International Journal of Social and Educational Innovation (Jul 2023)
THE NEED FOR FREEDOM AS THE GROUNDS OF AGGRESSION
Abstract
One of the things Isaiah Berlin noticed in his essay on freedom was the contradiction of human values. Of course, our ideal of living is their harmonization or their falling under a supreme value, such as the Good. In reality, however, the values contradict each other. Also, the ideal of the ego is to comply with the image of the type of man that society forms for itself at a given moment. The smaller the society, the more coherent, the more entire and simpler this image is. As society becomes more complex – the ideal image of man – becomes increasingly incoherent, more contradictory; thus, it becomes more difficult if not impossible to satisfy the individual as such. According to Erich Fromm, the growth of aggression in both directions – destructive and self-destructive – is not at all alien to such a “contradiction” of the values of a complex society. The need for freedom from pressures from many sides, the need to find a morbid “oneness” in the simplicity of death or the self-forgetfulness – can be seen as a possible explanation for the increase in aggression nowadays. Also, another connection between the need for freedom and aggression is seen, in this article, as given by the condition of the human being – as it has been confirmed, so many times, by the philosophical and biological anthropology: man tries to decondition himself, to adapt the environment to its own needs, which implies, depending on the degree of evolution of society, an act of violence done to the external reality. To a certain extent, however, such a tendency to deconditioning, to adapt the environment to our own needs (building nests, decorating, dances) can be found in all living nature. The main conclusions of this article are: 1. The very tendency towards freedom, towards the liberation from the natural conditions can constitute a new argument in favor of the “solidarity” with the whole living world; 2. Following the very inner springs of deconditioning, it means that in its proper sense and in its highest degree freedom is the turning of the will to dominate upon itself, the self-limitation and channeling of the impulse to dominate from the external environment to the goals and ideals of the internal environment, that is spiritual in itself. Often such finality is not alien to an immense responsibility on the other non-human beings.
