Redeeming freedom

Jiwei Ci

pp. 49-61

in: Stanvan Hooft, Stan van Hooft, Wim Vandekerckhove (eds), Questioning cosmopolitanism, Berlin, Springer, 2010

Abstract

Freedom is one of the key concepts that citizens in liberal democratic societies employ to interpret themselves as agents. While this paper questions conventional uses of the liberal ideal of freedom, it also explores the possibility of advancing freedom through ideology critique. Basic to any human life is the feeling of power organized as subjectivity, or what is usually called agency. However, this feeling is mediated by interpretation, and interpretation in turn relies on categories available in a society. In liberal societies, much of this interpretation takes place in terms of the category of freedom. When such interpretation works or seems to work, it is not because it is true but because it is somehow plausible to us as we seek some way of thinking of the goals we pursue as our own. While there is an unavoidable element of subjection in how we acquire this interpretation, we nevertheless have a considerable if limited capacity to shape such subjection through democratic discursive processes and thereby render it free of domination. In this way we "redeem" freedom by disarming its ideological functions, and we do so in none other than the spirit of freedom itself.