Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
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132<br />
DEMOCRACY TODAY<br />
for certain desirable ‘beings and <strong>do</strong>ings’. Nietzsche, for example, puts<br />
the association well: ‘That we are effective beings, forces, is our fundamental<br />
belief. Free means: ‘not pushed and shoved, without a feeling of<br />
compulsion’... Where we encounter a resistance and have to give way<br />
to it, we feel unfree: where we <strong>do</strong>n’t give way to it but compel it to give<br />
way to us, we feel free... – man’s most dreadful and deep-rooted craving,<br />
his drive to power – this drive is known as ‘free<strong>do</strong>m’. [12]<br />
Then, in another key, there is Dewey’s famous identification:<br />
‘Liberty is power, effective power to <strong>do</strong> specific things... The demand<br />
of liberty is the demand for power.’ [13] And this association is even<br />
evident at the heart of contemporary analytical political philosophy, in<br />
Feinberg’s account of free<strong>do</strong>m: ‘There are at least two basic ideas in the<br />
conceptual complex we call ‘free<strong>do</strong>m’; namely, rightful self-government<br />
(autonomy), and the overall ability to <strong>do</strong>, choose or achieve things,<br />
which can be called ‘optionality’…’ [14]<br />
As I argue at length in my forthcoming book, Free<strong>do</strong>m is Power,<br />
the main liberal argument that to be free is to act in the absence of<br />
impediments or obstacles, in particular those that result from conscious<br />
deliberate human action, rests on a series of mistaken assumptions<br />
that mask a deep misapprehension about political and social life. I<br />
cannot summarise the argument here, suffice to say the following:<br />
liberals are concerned with external obstacles because they think it is<br />
better to have more possible courses of action rather than fewer. That<br />
is obviously true of some situations, but it is not clear that it is true of<br />
all; but whether or not it is always a good thing to have more rather<br />
than less options open, the number of options open depends not merely<br />
on the presence or absence of obstacles, but the conjunction of one’s<br />
power and the internal or external obstacles that stand in one’s way.<br />
Moreover, whether or not a person, act or institution constitutes an<br />
obstacle will itself often depend on my relative power, in particular my<br />
position within existing power relations and groups and the power of<br />
my groups’ representatives. I maintain therefore that free<strong>do</strong>m is relative<br />
to power and control across four dimensions. Free<strong>do</strong>m involves:<br />
12<br />
F. Nietzsche, ‘Notebook 34, April-June 1885’ 34[250] and ‘Notebook I, autumn 1885-spring<br />
1886’ I[33], in Writings from the Late Notebooks, ed. Bittner (CUP 2003), pp. 16; 57.<br />
13<br />
Dewey, Problems of Men (Greenwood Press 1968), p. 111.<br />
14<br />
Feinberg, ‘Free<strong>do</strong>m and Liberty’, p. 1.