Critically
compare Berlin's and Merleau-Ponty's conception of freedom
Barry
Gilheany (c)
This
essay compares notions of freedom advanced by one of the giants of
20th century political theory -Isaiah Berlin – with
those of the lesser well known French philosopher, Maurice
Merleau-Ponty. It examines their seminal texts ; Berlin's – Two
Concepts of Liberty (1958) and
Merleau-Ponty,'s Phenomenology of Perception (1945).
It discusses their dominant precepts , in the case of Berlin, value
pluralism (Cherniss, 2013); and the ability to “stand out from the
crowd” and in that of Merleau-Ponty; the body as subject and the
location of freedom in a situation. It
reflects upon the intellectual influences on both; for Berlin the
inter-war Oxford Realists and the dominant contemporary liberalisms
whose central concept of rational choice Berlin's value-pluralism
sought to undermine (Gray, 2013). For Merleau-Ponty, the
'phenomenological' movement initiated by Edmund Husserl (Matthews,
2006) and, to a lesser extent, the existentialism of Jean-Paul
Sartre. Finally, the impact of each philosopher's view on freedom on
politics is considered.
To take Berlin first, he unpicks the
liberal package deal which automatically associates freedom and
democracy (Gray: p.6). He postulates, not just as a logical
possibility but a reality of history (Gray:p.7) that there may exist
in authoritarian regimes a greater measure of liberty than in some
democracies:
“Indeed, it is arguable that in the
Prussia of Frederick the Great or in the Austria of Joseph II, men of
imagination, originality and creative genius, and, indeed, minorities
of all kinds, were less persecuted and felt the pressure, both of
institutions and custom, less heavy upon them then in many an earlier
or later democracy' (Gray: p.7)
This contention has contemporary
relevance in the context of the post-despotic state of Iraq where the
regime that emerged after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is more
democratic in that it has come out of unpredictable elections but
that many minorities such as Christians and gays are less free and
the freedom of women is much diminished due to the development of
ungoverned spaces which religious fundamentalists have exploited.
Berlin's insistence that democracy and
liberty can be conflictual has illustrious ancestry. The French
liberal thinker Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), John Stuart Mill
(1806-1873) and Mill's godson Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), thought
the same. They assumed what Berlin needed to spell out: liberty is
best understood in negative terms, as an absence of constraint, legal
or social, on what individuals may do. At its base, Gray's
essential contention is that freedom is best understood as the
absence of human obstacles to living as you so desire or may come to
desire (Gray: p.8). As Berlin put it in a BBC radio broadcast on
Hegel in 1952:
“....... The essence of liberty has
always lain in the ability to choose, because you wish to choose
uncoerced, unbullied, not swallowed up in some vast system, and in
the right to resist, to be unpopular, to stand up for your
convictions merely because they are your convictions. This is true
freedom, and without it there is neither freedom of any kind, not
even the illusion of it.”(Gray:p.9).
Berlin's preference for negative over
positive freedom is, at its simplest, a rebuttal of paternalism –
the idea that either divinely ordained authority or authority
located in a supposedly higher realm of knowledge or enlightenment
can prescribe how others may live. Berlin's anti-paternalism is
rooted in his value-pluralism, the theory that human values are
irreducibly multiple and can generate conflicts to which there is no
single correct solution. For there are times when there can be no
totally satisfactory answer to every moral dilemma, whether by having
the best consequences, or by obeying some ethical precept (Gray:
p.10).
Berlin's philosophical beliefs are
rooted in the debates between the Idealist and Realist schools in
Britain in the early 20th century.. Influenced by his
Realist predecessors at Oxford, Berlin rejected Idealism's
metaphysical and systemic approach to ethics; this 'Hegelian
patter' (Cherniss: p.1) based ethical theory on a conception of an
ordered and purposive universe and of a human telos within
this larger order, conceived as transcending the ends and instincts
of the 'empirical self'. This followed from their identification of
duty and interest (i.e. an action is right, and thus obligatory, if
and only if, it is good for the actor)(Cherniss: p.2).
By contrast, Berlin shared the
scepticism of Realists towards dogma and irreverence towards
authority, and their affinity with anti-extremist liberalism
(Cherniss: p.5). This scepticism formed the basis of not only his
opposition to Communism but to other totalatising trends in the mind
20th century such as the social trends towards conformity
and functionalism, and the rise of managerial, technocratic and
scientistic doctrines in both thought and politics (Cherniss: p.87).
