Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty

by D.C. Schindler

It is commonly observed that behind many of the political and cultural issues that we face today there are impoverished conceptions of freedom, which, according to D. C. Schindler, we have inherited from the classical liberal tradition without a sufficient awareness of its implications. Freedom from Reality presents a critique of the deceptive and ultimately self-subverting character of the modern notion of freedom, retrieving an alternative view through a new interpretation of the ancient tradition. While many have critiqued the inadequacy of identifying freedom with arbitrary choice, this book seeks to penetrate to the metaphysical roots of the modern conception by going back, through an etymological study, to the original sense of freedom. Schindler begins by uncovering a contradiction in John Locke’s seminal account of human freedom. Rather than dismissing it as a mere “academic” problem, Schindler takes this contradiction as a key to understanding the strange paradoxes that abound in the contemporary values and institutions founded on the modern notion of the very mechanisms that intend to protect modern freedom render it empty and ineffectual. In this respect, modern liberty is “diabolical”―a word that means, at its roots, that which “drives apart” and so subverts. This is contrasted with the “symbolical” (a “joining-together”), which, he suggests, most basically characterizes the premodern sense of reality. This book will appeal to students and scholars of political philosophy (especially political theorists), philosophers in the continental or historical traditions, and cultural critics with a philosophical bent.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Cultural, Theology, Catholic, Sociology, Nonfiction

496 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Professor David Christopher Schindler is Professor of Metaphysics and Anthropology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute, Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America in 2001, with a dissertation on the philosophy of Hans Urs von Balthasar. He taught at Villanova University from 2001-2013, first as a teaching fellow in the Philosophy Department, and then in the Department of Humanities, where he received tenure in 2007. He received an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship to do research in Munich from 2007-2008. Professor Schindler is a translator of French and German and has served as an editor of Communio: International Catholic Review since 2002.

Reviews

[Adam Wilcox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very challenging read, especially in the first few chapters. Schindler is very thorough in his laying out of Lockean freedom and thus this section is slow going; I found it necessary to take lots of notes in the margins and re-read much of the material to really get a grasp on it. However, the pay-off of this book is fantastic if you persevere. Precisely because of how carefully Schindler works through modern liberty, he is able to offer a deep and powerful critique of the liberal 'tradition,' revealing it to be fundamentally a flight from the real, a diabolical subversion of symbolical order. This is one of those books that will make you see the world differently if you give it due time.

Although I have yet to get Schindler's follow up book, Retrieving Freedom, I can easily see how it will pick up from the chapters on Plato and Aristotle. As I'm currently working on an essay on St Maximus the Confessor and his doctrine of the Logos/logoi relation between divine and created being, the Aristotle section particularly resonated with me. Having just finished Balthasar's Cosmic Liturgy, the theme of openness between created beings as allowed by a prior unity in relation to the Good/the Logos makes excellent sense of Schindler's proposed re-conception of freedom in line with the tradition.

[Reid Selmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fantastic and thought-provoking book. I can't wait to read the rest of this series!

[Angus · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far the first chapters give a very insightful view of once complex texts published before. An oversimplification.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Imagine you are given the responsibility to build a brand new interstate highway. You have a map and you trace out the desired path of this proposed highway.
On the map, it seems very easy. But the hard work is putting away the map and trying to carry out the project in the real world. In the real world there are different terrains with different engineering challenges. In addition, there are existing homes, schools, roads, hospitals that are on the path of the track you just traced out. lines are easy to draw on maps; but the real world is something different.


That's the metaphor you should have in mind when reading this book. It does a very good job of pointing out what is wrong with the current conception of freedom and rights, etc. It even gives us a bird's eye view of how things are supposed to be different.

But there is nothing concrete about how it can be actualized in the real world. There are passages that soar very high with lofty aspiration, but never make contact with the real world.

We see for example this passage in the conclusion

From the premodern perspective, freedom is not simply something
we need to protect and regulate; it is something we can deepen. The
proper way to deepen freedom, moreover, is not to separate and keep
apart, but rather to reconnect, especially to origins, to what is authentic
and real. The priority of actuality over potency, which lies at the heart of
the premodern view of freedom, entails a privileging of nature, of what
is given a priori, and therefore of what one receives from those who
come before one. In a symbolical order, freedom is rooted in a pattern
of life that has its center in the truth of reality, a truth that gets amplified
through the generative diversity of analogy, through relations and activi -
ties that reflect gratitude in their basic form.

and then later Privileging the natural and original does not entail the disparagement of human art, culture, and ingenuity, but demands it: because the
origin is a superabundant source. The appeal we make here to tradition
is therefore not “backward-looking,” however it may appear. Our argument has been on behalf of a living tradition; the point is that a “reconnection” (συμ-βάλλω) with tradition is a sine qua non, not just for a
truly human order in the present, but indeed for any genuine novelty
in the future. Deep creativity is always a reappropriation of roots, a
reentry into the original energy that is itself, of its essence, a moving
beyond.

What does it mean CONCRETELY? How does the author translate these lofty proposals into the concrete reality of life? That's where the book fails. It gives no answers.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

A boring rehash of old ideas to satisfy the "I did my job" to save souls and justify the "worse than ever" world. Same boring story from the first prophets of christianity and even before that.

[Mills College Library]

123.5 S3362 2017