statistically assembling infra-individual data into supra-individual models of behaviour. However, whilst dividuals are being taken hostage by neoliberal apparatuses, a different route may be opened by claiming at once our sub-individual components and their supra-individual connections. If, as Serres puts it, prepositions precede (and predefine) any possible position, it may be time to replace the Latin negative preposition ‘in’ in the word ‘individual,’ which at the same time constructs each of us as a fictitious unity, and obscures from view any kind of operation that happens on our partial selves. The Latin preposition ‘per,’ that is, through, together with the word ‘dividual’ may instead help to remind us that we are, so to speak, an inside which is always already traversed from the outside, and that we can choose some but not all that enters us and that we enter. Moreover, insofar as we are perdividuals, we could build paths of perdividuation, so as to bypass both traps of the old individuation bottleneck and the new neoliberal induced dispersion: but this is matter for another book.

[630] Here I am not pleading for a domestication of unconscious components via Habermasian dialogue: on the contrary, the felicitous example of Mary Barnes’ travel through and beyond her psychotic symptoms (even by taking Eusthatius’ invitation at face value) within the community of Kingsley Hall shows how transindividual (or better, perdividual) negotiations transcend the limits of languages and procedures. See Mary Barnes and Joseph Berke, Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1971).

[631] The Greek word πρόσθεσις [prosthesis] combines the preposition πρός [pros], expressing direction, with the verb τίθημι [tithēmi], to put, in order to describe an application (for example, of a ladder against the wall in Thuc. 4.135; of uterine irrigation in Hipp., Nat. Mul. 11): perhaps, another compound with the same verb, namely ἔνθεσις [enthesis], which describes the action of grafting and its result (see Geoponica 10.37.1), would better render the constitutive role of tools in the processes of transindividual subjectivation (or, even better, perdividuation). For example, just like the human deployment of the Palaeolithic flint, the use of writing is a process of becoming-internal, an enthesis, in which the boundary between writer and writing gets blurred, as the Platonic Thamus well understands (Phaedrus 275a–b). This blurring also affects the various boundaries between human and non-human, living and non-living, and, more generally, inner and outer: but this is matter for another book too.

[632] This renovation is to be understood as the deconstruction of both inward and outward architectures through the claim of that middle place in which we all already stand.

[633] [T]haumazō kai autos palai tēn emautou sofian kai apistō, I myself have long been marvelling at my own wisdom, and I cannot believe it. In Plato, Cra. 428d.

Selected bibliography

Abelard, Peter, Glossae super Peri Hermeneias, Klaus Jacobi, Christian Strub eds. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010).

——, Sic et non, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina (abbreviated PL), J. P. Migne ed. (Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1844–1855), vol. 178, 1329–1610.

Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Negative Dialectics, E. B. Ashton trans. (New York: Continuum, 1973).

Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund and Horkheimer, Max, Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag GmbH, 1969).

——, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Gunzelin Schmid Noerr ed., Edmund Jephcott trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).

Ambrose, Epistola 37, PL 16, 1083–1095.

Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, in id., Opera Omnia, vols. 4–12 (Rome: Typographia Polyglotta, 1888–1906).

Aristophanes, Aristophanes Comoediae, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart eds., vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907).

Aristotle, Aristotelis Categoriae et Liber De Interpretatione, L. Minio-Paluello ed., 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956).

——, Aristotelis “Ars rhetorica,” Rudolf Kassel ed. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1976).

——, Aristotelis Atheniensium Respublica, F. G. Kenyon ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1920).

——, Aristoteles’ “Politik,” Alois Dreizehnter ed. (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1970).

——, Eudemian Ethics, R. R. Walzer and J. M. Mingay eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).

——, Physica, W. D. Ross ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950).

——, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, W. D. Ross ed., 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924).

——, De anima, W. D. Ross ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956).

——, Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea, F. Susemihl ed., Otto Apelt rev., 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Taubner, 1903).

——, Prior Analytics, W. D. Ross ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928).

——, De la Génération et la Corruption, Marwan Rashed ed. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2005).

Arnim, Hans Friedrich August von, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1903–1905).

Aubrey, John, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, O. L. Dick ed. (London: Secker and Warburg, 1950).

Augustine, Retractationes, PL 32, 583–656.

——, Confessiones, PL 32, 659–868.

——, De libero arbitrio, PL 32, 1221–1310.

——, De Civitate Dei, PL 41, 13–804.

——, Contra Adimantum Manichaei discipulum, PL 42, 129–172.

——, De Correptione et Gratia, PL 44, 915–946.

Austin, John Langshaw, ‘Truth,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 24 (1950): 111–128, reprinted in id., Philosophical Papers, J. O. Urmson and Geoffrey Warnock eds., 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 117–133, 130.

——, ‘A Plea for Excuses,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, vol. 57 (1956–1957): 1–30, reprinted in id., Philosophical Papers, 175–204, 180.

——, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962).

Bakhtin, Mikhail, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, C. Emerson trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).

Baldus de Ubaldis, Lectura in VI–IX libros Codicis (Lyon: Johannes Siber, 1498).

——, Super Decretalibus (Lyon: Pierre Fradin, 1551).

Barnes, Mary, and Berke, Joseph, Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1971).

Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Commentaria ad Digestum Vetus, Tommaso Diplovatazio ed. (Venezia: Battista Torti, 1520).

Bémont, Charles, Chartes des libertés anglaises (1100–1305) (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1892).

Benveniste, Émile, Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, 2 vols. (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1969).

——, Indo-European Language and Society (London: Faber and Faber, 1973).

Bergson, Henri, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (Paris: Alcan, 1889).

——, Time and Free Will, F. L. Pogson trans. (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1910).

——, Matiére et Memoire (Paris: Alcan, 1903).

——, Matter and Memory, N. M. Paul and W. Scott Palmer trans. (New York: Zone Books, 1991).

Berlin, Isaiah, Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958).

——, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).

——, The Roots of Romanticism (London: Chatto and Windus, 1999).

Berman, Harold Joseph, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).

Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola 190, PL 182, 1049–1054.

Bickerman, Elias, ‘Autonomia. Sur un passage de Thucydide (I, 144, 2),’ Revue Internationale des Droits de l’Antiquité 5(1958), 313–344.

Blanc, Luis, Histoire des dix ans. 1830–1840, vol. 1 (Paris: Pagnerre, 1841).

Bollier, David and Helfrich, Silke eds., Patterns of Commoning (Amherst, MA: Commons Strategy Group, 2015).

Borges, Jorge Luis, Obras Completas, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1974).

——, Other Inquisitions, Ruth L. C. Simms trans. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964).

——, Selected Non-Fictions, Eliot Weinberger ed. (New York: Viking, 1999).

Bruhl, Adrien, Liber Pater. Origine et expansion du culte dionisiaque à Rome et dans le monde Romain (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1953).

Buber, Martin, Between Man & Man, Ronald Gregor Smith trans. (London: Fontana, 1966).

Calvin, Jean, Institutio Christianae Religionis (Geneve: Robert Estienne, 1559).

——, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Ford Lewis Battles trans., T. McNeill ed., 2 vols. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960).

Canning, Joseph, Ideas of Power in the Late Middle Ages, 1296–1417 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

——, The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Carnap, Rudolf ‘Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache,’ Erkenntnis 2 (1): 219–241 (1931).

——, ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language,’ A. Pap trans., in Logical Positivism, A. J. Ayer ed. (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1959), 60–81.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius, M. Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, David Roy Shackleton Bailey ed., 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Bibliotheca Teubneriana, 1987–1988).

——, M. Tulli Ciceronis de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum Libri Quinque, Leighton Durham Reynolds ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).

Constant, Benjamin ‘De la liberté des anciens comparée a celle des modernes,’ in id., Œuvres Politiques de Benjamin Constant, C. Louandre ed. (Paris: Charpentier, 1874), 258–286.

——, ‘The Liberty of the Ancients compared with that of the Moderns,’ in id., Political Writings, Biancamaria Fontana ed. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 308–328.

Dante, Divina Commedia, Giorgio Petrocchi ed., 3 vols. (Milano: Mondadori, 1966–67).

Deleuze, Gilles, Différence et répétition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968).

——, Difference and Repetition, Paul Patton trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).

——, ‘Les sociétés de contrôle,’ L’Autre Journal, n. 1, Mai 1990, 111–114. Reprinted as ‘Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle’ in id., Pourparlers (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1990), 240–247.

——, ‘Postscript on the societies of control,’ October, 59: 3–7 (1992).

——, Negotiations, M. Joughin trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).

Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, Mille Plateaux: Capitalisme et schizophrénie, 2 (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1980).

——, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Brian Massumi trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

Derrida, Jacques, ‘La structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines’ in id., L’écriture et la différence (Paris: Seul, 1967), 409–429.

——, ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’ in id., Writing and Difference, Alan Bass trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 278–294.

Descartes, René, Principia Philosophiae (Amsterdam: Louis Elzevir, 1644).

——, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Paris: Michel Soly, 1641).

——, Meditations on First Philosophy, John Cottingham ed. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Devas, Charles Stanton, The Groundwork of Economics (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1883).

Diderot, Denis, ‘Droit naturel,’ in Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnare Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers (Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton, Durand, 1755), vol. 5, 115–116.

——, ‘Natural right,’ in Diderot: Political Writings, J. Hope Mason and R. Wokler eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 17–21.

Diehl, Ernst, ed., Anthologia Lyrica Graeca, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1925).

Diels, Hermann, ed., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed., Walther Kranz rev., 3 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1952).

Dio Chrysostom, Dionis Prusaensis quem uocant Chrysostomum quae exstant omnia, Hans von Arnim ed., 2 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1893–1896).

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Tiziano Dorandi ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

——, Dionysii Halicarnasei Opuscula, Hermann Usener and Ludwig Radermacher eds. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1899–1929).

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, The Roman Antiquities, Earnest Cary ed., 7 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1937–50).

Dionysius Thrax, Technē grammatikē, Giovan Battista Pecorella ed. (Bologna: Cappelli, 1962).

Duns Scotus, John, Opera Omnia, Luke Wadding ed., vol. 3, Quaestiones in Libros IV, V, VI, VII, VIII Physicorum Aristotelis, in Libros Aristotelis De Anima (Paris: Ludovico Vives, 1891).

Ehrenberg, Alain, La Fatigue d’être soi: Dépression et société (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1998).

——, The Weariness of the Self, David Homel trans. (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010).

Einstein, Albert, Born, Max and Born, Hedwig, Briefwechsel 1916–1955 (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1972).

——, The Born-Einstein Letters; Correspondence between Albert Einstein and Max and Hedwig Born from 1916 to 1955, Irene Born trans. (New York: Walker, 1971).

Eliot, Thomas Stearns, The Sacred Wood (London: Methuen & Co., 1920).

Engels, Friedrich, Anti-Dühring, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Gesamtausgabe (abbreviated MEGA), Band 1.27 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1988), 217–582.

——, Anti-Dühring, Emile Burns trans., in Marx and Engels Collected Works (abbreviated MECW), vol. 25 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975), 1–309.

Epictetus, The Discourses as Reported By Arrian, The Manual, and Fragments, William Abbott Oldfather trans., 2 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1925–1928).

Eriugena, John Scotus, Iohannis Scotti de divina praedestinatione, Goulven Madec ed. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978).

Euripides, Euripidis Fabulae, James Diggle ed., 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981–1994).

Eusebius of Caesarea, Praeparatio Evangelica, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca (abbreviated PG), J. P. Migne ed. (Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1857–1866), vol. 21, 21–1456.

Eusthatius of Thessalonica, Eusthatii Commentarii, in Geographi Graeci minores, Karl Müller ed., vol. 2 (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1861), 201–407.

Ferenczi, Sándor, Introjektion und Übertragung (Leipzig and Wien: Franz Deuticke, 1910).

