Systematizing Tsuneari Fukuda 18: Freedom and Its Essence

Two Concepts of Liberty

There is an essay titled "Two Concepts of Liberty" by Isaiah Berlin, which is perhaps counted among the classics of modern liberty theory. Although it is not mentioned much these days, it was widely read and actively discussed during the time Tsuneari Fukuda was active. Berlin divides the concept of "liberty" into two, as the title suggests, which is the reason it garnered attention. This classification method is still frequently brought up; one is defined as negative liberty, and the other as positive liberty. The former is described as "freedom from," and the latter as "freedom to." (Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," translated by Keizo Ikimatsu)

Negative liberty means securing a "sphere of private life into which neither the state nor any other authority is permitted to intrude," as in J.S. Mill's classic work "On Liberty." In other words, it can be called freedom from restraint or oppression by others. The oppressor assumed here is primarily political power.

Positive liberty is considered to be "the liberty which consists in being one's own master." It relies on the desire to "be an agent who makes decisions and provides direction for oneself, rather than being determined." In the case of "freedom to," the "to" is at the discretion of the individual.

At first glance, this might seem like a distinction between political liberty and spiritual liberty, but that is not the case—though no doubt not a few people misunderstand it as such.
Berlin speaks of both within the framework of political liberty. Because the classification of liberty is explored strictly as political theory rather than a task of the spirit, it becomes quite complicated and is somewhat difficult to understand.

This is because, looking at the classification of liberty shown by Berlin, I think we are prone to jumping to the conclusion that "positive liberty" is a truth superior to "negative liberty," but in fact, that is not the case.
For example, Berlin says that one cannot say there is no liberty even under a despotic government, and states that under the reigns of Frederick the Great and Joseph II, for a chosen few, the pressure of institutions and customs was reduced more than in democratic countries. However, such liberty, no matter how tolerant it may be, is defined as "negative liberty" for the reason that it is "not connected to democracy or self-government."

This means that "positive liberty" is something that aims for "democracy or self-government." In the end, isn't the "to" in "freedom to" actually "sovereignty"? Moreover, Berlin states that those who cannot understand the meaning of "positive liberty," even if they are not aware of it, have been effectively coerced and oppressed by self-aware leaders under the pretext that it is the best choice for them to acquire their true liberty. In that case, leaders such as Kant, Hegel, and Marx are harshly criticized.

Kant seeks for humans to be autonomous beings who follow reason, but Berlin objects to the fact that even Kant argues it is not unreasonable for the law to regulate liberty if that liberty is not rational.

Berlin tirelessly fires arrows of criticism, stating that not only Kant, but also events where "negative liberty" is trampled upon based on the grand cause of realizing the only ideal free society of the future have appeared repeatedly in modern history. He argues that the fight for "positive liberty" has often "oppressed, enslaved, and exterminated the majority of people."

He is an empiricist in the lineage of Hobbes, Locke, Mill, and Burke. This appears as a harsh condemnation of idealists. Regarding Rousseau, he also cites the words, "The laws of liberty (after the revolution) will be far more severe than the yoke of tyranny," and criticizes it as merely "shifting the burden of servitude, not expanding liberty."
In short, Berlin argues that whether it is by the highest reason, the "general will," or a revolutionary government by the people or a proletarian dictatorship, there is no difference in coercing and oppressing people; whoever the subject may be, it is an infringement on liberty. He claims that "positive liberty" brings a hundred harms for one benefit.

"We must establish a society where there exists a boundary line of liberty that no one is ever permitted to cross" is his final message, and it is one that legitimately inherits the spirit of Mill. According to Berlin, liberty as a social theory boils down to the securing of "negative liberty."

This essay frequently cites Mill's thought, and even while being critical, it overflows with Berlin's deep respect for Mill between the lines.

Tsuneari Fukuda also stated, "Return to the spirit of Mill," in a dialogue with Yujiro Nakamura, who developed a critique of social science, and I remember being surprised by the unexpected name. I think the greatness of Mill, to whom both men pay respect, lies not in the content of his thought, but in his stance of absolutely refusing to make reality serve his own theory. It is a rare achievement that can only be accomplished by an extraordinarily sincere and clean spirit.

To summarize what has been said so far, in political reality, people are not free at all. Even if it is a "free society," it is established by premising a certain limitation of liberty, and it is not in the least spontaneous; it is found by sharing constraints and has been created little by little historically.

However, while it is certainly important to capture liberty empirically as a historical phenomenon like Berlin does, the essence of what liberty is must also be considered as something that precedes it. Berlin's criticism of positive liberty, which stems from dogmatism, will not be a fundamental criticism unless it is made from that level of thinking. That is the realistic limit of empiricism.

