0:00

Thinking about your next career move in

0:02

research and development? Then it's

0:04

time to make your move to the UK. The

0:07

nation that's investing £20 billion in

0:10

R&D over the next two years.

0:13

The nation that's home to four of

0:15

the world's top research universities. The

0:18

nation where great talent comes

0:20

together. Visit gov.uk/great

0:22

talent to see how you

0:25

can work, live and move

0:27

to the UK. Hello,

0:34

my name is David Runtzman and this

0:36

is Past Present Future. Today

0:39

it's the first episode in our new

0:41

series with the writer and philosopher Lea

0:43

Ippi, in which I'm going to be talking to

0:45

her about ideas of freedom.

0:48

What does it mean and why does it

0:51

matter? Freedom from the ancient world to the

0:53

modern world, in different times, in different settings.

0:56

The different ways human beings have tried to achieve

0:58

it and the barriers that have

1:00

prevented them from doing so. To

1:02

start with though, we begin with

1:04

something a bit more personal. Today's episode is

1:06

not just about why freedom matters. It's

1:09

about why freedom matters now and

1:12

why it matters for us. Past,

1:14

present, future is brought to you in

1:16

partnership with the London Review of Books

1:19

and the LRB has a must listen

1:21

new podcast out now. It

1:23

tells the story of the sinking of

1:25

the General Belgrano, the bloodiest and most

1:27

controversial military action of the Falklands War,

1:31

and of a diary written on board the

1:33

British submarine that fired the torpedoes. Andrew

1:36

O'Hagan talks to the man who wrote it, the

1:39

man who leaked it, the journalists,

1:41

submariners, civil servants and politicians who

1:43

got caught up in the cover-up.

1:47

The Belgrano Diary, a new

1:49

six-part podcast series from the London

1:51

Review of Books. Just listen at

1:53

lrb.me slash Belgrano or

1:55

wherever you get your podcasts. Leo,

2:10

we're going to be talking about the history of

2:12

freedom and we're going to be covering philosophers,

2:15

different times, different places,

2:19

some big ideas, but this

2:21

is partly inspired by your book

2:23

and your book is called Free and

2:26

it's about the idea of freedom, but

2:29

it's your story and it

2:31

begins with you as an 11 year old

2:33

child and you say right

2:35

at the start of the book that more

2:37

or less until a particular day you'd

2:40

never really thought about freedom and

2:42

then suddenly this idea or maybe

2:44

even this word means

2:46

something to you and it matters and

2:49

you're saying this about a childhood in

2:52

a country Albania before the

2:54

end of communism which seen from the

2:56

outside by Western

2:58

liberal standards was a very

3:02

unfree place. So

3:05

maybe the children don't think about freedom anyway, I

3:07

mean maybe you are 11 so it may be

3:09

that this is because 10 year

3:12

olds, it doesn't matter where they live, don't spend much

3:14

time thinking about freedom or

3:16

it may be because Albania

3:18

are seen from the outside is not the

3:20

same as Albania seen from the inside. Yeah,

3:23

so it was a particular

3:26

day after school in December 1990 when

3:28

I stumbled on the protest

3:32

and up to that point I didn't actually know

3:35

what a protest was and in fact even on

3:37

that day I didn't know what a protest was

3:39

because although those protests had started to happen all

3:41

over Albania during those months just from more or

3:43

less the fall of the Berlin Wall, this was

3:45

a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall,

3:47

they were called on state television hooligans, the people

3:49

who are outside on the streets shouting freedom and

3:51

democracy and the reason I start the book by

3:54

saying I thought about freedom for the first time

3:56

is that it's not that I had never heard

3:58

the word or that

4:00

nobody ever talks about freedom in communist Albania.

4:02

In fact, a lot of the official talk

4:05

was about freedom and indeed the state propaganda

4:07

was that this was not only a free

4:09

country but maybe even the only free country

4:11

in the world or something like that because

4:13

it stood up for something more meaningful than

4:15

the other countries that it competed with. It

4:17

was more that on that particular day, it

4:20

was a meaning of freedom rather than the word freedom

4:22

and I think there's a difference between how you think

4:25

about something and when you hear it and you don't

4:27

reflexively articulate your thoughts. So it was

4:29

only at that point where I thought I was

4:31

in this crowd of people and I

4:33

was very scared because there was police chasing

4:35

these protesters and there was dogs barking and

4:38

so on and in general felt

4:40

very afraid and very insecure in the way

4:42

in which I had never really felt so

4:44

afraid before in my life because

4:47

my life in communist Albania was relatively

4:49

safe. I mean, it wasn't a kind

4:51

of society where children had to worry

4:53

about too many things. Just

4:55

adults worried about most things and for

4:57

you, it was more a question of

4:59

does this dog who is barking also

5:01

bite and if I go out on

5:03

the streets, are my friends going to be nice to me? Are

5:05

they going to let me play with them or not because we

5:08

mostly played on the streets? And so there was a lot of

5:10

freedom for a child in a way and

5:13

exactly the kind of freedom that you don't have to think

5:15

too much about. It's just some kind

5:18

of immediate instant security

5:20

that comes from your surroundings. And

5:23

not the thought, I could do something

5:26

wrong. If I do this rather than that, I

5:28

will have crossed some line. Everyone at school thinks

5:30

that a lot, right? You don't want to cross

5:32

the teacher, you don't want to step outside of

5:34

the rules, but it wasn't as a child, there

5:37

was a constrained way of living. I

5:40

suppose there was a sense in which there were rules

5:42

and so you had to obviously respect the rules. You

5:44

had to be polite and you had to be good

5:46

in school and all of this kind of stuff. I

5:48

think what made it particularly distressing on that day

5:50

is that somehow the adults seem to

5:52

not have freedom. And so for

5:55

me, the thought as a child was I live in

5:57

a society that is free and I accept it to

5:59

be free. And then there are rules and

6:01

constraints and that's how everyone lives. There are social

6:03

norms basically. But the thought

6:05

that these citizens are shouting freedom

6:07

and democracy and they're fighting for

6:10

something and their lives are at stake because there's

6:13

police chasing. They're doing something wrong as well clearly.

6:16

And I remember that particular moment was

6:18

particularly scary because of the thought that

6:20

the grown-ups didn't know, that they didn't

6:23

have freedom. And indeed the

6:25

question of whether they didn't have freedom or whether they're

6:27

just being naughty. And

6:29

the first chapter of the book is all a

6:31

reflection on that episode because then I went home

6:33

and hoping to find some kind of comfort from

6:35

my parents who would somehow sustain the narrative

6:37

that I had heard on television that these

6:40

were hooligans and so on. They

6:42

did somehow sustain but also not sustain. There

6:44

were cracks that began to show where

6:46

you suddenly realize actually my parents maybe

6:49

also are like those hooligans and maybe

6:51

also they think that they're not free.

6:53

And so this society that I've

6:55

grown up in all my life thinking that

6:57

this is free society, you

6:59

begin to question whether that's the case. And

7:02

you also discover that this word or this

7:04

idea is the thing that everyone is claiming.

