#Liquid notes for live free#
‘ So you are back you busybody? Again you want to nag and pester us, to expose our bodies to dangers and force our hearts to take ever new decisions? I was so happy, I could wallow in the mud and bask in the sunshine, I could gobble and grunt and squeak, and be free from doubts… Why did you come? To fling me back into the hateful life I led before?’īauman now poses two questions ( NB this isn’t that clear from the writing!) – firstly, why has freedom been slow to arrive? Secondly, when freedom does arrive, why is it so often seen as a curse?īauman explores one type of answer to the first question, which is that men are not ready for freedom. However, the released sailor, Elpenoros, is far from grateful and complains: Odysseus (through the use of a magical herb) manages to release the sailor from his bewitchment. This section begins with an episode from the Odyssey in which Odysseus manages to trap a sailor who had been turned into a hog by Circe.
This highlights the fact that people may not be objectively free but feel free because they either fail to realise they are not free, or, more worryingly for Bauman, because they dislike the idea of freedom given the hardships that come along with that freedom, which brings him onto the ‘mixed blessings of freedom’. This balance might be achieved in two ways – through either expanding one’s capacity to act or through limiting one’s desires (imagination).ĭistinguishing between these two strategies of emancipation makes possible the distinction between subjective freedom (to do with how one perceives the ‘limits’ to one’s freedom), and objective freedom (pertaining to one’s capacity to actually act). He then argues, following Schopenhauer, that feeling free from constraint means finding a balance between one’s wishes (or imagination) and the stubborn indifference of the world to one’s intentions. Next Bauman outlines his conception of liberation, noting that ‘to feel free means to experience no hindrance, obstacle, resistance or any other impediment to the moves intended or desired’. The chapter begins with Marcuse’s complaint (writing in the 1970s) that most people don’t see the need to be liberated from society, and of those that do, relatively few are prepared to take action towards liberation, and most of those have little idea of how a more liberated future might be different to our current situation. A level sociology labels Bauman as a postmodern Marxist. A brief summary of Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity, chapter one.
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