How Shall We Define Freedom?

8/2/2019 How Shall We Define Freedom?

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How shall we define freedom? If we consider freedom to be authentic self-directed interaction

with the world around us there would appear to be two types of constraints. There are natural, external

constraints which are dictated by our physical needs and competition for the resources available to

meet those needs. There are natural laws, such as gravity, which prevent us from achieving all of ourflights of fantasy and impose limits on what it is to be human though these limits are often the

greatest inspirations for human endeavor to attempt to defy. There are also artificially constructed

societal constraints on our freedom, and these may be seen to have both external and internal effects.

Work, duty, responsibility, social acceptance, family, and religious and moral mandates are all factors in

determining our interactions with external society and our internal sense of the degrees of freedom we

feel to be available to us to act within the world. These constraints can be considered either obstacles

or vehicles of creativity.

However one defines freedom seems to be based on what one is struggling to be free from.

Most of the authors we have so far considered in class have sought freedom from what could be

considered societal constraints. Mencken aims his freedom away from platitudinous prosperous tyrants

which turn into militaristic mobs led by limiting legislature. Weber uses analysis to show the trappings

of how a conditioned Protestant work ethic is unnatural and makes men cogs in a machine with no

actual return on investment. Niebuhr wants us to seek freedom from self-delusion about our own

inherent sinfulness. Emerson attacks the chains of dogmatic routine drudgery. Only Edwards and

Holmes seem to point to freedom being directed from God or from involuntary forces of nature which

shape and determine our individual lives collectively. Seeking freedom is generally directed toward the

social constraints presented in our direct environments.

Our current concept of work seems to be a fairly recent human development. Previous types

of society (such as hunter/gathers or agrarian) did not have a clear distinction between life and work.

Life itself was totally determined and classified by what type of work one performed, or had others to

perform for one. Our current ideas about work seem to have come with the split between ones daily

activities of living and what one must do to maintain those activities. Employment is a contract which

designates an employee, where the employee is so defined:

"A person in the service of another under any contract ofhire, express or implied, oral or

written, where the employer has the power or right to control and direct the employee in the

material details of how the work is to be performed." Black's Law Dictionary page 471 (5th ed.

1979).

With this type of definition, we get the sense that the employee, or the worker, is essentially agreeing to

trade freedom of self-direction for specific periods of time in order to receive compensation for doing a

job. Time, and our orientation to it, seems to be the key factor of what makes employment work, and

whether one can be simultaneously free and yet also completely committed to ones work.

Weber draws distinction between pre-Capitalistic/naturalistic laborers and Capitalistic workers

displaying what he calls the Protestant work ethic. Each type displays a different type of orientation to
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time. The naturalistic laborer tends to value the present and freedom to this person literally means

having free time to be engaged in whatever it is the person enjoys doing. If this persons employment

consists of doing what it is that is most enjoyable to the person, with reasonable constraints in the

material details of the job, then there will be little conflict between freedom and work and enjoyable

commitment. However, if this person is instead employed in a trade which does not match his/her

sense of impassioned enjoyable interest, the gulf between freedom and work will be vast, and work will

be conceived of as a necessary evil. The worker with a Protestant work ethic, however, may be

unconsciously future-directed. Freedom to this person will have more to do with financial security

and the accumulation of status symbols. The Protestant ethic worker will often see employment as a

vehicle for gaining social acceptance and approval. Even if the occupation does not match the persons

true calling, the contract of employment is an important factor in the persons social internal/external

realities and will often be regarded as a vehicle for gaining freedom rather than being oppositional to it.

In this way, with the intense entanglement of internal and societal judgments of self-worth being

centered in ones employment, many workers find themselves wholeheartedly committed to their work

which they perceive will lead them closer to their ideas of freedom, even if the work itself is unpleasant.

Whether one is directed towards the present or the future, or some combination thereof, the

external work produced relates to these internal and external complexes of self-worth by which

character can be constructed. External character is measured publicly through ones speech, actions

and general public behavior and from produced work. The internal sense of self-worth can be

directed towards building public character and reputation, allowing for dedication to work which is not

in and of itself personally motivating but is judged to be a means to an end. This internal sense of self

worth can also be directed towards a very personal sense of internal character one not witnessed

publicly except by the works produced through its inspiration. The difference will primarily appear as an

attitude toward the intended goal of the external produced work and whether the approval of others

is the primary aim. One can direct oneself to the process of painting a fence in perfect meditative blisswith the intended aim being the internal gratification and experience. Or one could paint the same

fence with the intention to please Mrs. Johnson so she will recommend your handiwork services to all of

her neighbors. If the meditatively painted fence does not please Mrs. Johnson, it will likely change the

painters relationship to Mrs. Johnson, not ones evaluation of ones work/ability/self-worth. But if

ones aimed to please painted fence fails to bring the proper praise, then one questions ones work

product more than the social critique. The first response to public disapproval then, showing the origin

of intent, is something like either what can I do differently to please her? or is she the right audience

to appreciate the work? The ideas of both internal and external character seem to involve a

valuation, whether in moral or utilitarian terms, of the traits we exhibit to ourselves and to others.

