Let us begin by reviewing once again the three levels of freedom introduced in the first lecture above.

The first level is to choose as I want. It is related epistemologically to empirical or sense knowledge, which concerns material things and presents only their surface or external characteristics. Here the choice is between contraries. Further as material things cannot be possessed by more than one person at a time, the basis is laid for conflict in the search for these possessions. This has been the history of wars in the past in search of land or resources.

The second level of freedom is that found in Kant; it is the freedom to choose as I ought or should. It is ruled by the categorical imperative, the formal law to act in such a way as one would want others to act in relation to oneself. This is a universal formal law; it does not take account of the concrete, the personal, or the motivation to act.

The third level regards the free exercise of existence in building one’s life. This was the concern of the previous lecture. This is shaped more stably into values, virtues and cultural traditions. This is one’s life project which one undertakes in relation to others.

To test these levels of freedom one might consider marriage. Is marriage a loss of freedom or its real engagement. One moves beyond the first level of freedom as choice between partners, but there emerges definitive personal commitment. In fact our life begins not with the period of adolescence in which one is simply making acquaintances with all kinds of people, but at the point at which we engage our freedom with another as a project to be lived through difficulties and triumphs. That is the point at which one commits one’s existence freely and definitively in a life project and begins to engage all of one’s competencies toward its successful realization.

What is then the relation between the first and the third level of freedom, or of the first and the second with the third? Is it that one gives up the first when one undertakes the third or does this give to the first (the choices) their definitive significance. The danger is that we may take the first level of freedom and, in order to protect that, exclude the second sense of acting according to patterns of moral laws, and the third level of freedom which consists in definitive commitment and consistent mobilization and application of my person with its concerns and resources.

This should include and inspire the earlier two levels of freedom. If the opposite proves true, whereby one of the earlier levels dominates and controls the third level then one is being subjected to an ideology as was the case in the Cold War either of capitalism when the first level is dominant, or of communism when the second level dominates. The Cold War was essentially a competition between the two in which the person was suppressed. Hence, if now we emerge from that period and are intent on restoring socially the exercise of the third level of freedom then the task is the establishment of civil society.

In the situation of the development of a new nation, one has new possibilities for freedom and there is a great challenge to understand how these different notions of freedom can come together and reinforce one another. As this is very much a philosophical problem, work in philosophy is particularly crucial in the development of new nations with a new sense of freedom.

This lecture concerns civil society as a mode of realizing freedom especially in need of development in our times. We are now at a point of great change from the earlier part of this century when life was coordinated by the systems of fascism, communism and capitalism. We have seen the end of fascism and communism, and there is a sense that capitalism has been so conflictual that it threatens to establish a new form of domination of the economically strong or aggressive over the whole world. Now new attention is paid to minorities, to women, to the environment and to culture; conflict and exploitation are rejected. Socially this coalesces in the development of what is referred to as civil society, that is, not a hegemony of the political order or state, and not of the economy, but active participation by groupings of people in their own particular spheres of interest and competency.

The importance of this was brought to attention by Chinese philosophers just after a discussion of their newly emergent market economy. If the market economy was not to be a jumble of attacks of one against the other, there was need for some direction and orientation. However, were this to come simply from the state, one returned to state centralization. Hence, one needed something beyond the state and the economy in order to provide coordination and direction to the working of the market and the broader society.

In other words, to have only the political order, with its tendencies to increased centralization and bureaucratization, does not favor the freedom of the people. But if one passes from that to the economic order one is subjected to even more impersonal, if not blind, economic laws. What is important is that the people of a country come together with their particular interests and competencies — for instance, those who are engaged in education as parents with teachers, or those who know health care with those who are concerned about it for their parents. Whether on issues of labor or health, religion or education, people need to come together and exercise a voice in relation to the political and economic order, not as opponents, but rather as dialogical partners.

In order to sort out what is involved in this I would like to turn to Aristotle who is called "The Philosopher" because he developed logic and hence was able first to organize knowledge into the pattern of scientific reasoning with the concomitant control and certitude. He distinguished the speculative sciences, such as physics, in which the principles are in the object from the practical sciences, such as ethics, where the principles are in the subject. Our attention here will be on ethics as a practical science. We will focus not so much on ethics as a discussion of the personal exercise of freedom, but on its extension into politics as the social or community exercise of freedom. The heart of this is governance in, of and by the community.

Here the key notion is arché, the Greek term for beginning, origin or source. Being the arché of action is the essence of the exercise of human freedom as governance in the political order. As source it is not determined by anything prior; though effected by the circumstances it is not necessitated by anything else. It is the initiation of human action and the determination of its nature. In this sense we can speak of governance as "authorship", the author being the source of a work. This, in turn, entails responsibility as an implication of being the source of an action.

There are a number of ways of misinterpretating this. Given the modern concern for power as control of life we think of authority too often in terms of suppression of others. Thus, authority comes to be seen as a negation of freedom. This, in turn, invites an-archy as the rejection of authority. The notion of the arché as source and responsibility should imply rather the promotion of people’s freedom (as we shall see in the notion of subsidiarity).