Berlin develops an original and
distinctive strand of liberalism that that goes against the grain of
conventional Anglophone liberal thought. Whether expressed in the
works of Rawls and Dworkin, Hayek or Nozick or earlier in Kant,
Mill, Locke or Hobbes the foundation stone of contemporary liberalism
is rational choice for the optimum promotion of general well-being.
In Berlin's agonistic liberalism, however, the value of
freedom derives from the limits of rational choice. Agonistic
liberalism posits a liberalism of conflict among inherently competing
goods and is based on the radical choices that we have must make
among incompatibilities, not rational choice. Further it denies that
the structure of liberties appropriate to a liberal society can be
derived from any body of principles, since the choice among
conflicting liberties often comes down to a choice among
incommensurables (Gray: pp.44-45).
To turn to the central dichotomy in
Berlin's concept of liberty; that between positive and negative
liberty;Berlin endorsed the 'liberal' view that the ' minimal
meaning' of liberty was the 'absence of restraint'. Freedom
was in the first instance freedom against; liberty is liberty from'.
Social or political freedom meant absence of 'interference or
oppression, whether deliberate or not' by others. Liberty was thus '
in its primary sense a negative concept. (Cherniss:
p.188).
However,
Berlin did not posit an absolutely 'negative' concept of freedom. He
often conflated freedom as non-interference with the ability to do as
one wished. The passage quoted from his 1952 BBC radio broadcast
clearly articulates the 'positive' aspects of freedom: making
choices for oneself,
and living a life based on convictions one experiences as one's own
(Cherniss: pp.188-89).
Berlin attempts to reconcile the
possible conflict between “negative” and “positive” concepts
of freedom by introducing another dichotomy: between 'humanistic'
and 'non-humanistic' , conceptions of liberty. The 'non-humanistic'
conception was anti-empirical, anti-individualist, the antithesis of
liberalism. It viewed individuals as part of a greater whole; and
defined by their function in relation to this entity or ends. It saw
liberation as an act of 'collective self-sacrifice' on behalf of a
wider entity be it nation, class, religion, ideology or the pursuit
of power for its own sake. By contrast, the 'humanistic' view
combined a conception of the individual as 'an empirical being in
time and space' pursuing his own goals for whatever reason with a
Kantian view of individuals as the 'sole source of morality' who
should never be sacrificed for some higher cause (Cherniss:
pp.201-02).
Introducing the 'humanist' and
'non-humanistic' cleavage leads to Berlin's views on how the state
can impact on freedom within society. Berlin's political theory
centres
on a liberal programme of protecting
civil liberties, limiting interference, and insisting of the sanctity
of certain areas dedicated to private life (Cherniss: p.203). His
account of 'basic' liberty was closely allied to opposition of grand
designs on individual thought and behaviour. He feared that through
the use of social pressure, cultural regulation and technological
means of persuasion and control, the authorities would render the end
of personal freedom (Cherniss: p.199). Throughout his work he
condemned:
“every enactment which has sought
to obstruct human liberty and vivisect [sic] human society into a
single harmonious whole, in which men are intended to be devoid of
any degree of individual initiative'. Such a 'tight well-built system
'might produce happiness – but it was likely to be too cramping;
in any case, it was not clear[...] that happiness is the sole value
which men seek” (Cherniss: p.199).
While, as an anti-Communist liberal,
he rejected the arguments, often used by Marxist regimes to nullify
political freedom, that possessing formal legal and political rights
without material resources was not 'true' freedom; he did not want
his account of liberty to legitimise laissez-faire and consequent
economic inequality and poverty. He acknowledged that advocates of
'economic freedom' were highlighting serious deficiencies in society.
Berlin's imagining of the social world
as constituted by intrinsic conflict rather than natural harmony made
him as sceptical about free-market as well as Communist nirvanas.
Accordingly he supported the post war Atlee Welfare State with its
'mixed economy' and he rejected what would now be called the
neo-liberal state with its free-market fundamentalism.
Berlin never fully reconciled the
tensions between the positive and negative dimensions of liberty.
His doctrine of value-pluralism helps to explain how his view on
liberty, even negative liberty, contains competing and
incommensurable liberties such as those between liberty and equality,
freedom of information and privacy and equality of opportunity and
outcome. There is also the form of incomparability among values
known as cultural pluralism – the view that human
values are always specific to particular cultural traditions and
cannot be the objects of any sort of rational assessment or
criticism. Berlin's value-pluralism incorporates all three levels of
conflict in that he accepts the inevitable incommensurabilities in
each of them (Gray: pp,79-80). It is through value pluralism that
Berlin articulates his opposition to any perfectionist or
teleological political theory or design.
