The Idea of Freedom, Vol. II by Mortimer J. Adler (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Idea of Freedom, Vol. n. By MoRTIMER J. ADLER. Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1961. Pp. 754, with bibliographies and indexes. $7.50. Volume One of this work appeared in 1958 and has been reviewed extensively. The Tkomist carried a review of this work in Vol. XXII, N. 4 (October, 1959), pp. 565-570, written by Fr. David O'Connell, 0. P., and readers may refer to this review for a detailed account of the contents of Volume One. The first chapter of Volume Two makes the transition between the two volumes. Here it is necessary only to state very generally the contents of Volume One in order to see its relation to Volume Two. Volume One was divided into two books. Book I explained and defended the nature and method of the dialectical enterprise with which the Institute for Philosophical Research has been engaged. In particular, this dialectical effort was distinguished both from a history of ideas and from astrictly philosophical consideration of such subjects as freedom. (Despite some criticism which can be and has been raised against the legitimacy of this distinction-particularly as to whether various authors can be considered in relation to each other without doing violence to historical context-nonetheless these three areas, though always related, are still sufficiently distinct provinces of investigation, each meriting its own proper development.) Book IT of Volume One thereupon applied the method described to the idea of freedom by dialectically examining the different conceptions of freedom. Adler and his associates arrived at the position that there were· five distinct subjects involved in controversies centering on freedom. Three of these, considered to be main subjects, are named: Circumstantial Freedom of Self-Realization (an individual is able to act as he wishes for his own good as he sees it); Acquired Freedom of SelfPerfection (by acquired wisdom or virtue, one is able to will or live as he ought in conformity to moral law or some ideal); Natural Freedom of Self-Determination (a freedom possessed by all men in virtue of a power inherent in human nature). The other two subjects are sufficiently different to warrant distinct consideration. Political Liberty, a variant of circumstantial freedom, is a freedom possessed only by citizens having the right of suffrage; Collective Freedom, though a variant of Self-Perfection, differs from it by being acquired by the human race in the course of its historical development. Over and beyond these five subjects of special controversy there is the controversy among all authors about the generic meaning of freedom. This meaning is formulated as follows: a man is free who Twa 556 BOOK REVIEWS 557 in himself the ability or power to make what he does his own action and what he achieves his own property (p. 16} • In the course of clarifying the meaning of freedom and in listing the various authors who hold views compatible with those meanings, Volume One also outlined the problems to be solved arising from controversies. Five are listed. The first two are solved in Volume One: (1) To identify the distinct freedoms which are the subjects of special controversies. (~) To identify the subject of the general controversy about the kinds of freedom, i.e., freedom in general. The remaining three problems, to be solved in Volume Two, were: (3) To formulate the questions which raises the issues that constitute the controversies about each of these subjects. (4} To formulate the positions taken on each issue, together with the arguments pro and con that constitute the debate of these issues. (5} To describe the form· or structure of each controversy by reference to the ways in whic~ its constitutent issues and arguments are related. Chapter Two of Volume Two carefully explains the technique used to solve these problems. Let us suppose, for example, that there is to be a dialectical construction of an issue about circumstantial freedom. Two authors, in minimal topical agreement on the subject, may give incompatible answers expressed so explicitly that it only remains to report the issue and their disagreement. Often, however, the two authors do not explicitly join issue. Here is where dialectical construction begins in that Adler and his associates may...