Freedom

Freedom, like the other value virtues of the ethical quadrivium, is a difficult concept to define. What is freedom? It may be as impossible to answer this question as it is the one concerning justice. There are invariably two sides to the inquiry involving liberty: freedom from something, and freedom to do something.[1] The nuances are endless, and all is set against the ultimate question of whether we have freedom of will, freedom of choice, or whether our course is predetermined and inevitably already set.

Platonists and Stoics, as well as many others, hold to the notion of a divine plan. A plan, however, presupposes a preexisting idea. Spinoza appears to translate this idea into a doctrine of determinism. For the majority of pagans, however, it is possible that a preset divine plan makes no sense.[2] At best, we would be simply playing out our positions as actors perform their stage roles in enacting a dramatic play for the theater. Who would be the author of the overall drama of life? And, perhaps even more to the point, who would be its audience?

While there are always exceptions, by and large, most pagans would appear to accept that life has no prearranged purpose. It is spontaneous and perhaps even largely accidental. Instead of a divine plan as some sort of preordained script, pagans hold more to the notion of a divine process – one in which divinity is unfolding and developing itself with no inevitable rules or pre-selected directions. Life is procedural rather than pre-arranged. It is for this reason that contemporary complexity theory appeals to pagans. The spontaneity of self-organization into greater and more complex wholes is the natural way of nature – allowing ultimately for retro-diction instead of prediction, that is, the retracing of why something worked out as it has rather than forecasting in advance exactly how things are to turn out.

What often does seem inevitable is conflict. As a world grows more complex – let alone crowded with only limited resources, continual diversification seems invariably to lead to increasing competition and clash. If we follow Hegelian logic of a thesis engendering an antithesis that ultimately becomes a synthesis that, in turn, inevitably necessitates another antithesis, this would, on its own, presuppose a cosmos of endless discord and tension. Without the idealism of Hegel or even Marx, there can be no final resolution to such endless divergence. For the pagan, there is no external absolute, no a priori ideal, no utopian state that exists either outside the cosmic process or at the end of the road of time to rectify the inevitable and ceaseless struggle and differentiation of individual and opposing wants. There is no divine plan but only process. But again, for the pagan, this process is itself divine – the perpetual divine becoming and self-fulfillment. The pagan will maintain that the only onus is to trust the process. Herein lies, in addition, the fundamental source for the pagan’s proclivity toward idolatry. The pagan is not one who looks outside ‘the system’ but within. Reflection within the cosmic organism is a form of self-reflection, part of the feedback looping process described by complexity theory, in which the dynamic of change and growth is located through the worship of the organism or any holographic aspect of the organism rather than with any denial of, or longing for escape from, the organic process that is our cosmos.

But if we project to any kind of final bottom line, we might be able to discern that cosmic conflict is ultimately one between the nightmare and ceaseless anguish of struggle and battle, on the one hand, and the aesthetics of harmonious cooperation and adjustment, on the other. We can always imagine a situation in which these two possibilities are equally deadlocked – with no deus ex machina to intervene and break the stalemate. In such an equal division, one in which the forces of entropy and dissolution are fully balanced by those of growth and concord, there is one and only one additional factor, namely, will. It is here that we find not only the source of the entire cosmic impetus but also its salvational future. It is in will both as origin and as the prerogative of sentience that we find freedom. Whatever liberty we have as individuals and social collectivities is to be found in and through our abilities to exercise will – our capacity to wish and, finally, to bring that wishing to fruition. Our full freedom is the full process, but an important part of that process, indeed, I would argue, the most important part, is the initial will itself, the energy to wish and want. It is for this reason that desire is as central to the pagan ethos as it is. It is the heart of the pagan’s religion; it is his or her raison d’être; it is the locus within which the pagan finds liberty. And even if and when we do not have freedom, we can still always wish for, invoke and honor it.

Endnotes

[1] Another way to consider freedom is to distinguish between positive freedom (Plato, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel) having to do with self-determination and autonomy, on the one hand, and negative freedom (Bentham, Hobbes, Locke and Hume) referring to the situation in which a person is free from the interference or coercion of others. Positive freedom is the liberty for something, the ability to do what one chooses. Negative freedom is freedom from constraint, intimidation or prevention by others.

[2]Apart perhaps from the determinism effected by our DNA seeking to replicate itself. See Dawkins (2006). See also Schrage (1995).