The Brooklyn Rail

“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.”— Niccolò Machiavelli

“Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”— Alexis de Tocqueville

Freedom is often defined in a kind of Machiavellian sense by people who claim a certain nobility of spirit but in fact are driven by vile calculation. As a result, we often find ourselves accepting an idea of freedom which, in the context of democracy in America, has altogether different meanings than elsewhere in the world.

If we acknowledge Alexis de Tocqueville’s advocacy of how democracy is possible here in the US, and not in Europe, we then must revisit Sir Isaiah Berlin’s two concepts of liberty: positive liberty and negative liberty. While positive freedom proposes that we are only free when we’ve mastered ourselves as an internal rather external condition, even at the expense of letting the things that surround us fall apart, we can still undertake stoicism as means to be free within. This conception of freedom has been associated with some of the worst disasters of the twentieth century. For it would be difficult to deny that World War I was the product of nationalism, which bolsters the notion that we only are free when we embrace our national community. Similarly, it is impossible to think of World War II without the aggression of Nazi ideology spreading the belief that we only are free when we live as part of a race that has been given the right to dominate the rest of the world. And how can we forget that the iron curtain of Communism that dropped over Europe and Asia was equally aggressive in enforcing the belief that we are free only when we live according to the laws of a new proletarian revolution that was created as a counter-friction against capitalism. Negative freedom, on the other hand, is a freedom that we enter into without interference. As negative freedom coincides with the invention of the modern nation state, the creation of capitalism and the scientific revolution, we associate negative freedom with liberal democracy in so far as we’re given the rights to various kinds of actions, including freedom of speech, freedom in voting, freedom in consuming, and so on.

There is also a third concept of freedom: Quentin Skinner’s concept of freedom as non-domination, which implies the absence of the capacity of other agents to interfere arbitrarily in our lives. In other words, we’re free to the extent that others cannot make us conform to their unjustified goals.

Tocqueville’s enthusiasm for America was based on a new kind of liberalism with a soul, centered on the self-governing principle, which offers to us Americans an ability to self-reflect constantly on our actions—both in terms of what we’ve done, and in terms of not letting ourselves be victims of larger impersonal forces created by unrelenting external circumstances. This is to say that only by being mindful that we’re not automatons will we ever understand that the soul itself is capable of being degraded by material corruptions. For democracy to exist, it must therefore be always conceived as an experiment. For the balance that lies in between the tyranny of the minority, and the tyranny of the masses is extremely fragile. We must be aware that the greatest danger to democracy is the very nature of democracy itself. At any time when the sovereignty of the people surrenders to any form of complacency, there emerges the big machine of the government as a prevailing tyranny of mild despotism. America is a relatively young nation, vigorous and energetic. But as we imagine ourselves moving forward with agility and mindfulness, we must also be aware of endless contingencies, asymmetrical tendencies that may appear as small fluctuations, but which, over periods of time, can produce significant change. While we often tell ourselves that we must ignore noise and pay attention to meaningful signals, we must also be aware of how causes can incite effects in our everyday lives, especially the increased instability that occurs through shifting political dogmas, and the various labels and inventions of social engineering.

Again and again, as we look backward to move forward, we can detect past patterns that are seen as indicative of our future outcomes. Will America recognize that the Jacksonian America of the 1830s is nearly identical to what is being evoked by Trumpian America of 2020s, as we’re reminded of Machiavelli’s empathic rejection of imaginary truth in favor of political realism, as well as Tocqueville’s advocacy of self-government with relentless self-correction? What is required of us is the constant attention that must be paid to our own capacity for freedom. Given our current crisis in civil liberties, we must be judicious of how we respond to the things that we are being told, in the name of freedom and democracy, about what counts as a form of national emergency. For the language of tyranny is most easily deployed in times when distracting false alarms are raised, and when democratic participation in the social fabrics of various communities is absent.

May our democratic soul, braced with the spirit of love and courage, prevail in our present time.

In solidarity as ever,

Phong H. Bui

P.S. We are grateful to Nazlı Ercan, who has made a wonderful contribution to the design of the Brooklyn Rail since April of 2021. We send her our best wishes in her new position at the Walker Museum, and we are equally thrilled to welcome Sophie Auger as our talented new designer. This issue is dedicated to two extraordinary contributions to human freedom and visual culture, namely Alexei Navalny (1976–2024), a lawyer, social, political activist, founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBF), who ran for office to advocate reforms against Vladimir Putin and the corruption of his regime. He was awarded the Sakharov Prize for his work on human rights. His death was almost certainly the result of being poisoned and imprisoned by Putin, which should remind everyone of us in the free world to be mindful how we can cultivate while protecting all of our democratic yielding; David Rabinowitch (1943–2023) whose vast interest in philosophy, especially Immanuel Kant, David Hume, among other German idealists has directed him to a personal mediation with minimalism with esoteric precision and mystical geometry in his sculpture. His drawing, while being guided by his immersive knowledge, explores the synthesis of expressive gesture, architectural compression, and geometric solemnity. We send our deep condolences to both of their partners, family members, friends and admirers across the globe.