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The passage by Barbara Kingsolver from a collection of works from The Bean Trees is baout a general sense of despair, doubt, and an undercurrent of disappointment. The narrator describes her road trip through the middle of the United States, contemplating life's issues which is revealed later in the passage an issue not so much created by herself but more decided for her based on her Cherokee blood and heritage. It is about her alienation with the modern world of cars, highways and petrol stations. Although it is ironic that she feels ostracized, Barbara Kingsolver explains her apparently aimless journey through the Midwest in snippets of the highlights of her trip, ironically, in the end she admits there is nothing meaningful in trying to live a different paradigm by adopting a new name, or by letting fate decide her identity.

An ambivalent mood is evoked in the beginning of the passage, revealing the author's almost genuinely contented attitude to navigate without pre-existing mindsets or plans. However, it seems as if she has arrived at this option through a last resort through the finality of the statement "When I drove over the Pittman line". There is a notion that this must, in some inexplicable manner the pivotal point of achieving her goal - to find a new sense of meaning in life with a new name. By adopting an appropriate attitude, Kingsolver hopes to render her situation more positive in the hopes that this will diminish the degree of disappointment later on. She is willing to let fate and destiny decide and be content with the outcome, "provided [that it occurs] more or less by chance." Kingsolver is even willing to give up her "rights" to "decide" , claiming that such a n act must be more natural, using the colloquial expression "really" to evoke a sense of apathy. Although it appears to be ambivalent and, to some degree indifferent, paradoxically the author has also arrived at this decision through contemplation, with the anaphora of "the more" reinforcing this idea.

Juxtaposing the sense of determination that the author creates (and the apparently only certain decision she makes in the passage) is the undercurrent of doubt and uncertainty that she establishes throughout the entire passage. Through the passive tense it is quite evident hat the author does not have any intention to make an effort to control her life. The car that she travels in seems to personify her ambivalence: by letting a separate entity take full reigns of where she would end up, both literally and metaphorically, the sense of despair is not amplified until she reaches the "Great Plain", a symbol of disappointment. In short, the physical appearance of this place serves to mock her anticipation: she is shocked of what she found out, having "never imagined" a place "could be so flat". The disbelief in her tone is further brought to a more personal level when the author saw that it was "all laid out right in front of you" to remove any second thoughts, and confirm that it is indeed a great expanse of "nothing". In the middle of this despair the author also loses "hope" and this giving up idea further reinforce the previous notion of running out of gas. Both use similar ideas on running out of something crucial and essential to his/her journey.

Interestingly, Kingsolver does not mention references to her Cherokee connection until at this point when her car breaks down. This is when the author mentions at the most convenient time "the sole reason for her journey, merely to find out a possible new beginning and find out about the "Cherokee Nation" her mother used to tell her about. This "Cherokee Nation" clearly seems absurd, almost mocking her culture as it must be allocated to indigenous people to keep them quarantined. The author reveals a glimpse of her inner conflict - there are parts of this country for which she can never really feel that she belongs. It is such a place that she has ended up in. Ironically, she needs the Cherokee blood "to qualify" and contradicting her mother's view, it is a place to let the Cherokees "lie down and die without a fight", implying that the "Cherokee Nation" is merely a euphemistic term, for what is far from a sanctuary.

The incident with another Cherokee, one of her own ethnicity suggests that the author feels that there is a sense of disconnection with those who have managed to adapt to a way of life other than their traditional life. It is humorous to mention that the Cherokee mechanic "went home with something near half the money I had" but she is also denying this isn't unfair. It can also be inferred that the author has never made such a long trip as this as this is "the closest" she has ever been to breaking down. Here Kingsolver arrives at an undeclared conclusion - she would never volunteer to go to the "Cherokee Nation" and claim something that "according to Mama" is an official "head rights". This realization also leads her to another view that she would not be able to live with other Cherokees who have adopted new identities - hence the possible (though never revealed) explanation of finding a "new name" that she mentions in the beginning.

The inner conflict, while superficial on the one hand, shows that nothing remotely interesting happens in her trip other than the confirmation that Oklahoma and the treeless landscape is featureless both literally and figuratively; there is nothing for her to connect to this "godless stretch of nothing". It almost seems as if Kingsolver proved that there is more to the outside world and its disappointment than even her mother knows. By letting fate decide the destination, the author ended up confirming to herself that nothing as been amiss.

Winter

The ten o'clock train to New York;
coaches like loaves of bread powdered with snow.
Steam wheezes between the couplings.
Stripped to plywood, the stations' cement standing room
imitates a Russian novel. It is now that I remember you.
Your profile becomes the carved handle of a letter nife.
Your heavy-lidded eyes slip under the seal of my widowhood.
It is another raw winter. Stray cats are suffering.
Starlings crowd the edges of chimneys.
It is a drab misery that urges me to remember you.
I think about the subjugation of women and horses,
Brutal exposure. Weather that forces, that strips.
In our time we met in ornate stations
arching up with nineteenth-century optimism.
I remember you running beside the train waving goodbye.
I can produce a facsmile of you standing
behind a column of polished oak to surprise me.
Am I going toward you or away from you on this train?
Discarded junk of other minds is strewn beside the tracks.
Mounds of rusting wire. Grotesque pop-art of dead motors.
Senile warehouses. The train passes a station.
Fresh people standing on the platform;
their faces expecting something.
I feel their entire histories ravish me.

-Ruth Stone

Leaders vs. Managers

Managers have employees - Leaders win followers
Managers react to change - Leaders create change
Managers have good ideas - Leaders implement them
Managers communicate - Leaders persuade
Managers direct groups - Leaders create teams
Managers try to be heroes - Leaders make heroes of everyone around them
Managers take credit - Leaders take responsibility
Managers exercise over power - Leaders exercise with power

Your impact on others
Character, Competence, Connection
Motivating others
Confronting Problems
Don't be afraid to Challenge those Around You

Responding to difficulties

Years ago, as a ocllege student, I heard a speaker say something that has stuck with me every since: Everybody hurts. No matter how successful a person is, life can be painful. Personal setbacks are a dialy occurrence. We are continually challeneged adn confronted with problems at work and in other ares of our lives. If you aren't experiencing challenges or difficulties a present, remember that you have in he past and you certainly will again.

Foundation-shaking change, increased competition, displacement, diminishing resources, and uncertainty about tomorrow are part of "business as usual" in the corporate world as well. Even those companies that are successful today realize (or should) that the distance from being a supernova to being extinct can be very short indeed.

Not all people who face challenges and difficulties admit to them. Too often we try to deal with difficulty by ignoring it or anesthetizing it with activity. The healthiest companies and individual see challenges for what they are, accept them, and work to solve them.

People who act as leaders, whether they have a title or not, in some measur eserve as merchants of hope. This doesn't mean that they try to gloss over the difficulties that are being faced. Rather, they deal with them. People who lead show us that the greatest satisfaction often comes from meeting challenges head-on. They ahve hte ability ot focus on what's right and on overcoming what's wrong. They help to find the pony in the pile of manure.

Managing people in order to ensure that they do what they're supposed to do is a necessary activity. Taking time to lead them to new levels of success is significant accomplishment.

My point is that everyone makes a difference. The choice we all have is whether we want to make a positive difference or a negative difference.

Resume
What you've accomplished
Results
The money you've made
The impression you leave
Your career
Self-improvement

Legacy
What you've contributed
Relationships
The difference you've made
The impact you have
Your organization, family, and community
Helping others improve

Next time you find yourself facing an important decision and you're not sure what to do, ask yourself two simple questions: When you've successfully confronted the challenge, how will you fell? And if you decide not to take that challenge, how will you fell, months and years later, about not having made that leap?

