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Free Thinking : The nation

From the UK, philosopher Jonathan Rée

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1. Humble opinions

   • Jonathan Rée
   • 11 Sep 06, 12:17 PM

   In my last post I said that there is more to freedom than getting what you want.

   Of course the word ‘freedom’ is only a word, and if you like you can stretch it to cover people who are simply following their whims or wafting in the winds of fashion. But in that case freedom ceases to be something worth aspiring to or fighting for: it means being the puppet of your passions and your past rather than the controller of your present and your future.

   If freedom is to be really desirable, then it must have a relation to something beyond what you happen to want – a relation, as I said, to something like reason, responsibility, even truth.
   
   Reading the comments coming into this blog over the past few days, I notice several new versions of the old freethinking chestnut – the idea that criticising someone’s ideas, or perhaps refuting them, may mean infringing their right to their own opinions.

   In addition I am glad to find some real-world discussion about which regimes are better than others from the point of view of freedom.

   I shall quickly take up both these points (my hobbyhorse about the history of freethinking will have to remain in its stable for the time being). First I shall refer you once again to the case of the Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, and secondly I shall try to draw your attention to the difference between thinking and having opinions.

   Continue reading "Humble opinions"

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