THE PHILOSOPHICAL TURN TO RESPONSIBLE FREEDOM.

WHAT RIGHTS NEED TO BE HUMAN

X Meetings on Ethics and Political Philosophy, 13-15/06/2019, Braga, Portugal

The thought of Jeanne Hersch is founded in freedom from its beginning to its end. All her life can be reread
as an evolution of her concept of freedom, in order to clarify human dignity and to increase the possibility
of freedom, first of all understanding what freedom means theoretically, then trying to do something real
to let every human to be free. In this sense, human rights are the final step of a long and coherent path
through theory and practice and they cannot be understood without their theoretical ground. This is the
reason why I will explain briefly all the different types of freedom that characterise Hersch’s reflexion, in
order to develop, in the second part of this speech, the Herschian theory about human rights.

It is possible to consider the evolution of Hersch as a wonderful awakening to reality, through

As I have already said, the root of the subjective freedom in the first Hersch is both realist and existential.
The realist root comes from the first important work of Hersch, Les images dans l’oeuvre de M. Bergson, in
which she speaks of a freedom as organic development, namely a freedom that is necessary, since it starts
from an internal law of the subject, but also free, since this internal law is realised and developed in an
original way. The subject has a natural tendency, but he has the possibility of doing whatever he wants of
it.

The existential root comes from the Herschian reflection on the contribution of her teacher Karl Jaspers. In
L’illusion philosophique, she says that after Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Jaspers, it is impossible to
reach philosophically a total knowledge, so a philosophy that tries to compete with science in finding an
objective truth, risks it death. The real value of philosophy is not in the new knowledge that it offers, but in
her example of authenticity: the most famous philosophers start from the illusion of having found the truth
and they engage their freedom towards this simple gesture. From that moment, they will always be loyal to
it, because it will be the metaphysical truth that they feel necessary for their existence, so the simple
gesture will always be present in their acts and thoughts, building a coherent existence. The reader of the
philosopher does not search for a new knowledge but rather for this inspiring example of how to start
existing from the free engagement. So the first type of freedom that one meets in Hersch is the existential
freedom, namely the freedom that is used for taking decisions that start an existence.

Coming back to the example of the room, Hersch starts looking more in depth: after having described the
freedom at the basis of the most essential decision of the existence, it is necessary to understand how the
human daily life works. The verticality of the metaphysical moment in which one engages his existential
freedom, needs the horizontality of an ontological routine that actualises the simple gesture in the reality.
So in L’être et la forme Hersch starts from Kant, for analysing the human conditions that must be satisfied
for something to be real. When man starts walking through the world, he meets various objects that are
not revealed in-itself. Hersch calls them matter. When the subject is interested by an object, he tries to
exert his hold on it, and from the violent clash between the hold and the matter he gets the shape,
something with the imprint of the two strengths from which it has been produced. And since matter in
itself is unknowable, the subject won’t live in the world in-itself, but in the reality that he builds. Here we
can find a second type of freedom, the ontological freedom, namely the freedom that is used for actualising
shapes in daily life.

At the end of this first Hersch that investigates the subjective freedom between 1930 and 1950, there is a
gradualist theory of freedom, in which we can consider freedom as a pyramid: the top is the existential
freedom, with its unconditional engagement towards a simple gesture, then we have the different levels
that lead to the top, where ontological freedom is used to create shapes that reflect the engagement of the
existential freedom, through the decisions and the actualisations of daily life.

Now the subject knows how to gain his free existence. But Hersch goes on in knowing the room she is in,
and she discovers that man is not alone and he lives with other men. This is a big problem, since man is
made up of soul and body. The part of the soul just asks for freedom and we have already analysed it. The
part of the body has instead some biological needs and a life to preserve. With the first Hersch we have
seen that, when reflecting on a single subject, the biggest danger is the inauthenticity or the incoherence, if
the subject does not use his existential and ontological freedom in a proper way. He will never hurt himself
consciously. But if man is also body, this means that he is subdued to the natural law of the strongest, so he
could hurt someone to preserve himself. The problem of the evil comes in for the first time, since a subject
cannot hurt himself consciously, but he can hurt another man for preserving himself. This has an essential
consequence for freedom, because knowing how freedom works is not enough for being free. Now we also
need to preserve this freedom from the ones that threaten it. This is the reason why the second Hersch
investigates the intersubjective freedom between 1950 and 2000.

