Founding

A corollary of the firsthand and a declaration of ignorance

Phillip Black and I had a conversation based on a few of the essays in this series for his podcast The Competent Home Cook. With the kitchen as backdrop we talked habit and learning, Plato, professional philosophy and more. Check it out.

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⩩ 15

I found some words this week that have flickered in my imagination since I first came across them years ago.

Political freedom, and especially that political freedom that justifies itself by the pursuit of human excellence, is not a gift of heaven; it becomes actual only through the efforts of many generations, and its preservation always requires the highest degree of vigilance.

Freedom is not a lucky accident or a stroke of good fortune. Freedom is not a gift. It is earned. It is the result of conscious effort, actively staked out, guarded, preserved.

Of course, nobody thinks of freedom as a gift from heaven in those words. To treat it is as gift is not to think of it, not to examine it, not to attempt to realize its conditions.

This seems to be the way we have come to understand freedom — a circumstance that stands independently of us — which is parallel to the way we understand government. It follows in part from the scale of our society.

Our age is one of abstraction. Thanks to industrialization and technology, our culture is nationalized and homogenized. Our news, entertainment and art come from centers out of sight, a thousand miles removed. We stand one side of a chasm. The disproportion between the human frame and the society we are meant to swim in is so terrific that it is natural to think it is indifferent to our action. It does not depend on me.

And yet to be preserved, freedom must be renewed in each generation. It simply cannot be handed down or inherited from mothers and fathers, still less from forefathers. The institution passed down is not the same as the one received; it has become part of the environment rather than an intervention in it. By necessity the world is created anew with each generation, and so each generation must achieve freedom anew, if it is to have it at all.

But there are conditions on freedom for human beings, — for one thing, knowledge. Animals seem to be born rich here, as if getting self-knowledge as a gift from nature. They know what they love and hate, what they disdain and honor; they know where their good is. In human terms, they know their own opinions. Humans do not. If they are to know what they love and honor, they must find it out. If a human is to know their own territory, they must actively and deliberately explore it. Indeed, as they’re the first one there and it’s a wilderness, they must risk exploring it.

But freedom is a social condition and is achieved through speech, communication, interaction and trust. I doubt the large society is hospitable to freedom: on that sea you lose the ability to recognize when someone is speaking to the common good. A small society may well be one of the conditions of freedom. One proportional to the human frame, one in which each person has a role to play. One every part of which can be gathered together in one place. A community in which everyone knows, not indeed every other member, but at least an acquaintance of every other member. A society in arm’s reach.

This, the “small society,” is a corollary of the firsthand, one I saw articulated for the first time in Leo’s Strauss’ book Natural Right and History. Besides the sentence I started with, one finds in this book the distinction between hearsay and seeing with one’s own eyes, both clearly made and clearly tied to the emergence of philosophy.

The distinction must have always existed, Strauss says, and the firsthand has always been preferred, as in judicial proceedings, but its use was originally limited to particular and subordinate matters. It was in the backyard, fenced in. When its validity was expanded, when it hopped the fence and moved of its own accord, it took on a whole new face. When, indeed, it became a first principle and capable of universal application, including especially on the worthiest matters — first things, the right way of life — philosophy was born.

Moreover, Strauss’ book begins with a discussion of this august passage:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

How could one not be led to wonder about his relation to this founding declaration?

Seeing that it must be claimed, declared, that freedom is for its founders, I would like to declare my independence, and yet I am in no position to do so. As things stand, I do not meet the first conditions of freedom. It’s not just that what I know of the world comes to little or nothing — the stretches of time and space wholly unaccountable to me — but even of this little plot of earth under my feet. There are not twenty cents on the counter and my pockets are turned out. And this, ultimately, cannot be a surprise. How could you know a territory, when you haven’t explored it? And a society you haven’t created, a society that doesn’t exist yet — how could it enable your freedom?

So since above all what is needed in this kind of enterprise is honesty, let me, in place of a declaration of independence, make a declaration of ignorance.

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Did a part of this essay resonate with you? Make you think of something you have seen, heard or read? Have another angle on the topic? Please leave a comment.

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You are reading Footnotes, by Garrett Allen, a series of philosophical-ish short essays. You just read ⩩ 15. Here are some highlights from what came before.

Firsthand

⩩ 14 Yourself

⩩ 12 Learning

⩩10 Habit

⩩ 9 Firsthand

Stagestranger

⩩ 7 Mistake

⩩ 6 Whim

⩩ 3 Speechless

⩩ 1 Headsup

If you enjoyed one of them or the series as a whole, please consider passing it along to a friend. And if a friend passed it along to you, welcome. By subscribing you can have these notes delivered to your inbox, too. If you would like, stay abreast.

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A shoutout as usual to Danny at breakfastswerved for his ink. See his drawings for the series here.

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If you’ve come this far: thank you for reading my work and spending time with me. I would love to hear from you.