Freedom in the Age of Polycrisis

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

The prevalence in public and scientific discourse of the term polycrisis signals anxiety. The core modern ideal of freedom is under intense pressure. The loss of confidence in the possibility and value of freedom paves the way for military and technological competition, securitisation, populist politics, autocratisation or ‘authoritarian capitalism’ and for pathological struggles for recognition. The discourse of polycrisis also signals a demand for new tools for moral and political orientation. We suggest that the theoretical resources accumulated in the philosophical discourse of modernity remain indispensable for meeting this need of our times. The key aim of the project is to show, in particular, the lasting relevance and moral force of the idea of freedom as self-determination, understood as the capacity at the individual level for self-realization and at the political level for democratic governance. The task requires, however, a critical engagement in the contemporary development of several different and, as we propose, mutually complementary traditions in which freedom and self-determination have been conceptualised. Based on their solid expertise in various branches of critical theory (Frankfurt School, Ljubljana School, queer theory, Foucault, Latin American post-colonial studies), phenomenology and a Socratic, transformative reading of the later Wittgenstein, the four members of the core team and the PI of the project each contribute 2-4 individual studies on the said theme. The special strength of the project is the promise of mutual enrichment between separate and competing traditions that we propose will follow from sustained dialogue between the project members and their outstanding group of international collaborators. Key results will be published in an edited volume with the project title: Freedom in the Age of Polycrisis.