Freedom and Error

The text, Freedom and Error, aims to present an original conception of freedom by relating it to the phenomenon of error. While it is clear that freedom and error must have a close correlation, the present formulation shows that our capacity to err conditions our freedom. In other words, extending our horizon of possibility to err just is the horizon of our freedom. To make this argument requires a careful reinterpretation of the phenomenon of error, which will elucidate its basic structures and conditions of possibility. Through critical interpretations of some of the historical accounts of error within the philosophical tradition, Freedom and Error undertakes to systematically account for the very possibility of error, without relying on metaphysical assumptions regarding truth, knowledge, or reality. The basic problem of error’s possibility must be extricated from the dominance by its binary opposite—truth—and seen rather as constituting at once the disclosure of our limitations as well as an opening toward their transcendence. To err, a being like us must first strive toward some projected possibility as if it were understood, then realize that their understanding was not what they originally thought, and lastly begin interpreting the meaning of this error, since what appears initially is the mere incongruence between intentions and their realization. Because error requires that we convince ourselves we understand something that we do not, the structure of error contains a basic form of self-deception—taking something as if it were given even though it is not because of our desires to believe that it is. What the investigation of the possibility of errors and its relation to self-deception in Freedom and Error ultimately shows is that freedom ought to be understood as the historically unfolding experience of erring regarding ourselves and our existence through elaborate self-deceptions. With each error forming upon previous ones, we throw ourselves beyond the immanent limits of our possibilities, and thereby transcend them. Our freeing of ourselves is therefore this indirect opening of possibilities of being; by deceiving ourselves, we err beyond ourselves toward disclosure of originary possibilities.