Just returned from a brilliant lecture at the University of Arizona on slavery and freedom. The lecture was given by a visiting scholar named Professor Jacob Levy of McGill University. It was very illuminating. Though I was not able to talk afterward with Prof. Levy, I would like to formally thank him here.
The lecture traced the origins of the idea of freedom in the west. I mention just two of the many compelling ideas that he shared.
First, Prof. Levy posed a question from Orlando Patterson’s book Freedom and the Making of Western Society; why did the west develop a notion of freedom as a positive good? It was mentioned that many societies do not have words for freedom or for liberty as connoting a positive or good thing. Often the terms in these societies convey freedom as a kind of licentiousness, or a “being out of control.” That is a very interesting linguistic idea, and I wanted to explore it further. What are the Chinese, or Japanese, or Arabic, or Tibetan words for freedom?
Second, Prof. Levy outlined how in the west the idea of freedom emerges from an “out of slavery” experience. To illustrate he referred to the Institutes in the Justinian Code, a summary of legal principles, in which the first legal division in that massive codification of the law is that between free man and slave.
I arrived about ten minutes late, but I wonder if Prof. Levy considers the Exodus story relevant in this context. I’m also wondering in what sense am I free without a direct experience of slavery? Is freedom something I have or don’t have, or is it something I do, or don’t do?
A person can certainly be free without having a direct experience of slavery. I personally have never experienced slavery in the legal sense. I do know of the concept of course, but I can imagine a society where that institution never existed. I see freedom as more of a combination of a decision and an outlook than a thing or an action. Freedom is something you experience. To get philosophical for a moment, it is certainly possible to be a slave to something other than a person. We’ve all seen people that are slaves to their jobs, to money, etc. To be “free,” you need to recognize the oppressor and then make decisions based on your view of what being a person is. From this perspective, I could imagine a Catholic considering himself “free” regardless of his legal status. I know that many libertarians are atheists, but I don’t think that’s a problem on this blog
Talking about freedom without taking into account our concept of God seems incomplete to me…
Thanks for the thoughts, Isaac. There is an individual and social dimension of freedom. I have no doubt that free men of Athens were truly free despite the slavery at the silver mines at Laurium, though in a limited sense. And ancient slavery, as Prof. Levy pointed out, was a very different institution than American chattel slavery. I really liked how you linked freedom to choice, as in recognizing the source of oppression and then making decisions about “who’s in charge.” And I love the St. Paul line in Galatians about Christ setting us free for freedom’s sake.