Sometimes, people can be wrong on the internet.
But if you’re very lucky they can be interestingly wrong:
“Surely the Devil is more free than God, because God can only do good things, whilst the Devil can do whatever they want to?”
This semi-rhetorical question from the website formerly known as Twitter made me pause. If we know literally no theology, then there does seem to be some obvious truth to this claim: You can only do good things. I can do all those things and bad things. The space of possible actions is in some (very hard to make rigorous) way larger for me than you. If we think that freedom is correlated with possible actions, then if I have more possible actions than you, then I am more free than you. Q.E.D.
I will not consider any of the theological stakes or stupidities in this question; I rather want this question to illuminate a primarily metaphysical and politico-economic problem. I have stated that there does seem to be some obvious truth to this claim. To illustrate, consider both the negative and positive concepts of liberty. Both have to agree that the Devil is freer than God. However, like most things that seem to be obviously true, it was not that long ago that it was patently nonsense. Transforming an absurdity into a truism, or vice versa, does not happen overnight. This course will be examining the century-long battle to establish the overwhelming freedom of the devil, albeit in human form, a battle between libertinage and an array of opponents, some reactionary, some revolutionary.
What, though, is the contemporary urgency of this battle of ideas? We are compelled to revisit these arguments because the presuppositions that lie behind the assumption that the Devil is more free, as well as those that denied it, are still at work today, though in a more secular guise. We find the Devil’s party on the side of homo-oeconomicus and the idea that there are no deeper truths behind revealed preferences. All choices are equally valid and the more options one has, the freer one is. Opposing this idea we have various strands of critical thought. Whether we can reconstruct the theoretical tools that allow us to find a way of evaluating our choices that avoids either the libertine’s everything is permitted because all has melted into air, or an obnoxious essentialism, will be the question for the conclusion of this course.
Course Schedule
| 14 March | Week 1 | Lukes: three dimensions of power: setting up the problem (Lukes, Power: A Radical View) |
| 21 March | Week 2 | Augustine: the fullness of being, the irreatlity of evil, and the bondage of the devil; selections from On Order and The City of God |
| 28 March | Week 3 | Hobbes I: bodies in motion, an end to essences (selections from de Corpore and Leviathan) |
| 4 April | Week 4 | Hobbes II: the anti-republican moment (Skinner Hobbes and Republican Liberty, Liberty Before Liberalism) |
| 11 April | Week 5 | Rochester: the libertine revolt (A Ramble in St. James’s Park, Satyr on Reason and Mankind) |
| 18 April | Week 6 | Spinoza I: plenitude and immanence (Ethics, TTP) |
| 25 April | BREAK | |
| 2 May | Week 7 | Spinoza II: Epicurean politics (Field, Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics, Vardoulakis Spinoza, the Epicurean: authority and utility in materialism) |
| 9 May | Week 8 | The Sentimental Reaction I: Hume (Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Feltham Destroy and Liberate: Political Action on the Basis of Hume) |
| 16 May | Week 9 | The Sentimental Reaction II: Adam Smith (Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Montag The Other Adam Smith) |
| 23 May | Week 10 | De Sade I: Nature and immorality (de Sade, Philosophy in the Bedroom, Klossowski Sade my neighbor) |
| 30 May | Week 11 | De Sade II: The freedom of the Devil (de Sade, selections from Juliette, Sawhney Must we burn Sade? & The Divine Sade) |
| 6 June | Week 12 | Conclusion: the polyvalence of interest |