7:07

It is one of the features of freedom and

7:10

there are lots of different ways of thinking about what this

7:12

means. That it feels like

7:14

it's the ubiquitous value that everybody

7:17

wants. More than some other things

7:19

that you might think like I don't know happiness

7:21

or virtue or whatever it is. And

7:23

that was what you discovered apart from anything else. Everyone

7:26

was claiming this idea, not

7:28

just the people you'd been growing up

7:31

listening to and believing but also the

7:33

people who believed the opposite. Yeah,

7:35

exactly. Which is what made it really

7:38

confusing and which is why I think

7:40

at that particular point I went from

7:42

believing completely that I was in fully

7:44

free society to then thinking actually

7:46

this side is completely oppressive. And so feeling

7:48

that I was part of the general movements

7:51

of people who are claiming freedom and wanted

7:53

to be free. And my very first poem

7:55

was called freedom. So I was

7:57

about 11 and it's all about. you

8:00

know, what does freedom mean? What does everyone want when

8:02

they say this? You're 11,

8:04

you're precocious 11 year old, but you were

8:06

11. You didn't

8:08

think this must be

8:10

a complicated idea because two

8:12

very different versions of it are being pushed on

8:15

me at the same time. You went from thinking

8:17

the one I believed in to the

8:20

opposite of that one. I think so. And

8:22

I think for an 11 year old, it's

8:24

very hard. And maybe that's what it means

8:26

to think about freedom is actually to be

8:28

able to navigate this distinction between in a

8:30

way the ideal of freedom and the ideology

8:32

of freedom. So the way in which freedom

8:34

is spoken about and presented to you and

8:37

always packaged by someone or so this confusion

8:39

about what freedom was, was actually something that

8:41

then accompanied me throughout my work. And in

8:43

fact, part of the reason why I chose

8:45

to study philosophy because it wasn't

8:47

as though you had this communist idea

8:49

of freedom. And then you had a capitalist

8:52

idea of freedom as a child could think, well, that

8:54

was the wrong one, but this is the right one.

8:56

It felt like that at that time. But then afterwards

8:58

with maturity and with more reading and so

9:00

on, you then begin to realize, well, maybe

9:03

these are all different ideologies

9:05

and so different ways of thinking about freedom.

9:07

And so how do you actually understand what

9:09

freedom really is? And how do you uncover

9:11

the surface in a way? When you

9:13

look back on it now, that

9:15

you're roughly the age that your parents were

9:18

then is that right? Can

9:20

you reconstruct how that day would have

9:22

been for them? So you come home

9:25

and ask them what's going

9:27

on, and they have to try and

9:30

navigate these two versions, including

9:32

the one that you have been brought up

9:34

with, but they don't believe in. What

9:37

does it feel like when you try and imagine an adult

9:40

version of this? So

9:42

it's very interesting because for me, it was a personal

9:45

rupture, as well as a political rupture,

9:47

in a sense that my, let's

9:49

say, whatever I thought as a person, whoever

9:51

I thought I was, what kind of family

9:54

I thought I lived in and so on,

9:56

that all began to shatter

9:58

from that moment onward. and that

10:00

went along with the political changes. I think my

10:02

parents, because they were adults and because they'd been

10:05

exposed much longer than I was to also

10:07

the oppressive nature of society in Albania,

10:09

internally had always thought that this was

10:11

not a free society, so they knew

10:13

it. So they were just waiting for

10:16

the change politically to happen and of course

10:18

they had no guarantee that it would happen, so

10:20

they were very cautious in how they expressed themselves

10:22

and who they supported and who they were talking

10:25

to and so on. But in a way, it

10:27

wasn't for them a personal rupture because who they

10:29

were as people, they had by

10:31

that point all of them, even though they

10:33

might have had a childhood where they went something

10:35

similar to me, when they were adults, they

10:37

all thought of themselves as dissidents coming from

10:39

dissidents families, not being really aligned. None of them

10:42

was a party member. We didn't have that

10:44

many officials or party members

10:46

in our family, even in the kind of more

10:48

extensive family. So in a way,

10:50

it wasn't a question of who you are,

10:52

your personal identity being fractured

10:54

alongside the political identity of the country you

10:56

live in, whereas for me, it was different

10:58

because I thought I was a happy child

11:00

in a happy country and I'm not

11:03

saying Albania was even from the point of view of

11:05

a child, it's not that the child was not aware

11:07

of the constraints. So I knew that people had to

11:09

wake up at four in the morning to get

11:11

milk every day because otherwise

11:13

the milk supply would finish and you wouldn't

11:15

get milk and so on. Sometimes children were

11:17

actually sent to queue at four in the

11:19

morning, so I mean, my parents didn't do

11:21

it, but a lot of other parents did.

11:23

And so it's not as though you didn't

11:26

think that there were rules and society. It's just that

11:28

whether these rules and maybe there's something to do with

11:30

freedom as well, you know, how you think about rules

11:32

and how you justify them and where they come from

11:34

and so on. That was the difference

11:37

in a way. I thought, okay, there are these rules,

11:39

but I didn't think the rules were freedom constraining in

11:41

a way. They were just the kinds

11:43

of things that you have to live with because every

11:45

society has rules. And also all

11:47

children have to pretty much

11:49

obey the rules, but the rules

11:51

that said either

11:53

explicitly or implicitly, you

11:56

must not articulate these

11:58

beliefs. you

12:00

were conscious of that, but then if you're a child, you

12:03

sort of feel that anyway about some things you don't want

12:05

to get on the wrong side of your teachers and your

12:07

parents. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also, I

12:09

don't think the kind of unfreedom that was

12:11

lacking in Communist Albania was, and that the

12:13

part that made it particularly oppressive were actually

12:15

really to do with the kinds of unfreedom

12:17

that I don't think a child is necessarily

12:19

sensitive to because it's more about political

12:21

freedom, censorship and dissent. And I

12:24

don't think as a child you have

12:26

very sophisticated political views such that if

12:28

you can't air them and you feel

12:30

like you're being censored. I can't publish

12:32

my views. I'm unfree.

12:34

Yeah, right. As a child, you say

12:36

what you want or don't say because you

12:39

think there are rules and you can't say

12:41

it, but it's not political in that way.

12:43

And so for me, the fact that there

12:45

was no milk in Albania after five in

12:47

the morning didn't make it an unfree society

12:49

because in school we were constantly told that

12:51

this is a free society, it's fighting imperialism

12:53

and it's capitalism that hinders freedom and

12:56

that we had to fight very hard. There was a whole narrative

12:58

of nation building about the role of

13:01

the Second World War and how Albania

13:03

became independent and how it didn't need

13:05

any foreign intervention by allies or by

13:07

the Soviets and how it had its

13:09

authenticity in its own search for freedom.

13:12

And that was all part of education. And

13:14

that's what made me never question the fact

13:16

that this was not a free society. One

13:19

of the questions I have, and for me it's one of

13:21

the reasons why we're doing this series, we're

13:23

going to talk about freedom in all sorts of different contexts

13:26

inside and around all sorts

13:28

of different philosophies, political philosophies,

13:31

personal philosophies, but everyone

13:33

is for it. And

13:36

maybe it's obvious why everyone is for it

13:38

because to be against it, I guess, is

13:40

to be on the side of unfreedom. And

13:42

it sounds odd that any human being would

13:44

champion unfreedom. Although

13:47

human beings do champion things like

13:49

unhappiness, you know, unhappiness might be

13:51

good for you and so on.

13:53

But unfreedom feels not taboo, but

13:55

mad. And so everyone

13:58

stakes a claim for freedom. And

14:00

I'm not completely sure why. I

14:03

mean, I'm sure there is a good reason why, and

14:05

maybe it's just some fundamental aspect of what it means

14:07

to be human. And we'll talk about

14:09

the different ways that you

14:11

might connect being human and being

14:13

free. But just to keep this

14:15

personal for now, did

14:18

you then, do you now get

14:20

why it's the ubiquitous rallying

14:22

cry of all political regimes?

14:24

And I'm sure not all in history, and

14:27

if you go far enough back or distant enough

14:29

from the West, it'll

14:32

get more strained. But pretty

14:34

much freedom is

14:36

the universal value, more I

14:38

think than happiness, more I

14:40

think than virtue. You

14:43

can think of people who don't advocate for

14:45

leading a good life or a happy life,

14:47

but everyone wants to be free.

