Source: 45′ For a Speaker (and associated tracks) by John Cage.
A Brief Ontology of Freedom (Excerpt)
While recognizing that our globalized world has dramatically extended freedom of choice and opportunity, we problematize in this essay, through an exploration of the structure of freedom, the idea that this expanded scope of choice and opportunity is where our focus should primarily be in understanding the phenomenon in its fully human dimension. In exploring this issue, we focus on explaining a distinction between nominal and ontological freedom and analyzing the latter in a socio-symbolic material context. That is, in the context of the social— our necessary embeddedness in a world of others; the symbolic— language and other forms of abstract symbolisation through which our relationship to this world is mediated; and the material—physical reality and our embodiment in it.
Nominal vs Ontological Freedom
Nominal freedom, as we define it here, relates to the availability of choices. The emphasis is on the quantitative, and a human subject is not required. Non-human animals have nominal freedoms as we do—they make choices and may have more or less choice available to them at a given time. Ontological freedom, by contrast, relates to the quality or mode of choice—how choices are made. It is a purely human form of freedom that may or may not be exercised in the face of available choice, and the degree it is depends largely on whether our choices are reflective and/or expressive vs. merely reactive (concepts explained in detail below). So, while nominal freedom is a necessary condition for ontological freedom—we need the availability of choice in order to exercise choice—it is not a sufficient condition.
Reactivity/Reflectivity/Expressivity
Reactivity in the face of choice describes a situation in which the stimulus of a given choice is the decisive factor in causing action. In this case, we do not transcend, interrupt, or subvert the causal chain and are thus objectivized by the process of choice. A choice presents itself and we act, without reflection, in accordance with the immediate internal state it provokes in us, making ourselves a passive participant in the process.
Reflectivity, by contrast, refers to an active effort of symbolic self-interaction that imposes abstraction on the stimulus pertaining to a given choice and so subjects it to a semantic transformation that interrupts its immediate reactive potential [3]. Here, stimulative “meaning” is interrupted through symbolic interpretation and so potentialized as the precursor to action. A gap is inserted between the stimulus and its object that is materially and objectively empty but filled in with the subject, and this gap is the means by which the subject deobjectivizes itself. That is to say, the subject, in reflectivity, is created in and through this gap, as the gap disrupts the unified reactivity or determinative causal chain of the material world and actualizes a causally effective symbolic reality [3]. It is this complication of causality across levels of reality (the material and the symbolic) that distinguishes both ontological freedom and human subjectivity itself. Reflectivity then, in subjecting raw stimuli in an interpretive and interrupting process of symbolization, opens up the space of subjectivity, and is the transformative mode of ontological freedom.
We can illustrate the difference between reactivity and reflectivity with a simple example. Suppose we hear a notification on our phone and this causes us to reach for the phone and check the notification unthinkingly. Here, we are behaving reactively. On the other hand, when faced with this stimulus, we may pause and reflect and decide that checking the phone notification is not a good use of our time. Here, we are behaving reflectively. In the latter case, we oppose the reactive stimulus of the notification and create a space that interrupts our part in the causal chain it has initiated (from notification to checking of the notification). This space is a subjectivized space in which we apply abstract reasoning to the concrete reality of the urge to transform it into a voluntary action rather than having it transform us into the involuntary completion of its impetus. We thus make ourselves the subject of causality rather than merely subject to causality—we choose not to check the phone, rather than allow it to make us check it. We should note that whether or not we actually look at the notification in the end is not the crucial point here. It is that we reflect and consider rather than merely react.
Ontological freedom is not limited to reflectivity though, there is also expressivity. Here, we refer to the processing of symbolic self-interaction through action in such a way that exteriorizes new forms of symbolic structures. In expressivity, stimuli, whether internal or external, are actively reordered, recombined, and reconfigured in personal expression. Expressivity is the process of opening up and actualizing spaces of symbolic creativity. A semantic transformation is involved, but it is rather than a distanciation of a stimulus, a creative integration of the given into the new [2]. The gap that is made manifest is a space of meaning consisting of the symbolically interpreted raw stimuli of perception, emotion, intuition, language etc. And it is into this gap of the given that the subject integrates new meaning through expression. Again, the gap potentializes the subject as human subject, and the subject actualizes itself as self-expressive subject in acting on it. Expressivity, then, in producing from raw stimuli a space full of the subject (the space from which the subject self-expresses) is the creative mode of ontological freedom.
Expressivity is most obviously illustrated in artistic creation, but is not limited to such. Spontaneous gestures, speech, and other acts may—in being unique reconfigurations of internal and external stimuli that reflect our individuality—fall under the rubric of expressivity. For example, when one addresses boredom not with distraction—an impetus to passivity—but with a creative act, one brings oneself into the realm of expressivity and ontological freedom.
None of the above is to suggest that the subject is always involved in reflectivity or expressivity. Freedom is, by its nature, chosen, not forced. But the point here is that there is always, within whatever concrete limits, a context that imposes some level of choice that potentializes the subject, for at the point that that choice in reflection or expression disappears, so with it disappears the subject. And, conversely, the more freedom is chosen in the face of such choices, the stronger the subject qua subject becomes.
Source: A Brief Ontology of Freedom by Paul R. Buckle
