Quentin Skinner is undoubtedly one of the greatest living historians. If there were Nobel prizes for History, he would get one.

~1:05:40 "...what is very important for a theory of freedom is identifying those who've done the disempowering and in cases where you can't, you probably are not in the discourse of freedom at all. You're just in a discourse of power and powerlessness. ... Freedom is about empowerment. But un-freedom is all about having been disempowered. There must be some identifiable agency otherwise we can't get the story running."

Brilliant.

Great overview of the concept of liberty through the eyes of Hobbes, Locke, Bentham and Mill. Marx is mentioned; but incorrectly interpreted in terms of the dynamics of liberty. Actually, the focus of Karl's critique of political-economy was on raising awareness about the servility involved in being a wage-labourer. As the slaves and servants of the past, the wage worker is on the payroll because s/he produces the wealth which the ruling class appropriates the lion's share of. Unbeknownst to Skinner, freedom from wage-slavery to the system and its rulers is what Marx is about, not freedom from the mental slavery of 'consumerism'.

@Judel100

8 жыл бұрын

+Mike Ballard Yup. He attributes Marcuse's notion of unfreedom to Marx. But Marx was famously ambiguous about liberty as classical liberalism conceives it. Hobbes would say that Marxian freedom - freedom from wage slavery - is the precondition for liberty, not liberty itself.

~1:03:17 "Of the instances that you cite, the most troubling I think is Schmidt's anti-liberal point, which is that this notion of rule of law is itself an ideological construct, which is something you were gesturing at very strongly in your third observation and yes, I mean, that there will always be some will and that has to be executive is true. But the reply that these people would have to give is that must be the general will"

Something very odd happened at 1:04:30. It is as if he developed an entirely different and disconcerting persona. Is he well?

~6:11 "...on which I have tried to lay out what seems to be something like the essence of Hobbes' argument about the liberty of subjects. ... I have tried to lay out here what I have called the liberal concept of individual freedom and I ought to pose just one technological question to myself here which is is that all right suddenly to have said freedom? I have just been talking about Liberty. Well, terminological disputes are never interesting. I don't think they're exact synonyms but I don't think anything of philosophical import hangs on the difference between the terms"

Amazing stuff, though technically I would say that this is History of Ideas (or "Ideal History") and not genealogy. Notice that there is no information at all about social-historical forces that affected the concept, no psychological interpretation of historical actors who shaped its use, no *explanation* for why the concept evolved as it did. Rather, Skinner gives us a series of competing positions held by philosophers. This is an interesting talk, but it's basically just a philosophy lecture, and it doesn't actually establish that the concept itself really is as complex as he says it is (he only shows that philosophers have talked about it in different ways, a very different sort of conclusion).

@Argetlam142

8 жыл бұрын

Nicholas Smyth This is the explanation, there is no "real" history of freedom. Freedom is a idea or value, and ideas and values only exists inside peoples heads. There is no "freedom as it really is". You cannot research historically how people exercised their freedom without understanding the concept, and the concept evolved through political debate.

@nicholassmyth6263

8 жыл бұрын

+Gnosis I would caution you to not contrast "reality" with "what is in people's heads". I am pretty sure that people's heads are real, and that what is in their heads is real. Moreover, what is in their heads is often influenced by what is not in their heads: their social and economic situation, their political circumstances, etc. A genealogy explains what is in our heads by citing these external forces. Nietzsche didn't catalog the arguments of philosophers who were debating early Christian morality, he said that Christian morality (a set of values) was invented by a powerless and resentful lower-class. That's what makes it a genealogy.

@Argetlam142

8 жыл бұрын

Nicholas Smyth Well, if you read the written work you will find speaches in parlament, letters, pamphlets etc was used to do this reasearch.. its a 1 hour lecture it has certain limitatioins. I for one would say Nietzche is alot more speculative and less empiric than Skinner in his geneaology.

@Argetlam142

8 жыл бұрын

Nicholas Smyth But, yeah, it is intellectual history or the history of ideas, but a method often used within that is genealogy, you know, Nietzche was a filologist. He did pretty much the same thing.

@nicholassmyth6263

8 жыл бұрын

+Gnosis Fair enough, I should probably look at the written version as well. I'm sure Skinner knows much more about the history of the concept than he can get out in a 45-minute lecture!

No one can force another to Love them, for Love is a Gift given freely from the heart; the reason we have free will is so that we can choose Good, over evil, so that we can Love The Ordered Communion of Perfect Love, The Blessed Trinity, as God Loves us. God Is Love. Love exists in relationship. Individual love is self love, and self love is the antithesis of authentic Love. Every act of Love is ordered to the inherent personal and relational Dignity of the human person.

Which I suppose is to say President Bush was correct in his assessment that Liberty is part of the "plan of Heaven for humanity", as the philosophical becomes the Theological when we recognize that only The Truth of Love can set us free. The Greatest Philosopher, Was In The Beginning, Is Now, and Forever Will Be, Truth Himself, our Savior Jesus The Christ, compared to Whom everything else is mere straw.

@landisgallagher

3 жыл бұрын

I’ll take institutional and constitutional liberty over that of a divinely inspired despot any day.

Philosophy is merely humanism, when it denies The Truth of Love, but it does belong in History, for it often can illuminate, for a particular Time in Salvational History, what they were thinking, or what were they thinking?

Genealogy, does in fact, have a beginning, in fact, The Founding Fathers of The United States of America, recognized that our unalienable Right to Liberty, as our unalienable Right to Life, and The Pursuit of Happiness, Is endowed to a from God, at the moment of our creation, which is not the same moment we are brought forth from the womb or delivered by C-Section. The purpose of our inherent Right to Liberty, is what God intended