Free Self-determination

“I think that I am free!” This could be a slogan of the postmodern society. Man, who can give himself purposes, and determine himself thereby, seems to be the condition sine qua non of all intellectualizing and acting. The condition of our free-will is founded on the fact that there is no possibility to reduce it to another reason. Because of that Kant has strictly separated the kingdoms of freedom and nature as incompatible. The Kantian subjective idealism begins with his positing of the free-will in his practical philosophy. The question is nevertheless: how we can imagine free self-determination in a social and political context? The idea of absolute self-determination leads to the consequence that we recognize (in germ. “anerkennen”) the Other as a completely free and self-determinating being who is responsible for his acts.

There are generally two ways to undermine the free self-determination of the human being. On the one hand, there is the approach of brain-scientists as Wolf Singer for whom freedom is only a “feeling” and who considerate thinking, discourse and acting are always determined by neurological processes. However we will not extend the area of our discussion to the infinite struggle between the problem of free-will and causal determination.  We think that the “real” problem to undermine the free self determination is not causal reduction. However we can find in this argumentation an implicit claim which gives us a reason, why should it better to think that we are not free. Or, what does it mean to think the possibility of non-freedom ?

On the other, there are theories which claim the impossibility to think the subject independently from its social, political and cultural context.

In according with these theories the purpose that the subject seems giving to itself is not merely a spontaneous intellectual act, but a determined purpose. This, according to Hegel, is to be both intellectually understood as a concept, and as concrete and determined content. Thus he writes „Der Begriff ist unmittelbar mein Begriff“ (“The concept is immediately my concept”), in his Phenomenology of Spirit (Geist). The content becomes immediately my thought, without mediation. I “erfahre” (in german: make the experience of, suffer from, to learn of sth, to hear sth.) the thought which is already determined, I have the experience of the thought without determining it.

Its content appears to me. “In my thinking,” concludes Hegel, “I am free because I am not in the Other”. For Hegel the freedom of the thinking is founded in the fact that I grasp the object in a concept instead of to be related immediately to the Other as in the case of desire. This produce a displacement of the Other: I am not in the Other, but the Other is in me as concretely determined content.

The purpose as Symptom

The self-determining subject gives itself purposes, which are already in a cultural, historical and political context. The concrete purpose appears to the subject as something “thought” which is at his disposal, but the determined content of a purpose is more than a simple content, it is over this determining and it bears in itself the decision of the subject. The determined content anticipates the decision. For this reason the purpose can be described as Symptom which points to a – unconscious – context.  Thus, for example, the subject A can explain her marriage with B and rejection of C, because B gives her a feeling of security and trust. With C she had only a passionate relationship which is not, she thinks, sufficient for a marriage. These conscious reasons are sufficient for her decision. A’s purposes (or reasons) are symptoms because she didn’t take account of the social and cultural back-ground (Hinter-grund) of the institution “marriage” – concerning the age and social status of women, intrafamiliar constraints etc. – in her decision. This is the unconscious background of her choice.

If we interpret the purpose as a symptom, in opposition to the idea of a free self-determining subject, the relation between the subject and the Other will change. Firstly we considered the Other completely free and responsible for his acts. The purpose as a symptom means, that the Other is able to influence my purposes and therefore also my decisions.

The social, political, cultural and the personal context of a subject determine only the form of her decisions, but not her responsibility. The crucial question to ask is that of how far the institutions for example are responsible for the decisions of subjects?

The recognition of the symptomatic character of purposes has the consequence that the subject giving himself purposes (we can call this: rationalization) is always shaped by the institutional context (or its absence or failure). This begins with “Bildung”, education, or the literally sense, formatting or formation, and runs all the way “up” from the creation of symbols in advertising, to the formation of political opinion by mass-media.

The background as “Hinter-grund”

What we have described as socio-political context or in a more symbolic way as the conception of “the Other” appears only unconsciously. It is an “appearance”, because they seem to be and to operate independently from the subject as institutions, norms, or customs. As long as they operate only as a background, without the understanding of the relation to the decision, as long as we have no knowledge about this relation, the subject will be bound passively in this context. The subject can not reject or recognize this context, because she doesn’t recognize it. Knowledge will be knowledge if the subject is conscious of it. Knowledge is the relation which the subject has to itself as an object; this means that the subject will be conscious until it appears to itself as object in which the subject is no longer bound immediately. “Erkennen”, cognition, is – so to speak – the reflection of itself, what is the condition of “An-erkennen”, re-cognition. But “Bildung” (in the sense of the formation of the subject by education and acculturation) which doesn’t take account of its “Bildung” (in the sense of development) keep its objective character as an Other, beside of which the subject regards herself in an abstract freedom.

