scholarly journals Self-Constitution and Folds of Subjectivation in Foucault

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 35-42
Author(s):  
Cristian Iftode
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Negative Freedom ◽  
Ethical Pluralism ◽  
Compelling Argument ◽  
Positive Liberty

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Foucault’s final key notion of subjectivation in the light of the Baroque metaphor of fold(ing). According to Deleuze, two distinct sources, Heidegger’s memory of Being and Leibniz’s monadology, are in a way brought together in this Foucauldian notion. I try to highlight the importance of the concept of subjectivation in the context of a performative turn in contemporary philosophy and various historical ways of conceiving this concept. A technical yet crucial aspect that has to be emphasized is the complex interplay and mutual co-dependence between active subjectivation and subjection (assujettissement). Understanding the «mode of subjection» as one of «the four folds of subjectivation» in Foucault provides us with a compelling argument for ethical pluralism. Finally, this gives us the vital clue for adjusting Deleuze’s interpretation of Foucault, revealing Nietzsche’s violent memory rather than the Heideggerian memory of Being as decisive in the process of subjectivation, and also a necessary conversion of «negative» freedom into positive liberty as autonomy and self-discipline, likewise in agreement with Nietzsche’s project of making «asceticism natural again».

Freedom in mass values: egocentric, humanistic, or both? Using Isaiah Berlin to understand a contemporary debate

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gina Gustavsson
Keyword(s):  
Negative Freedom ◽  
Isaiah Berlin ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Negative Liberty ◽  
Confirmatory Factor ◽  
Positive Liberty ◽  
The Common

Does an increasing emphasis on individual freedom in mass values erode or revitalize democratic societies? This paper offers a new approach to this debate by examining it through the lens of Isaiah Berlin, and his distinction between positive and negative freedom. I show that, contrary to the common assumption among scholars who study mass values regarding freedom, these do not consist of one dimension but two: negative and positive freedom. I also show that, while valuing negative liberty clearly leads a person to become more morally permissive and more condoning of non-compliance with legal norms, valuing positive liberty does not seem to have the same effects at all; in fact, it shows the very opposite relationship with respect to some of these attitudes. Thus, it matters what kind of freedom people value. The results rely on confirmatory factor and regression analyses on World Values Survey data from ten affluent Western countries in 2005–2006.

scholarly journals An Analysis of the Equal Freedom

Studia Humana ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Andrzej Stoiński
Keyword(s):  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Negative Freedom ◽  
Positive Liberty

AbstractThe article concerns selected problems related to the postulates of equalizing the level of positive liberty. The classic understanding of individual freedom, called as negative (freedom from), identified with alack of compulsion, can be in opposition to the so-called positive liberty (freedom to). The last notion is generally defined by anability, which brings its relation with a concept of power. The postulate of equality in “freedom to” can be justification for conducting a social redistribution of goods. The cases of voluntary and compulsory donation are considered in the text, whose aim is to visualize consequences resulting from a compulsory expansion of the scope of positive liberty.

scholarly journals THE RIGHT THING OR A HUMAN RIGHT: RIGHTS, LIBERTIES AND HEALTHCARE REFORM

eTopia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
April Pierce ◽  
Lisa Backman
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Reform ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Negative Freedom ◽  
Opt Out ◽  
The Us ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Positive Liberty ◽  
The Right ◽  
Canonical Texts

The recent framing of healthcare as an issue of rights has invigorated public opinion, and given renewed relevance to the opposition between negative and positive liberties in the contemporarydebate. The right to healthcare resources can be interpreted as stemming from “positive” liberty and the right to opt-out or be “left alone” as “negative freedom” (Berlin). In this paper, we will describe how the current American debate on healthcare – with its use of the arguments for and critiques of“negative” liberalism - and has its foil in the trajectory of Swedish healthcare reform. Alluding to both public debates and some of the formative philosophical and political texts surrounding the issue, we will describe how both Swedish and American thinkers have used these two liberalisms to elevate healthcare above mere policy debate to the level of human rights, and how canonical texts are mobilized to justify claims about healthcare. Our goal is to invite further conversation on what is undoubtedly a critical and complex crossroads in the political landscape of both Sweden and the US.

