I've been thinking about my two recent posts on freedom and responsibility this weekend. While I'm quite sure I can't convince Blake or anyone else committed to Libertarianism, I've more been thinking at what is the real locus of our disagreement. As I've thought about it I think the issue is what is more primordial, time or freedom. The second issue, which I touched on in my comments regarding intuitions, is whether the phenomena of perceiving one making a choice is a primordial phenomena or if this "making a choice" is emergent out of a more primordial sense of freedom. This was brought back to mind again when Enowning quoted Heidegger's The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic.
Only where there is freedom is there a purposive for-the-sake-of, and only here is there world. To put it briefly, Dasein's transcendence and freedom are identical! Freedom provides itself with intrinsic possibility; a being is, as free, necessarily in itself transcending.
Now I've touched on these issues before (here, here, here, and here). My view is that the problem with the Libertarian position is a certain temporal assumption regarding the essence of freedom. As I've said before, the issue is less the requirements for when freedom is manifest (which at best is what I think the Libertarians and their intuitional appeals deal with) than what the essence of freedom is at a primordial level. As Heidegger puts it, freedom and transcendence are the same thing.
The real issue that I find most interesting isn't really the whole compatibilism or semi-compatibilism debate, but the relationship between this primordial sense of freedom and for-the-sake-of, which as I've mentioned form something functionally similar to universals. Albeit universals that can't in the least be considered static or fully present in things. Indeed they are essentially pure possibility, when considered from within a temporal view.
Anyway, the reason I appealed to a fairly neoPlatonic like thought experiment was because for most neoPlatonists, time is emergent. It is not fundamental or primordial. While I clearly didn't present the idea as found in the various kinds of Platonisms, I think it an important way to consider the issue.
I thus think that the Libertarian perspective of freedom has several errors, or at least assumptions that need unpacking. The first is the issue of time, which is typically taken for granted. The second is the issue of ground, although the Libertarians typically do better there and have a view fairly close to what I think is correct: that freedom is ungroundedness yet not arbitrariness. (Undetermined, but not random) The third, and most important, is the relationship between time, freedom, and truth. The very statement that there can not be a truth about the matter of the future and still be freedom entails all sorts of assumptions regarding the nature of truth and time. However we might wish to put that under the first category. The last is the issue of whether the perception of freedom or manifestation of freedom is the same as freedom itself or its essence. Which is just an other way of saying that we ought keep in mind that primordial freedom or freedom as such and the manifestation of freedom need not be the same.
Clark,
Maybe I'm just dense, but I still can't see how a Heideggerian approach to freedom cannot be libertarian. In fact, it seems to demand a libertarian approach--transcendence and freedom, being synonymous, seem to demand that the past is not fully determinate, or determinative for future actions (though the past, in Dasein's temporality, is a necessary component).
As for a libertarian view on time, I think it would be safe to say that libertarians reject the B-theory of time. On a more basic (metaphysical?) level, the libertarian would reject any view of time that takes away the openness of the future. Though exactly how the above two rejections pan out in making a positive theory of time will probably differ from libertarian to libertarian, but it seems to point towards some viable options.
Kevin Winters
The issue Kevin is the "when" of things. i.e. exactly what is time.
Just to add to the above, what was neglected or perhaps for some treated erroneously to a certain extent in the early Heidegger is the nature of space and the nature of time and their interrelationship. Heidegger only comes to really focus in on time in his late period. (I think from 1962 onward) His analysis of space is in fact fairly similar in certain ways to his analysis of time. (i.e. finitude, freedom, etc.)
However an other way to look at the issue is to consider what truth as unveiling means.
I just wanted to give a plug the presentation of C. Stephen Evans at the Wheaton College symposium of Divine Freedom. His presentation focuses on self-limitation inherent in the view of kenotic Christology -- a type of Christology that I develop in my book. It can be found here: ftp://68.5.229.123:4789/Evans.mp3
The presentation of Dean Zimmerman on libertarian incompatibilism and foreknowledge is also important. It can be found here: ftp://68.5.229.123:4789/Zimmerman_1.mp3
Allow me to second Blake's comments. All the talks currently up at Garden of Forking Paths are excellent. I've been listening to them on my iPod as I walk my dog.
Oh, Kevin, the following quote by Heidegger from Time and Being probably would be helpful in seeing my position. I'll try to blog on it more in the future.
In Being as presence there is manifest the concern, which concerns us humans in such a way that, in perceiving and accepting it, we have attained the distinction of human being. This accepting of the concern of presence, however, is based on a standing within the realm of the offering [of time]. In this way true fourdimensional time extends to us. Since there is Being and time only in the Event [of their mutual appropriation], this event has the distinctive property of bringing human beings - as those who perceive Being by standing within true time - into their own. Thus owned, human beings belong in the Event. This belonging lies in the assimilation that distinguishes the Event. Through this, human beings are admitted into the Event. This is why we can never place the Event in front of us, neither as over against us, nor as the all-encompassing.
The word translated as Event is Ereignis is very key and is often translated as "happening." As you probably know, the latter Heidegger links up space and time in a fashion that I think is somewhat similar to how Merleu-Ponty does. Of course neither of them quite goes all the way in certain ways (i.e. with respect to the body) Although I'll fully confess most of my knowledge of Merleu-Ponty is secondary, and so I usually try not to comment on him too much.
I'm a little thrown by your statement that Heidegger only focuses on time in his later work in the 1960s. In the 1920s he lectured on The History of Time (1924), History of the Concept of Time (1925), and then published Being and Time (1927).
What I see as special about Heidegger in the 1960s is the focus on Ereignis. He had written the Contributions (Vom Ereignis) book in the late 1930s but deferred its publication until after his death, but in the 1960s he publicly (in seminars: Time and Being and Four Seminars) starts discussing its importance to his thought.
Perhaps the time issue comes from the translation of Ereignis as "event" or "happening", which is natural enough be cause in common (i.e. non-Heideggerean German) it is simply "event". However, in the sense of "event of appropriation", I think Ereignis is as time bound as any other verb; e.g., pacing is an event of walking.
Whoops. That was a typo. Clearly Being and Time is all about time as are many of his important works. That wasn't what I was getting at. When I wrote,only comes to really focus in on time in his late period," that was supposed to say "focus in on space and time." Sorry I was half asleep when I wrote my final comments last night and tired when I wrote those earlier comments. I really need to double check them more. In the early and mid Heidegger the relation of space and time doesn't appear very developed (at least as I see it). I'd have to check to be sure, but I believe it is his book on Kant that starts to head in that direction. Anyway, that was why I added those latter comments prior to bed. Thus the appeal to Ereignis. But I forgot to proofread the earlier ones.
Sorry for the confusion.
My point is that the happening especially in the latter thought isn't just a happening of time but of space.
Sorry, just noticed an other possible confusion in the above. I said "his book on Kant." Clearly I didn't mean the early works, such as Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics which was composed back in 1929 circa the period of Being and Time. Nor did I mean the lectures published as Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Now that I think about it I'm unsure what work I was thinking of. I think I was thinking of some comments I'd read in some secondary literature. But looking at it again, it seems primarily discussing Time and Being. So I think I was just being muddle headed and conflating the English publication of the earlier Kant books in the 1960's with the later thought.
Mea culpa.
That's the danger of a blog. You sometimes write without proofing. Good writing often has to sit for a few days and be come back to. Often you don't recognize in the least what you were thinking. With a blog you end up having that immediate publishing without the safety. C'est la vie I guess.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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