14:52

I'm not sure I completely understand why. And

14:54

I'll ask you in a minute whether that's

14:56

about me rather than about

14:58

freedom. But do you understand why? I

15:01

mean, I don't understand why in the sense that I don't

15:03

think there's a general story we can tell about why everyone

15:06

claims freedom and fights for

15:08

freedom. And I have a

15:10

philosophical justification for why I think it

15:12

might be the case, and so why I care

15:15

about it. And it's to do with how you

15:17

think about the relationship between freedom and nature. And

15:20

this maybe goes back to what you were saying, what makes the

15:22

human human is it's different

15:24

from other entities in nature

15:26

that don't have thought

15:29

and don't have a capacity to somehow

15:31

detach themselves from their immediate surrounding. And

15:34

so maybe there's something about our thinking

15:36

nature that makes us separate

15:39

ourselves from our environment, from nature

15:41

that creates this distinction between reason

15:43

and nature. And I think

15:45

maybe freedom is a fundamental part of that

15:48

process of understanding what separates you

15:50

from your immediate surroundings. And when

15:52

you feel that you can't separate

15:54

yourself from those immediate surroundings, that

15:57

is felt really strongly because it's almost as though it's

15:59

a matter of time. goes against who you are

16:01

as a human or as a person, the

16:03

thinking entity. But as a thinking entity, so

16:05

the thing that you have to be able

16:07

to separate are your thoughts. Yeah,

16:10

I think so. I mean, this is how

16:12

I think about freedom myself. I don't know

16:14

in obviously over the course of history, people

16:16

have different understandings and they articulate it differently.

16:19

But I think it has something to

16:21

do with constraints. And yeah, you can

16:23

cash out the constraint as nature, because

16:25

nature is maybe the most general way

16:27

of talking about it, but you could

16:30

cash it out as power, as other

16:32

elements, forces beyond your

16:34

control. And so I think it

16:36

has something to do with our drive and

16:38

our urge to be in control and another

16:42

understanding of freedom is mastery of

16:44

some kind. So I sometimes feel

16:46

it's partly because we

16:48

all instinctively have a

16:50

sense of what it's like to

16:52

have other people have mastery over us. At

16:55

some level, we've all experienced it, even the

16:57

most privileged among us have experienced it in

17:00

some form or another. And actually, when

17:02

we are taking a claim to freedom, really

17:04

what we're doing is railing

17:06

against our revulsion at

17:09

certain kinds of unfreedom, and

17:11

particularly when it comes

17:13

from other human beings. So you talk about

17:16

ideas and systems and ways of life and

17:19

cultures and political systems and economic

17:21

systems. We'll talk about all of that.

17:24

But isn't the core of it a

17:26

human response to our

17:29

knowledge that other thinking beings, so

17:31

not animals, it wouldn't be

17:33

fun to be trapped in a cave with a

17:35

lion on the outside, but that's not the thing

17:37

that we're recalling against. It's that

17:39

sense that other thinking creatures are

17:42

the ones that are mastering us.

17:45

And that's the thing that we

17:47

absolutely hate. And it might be

17:49

not completely universal, but quite close

17:51

to a universal revulsion. I

17:54

agree with you that it is close to universal because also

17:56

it has to do with something about human

17:58

development. So the child goes... from being

18:00

a child and being in dependence

18:02

on their surroundings, on grown-ups, on

18:04

care from others, on the elements

18:06

as it were, to acquiring

18:09

a state of being in control of these

18:11

things. So you go from someone who is

18:13

looked after by people and the goal is

18:15

to become self-sufficient and then you

18:17

become self-sufficient and so it's part of human development

18:20

somehow that you have acquired

18:22

this mastery. And so this sense that

18:24

this realization at some point that, well, maybe

18:26

you actually you're not that much of a

18:28

master or you're not as much of a

18:31

master of yourself as you think you are,

18:33

that's profoundly disconcerting because there's something almost anti-developmental

18:35

or anti-evolutionary about it. And that means in

18:37

freedom there are these two things that are

18:39

going on at the same time. It's

18:42

kind of adolescent, the impulse, and

18:45

we all have that in us all the way through our lives. I'm

18:47

guessing that sense or memory of what it was

18:49

to feel constrained in that way. And

18:52

then the philosophy of freedom is

18:54

incredibly grown up in its

18:56

way. It's sophisticated, it's complicated,

18:58

it's not at all instinctive.

19:00

But the two things are there all the time.

19:03

So what you described, the people marching and

19:06

the slogan democracy and freedom. So you could

19:08

cash out what that means, democracy and freedom

19:10

in a philosophical treatise. And by the end

19:12

of it, you'd probably have concluded they're very

19:15

different things and it'll get very complicated and

19:17

very messy. And then there's that you

19:20

can't constrain us in this way,

19:22

instinct. And it's not

19:25

animal because it's human and it

19:27

involves rational thought. But it is

19:30

not childlike. But it is, I

19:33

can't think of another word for it then, it's kind

19:35

of adolescent or teenage. It has that impulse

19:38

to it. Yeah, I don't

19:40

agree with that. I mean, the process

19:42

of somehow liberating yourself from constraints, I

19:44

think the urge is an important one. And

19:48

then it's a question of understanding what are the constraints

19:50

and how you reflect on these constraints. And maybe then

19:52

the philosophy of freedom is all an effort to unpack

19:54

what counts as constraint. How do

19:56

people relate to each other as they

19:59

try to understand what's going on? these constraints are

20:01

and so on. But I think, I mean, you

20:03

say adolescence, although it's a bad thing, but it's

20:06

not a criticism. No, I'm not saying it is a bad

20:08

thing. I'm saying it, no, that's the

20:10

universal thing. So that's the thing that all human

20:12

beings, and I'm guessing almost

20:14

all cultures experience. What you

20:16

described, which is the child, the 11 year

20:18

old child, whatever it is, who

20:21

has internalized a world in which

20:23

constraint is itself natural, and

20:25

the adult can theorize it and conceptualize it,

20:28

you don't have to have had a university

20:30

education to be able to think through some

20:32

of the complexity of it. But there is

20:34

a transition between these two things. And something

20:36

about that transition, the energy behind

20:38

it, I mean the opposite. I'm not denigrating

20:40

it. I'm trying to find out what's the

20:43

universal impulse here. And it's

20:45

almost the memory of that. If it

20:47

is a developmental aspect of the human

20:49

condition that you suddenly

20:51

notice, maybe not as immediately as you

20:53

did on one day in almost

20:56

post-communist Albania, but at some point

20:58

you notice that that childlike

21:01

condition no longer holds.

21:03

You experience that as an adolescent. And

21:06

even the philosophers, some part of them

21:08

as they reach for

21:10

freedom, for me, adolescent

21:12

is better than philosophical, not the other way

21:14

around. No, exactly. I mean, in some ways,

21:17

I think all of philosophy is an

21:19

effort to recover the fundamental questions of childhood and

21:21

of the child, or a lot of it is

21:23

going back to the kind of simplicity of the

21:25

child and to the basic approach to the

21:28

world that children have. We sometimes, as an

21:30

adult, yes, there is a gain in terms

21:32

of autonomy and liberating yourself for constraints and

21:34

so on. But sometimes the price of

21:36

that gain is that we suppress the fundamental

21:39

questions. And so I know from my

21:41

own kids that around five or six, all

21:43

children start thinking about death in this very

21:45

fundamental way. And it really

21:47

disturbs them. I mean, it's clearly they go through

21:49

this and they come to you and they ask

21:51

all these questions, but why do we have to

21:53

die and how do what happens? And if you

21:55

come from a secular background, like I do, it's

21:57

very hard because you don't have a nice story.

