lawgiver should frame his code with an eyeon three things: the freedom, unity and wisdom of the city for which helegislates. That’s right, isn’t it
nowadays we increasingly only look towards freedom and prosperity in things that rulers promote, not towards wisdom or unity
Very well. When the old laws applied, my friends, the peoplewere not in control: on the contrary, they lived in a kind of ‘voluntaryslavery’ to the laws.26. At 647a, 671d.
the social contract is here - they allow restrictions on their negative or even positive freedoms in exchange for other ideals
would you be glad to have as a resident in your house or as a neighbora man who in spite of considerable courage was immoderate and licentiou
courage is a virtue only if one is virtuous in other ways
It was a womanish education, conducted by the royal harem
he says this disparagingly towards women
nd I suppose the fifth is that the stronger should rule andthe weaker should obey
This is meritocratic
Close behind comes the title of those of high birth to governthose of low birth
This one seems arbitrary and anti-meritocratic
I know what you mean. Your point, I take it, is that youshould demand your own way in your prayers only if your wishes aresupported by your rational judgment—and this, a rational outlook, shouldbe the object of the prayers and efforts of us all, states and individuals alike
everyone will think their judgement is rational, so they will all pray for their own wishes
That events should obey whatever orders one feels like giv-ing—invariably, if possible, but failing that, at least where human affairsare concerned
Everyone wants control over events - as much as they can get
unlucky enough to be destroyed?
definitely not up to luck
Whenever a given state broke the established laws, an allianceof the other two would always be there to take the field against it
This resembles the family dynamics seen beforehand that led to the establishment of a state - interest groups realize it's in their best interest to avoid conflict by collectivizing and policing each other
You maintained that Sparta683was established on the right lines
giving credit to the rival state's political system
autocracies a sort of aristocracy, or perhaps kingship. Andwhile the political system passes through this transitional stage they willadminister the state themselves
he thinks autocracies only develop as a transitional stage into his form of society?
They always had a supply of milk and meat, and couldalways add to it plenty of good food to be got by hunting. They also hadan abundance of clothes, bedding, houses, and equipment for cooking andother purposes. (Molding pottery and weaving, skills that have no needof iron, were a gift from God to men—his way, in fact, of supplying thembwith all that kind of equipment. His intention was that whenever thehuman race was reduced to such a desperate condition it could still takeroot and develop.) Because of all this, they were not intolerably poor, nordriven by poverty to quarrel with each other; but presumably they didnot grow rich either, in view of the prevailing lack of gold and silver. Nowthe community in which neither wealth nor poverty exists will generallyproduce the finest characters because tendencies to violence and crime,cand feelings of jealousy and envy, simply do not arise. So these men weregood, partly for that very reason, partly because of what we might calltheir ‘naı ̈vete ́’. When they heard things labeled ‘good’ or ‘bad’, they wereso artless as to think it a statement of the literal truth and believe it. Thislack of sophistication precluded the
Conflicts will always emerge when humans live in proximity with one another; it's human nature. there is no state like the one he describes; a garden of eden of sorts. Every group experiences civil and outside conflicts due to the scarcity and allocation of limited resources, so politics are always a necessity of human existence
out of those conditions all the features of our present-daylife developed: states, political systems, technical skills, laws, rampant viceand frequent virtue.
out of those conditions and of human nature to build social structures to mirror the tribal social needs we psychologically cling on to
at city-dwellers use in the rat-race to doeach other down; and all the other dirty tricks that men play against oneanother must have been unknown
they're in a state of primality, noncivilization
hat the human race has been repeatedly annihilatedby floods and plagues and many other causes, so that only a small fractionof it survived
I would hesitate to call this a tradition in the modern sense, more so it is a pattern
possessions of friends should be held in common
communal living on a small scale but just for non adult males?
whether it is more profitable toact justly, live in a fine way, and be just, whether one is known to be so445or not, or to act unjustly and be unjust, provided that one doesn’t pay thepenalty and become better as a result of punishment
he says justice is an internal value that we can see in ourselves and actions - I agree
hree parts of himself like three limitingnotes in a musical scale—high, low, and middle
This is an archaic notion of having different parts of the self. I think in the modern day, where we aren't taught to believe that we have different parts to our soul, this analogy simply can't work because we can't intuitively separate out these parts-or at least i can't
And isn’t the cause of all this that every part within him does its ownwork, whether it’s ruling or being ruled
allowing for positive freedom to flourish in a sense within his own character
, some never seem to get a share of it
he dehumanizes many people here
Rather, thirst itself is in its nature only for drink itself
This whole section has been going on about little to do with freedom and more to do with linguistic philosophy. Interesting stuff, and certainly can help people communicate more clearly.
