FREEDOM Freedom is one of those words so big, so heavy, so important that it is even difficult to understand where to get them in order to analyze them.
We had made this type of observation more than a year ago for the word 'love': the two expressions also have in common a formidable risk of consumption, they are exposed to the usury of abuse, of bombast, of rhetoric.
Listen to "Word of the week: freedom (by Massimo Sebastiani)" on Spreaker.
But luckily we can find safe anchors, starting points that already give us a solid if perhaps unusual perspective, such as the words and energy of 'Think', the song by Aretha Franklin universally recognized as a hymn to freedom, in this case female. A song published in a key year, 1968 and then revitalized and perhaps a little distorted by the irony of John Landis' 'Blues Brothers' where, in an overwhelming and memorable scene, alongside the protagonists John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd she appears , the queen of soul, to remind her husband, Matt, aspiring guitarist of the band that the two are putting on, of her family duties, particularly in the fast food they manage together. Already in this scene alone, therefore, the word freedom seems to free, and the pun is not accidental,all its potential of ambiguity, or rather of complex stratification, of references and echoes. We talk about freedom but at the same time we recall a duty and a bond: 'You need me and I need you', Aretha sings. It is one of those words, one could say, that spreads an immense halo, like the circles of a stone in the water, which seem to propagate indefinitely. Salvatore Veca wrote in his 'Minimum Dictionary' of words relating to democratic coexistence: 'The ghost of freedom - a clearly intended citation of the title of a film by Luis Bunuel - has its own halo and its variegated procession of speeches and narratives'. In other words, says Veca, 'we talk, we talked and presumably we will continue to talk about freedom in many different senses, in space and time'.or rather of complex stratification, of references and echoes. We talk about freedom but at the same time we recall a duty and a bond: 'You need me and I need you', Aretha sings. It is one of those words, one could say, that spreads an immense halo, like the circles of a stone in the water, which seem to propagate indefinitely. Salvatore Veca wrote in his 'Minimum Dictionary' of words relating to democratic coexistence: 'The ghost of freedom - a clearly intended citation of the title of a film by Luis Bunuel - has its own halo and its variegated procession of speeches and narratives'. In other words, says Veca, 'we talk, we talked and presumably we will continue to talk about freedom in many different senses, in space and time'.or rather of complex stratification, of references and echoes. We talk about freedom but at the same time we recall a duty and a bond: 'You need me and I need you', Aretha sings. It is one of those words, one could say, that spreads an immense halo, like the circles of a stone in the water, which seem to propagate indefinitely. Salvatore Veca wrote in his 'Minimum Dictionary' of words relating to democratic coexistence: 'The ghost of freedom - a clearly intended citation of the title of a film by Luis Bunuel - has its own halo and its variegated procession of speeches and narratives'. In other words, says Veca, 'we talk, we talked and presumably we will continue to talk about freedom in many different senses, in space and time'.We talk about freedom but at the same time we recall a duty and a bond: 'You need me and I need you', Aretha sings. It is one of those words, one could say, that spreads an immense halo, like the circles of a stone in the water, which seem to propagate indefinitely. Salvatore Veca wrote in his 'Minimum Dictionary' of words relating to democratic coexistence: 'The ghost of freedom - a clearly intended citation of the title of a film by Luis Bunuel - has its own halo and its variegated procession of speeches and narratives'. In other words, says Veca, 'we talk, we talked and presumably we will continue to talk about freedom in many different senses, in space and time'.We talk about freedom but at the same time we recall a duty and a bond: 'You need me and I need you', Aretha sings. It is one of those words, one could say, that spreads an immense halo, like the circles of a stone in the water, which seem to propagate indefinitely. Salvatore Veca wrote in his 'Minimum Dictionary' of words relating to democratic coexistence: 'The ghost of freedom - a clearly intended citation of the title of a film by Luis Bunuel - has its own halo and its variegated procession of speeches and narratives'. In other words, says Veca, 'we talk, we talked and presumably we will continue to talk about freedom in many different senses, in space and time'.like the circles of a stone in the water, which seem to propagate endlessly. Salvatore Veca wrote in his 'Minimum Dictionary' of words relating to democratic coexistence: 'The ghost of freedom - a clearly intended citation of the title of a film by Luis Bunuel - has its own halo and its variegated procession of speeches and narratives'. In other words, says Veca, 'we talk, we talked and presumably we will continue to talk about freedom in many different senses, in space and time'.like the circles of a stone in the water, which seem to propagate endlessly. Salvatore Veca wrote in his 'Minimum Dictionary' of words relating to democratic coexistence: 'The ghost of freedom - a clearly intended citation of the title of a film by Luis Bunuel - has its own halo and its variegated procession of speeches and narratives'. In other words, says Veca, 'we talk, we talked and presumably we will continue to talk about freedom in many different senses, in space and time'.'we talk, we talked about and presumably we will continue to talk about freedom in many different senses, in space and time'.'we talk, we talked about and presumably we will continue to talk about freedom in many different senses, in space and time'.
This is not new: this type of consideration has already happened to us for several other words and this, on the other hand, is the reason why it is interesting to deal with words: ambiguity, surprise, discovery, overturning. , the contradiction are often just around the corner, as soon as you begin to delve a little deeper into the concepts and stories behind and around certain expressions. Freedom as we know it today, or as we understand it today when we pronounce the word, understood as the state of someone who can act without constraints and impediments, needed Christianity before the development, even political, of the cities then; and therefore emerges between the age of the Communes and the Renaissance but knows its greatest development in modern thought.
The word, however, derives from the Latin and here comes a first surprise: the proximity of the root of the term to that of 'free', to please, to please, so that libens means willing, because only those who are free can do what they like. In short, freedom semantically and etymologically approaches pleasure: libido, libare. While in the Roman world the free were the children and for this reason still today the liberalities are unconditional gifts and concessions (and behind this expression hides, again, the very idea of freedom, that is the lack of constraints, of conditions).
But the point is that freedom is not the total absence of ties (as Aretha Franklin also seems to suggest) and rules and therefore does not and cannot have only one meaning but at least two. A master of liberal thought, in fact, whom we have already mentioned with regard to the word compromise, explained it definitively: at the end of the 1950s in full contrast between the two blocs, that of liberal democracies and that of Soviet socialism , Isaiah Berlin dedicated his introductory lecture in Oxford to 'The two concepts of freedom' distinguishing between positive and negative freedom. Berlin, in what would become a classic of contemporary political thought, wanted to answer questions we are still asking ourselves in recent weeks:what does it mean not to be free to do something? And what is the connection between freedom and desire (which we have seen to be quite close from the etymological point of view)? The answer was: it is the negative freedom, that is the freedom from (it was also the title of a very modern school text in use in the seventies), that which defines an area within which a person is or does what he aspires to do or to be. It borders but, suggests Berlin, it is not the same as the freedom of, which seems to want to have no limits. As in the liberating scream, it is appropriate to say, of a famous song by Queen. We will have to go back to talking about it.that which defines an area within which a person is or does what he aspires to do or be. It borders but, suggests Berlin, it is not the same as the freedom of, which seems to want to have no limits. As in the liberating scream, it is appropriate to say, of a famous song by Queen. We will have to go back to talking about it.that which defines an area within which a person is or does what he aspires to do or be. It borders but, suggests Berlin, it is not the same as the freedom of, which seems to want to have no limits. As in the liberating scream, it is appropriate to say, of a famous song by Queen. We will have to go back to talking about it.