As mentioned two weeks ago in my note "Translation as Thinking", the concepts used across time and space (and, even, across writers) can vary quite significantly in the meanings they capture. This is especially true regarding concepts that are rather vague in the first place, such as virtue, happiness, democracy, and - the subject of today's post - freedom.
Although I'm far from the first to observe that the ancients thought differently about liberty and freedom than we moderns do - Benjamin Constant gave a famous talk on the topic over two hundred years ago - recently I've been struck by how foreign to us the classical Greek conceptions really are. While translating Aristotle's short "handout" On Thrivings and Failings of Character, I struggled to render the Greek word ἐλευθεριότης; the sense is wider than the usual Englishing of "generosity", whereas "liberality" sounds somewhat old-fashioned. So I looked up "liberal" in my 1828 edition of Webster's dictionary and struck paydirt on the first definition: "free of heart". That captures it perfectly, because ἐλευθεριότης is derived from the Greek word for freedom: ἐλευθερία.
Yet what did those old Greeks mean by freedom and free-heartedness? They definitely did not mean complete license to do whatever one pleases, for which they had a different word: ἐξουσία. Indeed, in Book XII of the Metaphysics Aristotle makes a passing remark that the freeborn members of an ancient Greek household were least at liberty to act as chance may have it, since their actions had to be well-ordered toward the common goals and common good of household management (οἰκονομία - whence our word "economics").
This idea that "something one and common is the work of all" figures prominently when Aristotle talks about social animals like bees, ants, and humans (the quote is from the Historia Animalium). In the historical context of classical Greece, where warfare between city-states was endemic, the primary common goal was simple survival and independence, because being conquered by another polis meant death or enslavement for the citizens. This is a core meaning of the word freedom in English, too: to be free means that you and your friends and frithmates are not in thrall to some other group but can control your group's destiny.
Yet Aristotle argues that mere survival is not the highest goal: we want not merely to live, but to live well. Because war is for the sake of peace and work is for the sake of leisure, military and productive activities are secondary to more glorious pursuits like wisdom, learning, conversation, music, dancing, poetry, art, religious festivals, athletic games, and all the other pastimes we humans have created to celebrate life.
This is why, according to Aristotle, free-hearted people are not only generous in our modern sense of charity (derived in large measure from Christian ethics), but also spend lavishly on necessities, delight in beauty, liberally express their love for family and friends and fellow citizens, and achieve quialities like adaptability, kindness, compassion, goodwill, and mutual understanding.
Thus we can see that for Aristotle and the ancient Greeks more generally, freedom meant being a well-ordered person whose internal harmony shone outward into harmonious relations with other people and the world at large. These insights explain a perhaps otherwise cryptic remark in On Thrivings and Failings of Character: "a person in seriously excellent condition is a model for a well-governed society." But perhaps not so cryptic after all, because a similar premise lies at the base of Plato's Republic and the entire Socratic tradition of classical philosophy.
At root, I would say, Aristotelian freedom is the capacity - perhaps even the capaciousness of mind and heart - to consistently act for the sake of what is beautiful in life. Although we hear an echo of this noble vision in Jefferson's "pursuit of happiness" (properly understood), it seems to me that we frivolous denizens of the twenty-first century no longer understand the depth, seriousness, and greatness that true freedom once implied, both personally and societally. The loss is ours.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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