Where does the desire for freedom begin?
Barcelona"It's hard to see and say where the desire for liberation, to be free from oppression, ends, and where the desire for freedom, to live a political life, begins," says one of the many phrases I've underlined from The freedom to be free, of Hannah Arendt (Linden, 1906 – New York, 1975). This is a compilation of three articles published by Eumo Editorial, translated by Laia Font i Mateu and with a prologue by Fina Birulés, slightly ahead of the 120th anniversary of the political philosopher's birth, which will be celebrated next year.
In these articles, Arendt touches on a multitude of topics, but she primarily focuses on the relationship between the concepts of freedom and politics, arguing why they are intrinsically linked. Few people would be capable of grappling with such a profound question. Some of us would need to approach it from a more personal perspective: from the conflicts we experience that fuel our yearning for freedom. But Hannah Arendt seeks the essential definition of these terms: what is politics and what is freedom, whether you're speaking in Catalonia or on the other side of the world.
Guarantee a public sphere of debate
Arendt, a German of Jewish origin who went into exile in the United States during the Nazi era, refutes arguments we've been hearing quite a bit lately. She questions, for example, the feeling that the more politicized our lives become, the less freedom we have; or the idea that politics should prioritize individual lives. As she writes: "Party politicians pride themselves on representing the private interests of their electorate just as a good lawyer represents his clients; consequently, the public sphere, the world around us, is again filled with private, individual interests." In fact, Arendt believes that paying primary attention to individual lives means abandoning politics: "Freedom can be the meaning of politics only if politics designates a sphere that is public and, therefore, not only distinct from the private sphere and its interests, but also opposed to it."
Ensuring a public sphere for debate is what allows freedom to have a worldly space in which to appear. In the book's third article, the philosopher focuses on the idea of revolution, its conditions, and its meaning. She reviews various revolutions throughout history, such as the American and French revolutions, and points out things like this, which gives meaning to the publication's title:"In France, one of the main consequences of the revolution was that for the first time in history the people She took to the streets and made herself visible. This revealed that not only freedom, but also the freedom to be free, had always been the privilege of a minority.
Hannah Arendt's texts are dense, and it's hard not to quote them verbatim. From this publication, I'm left with the definition of politics not as a willpowerbut as a action"Freedom is, in essence, a political phenomenon, experienced primarily not in will and thoughts but in action, and therefore requiring an appropriate sphere for such action—a political sphere." In any case, the beauty of action lies in the fact that one never knows where it will lead and that it always requires continued action, while its opposite is automation, repetition, the individualization of conflicts, and the lack of new proposals for starting from scratch, which is probably what is currently happening in this stage of political decline in which we live.
What is certain, returning to the opening line of this article, is that freeing oneself from oppression is just as important as exercising freedom. That is to say, committing to political action and offering new beginnings in society every day.