tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post1471953522905432652..comments2023-07-04T03:53:40.171-07:00Comments on Matt Kundert's Friday Experiment: Constant’s Speech of 1819Matt Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-29659686716019752082009-01-10T13:46:00.000-07:002009-01-10T13:46:00.000-07:00More or less. Rorty leans on Isaiah Berlin's essa...More or less. Rorty leans on Isaiah Berlin's essay "Two Concepts of Liberty" when he develops his notion of the public/private distinction in CIS, and Berlin's distinction between positive and negative liberty is something like a self-conscious update Constant's between Ancient and Modern.<BR/><BR/>I don't think Berlin had in mind that we could bring positive and negative liberty together (he conceived them as something like incommensurable conceptions of life), but the ultimate thrust, of my appropriation at least, is that there does need to be something like a rapprochement, which is what I think Rorty is up to.<BR/><BR/>The Greeks had just discovered true communal activity, so it isn't surprising they apotheosized it. However, it is also difficult to imagine freedom as not bound up with some notion of an inviolable private sphere of action, some area where the activities are completely, totally and optionally your's to decide. The creation of an idea called "Ancient Liberty" is specifically a modern creation--whatever Rousseau was talking about, it wasn't historically Greek. What Rousseau was a part of, along with Machiavelli and the Italians, was the creation of modern republicanism (no relation, really, to the political party). The modern traditions of liberalism and republicanism have roughly revolved around emphasizing the individual on the one side and the state on the other.<BR/><BR/>Rorty's intercession is that we need both emphases. Without a state, there would be no inviolable sphere of privacy. So we need to have public virtues, we need a tradition of respect for public service. Rorty identifies with the liberal tradition because, when push comes to shove, he will say that the <I>only</I> reason we want a state is to secure that sphere of privacy.<BR/><BR/>Of course, a hell of a lot more goes into actually securing a working right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We've been figuring that out over the lifespan of the United States. One thing we've figured out is that people who are poor aren't really able to pursue happiness. We've also figured out that when people are poor, when they are constantly in fear of falling off the edge into total desolation, like say Iraq, Afghanistan, or Gaza, they are more likely say, "Fuck my privacy, I'm going to give over all my energy to anybody who can secure me and my family's ability to live."<BR/><BR/>We've learned, in other words, that something like Maslow's hierarchy is more true than we were previously likely to admit. Liberty goes hand in hand with equality, are not so simply opposed as we were still learning in high school in the 90s when studying how to splice up the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.<BR/><BR/>In other words, it is more something like, Ancient/positive Liberty is a precondition for Modern/negative Liberty, but the only point in having the former is to get to the latter. There isn't a tension, so conceived, though maybe an historically acted out negotiation in getting the right balance between government intervention and government get-the-hell-out. The only tension are the psychological tensions we individuals feel between enjoying hanging out with other like-minded people and just wanting to be left alone.Matt Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05304261355315746372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24152639.post-10240408629865028632009-01-10T12:08:00.000-07:002009-01-10T12:08:00.000-07:00So am I to make the Rorty comparison here by sayin...So am I to make the Rorty comparison here by saying that Ancient and Modern Liberty, brought together as Constant suggests, creates the same tension that the Liberal Ironist faces between his private irony and public face?Andrew Louishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18204999524677028033noreply@blogger.com