If there is a pathology of the distorted modern spirit in the fact that the meaning of liberty can only be found in "negative liberty," then to examine that, an insight into the freedom of the spirit, distinguished from the political, is necessary.

Late Greek Liberty and the Stoic Paradox

There are two aspects to liberty.
One is liberty guaranteed by social customs, institutions, and legal systems. The other is liberty that must be secured by one's own efforts even when such things are not provided from the outside.
If I may say so, this is the essential distinction between "negative liberty" and "positive liberty.
The latter is "positive liberty" because it is based on individual subjectivity and autonomy. Pericles' "spirit of liberty" corresponds exactly to this.

Therefore, it would not be a waste to look at how freedom transformed in the Greek world, where that 'spirit of freedom' had withered away.
The following anecdote about Diogenes the Cynic is likely known to everyone.

When Alexander unified Greece, many famous men gathered to seek an audience with him. However, Diogenes did not visit. Alexander, having come to Corinth, became curious and went to see Diogenes.
Diogenes was sunbathing. Even when he saw the person standing before him, he acted as if he did not know him at all. The Great King, losing patience, said:
—I am Alexander.
—I am Diogenes.
—Are you not afraid of me?
—Are you a bad person?
—I am not a bad person.
—Then, where is the reason to be afraid?

Stumped by this unexpected reply, Alexander finally said:

—Is there anything you would like me to do for you?
—I would like you to move aside. You are blocking my sunlight and ruining my sunbath.

In the presence of Alexander, who possessed immense power, Diogenes did not humble himself, fear him, or ask for anything. Or rather, it was precisely because he expected nothing from others that he was able to maintain an attitude of fearing nothing. This cynicism was later inherited by Stoicism.

The Stoics made it their maxim to live by protecting their inner freedom, without being disturbed by whatever might happen outside themselves. Since external events are uncontrollable and beyond one's own ability, they believed that by choosing to shut themselves away in a fortress built within, they could secure their own freedom without being swayed by uncertain factors. The root of all evil lies in the mistaken belief that one can control what one cannot.
Here, too, the philosophy that one will never be disappointed if one expects nothing from external conditions is carried through.

As a result, they willingly accept events that cannot be controlled by their own abilities. In other words, they willingly submit to external forces. Furthermore, being able to accurately recognize the necessity of such servitude becomes the last and only base of freedom left to them. Therein lies the Stoic paradox that servitude to external reality is, in fact, freedom.
It was an attempt to turn 'negative freedom' into 'positive freedom' by reducing the former to its absolute limit. The goal was a transition from freedom as something merely given to freedom obtained through one's own responsibility and choice.

Regarding the Stoic paradox, Tsuneari Fukuda states, 'They narrow down life and its happiness to a single principle of whether it is free or not, and attempt to control it through that,' adding that this is 'because for them, freedom was the supreme principle.'

Stoic ethics consist of narrowing one's perspective down to a minimum size and limiting the events that appear there to the bare minimum. They attempt to squeeze a high-purity freedom out of that. Closing off the dimension of coexistence from one's perspective and restraining the collective ego becomes the ideal state. However, what is assumed on that extension is an act of completely blocking external events—the strangulation of life known as suicide, as the ultimate freedom.
A philosophy that seeks light within itself leads, without exception, to the negation of life.

Freedom and Egoism

Tsuneari Fukuda rejects the philosophy that makes freedom a value. This is not a rejection of freedom itself.

Freedom has its origins in egoism. 'Negative freedom' is freedom from oppression by external power, but 'positive freedom,' which attempts to secure it subjectively, is, in the end, as Berlin also admits, nothing more than something that 'is forced to aim for promotion to a privileged class.' In short, it is fine to rephrase these as 'negative egoism' and 'positive egoism.'
Making freedom an ideal results in unreserved self-affirmation and the acceptance of reality, and there is no path from there that leads to justice, goodness, or beauty.

The problem is that when freedom is treated as an issue, especially in the modern age, it is exclusively about finding the subject of restraint outside oneself—such as political power, state systems, the economy, legal systems, customs, or the common sense of society.

Please recall the anecdote of Diogenes. Despite having the greatest power in his hands and enjoying the greatest freedom, Alexander the Great was forced to flaunt his own 'dictatorial desire for power' in front of a single old philosopher.

Freedom is not an ideal of life, but a reality of life. It is not the freedom to do anything, nor is it the freedom to do nothing.
To live is to choose something and do something, and one must judge that based on one's own judgment and at one's own responsibility—that is freedom in its original sense. In other words, freedom is a characteristic that belongs to my perspective. It is not something to be aimed for, but a fundamental reality imposed upon human beings.
Freedom is a burden and a weight for human beings. There is no freedom to escape from it.