22:00

to tell them about what happens after

22:02

you die and it's okay, you don't have to worry about

22:04

it because there's this other way of thinking about life and

22:06

so on. And so you then have to somehow

22:09

have to say to them, well, there

22:11

is this fundamental constraint which is death and

22:13

we have to understand it and somehow make sense

22:16

of it and then they forget it and we forget it

22:18

and we don't wake up in the morning and worry

22:20

about death obviously. You somehow find

22:22

a way of suppressing certain questions

22:24

or naturalizing certain answers and I

22:26

think there is in philosophy an

22:29

urge to return to some of

22:31

these basic questions that we forget

22:33

to ask and maybe the

22:35

question of freedom is a little bit like

22:37

that return to the child becoming a grown-up

22:39

and all of philosophy is an invitation to

22:42

go back to these fundamental questions and rethink

22:44

them and come to a different understanding or

22:46

rethink your life in light of those constraints

22:48

and so on. Death comes first

22:51

for children five or six. What is it and

22:53

why does it have to happen to us? And

22:56

its fairness I think, so this is

22:58

unfair and that is a childhood refrain.

23:00

Again, I don't know enough to know whether

23:02

it's universal but I'm guessing

23:04

in most cultures children say it's not

23:07

fair. I think they're actually connected

23:09

because death is the constraint and then once

23:11

you have a limit, once you have a

23:13

boundary, then it becomes a question of distribution.

23:15

So if we had endless lives, I don't think we'd

23:18

worry about scarcity as much because we would always

23:20

be able to make up and see this also

23:22

goes back to the question of freedom actually. But

23:25

yeah, there'd always be time to live

23:27

all sorts of lives, try all sorts of

23:30

different things and there'd be endless possibilities

23:32

whereas the brute fact of death which is

23:34

the first thing that we learn then leads

23:36

us to then ask all these other

23:38

questions about constraints and relating to other

23:40

people and so on. It's not fair

23:42

though comes before set me

23:45

free. One of the things that's so interesting

23:47

about your story, 11, in some ways it's

23:49

quite precocious but you had an unusual experience

23:51

to frame it in the language of freedom

23:54

because fairness is much easier to understand because

23:56

it's much easier to personalize it including it's

23:58

unfair that you're not. you do this to

24:00

me. But freedom

24:03

is a more general term and

24:05

it implies a set of values

24:08

or constraints that go beyond just this particular

24:10

situation. But it is, again, I'm not using

24:13

this in a pejorative sense at all, it

24:15

is the adolescent cry, right? Which is not

24:17

just that's not fair, which sounds a bit

24:19

more like an eight-year-old child. But

24:22

I want to be free of this. I

24:24

want to be free of this, of you,

24:26

of this family, of this, whatever it is.

24:28

But freedom is later. Death, fairness,

24:31

freedom. I don't know

24:33

if all languages have and all indeed all

24:35

cultures have the concept of fairness is

24:37

as present in all cultures and in all

24:39

languages as it is in as the concept

24:41

of freedom is. And indeed, when I try

24:43

and think about what is the Albanian translation

24:45

from fairness, I'm not even sure I can

24:47

even it doesn't occur to me right away

24:49

what the concept of fairness is actually I

24:51

remember also translators of John Rawls had real

24:54

issues with translating justice and fairness. Well, no,

24:56

no, across the board, even in Italian, it

24:58

was really hard to come up with an

25:00

answer with the translation for the word fairness.

25:02

So maybe something particularly British. We're

25:05

going to come on to the particularly

25:07

Britishness of my approach to this. But

25:09

what is then the word for you

25:13

can't do that to me? But rights

25:15

and freedom are connected. So I think about right

25:17

and I don't want to make it too abstract.

25:19

But I think about the concept of right as

25:21

something that has to do with the allocation of

25:23

freedom. And so there is a relationship. You can

25:25

think of freedom in the abstract or you can think of it as

25:27

a social relation. And then when you think of

25:29

it as a social relation, then there's something about the

25:31

notion of right that enters the picture, which

25:33

is what helps people understand how do you

25:35

think about freedom in this relation. And

25:38

the concept of right is something that helps

25:40

you articulate the concept of freedom. And so

25:42

they're also again, they're not that different. They're

25:44

fundamentally connected. Yeah, I think in

25:46

the way I grew up and the reason why

25:49

it was so important is that it was

25:51

almost a hypocrisy of the use of freedom

25:53

that made people really angry, right? The fact that

25:56

they were constantly being told by the state that

25:58

you are in a free society. when

26:00

in fact they couldn't even speak freely.

26:03

And that's this gap between how the world

26:05

was packaged for them and how they thought

26:07

it should be. From

26:09

then on, I think made me particularly aware

26:11

of this difference between freedom as an ideal

26:14

and freedom as an ideology. There

26:16

is always an ideology that will tell you

26:18

this is the ideal of freedom. The society

26:20

that you live in is the ideal society

26:22

more or less. And indeed, that's also what

26:24

makes me sometimes annoyed about liberal societies because

26:26

I think even though there is a lot

26:28

of questioning of freedom, there is a fundamental

26:31

complacency about the fact that, yeah,

26:33

okay, but by and large, these

26:35

are free societies. And it's kind

26:37

of fine. And that's something

26:39

that I find is where the ideology creeps

26:42

in actually. And I can now see even

26:44

as you're saying this that the word

26:46

right in English, the word right can bridge

26:48

that gap. It can be quite

26:50

close to ideas of freedom, whereas

26:53

the word fair doesn't

26:55

quite make it and

26:57

the feeling that you just described people having that

26:59

they've been sold a kind of lie. To

27:02

then say, and that's not fair,

27:05

doesn't sound enough. At a

27:07

minimum, you have to say that's not right. And perhaps

27:09

beyond that, you have to say we want real freedom.

27:12

But that's not fair. Sounds like

27:14

quite a whiny complaint. Yeah,

27:16

it sounds like a child complaint. Or a

27:19

Western liberal complaint. Thinking

27:23

about your next career move in research and

27:25

development? Then it's time to

27:27

make your move to the UK. The

27:30

nation that's investing 20 billion pounds in

27:32

R&D over the next two years. The

27:36

nation that's home to four of the

27:38

world's top research universities. The

27:41

nation where great talent comes

27:43

together. Visit gov.uk/great

27:45

talent to see how you

27:47

can work, live and move

27:49

to the UK. I

27:55

want to read you a poem now because you said

27:58

you wrote a poem called freedom. So I'm

28:00

going to read you a poem called Freedom, which

28:02

to me touches on some of these things. I

28:05

don't know if it's a great poem, it probably

28:07

isn't. It's a 19th century American

28:09

poem by Helen Hunt Jackson. So

28:12

she was a white American

28:14

writing poems about

28:17

the oppression of Native Americans and

28:19

Black Americans, and she was a

28:21

champion of freedom understood as

28:23

different kinds of emancipation. So this is an

28:25

American story in lots of ways. What

28:28

struck me about this poem, thinking about this

28:30

series, and also thinking about this conversation, which

28:32

is partly about personal experience, and mine is

28:34

so different from yours in lots of ways.

28:37

Maybe not in every way, but in lots of ways, is

28:39

the first line of this, but I'm just going to read the whole thing.

28:43

What free man knoweth freedom? Never

28:46

he whose father's father, through

28:48

long lives, have reigned her

28:51

kingdoms which mere heritage attained.