While Berlin rejects any attempt to
limit basic liberty whether through 'determinist ' accounts of
ideology and history or by well-intentioned programmes to shape human
destiny, the account of freedom given by the French philosopher
Maurice Merleau-Ponty appears to circumscribe liberty by his belief
that;
“Our body and our habits give a
shape to our life which is neither freely chosen nor
deterministically imposed” but that ...”it is precisely because
of the motivations inherent in our existence and our past that we can
stand back and make a free choice of a new future” (Baldwin, Ed,
2004).
Before critiquing this notion of
freedom it is necessary to refer to the intellectual influences on
this rather less well known but almost equally influential
contemporary of that French philosophical icon – Jean Paul Sartre.
Although Marcel Merleau-Ponty
(1908-61) had appeared to have been forgotten about in scholastic
circles, there has been a revival of interest in him particularly in
his writings on mind and consciousness (.Matthews, 2006). The most
telling influence on his intellectual development was the
'phenomenological' movement initiated by Edmund Husserl (b.1859)
(Matthews: pp.4-5).
Although phenomenology, like all
schools of thought, evolved over time, certain elements remained
constant. One was the emphasis on human subjectivity.
Knowledge and awareness of the world are always someone's
knowledge and awareness, as both Descartes and Kant had reminded
us. Husserl saw the concept of phenomenology as that of clarifying
the essences of the concepts used in the various forms of awareness
of the world around us, including the natural sciences. As part of
the 'natural attitude', we naturally take for granted the objective
existence of things of which we are aware, and seek more knowledge
about them. But to do that means enquiring into what exactly it is
that we are investigating. e.g. what is meant by 'consciousness' in
psychology. To discover that, we need to dispense with the
objectivist assumptions of the natural attitude and concentrate on
our own subjective consciousness; of how things appear to us
(hence 'phenomenology' from the Greek word 'phenomena' meaning
'appearances') (Matthews: p.60).
Merleau-Ponty saw phenomenology, in
his Phenomenology of Perception (1945) as combining a form of
subjectivism with objectivism, both realism and idealism. There is an
he objective or actually existing world that is independent of our
experience, which our experience must reach out to if it is to be an
experience at all. This is the basic premise of objectivism: even to
talk of our own personal experiences of the world requires us to be
able to arrive at a universalist point of view by comparing
experiences with other subjects. But what is mistaken about this
version of objectivity dominant since the Scientific Revolution of
the 16th and 17th centuries is that there is a
'stand-alone' world, independent of any single experience or indeed
of experience at all. The truth in subjectivism or idealism is that
the concept of an experience without a subject, and without a
perspective, is meaningless (Matthews: p.93).
Merleau-Ponty begins his account of
freedom by agreeing with Sartre's contention that freedom must 'be
in a situation'. Human beings can only make genuine choices if they
have to choose between valid alternatives. But these alternatives
must not themselves be chosen, otherwise we face the absurdity of an
infinite regress; I can choose only because I am in a situation
defined by x,y and z. With his account of 'being-in-the-world,
Merleau-Ponty conceptualises freedom in more concrete terms, as the
routine making of choices in a world we did not create. Human beings
are thus sited in a more genuinely 'existentialist scenario; in
concrete situations that restricts their freedom (Matthews:
pp.93-94).
To sum up Merleau-Ponty's conception
of freedom:
'What
then is freedom? To be born is to be born of the world and to be born
into the world. The world is always constituted but never completely
constituted; in the first case we are acted upon; in the second we
are open to an infinite number of possibilities. But this analysis
is still abstract, for we exist in both ways at
once.
There is, therefore, never determinism and never absolute choice'
(Baldwin, Ed: p.230)
At the heart of this
being-in-the-world situation is temporality. Being-in-the-world is
actively engaging with the world, acting on one's situation to change
it, but only in ways in which the unchosen character of the situation
will allow. (Matthews: p.100). We are embodied subjects, our past
choices are 'sedimented' in our body, in the same way that past
geological changes constitute part of the Earth today. For example
addicts have formed particular habits of response and behaviour which
continue to influence their present actions as they are sedimented in
brain pattern activity which governs their addiction to their drug of
choice. The addict may be free to give up but needs to bolster this
by finding ways of breaking their cycle of addiction (Matthews:
p.101).
