Two Levels of Freedom
As I see it, there are two levels of freedom. First, there is our freedom of
speech and action, a freedom that may be challenged, contested or checked by external
forces : a freedom which, generally speaking, is declined in the plural. Thus we speak of
political and economic freedoms. True, we speak of "freedom of morals", in the
singular. But, basically, "freedom of morals" means "morals in
freedom", and we come back to the plural. In these examples we are dealing with an
external reality which can be limited, restricted, destroyed by external influences. At
this level freedom caracterizes my speech, my actions, my behaviour - in short, what is
visible. This is so easy to conceive that, when we speak of freedom, we generally place
ourselves at this first level. But this is not what I have in mind, although I shall
return to this point at the end of my talk.
There is, in fact, another level of freedom which I believe, is more difficult to
discover and very important if one truly wishes to attain to freedom of speech and action.
It was Sartre, I think,who said something like this : "The important thing is
not to know what man is constrained to do, but to know what he makes of that
constraint." Now this is a much more interior, hidden and personal activity, for it
does not depend solely on external influences. Of course it is inseparable from words and
deeds and all external pressures. And yet it is his very own activity ; it is particular
to the person who undergoes these influences, for it is he who makes what he wishes to
make of them, bends them to his will. He may be ruled by external forces, yet no one can
put himself in his place and deal with those forces as he must or wishes to deal with
them.
So here we have a different type of freedom ; the very personalized freedom which I
would call freedom of being, to distinguish it from the first freedom, the one pertaining
to words and deeds, which I would call freedom of action. Two freedoms, inseparable from
one another, but of a different order. Freedom of being does, to some extent, involve
words and deeds, therefore a relative possibility of freedom of action. But freedom of
action, on the other hand, does not necessarily postulate freedom of being, for one may
simply be "lived" by others, or live in the passive sense, without being
"alive". So this difference of order is extremely important.
(to be continued)
Marcel Légaut