Critically compare Durkheim’s methodological holism and Smith’s methodological individualism

Durkheim and Smith both develop their own thesis on the relationship between the society and the individual by examining the role each plays. Smith uses individualism to reason that individual choices and actions lead to an aggregate outcome, whereas Durkheim claims that we can only correctly examine the relationship between the individual and society from a holistic approach, by considering how the collective leads to individualism. While Durkheim and Smith both show that social interactions between individuals play a pivotal role in the development of society, Smith’s way of examining the individual in isolation from society gives an incomplete account of the relationship between the two. It is limited because it focuses on economic self-interest as a factor in how individuals relate to one another. Durkheim believes that the individual cannot exist without society, and shows how the society endows the individual with notions of morals, mutual liking, and mutual dependence, underlining that the individual should be studied within a social context. Durkheim’s methodological holism allows him to understand the function of society in relation to the individual. It establishes the context from which Smith’s premise originates from: individualism from society, and henceforth, establishes how individualism supports and sustains society.
Both Durkheim and Smith consider the role of the division of labour as an example of how their methodology provides a framework to examine the individual and the society. A critical point of deviation between Smith and Durkheim, other than their different premises (starting from the individual or from society), is their investigation of the role of the division of labour. Durkheim criticizes Smith for limiting the role of the division of labour to an economic interpretation. For Smith, the reason why one should specialize, other than inherent differences, (innate abilities and disposition towards certain skills), is to benefit from the economic efficiencies of others, as well as promoting one’s own economic advantages: our actions are motivated primarily on personal and economic gains. Durkheim, on the other hand, extrapolates on this idea by considering the social division of labour. Durkheim claims that it does not simply make individuals agents of exchange, but, “whole system of rights and duties joining them in a lasting way to one another” .
Durkheim and Smith also differ in the origin of the division of labour. Smith believes that it arises out of “a propensity in human nature to exchange” . From Smith’s economic viewpoint, greater productivity brings greater prosperity to society. Durkheim states that this productivity is merely a side phenomenon, a consequence of the division of labour. He believes instead that the division of labour is an evolutionary driving process in the development of society and individualization: “the division of labour is one result of the struggle for existence: but it is a gentle denouement” . It is preceded by society, (clearly demonstrating the social context of the division of labour), but plays a social role that allow us to adapt and live in the new conditions that society has created. Competition in society becomes progressively more intense with individualization. At the same time, the degree of interdependence between these individuals increases. The social role of the division of labour is to create a more complex and diverse society, replacing society’s former homogenous conditions where mechanical solidarity played a greater role suited for like-minded individuals to a more heterogeneous society composed of dissimilar individuals. Durkheim notes as the individual becomes more specialized, the more his sense and intellect is developed, because it is exercised frequently and in an acute fashion. Thus, as he exemplifies in this statement: “without having willed it, humanity finds itself prepared to accept a more intense and varied culture” . The structure of society becomes more and more intricate because the number of links between individuals grows. At the same time, social solidarity is enhanced. Once social solidarity has been enforced and strengthened, the individual cannot live without society. If social solidarity dissolves, the individual perishes. In the absence of any social context, the individual has no reason to differentiate and specialize.
Durkheim not only shows how the division of labour shapes society but also how it shapes the individual. Rather than separating and alienating individuals from one another, it draws them closer together because of increased mutual dependence. As the social climate changes, individuals become ever increasingly distinguished from one another. At the concluding end of the division of labour is the realization that the individual will emerge from society. He also observes how over many generations, society transitions from one dominated by ‘mechanical solidarity’ to one by ‘organic solidarity’, whereby differentiated individuals relate to one another as “social functions” . Durkheim draws on an anthropological evidence of why individualism could not have been present in primitive societies: “If individualism was to such an extent congenital in humanity one cannot see how primitive tribes were able so easily to subject themselves to the despotic authority of a chief” . As Smith can only pay attention to the individual’s motives one at a time, his methodology does not encompass other factors involved in decision making, such as the recognition to live harmoniously. Smith misses this critical point: “Individuals, instead of subordinating themselves to one group, subordinate themselves to the one who represented it” .
The difference between Durkheim and Smith’s methodology serves to highlight the emphasis one places on individualism or society. Durkheim’s assumptions are sociological; all human beings are political animals, so the need to live in a society is natural. Even though Smith’s premise does include the fact that human nature is political, it places a greater emphasis on personal gain as the sole objective of all social interactions. Where Smith fails to explain how a potential conflict, where the individual’s self-interest does not correspond to the interest of the great majority is resolved, Durkheim shows that instead of competing with one another, “they co-ordinate their activities. But in every case new specialties appear” . He highlights this flaw of individualism by critically pointing out that “any personality, however powerful it might be, could do nothing alone against a whole society” . Moreover, the society takes priority over the individual, since the individual’s existence depends on whether the society is in a healthy state. The individual draws its strength from society; society is strengthened by their social interdependence. Durkheim concludes at the end of The Division of Labour in Society with this observation:
“The human consciousness that we must realize within ourselves in its entirety is nothing other than the collective consciousness of the group of which we form part”
For Durkheim, the individual not only depends on society but also cannot escape from it: “the duties of the individual to himself are duties to society” .
Durkheim further elaborates and extends his thesis to other spheres of life that arises out of society and realized by the individuals. Smith’s methodology implies that some notion of the state exists based on some vague conceptualizing of some higher authority. In reality, however, it only appears to come from some higher principle, because the task of society is to maintain social cohesion, and to “endow their blessings” on the individual. Regarding this phenomenon, Durkheim observed that the only force that is superior to the individual and the sole entity that possess such a quality is that of the group. Moreover, in realizing that the society is literally and metaphorically an ‘organism’, Durkheim’s insightful perspective shows how the society also takes an independent existence of its own: “the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own” . It can be termed the collective or common consciousness Out of this arises altruism. It is interesting to note this because Durkheim sees altruism as “scarcely more than a private virtue, which is laudable for the individual to pursue” yet it prevails in society and is needed to ensure solidarity. Altruism is virtuous because it neutralizes and softens the brutal effects of the struggle for existence aggravated by the ongoing process of the division of labour.
Durkheim further shows how social solidarity is reinforced by the individuals. “The very pronounced sentiment that each one of us today possesses of our own individuality has caused them to believe that personal rights could not be restricted to such a degree save by an organization that exercised coercion.” . It is clear that in the domain of the civil society, Smith’s account fails to demonstrate how social cohesion is maintained. Without any recognition of the power of the collective – indeed Smith’s account does not include the concept of ‘collective consciousness,’ – methodological individualism fails to explain the establishment of institutions in society that could not have originated from the individual. Smith’s individualism believes that the rational individuals would not possess any personal interest or motivation to form a governing body, or a law of courts. These institutions, whose function is to maintain social cohesion, are formed when groups of individuals come together. Moreover, Durkheim shows how even if one were to base their premise on individualism, it would have to demand “a strange conclusion that social evolution has attempted, from the very outset, to produce the most perfect types [of individuals], since “no governmental force exists at first save that of the common will expressed by the assembled horde” . Thus, where Smith fails to consider the social influence of the collective, Durkheim shows how it engenders upon the individual some notion of unity and of the necessity of cooperation.
Perhaps the most powerful conclusion of Durkheim’s holistic view of society is that there are many examples of cooperation and understanding of universal rights in society that cannot be explained through the pursuit of self-interest. Morals, for example, only exist in a society, and not as an independent entity. The concept of morality cannot be reached by deduction starting from the individual. Every society is a moral society, because this involves at the most of fundamental basis learning to live together, to agree with one another, and which Durkheim observed, “cannot be achieved without making mutual sacrifices” . Smith’s methodological individualism fails to come to such a conclusion as it is grounded in a rather pessimistic and fundamentally selfish view of how individuals behave. If Smith’s point of view were absolutely correct, one would never need to interact socially beyond satisfying personal gains. Durkheim shows that this was not true, citing this example:
“For man to acknowledge that others have rights, not only as a matter of logic, but as one of daily living, he must have agreed to limit his own. Consequently this mutual limitation was only realizable in a spirit of understanding and harmony” (p. 76)
Even though Smith and Durkheim both agree on the importance of the division of labour as a self-perpetuating process that accompanies the development of society, where Smith fails to explain how different interests can still guarantee a functioning society and cohesion among individuals, Durkheim’s methodological holism provides a sound explanation by tying the role of the division of labour with social interdependence. In Smith’s account of society, the concept of morals spring from sympathy, but self-interest is a dominant ‘strategy’ in social interactions. Durkheim believed that only by examining the society as a whole do we understand the need for morals and how it arises from society:
“What is moral is a source of solidarity, everything that forces man to take account of other people, to regulate his actions by something other than the promptings of his own egoism” (p. 331)
We see how Durkheim differs from Smith’s view that morality originates from private sentiments. Durkheim believes that society endows the individual with notions of morals that could not have originated from the individual: how to best protect the collective from harm, through written laws, which are verbal representations of morals used enforce social solidarity. Morality must therefore originate from what Durkheim identifies as “social consciousness” and which can be interpreted as the ‘thought’ of society when we consider society as an ‘organism’. To elaborate, “social consciousness” shows how his methodology encompasses some aspects of Smith’s account, as the term implies how some elements of individualism, such as self-interest, influence the way that society enforces cooperation and maintains social solidarity. Smith’s methodological individualism is useful when studying the individual in more developed societies, but only focuses on one individual at a time and therefore fails to consider the greater role played by society in moderating and regulating private actions. While Durkheim and Smith’s methodologies are hermeneutic, Durkheim’s methodological holism demonstrates a paradigm shift from Smith’s methodological individualism, presenting a more encompassing perspective on the role of the individual in society.