much thirst because of the presence ofmuchnes
This is a very interesting point in this paragraph but I find this line funny
justice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with what isn’tone’s own
allowing others' positive freedom to flourish,
t they should fear and all the rest would become sofast that even such extremely effective detergents as pleasure, pain, fear,and desire wouldn’t wash it out
if they are raised with certain values, we can make them follow them even against temporary urges like the ones mentioned-the society can give and take positive freedoms in how people are raised and their influences
nd to this class, which seems to be by nature the smallest, belongs ashare of the knowledge that alone among all the other kinds of knowledge 429is to be called wisdo
He assumes the other classes can possess no wisdom and only the small ruling class can. instead, I think it's up to everyone in the society at large to be wise in their actions and effects on the community
t is guardianship, and it is possessed by those rulers we just now calledcomplete guardians
good sense; understanding the value of tradition but also knowing when change is necessary
not realizingthat they’re really just cutting off a Hydra’s head.
The hydra is human nature-greed and selfishness
t also amusing that they consider their worst enemy to bethe person who tells them the truth, namely, that until they give up drunk-enness, overeating, lechery, and idleness, no medicine, cautery, or surgery,no charms, amulets, or anything else of that kind will do them any goo
These people are slaves to their 'lower selves' as berlin would put it
er little by little into characters and ways of life.Then, greatly increased, it steps out into private contracts, and from privatecontracts, Socrates, it makes its insolent way into the laws and government,until in the end it overthrows everything, public and private.
Life imitates art
well educated theybecome reasonable men
harkens to Berlin both when he said we can't treat the irrational as subhuman and when he said all rational men will see truth and live in harmony
agree, for I think what you say is right
This sentence right here is why I absolutely despise Plato's dialogues. Someone should create a new translation where the characters actually talk like real humans, and we should read that instead of this.
wealth and poverty. The former makes for luxury, idleness, and422revolution; the latter for slavishness, bad work, an
middle ground for everything
compel and persuade the auxiliaries and guardians to follow our otherpolicy and be the best possible craftsmen at their own work, and the samecwith all the others.
infringement on their positive liberty here for the greater goal of equality and prosperity
farmer wouldn’t be a farmer, nor a potter a potter
He insinuates that an inherent difference between jobs is the luxuries they should be afforded?
You mustn’t expect us to paintthe eyes so beautifully that they no longer appear to be eyes at all, and dthe same with the other parts. Rather you must look to see whether bydealing with each part appropriately, we are making the whole statuebeautiful.”
aesthetics are defined by their context and function
we aren’t aiming to makeany one group outstandingly happy but to make the whole city so, as faras possible
promotes the value of equality here
‘positive’ self-mastery by classes
positive self-mastery is equally as important, I would argue, in ones own personal philosophy. However, as a vehicle for policy, i agree that it's worse than negative liberty.
ney that the liberty of the strong, whether their strength isphysical or economic, must be restra
Liberty of all must be constrained, because all are strong in some sense.
his abandonment of the notion of a finalharmony in which all riddles are solved, all contradictions recon-ciled, is a piece of crude empiricism, abdication before brute-facts, intolerable bankruptcy of reason before things as theyare, failure to explain and to justify, to reduce everything toa system, which ‘reason’ indignantly rejects.
The mindset that a perfect system exists and we must set forth to create it is a noble one and does lead to progress. However, the perfect system does not exist and instead, an even more uplifting truth in some sense is revealed: that progress always exists.
his is the belief that somewhere, in thepast or in the future,’in divine revelation or in the mind of anindividual thinker, in the pronouncements of history or science,or in the simple heart of an uncorrupted good man, there is afinal solution.
