The Freedom to Be Free

07-02-2017

The Freedom to Be Free

[caption id="attachment_18995" align="alignleft" width="197"] To be released in January 2018.[/caption] Jerry Kohn has edited and published "The Freedom to Be Free," a previously unpublished lecture by Hannah Arendt. The essay will appear in Thinking Without a Banister, Essays in Understanding, Vol. 11, by Hannah Arendt, edited by J. Kohn, to be published by Schocken Books in January 2018. The newly published "The Freedom to Be Free" follows closely the arguments made in On Revolution, but presents them in a synoptic version. Freedom is at the core of Arendt's political thinking and in her book On Revolution she argues that the aim of all revolutions is freedom. One particularly novel formulation in this lecture is Arendt's claim that "to be free for freedom meant first of all to be free not only from fear but also from want." Arendt references an oft-overlooked distinction she makes in On Revolution between poverty and misery. It is very possible to be poor and still be free; one distinction of American revolutionary society was that poor white Americans were not desperately poor and were not miserable, as were the "laboring poor" in Europe and the slaves in the Americas. What this meant is that the revolution in France was driven in large part by the miserable poor while the revolution in the United States was led by what she calls (following William Penn) the "good poor." For Arendt, while freedom sought by revolution depends on freedom from want, the effort to eradicate want through revolution leads to terror. On this fourth of July weekend, it is worth returning to Arendt's claim that only the American Revolution, and not the French, succeeded in founding political freedom.

"The men of the first revolutions, though they knew well enough that liberation had to precede freedom, were still unaware of the fact that such liberation means more than political liberation from absolute and despotic power; that to be free for freedom meant first of all to be free not only from fear but also from want. And the condition of desperate poverty of the masses of the people, those who for the first time burst into the open when they streamed into the streets of Paris, could not be overcome with political means; the mighty power of the constraint under which they labored did not crumble before the onslaught of the revolution as did the royal power of the king. The American Revolution was fortunate that it did not have to face this obstacle to freedom and, in fact, owed a good measure of its success to the absence of desperate poverty among the freemen, and to the invisibility of slaves, in the colonies of the New World. To be sure, there was poverty and misery in America, which was comparable to the conditions of the European “laboring poor.” If, in William Penn’s words, “America was a good poor Man’s country” and remained the dream of a promised land for Europe’s impoverished up to the beginning of the twentieth century, it is no less true that this goodness depended to a considerable degree on black misery. In the middle of the eighteenth century, there lived roughly 400,000 blacks along with approximately 1,850,00 whites in America, and, despite the absence of reliable statistical information, it may be doubted that at the time the percentage of complete destitution was higher in the countries of the Old World (though it would become considerably higher during the nineteenth century). The difference, then, was that the American Revolution— because of the institution of slavery and the belief that slaves belonged to a different “race”— overlooked the existence of the miserable, and with it the formidable task of liberating those who were not so much constrained by political oppression as the sheer necessities of life. Les malheureux, the wretched, who play such a tremendous role in the course of the French Revolution, which identified them with le peuple, either did not exist or remained in complete obscurity in America.... A comparison of the two first revolutions, whose beginnings were so similar and whose ends so tremendously different, demonstrates clearly, I think, not only that the conquest of poverty is a prerequisite for the foundation of freedom, but also that liberation from poverty cannot be dealt with in the same way as liberation from political oppression. For if violence pitted against violence leads to war, foreign or civil, violence pitted against social conditions has always led to terror. Terror rather than mere violence, terror let loose after the old regime has been dissolved and the new regime installed, is what either sends revolutions to their doom, or deforms them so decisively that they lapse into tyranny and despotism."

Form more information visit: http://lithub.com/never-before-published-hannah-arendt-on-what-freedom-and-revolution-really-mean/

A Worldly Freedom

[caption id="attachment_18994" align="alignright" width="225"] By Dontworry - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0[/caption] In an interview touching greatly on questions of protest and political freedom, Judith Butler embraces Hannah Arendt's understanding of worldly freedom, the idea that human freedom is only possible in a political world we build and share with others.

"I think that Arendt was right to criticize those forms of individualism that presume that freedom is always and only a matter of personal liberty. Of course, I am most glad to have my personal liberty, but I only have it to the extent that there is a sphere of freedom in which I can operate. That sphere is coproduced by people who live together or who have agreed to live in a world in which the relations between them make possible their individual sense of being free. So perhaps we might regard personal liberty as a cipher of social freedom. And social freedom cannot be understood apart from what arises between people, what happens when they make something in common or when, in fact, they seek to make or remake the world in common. I am struck by the way Arendt’s position echoes that of Martin Buber, whose cultural Zionism interested her a great deal in the 1930s. For Buber, the I only knows its world because there is a you who has consciousness of that world.⁷ The world is given to me because you are also there as one to whom it is given. The world is never given to me alone but always in your company. Without you, the world does not give itself. We are worldless without one another."

Form more information visit: https://theotherjournal.com/2017/06/26/worldless-without-one-another-interview-judith-butler/

More Cowardice in Academe

[caption id="attachment_18991" align="alignleft" width="300"] Professor Johnny Williams of Trinity College, Hartford, CT[/caption] Trinity College suspended Professor Johnny Williams, ostensibly for his own safety, after threats against him followed his comments suggesting that first responders to the shooting of Representative Steven Scalise and other Republican Congressman should have let the Congressmen die. According to an article by Colleen Flaherty on Inside Education,

"Williams last week shared an article from Medium called “Let Them Fucking Die.” The piece argues that “indifference to their well-being is the only thing that terrifies” bigots, and so people of color should “Let. Them. Fucking. Die” if they’re ever in peril. The Medium piece linked to another Fusion piece about Republican Representative Steve Scalise, who was shot earlier this month in Alexandria, Va. It says Scalise has previously opposed extending protections to LGBTQ people and reportedly once spoke at a meeting of white supremacists, while one of the black law enforcement officers who rescued him is a married lesbian. In sharing the Medium piece, Williams used the “Let them fucking die” comment as a hashtag, and wrote that it is “past time for the racially oppressed to do what people who believe themselves to be ‘white’ will not do, put end to the vectors of their destructive mythology of whiteness and their white supremacy system.”

Professor Williams comments are stupid. The appropriate response to such idiocy is to respond to it, as many have. That response seems to have worked. Thankfully, Professor Williams has apologized for his comments. "Williams has since apologized for his remarks and said he was not advocating violence against whites, only drawing attention to systemic racism." So the question is, why has Trinity College felt the need to go further and suspend a tenured professor who has apologized for admittedly stupid and insensitive comments? As the Trinity College AAUP said in a statement, the administration's cowardly reaction is a threat to academic freedom.

"We are particularly concerned about the implications that this decision has for issues of academic freedom and scholarly inquiry on campus, and the precedent that it sets. We have significant doubts about whether this decision is consistent with the College’s rightful and laudable attempts to build a diverse and critically engaged academic community. In conversations we have had among the faculty a common theme is: “If the administration is not going to stand up for Johnny Williams despite his international stature as a first-rate scholar on issues of race and society, who are they going to stand up for?” In these situations, we expect nothing less than a full-throated endorsement of academic freedom. We expect that the administration’s first impulse should be to protect and affirm the College’s faculty, rather than encourage the inaccurate and damaging interpretation of Professor Williams’ comments and to allow these attacks on academic freedom and personal safety to go unchallenged."

Form more information visit: https://academeblog.org/2017/06/27/trinity-aaup-statement-on-the-decision-to-place-professor-johnny-williams-on-leave/