Original scientific paper

Models of Freedom in the Contemporary World

Albrecht Wellmer ; Konstanz

Abstract

Should the concept of freedom be interpreted from the point of view of the community? Depending on the answer to this question one distinguishes »individualist« and »collectivist« or »communalist« political theories. Although, according to the author's view, the two presented conceptions of freedom complement one another, in the text he analyses their opposition in the form of the dilemma: radical individualism or radical communalism.
Individualist theories, which start off from the detached and independent individual, conceive freedom as »negative« — restricted by the universal law which ensures rights and freedom for everyone. On the other hand, communalist theories emphasize the »normative« character of freedom, thematizing the specific means used by the actors within a society, first of all, in reaching the decision concerning what they wish to do. Regarding the anthropological and episthemologica! presuppositions of communalism, originating with Aristotles, and in modem theory revived by Hegel, as certainly more proper than those of the individualist tradition (Hobbes, Kant, Enlightenment, Romanticism, Nozick...), Wellmer analyses how Hegel’s communalist views are revived in the works of Marx and Toqueville. Agreeing with Toqueville that the spheres of »negative freedom« and positive universal freedom cannot be unambiguously divided, as well as with the view that freedom can exist only as a form of ethical life, in other words, of communal practice embodied in the character, customs and moral feelings of citizens — the author, however, once again analyses the radical dilemma individualism/communalism incarnated in the opposition of Habermas towards Nozick.
Considering the relation among »negative freedom«, »positive rights« and »universal will«, Wellmer establishes that commitment in the dispute depends also on the possibility of thinking out the concept of communal or discursive rationality — which should extend to the normative structure of the »modern consensus« and provide the normative content for contemporary concepts of freedom. In contrast to Habermas, to whom he is otherwise closely related in thought, Wellmer concludes that Freedom and Reason in the contemporary world do not correspond — despite the fact that the demand for freedom is a rational one, and that the aim of negative freedom is — rational, communal freedom.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

155424

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/155424

Publication date:

31.12.1989.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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