I agree. A belief in a neverending journey in the direction of progress is a more apt and healthier one.
t their observance has entered into thevery conception of what it is t0 be a normal human being,
I think solidifying these natural rights arguments too far can have the opposite effect on people's senses of freedom. If they fear that whatever they do which is not explicitly allowed or granted as a right might be punishable, they will restrict their actions and live in cowardice--not fulfilling their true rational and moral selves.
ights, or the word of God, or Natural Law, or the demands ofutility or of the ‘permanent interests of man’; I may believe themto be valid @ prior?, or assert them to be my own ultimate ends,or the ends of my society or culture.
The essay has gone full circle by this point.
ven thoughthe result was, for a good many of them, a severe restriction ofindividual freedoms.
Maybe they didn't argue for it as much as they did for freedom, but I thought the French revolution was more so motivated by calls for economic and social equality. Of course, these have been conflated to the point of meaning the same thing by this point in the essay, but I still think it's an important distinction.
elieve
the belief that we're free is more important than actual freedom
No society literally suppresses afl the liberties of its members;a being who is prevented by others from doing anything at all onhis own is not a moral agent at all, and could not e:ther legally ormorally be regarded as a human being, even if a physiologist or abiologist, or even a psychologist, felt inclined to classify him asa man.
Could the same be said of slaves? Some slaves were likely treated with a level of dignity that allowed them to achieve the human being status, but at large and cruel plantations it could be argued that the repression was enough to render slaves these inhuman beings that the writer writes of.
the confusion of desire for liberty with this profoundand universal craving for status and understanding, further con-founded by being identified with the notion of social self-direction, where the self to be liberated is no longer the individualbut the ‘social whole’, that makes it possible for men, while sub-mitting to the authority of oligarchs or dictators, to claim that thisin some sense liberates them.
If men feel liberated by this process, as many do, doesn't that liberate them? As was written earlier, many under despotic and controlling societies became brilliantly creative and highly individualistic people - they likely felt a high level of personal freedom.
because it is an insult ta my conception of myself as ahuman being, determined to make my own life in accordance withmy own (not necessarily rational or benevolent) purposes, and,above all, entitled to be recognized as such by others.
All humans want to be treated as competent, knowledgeable, and worthy of respect.
hen I demand to be liberated from,let us say, the status of political or social dependence, what Idemand is an ajteration of the attitude towards me of those whoseopinions and behaviour help to determine my own image ofmyself.
I find this very true - as social animals, humans want the most just to be understood, accepted, and respected.
he endsof all rational beings must of necessity fit into a single universal,harmonious pattern,
As a rational being I want to spend my days in relative leisure and work very little but still live a life of luxury. even though I know not everyone can have this, so rationally I want a system to be in place to keep everyone from being lazy (capitalism or communism work), it's still rational for me to want to work as little as possible. This assumption is flawed.
What can have led to so strange a reversal
this is a genealogy of ideas of freedom, not an argument for one or many views
in the name of the reason of the free indi-vidual following his own inner light.
Everyone's true self must be a product of themselves - if a 'wiser' person influences them it could make them not be who they want to be - the wise can only impart wisdom
etic, justification for his conduct. I must do for men (orwith them) what they cannot do for themselves, and I cannot asktheir permission or consent, because they are in no condition toknow what is best for them; indeed, what they will permit andaecept may mean a life of contemptible mediocrit
An extension of the paternalism noted in the previous page-it's a very slippery slope
derstand your true goals. You want to be a human being.
I annotated up to here but none of it saved.
t Oxford have learnt that politicaltheory is a branch of moral philosophy, which stares from thediscovery, or application, of moral not
Both are rooted in subjective human experience or in religion. There is no absolute, measurable right or wrong (without god) and neither is there freedom, injustice, or justice.
losophy, and reject whatever the methodcannot successfully manage—is merely to allow oneself to remainat the mercy of primitive and uncriticized politic
Theory is vague and all its concepts are subjective. However, we must study it because otherwise there would be no grounding to the decisions we make politically, which do matter a great deal.
