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Freedom as a Skill

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

K. R. Minogue
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Extract

The word ‘freedom’ leads a double life. As a rallying cry in the mouths of politicians and publicists, it features in speech acts which inspire men to brave endeavours. Freedom or death are the proffered alternatives, and they are generally linked with fatiguing dispositions such as vigilance. As a philosophical concept, on the other hand, freedom is a territory in which battles are fought about such issues as positivity and negativity, virtue, determinism and the character of the will. There is remarkably little connection between these two lives. Philosophers do not seem to take much interest in courage, and politicians do not tarry to specify whether it is negative or positive liberty they are talking about.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 15: Of Liberty , March 1983 , pp. 197 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1983

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References

1 The Good Soldier Schweik, trans. Selva, Paul (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1951), Ch. 3, 37–38.Google Scholar

2 It is discussed as ‘The retreat to the inner citadel’ in Section iii of Isaiah Berlin's essay on ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 135.Google Scholar

3 The Teachings of Epictetus, translated and introduced by T. W. Rolleston, (London: Walter Scott, n.d.), xxxvi.

4 I shall later emphasize the ludic quality of the condition of freedom; and it is notable that the Stoics were great exponents of the game of freedom.

5 Ilinxic is an adjective taken over from the French of Roger Caillois's work, Les Jeux at les hommes (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), 57Google Scholar, in which it describes his fourth class of types of games, which is where ‘onjoue a provoquer en soi, par un mouvement rapide, de rotation ou de chute, un état organique de confusion et de désarroi’.

6 See obituary and correspondence in The Times, 01 1981.Google Scholar

7 I borrow this form of words from the second essay in On Human Conduct by Oakeshott, Michael (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).Google Scholar

8 Leviathan, II, Ch. 21, Michael Oakshott (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, n.d.), 138.Google Scholar

9 Leviathan, op. cit., 227.Google Scholar

10 Leviathan, Ch. 15, op. cit., 97.Google Scholar

11 Leviathan, Ch. 14, op. cit., 12.Google Scholar

12 The Times, 10 02 1981.Google Scholar

13 Cf. Homo Ludous by J. Huizinga.