28:54

Though from his youth to age

28:56

he roam as free as winds,

28:58

he dreams not freedom's ecstasy. But

29:01

he whose birth was in a

29:03

nation chained, for centuries, where every breath

29:05

was drained from breasts of slaves, which

29:08

knew not there could be such a

29:10

thing as freedom. He

29:13

beholds the light, burst

29:15

dazzling. Though

29:17

the glory blind his sight, he knows

29:19

the joy. People

29:22

laugh because he reels and wields

29:24

confusedly his infant will. The

29:27

wise man watching with a heart that

29:29

feels says, cure for freedom's

29:31

harms is freedom still. Like

29:35

I said, I don't think it's a great poem, but the

29:38

implication of that poem is

29:40

that people who

29:43

are conventionally born free

29:45

by, and we'll argue about

29:48

this, by, I guess, Western

29:50

standards, not quite liberal standards, but

29:52

conventional Western standards. And

29:55

I think the word for this is just have

29:57

the privileges that we associate with freedom. Don't

29:59

actually know. Know what it is and to

30:01

know it, you have to be denied it.

30:04

If you are denied it. In. The

30:06

was the poem then you experience it

30:08

like an infant when you get it

30:10

and in Attica something a bit patreon.

30:13

I think about the assumption that people

30:15

who when they get their freedom move

30:17

and of behave like children but nonetheless

30:19

the something about the infant's well that

30:21

can capture what this thing is and

30:23

when I read that I relate to

30:25

that plan because I think the first

30:28

line is about people like me and

30:30

these fathers fathers fathers had just taken

30:32

all of this for granted and for

30:34

that reason. The. Steaks

30:36

aren't as high for me to when I

30:38

started by saying why is it. That.

30:41

Everyone once this thing. is it

30:43

because I take it for granted?

30:45

Is it actually so conditional on

30:47

one's own experiences of what it

30:50

is not to spend too much

30:52

of one's life being. Constrained.

30:54

In various ways, we're being told by other

30:57

people what to do and that actually this

30:59

is the thing that is most visible when

31:01

you're on the other side of it. Do.

31:04

You relate to that. I mean, I relate to

31:06

one side of this which is the people being

31:08

attacked here. Do you relate to it? I.

31:11

Relate to both of them. At this point

31:13

I think because although I come from

31:15

this. From. Ethnic background let's say,

31:17

Albania and with disruptor and my adolescence

31:19

and silence I mean I'm very aware

31:22

of the fact that now I am

31:24

also part of a wealthy. Class

31:26

Of the both that privilege it's ends

31:28

who have a position in society where

31:31

they have a voice that other people

31:33

don't have that channels of communication that

31:35

means of incidence of others aren't haven't

31:37

So I'm actually it's. Indeed, maybe

31:39

even more now that that I

31:41

am and disposition aware of the

31:43

constraints of the responsibilities. That come with.

31:46

The. heading of get buying a certain position as scientists

31:48

but i think a very tricky with. Freedom

31:50

because. Sometimes I

31:52

wonder whether. The. Fact

31:54

that. We. have you know

31:56

privilege and preseason ends

31:59

influence And what you might

32:01

call power to some extent, I

32:03

wonder whether that actually is freedom. And

32:05

so I sometimes wonder whether

32:08

for me freedom remains a kind of

32:10

ideal. And so to some

32:12

extent, yes, you have certain possibilities

32:14

of doing certain things and you have means and you have

32:16

access and so on. And of course

32:18

those change with the change in empirical circumstances.

32:20

But in another way, I also think because

32:23

I think of freedom as a social relation and

32:25

because I think it's a much more demanding, much more

32:27

robust concept. I also think that

32:29

if the whole world is not free

32:31

and if there is people living right

32:33

next to me who have many more

32:35

constraints and much less access, I

32:38

don't think that my world is actually

32:40

– gives me freedom as well. So if I

32:42

think about it, at the surface level, it looks

32:44

like I am free and I live in a

32:46

free society because individually maybe I have

32:48

more possibilities. But ultimately, I don't

32:51

think that the world in which we live

32:53

is a free world for everyone. And I

32:55

wonder whether a world that is

32:57

not free for everyone is actually free for

32:59

anyone insofar as you are always at the

33:01

mercy of these fundamental uncertainties. And when you

33:03

start thinking about it, then you become aware

33:06

of how difficult it is to

33:08

have freedom even at a personal level, even

33:10

for someone who comes from a privileged background.

33:12

But I take it and I agree with

33:15

you that it takes a certain level of

33:17

reflexivity to come to all of that

33:19

understanding whereas maybe if you

33:21

make the experience of unfreedom firsthand

33:23

in your life, in your personal

33:25

circumstances, in your biography, that

33:27

gives you an insight that for other people it

33:30

takes a little bit longer to reconstruct and it

33:32

comes with more reflection. But

33:34

as you say, you've acquired this position.

33:36

You've moved in some ways across that

33:38

line and the poems

33:41

about people whose fathers, fathers, fathers have taken

33:43

this for granted and that is different and

33:46

I think I'm thinking more of myself. I'm white,

33:48

I'm male, I'm well off, I'm

33:51

British. That doesn't mean that I

33:54

know freedom in a way that other people

33:56

don't but it probably means I'm complacent about

33:58

some aspects of it. But then at the same

34:00

time, I think you think that I'm also,

34:03

if I feel that I'm

34:05

taking it for granted, that I'm illusioned

34:07

about it too. So there's some false

34:10

consciousness in my Western privilege

34:12

as well. I'll tell you

34:14

about the ways I feel I'm free in a minute, but

34:16

I don't think I feel I'm free. When

34:18

I read a poem like that, I think I'm on one side of a line where

34:21

I'm just never going to know what

34:24

it is to maybe the

34:26

word is seek emancipation. And

34:29

for those reasons, there

34:32

are things that I don't understand, but that's

34:34

different from you. You're saying

34:36

that you sort of do

34:38

know it because you're really conscious of

34:41

the thing that you have having been acquired

34:44

and not being shared. I don't know.

34:46

I mean, this is an interesting thought experiment.

34:48

I think if I bracket

34:51

myself and I say, okay, but

34:53

it is just sheer luck that I got

34:55

to this position. So I could not have

34:57

been in this position. I could be someone

34:59

completely different. I could have someone's life that

35:02

just doesn't have this set

35:04

of opportunities. And that makes

35:06

me think, okay, but if it's just sheer

35:08

luck, then it's not really freedom in a

35:10

way. So even the freedom

35:12

that I have is just contingency. It's

35:14

random. It's arbitrariness. So it's not... So do

35:16

you mean that you could have been born someone else? I

35:19

could have been born in a different family, but I also,

35:21

you know, I come from Albania. So I constantly think about

35:23

my fellow Albanian youngsters, my schoolmates.

35:25

There's a character in the book

35:27

who had a very tragic story

35:30

of whom I write because she's almost this kind of alter

35:32

ego. She had a life. She was in the

35:34

same class, same age, same city as me. We

35:37

were doing the same things at age 11. And

35:39

then I ended up being an academic

35:41

and she actually ended up as a

35:43

sex worker because she followed a boy

35:45

in these years of transition in the

35:47

mid-90s and ended up on the streets

35:49

in Milan and actually died a

35:51

couple of years ago just after my book came out.

35:53

So when I think about that life and

35:56

I think that life could have been mine, there is

35:58

a way with that thought. shocks

36:01

my own insight about my life

36:03

that makes me realize, well, this

36:05

kind of world isn't really a free world. And

36:07

if it's not a free world, how free is it

36:10

for me? So I mean,

36:12

there's a lot of discussions, as you know,

36:14

in philosophy about epistemic awareness of

36:16

oppression and freedom and who

36:18

can speak for whom and who has

36:21

the right to say certain things and who has

36:23

the right to some people that might feel disingenuous.