Is Hegel a liberal?

Individualism, in the classical sense is a political belief that the state should not intervene and interfere with the individual. Individual liberty is paramount to the political ideal of liberalism, as it stresses on the importance of individual rights. In particular, classical liberalism is associated with the belief that states should only institute negative freedom through coercion. In Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel demonstrates through the dialectic argument how the idea of the state is arrived. The dialectic approach stresses on reiterating each moment of the dialectic process, which in turn leads to the gradual concrete realization of the will, beginning from a sole existence in-itself and ending with the concluding existence for-itself. While Hegelian philosophy may not be traditionally regarded as liberal, it reinforces notions of freedom, liberty, and most importantly, individual rights with meticulous clarification. While his philosophy does not appear to be explicit, Hegel demonstrates how it leads to a liberal state. The individual comes to a conclusion of to an existence for-itself, which is reinforced by particularized will.
Hegelian philosophy, while not conventionally regarded as liberal, however, exemplifies Hegel’s idea of making implicit concepts explicit. He also believes that his philosophical method is non-refutable, as he clearly states in the beginning of Elements of the Philosophy of Right: “The author will regard any criticism expressed in a form other than that of scientific discussion of the matter itself merely as a subjective postscript and random assertion, and will treat it with indifference.” Hegel later demonstrates that Hegelian philosophy actually incorporates aspects of individualism with the concrete existence of the individual in the state. These aspects, in fact, are actualized in civil society. The subject matter of discussing rights and the right to property (as it relates to the freedom of individuals in societies) can only be regarded as an abstract idea. Thus, his philosophy is justified by virtue of grasping ideas from its initial reduced, nebulous, and objective root. Any conceivable notion of individual freedom and property rights according to Hegel has its origin in an abstract form, and is dealt with in a similarly abstract manner: “Philosophy has to do with Ideas and therefore not with what are commonly described as mere concepts.”
Where Hegel does not explicitly articulate liberal views is his claim that without ever fully realizing abstract rights, the meaning of individualism is equally abstract, and therefore, not put into practice. In the abstract form, the individual has free albeit un-actualized free will. Hegel believes that the individual is free to will anything in the most abstract form. Inherently, this statement does not contribute much further to the progress of thought and is insufficient alone, yet it establishes an important basis for further inquiry, thus reaffirming the will in a positive tone. The succeeding moments testify whether this will actualized. For this reason, Hegel believes that anything in the liberal sense is unrestricted until it is reconstructed in the real world. Conflicts may arise between the ideal (what is conceptualized) and reality (that which is actualized) in the latter moments. The notion prior to conceptualized individual rights is not, as Hegel clarifies, the notion of a defined and specific right but the notion that one has the luxury to will anything. The succeeding stages of the dialectic argument strengthen this notion substantially, by giving the pure abstract concept subjectivity. In light of this reasoning, Hegel concludes that all actualization of the will is confirmed through particularization. In particular, the actualized will is the free will defined by what it is refrained from doing: “With reference to concrete action and to moral and ethical relations, abstract right is only a possibility, and the determination of right is therefore only a permission or warrant.”
Hegel’s dialectic argument emphasizes more on the specific details of willing than on the notion of whether individualism should be preserved in the state. He believes that it is not right to demand that individuals conform to abstract universal ideals on notions of individual rights because it does not correspond to their particular specific interests. Moreover, every actual stage of his argument confines the definition of individual liberty reached thus far in the moment; they are constraint by dialectical parameters. Every actualization of a concept is a representation, and “every representation is a generalization, and this is inherent in thought. To generalize something means to think it.” Hence, it is possible to generalize about free will independently of any associations with the state or society, but the representation of individual will in the state does not necessarily correspond to what has been generalized. To clarify, the representation does not translate itself as completely identical to what was hypothesized in the preceding moment. On the other hand, Hegel is careful to point out that crucial elements from previous stages are preserved in the next moment. Some elements of individualism are conserved. Every next stage is an improvement from the existing stage by representing the idea in a less and less abstract form and conversely, more and more substantial form.
Thus, Hegel’s philosophy, despite being readily regarded as anti-liberal, however, meticulously clarifies the critical difference between what one has unlimited liberty to think abstractly, and what one is able to practice. This is an important distinction between free will and individual right: “The distinction between thought and will is simply that between theoretical and practical attitudes. But they are not two separate faculties; on the contrary, the will is a particular way of thinking – thinking translating itself into existence.” Hegel also makes the further distinction between the realm of rational thought and will: “Those who believe that the human being is infinite in the realm of the will in general, but that he – or reason itself – is limited in the realm of thought, have little understanding of the nature of thinking and willing.” As such, Hegelian philosophy deals with arriving at a solid conclusion. His premise acknowledges that we must begin with the individual having specific wants, needs and desires.
Hegel does not expressively shows how he is liberal when he advocates for the state to retain and exercise its role over the individual. On claims made by other political philosophers that the state precedes or dominates the individual, Hegel regards this view as too authoritarian and not a possible conclusion according to the dialectic argument. The view that individualism is superseded by the state is false. Hegel corrects this belief by claiming that individualism has merely “transferred the determinations of private property to a sphere of a totally different and higher nature.” He shows how the anti-liberal view that each individual has consented and conferred their powers to the sovereign is unsupported and merely “superficial thinking, which envisages only a single unity of different wills.” Thus, by his philosophical clarification, “the distinction between thought and will is simply that between theoretical and practical attitudes.”
It is easy to misunderstood Hegel as anti-liberal in the traditional sense based on his concepts of the abstract will. For Hegel, the will, and not individualism is an abstract notion. Also, by Hegelian philosophy, an abstract idea of force or coercion (an abstract notion that contradicts individual right) is an expression against the will. By the same logic, Hegel argues that anything which contradicts the existence of an idea therefore contradicts its liberty: “Abstract right is a coercive right, because a wrong committed against a force directed against the existence of my freedom is an external thing.”
Hegel shows how while his political philosophy appears anti-liberal it contains elements of liberalism through its argument for personhood. Rationality endows the individual with a concrete existence. The actualization of the will leads to particular wills, that is, a definite specific will for external objects, which in turn creates further synthetic or particular needs. Personhood is defined at this particular moment precisely when the individual acquires a definite personality, and whose rational thoughts become subjective thoughts. In the previous stage, that abstract notion of willing something is so vague that it is [paradoxically] an objective notion. Everything that a person wills is a generalization, and “to generalize means to think it.” Therefore, in the state that Hegel arrives at, and which is, according to his understanding, actualized through individual rationale, is the materialization of what is good. While it may appear by his statements such as “The commandment of right is therefore: be a person and respect others as persons,” seems to oppose the absolute sense of liberalism, it preserves the idea that the will becomes particularized and, more importantly, recognizes those willed by others. As he clearly explains, every person is “the infinite will.”
Hegel also believes that some elements of individualism are most fully realized in the community. Without an existence that respects the right of the state, individuals are mere disparate entities whose wills corresponds only with “abstract universals” , and therefore not a will at all. The state gives the individual concrete existence, and defines the individual’s personality. Likewise, within the community, “The personality alone confers a right to things, and consequently that personal right is in essence a right of things.” All particular stages arrived by Hegelian dialectic argument is that which is good. While Hegel philosophizes from the individual, he concludes that the individual needs to respect the state that has created for it a system of particularized needs. According to his argument that the subjective will (realized in the state) constitutes its substance, (analogously to the relationship of gravity to body), it follows that particularized will is an inherent property of the state.
Hence the community, according to Hegel, is composed of mediated will through self-consciousness, and the concrete realization of the will. Based on his rigorous clarification, individualism, as well as liberalism, is not simply about promoting self-interest and restricting state intervention on the individual’s behalf, but a clear distinction that the will is mediated through interaction with other wills. Simply having an idea of what one wants or wishes to will is the first half of the dialectic, with the latter half testifying whether such an abstract will is rational. The system of ethics and laws are derived from the result of how individual will is actualized. Thus, regarding whether Hegel is liberal, it is important to consider the extent of rational freedom that the individual is allowed to have in society. Hegel does not concern himself with the absolute liberty of willing whatever the individual fancies. In fact, he clarifies that the individual realizes, in attempting to materialize the will, that its action may affect others.
The critical difference between traditional liberals and Hegel is that Hegel recognizes the potential consequences of one’s deed, or the “intention.” His philosophy stresses and focuses more on the individual’s self-consciousness, and demonstrates how the concept of individual right is a manifestation of the self-conscious will: “The state is the actuality of concrete freedom. But concrete freedom requires that personal individuality […] Individuals do not live as private persons merely for these particular interests without at the same time directing their will to a universal end and acting in conscious awareness of this end.” By simultaneously recognizing the universal, the individual arrives at an existence for-itself. Individualism according to Hegel respects conscious self-awareness, reflected in the practice of individualism by others. All particularized will or desire – right to property, possession of objects is subjective means to the real objective idea of the will. For this reason, he is not a liberal in the classical sense, as Hegel believes that self-consciousness individualistic motives must be guided by social responsibility.