There is another way of misinterpreting this which would seem to be found in Aristotle himself. In speaking of the best form of government, he affirms this to be oligarchy, that is, rule by the few who are supposed to be rich and therefore less impelled to exploit the people.

In the next chapter — which may not have been written in sequence — he seems to correct that by saying that there is a way in which the broad populace could be engaged in governance, that is, provided the governance is done not for personal gain but for the common good. Thus, concern for the common good becomes the condition for the broad participation in governance that is central to democracy. For Aristotle, effective democracy is not a matter of conflicted self-interest, but of cooperation for the common good.

Other factors are important for the implementation of freedom as civil society; one is solidarity and the other is subsidiarity. If in thinking of civil society one begins from the notion of arché as responsible governance, it becomes necessary next to recognize the many people who are engaged. When to freedom is added the multiplicity of persons in the group one has the notion of solidarity as many unite for the effective exercise of their responsible freedom.

Some would like to understand solidarity as being adequately provided for by a legal or formal framework. But if freedom is the active exercise of a person’s existence it must be much more than an external formal structure. It is rather interaction in the exercise of freedom by a people or a group. This must not simply be conflict, but must engage the cooperative initiative of the people. It can set them in a certain sense of emulation — one trying to do as well or better than the other; but conflict tends to negate or paralyze constructive action. Solidarity bespeaks cooperation rather than competition, and especially rather than conflict.

This is not merely a technique for external cooperation toward practical or utilitarian goals, but an issue of what we are as persons and peoples, and it is particularly related to the history and traditions of Uzbekistan and Central Asia. Looking back into the history of the traditions of that people one finds in its Zoroastrian base a firm sense of unity. The way in which unity could be lived in freedom was fundamentally enriched by the Christian Fathers during the four centuries prior to Islam. Their reasoning proceeded along two paths, one philosophical and the other theological. Philosophically they noted, prior to Plotinus, that since all was under the dominion of God matter could not be simply supposed as had the Greeks, but needed its own explanation. This meant that the basic philosophical issue was made more radical. It was no longer how forms were had by matter. Rather if even matter depended upon God for its reality, whether in or beyond time, then the issue was the very existence of all and anything, whether matter, form or the synolon (union) of the two. In this light a new sense of human persons emerged: they were created by God and in his image; they exist in their own right with their own freedom and dignity; and they are bound together in the unity of children of God on a pilgrimage toward reunion in love with their one source and goal. For a human the responsible exercise of one’s existence was the basic issue.

Later it was the genius of Ibn Sina of the region of Uzbekistan to employ the structures of Greek thought carrying forward work on the meaning of existence for the constitution and execution of human life. On this combined Greek, Christian and Islamic basis the existential reality of freedom could be richly articulated. After the Munqid of al-Ghazali, the Greek heritage and the systematic work of Ibn Sina was continued by Western Christian scholars rather than in the East. A century and a half later Thomas Aquinas took up the issue and by working out the relation of existence and essence as act and potency made it possible to solidify work out systematically the philosophy of the free exercise of existence. Attention to this philosophy was renewed in Catholic circles by Pope Leo XIII later in the 19th century in the face of the emerging totalitarian systems which were soon to suppress freedom even to the extreme of genocide.

One element was still lacking. The previous work had been objective in character. The human subject was the observer and what was observed was carefully noted and systematized. What was not focused upon was the subjectivity of the observer, that is, human consciousness itself and its free exercise. This required entering into the self in order to be aware of how we perceive life and internally initiate, shape and direct our actions. For this a new method was needed, which came to be called phenomenology, as the way of bringing to light the interior human consciousness. Phenomenology as developed during the 1930s could provide a way to bring the Uzbek heritage to bear on the new problems of its people. That heritage of Zoroastrian unity, Christian existence and Avicennian system which had been exported to the West, integrated and systematized by Aquinas, came together in Poland and thence returned geopolitically in the form of the new independence of Uzbekistan. The way in which this happened is the history of how the notion of solidarity, built upon the Uzbek components described above, returned to set free Uzbekistan and the other newly independent states of Central Asia. This happened as follows.

One is familiar with the term "solidarity" through the Polish term solidarnosc. This reflects the philosophical work of Cardinal Wojtyla in Krakow who now is the Pope in Rome. He had been trained in the existential philosophy of Thomas Aquinas in Rome and was much impressed by the work in phenomenology of his compatriot Roman Ingarden. As Cardinal, Karol Wojtyla spent extended time each morning writing on the philosophy of the person and of solidarity, considering, as he told me, that the only way to overcome the repressive character of the Marxism was to develop a better philosophical anthropology — a better sense of the freedom of the person and of how this is exercised in community. The surprise came in the middle of the 1970s when the situation was most repressive in Eastern Europe: Cardinal Wojtyla from the middle of Soviet Empire was elected to be Pope of the universal Church. It was the first time in 400 years that a non-Italian had been chosen for this post. Within two years, the next time there was a labor dispute in Poland, a movement was formed called, not incidentally, Solidarnosc. Immediately, the intellectuals, workers and farmers joined solidarity, which became the mass movement of the country. During the following ten years the government first declared martial law and then offered various concessions to the people, some of them very good. All were refused on one principle, namely, that for the government to give something to the people does not respect their dignity. The people must be part of the decision making process. Finally, in 1988 the government agreed to have a conference in which Solidarnosc would be a participant in order to work out the future of the country.

When they began to discuss how the conference would be held, however, the idea of the government was the standard long table with the government in one side and solidarity representing the people in the other. But that would mean that the people were petitioners before a government which controlled all. Soledarnosc insisted that the table be round so that all were present as Poles exercising their responsible freedom as citizens for the common good of the country. Hence, those meetings came to be called the "round table" talks. In them it was decided that there would be an election, the first free election in Central and Eastern Europe since World War II. Held in the summer of 1989, this unclenched a dramatic sequence of national changes throughout the region. Within six months East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Bulgaria, all had declared their independence. Two years later the same was true of Uzbekistan, the Central Asian Republics and even Russia.

It would be possible to go further into the long background of this sense of existence and freedom, the importance of such philosophers of Uzbekistan as Ibn Sina in that development and the challenge for Uzbek philosophers in our day. Indeed, doing so is the major task of Uzbek philosophers for their people as for the world in our times.

The other notion essential to civil society is subsidiarity. From the viewpoint of objective structures this should mean that the smaller units helped the larger unit. In fact, subsidiarity means the opposite, that is, that the larger unit has as its major concern to help the smaller units to exercise their creative freedom. Here the entire perspective evidently has shifted to the subjectivity and freedom as an exercise of uniquely personal human wills.

If there are many groups (solidarities) there is need for a process of coordination by which their efforts are brought into relation one with another. Unfortunately, the drive to simplify and to control generates a tendency for the larger group to take all of the decision making authority to itself instead of leaving that to the differentiated initiative of the various smaller groups.

The notion of subsidiarity is rather that the higher should take only that authority which is necessary in order to promote the activity and engagement of the smaller groups. This means bringing the whole country alive with all of its various competencies and interests and to engage all of that in the national life. The deleterious effect of central planning was that it did not encourage the engagement of the people, so that in the end they were not able to take care of themselves. The sense of subsidiarity, on the contrary, is to enliven and promote the responsible and creative freedom of all the people.

This notion of subsidiarity was developed in the Catholic Church earlier in this century in response to the developing totalitarian orientations of Fascism and Marxism. Until recently, it was found only in the Catholic social teaching and encyclicals. With the development of the European Union, however, it became necessary to theorize the character of the cooperation of the European states as sovereign but within the unity that is Europe. For this Jacques Delors took the term and philosophy of subsidiarity from the Catholic documents and developed them as the philosophy of the European Union. Accordingly, the Union does not supplant France, Germany and England, but rather becomes a context within which they can thrive or live more fully and cooperate more effectively. A development of these matters with references can be found in the work of Carlos Maldonado, Civil Society, Solidarity and Subsidiarity, in this series (Washington: The Council for Research in Vales and Philosophy, 1997).

In Catholic doctrine subsidiarity is built upon the notion of all persons as created in the image of God, on which basis they have their own proper dignity and freedom, which is to be recognized by all.

Two subsidiary notes: first Heidegger speaks of being thrown into existence without our will. This is characteristic of the existential philosophers and can be understood in different ways, namely, negatively as ignoring our will or positively as the gift to us of our will. Positively, we are thrown not just into a jungle or an environment, but into a world with a language, social system and culture. This is our inheritance. For Heidegger the big question becomes our project: as something which is cast, thrown or propelled ahead (etymologically: pro for ahead; and ject for thrown). What we do with that existence, how we exercise and direct it is the distinctive work of our responsible freedom — which is the specific focus of these lectures.

Second, while responsibility means also willingness to follow the national coordination of the leader, subsidiarity means that the leader can best exercise his or her leadership through promoting the freedom and creative responsibility of the people in their different groups for the different sectors of national life. For instance my sister, Agnes, is a teacher in kindergarten. She belongs to a union of teachers. No legislation regarding education can be made in Washington without consultation with her national association of teachers.

We need to work together under the leadership of the nation, but the particular contribution of civil society is that it enables the insights, competencies and initiatives of the people in their different spheres to be nurtured, harvested and applied.

My sister’s complaint about her union is that often it is too much concerned about the teacher, and not enough about the educational welfare of the students. We must then have better people; structure alone will not suffice. It is necessary to develop a more vivid sense of service and of the common good. For this there is need to reground the structures of civil society in the responsible freedom, values and traditions of the people in a way that is creative and progressive. This will be the subject of the next lecture.