The deception of freedom

Today we live in the age of freedom and never as in the last 70 years have we witnessed a true cult of freedom like the one that today is consecrated in the Western world.

The citizens feel free, and this freedom is granted to them because they have paid holidays, holidays, holy holidays, free Sundays to dedicate to purchases. Is this freedom? What then is freedom? Is it the freedom to feel good? To fully enjoy the pleasures and possessions? The freedom to consume and produce?

The text starts from an examination of the Western and progressive concept of freedom, which today more than ever is understood as a playful and recreational condition, leveling and supporting homogeneity of individuals.

But this is opposed by another Freedom, the one that the ancient Greeks evoked in the word Eleuteria, linked to the Goddess Eleuthia, Goddess of birth and life, therefore to a life-giving, to a offering life, contrary to how it is understood today freedom, or to take what makes you feel better. Franz then re-evaluates the opposite, apparently opposite, term of freedom, or that of servitude. In itself there is nothing negative about Serving, Con-Serving, or being at the Service, if this Service is dedicated to an Ideal or to a higher goal of shady individuality.

Franz then realizes that every freedom, whatever its nature, can only exist if man is endowed with free will. If the latter is questioned, then the foundations of all freedom collapse. And it is on this point that the thesis of Emanuele Franz becomes bold.

Here he elaborates a thesis, that of uniqueness and unrepeatability of arbitrariness, which is neither deterministic, nor in favor of free will, nor is it a servant arbitrariness as Luther wanted it.

According to this doctrine, man can choose, but only once in his entire existence, and from this choice everything else follows.

This doctrine, of the uniqueness and unrepeatability of arbitrariness, is neither that of free will, nor that of determinism, nor that of the arbitrary servant, or of an arbitrariness conditioned by divine intercession.

It is a new point of view on the problem of choice. The author postulates here the existence of a hidden hierarchy of choices, according to which some, originating, are placed in a Superior Type with respect to the following ones. It is therefore a question of understanding that what we commonly consider to be a choice is not, rather it is a sub-choice, a decision to a hierarchically inferior type compared to a previous or otherwise superior Choice. And there is a single one upstream of everything only: the Original Choice.

Emanuele Franz (born in Gemona del Friuli -Italy- August 14th, 1981) is an essayist, philosopher and poet. He deals with philosophy and history of religions, has over 16 publications in which he ranges from novels to non-fiction, from dialogues to dramatic works. In 2008 he founded the publishing house called Audax that he still directs. In 2017 he published History as a living organism; an essay on universal history that leads to political philosophy in which it supports an innovative theory of time.