——, Introjection and Transference, in id., Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, Ernest Jones trans. (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1916), 30–79.

Foucault, Michel, Folie et déraison: histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (Paris: Plon, 1961).

——, History of Madness, Jean Khalfa ed., Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa trans. (London: Routledge, 2006).

——, Naissance de la clinique: une archéologie du regard médical (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963).

——, The Birth of the Clinic, Alan Sheridan trans. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973).

——, ‘Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire,’ in Hommage à Jean Hyppolite, Suzanne Bachelard ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), 145–172.

——, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,’ in id., Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, Donald F. Bouchard ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 139–164.

——, Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975).

——, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Alan Sheridan trans. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).

——, Histoire de la sexualité, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1976–1984).

——, The History of Sexuality, 3 vols., Robert Hurley trans. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978–1986).

——, ‘L’ éthique du souci de soi comme pratique de la liberté,’ in id., Dits et Écrits IV (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 708–729.

——, ‘The ethics of the concern of the self as a practice of freedom,’ in id., Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth: The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, vol. 1, P. Rabinow ed. (New York: The New Press, 2006), 281–301.

Freud, Sigmund, Die Traumdeutung, in id., Gesammelte Werke, vols. 2–3 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1961), 1–642.

——, The Interpretation of Dreams, in id., The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, James Strachey ed., vol. 4 (London: Hogarth Press, 1953).

Freud, Sigmund, and Jung, Carl Gustav, Briefwechsel, W. McGuire and W. Sauerländer eds. (Zurich: Buchclub Ex Libris, 1976).

——, The Freud/Jung Letters: The Correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, W. McGuire ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).

Gaius, The Institutes of Gaius: Part 1: Text with Critical Notes and Translation, Francis De Zulueta ed. and trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946).

Galilei, Galileo, Istoria e Dimostrazioni intorno alle Macchie Solari e loro Accidenti (Roma: Giacomo Mascardi, 1613).

——, Il Saggiatore (Roma: Giacomo Mascardi, 1623).

——, The Assayer (excerpts), in Stillman Drake, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1957).

——, Dialogo sopra i due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo (Firenze: Giovan Battista Landini, 1632).

——, Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic & Copernican, Stillman Drake trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).

Galilei, Galileo and Scheiner, Cristoph, On Sunspots, Eileen Reeves and Albert Van Helden trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

de Gouges, Olympe, Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne, Emanuèle Gaulier ed. (Paris: Mille et une nuits, 2003).

——, ‘Declaration of the rights of woman and the female citizen,’ in John R. Cole, Between the Queen and the Cabby: Olympe de Gouge’s Rights of Woman (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 30–34.

Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio Catechetica, PG 45, 9–106.

Gregory of Rimini, Super Primo et Secundo Sententiarum, Augusto Montefalco ed., 2 vols. (Venezia: Lucantonio Giunti, 1522).

Gregory the Great, Dialogi, PL 77, 149–432.

Gregory VII, Epistola 3, in Registrum, PL 148, 606–609.

Grotius, Hugo, De Jure Belli ac Pacis (Paris: Nicolaus Buon, 1625).

Haskins, Charles Homer, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927).

Havelock, Eric Alfred, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963).

Hayek, Friedrich, The Road to Serfdom, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944).

——, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).

——, ‘Remembering My Cousin, Ludwig Wittgenstein,’ in Encounter, August 1977, 20–22.

Hecht, Hans, ed., Bischofs Wærferth von Worcester: Übersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen (Leipzig: Wigand, 1900).

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Über die wissenschaftlichen Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts, seine Stelle in der praktischen Philosophie und sein Verhältnis zu den positiven Rechtswissenschaften, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), Band 2, 434–530.

——, Natural Law: The Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law, Its Place in Moral Philosophy, and Its Relation to the Positive Sciences of Law, T. M. Knox. trans. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975).

——, Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, M. Petry ed., 3 vols. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1978).

——, Phänomenologie des Geistes, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), Band 3.

——, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, A. V. Miller trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).

——, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), Band 7.

——, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Allen W. Wood ed., H. B. Nisbet trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

——, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse I, Die Wissenschaft der Logik, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), Band 8.

——, The Encyclopaedia Logic, Part I of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991).

——, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse III, Die Philosophie des Geistes, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), Band 10.

——, Philosophy of Mind: Translated from the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, William Wallace trans. (New York: Cosimo, 2008).

——, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie II, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971), Band 19.

——, Lectures on the History of Philosophy vol. 2, E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson trans. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1894).

——, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie III, in id., Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971), Band 20.

——, Lectures on the History of Philosophy vol. 3, E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson trans. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1896).

——, The Letters, Clark Butler and Christiane Seiler trans. and eds. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984).

Heidegger, Martin, Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie (Freiburger Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1930), in id., Gesamtausgabe, Band 31 (Frankfurt: Verlag Vittorio Klostermann, 1982).

——, The Essence of Human Freedom: An Introduction to Philosophy, Ted Sadler trans. (London: Continuum, 2002).

——, ‘Brief über den “Humanismus”,’ in id., Gesamtausgabe, Band 9 (Frankfurt: Verlag Vittorio Klostermann, 1976), 313–364.

——, ‘Letter on “Humanism”,’ in id., Pathmarks, Frank A. Capuzzi trans., William McNeill ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 239–276.

Herodotus, Herodoti Historiae, Nigel Guy Wilson ed., 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of A Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (London: Andrew Crooke, 1651).

Homer, Homeri Opera, David B. Monro and Thomas W. Allen eds., 5 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1920).

Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, 3 vols. (London: John Noon/Thomas Longman, 1739–1740).

Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, PL 82, 73–728.

——, Sententiae, PL 83, 537–738.

Isocrates, Opera Omnia, Vasilis G. Mandilaras ed., 3 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 2003).

Jakobson, Roman, ‘Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances,’ in Roman Jakobson and Morris Halle, Fundamentals of Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1956), 53–82.

Jaynes, Julian, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1976).