What is the methodological importance of the state of nature for Hobbes and Locke in their arguments about states?

In both Hobbes’ and Locke’s thesis on the origins of the liberal state, the state of nature is used as a premise for the formation and justification of the government. Where Hobbes and Locke differ in their thesis though, is the assumption of how each has defined the state of nature to be. This consequently implies that their view towards the foundation on which the political society is laid also differs. Hobbes believed that the formation of society, government and the sovereign is in every aspect of human conduct a far rational and sensible alternative than that in the state of nature. Locke believes that the fundamental principle on which all political societies are formed is ultimately the protection of property. By examining the purpose of Hobbes’ The Leviathan, and Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, one can deduce the reasons for Hobbes’ and Locke’s different interpretations of the hypothetical conjecture of the state of nature.
Despite their belief to the extent of savagery present in the state of nature, both Hobbes and Locke agree that each individual with or without a societal context are entitled to the right to self-preservation. This fundamental right is a critical ingredient to both their thesis on the formation of society, and the beginning of human beings living in a civilised context. For Hobbes, the right to self-preservation necessarily led to the imminent threat of war, or the state of war for which Hobbes believes makes living in the state of nature filled with uncertainty and insecurity. The right to self-preservation is not unquestionable in the sense that Hobbes believes such motivations and principle are reasoned through our capability to rationalize. As he elaborates in the beginning of The Leviathan, the individual’s existence is composed primarily from reason and experience. As such, Hobbes does not believe in the concept of free will in absolute terms, for every action, intention, and belief in our own conducts are guided by other faculties and therefore can never be arrived at independently of these entities. As he illustrates in his discourse on various passions of the mind, even if our various tendencies are described as ‘voluntary,’ in actual fact, they are nothing more than a sequence of affirmations and deliberation, and the last thought to arrive is “an end to the Liberty we had of doing, or omitting, according to our own Appetite, or Aversion.” For Hobbes, the common definition of the Will is not good, for it actually means that voluntary actions against Reason, which is not true. Hobbes further exemplifies that the use, as well as end of reason is to serve the purpose of arriving at the last conclusions, and to assert the various Affirmations and Negations on which “it was grounded, and inferred.”
The right to self-preservation for Locke, on the other hand is founded on the belief that individuals have some right that they are endowed with in the state of nature and which they have the right to under circumstances where the State or society properly abuses this natural right. Locke further believes that this right has been transformed to a political right under a society, and thus, all of our political rights are derived from “the state of perfect freedom.” It necessarily follows that the state of nature is also a state of equality, which implies that in the state of nature all men are “ equal amongst another without subordination or subjection” . Just as Hobbes believed that the state of nature always poses some threat to man’s peace, and is the state in which there is a tendency to revolt into a state of war, Locke acknowledges that this right to self-preservation does not guarantee protection of private property: “But though this [Locke’s state of nature] be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence.” Moreover, as the right to self-preservation is granted to every one, “the execution of the law of nature is put into every man’s hands,” however, what every one may do in prosecution of that law, so everyone must have the same right to do so. This is best demonstrated in Locke’s following passage:
“In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men, for their mutual security; and so he becomes dangerous to mankind…”
Thus, the right to self-preservation and its implication on the lack of security and reinforcement of basic rights necessarily led to the formation of society, regardless of its merits on preserving man’s natural right or protecting the public interest, though Hobbes and Locke diverge as to how man first entered into a communion with other individuals.
For Locke, the role of the civil government is to act as a proper remedy for the inconveniences that arises from the state of nature. Even with a religious, if not, enlightened tone, he observes that “God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence man.” Locke clearly shows that God has supplied us with the defects and imperfections that naturally induced us to seek communion and fellowship with others, even though he also strongly believes that to live in society is very unnatural because it requires and is established by our consent to be under the dominion of any will. In the statement, “The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power” and this natural liberty is “but to have the only law of nature for his rule,” Locke underlines his fundamental principle that man does so by agreeing to part with his natural liberty. Living in society is an unnatural arrangement as individuals do so to avoid the inconveniences of the state of nature and that of the state of war.
Whereas for Hobbes, the act of consent is not seen as a surrender of the natural right man inherits from the state of nature but a consent made by every individual. Hobbes’ definition of the final cause and end of Liberty is “the foresight of our own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby, of getting themselves out from the miserable condition of War.” This consent to leave our vulnerable and passion-orientated state of nature is not only a rational and wise decision but a necessary one; we not only consent to live in society, but arrive at the mutual agreement for the need of Sovereign Power. As Hobbes explains, “the Laws of Nature, without the terror of some Power to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural Passions […] And Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.”
The critical different between Hobbes’ and Locke’s state of nature premise is the type of consent formed when individuals mutually agree to enter into a society. For both Hobbes and Locke, humans are not fundamentally different in the state of nature than they are in a governed, civilized society. For Hobbes and Locke, human behaviour is regulated, moderated, and tempered because the government is justified to the individual by offering an indifferent judge to whom these individuals may turn to for common appeal. Locke clearly states that those who have no common appeal are still in the state of nature. Moreover, with no authority to appeal to he is in every way as vulnerable as if “he were degraded from the common state of rational creatures, and is denied a liberty to judge or defend his right.” Hobbes, on the other hand, implicitly describes this consent as formed predominantly out of fear.
With the establishment of society through Consent, the different premise of Hobbes’ and Locke’s state of nature is further reflected, despite other similarities, in their justification of the government to the individual. The need for ‘Civil Government,’ according to Hobbes, is grounded in the belief that there could not be “Peace without subjugation.” The only way to achieve this, primarily erecting a Common Power, or the creation of Sovereign Power, is for each individual “to confer all their power and strength upon on Man.” Hobbes claims that the need for a judge implies that it is “therefore in vain to grant Sovereignty by way of precedent Covenant.” Thus, the requirement for the act of voluntarily entering a Sovereign is that the individual “tacitly covenanted” – which for Hobbes is a significant moment with regards to the manner in which these individuals do not form private covenants (in the case with Hobbes) with the metaphorical mortal God that Hobbes calls ‘The Leviathan’, but a common covenant requiring co-operation with every other consented individuals.
Similarly, Locke believes that when individuals consent with others to make “one body politic under one government, [they put themselves] under an obligation, to everyone of that society, to submit to the determination of the majority.” However, Locke always clearly defines that this is a political society, because the great chief end of men uniting in commonwealth is the preservation of their property, whereas for Hobbes the political society is merely “a mediation of some body that represents God’s person,” and that the political society is a means for men to form a covenant with God. Where Hobbes uses covenant with God as a justification for society, Locke believes that the political society was justified because God has permitted it to come into existence, but it did not arrive to serve as a medium. Instead, Locke claims that men consented with every intent to preserve himself, his liberty and property – this underlies that the right of self-preservation must not only have preceded the consent but that the consent was made contingent upon retaining this right.
Ultimately, the difference in their interpretation of the state of nature is significant in their respective justification and perception of the political society for the individual. Hobbes, as he paints a rather fearful and insecure picture of man in the state of nature, argues more for absolute power (as the collective will of the public) than do Locke, who believes that the consent to form political societies was made conditionally because one can still retain their right to self-preservation. For Locke, we merely seek sanctuary and protection (for our own safety and for private property) in established governments, but on the condition of parting with our natural right save for the right to self-preservation and property. As Locke observes, “The power of the society, or legislative constituted by them, can never be supposed to extend farther, than the common good.” Hobbes believes that the mutual consent to and creation of Sovereign Power is not only a political instrument to temper our savagery instincts but to administer justice through laws, which are legislated and enforced by the Sovereign. However, while Locke agrees that the political society has the means to stabilize tendencies towards the state of nature, individuals retain the right to oppose and dissolve the government (which he views as a human design), thanks to the conditional contract of their consent. This is an irreversible form of free will and its outcome and approval occurs because God has allowed for it to carry forward. Thus, the state of nature is a critical premise for considering Hobbes’ and Locke’s interpretation of the type of consent that individuals give to form societies and on what basis, and consequently the role it has for these individuals to recognize the Sovereign, and its important purpose to defend their rights.

