How Do You Know If You're Truly Free? | Philip Pettit | TEDxNewYork

Most of us can generally agree that freedom is an ideal, says philosopher Philip Pettit. But how do we actually define it? In a thought-provoking talk, Pettit shows the cultural and legal requirements for a truly free society.

Philip Pettit is a political philosopher at Princeton University, where he thinks deeply about republican governments and the nature of freedom.

[darrinneat]

To walk upon the skies with no more than wind in your eyes, to gaze upon ourself through the silence of your own creation with awe and fearless steps of certainty.
To walk upon... And to walk across... What was on the other side was the turn... So as to gaze upon the same view that had never been seen before.. And Never will again... To the last sky walker of the two towers 😊 Thank you for the thrill 😊

[BreakingDawn]

We have to be slaves towards freedom so to speak if we want to fight for it to be our own bad enough...we still have to recognize with freedom comes demands from it in itself both on personal and public front.

[istvanzardai]

Excellent summary of some of the motivations of Pettit's republican views. Good laws and social rules enable freedom. They make it possible that we can go to school, have healthcare, have roads and energy. We need a strong legal framework and infrastrutrue which enable safe and rich lives. Business and industry are only possible in such a world, so we have to regulate business in a way that benefits most of us. Just doing what everyone wants leads to weakness, chaos, exploitation and the rule of the rich.

[Commonsense]

"The army of truly free people grows with every life they trample" Tristan Garwood

[otisdriftwood]

By binding others especially those who can't pay you 👍😀

[xanamata]

i know that i am free because i am obligated to taxes and tolls .

[Banele-svpn]

Who's comin from one of Zack's shorts 😂

[朱林-jd]

I don't know how to get this freedom, in my feeling, all laws making and work depend on humans. Humans should have different tendencies on different issues. We depend on others. Because we have to exchange things with others, we cannot produce anything.

[johnperez]

The more protection you need the less Freedom you have

[godscissorer]

Why is it that we continue to negotiate freedom by addressing what are percieved differences?

Our differences should should perhaps be private. That is to say not a matter for the governing bodies to consider.

[dapc]

~freedom is not "of" the world~freedom is being not consistently Maya's puppet~when you have lost your ego you are totally free from agendas, events and even your physical self in being true self which in ZEN* is nothing at all~an object will never be free~freedom is transparent and like said not "of" the world but in it instead~only the SOUL* has it~not an identity~do you know who you are?~remember when the Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma "who stands before me?"~Bodhidharma said~" dunno" and walked away~he went on to be the founder of ZEN* which no one can interpret unless you dig deep within yourself to know of it~as said~identity is ego based and to seek it outside oneself one has just lost who is already within~

[davidcuarzo]

Let's now see an example from the artistic world that Pettit has recurrently used to illustrate his idea of freedom as non-domination: Henrik Ibsen's play "A Doll's House." In this drama, Pettit explains that Nora would not be directly constrained in her factual freedom under her husband, who allows her to do whatever she wants. However, she would be dominated because her freedom ultimately depends on her husband's goodwill. But Pettit stays at a superficial level of the play, and the metaphorical sense of his interpretation does not hold up. As we later understand in the novel, Nora has been deceived by her husband's attitude from the beginning. His tolerance and permissiveness are rooted in hidden economic interests related to the power of the woman's signature, which has always been manipulated.

I emphasize this because Pettit establishes a criterion to detect domination at a basic level of social interaction, which he calls the "eyeball test." According to this test, a society is free if its citizens can look each other in the eye without feeling the fears associated with domination. This immediately raises the question of what happens when citizens do not identify the agent of their domination, when the power that subjugates them is not readily visible. This is the case in contemporary society, where corporations are invisible in their structure and identity, and the overwhelmingly dominant power, represented by their shareholders, remains elusive and untouchable, the source of misery and death. One cannot separate the private from the political, the personal from the public, the social from the individual.

This is precisely what happens with Nora. Nora shatters the doll's house that Pettit tries to reduce her to with his interpretation by leaving her home and abandoning her family. Nora, like Antigone at that level, defies the entire state apparatus, personified by her husband as a patriarchal figure. Great real-life figures like Ulrike Meinhof or Rosa Luxemburg embody this. Here, the true enemy is identified, one that is never obvious.

This example of "A Doll's House" is important because Pettit uses it in various interventions, including an interview and a conference. In a TEDxNewYork talk titled "How Do You Know If You're Truly Free?" he once again relies on "A Doll's House" to explain his idea of freedom as non-domination, drawing an analogy with the independence of the 13 American colonies from the British Empire. For Pettit, colonial America represents the role of the oppressed, Nora, while the British Empire represents the role of the oppressor, Torvald.

This choice of the "American Revolution" is more driven by a sophistical inclination towards chauvinism and the exaltation of American patriotism than by philosophical adequacy, as we will now see. When speaking of freedom as non-domination, Pettit unintentionally presents a counterexample. On one hand, he presents colonial America as the archetypal example of the oppressed against the British Empire, which represents the oppressor. However, he later proposes the African American social minority as a new archetypal example of the oppressed. Well, colonial America was, for centuries after its "revolution, " the absolute oppressor of the African-descendant minority. Despite its "constitution, " it maintained the factual enslavement and privileged exploitative relationships with the British Empire, dominating the enslaved workforce that provided raw materials for the British imperial metropolis's industrial revolution, such as cotton. And this is just speaking of the oppressive role of colonial America in relation to enslaved human beings from Africa. On the other hand, we have the systematic genocide of tens of millions of Native Americans. What on earth does the independence of the 13 American colonies from the British Empire have to do with the side of the oppressed, with Nora? Pettit falls into a major contradiction. Here we see the classic case in which freedom as non-domination can be applied to defend both the oppressed and the oppressors, although it may only appear as a double-edged sword.

Pettit's postulate that "we need a situation in which minorities are protected from majorities" through non-domination is susceptible to being easily interpreted as an invitation to class inequality. Because such a sword can be wielded by large corporations and other elite power groups (who are all-powerful but quantitatively a minority), who, under the guise of freedom as non-domination, continue or expand their disproportionate domination.

Thus, both Pettit's defense of freedom as non-domination and Shapiro's defense are actually one-sided swords: they seem to be inclined toward the defense of positive freedom for the most disadvantaged in terms of redistributive justice, but nothing prevents the powerful from snatching it from their hands and using it to decapitate them with the armored defense of their corporate rights, claiming freedom as non-domination to protect the unsustainable growth of their predatory enterprises in the public sphere. Because weapons are taken by those who can take them and know how to use them.

[RalphDratman]

So Nora does not have the freedom to leave Torvald. Well, no one is free of every constraint. I'm not free to fly into the air without mechanical assistance. So I am not then free at all --- is that right?

[PeopleDoingRegardThings]

Government = Torvald. You're welcome I saved you 14 minutes

[khalidsafir]

I disagree fundamentally with this talk. Real freedom is from within. In the west we lack that despite given freedoms to do what we want. We have the freedom to smile at strangers but we don't. If that sounds like a small thing to you, as it does to many well off people I know, then you don't understand how to be happy.

[RealAdvocateForLiberty]

Obviously this guy doesn't understand what a libertarian is. He seems to have no reason except some personal vendetta to even tag a lecture on the dangers of libertarianism onto the last minute. Libertarians work harder at keeping laws and lawmakers in their place than anyone I know

[rafaelrocha]

Isaiah Berlin has a better definition of freedom. Is more in line with the liberal movement. Negative freedom is what matter. We should be free from government.

I also associate equaliaty as equality of opportunity. Is the only equality that has some value.