Jerome, Epistola 22, PL 22, 394–425.

John of Salisbury, Ioannis Saresberiensis Metalogicon, J. B. Hall and K. S. B. Keats-Rohan eds. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991).

Josephus, Flavius, Flavii Josephi opera, J. A. Benedikt Niese ed., 7 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1885–1895).

Kant, Immanuel, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in id., Gesammelte Schriften (Akademie Ausgabe, abbreviated AA), Band 3, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1911).

——, Critique of Pure Reason, P. Guyer and A. W. Wood eds. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

——, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, AA 4, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1911).

——, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Mary Gregor ed. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

——,‘Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?,’ in id., AA 8, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1923), 33–42.

——, ‘An answer to the question: What is enlightenment?’ In id., Practical Philosophy, Mary J. Gregor ed. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 11–22.

——, ‘Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis,’ in id., AA 8, 273–313.

——, On the common saying: that may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice,’ in id., Practical Philosophy, Mary J. Gregor ed. and trans., 273–309.

——, Bemerkungen zu den Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen, id., AA 20, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1942), 1–192.

——, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and Other Writings, P. Frierson and P. Guyer eds. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 65–202.

——, ‘Selbständige Reflexionen im Handexemplar der Kritik der reinen Vernunft (A)’ in id., AA 23 (Berlin: Reimer, 1955), 20–43.

Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye, To opbyggelige Taler (Copenhagen: Philipsen, 1843).

——, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Howard Vincent Hong and Edna Hatlestad Hong trans. and eds. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).

La Boétie, Étienne de, De la servitude volontaire ou Contr’un, Malcolm Smith ed. (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1987).

Laroche, Emmanuel, Histoire de la Racine NEM- en Grec Ancien (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1949).

Latour, Bruno, Nous n’avons jamais été modernes. Essai d’anthropologie symétrique (Paris: La Découverte, 1991).

——, We Have Never Been Modern, C. Porter trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

Levinas, Emmanuel, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974).

——, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Alphonso Lingis trans. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994).

Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieures (Paris: Alcan, 1910).

——, How Natives Think, Lilian Ada Clare trans. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1926).

Lindsay, W. M., ed., Sexti Pompei Festi De verborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli epitome (Leipzig: Teubner, 1913).

Livy, Ab urbe condita, Libri I–V, R. M. Ogilvie ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974).

Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, Peter Laslett ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Lorhard, Jacob, Ogdoas scholastica (St. Gallen: Georg Straub, 1606).

Löwith, Karl, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought, David E. Green trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).

de Lubac, Henri, Corpus mysticum. L’Eucharistie et l’Église au Moyen Âge, 2nd ed. (Paris: Aubier, 1949).

——, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, Gemma Simmonds with Richard Price and Christopher Stephens trans. (London: SCM, 2006).

Luther, Martin, Von der Freiheit eines Chistenmenschen, in id., D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe, abbreviated WA), 120 Banden (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–2009), Band 7, 20–38.

——, De Libertate Christiana, WA 7, 49–73.

——, Von welltlicher uberkeytt wie weytt man yhr gehorsam schuldig sey, WA 11, 245–281.

——, Widder die stürmenden bawren, best known as Wider die räuberischen und mörderischen Rotten der Bauern, WA 18, 357–361.

——, ‘Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants,’ in Martin Luther, Documents of Modern History, E. G. Rupp and Benjamin Drewery eds. (London: Edward Arnold, 1970), 121–126.

——, De servo arbitrio, WA 18, 600–787.

Machiavelli, Niccolò, Discorsi di Nicolo Machiauelli cittadino, et segretario fiorentino, sopra la prima deca di Tito Liuio (Roma: Alberto Blado, 1531).

——, Il Principe (Roma: Alberto Blado, 1532).

de Maistre, Joseph, De la souveraineté du peuple (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992).

——, Study on Sovereignty, in id., The Works of Joseph de Maistre, Jack Lively ed. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1965), 93–129.

Malebranche, Nicolas, Traité de la nature et de la grâce, in id., Œuvres complètes, vol. V (Paris: Vrin, 1976).

——, A Treatise on Nature and Grace (London: John Whitlock, 1695).

Marcuse, Herbert, ‘Ideengeschichtlicher Teil,’ in M. Horkheimer ed., Studien über Autorität und Familie (Paris: Alcan, 1936), 136–228.

——, ‘A Study on Authority,’ in id., Studies in Critical Philosophy, Joris De Bres trans. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), 49–155.

Marsilius de Padua, Defensor Pacis, Richard Scholz ed., 2 vols. (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1932–1933).

Marx, Karl, Grundrisse, MEGA 2.1.1 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1976).

——, Grundrisse, Martin Nicolaus trans. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973).

——, Kritik des Gothaer Programms, MEGA 1.25 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1985), 5–25.

——, Critique of the Gotha Programme (letter to Wilhelm Bracke), Peter and Betty Ross trans., MECW 24 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989), 75–99.

Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Die Deutsche Ideologie, MEGA 1.5 (Glashütten im Taunus: Verlag Detlev Auvermann KG, 1970).

——, The German Ideology, Clemens Dutt, W. Lough and C. P. Margill trans., MECW 5 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975).

Maturana, Humberto and Varela, Francisco, De Máquinas y Seres Vivos (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1972).

Menander, Menander, W. Geoffrey Arnott ed., 3 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1979–2000).

Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty (London: John W. Parker and Son, 1859).

Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Discours sur les motifs, in id., Œuvres complètes, Tome 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1949).

——, De l’Esprit des Loix, 2 vols. (Genève: Barrillot & Fils, 1748).

——, The Spirit of the Laws, Thomas Nugent trans., 2 vols. (London: J. Nourse and P. Vaillant, 1758).

Nancy, Jean-Luc, Être singulier pluriel (Paris: Galilée, 1996).

——, Being Singular Plural, Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O’Byrne trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).

Newton, Isaac, Opticks (London: W. and J. Innys, 1718).

——, Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Alexandre Koyré and I. Bernard Cohen eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Morgenröthe, Digital Critical Edition, http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/M-Titelblatt

——, Daybreak, Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter eds., R. J. Hollingdale trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

——, Also sprach Zarathustra, Digital Critical Edition, http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/Za-I-Titelblatt

——, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Adrian Del Caro and Robert B. Pippin eds., Adrian Del Caro trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

——, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Digital Critical Edition, http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/JGB-Titelblatt

——, Beyond Good and Evil, R. P. Horstmann and J. Norman eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

——, Zur Genealogie der Moral, Digital Critical Edition, http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/GM-Titelblatt

——, On the Genealogy of Morality, Keith Ansell-Pearson ed., Carol Diethe trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

——, Götzen-Dämmerung, Digital Critical Edition, http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/GD-Titelblatt

——, Ecce homo, Digital Critical Edition, http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/EH-Titelblatt

——, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, A. Ridley and J. Norman eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

——, Nachgelassene Fragmente, Digital Critical Edition, http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1885,34

——, Nachgelassene Fragmente, Digital Critical Edition, http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1885,35

——, Nachgelassene Fragmente, Digital Critical Edition, http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1885,40

——, Nachgelassene Fragmente, Digital Critical Edition, http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1887,9

——, Nachgelassene Fragmente, Digital Critical Edition, http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1887,11

——, Writings from the Late Notebooks, Rüdiger Bittner ed., Kate Sturge trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Ockham, William, Summa Logicae, Philotheus Boehner, Gedeon Gál, and Stephanus Brown eds. (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1974).

Origen, De Principiis, P. Koetschau ed. (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrich’sche Buchhandlung, 1913).

——, On First Principles, G. W. Butterworth trans. (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1936).

Ostwald, Martin, Autonomia: Its Genesis and Early History (New York: Scholars Press, 1982).

Paton, W. R., trans., The Greek Anthology, 5 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1916–1927).

Patterson, Orlando, Freedom, Vol. 1: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (London: Tauris & Co., 1991).

Paul, Epistolai in Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 28th ed., Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Carlo M. Martini, and Bruce M. Metzger eds. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012).

Pausanias, Description of Greece, W. H. S. Jones and H. A. Ormerod trans., 4 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1918).

Peter Lombard, Commentarius in Epistolam I ad Corinthios, PL 191, 1533–1696.

——, Sententiarum libri quatuor, PL 192, 521–1112.

Philo of Alexandria, ‘Concerning Noah’s work as a planter’ (De Plantatione), in id., Philo, vol. 3, F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker trans. (London: Heinemann, 1930), 207–305.

——, ‘On dreams, that they are God-sent’ (De Somniis), in id., Philo, vol. 5, F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker trans. (London: Heinemann, 1934), 283–579.

——, ‘Every good man is free’ (Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit), in id., Philo, vol. 9, F. H. Colson trans. (London: Heinemann, 1941), 1–101.

Pindar, The Odes of Pindar, John Sandys trans. (London: Heinemann, 1937).

Plato, Platonis Opera, John Burnet ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900–1907).

——, Plato: Complete Works, John M. Cooper ed., D. S. Hutchinson ass. ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997).

Plautus, T. Macci Plauti Comoediae, Wallace Martin Lindsay ed., 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1904–1905).

Plotinus, Plotini Opera, Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer eds., 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964–1984).

Plutarch, ‘Platonic Questions,’ in id., Moralia, vol. 13a, Harold Cherniss ed. (London: Heinemann, 1976), 1–129.

——, ‘On Stoic Self-Contradictions’ (De Stoicorum repugnantiis), in id., Moralia, vol. 13b, Harold Cherniss ed. (London: Heinemann, 1976), 367–603.

Polybius, The Histories, William Roger Paton ed., 6 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1922–1927).

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, De Mystica Theologia, PG 3, 997–1048.

Raaflaub, Kurt, The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece, Renate Franciscono trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

Rabelais, François, La vie tres horrificque du grand Gargantua, pere de Pantagruel iadis composee par M. Alcofribas abstracteur de quinte essence (Lyon: François Juste, 1534).

Rosenstock-Huessy, Eugen, Out of Revolution: Autobiography of Western Man (Providence: Berg, 1993).

Rougemont, Denis de, ‘Denis de Rougemont: Tel qu’en lui-même,’ Cadmos 33: 7–23 (1986).

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, Du contrat social (Amsterdam: Marc Michel Rey, 1762).

——, The Social Contract and The First and Second Discourses, Susan Dunn ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).

Rouvroy, Antoinette and Berns, Thomas, ‘Gouvernementalité algorithmique et perspectives d’émancipation. Le disparate comme condition d’individuation par la relation?,’ Réseaux 1/177 (2013), 163–196.

Runia, David Theunis, Philo in Early Christian Literature (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1993).

Ryle, Gilbert, ‘The Thinking of Thoughts: What “Le Penseur” is doing,’ University Lectures, n. 18, 1968, the University of Saskatchewan.

Schilpp, Paul Arthur, Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, Von der Weltseele, eine Hypothese der höheren Physik zur Erklärung des allgemeinen Organismus, in id., Werke, Manfred Schöter ed., vol. 1 (München: Beck und Oldenbourg, 1927), 413–652.

Schmitt, Carl, Politische Theologie. Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1922).

——, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, George Schwab trans. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985).

——, Der Begriff des Politischen (München: Duncker & Humblot, 1932).

——, The Concept of the Political, George Schwab trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

——, Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1950).

——, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, G. L. Ulmen trans. (New York: Telos Press, 2006).

Serres, Michel, ‘Le point de vue de la bio-physique,’ Critique, Mars 1976, 32(346): 265–277.

——, Éclaircissements: Cinq entretiens avec Bruno Latour (Paris: Éditions François Bourin, 1992).

——, Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time, R. Lapidus trans. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).

Sieyès, Emmanuel-Joseph, Qu’est-ce que le Tiers état? (Paris: 1789).

——, What is the Third Estate?, M. Blondel trans. (London: Pall Mall Press, 1963).

