Freedom
This theme runs through several big questions. Here are the ones where it plays out.
The questions that illuminate it
Facing the world, should we focus on what is up to us or strive to extend our mastery?
Is the only seat of our power within, in our judgements and desires, the course of the world wholly beyond us, or can we lay hold of that order and reshape it to our hand? To take a position is to say how far our real grip on things extends, and whether freedom is won within us or out in the world.
Do we have a nature that precedes us, or do we become what we choose to be?
If a nature precedes us, there is a way to fulfil ourselves or to betray ourselves, but our freedom has limits; if we invent ourselves, everything becomes possible, but nothing guides us and nothing excuses us. To take a position is to say what we owe to what is given to us, and what we alone are answerable for.
Are we genuinely free in our choices, or are they determined?
We deliberate as if the future were open, yet our choices have causes. If everything were settled in advance, what would remain of merit, fault, responsibility? Our whole relation to ourselves and to others is at stake.
What is it to be politically free?
To be free, is it to be unhindered, to govern oneself, or to depend on no one's good will? Depending on the answer, what a society must guarantee, and what it must protect us from, changes entirely.
Should we assign blame and credit?
Praising a child, resenting a friend, taking pride in a success, blaming ourselves for a fault: we spend our days assigning blame and credit. Yet what each of us is, talents as much as leanings, was largely made without us, and one can admire a skill while knowing its acquisition owed nothing to the will. Whether our acts are determined is a neighbouring question, with its own axis; what is decided here is an attitude: to take merit and fault seriously, to keep them as tools, or to let go of them. To take a position is to say what we owe one another in praise, reproach, and forgiveness, and what would become of our bonds if we stopped keeping accounts.