That is why those who put their faith in some immense,world-transforming phenomenon, like the final triumph ofreason or the proletarian revolution,
Author doesn't directly compare these to religious faith in rapture or similar phenomena, but I think psychologically they are eerily similar.
than flight as their signaturemovement of freedom, the ugly freedoms I embrace in this book remain con-nected to place as a site of nourishment and community, even when thatIntroductionplacehasbeenasourceofdominationanddispossession,andtheyfightforitscare
Everyone has to live on land somewhere, so in some ways it's in everyone's best interest to care for the land with their freedom.
ir.LarsvonTrier,2005)
Well known director for making difficult and boundary-crossing films. I can definitely see how his film could be seen both as just a showcase of racism and as a critique of it.
lack freedom from national proclamations of formal liberty,
If black people feel/are treated as dependent on these national proclamations, they are never truly free and instead are given only conditional freedom based on what white people and those in power have allowed them to have.
om,shareassumptionsthatfreedomrequires bold expressions,rousingactions, and cathartic processesofemancipation
I don't think freedom needs these bold expressions. In its most simplest terms, I think freedom is the absence of outside restrictions, and these restrictions can in some cases simply not exist. I can see how Marx and the founding fathers believed to shake off chains in any meaningful sense though, bold action is required. I think bold action is necessary to attain freedom, but not to practice it. If an action is considered bold, then it in some ways is unexpected and can go against existing norms. So if exercising freedom means to be bold, people would constantly be pushing the boundaries of freedom. This is certainly one view of freedom, but I think someone isn't necessarily not free if they never make any bold actions.
theydo not address violent forms of freedom that also operate in modern life
By this does the author mean 'ugly freedoms?'
raison d’étre of politics is free-dom,” and many traditions of political thought would agree, though theywould differ significantly about what freedom actually is and how and whereit is exercised.
I disagree. First of all, politics arise in every circle with or without a raison d'etre - humans are wired to seek power through social approval (I take politics to mean group politics/game theory). In larger scale politics, I think it arises primarily as a means of ensuring security from the violence of outside factions. Collective action is necessary for human prosperity, and that is impossible without politics.
e“ugh”isaresponse fromapositionofpowertothesecondtypeofuglyfreedom,asitdenigrates waysofactingfreely bypeoplewhoarenotatlibertytodoso.TheactionsIexamineinthebookasfreepracticeinthissecondvalenc
Aesthetics essentially serve those in power to denigrate those who are not in power and to keep them in subservient positions. Those in power (in any circle) have mastered the aesthetics of power; the dress, the mannerisms, even the connections and ways of speaking. They put a lot of time into this mastery, and feel a sense of superiority over those who do not abide by these disparate codes. When they see someone 'faking it until they make it,' those in power also react, wanting to place a clear distinction between those who have 'earned it' and those who haven't.
rtmanisnotarguingthatdiscardedspacesanddingytenementsarealwaysthespaceoffreedom;shedoes notromanticizethepovertyproducedbywhitesupremacy.Yet on herreadingthesewaywardactsrepudiatetheascriptionof“ugly”:theuglinessoffreedominthiscasereferstosomethingelsethaciscraftedinworlds disparagedasugly,formsofagencythatmight seemerrantornonspectacular
here they exercise the freedom to be 'ugly' by normative beauty standards.
Mendelssohnaimedto re-valuepolitico-aesthetic Categoriesthatvalueduniformityoverdifferencetoinsteadencouragediversity overPurity,disorderoverorder.Heaimedtobothgenerateaccessfor“ugly”minorityparticipati
Many do not feel free to present their true selves for fear of being judged as ugly, weak, cowardly, or any number of aesthetic judgements. In this way, freedom of self-expression is often silently eliminated in social settings.
gly Laws,forone,rejectedasunfree,thespacescordonedofffor“unsightly,”“improper,” and “disgusting”lif
Within normative spaces, nobody feels free to be ugly-everyone feels judged and fears to act as themselves if their personality or behaviors aren't normative. However, within the spaces where the ugly are relegated, there is a greater freedom of self-expression.
ombinedwithnewstatuteslikeConcealedCarryand Stand YourGroundlaws thatallowpeopletocarrygunsinpublic and claim self-defenseinoffensiveeegunsnow deepenasenseoffreedomasindividual capacitytocontrolthelifeand deathofothers,
Pro gun argument would be that it is not the freedom to control the life or death of others, but rather of yourself. If presented with a dangerous threat, they would not want to be left hoping for the police to arrive and deal with the problem in time, instead they want to be armed with the capacity to eliminate the threat on their own
victionsdamagetheUNofthosewhoareevicted,destroyingthe stabiliryandconnectioneedbyhousingandfamiliarneighborhoodswhilethrustingvulnerablerecointodangeroussituations.
it could be argued that the existence of evictions still serves a good. It in the end is what forces people to pay their rent, and rent in the end is just an acknowledgement that housing has value. Without evictions, and by extension rent, people would feel no need to work to get housing and housing markets would be turned upside down. Within a capitalist system, where the value of a good is always inherently tied to money, there is no way to abolish evictions.
y making vulnerable people even more vulnerable, the anti-maskers enactthe domination they claim to reject. The COVID warriors practice a freedomto expose others to death, and indeed to be free from them.
