Quaestiones Infinitae Publications of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Utrecht University
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Quaestiones Infinitae Publications of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Utrecht University Volume 114 Copyright © 2018 by Hans Arentshorst All rights reserved Printed by ProefschriftMaken || www.proefschriftmaken.nl ISBN 978-94-6295-954-5 Perspectives on freedom Normative and political views on the preconditions of a free democratic society Perspectieven op vrijheid Normatieve en politieke zienswijzen betreffende de voorwaarden voor een vrije democratische samenleving (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof.dr. H.R.B.M. Kummeling, ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 27 juni 2018 des ochtends te 10.30 uur door Hans Arentshorst geboren op 14 december 1982 te Noordwijk Promotoren: Prof. dr. H.H.A. van den Brink Prof. dr. M. Yrjönsuuri Prof. dr. A. Laitinen Co-promotor: Dr. J.H. Anderson The degree is awarded as part of a Joint Doctorate with the University of Jyväskylä. Contents Introduction: The problem of freedom today ......................................................................... 1 1. Normative and political approaches to freedom ................................................................... 4 2. The social-ethical camp: Identifying social pathologies ....................................................... 8 3. The political-historical camp: Adding new perspectives .................................................... 14 4. Finding common ground ................................................................................................... 24 5. General overview .............................................................................................................. 30 Part 1: Freedom as indeterminacy Introduction: The French critique of totalitarianism .................................................................. 39 Chapter 1: Claude Lefort on the preconditions of political freedom ................................... 45 1.1 From Marxist revolt to Machiavellian virtù ..................................................................... 46 1.2 On social division and the symbolic function of power .................................................... 49 1.3 Totalitarianism as a pathology of democracy ................................................................... 54 1.4 Freedom, indeterminacy, and human rights ..................................................................... 61 1.5 The virtue of endurance ................................................................................................... 66 Chapter 2: Pierre Rosanvallon on the problem of representation........................................ 69 2.1 From the ‘second left’ to the ‘anti-totalitarian movement’ ............................................... 70 2.2 The French political culture of generality ........................................................................ 74 2.3 The problem of representation-as-figuration .................................................................... 77 2.4 The rise and fall of ‘balanced’ democracy ....................................................................... 79 2.5 Freedom as indeterminacy revisited ............................................................................... 100 Conclusion Part 1 ................................................................................................................... 107 Part 2: Freedom as complementarity Introduction: Three understandings of a social pathology ....................................................... 111 Chapter 3: Charles Taylor and the problem of situating freedom ..................................... 115 3.1 The need for identification and meaningful differentiation............................................. 116 3.2 Two critiques of naturalism ........................................................................................... 121 3.3 Atomism and the problem of identification .................................................................... 126 3.4 Recovering meaningful differentiation: the dialogue society .......................................... 134 3.5 Toward an illusion-free self-interpretation ..................................................................... 139 Chapter 4: Axel Honneth on the social foundations of democratic life .............................. 150 4.1 Three criteria for a democratic theory ............................................................................ 152 4.2 Social freedom and democratic Sittlichkeit .................................................................... 157 4.3 Immanent critique applied to the economy .................................................................... 161 4.4 Critique as a social practice ........................................................................................... 173 4.5 Tensions between political and social freedom .............................................................. 178 Conclusion Part 2 ................................................................................................................... 181 Part 3: Freedom in history Introduction: Tragedy and critique .......................................................................................... 187 Chapter 5: Tragic and comic conceptions of history ........................................................... 191 5.1 Renaissance and tragedy: Republican freedom and the problem of Fortuna ................... 193 5.2 Enlightenment and comedy: The emergence of utopian philosophies of history ............. 199 5.3 Herder on pluralism and empathy .................................................................................. 206 5.4 Hegel on modernity as being beyond tragedy ................................................................ 211 5.5 Guizot on liberalism and democracy .............................................................................. 217 Chapter 6: Giving form to a democratic society ................................................................. 225 6.1 Two approaches to the problem of atomism................................................................... 226 6.2 The tension between organicism and political equality: The case of universal suffrage .. 229 6.3 The emancipation of the citizen as individual ................................................................ 233 6.4 Complicating the relation between representations and social reality ............................. 236 6.5 Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic indeterminacy ............................................... 242 Conclusion Part 3 ................................................................................................................... 246 Conclusion: Two ways of situating freedom ........................................................................ 249 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 257 Samenvatting ......................................................................................................................... 265 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ 271 Curriculum Vitae ................................................................................................................... 273 To me, human societies, like persons, become something worthwhile only through their use of liberty. I have always said that it is more difficult to stabilize and to maintain liberty in our new democratic societies than in certain aristocratic societies of the past. But I shall never dare to think it impossible. And I pray to God lest He inspire me with the idea that one might as well despair of trying. Tocqueville1 1 Quoted in White 1973: 222. Introduction: The problem of freedom today In 1975 John Pocock famously coined the term ‘Machiavellian moment’, which refers to the moment when people start to realize that their political order is not a reflection of an eternal order or part of a divine eschatological story but that it is mortal and surrounded by a dangerous sea of historical contingency (Fortuna), which can only be kept at bay with the help of creative political action (virtù).2 Recently, Luuk van Middelaar has argued that the European Union had such a ‘Machiavellian moment’ in the period following the economic crisis of 2008: after decades in which the story of the EU had been told as an eschatological narrative, Fortuna now started to knock at its door with a series of crises – the euro-crisis, the Ukraine-crisis, the refugee-crisis, and the Atlantic crisis (Trump and Brexit) – which confronted people with the mortality of the EU and the need for political virtù in order to stay alive.3 This traumatic experience seems to be closely connected to the renewed struggles that we can witness today about the meaning and realization of the ideal of freedom. After decades of wide- spread belief in the benefits of globalization, marketization, open borders, and de-regulation, we are now facing a countermovement consisting of various forms of populism and nationalism that promise to restore borders, security, and identity. As Brexit and the recent elections in America (Trump vs. Clinton) and France (Macron vs. Le Pen) have indicated, the most important dividing line in western democracies seems to be no longer between the classical ‘left’