36:25

Which is if you say, well, I feel I'm

36:27

oppressed and I'm even if I'm not personally oppressed.

36:30

Yeah, I'm not going to say it. I'm not

36:32

going to say it. Well, no,

36:34

no, but there's an argument that you

36:36

could be making, which is to say, well,

36:38

I'm not personally oppressed, but I think we

36:40

live in an oppressive world and therefore I

36:42

also I'm in solidarity with the oppressed and

36:44

to that extent I am also oppressed. Right.

36:47

So some people would say you have no right to say that. Other

36:50

people would say, I think that's

36:52

actually what solidarity means. And that's what

36:54

a more robust understanding of freedom takes you

36:56

to, which is the ability to get out

36:58

of your privilege in your own position and

37:00

to think about other people. And so this

37:02

is an interesting discussion because as I say,

37:04

for some, this would be completely bad faith,

37:06

right? Someone who is and indeed there are

37:08

moments even in my own life and work

37:10

where I think because maybe I

37:12

tend to go on about injustice more than you do.

37:15

Sometimes I think, oh, come on, you know, but

37:17

there are other moments where I think, yeah, but there's

37:19

a lot of people out there who don't have a

37:21

voice, who can't say certain things and don't have a

37:24

platform. And so there's maybe the people who do have

37:26

the platforms have a responsibility to articulate certain grievances and

37:28

to make certain arguments on freedom,

37:30

for example, also on their behalf. So

37:32

it's an interesting, complicated question. It's

37:34

not just a robust conception of freedom.

37:36

It's incredibly demanding if the thought is

37:39

there are lives that could go differently from

37:41

mine. You know, there are these forks in

37:43

the road and they take people down very,

37:45

very different paths. And if one of

37:48

those paths is away from the sort

37:50

of freedom from constraint that I might enjoy,

37:53

I can't enjoy that freedom of constraint and

37:55

call it freedom. We're probably going

37:57

to differ about this, but there will always be those

37:59

forks in the. The right? I mean,

38:01

that is part of the human

38:03

condition that people's lives will turn

38:05

out very differently because of accidents

38:07

of satan. Other things, soaps. There's

38:09

gotta be a point at which.

38:12

You. Allow certain amount of that and still

38:14

are willing to talk about the possibility of

38:16

some people being free or else I think

38:18

you gotta give up an altogether. I

38:21

completely agree with that. but I think the problem

38:23

is that the kinds of obstacles that we have

38:25

now, the types of on freedom that we experience

38:27

in our world and our societies a structural. There

38:30

are accidents of faith, but they also

38:32

go with certain general social categories. So

38:34

you know. That. Usually goes it.

38:36

Background with. Ability with

38:38

wealth with the with knowledge with

38:41

we are father's father wasn't sauce

38:43

and so it's very unlikely that

38:45

someone who has everything. Over

38:48

up the of course. Of many generations, everything's

38:50

been going. Well and their family

38:52

and they would tell a story about

38:54

themselves as is all about achievement, hard

38:56

work and talent and so on. And

38:59

we could have discussed this as a

39:01

narrative of freedom that justifies the prevalence

39:03

in those terms. But. Okay, We can

39:05

bracket that for a moment. I think there's something really

39:07

you can see that, the way in which this. President

39:10

is inherited his structural so again

39:12

it's notes that. Sometimes

39:14

people who deserve certain things acts as a

39:17

don't get them because they are sell thirds

39:19

by the circumstances by the category by the

39:21

country this they're born into I mean even

39:23

and then than this plays out the many

39:25

different ways it has to with avid but

39:28

authors of the with Nathan's and states the

39:30

someone with even born poor in a wealthy

39:32

states like a poor person. In Britain is

39:34

not going to be the same as

39:36

the poor person In Albania is very

39:38

the financial crisis. If there is a

39:40

catastrophe, there's environmental breakdowns. The. People.

39:42

In Albania will be much more vulnerable than someone

39:45

who is born for in Britain. even though they

39:47

will be both poor they wanted were in the

39:49

same way. And likewise,

39:51

a wealthy person born in

39:53

a society where there are

39:55

constraints that even poor people

39:57

in person wouldn't appreciate. wealthy

40:00

person in contemporary Venezuela

40:02

or the Democratic Republic of

40:05

Congo, it's a completely different

40:08

way of thinking about what constraint means

40:10

because these are going to be societies

40:12

in which the rule of law is

40:14

much less robust. But

40:17

it also means that there are unfreedoms

40:20

because of the country that you happen to find yourself in

40:22

that are not amenable to monetary

40:24

easing. Right, exactly.

40:26

Yeah, yeah. So there will also be a way in which you're

40:29

pigeonholed if you happen to be elite in a

40:31

particular country and then you move and then you

40:33

realize that everyone thinks that if you're from Albania

40:35

you must be a cleaner or that it doesn't

40:37

matter who you were in your

40:39

own societies. And when I said

40:42

to myself, male, white, well-off, British,

40:45

you could take any one of those out and

40:47

you could find it was a very different kind

40:49

of thing. You could be male,

40:51

white and relatively well-off and still find yourself

40:53

in a society in which that

40:56

doesn't give you the kinds of privilege that I take

40:58

for granted. You

41:01

talked about whether we're allowed

41:03

to articulate the point of

41:06

view of the people who don't share our

41:08

advantages, your advantages

41:11

now. What about

41:13

telling people that they're unfree when they

41:15

don't think that they're unfree? So

41:17

people who live lives that's

41:19

seen from the outside look very constrained

41:21

and maybe that could include children, right?

41:23

And thinking more of adults and

41:27

whether you can say to them, you

41:31

don't understand the extent to which you

41:33

are lacking in freedom. So it's an

41:35

argument that Frederick Douglass makes when he's

41:37

talking about slavery, having grown up as

41:39

a slave, having the ultimate transition across

41:41

that line and looking back

41:43

on his childhood as a slave and

41:45

understanding as a child that he was

41:47

unfree, but also saying that he lived

41:49

in a world in which not all

41:51

of the adults thought in those terms

41:54

and they didn't think the key question was

41:56

freedom or unfreedom. They Thought the

41:58

key question was... Do. You have

42:00

a good master. A bad master. Because.

42:03

That was by far the most important thing

42:05

in their lives. By far the biggest difference

42:07

would be made spurs a point in talking

42:09

about freedom because it was a sort of

42:12

irrelevance and he says that. That

42:14

is the definition of on freedom

42:16

that anyone who is a slave

42:19

and he thinks the meaningful category

42:21

is good or bad master is

42:23

by definition unfree because no free

42:26

person would think like that, and

42:28

he can say it because he

42:30

was a slave. Can.

42:33

We say I. Guess. So

42:35

this goes back. To the question that

42:38

we were think about that the

42:40

inside The idea is that only

42:42

people who make certain experiences can

42:44

actually collate certain concepts are certain

42:46

grievances or i you have gone

42:49

through something and so there is

42:51

some insight that experiencing an injustice

42:53

gives you that other people who

42:55

dancer that inside want has an.

42:59

item in our that was the other way round.

43:01

So. In a way. Experiences

43:03

can be made for sense, that you

43:05

can have been a slave, or you

43:07

can read about slavery, and it seems

43:10

to me that it's too strong to

43:12

say that it's only a few been

43:14

a slave that you really understand. What

43:16

it means to be a slave when

43:18

in fact there are other ways in

43:20

which you can acquire this experience which

43:22

is for reading through education, through conversation,

43:24

from politics through general. Debate

43:27

and Society. And. Frederick Douglass

43:29

argument. It comes from his experiences

43:31

because he grew up seeing people

43:34

having these arguments. But the argument

43:36

itself is not. No, by some

43:38

experiences know humans almost based on.