Simondon, Gilbert, L’individu et sa genése physico-biologique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964).

——, L’individuation psychique et collective à la lumière des notions de forme, information, potentiel et métastabilité (Paris: Aubier, 1989).

Skinner, Quentin, ‘A Third Concept of Liberty,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 117 (2002), 237–268.

Sophocles, Antigone, in id., Sophocles, vol. 1: Oedipus the king, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Francis Storr trans. (London: Heinemann, 1912).

Spencer-Brown, George, Laws of Form (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969).

Spinoza, Baruch, Opera, C. Gebhardt ed. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Verlag, 1925).

——, Complete Works, Michael L. Morgan ed. and trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002).

Stiegler, Bernard, La technique et le temps 1. La faute d’Épiméthée (Paris: Galileé, 1994).

——, Technics and Time 1: The Fault of Epimetheus, Richard Beardsworth and George Collins trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

——, La technique et le temps 2. La désorientation (Paris: Galileé, 1996).

——, Technics and Time 2: Disorientation, Stephen Barker trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).

Stirner, Max, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (Leipzig: Wigand, 1845).

——, The Ego and Its Own, David Leopold ed., Steve Byington rev. trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Stobaeus, Ioannis Stobaei Anthologium, Curt Wachsmuth and Otto Hense eds., 5 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1884–1912).

Tellenbach, Gerd, Church, State and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest, R. F. Bennett trans. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970).

Terence, P. Terenti Afri Comoediae, Robert Kauer and Wallace M. Lindsay eds., Otto Skutsch rev. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958).

Thucydides, Historiae, Henry Stuart Jones and John Enoch Powell eds., 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942).

——, The Peloponnesian War, Thomas Hobbes trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

Torok, Maria and Abraham, Nicolas, Cryptonymie: Le verbier de L’Homme aux loups (Paris: Aubier Flammarion, 1976).

——, The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonymy, Nicholas Rand trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

Toulmin, Stephen, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York: Free Press, 1990).

Ventris, Michael and Chadwick, John, Documents in Mycenaean Greek: Three Hundred Selected Tablets from Knossos, Pylos and Mycenae, with Commentary and Vocabulary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956).

Vitruvius, On Architecture, Frank Granger ed., 2 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1931–1934).

Winstanley, Gerrard, Winstanley: ‘The Law of Freedom’ and Other Writings, Christopher Hill ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

Wirszubski, Charles, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome During the Late Republic and the Principate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950).

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical Investigations, G. E. M. Anscombe and R. Rhees eds., G. E. M. Anscombe trans., 2nd ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958).

Wycliffe, John, Of Dominion, in id., The English Works of Wyclif, F. D. Matthew ed. (London: Trubner & Co., 1880), 282–293.

Xenophon, Opera omnia, Edgar Cardew Marchant ed., 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900–1920).

Index

On the index and use of terms

One of the aims of this book is to highlight the shifts in the uses of words regardless of their definitions, so the index follows the unorthodox practice of surveying the mere presence of the word (be it an adjective, a noun, or a name) on the page, and not the frequent practice of delimiting the various aspects of a word with specific definitions.

A

abasileutos 21

Abelard, Peter 5, 51, 60

Abraham, Nicolas 151

Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund 88, 116

Aeolic 9

Aeschylus 13, 21, 26, 40

agathon 121

agencement 37, 147

Aitna 10, 11

akōlytōs 44

Alcibiades 132

Alcmaeon 24

Alfred of Wessex 47

Ambrose 38

Ammonius Saccas 43

amoiros 22

anarkhia 21

anarkhos 21

anarktos 21

Anaximander xv, 129

anēgemoneutos 21

anempodistos 22

anepitaktos 21

aneuthynos 22

Antigone 28

anypeuthynos 22

aouton 21

apeiron xv, 129

apheimenos 22

aphetos 22

apokatastasis 43, 45

apophasis 44

Aquinas, Thomas 5, 52, 54, 70, 71

Archilochus 3

Aristobulus 38, 39

Aristotelian 5, 16, 19, 44, 51, 54, 69, 71, 80, 83, 112, 121, 125, 161, 169

Aristotle 4, 8, 13, 15–19, 22, 24, 25, 38, 44, 53, 54, 68, 69, 71, 72, 80, 81, 104, 109, 110, 116, 120, 121, 124, 128, 132, 133, 134, 137, 142, 148, 151

arkhein 18, 25

arkhesthai 18, 25, 162

Astyages 12, 19

atomos 164

Attic xvii, 9, 10, 25, 26

atyranneutos 21

Aubrey, John 66, 67

Augustine 45, 49, 52, 60, 86, 87

Austin, John Langshaw xiv, 125, 127

autexousion 29, 44

autonomia 27, 28, 86

Autonomie des Willens 29, 86

autonomos 27, 28

autonomy 29, 51, 55, 76, 86, 133, 135, 136, 137, 143, 157

autopoiesis 137

autos xvi, 21, 27, 155, 165

B

Bakhtin, Mikhail 130

Baldus de Ubaldis 55, 56, 79

Barnes, Mary 164

Bartolus of Sassoferrato 55, 56

Benveniste, Émile 3, 13, 23, 30, 35

Bergson, Henri xvi, 113, 114, 115, 160

Berke, Joseph 164

Berlin, Isaiah 19, 25, 88, 125, 126, 178

Berman, Harold Joseph 51

Bernard of Chartres xiv

Bernard of Clairvaux 51, 59

Berns, Thomas 164

Bickerman, Elias 28

Bion of Borysthenes 19

Blanc, Luis 98

Bohr, Niels 115, 116

Borges, Jorge Luis 40, 66, 67

bouleutikon 16

Briseis 8

Bruhl, Adrien 30

C

Calvinism 59

Calvin, Jean 59, 60, 62, 67, 79

canon law 51

Carnap, Rudolf 101

Chadwick, John 7

Christian xviii, 1, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54, 57, 60, 61, 62, 74, 80, 82, 84, 85, 93, 100, 110, 151