Character is not necessarily these traits themselves, but a cognitive evaluation of the usefulness of

those traits within a system ofvalues. Ones personality will determine ones orientation to time,

interests, self-expressiveness, and the type of systems of valuation which one intentionally engages

with.

Artistic and intellectual endeavors, seeking to find meaningful patterns in the world around

them, may produce works which are not always met with public approval. Both artists and scholars


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report back to society a commentary, a critique, an analysis and synthesis of what they perceive from an

over-arching or unique perspective. In many ways, these endeavors can be perceived as counter-

productive to the ideals ofprogress and offend the sensibilities of publicly accepted character

valuations. Artists and intellectuals may feel genuine conflict between the desire for the authentic self-

expression to which they are wholeheartedly motivated and the need to maintain a certain type of

public character and a paycheck. Part of this conflict is due to the more widespread self-worth

evaluation and external recognition complex entanglements. But another aspect which is perhaps even

more heightened in examples of artists or intellectuals interacting within a Protestant work ethic

production environment is a natural difference in relation to time between the routine work and

creative output. One may be able to finish a great painting in the time it takes to build a car. But

generally, most artists cannot maintain the same type of integrity in their work on a consistent and

routine basis, while an auto worker may consistently produce the same level of work every day for forty

years. Creative process generally is described to involve a variety of phases, (some of which may seem

very unproductive to even the artist himself), prior to a conclusive and fresh synthesis which can be

put into an external work. Ironically, it is often the tension of deadline which helps the creative

process along, but inspiration cannot always be forced especially in fields of scientific discovery or new

technological breakthroughs. But when ones value is measured by the ability to regularly produce

external works in artistic and intellectual fieldswhen inspirations and deadlines dont line up what is

produced instead may be perceived as work which is cut off from a sense of integrity to ones original

wholehearted commitments in the field of interest. This can lead to an internal sense of constraint of

freedom, despair, and cynicism which may then be outwardly directed to the public sphere.

To what degree are we responsible for aligning our external public works to our internal

integrity of self-expression? This may depend on the time and place we find ourselves inhabiting

including our own self-development, self-sufficiency and the external societal environment. There may

be times to produce bland and uninspired work to provide one the opportunity for private creativeendeavors. There may be times when one must reject the constraints of others to seek authentic self-

expression. There may be times when that authentic self-expression is in vogue and celebrated by

others. What we fear, and to what degree, seems to be the deciding factor in what gets expressed and

what is repressed at any given time. What we fear and why we fear it changes due to social climates

and changes through experience and different self-understandings. Public valuations of courage and

integrity involve the timing of self-expression in speech or action. Few would judge the man on the

corner warning sinners of the coming apocalypse to be courageous though obviously his integrity

compels him to speak out about that which he fears out of a sense of responsibility to society. Does our

responsibility towards self-expression have to do with integrity of our internal character? Or is it based

on a concept of expectations of our external character? How one answers this at any given time will

guide behavior.

As an example of creative application to the balancing act of these principles, we can look to

Emerson. Here was a man with a strong personality wholeheartedly committed to his creative

endeavors, with a forceful and eccentric public character but directed passionately by an internal

character which was often contradictory in self-expression. Emerson was not afraid of public


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disapproval and found it his civic duty to express his views rejecting what he considered dogmatic and

wrong-thinking beliefs regarding Biblical miracles in the Unitarian Church, of which he was a minister.

He did not fear losing his place in the ministry and spoke freely. He did not fear upsetting academic

administrators at Harvard with his elaborate intimations of pantheistic bliss while replacing everyday

miracles of Nature for the supernatural Biblical authoritative monopoly on the miraculous. Emerson

deemed that society was ready for those challenges to its structure and aimed his works accordingly.

But as free as Emerson may have felt about those self-expressions, he also used a form of symbolic

coded language to explain his more private internal philosophy. Judging the social climate correctly, and

carrying on a long tradition of symbolic reference to occult and alchemical principles and processes,

Emerson struck an often beautiful balance with his own sense of freedom to authentic self-directed

interaction and public expression. His external public character may be valued less by philosophers

wanting clear reasoning and surely many thought he was a bit crazy, but at the same time he

maintained a freedom of position of influence in many spheres through careful construction of

communication to a variety of audiences.

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How Shall We Define Freedom?