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Free Thinking : The nation

From the UK, philosopher Jonathan Rée

All entries in this category: Democracy

  1. Prejudice, self-interest and self-display

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 30 Sep 06, 11:06 AM

    What is freethinking? It's not so easy to say. But perhaps it's easier to ask the question the other way round: what is the opposite of freethiinking?

    The most plausible answer, I think, is prejudice. which is why there has been so much traffic about prejudice on this blog recently.

    But what is prejudice exactly? In the coming days and weeks I want to try to clarify and define it, and I would appreciate your help: facts and anecdotes about prejudices, your own and other peoples, and also ideas about the different classes they fall into, and the different kinds of threat they pose.

    Here's my starter.

    Continue reading "Prejudice, self-interest and self-display"

  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"

  1. Freedom truth and thinking

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 6 Sep 06, 09:43 PM

    The only thing that’s indisputable about the idea of freedom is that it’s always in dispute.

    And the same applies to freethinking too. It’s a word with a lot of history: in the eighteenth century, certain dissident protestants liked to refer to themselves as ‘free-thinkers’ – but they were roundly rebuked and ridiculed, and not without reason. They flattered themselves absurdly, according to their critics. (There was a very funny satire on them by Bishop Berkeley, for instance: he thought that their confidence that they represented freethinking only proved that they knew nothing either about freedom or about thinking.) But I had better rein in this historical hobbyhorse, or at least save it for a later outing. The essantial point remains: you do not prove that you are free by saying or thinking that you are.

    Continue reading "Freedom truth and thinking"

  1. True respect

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 1 Sep 06, 08:55 AM

    Lots of people seem to like my idea of a democracy of mutual respect, but they’re not sure that such a thing can ever exist. On the internet perhaps, or specifically here in blogland?

    But first we need to agree about the meaning of respect.

    One commenter has got shirty with me because I pointed out that, as far as I could see, he had made a logical mistake. (He thought that being able to change your mind was the same as being unable not to change your mind – as if being able to fall asleep were the same as not being able to stay awake.) He took offence, and now he alleges that I have failed to practice the kind of respect that I preach.

    Continue reading "True respect"

  1. One Cheer for Democracy

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 29 Aug 06, 01:02 PM

    ‘What is democracy?’ says jesting Esther – and I think I may have an answer.

    In any case it’s nice to do a cyber-handshake with my fellow freethinker, and I hope I can cheer her up a bit, while leaving some of the commenters on Open Minds and Empty Heads climbing the lamp posts in Logic Lane.

    The idea of democracy is as old as western philosophy, and on the whole very few people have had a good word to say for it. But I think I have a notion of democracy that may recommend itself to Esther Wilson and others.

    I think I can dicriminate four different meanings of the term.

    Continue reading "One Cheer for Democracy"

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