Christian Golden Rule 85

Christianity 41, 45, 47, 50, 57, 94, 98

Chryseis 8

Chrysippus 29, 44

Cicero 33

Constant, Benjamin 95, 96, 97, 124

concept xviii, 43, 53, 61, 69, 73, 74, 84, 89, 92, 99 120, 122, 126, 134, 147

D

Dante 52, 53, 57

Deleuze, Gilles 37, 134, 135, 146, 147, 155, 162

depression 95, 162

Derrida, Jacques 99, 102

Descartes, René 142

Devas, Charles Stanton 116

dianomy 137, 138, 143

Diderot, Denis 77

Dio Chrysostom 28, 29, 86

Diogenes 20

Diogenes Laërtius 20

Dionysius of Halicarnassus 31, 127

Dionysius Thrax 4

Doric Greek 10

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 130, 143, 169

doulion 7, 11

doulos 17, 42

Duns Scotus, John 83

E

Ehrenberg, Alain 162

Eigentum 100, 101

Einstein, Albert 114, 115, 116

eleuthera 8

eleutheria xvii, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 18, 20, 28, 41, 44, 50, 99

eleutheriē 9, 12

eleutherios 11

eleutheron xvii, 1, 2, 3, 7, 11, 12, 23, 37

eleutheros xvii, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16, 41, 42, 108

Eliot, Thomas Stearns 7, 65

emancipatio 34

emancipation 12, 34, 41, 97

Engels, Friedrich 101, 102, 105

Enlightenment 84

enthesis xx, 165

ep’ autō 44

Epictetus 28

epithet 5, 10, 30, 155

e-re-u-te-ro 7

Eriugena, John Scotus 46, 47, 85

Euclid 66, 72

Euripides 12, 19, 22, 26, 40

Eusebius of Caesarea 38

Eusthatius of Thessalonica 119, 164

F

Ferenczi, Sándor 151

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 88

Fortune 11, 57

Foucault, Michel 102, 127, 130, 131, 153, 155

free xvii, 1, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23, 28–32, 32, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 76, 81, 84, 88, 93, 94, 100, 105, 111, 114, 119, 132, 156, 158, 183

freedom iii, xv, xvi, xvii, xx, 1, 2, 9–14, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 61, 63, 65–70, 72, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 83–89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98–106, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 117, 119, 120, 122, 124–131, 133, 134, 135, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 144, 145, 152, 155, 156, 158, 162, 163

Freiheit 61, 83, 84, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 110, 112, 139, 180

freodome 47

Freud, Sigmund 130, 149

G

Gaius 34, 73

Galileo 67–70, 87, 148

general will 74–77

Gnostic 42, 43, 62

Gottschalk of Orbais 46, 47

Gouges, Olympe de 88

Gregory of Nazianzus 38

Gregory of Nyssa 43

Gregory of Rimini 54

Gregory the Great 47

Gregory VII 48, 49

Grotius, Hugo 54

Guattari, Félix 37, 146, 147

H

Havelock, Eric Alfred xvii

Hayek, Friedrich 116, 117, 120, 123, 124, 125

Hector 1

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 88, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 105, 106, 125, 128, 129, 134, 138, 143, 146, 176, 179

Hegelian xix, 95, 97, 98, 102, 105, 116

hēi 121

Heidegger, Martin 101, 139

Helenus 1

Heraclitus 160

Herodotus 11, 12, 19, 24, 25, 26, 27

Heteronomie 86

heteronomy 86, 88, 135, 136, 137, 143, 145, 157

Hieron of Syracuse 10, 11

Hobbes, Thomas xiv, xvii, 27, 63, 65–72, 77, 78, 135, 142, 148

Hobbesian xiv, 63, 68, 73, 103, 116, 125, 145

Homer 2, 4, 8, 20, 25, 27, 142

Homeric xvii, 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 20, 21, 23, 53, 108, 142

homo oeconomicus 116, 117

Horkheimer, Max 61, 116, 167, 180

Hugh of St Victor 54

von Humboldt, Alexander 104

Hume, David 82, 107, 156

I

individual xix, 12, 14, 19, 20, 28, 29, 35, 39, 41, 49, 63, 71, 74, 76, 80, 82, 85, 86, 93, 95, 97, 103, 104, 107, 116, 119, 120, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 142, 144, 147, 150, 151, 153, 158, 161, 162, 163, 165

inertia 67, 68, 69, 70

inertial 65–6

inner 14, 16, 20, 21, 61, 84, 85, 94, 108, 109, 112, 113, 114, 129, 130, 132, 133, 140, 142, 143, 163, 164

Ionic 9, 12, 24

Isidore of Seville 46

Isocrates 28

isokratees 26

isokratia 26

isomoiria 24, 25, 137

isomoros 23

isonomia 24

Isotēs 26

J

Jakobson, Roman 2

Jerome 38

John of Salisbury xv

Josephus, Flavius 30

juridical theology 50, 56, 78

Justinian 45

K

Kantian 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 91, 92, 107, 125, 140

Kant, Immanuel 19, 29, 81–88, 92, 94, 107, 140

Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye 106

kinēsis xx, 151, 152, 157

Klein, Melanie 137

Kratos 13

L

La Boétie, Étienne de 57, 58, 59, 63, 100

Laroche, Emmanuel 25

Latour, Bruno 141, 156, 161, 185

Leviathan 63, 67, 68, 71, 78, 177

Levinas, Emmanuel 144, 145, 160

Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien 148, 150

lex regia 56, 71

liber 30, 31, 34, 46, 55

Liber 30, 31, 32, 170

liberare 34

liberation 131, 153

libertas 30, 32, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 62

liberté 75, 76, 78, 96, 99, 114, 131, 132, 145, 171

liberty xvii, 2, 13, 15, 19, 25, 27, 28, 30, 33, 35, 41, 47, 48, 53, 62, 67, 70, 71, 74, 75, 85, 88, 96, 98, 99, 103, 104, 119, 120, 123, 124, 125, 126, 169, 175