The objectivity of knowledge has its foundation, as Hegel put it in his Phenomenology of “Geist”, in the fact that consciousness is only possible in its otherness. This means that without the reflection of the self in the Other, the self has no image and therefore no knowledge of itself. But the problem is that the process of “Bildung”, formation, is not archived. “Bildung”, formation or education, is not automatically knowledge about\and of itself. There is no transparency in how, or in relation to which context, the consciousness of the subject was formed (gebildet). The subject is born in a particular context of values and norms and it grows up in it. The background or the context is itself a constitutive moment of the self. The background is given to the subject, which acts in a particular context of values and norms without being conscious of it. For this reason the background is not known, but is rather the grounds / foundation / condition for reasoning, operating behind our decision-making. A subject, who grows up in a society of consummation learns as a child how to buy something without knowing the principles of the contract or the signification of money. We consider it as normal that we can have property without knowing that this depends of very particular conditions.

This unconsciously learnt knowledge, allows us to call the “reason” of a decision as “Symptom”. The decisive reasons which a subject gives to explain its decision might be sufficient for its “daily life”, but they don’t explain its acting in relation to the social and political context. The free self-determination is understandable from the point of view of the subject, but the term “self-determination” will loose its meaningfulness if we think the subject in a reciprocal relation to the Other. The subjective (Kantian) point of view asks for the purposes why a subject votes for example for the candidate of presidency B and not for C. However if we consider the purpose of the subject as a symptom, the question might be: in which context lives the subject or in which context we can bring it, that her “free intentioned” purposes are in accordance to the intentions and purposes of a political party? In this sense it is not only sufficient to learn by example something about the fears of the subject, but to create suggestively a general ambiance of fear and to reassure and to calm after the feared person.

Advertising works with these principles to make the consumer submit to ones will. We are speaking from “Konsumverhalten”, reaction of consumer, and not of actions (Handlungen). “Verhalten”, reaction, express always a relation: “verhalten zu”, the re-action is always the rebound of something. Two quantities related to each other. If we change one, the other will be changed too. The starting point of modern marketing-strategies and forecast programs is not an arbitrary deciding subject, but a subject which is statistically determinable. Which information has to be given (and in which way) to the subject in order to produce the desired reaction?

The influence of mass-medias in the postmodern democratic society procures to the subject on the one hand an appearance of freedom to shape her own opinion and on the other hand “information” should be understood as “inner formation” or “inner-formatting”. In this sense we can understand Noam Chomsky’s proposition “manufacturing consent”. Consent can be manufactured by a specific politic of information. Such a theory is founded on a particular image of man whose freedom and self-determination are determinable. Theories in the future will be aim the way how the Other or the Others can be determined in their thinking and acting so that he do freely what they have to do. Short, the problematic in future theories could be: how we can establish total domination without coercion?

The “Brave new world” or the total and un-coerced domination

The fictional idea of total, un-coerced domination leads us one more time to the question of the free self-determination of the subject. If we consider the free-will and the faculty of human beings to give themselves purposes as a “symptom” (of their social context), those theories which aim the total and un-coerced domination, would be at the same time the description of their mechanisms of determination. The knowledge which the subject can get from these theories would be the knowledge about her own context and about her own behavior (or her re-actions) believing that she has freely decided.

In Phenomenology of “Geist” Hegel shows how the self-consciousness will get knowledge about the Self by recognize itself in the Other and the Other in itself. Jean Hyppolite has described this reciprocal being in the Other as madness characteristic to the human nature : „L’essence de l’homme c’est d’être fou, c’est-à-dire d’être soi dans l’autre, être soi par cette altérité même. “

However theories which regard the human being as “non-free” have another consequence. Theories which describe the mechanisms of determination of the free-will considered as symptom would give to the subject some lead of freedom because cognition and recognition are fallen apart, this will mean that the subject knows about the contents of its thinking and it is acting instead of re-acting. Such a lead of freedom is in so-called democratically governed states which have to rely on consent, against all strategies of conservation of power of the established government. For this reason the dogma of the “free-will” is the ideology of systems of societies which have to rely on consent. The “free self-determination” as principle of all intellectualizing and acting correspond to the principle of total and un-coerced domination in which the subject makes the correct choice from only those options put in front of him, but without coercing it.