Freedom and Equality

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Negative Freedom ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Negative Liberty ◽  
Positive Liberty ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Republican Liberty ◽  
Core Features

Freedom and equality are often viewed as conflicting values. But there are at least three conceptions of freedom-negative, positive, and republican-and three conceptions of equality-of standing, esteem, and authority. Libertarians argue that rights to negative liberty override claims to positive liberty. However, a freedom-based defense of private property rights must favor positive over negative freedom. Furthermore, a regime of full contractual alienability of rights-on the priority of negative over republican freedom-is an unstable basis for a free society. To sustain a free society over time, republican liberty must take priority over negative liberty, resulting in a kind of authority egalitarianism. Finally, the chapter discusses how the values of freedom and equality bear on the definition of property rights. The result is a qualified defense of some core features of social democratic orders.

Freedom and Enlightenment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Patrick Hanley
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
The Political ◽  
Negative Freedom ◽  
Negative Liberty ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Moral Freedom ◽  
Positive Liberty

Our understanding of the freedom advanced by the political thinkers of the Enlightenment has long been dominated by two conceptual categories, negative and positive liberty. Yet this convenient dichotomy obscures appreciation of the ways in which these two concepts of liberty can and often do work together. This chapter aims to redress this by examining the conception of freedom set forth by three key Enlightenment thinkers: Adam Smith, Rousseau, and Kant. It argues that their concept of “moral” or “inner” freedom suggests an important way in which positive liberty can promote ends traditionally associated with negative liberty. Specifically, these philosophers regard moral freedom as inextricable from political freedom insofar as moral freedom enables us to shoulder the burdens of political freedom. Thus their concept of freedom offers good reasons not only to question the separation between positive and negative freedom, but to regard moral freedom as indispensable to political freedom.

‘Nothing is simply one thing’: Woolf, Deleuze and Difference

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 456-474
Author(s):  
Beatrice Monaco
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Similar Model ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
To The Lighthouse

This paper explores some key texts of Virginia Woolf in the context of Deleuzian concepts. Using a close reading style, it shows how the prose poetry in Mrs Dalloway engages a complex interplay of repetition and difference, resulting in a remarkably similar model of the three syntheses of time as Deleuze understands them. It subsequently explores Woolf's technical processes in a key passage from To the Lighthouse, showing how the prose-poetic technique systematically undoes the structures of logical fact and rationality inscribed in both language and everyday speech to an extremely precise level.

The Modern Aristotle: Michael Polanyi’s Search for Truth against Nihilism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Hoinski ◽  
Ronald Polansky
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Michael Polanyi ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
The Face ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Theoretical Science

David Hoinski and Ronald Polansky’s “The Modern Aristotle: Michael Polanyi’s Search for Truth against Nihilism” shows how the general tendencies of contemporary philosophy of science disclose a return to the Aristotelian emphasis on both the formation of dispositions to know and the role of the mind in theoretical science. Focusing on a comparison of Michael Polanyi and Aristotle, Hoinski and Polansky investigate to what degree Aristotelian thought retains its purchase on reality in the face of the changes wrought by modern science. Polanyi’s approach relies on several Aristotelian assumptions, including the naturalness of the human desire to know, the institutional and personal basis for the accumulation of knowledge, and the endorsement of realism against objectivism. Hoinski and Polansky emphasize the promise of Polanyi’s neo-Aristotelian framework, which argues that science is won through reflection on reality.

What is a Process of Individuation?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Didier Debaise
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Historical Aspects ◽  
The Real ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
The Status

This chapter poses the question of “reality”. In opposition to a substantialist vision that has notably characterized modernity, Whitehead develops a processual conception of the real which is made of becomings and individuations. This vision of the real is envisaged starting from three distinct questions: First of all, how to exactly define a process of individuation? This question is treated in its historical aspects (Aristotle and Leibniz) and with respect to contemporary philosophy (Simondon and Deleuze). Secondly, where do the forms, the puissances, the virtualities derive from which accompany any individuation? Starting from this question it is most notably the relation with Platonism and its heritage that is elaborated. And third, which vision of time is implied in a theory of individuation? Even though close to Bergson, Whitehead’s philosophy profoundly differs from it with respect to the status of time and builds up new links with contemporary science.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document