Chapter 1
APORIAS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: THE CRITICAL THEORY OF FREEDOM

Freedom is the guiding trope of modernity.1 It is the key rationale underlying the bourgeois societies emerging since the eighteenth century, as well as of the rationalization, industrialization, democratization and individualization of all areas of life in these societies. Freedom is the trope on which modern society builds its own self-image. The question of what is meant by the term freedom, and how it is to be realized, is one of the ‘fundamental questions’ of community and society listed by Greek-French philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis: ‘Who are we as a collectivity? What are we for one another? Where and in what are we? What do we want; what do we desire; what are we lacking?’2 The semantics of the term freedom serves as the basis for negotiating the identity of both society as a whole and that of its members. Moreover, it indicates opportunities for self-realization through social institutions which can grant or deny freedom. Finally, it harbours a promise, an idea, which, through a normative imperative of action, encourages us to compare our social being to that of others.

Correspondingly, formulating a precise definition of the concept of freedom is no simple task: ‘There is no word that admits of more various significations and has made more varied impressions on the human mind than that of liberty’, noted French philosopher Montesquieu as early as 1748.3 To this day, the term is usually coupled to two horizons of meaning: firstly, a person’s freedom implies the absence of coercion, at least in those areas that are supposed to guarantee a sphere of freedom, such as in one’s private life, in science or in art. Secondly, freedom also implies a legitimate social authority which enacts the individual right to freedom and protects it from being violated, in particular the state, as an authority of power and decision-making.4 Which of the two meanings is dominant in public disputes says a lot about a society’s self-understanding.5 The respective semantics of freedom reveals the sense that members of society attach to it. Does individual freedom mean carte blanche for action, within a space protected from outside interference? Or is the freedom of the individual to be realized via social institutions? These specific emphases reveal how the social is substantiated through very varied rationales. The concept of freedom can legitimize state interference in individual independence (e.g., when the liberties of others are being infringed upon) or else contribute to the erosion of social cohesion (such as when individuals selfishly assert their own freedom to act at the cost of others).

Critique of freedom

Rather than defining the modern concept of freedom more closely, at this point we would first like to address its peculiar structure – which is what makes today’s synthesis of freedom and authoritarianism possible in the first place. Needless to say, the term freedom is marked by a broad-ranging plasticity. It is malleable and receives its force precisely through its intrinsic ambiguities. Whereas negative concepts of freedom emphasize the absence of external obstacles, positive ones underscore the inner intentions that precede free volition as well as the external preconditions required to protect individual freedom.6 In his The Principle of Hope, the philosopher Ernst Bloch, echoing Montesquieu’s remark from two centuries before, speaks of the momentousness of words able to harbour highly varied imaginaries: ‘The bigger the words, the more easily alien elements are able to hide in them. This is particularly the case with freedom, and with order, of which everybody often has his own idea.’7 Bloch insightfully observes that its enormous semantic range accommodates contrary meanings, including those which may at first glance appear unrelated to the term.

The concept of freedom proves itself in individual everyday actions, in which we find our notion of freedom either affirmed or denied, or at the superordinate level of political decision-making power which can strengthen or restrict individual rights and liberties. Images of freedom have a creative effect; while historically they have been placed in service of planned organization or, indeed, been politically abused, as a normative idea they elude any immediate control or direction. Rather, freedom as a social idea engenders new historical situations and new forms of behaviour. From the plurality of its meanings emerged its open, forward-looking potency, which resulted in its historical concurrence with social progress. This structural composition of the concept of freedom turns it into an essential resource of sense-making in modernity.

This is the backdrop against which a critique of freedom needs to be understood, indeed in two respects. On the one hand, it comprises all the both failed and victorious social struggles fought in the name of freedom. Advocating the realization of autonomy entails the critique of the societies which systematically prevent it. The bourgeoisie’s emancipation movement fought to implement universal civil liberties, the working class aimed for the elimination of its subordination within a capitalist structure, and the women’s movement – like the movements of social minorities – pursued the aim of no longer being discriminated against and attaining the right to lead a free, self-directed life. That is to say, historically, the fight for self-determination and self-realization has always motivated challenges to established social orders.8

On the other hand, a critique of freedom also requires the scrutiny of its own preconditions, so as to reveal its aporias and the ways it undermines itself.9 The reason why the concept of freedom is regarded with a degree of scepticism is its normative nature. The idea of freedom can founder on its own promises, for example, if they are delivered only insufficiently and in fragmented ways; it can set in motion unwanted side-effects, e.g., if, in order for opportunities for freedom to be granted, individual independence is restricted elsewhere. This calls for reflection on the limitations and contradictions inherent in real-life freedom. In this book, we seek to combine both these strands of critique: proceeding from the disturbingly regressive critique that is currently being articulated in the name of freedom, we analyse the aporetic structure of bourgeois freedom that carries a potential for social erosion in late modern societies. When institutions are regarded mainly as a restriction of one’s own free will and action, this says a great deal about our society and the social pathologies it engenders. After all, things have not always been this way.

Throughout modernity, freedom was usually spoken of in the same breath as progress.10 This is particularly noticeable in the Hegelian notion of the ‘cunning of reason’, according to which history progresses as ‘the development of the spirit’s consciousness of its own freedom and of the consequent realisation of this freedom’.11 The philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was convinced that reality was inherently reasonable, and that reason was realized both in the action of individuals and in the social world. Here, history is conceived as progress, in whose course the limited forms of realization of the spirit, which is objectified in world history, are overcome – leading to the realization of freedom.12 For Hegel, only after individuals have reached a mutual understanding about themselves, about what they are and what they want to be, can we even speak of history. He conceives of this form of reflective self-understanding in practical terms: it is sedimented in the rationality of social action. In this sense, freedom constitutes not only an intelligible yardstick for reason, but has its place in the moral organization of society.

Modernity is regarded as the most comprehensive emancipation project in human history. The ability to act on one’s own free will is no longer the privilege of a few, but a universal claim of bourgeois society.13 Consequently, the idea of individual freedom is inextricably tied to the social institutions designed to protect it. As philosopher Axel Honneth points out in his work Freedom’s Right, ‘[t]he enormous gravitational force exerted by the notion of autonomy derives from the fact that it manages to form a systematic link between the individual subject and the social order.’14 In this conception, the modern subject is not already free because it can decide according to its own will, but only once it is able to act freely during socially interactive processes. In modernity, autonomy, which is commonly associated with the independence from external forces, is a social product. The individual is independent not when detached from social circumstances, but within them. Conversely, the legitimacy of the social order depends on the degree to which it can guarantee individual freedom.15

Alongside the question of institutions providing opportunities for freedom, another aspect also comes into play, which may initially appear at odds with individual autonomy: namely, domination. Modern freedom rests on an asymmetrical order in which varying degrees of self-determination are legitimized. This applies not only to eighteenth-century societies. It was quite normal until well into the twentieth century for different social groups to...