Theory (from theorein: observe) is the foundation of self-observation, the consciousness to think one-self as an Other. Theory is the point of view of the unknown “We” of which the different stages of consciousness is described by Hegel in his Phenomenology of “Geist”. The theorization creates an artificial point of view of observation which permits knowledge independently from the Other exercising the power (executive authority) and which can be recognized or not by the subject.

Freedom through power

The terms “power” and “freedom”, as we use them in the every-day language, are normally considered opposites. If someone is obliged to do what he doesn’t want, he isn’t free. But if we interpret both concepts in a dialectic way (they determine themselves reciprocally), power can only be where freedom is, because the one who doesn’t resist, has not to be forced by power. The constraint by power is external. This has the consequence that the coerced subject can indeed consent, but he can refuse the consent in his “thought”. But the “inner” refusal becomes only actually by this external constraint. Or in other words: power creates the possibility of the recognition by producing an “inner” refusal. The consciousness of freedom can only be experienced by its limit – where freedom turns into non-freedom. The limit itself  is an obstacle which is preventing me to do what I want. Hegel describes this mechanism as reciprocal play of recognition in which the consciousness is constituted. The Other is acting toward me as I am acting toward the Other. Everyone is to the Other an obstacle and limit. Power (and for Hegel this is the struggle to death or to life) determines the limits. The one who looses (for Hegel the servant) recognizes the domination of the master who spares at the other hand the life of the servant. However he only recognizes the external power of the master for sparing his life – and the servant has its own life as its restricted disposal. The consciousness of this “right of disposal” is his freedom. But the master has in according to this schema only the servant to maintain its consciousness. Even if the master reminds the servant by application of his power that he has only spared his life, the master is less free than the servant. Only in a new struggle to the death the master can confirm his limit and thus his freedom. He is only the master in the eyes of the servant; as a master he hasn’t freedom as long as there is no other who opposes himself to him. The Other, we can say, is an image of an enemy always renewed or actualized, which appears as ideology of domination. In “1984” for instance, George Orwell describes the fluid transition from one image of enemy, which determines the “inner” ideology, to another. The Other symbolized as enemy can be considered as product of the idea of the free self-determining subject, who takes away the determining limit of the master by his free recognition.

It seems that the servant should be happy to be restricted by power, because this seems to be the logical guarantee of the possibility of his freedom. But in opposition to the “happy person” whose free-will has been “prepared” and whose “consent” has been manufactured, the freedom of the “servant” is determined by the power of the “master”. This means that the “servant”, is only able to understand his freedom in relation to the power exercising the constraint. The power appears to him as obstacle to realize his “total” freedom. The idea of the “total freedom” is only fictitious and consists in the illusion which will appear after the disappearance of the restricting power. But the restricting power is not necessarily a dictator or a totalitarian government. If we imagine for example a zone in which the restricting power has collapsed, the Other (with his symbolic connotation) which exercise the power, may be the neighbor. In this way we can understand the fear of anarchy, because it is the tyranny of the neighbor.

The servant, forced by power, to do what he doesn’t want assure his “inner” freedom by the illusion that if the restricted power will be eliminated, the “true” or “real” freedom will be actualized one day.

On the other hand there is the free self determining subject, the ideal post-modern democrat, who has the information as much as is required for him to be able to agree. We can call the first case the “unhappy freedom” and the latter “happy freedom”.

The first one knows what is necessary to realize his freedom, whereas the “happy one” knows only that he is “free” without knowing the reasons of his freedom. The free self-determination is a myth in which the subject of democratic societies grows up and which determines the content of his thinking. Therefore the “free self-determination” is the principle zero of critical thought which considers its context as given and which believes to be “happy and free”.

The principle of the “non-free determination” is not the attempt to transpose the responsibility of the subject to obscure or only theoretical context, but it is the condition of the possibility to realize freedom, where it appears only as symptom in front of a social and political context which isn’t understood or questioned.

Bacon’s statement that „Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est“ (for knowledge, too, is itself power), shows its importance if we transpose it into the concrete political reality of a society which has to rely on consent. The citizen as philosopher or the philosopher as citizen is the nightmare of democratically governed societies, because such a subject would try to attain a level of intellectual transparency by which he can understand his own thinking in relation to the social and political structure in which he was formed, and in which he always lived. He would be a citizen who was capable of mature judgment, asking for that one what he has always believed to have: “free self determination!”

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