Theory & Event

Kennan Ferguson has set his sights on a seemingly impossible task— namely, the destruction of the core concept championed by modern philosophers and subsequently taken mostly for granted by contemporary ones: freedom. In its stead, he would have us adopt a most noble sounding alternative—debt—and has set to work shaking freedom at its roots at the same time that he articulates the value of debt as foundational for human flourishing. In my response to Ferguson’s efforts, I will put forth several considerations in defense of freedom and a few concerns regarding debt. I like debt—really, I do—but I do not think it performs the work Ferguson would like it to. Perhaps ironically, I take the focus on debt to be making important contributions to theories of freedom: it shows us how essential acknowledging our indebtedness to others is in formulating sound concepts of freedom. In other words, debt is not freedom’s opposite, but rather it is its descriptive precondition.

Ferguson wants us to reconsider notions of freedom that have at their center the requirement that we be unencumbered individuals. We must have autonomy of thought, and of action, and of course, we must have bodily autonomy. Freedom’s insistence on autonomy is, broadly speaking, its fundamental flaw. It’s fundamental in the sense that the conceptions and debates around what constitutes freedom rarely if ever question the centrality of autonomy for any purpose other than to figure out how to advance it and, in the process, suggest that impediments to it are, somehow, indicators of oppression and injustice. They are impediments to be overcome, and transgressions on our autonomy are to be understood as just that. And as Ferguson further suggests, the only reasonable way to explain how we arrived at such a narrow understanding of freedom is to look at who the producers of such narratives are and to name them as he does, “white, male, Western, financially secure, cosmopolitan, [and] independent.”¹

And with all of this, I agree. What I appreciate and value about this aspect of Ferguson’s work is that he plainly and unapologetically refutes the centrality of autonomy as a useful foundation upon which to construct any meaningful concept of freedom for anyone who does not share a position akin to its producers. But if the problem is reflected in the positionality of the authors of these theories, throwing freedom [End Page 592] out is not necessarily the prescription. Much as I design my ideas of what constitutes freedom, or rights, or autonomy around what knowledge and lived experience I have access to, so too do others. For me, freedom is not the aspiration to be an independent, unencumbered individual. Acknowledging and embracing the debts—the condition of mutual indebtedness, as Ferguson refers to it—can and should be the precondition of any sound theory of freedom; these are not exclusive concepts that work in opposite directions.

I am reticent about throwing out freedom just because its origin story and development leaves much to be desired and at the same time I support Ferguson’s efforts to uncouple freedom from atomized individualism. Of course, this problem is not just limited to concepts of freedom. It is embedded in the history and ideas of how we think about what constitutes rationality, reasonableness, and responsibility, and it structures our expectations of what individuals will do and how they will do it. Work, for example, is one of the most obvious contexts in which atomized individualism fails to account for the actual social relations we exist in and which shows the potential detriment and harm that having such a concept can have on those of us who cannot pragmatically isolate ourselves from our social context. The noteworthy efforts of the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective (MWBC) in moving forward and away from individualism by centering theories of freedom on personal relationships, social relations, and lived experiences is precisely the kind of acknowledgment of indebtedness we need to inform theories of freedom. As Ferguson suggests, the MWBC evidences the impact individualist theories have on anyone not sharing the same social or political standing. Theories...