What follows from Rousseau’s reinterpretation of the State of Nature?

In his dissertation The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings Rousseau re-examines Hobbes’ state of nature argument by questioning the legitimacy of government. He endeavors to trace “the origin of inequality among men, and whether it is authorized by the Natural Law.” Rousseau is careful to point out that it is political inequality that is pertinent to the question he posits before the discourse, which arises when humans enter into a society. This distinction is critical for it not only demonstrates Rousseau’s premise for re-examining Hobbes’ claims that human beings are inherently wicked and thus needs to be moderated in a civil society, but also questions inherent properties of political societies which appear to undermine the argument that a social context is a better alternative than existence in a state of nature.
Rousseau disagrees with Hobbes that man is a fearful and inherently evil individual in the state of nature. For Rousseau, it is not possible to conjecture man’s tendencies and innate behavior simply by hypothesizing the individual outside of society, as it makes several presuppositions about human nature for the sake of justifying the transition from the state of nature to civil society. He argues that Hobbes’ fearful depiction of the Savage man does not legitimize the government, any more than the way religion legitimizes the claim that mankind is inherently morally deficient. For this reason, it is impertinent in his Discourse that Rousseau considers what he believes is a more accurate depiction of Savage man in the state of nature.
Unlike Hobbes, Rousseau believes that the individual in the state of nature is simple and content, harboring no ill desire to provoke other individuals. As he clearly demonstrates, it is the state in which “the care for our own preservation is least prejudicial to the self-preservation of others,” and it follows that this state was “the most conducive to Peace and the best suited to Mankind.” By considering the state of nature simply as an absence of civil or political context, Rousseau deduces that it is also an innocent state of man freed from the complications and complexity that arises from the establishment of a society. Moreover, the state of nature is the also a state of [moral] ignorance: “the calm of the passions and the ignorance of vice that keep them from evil-doing.” In so doing, Rousseau demonstrates how Savage man is neither wicked nor good, and in actuality, it is “the ignorance of vice [that] profit these than the knowledge of virtue profits those [evil-doings].” For this reason, Rousseau claims that individuals did not enter into a communion out of common fear but instead, as he later shows, out of a common consensus and recognition of the private as well as the general will.
Rousseau further shows how the most basic faculties endowed to the Savage man decisively prevented him from manipulating them to very high degrees of self-interest and individualistic actions. As he clearly shows, the Savage man is not simply oriented by his Passions or desires, but also has reasoning capabilities:
“We seek to know only because we desire to enjoy, and it is not possible to conceive why someone who had neither desires nor fears would take the trouble to reason. The Passions, in turn, owe their origin to our needs, and their progress to our knowledge.”
As such, at the most basic level, the Savage man experiences only the first beginnings of reason and knowledge, both of which eventually led him to conclude that a social context of some sort is more secure and which appeals to his need for personal security. At this critical moment, the Savage man cannot be induced to seek objectives beyond fulfilling his primitive desire: “deprived of every sort of enlightenment, his Desires do not exceed his Physical needs.”
The premise for Rousseau’s state of nature is significant to his argument against Hobbes’ method of alienating man from society. For Rousseau, there is nothing to contend nor argue against the Savage man. In his criticism of Hobbes, Rousseau shows how Hobbes “improperly included in Savage man’s care for his preservation the need to satisfy a multitude of passions that are the product of Society and have made Laws necessary,” and thereby incorrectly imposing the concerns of a civil and social man onto Savage man. In his most succinct claim and explanation why Hobbes’ state of nature argument is flawed, Rousseau again shows how the Savage man is not only ignorant of evil and virtue, but that if Hobbes’ claim were true, it would have been torturous for the Savage man. Rousseau shows that this contradiction would imply: “Nothing would have been as miserable as Savage man dazzled by enlightenment, tormented by Passions, and reasoning about a state different from his own.” The Savage man in Hobbes’ state of nature would have been burdened with faculties and ideas that are irrelevant, and therefore, incompatible with his existence in the state of nature.
Rousseau further criticizes Hobbes’ state of nature argument by mocking how Hobbes’ argument on the threat posed by Savage man himself inherently claims otherwise that his faculties would be designed by “a very wise Providence.” Rousseau elaborates that it would mean that those faculties the Savage man possesses “be superfluous and a burden to him before their time, [and] belated and useless in time of need.” By pointing out this absurdity, Rousseau shows how Hobbes’ definition of Savage man is not only incompatible but also incorrectly deduced.
Where Rousseau and Hobbes agree is the fact that the political individual is conditioned and shaped by society as society progresses. Savage man did not abuse his faculty of reason, as Hobbes believed, but instead initiated the first steps towards society by reason alone: “In instinct alone he had all he needed to live in the state of Nature, in cultivated reason he has no more than what he needs to live in society.” However, Rousseau makes an extended argument that man becomes conditioned and changes as society progresses and develops. His thesis about perfectibility suggests that man has the potential to cultivate himself and his rationality. Rousseau also notes that man’s [unfortunate] liability to lose his perfectibility and to become imbecile hinders the progress of mankind, and is not necessarily more favorable compared to the simple, indolent Savage man in the state of nature. As he summarizes, perfectibility is the faculty which not only removed man from the “tranquil and innocent days” spent in nature, but also the same faculty which caused “his enlightenment and his errors, his vices and his virtues to bloom, [and which] eventually makes him his own and Nature’s tyrant.”
This divergence highlights an important aspect of Rousseau’s and Hobbes’ argument. According to Rousseau, “being sturdy and being dependent are two contradictory assumptions in the state of Nature; Man is weak when he is dependent, and he is emancipated before he is sturdy.” Rousseau believes that because man’s conditions are malleable once he enters into a society and becomes a social being, it is not possible to apply backward induction to trace the origin of the state of nature. Moreover, because of man’s capability to perfect oneself, he must also increase his dependency on other individuals. So arises, out of a growing and developing society, and most importantly, political inequality. It is physical inequality that led individuals to form societies. At the same time, political inequality becomes realized.
Thus, Rousseau concludes that political inequality is not natural. The government is not necessarily legitimate, because it can never be absolutely perfect and always justifiable. However, physical inequality, which is inherent from the natural state and which individuals have inherited from the state of nature has necessitated political inequality. For without any natural inequality whatsoever, there would never have been discrepancies in physical might. Nor would there have been differentiated individuals who, by living socially and collectively, would contribute to the improvement of the Savage’s basic primitive conditions so well. Rousseau’s argument shows how natural inequality facilitated the transition from state of nature to society, and more importantly, how political inequality facilitated society’s progress. Perhaps it is impossible, if not, extremely difficult to achieve a perfect statehood and a perfectly legitimate government that fulfills every individual’s needs, interest, and extent of mutual interdependence. Rousseau believes that because it is necessary that political inequality must exist and proceed from the beginning, the very early forms of society are the best societies with respect to social conduct and mutual dependence. As he observes, civil societies were formed under the impression that one’s security of freedom would be secured, albeit the act entails displacing natural freedom: “for while they had enough reason to sense the advantages of a political establishment, they had not enough experience to foresee its dangers.”
Rousseau’s argument not only encompasses this transition but also shows how the government is not necessarily justified and legitimate to the individual. His state of nature explains why a political society is not natural not because it is a removed state from that of the Savage man, but that it imbues the individual with notions of political inequality. As Rousseau exemplifies, showing how Hobbes’ depiction of Savage man is wrong, society has “made a being wicked by making it sociable.”