As
is true for individuals, societies have freedom only in a situation.
For
example, Westerners live in societies based on representative
democracy and market economics and on the hegemony of scientific
world-views (Matthews: p.124) These are our reference points; we
cannot forget about science though religious fundamentalists may
choose to suppress this knowledge. Thus the decisions we take are
constrained by the trajectory that our society has followed. Also
social sciences cannot provide causal explanations in the manner of
the natural sciences, for instance by automatically correlating one's
economic situation to membership of a particular political party
(Matthews: p.125). For this is what 'objectivists' do, thinking of
Marxism as 'scientific socialism' with its requirement to discover
the 'laws of historical change' and the agents of social change
(Matthews: p.131).
How
then can we win back freedom concretely, letting go of these fixed
points of acquired experience? (Dorfman: 2007). In his analysis of
proletarian revolution and its three participant characters – the
factory worker, the itinerant journeyman and the tenant-farmer,
Mercel-Ponty sees it as motivated by a spontaneous 'thrust of
freedom' neither explicit or chosen (Dorfman: p.146). He appears to
deny the possibility that the revolution occurs independently of the
subject's will:
“
It
is not at all necessary that at any single moment a representation
of revolution should arise … It is sufficient that the journeyman
or the farmer should feel that he is on the march towards a certain
crossroads, to which the road trodden by the town labourers also
leads. Both find their journey's end in revolution, which would
perhaps have terrified the had it been described and represented to
them in advance.” (Baldwin: p.221).
Merleau-Ponty
does acknowledge the role of agitators
because 'they crystallise what is latent in the life of all
productive workers'. The role of agitators does beg the question of
whether without them 'workers would still be captive to the passivity
of their lives?' Is not
the act of crystallisation exactly
the kind of, what Merleau- Ponty calls, the kind of “radical
reflection” that is needed to achieve freedom? (Dorfman: p.147).
An answer to this question is found in
the his assertion that humans are both born of the world and into the
world. Freedom is therefore the movement and oscillation between
actively constituting the world (the all objective) and passively
accepting it as already constituted (the pre-objective) .
Merleau-Ponty discusses the
assumption to power of Napoleon Bonaparte in France in 1799 after a
decade of revolutionary ferment and states that:
“Nothing
can so order it that, in the France of 1799, a military power 'above
classes' should not appear as a natural product of the ebb of revolt,
and that the role of military dictator, should not here be 'a part
that has to be played' … freedom modifies it [history] only by
taking up the meaning that history was offering
at the moment in question.” (Baldwin, ed. pp.225-26).
In conclusion, both Isaiah Berlin and
Maurice Merleau-Ponty refuted determinism in their respective
conceptualisations of freedom. Both abhorred the descent of the
Soviet Union into totalitarian nightmare although Merleau-Ponty was
sympathetic to humanistic forms of Marxism while Berlin strongly
advocated liberal welfarist governments of those of Roosevelt's New
Deal and Atlee's Welfare State. Being an historian of ideas, Berlin
was influenced rather more by empiricism while Merleau-Ponty's work
reflected the imprint of the rather more dense concept of
phenomenology. Berlin was rather more prescriptive in delineating
zones of 'basic liberty' and his work reflected a visceral horror of
schemas be they Communism, managerialism and drives towards
efficiency and conformity. Yet he valued the autonomy of each
individual to forge their own life projects and destinies.
Merleau-Ponty did not see human beings as passive objects of
scientific laws of history but as active subjects free to make
decisions within the constraints imposed by the societies in which
they lived. Natural or societal limitations on the capacity of
individuals to act are, by contrast, rarely made explicit in Berlin's
work. But both, from their distinctive perspectives, have
contributed greatly to the corpus of scholarship around political
freedom.
Bibliography
Baldwin,
T. , Ed.(2004) Maurice
Merleau-Ponty. Basic Writings
London: Routledge.
Cherniss,
J.L. (2013) A Mind
and Its Time. The Development of Isaiah Berlin's Political Thought
Oxford:
Oxford University Press
Dorfman,
E. Freedom,
Perception and Radical Reflection pp.139-151
in
Baldwin, T. (2007) Reading
Merleau-Ponty. On Phenomenology of Perception London:
Routledge
Gray,
J. (2013) Isaiah
Berlin. An Interpretation of His Thought. Woodstock,
Oxon: Princeton University Press
Matthews,
E. (2006) Merleau-Ponty.
A Guide for the Perplexed
London: Continuum
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