The anti maskers are impinging on other's freedom by limiting the spaces which they feel safe inhabiting. however, if they were to be forced to wear masks, they would also in a sense not feel comfortable inhabiting public spaces. Which side is the side of true freedom depends on whether you think feeling unsafe or uncomfortable in a space is a more urgent need.
entalregulation, andecon
Want to highlight "socially interconnected" above but I can't. Freedom is typically a poor method to approach socially interconnected phenomena, as other ideals instantly come into competition with it.
modernandbackwards,richandpoor,white andBlack,Cheisciinand Jewi icuries,iiirty.Bytheeighteenthandnineteenth cenishandMuslim,pure anddirty.By-TeenigningwiJavement,industrialcapitalism,anm,aligningwithsystemsofensieeranihedtonon-WesternculturalbehaviuglinessbecameattacEantedwithwealthywhitephysical features,wherebyfeatures associatChristiansbecamethebeautiful,anduglinessattached‘°Blacks—-ignatiesshelisabiliindigenouspeoples.
The author does establish a link between the ugly laws and aesthetics, and shows how aesthetics have often served pro-white and western ideals, but the author never shows that the ugly laws implicitly or explicitly uphold these pro-western dichotomies. Maybe the author is arguing that aesthetics could potentially uphold existing power structures (as I'm sure they have), but it's not shown here.
public free-dom
"Public Freedom" isn't really defined. I'd think of the ideal that the ugly laws try to uphold as more of a public good, thinking of people as decorations for space and not wanting public space to be 'decorated' by the unsightly. it could be argued that it also upholds normative people's 'freedom' to inhabit spaces populated by other normative people, but I think that's a weaker argument.
partly from an aesthetic category of interpretation to namean affective experience of antipathy or dissonance, and a judgment of of-fensive action. Ugliness as an aesthetic judgment attaches to things withsubjectively determined displeasurable properties that work in multiple sen-sory registers of vision, smell, and taste when experiencing something dis-turbing, a sensorial multiplicity that is important throughout this book."'
isn't it a part of the freedom of individuals or groups to appear 'ugly' to outside standards? Aesthetic standards are also extremely subjective, much more so than moral ones. I think a better term for the title would be evil freedoms or some moral judgement of that kind.
cess to a competitive marketplace in which allpresumably have equal capacity to trade and profit,
Makes a lot of assumptions like economics does, but these don't apply to the real world-inequality is baked in from circumstances, genetics, and early childhood. Markets are also often unfair and don't promote the public good or freedom.
correct ideal of freedom
no such thing as the correct ideal of freedom - it will always be the subject of debate
Freedomisthus,atonce, thehighestidealinAmericanpoliticsandalsothemostbrutal.
Kind of an unsubstantiated claim here. Other ideals are arguably contenders for the highest good and also have caused a great deal of harm ex. the public good/security as an ideal causing us to draft soldiers to wars to be killed
hat if popular forms of freedomhave entailed not merely the celebrated practices of individual liberty, ruleof law, or shared participation in collective governance, but also torture, dis-possession, and racial domination?
this might be the case, but I would claim that the story of America is one of finding ways in which 'freedom' causes harms and ameliorating those structures ex. slavery, (supposedly) progressive taxes, environmental regulations
FreedomfortheFilipinoschallenging USoccupationmeansbeingsubjectedtotortur
Interesting way to highlight the hypocrisy in the song, but I doubt anyone would claim that freedom to the Filipinos is this--instead maybe that torture is a byproduct of the Americans' freedom
compelthelargerFilipinopopulationtosub-mittoimperialoccupation.
Fear of punishment can deter resistance to oppressors; impinging on the freedom of the oppressed to express their discontent or rebel