Politics has always been an important part of Hersch’s life since she was a child, because it is the means
through which man can work in the reality on the human conditions of life, so she tries to offer a first
theoretical analysis in Idéologies et réalité. Politics is born when man recognises the component of evil that
lives in him and decides to control it. This happens historically when the king understands that he is not a
transcendent institution and that he needs someone who can judge what he does. In this sense, Hersch
says that politics is the use of power to prevent a personal bad use of force. Since the natural instinct is so
strong, the threaten of evil is always real, even for a politician, so it is essential to find an institution that let
human satisfy his body, still recognising also his soul and his need of freedom. The tough fight to evil
through power is the only way that human can choose. This realistic analysis leads Hersch to say that the
two biggest enemies of good politics are the angelism, which renounces to politics in order to avoid evil,
and the totalitarian ideologies, which give safe and objective answers but sacrifice the human freedom,
turning the political power in a public and legit use of the force. At the end of this reflection, we can find a
third type of freedom, the political freedom, which is the duty of preserving in the social dimension a void
space that every citizen will fulfil with his existential and ontological freedom.

Thinking at The Metaphysics of Morals from Kant, this negative duty of not invading the void space of
political freedom seems a large duty of virtue and it is maybe too weak for assuring the preservation of the
subjective freedom from the natural instinct and the temptation of totalitarian ideologies. In order to reach
her goal, Hersch should add a strict duty, a positive ground for finding a shelter in case of danger or doubt.
The difficulty is to find this universal ground, still preserving the possibility of a free action. The Ginevean
finds the solution through human rights.

Between 1966 and 1968 she is at the head of philosophy division of UNESCO and she collects traditional
fragments about freedom from all over the world. The result is Le droit d’être un homme, the
demonstration that man has had the fundamental exigence of freedom in every time and in every place.
There have been different definitions and declinations of freedom, but the human dignity of choosing freely
is a universal ground of human. Every man wants to be recognised in his ability of choosing a fundamental
exigence – the simple gesture of L’illusion philosophique – and examples like Antigone or Solzhenitsyn show
that we even prefer dying than living without recognition. As it is said in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, every man is born free and with the same dignity or rights, but we always try to find some
exceptions or shortcuts and this is the reason why the Declaration is needed. Hersch defines the
Declaration as the incarnation of the practical reason and after it, it is impossible to not consider human
rights seriously. We have to give importance to this detail: Hersch has given only one demonstration in her
thought, since she prefer to show things rather than demonstrating them. But in this case there is too much
at stake, so she needs to preserve human rights from irrationalism through the results of Le droit d’être un
homme, in order to give a universal ground to her whole thought and to find a proper weapon to defend
human freedom. In a globalised world in which pluralism has permeated every aspect of common life, man
is still able to find an anthropological unity behind pluralities. Now that she has demonstrated that the
absolute exigence of freedom is the ground of human and she has understood how this freedom works in
her first studies, she can say something positive about the best way for preserving it.

First of all, in order to reflect on human rights, a détour philosophique is needed. Going on with the
considerations about the double nature of human, if we want to find something more than the large duty
of political freedom, it is essential to find the right point of view. Since freedom is not a natural datum and
it is about giving a subjective meaning beyond the natural horizon, a pure realism that considers only the
data and an angelism that does not accept to have a body cannot speak of human rights. The realist
existentialism of Hersch opts instead for a philosophical turn that takes a longer way and always looks to
the lived practice on one side and to the theoretical ground on the other side, while going straight ahead
towards the enhancement of new possibilities of freedom for every man through human rights. Knowing
what happens in reality and what must be in theory, the subject of the philosophical turn can take seriously
the danger of the evil and make order or clarify the different situations that threaten the human. Since
human rights, as politics, row against the current of the nature, the philosophical turn becomes the right
point of view for not giving in to the natural temptation and conceiving human rights as the categorical
imperative and the procedural theory for politics.