What went wrong with markets, for Polanyi?


The incapability of society to adjust to the rapid progress brought on by the ‘Great Transformation’ is an important criticism highlighted by Karl Polanyi. In his analysis of the social and economic changes that accompanied this transition, Polanyi demonstrates how the primary reason why supporters of free markets fail to recognize the flaws of market liberalism was due to an oversight and lack of particular attention to the historical facts. According to Polanyi, historical evidences show how the wrong perception of free market ideology gave birth to a disillusioned and biased misconception that such a system can be realized. While free market advocates are naïve to try to make the market function autonomously, Polanyi recognized that the fundamental flaw of markets was not on laissez-faire policies but its structural, internal mechanisms. These mechanisms have consequently exacerbated the problems that have surfaced from allowing markets to be self-regulated. Polanyi’s argument also shows that treating markets as autonomous entities (rather than as integral components society) risks destroying the humane aspects of society. Thus, Polanyi also believes that there are moral reasons why free markets should be moderated, although it is the internal structural problems that have aggravated the division between the political state and the economy. In the extreme case, the institutional deadlock finally culminated in a fascist state. For this reason, Polanyi believes that the ‘Great Transformation’ required well-intentioned government interventions and socialism to ease the transition and protect individuals from the harsh brutalities of what he observes is essentially a stark economic utopia.
The moral concerns for allowing laissez-faire economics to reign is exemplified through his outrage and appalled reaction to the way this system treats human labour as ‘fictitious commodities’. Regarding labour as mere commodities, stripped of any other human associations, is essentially including it “into the market mechanism, [which basically] means to subordinate the substance of the society itself to the laws of the market.” Hence, a paradigm that regards land, labour, and even money as ‘fictitious commodities’ postulates that anything that was bought or sold must have been produced for sale. This is untrue according to Polanyi, as it is inconsistent with the previous economic system where exchanges were carried out reciprocally. Thus, Polanyi describes the idea that production had a purpose is a false conclusion and which constitutes an “extreme artificiality of market economy” .
Polanyi also cites as other historical accounts as evidence of the moral concerns on society of individuals who were horrified by the drastic effects of rapid industrialisation. The enclosure movement, for example, essentially strived for economic progress, but at the price of social dislocation. Polanyi described it as a “revolution of the rich against the poor,” a juxtaposition which illustrate the extent to which a skewed paradigm had essentially robbed the poor of their limited and valuable resources. This detached conduct of economic affair gradually became an act that was eventually formally executed with the intention for “tillage, and not for pasture.” Contrary to classical economic belief, the enclosure act did not entirely took place under the market system.
It can be seen then, that moral concerns are generally concerned with the disillusion fantasy advocated by classical economists who attempt to justify economic principles based on “the alleged propensities of man in the state of nature” . Historically, in previous societies, transactions and the exchange of goods and services were not directed by a profit-orientated mindset. Free marketers, for that matter, made the wrong assumption that individuals acted under an economic doctrine, and that these individuals were solely motivated by monetary gains. Polanyi thus showed the inconsistency with historical evidence of laissez-faire economics, demonstrating how it could not be justified by an ideology that was made on assumptions that did not even correspond to the historical facts.
Although moral reasons are clearly important to Polanyi’s critique of markets, it is the inherently self-destructive nature of autonomous market that drives his critique. By analyzing why free market mechanisms, which can only describe economic principles according to a doctrine that did not necessarily have any historically supported origin, Polanyi shows how structurally free market functions are incompatible with society. The immediate effects of the attempts of free market to disengage itself from society brought on huge social dislocation. These dramatic shifts on society were evidenced by institutional reforms such as the Speenhamland Laws, enacted and motivated by the state’s desire to protect the welfare of the poor. Beginning at the departure of feudalism, any form of institutionalized charity were direct responses to prevent the evil calamities that confronted the people and protect them from the workings of the market mechanism, such as the labour market in the case of the Speenhamland Law. As Polanyi noted, the creation of a labour market would invariably subject human to a wage-labour system. Instead of fulfilling the utopian vision that the labour market would increase work productivity, it lead to the pauperization of workers and “compelled them to gain a living by offering their labour for sale, while at the same time depriving their labour of its market value.” According to Polanyi, these trials ultimately became self-defeated:
“Speenhamland was designed to prevent the proletarianization of the common people, or at least to slow it down. The outcome was merely the pauperization of the masses, who almost lost their human shape in the process.”
In addition, other self-protection efforts also rose simultaneously, including “factory laws and social legislation, [as well as] a political and industrial working-class movement sprang into being.” All of these reactionary efforts delineate society’s appalled and outrage on the conditions imposed on the displaced poor when laissez-faire economics were deliberately left to act according to its tenets. For this reason, these efforts also reflect the attempts made to prevent society from falling over the precipice into catastrophe and fascism.
Polanyi’s skepticism of classical economic liberalism shows how he does not believe that free markets could ever be realized. As he is careful to point out, classical market liberalism is not an ideology that is in opposition to communism, socialism or fascism, but that those political and economic systems were actual reactions against the problems that market liberalism created. In fact, these alternative socio-political economic systems surfaced after it became inherent that a completely liberal, laissez-faire economy would not only hurt the poor but also drastically influence the dynamics of wealth amongst capitalists and other institutions. It was the apparent destruction of social relations that begged government intervention to act on behalf of the interest of the citizens and to preserve social cohesiveness. Not surprisingly, this apparent state response was also manipulated by anti-interventionists who claim and masqueraded it as a ‘collectivist conspiracy’ directed with the deliberate intention to prevent laissez-faire economics from being completely realized. However, Polanyi clearly shows its absurdity, and that in fact, there were no such collectivist countermovement:
“The anti-liberal conspiracy is a pure invention. The great variety of forms in which the “collectivist” countermovement appeared was not due to any preference for socialism or nationalism on the part of concerted interests, but exclusively to the broad range of the vital social interests affected by the expanding market mechanism.”
Thus, what the classical economic liberals claimed was a conspiracy was really nothing but an obvious revelation of the impossibility of their utopian myth.
Furthermore, Polanyi goes so far to strengthen his argument by pointing out that these claims are paradoxical. In fact, laissez-faire economics was “the product of deliberate State action, subsequent restrictions on laissez-faire started in a spontaneous way.” The fallacy of laissez-faire supporters was that the “whole social philosophy hinges on the idea that it was a natural development” . Finally, Polanyi’s strongest claim and over-arching thesis is that subsequent transitions, which arose naturally out of the preceding situation, ultimately led to a self-destructing society directed by a fascist state. The capitalist bourgeoisies, fearing that their economic power will be threatened a mobilized proletarian class, wielded their socio-political power by seeking out the aid of their friends in high power positions. According to Polanyi, it was not a fear of an impending communist revolution, but “the undeniable fact that the working classes were in the position to force possibly ruinous interventions [which] burst forth into [a] fascist panic.”
Despite his strong opposition against complete laissez-faire economics, an undertone of optimism is evident throughout his examination. Autonomous markets run the risk of disrupting the natural order of society, that being an order that is completely neutral with regards to commodities and agents. The eventual realization of the failure of the market system, which Polanyi kindly believes will be the social lesson learnt from mankind’s utopian experiment, serves to emphasize his optimism that future economic institutions will be moderated by the society with this hindsight. Polanyi respects the fact that some form of socialism and state planning will demand sacrificing capitalistic freedom in order to strengthen political freedom. However, this does not mean total surrender of economic liberty, because as Polanyi has clearly shown, such notion is relevant within an economic but not necessarily a political context. Society as a whole cannot be constrained by an economic context. It follows that an economic doctrine, which is incompatible with other political state ideology, should not completely dictate and impose itself on the order of society.
For this reason, Polanyi argues how a utopia based on economic freedom achieved at the cost of a dehumanized society is detrimental to society itself. The notions held by free market theorists are flawed because it subordinates society to an economic principle, and not the other way around. Moreover, in Polanyi’s historical accounts of the difficulties encountered by society as it underwent an unprecedented form of economic transformation, recurring familiar struggles all illustrated one common theme: that “mankind was forced into the paths of a utopian experiment.” Government intervention is necessary to preserve these old elements of past economic systems based on reciprocity and redistribution. The socialist movements and the rise of fascism that arrived later both demonstrate society’s natural response to the decline in individual welfare or the fear of losing one’s accumulated wealth in a system that favored only an obscene minority. Polanyi’s counter claim to the free market theorists’ argument that collectivism conspiracy had resiliently halted the economic system to become truly realized is backed by his acute observation of these political movements that have surfaced, thus discrediting the utopian theory by historical experiences. The fundamental reason why markets are flawed is because “economic liberalism misread the history of the Industrial Revolution because it insisted on judging social events from the economic viewpoint.” Inherent in Polanyi’s argument on embedded markets is the fact that the most ideal economic system should then be a combination of socialism and classical economic liberalism.

“The difficulty here is that revolution as we know it in the modern age has always been concerned with both liberation and freedom.” Why is the difference between liberation and freedom so important for Arendt?

