Abstract
Aristotle situates freedom in nature and slavery in reason. His concept of freedom is inherently connected with the indeterminist belief in a double impulse of the body.
The deterministic conception of nature – introduced during Enlightenment – has brought a reversal of this relation: nature is slavery, reason is freedom. The double impulse is reduced to one impulse only. The different conceptions of nature result in different conceptions of law.
During the second half of the twentieth century the deterministic conception is rejected. One of the few authors who tried to envisage the ontological consequences of this rejection was Popper in his later work.
This contribution will show how Popper tries to save the idea that reason is freedom within the context of the new indeterminist view on nature. It will compare Popper’s attempt with the view of Aristotle.
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Notes
- 1.
See Briegel (2012) for a current attempt to combine an indeterminist physical approach with the possibility of creative machines.
- 2.
This discussion referred to by earlier authors such as Weber.
- 3.
For example Marcuse (1955, chpt. IV).
- 4.
The term gained popularity after its use in the farewell address of President Eisenhower in 1961.
- 5.
Leading in this respect Habermas (1981).
- 6.
“…not the least absurdity is the doctrine that there are certain entities apart from those in the sensible universe, and that these are the same as sensible things except in that the former are eternal and the latter perishable” (Met. III. ii. 997b5–10, trans. Tredennick).
- 7.
See however (Phdr. 253–257) where there is hardly any control of the driver.
- 8.
See however also (EN I.xiii.1102b6–28, trans. J.A.K. Thomson/H. Tredennick): “Probably we should believe nevertheless that the soul too contains an irrational element which opposes and runs counter to reason – in what sense it is a separate element does not matter at all.”
- 9.
Barnes (1955) however, is very explicit about this root of moral behaviour in the body, which makes the behaviour of animals and human beings comparable.
- 10.
Only as late as the mid-eighteenth century were systematic taxonomies made. In earlier times people lacked a belief in one true criterion, which is necessary for such an enterprise and which was indeed introduced by Linnaeus. The first edition of Systema Naturae was published in 1735. See for a more detailed discussion of the subject Huppes (2005, or 2008).
- 11.
- 12.
See Robert R Sokal (1974) for research in which imaginary animals served to illustrate how different individuals of the same specialisation take different classification decisions. Classification is never evident.
- 13.
To treat a patient, however, the physician has to adjust the general remedy to the particular situation of the individual patient.
- 14.
See for Aristotle especially EN book I.
- 15.
See also Kenny (1978, 13–26) who uses the term defeasible rules for this phenomenon, and who clearly reveals his own belief in physical determinism by reserving this notion for the field of ethics alone.
- 16.
In this volume see the essays by Engle en Yankah.
- 17.
See not only the discussions on money and age for those who held jurisdiction, on the education of them and on the function of philosophy to gather strength, but specifically also all the institutional arrangements for unpopular offices (Pol. VI.v.1321b40–1322a30).
- 18.
How the new religious outlook on the world could be brought in agreement with the Ancient philosophy by the epistemological notion of God’s Providence was very well explained by Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy (1969, Book IV and V).
- 19.
See also Averroes Middle Commentary,(Anatolio’s Introduction), trans. H.A. Davidson (1969): “Speech designates the conceptions that are present in the human mind, those conceptions have their reference in things that exist outside the mind; and the totality of existent things provides knowledge of the Cause of their existence and confesses that He created them. Therefore everyone who truly desires to seek God stands in need of the science of logic.”
- 20.
“Thus, suppose a spoken word is used to signify something signified by a particular concept of the mind. If that concept were to change ist signification, by that fact alone it would happen that the spoken word would change ist signification, even in the absence of any new linguistic convention.(…) For one thing the concept or impression of the soul siginifies naturally, whereas the spoken or written term signifies only conventionally. We can decide to alter the signification of a spoken or written term, but no decision or agreement on the part of anyone can hev the effect of altering the signification of a conceptual term.”
- 21.
More extensively on this Huppes (2011).
- 22.
Compare the first sentences of Foucault’s Political Technology (1988, 145) “The general framework of what I call the ‘Technologies of the self’ is a question which appeared at the end of the eighteenth century. It was to become one of the poles of modern philosophy (…) The question (…) is: What are we in actuality? (…) Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Max Weber, Husserl, Heidegger, the Frakfürterschule have tried to answer this question”.
- 23.
More on this Huppes (2011).
- 24.
“A magnetic field is not directly observable any more than an entelechy; but the concept is governed by strictly specifiable laws concerning the strength and direction, at any point, of the magnetic field by a current flowing through a given wire and by other laws determining the effect of such a field upon a magnetic needle in the magnetic field on the earth. And it is these laws which, by their predictive and retrodictive import, confer explanatory power upon the concept of a magnetic field”(122).
- 25.
Darwin stated in the preface of his Origin of Species that Aristotle’s Physics foreshadowed the principle of natural selection, but that his remarks on the formation of teeth show how little Aristotle fully comprehended the principle. Indeed Aristotle’s account on the formation of teeth doesn’t say anything about the competition of species or about the origin of species, it gives an account of the fact that the natural growth in particulars presupposes a kind of tendency or orientation: “Similarly if a man’s crop is spoiled on the threshing-floor, the rain did not fall for the sake of this – in order that the crop might be spoiled – but that the result just followed. Why then should it not be the same with the parts in nature, e.g. that our teeth should come up of necessity – the front teeth sharp, fitted for tearing, the molars broad and useful for grinding down the food – since they did not arise for this end, but it was merely a coincident result; and so with all other parts in which we suppose that there is purpose? Wherever then all the parts came about just what they would have been if they had come to be for an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way; whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish, as Empedocles says his ‘man-faced oxprogeny’ did. Such are the arguments (and others of the kind) which may cause difficulty on this point. Yet it is impossible that this should be the true view” (Phys. II. vii–viii 198b1–199a1, trans. Ross).
- 26.
As Popper (1972, 212 ftnt 11) reveals “Newton himself may be counted among the few dissenters, for he regarded even the solar system as imperfect, and consequently as likely to perish. Because of these views he was accused of impiety, of ‘casting a reflection upon the wisdom of the author of nature’.”
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Huppes-Cluysenaer, L. (2013). Reasoning Against a Deterministic Conception of the World. In: Huppes-Cluysenaer, L., Coelho, N. (eds) Aristotle and The Philosophy of Law: Theory, Practice and Justice. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6031-8_2
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