43:41

Philosophical logic he saying

43:43

essentially. By.

43:45

Definition: To think that good most a

43:48

bad master is the test of good

43:50

life. Bad life is itself a marker

43:52

of and freedom because no one's no

43:55

one. Who has freedom would think

43:57

that was the most important thing? Yeah, but

43:59

also. At the another part of the soul

44:01

to is that. You can.

44:04

Articulate, And experience based on

44:06

your own experience. But I think. It's

44:09

not just. Having the experience of

44:11

makes you aware of freedom for example,

44:14

So I think of freedom or something must

44:16

more general and it's not. That

44:18

the free selling be unfree. You are and

44:20

free. Or you are free. I think it

44:22

is. It's a universal predicaments. And is all

44:24

of us can think about it because it's connected

44:26

to faults. To who we are to being

44:28

human in this fundamental ways. Then yes, experience

44:31

will give you different ways of accessing it's

44:33

and you have. makes you think about it

44:35

differently. But I think the fundamental insights soil

44:37

is part of every one. So it's not

44:40

the free who are telling them free you

44:42

on free because in some sense the unfreeze

44:44

internally also free. It's just that there is

44:47

a gap between. Essence in Away

44:49

and the circumstances in which they live. And so

44:51

it's more about the fossil record. Miss an awfully

44:53

don't you know the old story about the slaves.

44:55

Being free and saw their something to it.

44:58

I think you can't say. Freedom. Is this an

45:00

external? And Isn't there something? About it,

45:02

that must be also internal. And indeed, it's

45:04

in the gap between the internal and external

45:06

that the conflict arises. And that's where this

45:09

experience of Slavery, for example, becomes so important.

45:11

For would you mean by the whole story

45:13

about the Sleeping Free mean the people who.

45:16

Can give you an argument wisely reasonable.

45:18

The antithesis of freedom. The. Old

45:20

steroid argument read: you know, the. In

45:23

ancient philosophy there's is arguing that the person

45:25

in prison if they have a certain mastery

45:27

of themselves and a certain control and it's

45:29

a sealants command of the surroundings and they

45:31

have an inner a calm and so on

45:33

then doesn't matter what the world the same

45:35

to them. In in fact in my books my

45:38

grandmother who more or less has his position because

45:40

he was someone who was. She.

45:42

Was a victim of communism because her husband went

45:44

to prison and thoughts and all her life. Whenever

45:46

I said to her. While them have been really

45:48

hard you were so oppressed and how did you live

45:50

with us on freedom Seal with that some it was

45:53

never on for the I was always free and that's

45:55

because he thought. afraid on the some kind

45:57

of in our control and capacity to

45:59

rise above circumstances and to

46:02

assert who you are regardless of what other people

46:04

tell you about who you are. And

46:06

in that sense, slavery is a deprivation

46:09

of external possibilities, of

46:11

external means of doing things. It's

46:14

a status inequality, but it's not

46:16

unfreedom at this fundamental human level

46:18

because the slave is always free

46:20

actually. There's a historical argument,

46:22

I'm thinking of someone like Simone de

46:24

Beauvoir, who says, if

46:27

you look at the record of people who

46:29

are emancipated, no one

46:32

ever wants to give their freedom back. The

46:34

oppressors always say, you don't want freedom because it's

46:37

really hard out there in the world of the

46:39

free. Don't we all want

46:41

to be a child? Don't we all want to be

46:43

looked after? So the overseer says to the slave and

46:45

the husband says to the wife, you

46:47

don't want this thing that I have because it's such

46:50

hard work. It's a real burden,

46:52

freedom. And then those

46:54

people are in their different ways liberated.

46:57

And they never say, oh yeah, you were right.

46:59

It's a terrible burden. I mean, they might

47:01

say, yes, you were right. It's a burden, but not that we

47:03

want to give it back. And that that's

47:05

the test in a way. That's the marker of

47:08

where the line is between freedom and unfreedom, that

47:10

there is at some level a version of freedom

47:13

that in different circumstances, human beings

47:15

all recognize when they have it,

47:18

you never want to give it back. Yeah, because

47:20

I think it's also in some ways

47:22

the capacity to make mistakes is also

47:24

a part of freedom. So there's a

47:26

sense in which freedom is about responsibility,

47:28

but you can't have responsibility if you

47:31

don't have the possibility of departing from

47:33

being responsible. And so temptation and evil

47:35

is actually in a way is exactly

47:38

connected to this dimension of exercise of

47:40

freedom. We're going to come back to

47:42

all of these things. I want to ask you one more

47:44

version of freedom. So I'm going to talk about myself again,

47:46

the privileged, unoppressed

47:48

person. So

47:51

if you ask me what I think freedom

47:53

means for me, I'm not thinking about philosophy.

47:56

I'm not thinking in the abstract. I'm thinking in my own

47:58

life. Do I feel free? So

48:00

in many conventional ways, I do feel free.

48:02

I think I live in a relatively free

48:04

society. We're going to argue about that. I

48:07

think that I am pretty

48:10

much unoppressed. I don't think we are going to argue

48:12

about that. But what

48:15

I want is peace of mind. And

48:18

I think that the

48:20

thought of certain kinds of peace of

48:22

mind to be

48:24

free from anxiety or worry

48:28

and also to be free from a constant

48:30

sense that there's

48:32

a sort of informational overload, not just in the world

48:34

that we live in, but to be inside a human

48:36

brain is to be weighed

48:39

down with too much information. And

48:42

I can't even really imagine it. But the thought

48:44

of being free of some of that, that

48:48

feels to me like liberation. That's

48:50

what liberation would be. So I can't put it in the

48:52

language of oppression. I mean, I could claim I'm sort of

48:54

oppressed by living in a world of social

48:56

media, but I'm not because I just avoid it. But

48:59

or email, I sometimes think email is the thing

49:02

that oppresses me. I'm not

49:04

going to make that argument. But I am going to suggest

49:06

that if I had to say where

49:09

I feel like I'm on the wrong side of the

49:11

line, where somewhere out there is that sort of promised

49:13

land where I would be like a child and I

49:15

would feel free, it's to be

49:17

free from the things

49:20

that prevent me from having peace of mind.

49:22

That might be that that's just wishful because

49:24

it's part of the human condition to be

49:26

anxious or whatever. But that's

49:29

really strong for me. And I'm

49:32

sure it's a mark of the fact that I'm unoppressed

49:34

in other ways. But I

49:36

also think it's not uncommon. But

49:39

it's very interesting you say that because

49:41

I have the exact opposite reaction. So

49:43

for me, peace of mind would be

49:45

unfreedom actually, because I always think of

49:47

freedom as something that I experience

49:49

in the moment of responsibility. So

49:52

I feel we are most free

49:54

when we are making decisions.

