Society 3/5

Having raised these initial philosophical questions (about being), we come to the second circle on the paradoxical road that leads to freedom. What can thinking about freedom and society mean, if society does not guarantee me the preconditions for my humanity? At the halfway point between a sociological approach and a philosophical study, we must begin by formulating these simple but essential truths: there can be no freedom and no power unless the human need for basic necessities has been satisfied. Like the projections inspired by Montaigne’s myth of the ‘noble savage’, the stories of Hayy and Robinson Crusoe abound in implicit a prioris about the status of man. In his state of nature, man eats, drinks and satisfies his elementary needs, and that allows him to move to the higher stage of asking philosophical questions. By satisfying his physical needs, the environment frees the individual from the first objective causalities that inevitably determine human behaviour. Now what seems to be taken for granted in the state of nature (and it is clearly absent from the reflections of too many philosophers) has never been a day-to-day, objective reality for millions of people throughout history and all over the contemporary world. Poverty, want and injustice in societies sometimes force human beings to regress to a status that is even lower than that of the noble ‘savage’.

Before looking into our freedom to act and think, we should therefore look at the world and respond to the priorities of our times. At the human and physiological level, the first freedom is the freedom we acquire once we have satisfied our elementary natural needs: being able to eat and drink, having the wherewithal to protect ourselves against the threats posed by the environment, and sexual fulfilment are sine qua non preconditions for access to even the idea of freedom. Depriving human beings of their elementary rights and powers actually means leaving them to the mercies of the things that will determine them, take over their entire being and imprison them before they have even achieved human status: they are individuals without any real freedom, and the ‘freedoms’ their thoughts and imaginations may enjoy make no difference. A human society that does not provide its members with that minimum deprives them of their rights, their dignity and their humanity. Billions of individuals are now in that position. As we start off down our circular path in search of ‘freedom’, it is here that we encounter the first stumbling block, the first real, palpable and crude obstacle that stands is our way: to speak of freedom in the midst of poverty is like philosophizing about humanity in the midst of the inhuman. And here, the social sciences call philosophy to order, and that is how we should read and understand the philosophico-political, economic and sociological reflections that punctuated the nineteenth century in the West: frenzied industrialization, growing poverty, a deepening gulf between classes, and a feeling that systems of production and society in general were being dehumanized. The utopian socialism of Fourier, Owen and Proudhon, the scientific socialism of Marx and Engels and even the thought of the anarchist Bakunin were primarily responses to these brute and brutal social and economic realities. The preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights alludes to these realities because they influence all our attempts to promote rights, freedoms and peace.

 When human reason has at last been freed from the constraints of instincts, bodily needs and its own survival, it discovers the world, discovers itself and seeks to understand. The natural aspiration, desire and need to learn and understand are some of the most immediate attributes of the human consciousness. Interacting with the environment and other humans, discussing and pondering the self and others, and mastering the elementary principles of natural causality are the first spheres of the education that, once the need for prime necessities has been met, develop and complete man’s humanity. Whilst the first precondition for freedom has to do with guaranteeing men the right to satisfy their vital needs, the second is education, which determines the very essence of that freedom at the intellectual and psychological level. Education means giving individuals the tools they need if their minds, being and individuality are to be autonomous; this is not simply a matter of acknowledging the power of their will, but of becoming its agent. Education is what allows human beings to become the true ‘subject’ of freedom. It is a necessity, and it is a right. Extending and going beyond his reflections on the state of nature, Rousseau is inspired, in the idealist project of Emile, or, On Education, by this basic intuition: education is the essence of social man’s humanity and a precondition for his autonomy and freedom among his fellow men.

We then have to introduce the notion of inalienable rights. As we have said, a society that denies the elementary needs of human beings and that does not guarantee them a minimal education dehumanizes them. And if, incidentally, it does not allow them to make use of their freedom of conscience, thought, expression and action, it imprisons them. Common laws and an acceptance – willing or not – of the constraints that are needed if we are to live in a society nevertheless presuppose the establishment of principles that ensure that no individual – man or woman – can be deprived of his or her status as a rational and autonomous subject. At this point, and as we noted at the beginning of this chapter, laws allow us, conversely, to determine the extent of the freedoms that are granted to the individual and the community. Individual and civil freedoms are so many rights that human communities must defend: by allowing individuals to fulfil all the potential of their being, they grant them powers relating to their humanity and their status as subjects, or as human beings who know that they exist, that they are free and that they are not alone. That is the meaning of Rousseau’s formula: ‘One person’s freedom ends where another’s begins.’ Its spirit is already present in the oldest philosophies of law, from the Twelve Tables of Roman law (inspired by Greek practice), which recognize the rights of plebs, to medieval Jewish juridical traditions (and especially Maimonides) and medieval Islamic traditions (which made a distinction between the rights of God and the rights of men towards each other as early as the eighth century). Despite their differences of opinion about God, reason and faith, Thomas Aquinas and the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus extend and elaborate this line of thinking in the Christian world, with particular reference to the rationality and meaning of the contractual relationship.

Even before we turn to philosophies of being, freedom and responsibility, the equation is very clear: any society that does not guarantee the conditions for the survival and life of all, education for all and the rule of law to defend individual freedoms (in the handling of interpersonal relationships) is a society that fails to respect basic human rights. It deprives its members of their potential and their powers, and, at best, encourages their illusions as to the immensity of the power offered by the virtuality of their will, their dreams and their imagination.