Ezra
Luctor et emergo
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2007
- Messages
- 534
- MBTI Type
- ENTJ
- Enneagram
- 8w7
- Instinctual Variant
- sp/sx
DOES IT APPLY TO YOU?
I was reading Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty and I came across a passage:
I thought it was very reminiscent of the way Jung describes Te dominance in Psychological Types. Unfortunately I don't have that book any more so if you don't have it I can't give you a comparison. However, the basic idea is that Te dominants (probably extends somewhat to Te auxiliary) like to keep their passions under control, and value their rational self above their animalistic, whimsical and impulsive self (which is a part of the self that everyone has).
The implications of this I guess are that most people who like positive liberty over negative liberty (if you believe in such a dichotomy of freedom) tend to be Te dominant types. And also dictators - mainly ENTJs but probably a few ESTJs. These are the types who believe in individual willpower, strength and autonomy. They value self-determination, just as advocates of positive liberty do.
Thoughts?
I was reading Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty and I came across a passage:
Isaiah Berlin said:One way of making this clear is in terms of the independent momentum which the, initially perhaps quite harmless, metaphor of self-mastery acquired. 'I am my own master'; 'I am slave to no man'; but may I not (as Platonists or Hegelians tend to say) be a slave to nature? Or to my own 'unbridled' passions? Are these not so many species of the identical genus 'slave' - some political or legal, others moral or spiritual? Have not men had the experience of liberating themselves from spiritual slavery, or slavery to nature, and do they not in the course of it become aware, on the one hand, of a self which dominates, and, on the other, of something in them which is brought to heel? This dominant self is then variously identified with reason, with my 'higher nature', with the self which calculates and aims at what will satisfy it in the long run, with my 'real', or 'ideal', or 'autonomous' self, or with my self 'at its best'; which is then contrasted with irrational impulse, uncontrolled desires, my 'lower' nature, the pursuit of immediate pleasures, my 'empirical' or 'heteronomous' self, swept by every gust of desire and passion, needing to be rigidly disciplined if it is ever to rise to the full height of its 'real' nature. Presently the two selves may be represented as divided by an even larger gap; the real self may be conceived as something wider than the individual (as the term is normally understood), as a social 'whole' of which the individual is an element or aspect: a tribe, a race, a Church, a State, the great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn. This entity is then identified as being the 'true' self which, by imposing its collective, or 'organic', single will upon its recalcitrant 'members', achieves its own, and therefore their, 'higher' freedom. The perils of using organic metaphors to justify the coercion of some men by others in order to raise them to a 'higher' level of freedom have often been pointed out. But what gives such plausibility as it has to this kind of language is that we recognise that it is possible, and at times justifiable, to coerce men in the name of some goal (let us say, justice or public health) which they would, if they were more enlightened, themselves pursue, but do not, because they are blind or ignorant or corrupt. This renders it easy for me to conceive of myself as coercing others for their own sake, in their, not my, they would not resist me if they were rational and as wise as I and understood their interests as I do. But I may go on to claim a good deal more than this. I may declare that they are actually aiming at what in their benighted state they consciously resist, because there exists within them an occult entity - their latent rational will, or their 'true' purpose - and that this entity, although it is belied by all that they overtly feel and do and say, is their 'real' self, of which the poor empirical self in space and time may know nothing or little; and that this inner spirit is the only self that deserves to have its wishes taken into account. Once I take this view, I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture them in the name, and on behalf, of their 'real' selves, in the secure knowledge that whatever is the true goal of man (happiness, performance of duty, wisdom, a just society, self-fulfilment) must be identical with his freedom - the free choice of his 'true', albeit often submerged and inarticulate, self.
I thought it was very reminiscent of the way Jung describes Te dominance in Psychological Types. Unfortunately I don't have that book any more so if you don't have it I can't give you a comparison. However, the basic idea is that Te dominants (probably extends somewhat to Te auxiliary) like to keep their passions under control, and value their rational self above their animalistic, whimsical and impulsive self (which is a part of the self that everyone has).
The implications of this I guess are that most people who like positive liberty over negative liberty (if you believe in such a dichotomy of freedom) tend to be Te dominant types. And also dictators - mainly ENTJs but probably a few ESTJs. These are the types who believe in individual willpower, strength and autonomy. They value self-determination, just as advocates of positive liberty do.
Thoughts?
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