Lipsius, Justus 57

Livy 32, 56, 57

Locke, John 74

logistikon 14, 109

Lorhard, Jacob 147

de Lubac, Henri 78

Lutheran 61, 82, 84, 85, 88, 94, 97, 105, 133

Luther, Martin 60, 61, 62, 73, 84

M

Machiavelli, Niccolò 56, 57, 58

Magna Carta 51

de Maistre, Joseph 99, 132

Malebranche, Nicolas 75, 77

Marcuse, Herbert 61

Marsilius de Padua 54, 80

Marx, Karl 79, 89, 101, 102, 103, 105, 116

master 15, 16, 17, 34, 55, 78, 120, 126, 132, 134

mastery 16, 17, 34, 78, 120, 126, 132, 134

Menander 32, 79

Mill, John Stuart 103, 104, 105, 116

Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat iii, xv, 75, 76, 77

Mont Pèlerin 117, 120

multiplicity 108, 109, 113, 122, 124, 129, 135, 141, 145, 146, 147, 152

mystical body 49, 56, 78

N

Nævius 32

Nancy, Jean-Luc 133

nature 16, 17, 22, 29, 55, 58, 61, 63, 68, 70, 71, 75, 80, 81, 83, 85, 94, 103, 105, 109, 110, 132, 144, 147, 180

negative freedom 23, 125

Negri, Toni 135

Newtonian 68, 82, 107, 115

Newton, Isaac 81, 82, 83, 148

Nietzschean 106, 127

Nietzsche, Friedrich 43, 89, 106–112, 122, 127, 130, 138, 140, 142, 143, 179

nominalization xv, 9, 12

nomos 25, 27, 29, 86, 143

O

Occupy movement 135, 158, 159

Ockham, William 53

Odysseus 116, 117

onomata 5

onomatourgos 143, 144

Origen 42, 43, 45

Ostwald, Martin 28

Otanes 15, 25

P

Papal Revolution 37, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51

Parmenides xv

parrhēsia 22

participation 22, 96, 97, 108, 111, 133, 135, 137, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161

paskhein 18, 126

Paul 41, 42, 43, 47, 59, 61, 62

Pausanias 9

Peter Lombard 49

phasis 44

Philo 21, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 59

Philolaos 72

Philoponus, John 68

Pindar xvii, 9, 10, 11

Plato xv, xvi, xvii, 2, 3, 4, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 22, 49, 53, 65, 66, 93, 99, 108, 109, 110, 112, 120, 121, 122, 124, 132, 142, 143, 150, 155, 162, 163, 165, 175

Platonic xv, xvi, xvii, 4, 5, 16, 30, 38, 39, 42, 44, 53, 72, 76, 80, 85, 109, 111, 112, 121, 132, 142, 143, 144, 147, 150, 156, 163

Plautus 33

Plotinus 43, 44, 47

plural forms 6, 7, 22, 27, 35, 108, 134, 144, 148, 156

pluralisation 108, 130, 133, 148

plurality 121, 135, 143

Plutarch 3, 29

pneumatikoi 42, 43

poiein 18, 126

polis 13, 14, 26, 27, 54, 93, 109, 112, 163

Polybius 57

Porphyry 43

predicate xvi, 4, 6, 35, 97, 155

prosthesis 165

Pseudo-Dionysius 44, 47

psykhē 16, 17, 108, 109, 112, 132, 133, 142, 163

R

Rabelais, François 57, 58

rhēmata 3, 4, 5

Roman law 51, 56

Rosenstock-Huessy, Eugen 48

Rougemont, Denis de xx

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 77–82, 85, 87, 91, 96, 103, 132

Rouvroy, Antoinette 164

Ryle, Gilbert 127

S

Schelling, Friedrich 139

Schmitt, Carl 25, 74, 134

self-mastery 111, 131, 162

Serres, Michel 141, 142, 154

servus 31, 60

Sieyès, Emmanuel-Joseph 89

Simondon, Gilbert 128, 129, 130, 135, 138, 146, 147

Simonides 9, 11

Simplicius xv, 121

singular 6, 93, 144, 145

singularity 106, 144

Skinner, Quentin 74, 126

slave xviii, 2, 7, 8, 16, 17, 19, 22, 31, 34, 37, 39, 41, 42, 59, 60, 62, 74, 104, 132, 134, 161, 162

slavish 2, 7

Socrates xv, xvi, 2, 30, 53, 76, 132, 142, 143

Solon 8, 9, 23, 24, 25

Sopatros 65, 66

Sophocles 13, 28, 38, 39, 61

Spencer-Brown, George 137

Spinoza, Baruch 72, 73, 106, 135

Stiegler, Bernard 152

Stirner, Max 79, 97, 98–102, 106, 108, 122, 144

Stoic 20, 28, 30, 37, 38, 39, 71, 76, 86, 93, 105

subjectivation xix, 20, 130, 131, 133, 135, 164, 165

subjectivity 93, 95, 108, 131

subject xvi, xix, 6, 7, 8, 10, 15, 17, 49, 76, 79, 82, 85, 86, 87, 88, 100, 107, 108, 109, 116, 117, 128, 130, 132, 142, 144, 153, 162, 163, 164, 165

syrrhèse 141

T

Tellenbach, Gerd 48

Terence iii, 32, 79

Theognis 3

Theophrastus xv, 22

throughdom 152, 154, 155, 156, 158, 160, 161

Thucydides 12, 21, 27, 57

touleutheron 12

Toulmin, Stephen 74

transduction 138, 147

transindividual 129, 130, 152, 164

transindividuation 152, 159

Troy 1, 10

V

Ventris, Michael 7

Vitruvius 31

volonté générale 75, 77

volontez generales 75

voluntary servitude 59, 62

W

Wærferð 47

William of Moerbeke 83

Winstanley, Gerrard 73

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 122, 123, 124, 151, 156, 160, 161, 175

Wycliffe, John 63

X

Xerxes 12, 18

Z

Zeus 11, 13, 23, 38, 50