Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | April/2024 |
Spalte: | 337-339 |
Kategorie: | Philosophie, Religionsphilosophie |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Fürst, Alfons |
Titel/Untertitel: | Wege zur Freiheit. Menschliche Selbstbestimmung von Homer bis Origenes. |
Verlag: | Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2022. XIV, 336 S. = Tria Corda, 15. Kart. EUR 39,00. ISBN 9783161616563. |
Rezensent: | Anders-Christian Jacobsen |
Alfons Fürsts book traces the development of the concept of freedom from its beginning in Homeric literature and in the Hebrew Bible until Origen of Alexandria’s new configuration of the concept.
The book has a clear structure. It opens with an introduction to the concepts of will and freedom, followed by a justification of the timespan which the book covers (7–17). After that, follow the chronologically ordered chapters that discuss the concept of freedom and will in the Homeric and Old Testament traditions (19–48), in the earlier Greek philosophy (49–100), and by the philosophers in the Roman Empire (101–138). Chapter four treats Jewish and early Christian ideas about freedom (139–186). The last two chapters cover Origen of Alexandria’s contributions to theological and philosophical thinking about freedom (187–290).
The author carefully defines the concepts of will and freedom in the introduction. He argues that in the period which this book cov-ers there is no idea about free will in the sense which we find later in history. The Greek words which are often translated as will or even free will are προαἱρεσις and τὸ ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν. Προαἱρεσις means the con- sideration which leads to preferring one thing over another. Tὸ ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν means that which is up to us. These terms do not indicate the idea of free will, but the active considerations about choosing be-tween the possibilities one has. The considerations about human freedom are considerations about the degree to which human beings can choose between different possibilities and therefore be responsible for these choices. During the centuries that this book covers, the author finds a steady development from an almost totally destiny-determined understanding of human beings’ lives to a still stronger emphasis on human beings’ possibilities to make choices. Consequently, human beings’ ethical responsibilities were stressed. However, F. finds another major change at the end of the period covered in this book, namely Origen of Alexandria’s reconfiguration of the idea of freedom. According to F., Origen moves the discussion about human freedom from the field of ethics to metaphysics. Freedom becomes for Origen the fundamental structure of divine and human reality.
Having chalked up the track this way, the author presents in the first chapter an overview of the considerations about human self-determination in early Greek epic and tragic literature and early Hebrew traditions. According to these traditions, human beings’ acts were decided by fate. However, the author finds small openings where peoples’ own considerations played a role in how they acted. This is true for both traditions. Thus, even if no concepts of free choice or free will were present, it was still the case that people in certain situations were considered to have some kind of choice and responsibility.
The second chapter deals with determinism and responsibility in Greek philosophy. The main figures are Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, but also Epicurus, Lucretius, and Carneades are discussed. Again, the author takes care to define and correct the terminology. The point of departure of the discussion in this period and by these authors is not human beings’ free choice and ethical responsibility, but a discussion about what the cause of a specific incident is. However, these philosophers move the discussion in the direction of human beings’ possibility to choose their own way of life. By the end of this period, Carneades is the first to distinguish between determinism in the physical realm and possibilities of choice in the moral or spiritual realm. This opens new perspectives leading towards a genuine concept of free choice.
The third chapter treats the debates about freedom in the time of the Roman Empire. In this period, the Stoics argues that humans have a certain freedom to choose, but the possibility to choose is limited to choose or reject the plans that are already fixed by the universal reason. The Platonic philosophers in this period challenge Stoic determinism arguing that only the universal natural laws are determined, not the life of individuals. This opens new perspectives on ethics and morals that, according to the Platonists, are not part of the physical realm which is determined by causal relations.
From the mid-second century Christian philosophers, like Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, joined the debates about human beings’ possibilities to choose. They were the first to use the term freedom to designate this possibility. Thus, they transformed the concept of freedom from being a political and social concept to an ethical concept. Further, they also claimed that this freedom was not limited to a small elite but was a possibility for all since freedom was not a matter of social or political status, but part of human beings’ constitution. It was already clear in Irenaeus’ thinking that the stress on human being’s freedom to choose was directed against different types of determinism. In the case of Origen, and later Clement of Alexandria, arguments for freedom were directed against Gnostic determinism. However, Clement took the debates about human freedom in a completely new direction by claiming that freedom was not only a certain possibility to choose inside the frame of a reality determined by natural causation. Clement defined freedom as human beings’ possibility to form their own nature by their free choices.
In the fifth and sixth chapters, the author shows how Clement’s new definition of human freedom became the basis for Origen’s development of his metaphysics of freedom. It is well-known to readers of Origen that freedom was a basic concept in his theology and philosophy. This is clear from the long treatises and sections in which he develops this theme. First among Origen’s texts about freedom is De principiis 3.1 where he develops a concept of freedom and interprets central biblical passages which seem to contradict this concept. In the fifth chapter, F. provides a detailed interpretation of these important texts in Origen’s textual corpus.
In the sixth chapter, the author presents his own and his col- leagues’ groundbreaking interpretations of Origen’s concept of freedom. This is what he calls Origen’s metaphysics of freedom. In F.’s convincing interpretation, freedom is, according to Origen, not only human beings’ possibility to choose their own way of life and to form their lives by these free choices. Freedom is for Origen the bas-ic principle of anthropology and metaphysics. God is freedom itself and humans are defined by their freedom as creatures of the God who is freedom. Thus, the long development of the concept of freedom culminates, according to F., in Origen’s theology and philosophy.
This book makes at least two important contributions to our understanding of the history of human freedom: It clarifies the meaning of the terms that we usually, but wrongly, translate with freedom and free will, and it shows how the considerations about the possibility to make free decisions develop during the centuries before and after the beginning of our era ending with a major transformation of the idea of human freedom from an ethical to a metaphysical concept in the thinking of Origen from Alexandria. This is a major contribution which summarizes F.’s long and deep research on this theme.