Freedom from Reality

Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty by DC Schindler, 363 pages

In the modern (Western) world, freedom has long been regarded as a good in itself, rather than a means by which what is good can be chosen.  Paradoxically, this elevation of freedom to the position of the highest good requires the denial of all other goods, and even goodness itself.  According to Schindler, the problem begins with metaphysics, as modern political philosophers, typified by Locke, have inverted the classical relationship between potency and act.  Rather than seeing power and possibility as always preceded by and rooted in an already existent reality, freedom has been understood to exist before, above, and independent of actuality.  It is in this inversion that he uncovers the origins of the superficially contradictory modern propensities for atomistic individualism and totalitarian government.  By rejecting the given in favor of the manufactured and valuing appearance over substance, modernity promises that each individual will be the god of his own private world, but that world is entirely solitary and, in the end, vanishingly small.

If the modern concept of freedom is, as Schindler argues, inherently diabolical, that is, predicated on division, the path to replace alienation with integration leads through a rediscovery of the symbolical, which is predicated upon unity.  He begins to explore this path in the final chapters of the present book, but a fuller discovery and recovery must wait for a promised sequel, which should be eagerly anticipated.  Freedom from Reality is as dense as it is deep, and no short summary can do justice to the scope and subtlety of its analysis.  Schindler himself is at great pains not to oversimplify the complexities of the thinkers whose thoughts he explores.  It is a rigorous, philosophical work and not a manifesto, but all the more explosive for it.