In On Revolution, Arendt examines a critical difference between liberty and freedom. She defines liberty negatively within a contextual reference of an established state. Specifically, liberty is concerned with the extent to which individuals can exercise their civil rights, and the condition under which they are protected from a [limited] government. Freedom, on the other hand, is a positive notion of increasing the public sphere in which one can exercise their civil rights through participation in politics. Her work focuses on analyzing the principle differences behind the concept of liberty and freedom by identifying the source origin and the consequent differences in the progression of the French Revolution and the American Revolution. From a political theory standpoint, the fundamental principle that drove the French and American Revolutions consequently led to different political results. This is a direct consequence of her thesis that the beginning and principle are coeval, which Arendt argues is important in understanding the distinction between freedom and liberty, from which the French and American revolutions are used as examples to illustrate this distinction.
Arendt begins with the concept that revolutions are “the only political events which confronts us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.” The conceptual difference between liberty and freedom is examined after first establishing the fact that a revolution, rather than a revolt, implies a radical reform of existing institutions. The catalytic force behind the French Revolution was more economic than political. Born out of economic motivation, the French Revolution, which was the final product of brewing unrest, quickly overthrew the existing figure of authority. The American Revolution, born out of the human faculty to reason politically that “to be free is not merely to be unobstructed; it is to take positive action with others,” addressed the question where the civil rights accorded to the English people did not necessarily extend over to the citizens of its colonies. In the American Revolution, the pre-revolution element was the product of intellectual mediation that manifested into a revolution against the British establishment.
In this respect, Arendt points out why freedom is a positive concept. The power derived from the community, through intellect and political discourse, laid the foundation on which to develop their ideals. This beginning principle can be traced to the Mayflower compact from which freedom is identified as the power of individuals resting on the existence of cooperation. Thus, the beginning principle necessarily influenced subsequent political dialectics that illuminated the flaws found in the pre-revolution establishment. It provided a common ground on which the American revolutionists were able to promote political activity that is grounded on mutual understanding and mutual pledges. They valued it not because it may lead to agreement or to a shared conception of the good, but because it enables each citizen to exercise his or her civil rights.
On the other hand, Arendt argues that the notion of liberty implied in liberation can only be negative. The French revolutionists, in framing the economic exploitation of the proletarians into a ruling class, believed that they could justify and pretend that economic motivations were equivalent to political motivations. What the revolutionaries were actually seeking was emancipation from the political institutions that had condemned the poor in poverty, not freedom, as this emancipation was driven largely out of necessity more than anything else. For this reason Arendt disagrees and criticizes Marx’s claim that “poverty itself is a political, not a natural phenomenon, the result of violence and violation rather than of scarcity.” The first outbreak of the French Revolution merely enabled the social question play a revolutionary role in destabilizing the old authority.
Through the notion of revolution as a means of achieving political ends, Arendt also demonstrates how the concept of liberty and freedom dictated the course of the revolution. In the French revolution, the desire and necessity for liberty initiated the radical, swift movement at the outbreak of the revolution. However, infused with the pre-revolution thought that the shift in power was approaching, the revolutionists proceeded to accomplish the displacement of feudalism and monarchy through violence, used in lieu of power. This critical fact underlies Arendt’s conclusion that the French revolutionists distorted the notion of liberty by forcing “The inescapable fact that liberation from tyranny spelled freedom only for the few and was hardly felt by the many who remained loaded down by their misery” . Thus, the social question (extricating the poor from poverty) was never given full attention because the revolutionists were confronted with the next problem: “the task of foundation and the task of lawgiving, of devising and imposing upon men a new authority.”
The notion of liberty was gravely misconstrued by the French revolutionists because they did not realize that what they were seeking was not political freedom but protection from the arbitrary exercise of power by the existing institution against them. Given their lack of competence, the revolutionists resorted to the Machiavellian notion of “appeal to high Heaven”, which was “not inspired by any religious feelings but exclusively dictated by the wish ‘to escape this difficulty’”. Emphasizing on the thesis that the beginning and principle are coeval, Arendt further shows how the French Revolution later evolved into tyranny, ironically reverting back to the old regime.
In fact, the French revolutionaries lost their legitimacy as soon as they equated power with violence, because “freedom and power have parted company, and the fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.” The underlying principle on which the French revolutionists built their campaign was flawed. Theoretically speaking, they had “attempt to derive both law and power from the selfsame source.” Not only did they proceed from the notion that they were seeking political freedom instead of liberty, the French revolutionists also attempted to justify their cause which had morphed into some other less relevant cause. The thesis that the beginning and principle are coeval had revealed the misconception of liberty on the French revolutionaries’ part, as well as the perversion of political ideals in the further stages of development of the French Revolution.
In an indirect way, Arendt argues that freedom is not about removing government, but constructing a new one from basic principles, which the American revolutionists understood perfectly. The French revolutionists, not knowing the distinction between violence and power, and “convinced that all power must come from the people,” necessarily threw themselves into a state of nature whereby attempts to establish freedom were confronted with the problem of justifying the use of violence. Since the poor had used an unconstitutional means to overthrow the existing government, they were confronted with the question of what exactly is the end of revolution and what exactly constitutes a revolutionary government. Borrowing a quote from Robespierre: “under constitutional rule it is almost enough to protect the individuals against the abuses of public power” Arendt uses this observation to highlight why liberty is not only negative, but that liberation seeks only to protect the individual from further arbitrary exercise of power.