At the end of the Herschian path, it is clear that man cannot be only free, because this would not be
enough and his freedom could be threatened and denied. Since man is not alone and he can realistically
give in to the evil for preserving his body, he must be both free and responsible. Only in this way, the
human realisation in an existence can be finally reached and protected. Through human rights, we find a
fourth freedom, the most important one, because it adds something to the self-realisation through
existential and ontological freedom and it becomes a reference for political freedom. This fourth type is
called responsible freedom, because it is about the duty of actualising an existence through existential and
ontological freedom while respecting the possibility of actualisation of the others. Now, the subject of the
first Hersch has to find his simple gesture and to build his existence on it, remembering that this simple
gesture is not an objective truth and that he has to leave some space to the freedom of the other.
Responsible freedom leads to the two principles of human rights: the not owned transcendence and the
absolute decision of the other. Both this two principles mean that the most important act of faith in an
existence is towards human, so we all have to find our absolute exigence, but this exigence is absolute only
for us, and it cannot touch the absolute exigence of the other. In this sense, human rights teach tolerance,
for the tolerant person fights for his ideas, still remembering that the value of the human dignity of the
other comes before every idea. On the other side, a freedom that actualises his simple gesture without
being responsible leads to fundamentalisms, when the enemy loses his dignity and his rights.

One last thing must be added, before concluding. When one understands the dignity of the other,
respecting it is not enough and he feels that his existence has to pass for the real promotion of the other’s
possibility of being free. There are particular situations in which being free is more difficult or impossible, so
the responsible freedom has to find his way for always promoting three types of human rights: the
elementary, civil and political rights, which forbidden the use of the force against one’s free expression; the
economic and social rights, which try to ensure a margin of security and the satisfaction of all biological
needs in every citizen, for increasing the possibilities of developing human soul and freedom; the cultural
rights, which allow man to improve his responsible freedom, because, for being free, man must live the
space of the world, learn his culture and get in touch with the other, have a free time for experiencing
freedom.

So, in conclusion, what rights need to be human?

Firstly, the awareness that man is made up of body and soul. The soul has the exigence of being free and
the body has the exigence of being preserved also using the force. The beast lives only a biology and not an
existence, while the angel does not recon the body and his needs. For being men, we have to understand
our real nature, to take seriously and face the threat of evil.

Secondly, the reflection on what being free means. With the responsible freedom, being free is the
possibility of actualizing a personal existence and the duty preserving this possibility to the others. This is
the goal that Hersch reaches at the end of her path: moving from the free fundamental exigence, she forces
to go to the root, without forcing to any specific root. In other words, freedom becomes the only possible
universal and yet free ground, a necessité conditionelle that gives a starting point to every human, while
letting him to write his favourite end.

Thirdly, linked to the previous point, the promotion of the right use of freedom. The existential freedom
teaches us that human existence is autonomous, but responsible freedom adds that it is not self-
determined. Responsibility limits freedom, so a subject must find his free way while being tolerant, through
the principles of the not owned transcendence and the absolute decision of the other.

Fourthly, the need of a détour philosophique, which knows that we can be human only being free, but being
free means that everything is a mix of two or more pure principles and there is no fixed answer. So, as long
as we want to be considered human, we have to always face life giving a personal meaning to it. This is the
dignity that human rights have to preserve for every real man.

Fifthly, the right point of view. Starting from human nature, one can only reach human rights and not
universal rights. So the power of these rights is ethical and not juridical. Hersch adds something to Kant for
the kingdom of ends leaves the noumenon and finds a place in the phenomenon. Human rights are not a
fixed duty but rather a daily, personal experience, the wonder for the dignity of the other that we want to
preserve, to discover, to enhance in always new ways, day by day.