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In a 1944 article in the Journal of Philosophy, one David L. Miller suggested a Rosenstock-Huessyan notion of human freedom: "by human freedom we mean not only political freedom from dictators and tyrants, but especially freedom from the mechanical laws of nature and from efficient causes which are often erroneously said to determine completely our activities and even our ideas. The basis of human freedom . . . lies in the fact that man has a calendar."
Human beings differ from animals in having a sense of past, present, future: "He constructs both spatial and temporal orders of events." These constructions are "ideational" and they permit man to use ideas "as a control for his conduct." That is, human freedom is the possibility of "coordination of thought and action." Miller argues that "the construction of a calendar is precisely that which enables man's mind to be other than spectatorial and makes thought reflective. That is, by thought man can set up control over his activity. . . the development of a calendar and man's setting up control over his conduct are one and the same thing. By means of a calendar man is able to hold on (ideationally) to the past and to present the future to himself in a present."
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 03:31 PM
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