Individuality
“Experience is the teacher of all things,”
—Julius Caesar, De Bello Civili (c. 40 BCE)
An
article (“The Philosopher Redefining Equality;” January 7, 2009) by Nathan Heller in
The New Yorker writes about the ethics of freedom in America, and how one philosopher—Elizabeth Anderson, chair of the University of Michigan’s department of philosophy—approaches it as thus:
To be truly free, in Anderson’s assessment, members of a society had to be able to function as human beings (requiring food, shelter, medical care), to participate in production (education, fair-value pay, entrepreneurial opportunity), to execute their role as citizens (freedom to speak and to vote), and to move through civil society (parks, restaurants, workplaces, markets, and all the rest). Egalitarians should focus policy attention on areas where that order had broken down. Being homeless was an unfree condition by all counts; thus, it was incumbent on a free society to remedy that problem. A quadriplegic adult was blocked from civil society if buildings weren’t required to have ramps. Anderson’s democratic model shifted the remit of egalitarianism from the idea of equalizing wealth to the idea that people should be equally free, regardless of their differences. A society in which everyone had the same material benefits could still be unequal, in this crucial sense; democratic equality, being predicated on equal respect, wasn’t something you could simply tax into existence. “People, not nature, are responsible for turning the natural diversity of human beings into oppressive hierarchies,” Anderson wrote.
Such is the case today with oppressive hierarchies the norm everywhere. Few people are truly free, a result of human ingenuity that has made less people free so that a few can be on top of the pyramid. Freedom and equality are interdependent. It is to a large degree about removing barriers, obstacles if you will, to personal freedom and fulfillment. In the language of everyday life, it is about treating people with dignity and respect. It is to say that someone with a low-paying profession or no profession or is disabled is still valued as a human being. It is to use the language of humaneness.
Applying such an approach, especially in language, will take some rethinking in America, in a nation where money is (almost) everything, most notably in the areas of influence and power, and how people are viewed and valued. Yet we are far away from such an achievement. For even on the most basic level of financial and economic measurement , I doubt that this will ever change
much, though there will be some poor attempts, no doubt to improve the lot of those at the bottom with expected loud resistance from those at the top, believing that too much has already been done (sharing is a foreign concept), and that those on the bottom “ought to pull themselves up by the bootstraps,” a truly nonsensical expression.
There might be minimal success, which I think is better than none, but America can never become such a nation—under current conditions—chiefly because “the order has broken down.” This includes the soul of the nation. There is no will or desire or actual belief to really fix it (e.g., increase taxes on the rich, build housing for the homeless, ensure free education, ensure universal healthcare, etc.)—all areas which I have written about over the years. None of it is remotely happening in America. In America, it is chiefly about ensuring that money keeps rising to the top for the few. Period. This is not a cynical expression but one of human observation.
This is why I think, after reading this article, that Prof. Anderson might mean well,and might be on to something good and fruitful to the benefit of humanity, but I doubt that she (and her husband), who probably make a nice middle-to upper-class living, would know through experience how those on the bottom live and suffer their humanly appointed fates. More often than not such fates are undeserved, unwelcomed and unmerited. This is also an important point that is too often easily ignored or smoothed over for fear of inviting feelings of uneasiness.
If freedom is hard to obtain, then how much importance it is given by the individual is how important it becomes in their lived lives. In the end, is that not how all people take stock of their lives? Is it not through the lens of their collective real-life experiences? A life lived. Even if you can agree that freedom begins in the mind, it is hard to deny the cumulative effects of a long life of struggle, notably if one considers and eventually views the struggle (for freedom) as futile or inconsequential. The opposite, however, can also be true, namely, that the struggle was necessary and noble.