49:57

But decisions are always hard because there is

49:59

always. attention, there is always a conflict, there

50:01

is always you need to jump one way or another and

50:03

there is always a kind of anxiety about it. And

50:06

that fundamental anxiety is how

50:08

actually we know that we are

50:11

at this fundamental level free. If

50:13

we didn't experience the anxiety, we wouldn't… Or

50:16

like children. I'm

50:18

not sure because I think even children make

50:21

decisions in their own way. They feel

50:23

responsible. I mean they have different realms

50:25

in which they exercise responsibility but they do

50:28

get worries. They don't get the

50:30

same kinds of worries as us but they also experience

50:32

tensions that are connected to decision making which I

50:34

think is fundamentally… I think where… If

50:37

I were to say why do I say I think fundamentally

50:39

at some fundamental level people are always free, it's because

50:41

I think they are always capable of making moral

50:43

decisions or of making decisions and of knowing

50:45

what the moral thing would be that they

50:47

should be doing. And sometimes they do it,

50:50

sometimes they don't but it comes with a

50:52

moment of decision. So if I were to

50:54

say take away the anxiety from

50:56

that, it would be as though I were

50:58

to say take away the grounds for freedom

51:00

in a way. And so it

51:02

wouldn't be freedom what you acquire. It would be

51:04

as I say like something like

51:06

the equivalent of taking heroin or I don't

51:08

know, some kind of medications. I

51:10

don't know. I understand

51:12

that if I could think of

51:15

my anxiety as a mark of my freedom,

51:17

it would be good for me on both

51:19

fronts. On the other hand, the

51:21

language that I was using there didn't feel wrong to me, the

51:24

language of being liberated from something.

51:26

So there are different kinds of freedom that we're talking

51:29

about here. You're talking about freedom as a form

51:31

of responsibility and I'm talking about freedom

51:33

in a negative sense as being

51:37

liberated from something, something that

51:39

feels constraining and oppressive. And

51:42

I don't think it has to be like taking heroin

51:44

to want a certain kind of

51:46

peace of mind. So

51:49

it's possible to

51:51

be overloaded with

51:53

the anxiety of choice in a

51:55

way that's unhealthy too. Yes,

51:58

but then I think it is unhealthy. healthy

52:00

only if you have no way of externalizing

52:02

the anxiety. So I think then we kind

52:04

of would take the conversation maybe a step

52:07

further and then it's a question of okay,

52:09

how do you turn this individual personal anxiety

52:11

into something that involves other people? And so

52:13

there is a sense of sharing the anxiety

52:16

that I think is ultimately what politics is

52:18

about. And this you don't

52:20

experience it just by yourself, but you

52:22

try to find companionship in the anxieties

52:24

that other people experience and you find

52:27

shared grounds for the anxiety and so

52:29

think about society in this different way. But I

52:32

think it's just a very different way and it's maybe

52:34

just me being so generous here. I think

52:36

maybe it's a very different way of thinking from

52:38

how most liberal people tend to think where it's

52:40

really about you and

52:42

your constraints and your life

52:46

and your state of being or it's

52:48

social and relational through and through. And so

52:50

all of these things are anxieties, yes, of

52:52

the individual, but they also always have a

52:55

social route as well and then you

52:57

have to think about how you can make

52:59

these arguments for connecting these different experiences of

53:01

anxiety and offering help

53:03

or coming up with alternatives or

53:05

with solutions or with diagnosis of

53:07

different kinds. But yeah,

53:10

I don't think I'd want to be free from

53:12

anxiety. It's not my concern in a way. It's

53:14

more that I think of internal

53:17

freedom as this freedom connected to moral responsibility

53:19

and maybe we'll talk over the course of

53:21

our conversations on how you can unpack that

53:23

exactly and what it means for me and

53:25

why I think that's the most plausible way

53:28

actually of thinking about freedom. But

53:30

from there, then you can have a

53:33

reflection on to what extent do

53:35

our societies enable people to live by

53:37

this conception of freedom, to be morally

53:40

responsible, to take responsibility and to what

53:42

extent do they actually instead create mechanisms

53:44

and ideologies that prevent us from exactly

53:46

accessing freedom in this way. Do you

53:49

think the way that I've just described

53:51

it to you is a reflection of

53:54

me? It's a reflection of my

53:57

upbringing in this society. Is it a kind of? moral

54:01

failing on my part is in absence of

54:03

imagination. I understand what you're saying and yet

54:05

I don't feel it. I don't think

54:07

it's a reflection on you but I think it is a reflection

54:09

of a certain conception of freedom which is what

54:11

you were saying earlier, this negative conception of

54:13

freedom as freedom from constraint. I

54:15

think about what are the things that seem to

54:17

me to be barriers in the way of my

54:20

ability to truly be

54:22

myself and I should

54:24

be more political about that? Yes,

54:26

I think that's what I think. I mean in a

54:28

way, there's a certain negative conception of freedom that then

54:30

reflects on how you view the world

54:32

and how you view yourself and whether you

54:34

think of you're free or you're unfree that

54:37

goes with having that understanding of freedom which

54:39

is this negative understanding which I don't think

54:41

is the right one philosophically. But

54:43

having said that, I don't want to say, okay, I know what

54:45

the right conception of freedom is and I'm now

54:47

going to convince you of it because I take

54:49

your point that it's not something that you can

54:51

actually ever teach people and it

54:54

would defeat the purpose in a way and

54:56

a kind of lecturing on freedom that says you

54:58

run free and now I teach you how to

55:01

be free is what authoritarians typically do and is

55:03

the paradigm of authoritarianism. So I

55:05

think there's ways throughout the history of

55:07

philosophy in which people have navigated this

55:09

question and try to come up with

55:12

answers that don't go from the thought

55:14

that, okay, there is a

55:16

superficial way of thinking about freedom and

55:18

a real freedom to the thought and

55:20

now some person, some philosopher, some theory,

55:22

some politician will give you the right

55:24

answer to what it means to be

55:26

free which is what often

55:28

the jump that people make from one to the

55:31

other and I think maybe there is a more

55:33

complicated way of answering the second question even though

55:35

I think the first is philosophically what seems more

55:37

plausible to me. Before

55:47

we go, I just wanted to let you

55:50

know about our new subscription offer PPF+. Sign

55:54

Up and get bonus episodes to accompany

55:56

each of our series along with ad-free

55:58

listening. Besides

56:00

on the American Election series that we

56:02

just finished and later on they will

56:05

be to bonus of So to complete

56:07

this series with let if the if

56:09

you click on the link in the

56:12

soda scripts and you will see how

56:14

to sign up for just go to

56:16

ppfideas.com Do also follow us on Twitter

56:19

at Ppf I days or an Instagram

56:21

up Ppfideas We will also be

56:23

putting out video clips from this series.

56:27

Coming out next Episode two: I'm

56:29

going to be talking to laugh

56:31

about ideas of freedom in the

56:33

ancient world plato, Socrates, Stoicism, and

56:36

also the revolution that was. Christianity.

56:41

This. Has been past present. future brought

56:43

you in partnership with the London Review

56:45

of Books. Thinking

57:01

about your next to remove in

57:04

research and development tennis time

57:06

to make you'll need to the

57:08

Uk the nation that investing twenty

57:10

billion pounds and aren't he

57:12

I said the next two years

57:15

the nation this home to for

57:17

us to was tough research universities

57:20

the nation with right talent

57:22

comes together. Visit Gusto Uk. See

57:26

how you can work nice and

57:28

news to the Uk. He

57:33

cast powers almost as. Here's

57:37

the show that we were. He

57:42

friends absurd don't have that any.

57:44

In the teacher and it just

57:46

seems like it's interesting. I

57:48

don't depleted stories you haven't

57:50

heard of that America's greatest

57:52

thinkers and figure it's also

57:54

interview many of today's leading

57:56

cultural experts. Like France kid

57:59

foods, and Patrick, Brad, and Keith,

58:01

who share their insights, challenge

58:03

us to think in new and innovative ways.

58:06

So follow Here's Where It Gets

58:08

Interesting on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music,

58:11

Spotify, or wherever you listen to

58:13

your podcasts. Acast

58:17

helps creators launch, grow,

58:19

and monetize their podcasts

58:21

everywhere. acast.com.