I am pinned to the center of my own perspective. I am a being constrained by my own perspective. Various things appear and occur there. I can observe them, but I am not permitted to step out of it, look back, and view myself from the outside. Therefore, when I try to judge something, the most uncertain element is, in fact, myself.
Moreover, what makes it difficult to deal with is that the life force that drives me lies deep within my own underworld. And it is inseparably one with egoism. Visible egoism is nothing much. What is unmanageable is the egoism that wriggles beneath such consciousness.

What is the true meaning of freedom?

In front of my desk, there is a scrap of paper that has been pasted there for the past twenty years. It is an excerpt from an article Tsuneari Fukuda wrote as a counter-rebuttal to Guo Moruo during the Cultural Revolution. Guo Moruo was the head of the Chinese literary world and also an executive of the Communist Party government.

The Cultural Revolution is now understood as a 'civil war' that included large-scale terrorism instigated by Mao Zedong to seize power, but at the time, for a long time, it was praised by intellectuals in developed countries as a historic achievement. Under the slogan 'It is right to rebel,' lynching was rampant throughout China, and the world-renowned writer Lao She was also deemed a 'reactionary element' and lost his life. It is said that tens of millions of lives were lost in total.
Even so, Mao Zedong's actions were affirmed as aiming for an ideal. Even YMO wore Red Guard uniforms. That was the kind of era it was.

Under such circumstances, at the National People's Congress of China, Vice Chairman Guo Moruo admitted his mistakes and engaged in self-criticism in a public forum. 'By current standards, my works are absolutely worthless and should be burned.' He said he had 'fallen far behind the workers, peasants, and soldiers' for not being loyal to Mao Zedong's instructions, and 'If the imperialists attack us, throw the hand grenades at me.'

Tsuneari Fukuda, upon encountering the newspaper article reporting this, severely criticized Guo Moruo, arguing that advocating for the burning of all one's own works was not proof of sincerity, but rather 'nothing more than complete self-annihilation,' and furthermore, an irresponsible act that 'coldly betrayed' his readers and supporters. 'The reign of terror is frightening, but the moral decadence seen in Mr. Guo's irresponsibility is even more frightening.' <Although, as a whole, it also includes sympathy for Guo Moruo> <Asahi Shimbun>

In short, Tsuneari Fukuda is stating that the egoism operating beneath consciousness is 'even more frightening' as an enemy than the visible reign of terror of Mao Zedong. This is because attributing the basis of freedom to external conditions without questioning the whereabouts of such invisible egoism of the self is also 'moral decadence.' Simple-minded liberals who criticize dictators and totalitarianism are, in that respect, just the same kind of people. While Fukuda's criticism questions the individual responsibility of Guo Moruo, it is something that transcends the political situation and returns to us ourselves.

Now, Guo Moruo, who reacted sharply to this, fiercely rebutted Tsuneari Fukuda's article at the Asian-African Writers Conference in Beijing.

Thanks to his self-criticism, he was able to secure his personal safety and status as a trade-off for 'self-annihilation.' That is why he is so high-spirited, as if he had turned over a new leaf.

The words I look at every day that I have pasted up are in the counter-rebuttal to that. The paradoxical essence of freedom is clearly stated.

As we have seen twice so far, if you get to the bottom of it, the social theory of freedom is quite simple. It is the construction of a society that maintains a balance between everyone being able to participate in politics and following the rule of law.

What confuses the issue is extracting individual freedom from that. It is theoretically assumed that individual freedom includes the freedom to slander or harm others, and even the freedom to deny freedom itself. The rule of law is what suppresses that, but one can also conceive of a freedom that rejects even that.
However, controlling such 'evil' is a denial of freedom, and therefore its legitimacy cannot possibly be derived from the principle of freedom. Strictly speaking, it becomes an element that destroys the consistency and identity of logic as a reductio ad absurdum, causing a fundamental logical contradiction in the principle of freedom. Liberalism is a political philosophy that carries such self-contradiction and absurdity within itself.

The words of Tsuneari Fukuda that I stare at every day always bring me light and courage.
What awaits in the future of regarding freedom as a value, making it an objective, and pursuing it without limit is a miserable self-destruction. But we have the freedom to choose how freedom exists, and in some cases, the freedom to abandon freedom. No matter what limit situation we are in, we have the freedom to fight against our own egoism. And that determination and judgment never come from the principle of freedom.
Freedom is the fundamental reality of human existence. It is not a value or an ideal in itself. However, it is precisely because we are in this fundamental reality that we possess morality.