Another distinction between a revolution striving for freedom and a revolution striving for liberation is the understanding of where power resides. In the American Revolution, people were organized in self-governing bodies and had respected the faculties of speech and freedom, which they did not throw into the state of nature. As Arendt explains, the founding fathers behind the American Revolution understood power as the opposite of “pre-political natural violence.” Unlike the French proletariats who failed to grasp the idea of real power, which “rested on reciprocity and mutuality,” the American revolutionists understood that power in a covenant made it legitimate because it could not be usurped. In contrast, while the French revolution banished the so-called power of kings, princes, or aristocrats with ease (power that was “spurious and usurped”), they failed to recognize how to establish real power that would unite the common people. For Arendt, this was the crucial point the French revolutionists missed and that would have successfully consolidated the confidence of the rising proletarian class. It is the same confidence that they were seeking for in their real political goal for liberation.
Arendt demonstrates that this distinction is critical in understanding where power is derived from. The men of the American Revolution understood by power the very opposite of a pre-political natural violence. To them, power came into being when and where people would get together and bind themselves through promises, covenants, and mutual pledges; only such power was legitimate. The unconstitutional use of violence in the French Revolution, which succeeded in sweeping away the old regime, also silenced the intellectual voice for an institution that would ensure liberty. As Arendt succinctly observes, “violence itself is incapable of speech, and not merely that speech is helpless when confronted with violence. ” In condemning the intellectual voice that would have act as political guidance on the discourse of the revolution, the French revolutionists also banished any hopes of political enlightenment. Underlying this explanation is the idea that “nothing seems more natural than that a revolution should be predetermined by the type of government it overthrows.” The French revolutionists, comprised of the poor, never had relevant experiences in government and were not in the position to set up a government. The American revolutionists, having already envisioned the new kind of government that they want to establish, knew exactly the appropriate kind of foundation on which they could expand and maintain political freedom.
The primary distinction between political liberty and political freedom is that the former is more directly relevant to answering a social question based on economic inequality, whereas the latter is directly concerned with increasing what Arendt terms as “public happiness” or the citizen’s right to participate in the public or political realm. She continues to elaborate why the American revolutionists have rightfully understood the concept in equating political freedom with happiness:
“The very fact that the word ‘happiness’ was chosen in laying claim to a share in public power indicates strongly that there existed in the country, prior to the revolution, such a thing as ‘public happiness’, and that men knew they could not be altogether ‘happy’ if their happiness was located and enjoyed only in private life.”
Reiterating the thesis that the beginning and principle are coeval, Arendt shows how each revolution, in defining the political objective, necessarily associated different qualities to different ideals. The American revolutionaries equated political freedom with happiness, which was then regarded as a legitimate objective of the government. Beginning from this idea, they were able to use their concept of freedom as a guiding principle in drafting the first constitution. Hence, under a new political system, the role of the government is defined as “promot[ing] the happiness of society” . Endowed with this particular political enlightenment, the concept of freedom was reinforced with the basic pre-revolutionary principles, that of expanding civil rights and political discourse.
The intention of liberating oneself from a totalitarian government is not the same as the desire for greater political freedom. “The meaning of revolution – confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning” – and Arendt clarifies the meaning of violence, which she criticizes as traditionally associated with revolutions. In underpinning the distinction between liberty and freedom, Arendt successfully shows the consequent error that the French revolutionists had committed as the revolution progressed based on a misunderstanding of the revolution. Liberation may be a condition of freedom, but it by no means can automatically lead to more freedom. At the same time, Arendt demonstrates how the emphasis on the social question disappeared because by forcing Rousseau’s notion of the General Will, which became an axiomatic principle that drove the subsequent events of the French Revolution, as “the theoretical substitute for the sovereign will of an absolute monarch.” Liberty is a condition for freedom, because it facilitates the establishment of a new political way of life, although it does not certainly lead to more freedom. In light of her thesis on beginning and principle as coeval, Arendt argues that in the event of revolutions, both in turn serve to illuminate the political foundation and the beginnings of political establishments.

Selfishness blights the germ of all virtue; individualism, at first, only saps the virtue of public life; but, in the long run, it attacks and destroys all others, and is at length absorbed in downright selfishness. - Toqueville

-La nature n'a fait ni serviteurs, ni maˆtres. Je ne veux ni donner, ni recevoir de lois.

-Ni l'or ni la grandeur ne nous rendent heureux.

-Personne ne le fera plus jamais de la même façon.

-L'avenir est un paradis d'où, exactement comme de l'autre, personne n'est encore jamais revenu.

Elle est jolie comme un coeur, mais myope comme une taupe.
Elle mange comme un oiseau et parle français comme une vache espagnole.

The dead die a second time by being forgotten. The totalitarians could perform such feats because among their novel arts was a wholesale assault of the factual world and a replacement of it with a factitious world of their own devising.

Intro to 'On Revolution'

For power can of course be destroyed by violence; this is what happens in tyrannies, where the violence of one destroys the power of the many, and which therefore, according to Montesquieu, are destroyed from within; they perish because they engender impotence instead of power.

Terror, the essential means of totalitarian regimes, is found to be a perversion of revolution, often unleashed by what Arendt sees as the mistaken attempt, illustrated by the French revolution, to use revolution to solve "the social question".

On peut dire n'importe quoi pourvu que ce soit bien écrit.

A significance test is a formal procedure for comparing observed data with a hypothesis whose truth we want to assess.