Freedom

Freedom

If the basic structure is meaningful, then it might be useful here to lay out more explicitly the implications for human freedom.  The basic distinction is one between freedom from and freedom to -- not a particularly startling distinction, but one that is often confused, particularly in a discussion of rights and obligations on the social scale.  I will return to both, but for the moment we can look at the basic correspondence between freedom from and intentionality -- that is to say, I must free myself from my subjectivity to the given imperative -- but then too, insofar as I must free myself, I must be free to act instrumentally.

We could look at the basic structure through a slightly different frame, as a matter of choice.  At one level, thinking of this physiologically constituted form of life, I do not choose intentionality.  I do not choose, for example, to become hungry.  I just do, and I must act on that imperative.  We would not normally think of the desire to satisfy an appetite as an obligation, per se, but let us just say that we are more or less obliged to go about the task of finding something that will serve as food.   At another level, thinking of this as a socially constituted form of life, I do choose, for example, to play chess, and in that sense give myself an imperative. There is an artificiality about the given imperative to seek checkmate, and I can simply quit playing at any time, but to do so for most leaves something unfinished. I suppose too that I could go through the motions of seeking checkmate and not really seek checkmate -- engage in a duplicity or hypocrisy -- but insofar as I am going through the motions of chess as a form of life, I am going through the motions of seeking checkmate.  Regardless whether I am given the imperative physiologically or I give the imperative to myself, it is a given imperative none the less.  Once I have chosen to play chess, I am obliged to seek checkmate.  In either case, freedom from the given intentionality predicates a future state, a not-yet, and to be free from predicates a future state of being in which one is no-longer beset with the given intentionality.  As an aside, speaking of the temporal frame implicit within the basic structure, we might think of it as eschatological.  Insofar as intentionality brings me into being and does so recurrently, again and again I grow hungry, and I must free myself from my subjectivity to its imperative recurrently, again and again I must go in seek of food, one can better appreciate the eastern eschatological imperative to free oneself from the cycle of birth and death or the more western imperative to free oneself from the trials and tribulations of this existence for a predicated future state of being once and for all free from subjectivity to intentionality.

Beyond that, neither are we perfectly free to act instrumentally.  The first and perhaps most significant limitation is utility.  While in some respects, I might be free to eat sawdust, eating sawdust will exacerbate, not free me from my subjectivity to my hunger, and in this sense, utility has a sort of prima facia primacy as a first level consideration in choosing how to act.  This is not to suggest that the utility of the act is somehow self-evident or obvious.  If we imagine our hunting-gathering ancestors traipsing into new territory, coming upon an unfamiliar berry, it might suggest itself as food, but we might also imagine some hesitation, some trepidation among those who first raise it to their lips.  Not all things that suggest themselves as food turn out to be good for food.  For the moment, I don't want to make too much or too little of utility, and I am clearly considering it from an individual perspective where the proof is in the pudding so to speak -- whether or not it frees me from my subjectivity to the given intentionality.  As an aside, however, utility, this differentiation between those acts good for (over against all those not good for) the satisfaction of a given intentionality, also implies a primitive sort of semanticity.  If we consider hunger, for example, we come into being within a world already divided between those things which have utility as food (and many others things that do not have utility as food).  The dividing line between food (and all that is not-food) may not be immediately obvious, but the dividing line is there, is discoverable, and the objects of the world fall into place on one side or the other of the line.  I am suggesting, in other words, that intentionality brings me into being, but it is being already meaningful.

The second limitation is capability.  If utility relates to intentionality, whether or not a particular act satisfies my intentionality, capability relates to instrumentality, the range of acts available to me.   Here again, given my physiology, eating sawdust might not have much utility as food for me, but I do have the capacity to eat sawdust.  I could choose to eat sawdust, even though it would not have much utility, in ways that I simply cannot choose to flap my arms and fly, even though flying might have considerable utility on a number of occasions.  If we enlarge the discussion a bit, placing it in a more modern political economy, the distinction between utility and capacity takes on a greater significance.  For example, there are acts that might have perfect utility in the alleviation of an appetite -- e.g. stopping by a restaurant, ordering up some food, and eating it.  In some theoretical sense, I also have the human capacity to do so.  There is nothing in my make up as a human being that prevents me from ordering up food in a restaurant in the way that my physiology prevents flight without considerable mechanical help.  I can read the menu, speak clearly enough to get my preferences across to the wait staff, and in this sense, I have the given capacity to order up food and I am perfectly free to do so, supposing I have the money.  Because I am a bit impecunious at the moment, however, I lack what might be called the contingent capacity.  I am not free to engage in an act that otherwise would have considerable utility in freeing me from my hunger.  Here again, for the moment, I don't want to make too much or too little of capacity, and I am clearly considering it from an individual perspective where the proof remains in the pudding -- whether or not I have at my disposal the means to free myself from subjectivity to the given intentionality.

All of which brings us to the third limitation, contingency.  If intentionality brings us into being, it brings us into being here and now, into a contingency that is not of my choosing.   This, of course, is the existential conundrum.  We come into being as one who grows hungry, but what one can do and how one can do it are limited within the here and now.  I am not wholly free to act as I might want to act.  One can easily enough imagine being born into a famine where that which might have utility to alleviate my hunger is simply not available, or where I lack the capacity to engage in those means available to others and resort to other means -- e.g. rummaging through the dumpsters behind the restaurant.  As much as I might want to be the person in the restaurant, not behind the restaurant, I cannot choose to be other than who I am, such as I am, where I am, when I am.  There is much to say about contingency, and most post-structuralist philosophy is an examination of contingency -- what it means, so to speak, to be present in a world already meaningful, where the "already" points to being before and beyond my being, and my intentionality is felt, if I may pun a bit, a hole in what is whole -- a lack that must be filled -- a not-yet that must be fulfilled.  I am free to, but not perfectly free to, fulfill myself from within a given contingency, and there is of course a great injustice, a great inequity in contingency, one that will be repaired in the end times.