A Social Theory of Freedom

ISBN-13: 9781138931589 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 278 str.

Mariam Thalos

Opis

In "A Social Theory of Freedom," Mariam Thalos argues that the theory of human freedom should be a broadly social and political theory, rather than a theory that places itself in opposition to the issue of determinism. Thalos rejects the premise that a theory of freedom is fundamentally a theory of the metaphysics of constraint and, instead, lays out a political conception of freedom that is closely aligned with questions of social identity, self-development in contexts of intimate relationships, and social solidarity. Thalos argues that whether a person is free (in any context) depends upon a certain relationship of "fit" between that agent s conception of themselves (both present and future), on the one hand, and the facts of their circumstances, on the other. Since relationships of fit are broadly logical, freedom is a logic it is the logic of fit between one s aspirations and one s circumstances, what Thalos calls the "logic of agency." The logic of agency, once fleshed out, becomes a broadly social and political theory that encompasses one s self-conceptions as well as how these self-conceptions are generated, together with how they fit with the circumstances of one s life. The theory of freedom proposed in this volume is fundamentally a political one."

Spis treści

Introduction  Part I: Freedom is a logic  1. An existential prelude  2. Freedom worth wanting  3. The grammar of experience and the logic of freedom  4. Existential syllogisms  Part II: Beyond the logic of freedom  5. The difference a new conception of action makes  6. Paradoxes of freedom  Part III: Existential foundations of social science  7. Self-making  8. Love relationships: The space for self-making  9. Alliance and solidarity  Conclusion

O autorze

Mariam Thalos is Distinguished Professor and Head of theDepartment of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA