A dialogue with professor Claudio Pavone. He has been a lecturer in contemporary history for many years at the University of Pisa. Il Grillo (16/May/2000).
COMMENTATOR: Freedom and history have a very difficult relationship. Historical processes are the result of everyone’s choices, or they are produced by internal necessity, starting from given conditions. To what extent is the single will the product of the history that precedes it? Freedom and history seem, on the one hand, to be distinct concepts, while, on the other, they seem to pass into one another. History appears as the product of freedom, while individual choices seem the consequence of the history that precedes them. Like freedom, history has two sides. History is the ultimate result of all the actions we give a name to, such as the French Revolution or the Protestant Reformation, but it is also a set of autonomous actions, differing in purpose and motivation. The Parisians who took the Bastille did not think they were doing what historians now call the French Revolution. Being free seems undeniable evidence to us who act, while to an external observer our actions may seem predictable, mere consequences of the character and historical circumstances. Thus the French Revolution would not have been possible without the philosophy of the Enlightenment, without the progress of trade and without a new idea of freedom and a new sense of history. If we look at freedom as individuals acting in a certain era, this freedom seems to us an asset to defend. As individuals, we know that freedom can be taken away from us. How much the single individual will can affect historical processes. Can there be an education for freedom?
QUESTION N.1
STUDENT: Since man is truly free from birth until he is subjected to the conditioning of history and education, how can we speak of freedom and education to freedom if, on the other hand, education itself is conditioned by history?
PAVONE: This question refers to the two ways in which freedom can be understood: the freedom of the individual as indifference to everything, and freedom as a way of building one’s attitude towards life and the world. It seems to me that you have the suspicion that education limits freedom. Freedom reflects a way of conceiving and respecting the other, but also a way of learning to know oneself, of asking questions and knowing how to answer them, understanding that in every situation you can choose different ways of action. Freedom has a meaning only if the ability to understand the variety of choices offered in life matures in the individual. Freedom precisely concerns the freedom of choice between the various alternatives that are offered in history and in life. You have here in your room some objects that “symbolize” some “historical” moments of freedom, such as the image of the “nation” and freedom personified by Marianna in that “commemorative” painting on the French Revolution, or like the famous “painting” “by Pablo Picasso entitled to the massacre of the Basque town of Guernica, bombed and destroyed by the German air force during the” Spanish civil war “on April 26, 1937. In both pictorial contexts there are motifs of tension to freedom” symbolized “for the precisely by female figures.
QUESTION 2
STUDENT: I just wanted to know why the idea of freedom is associated with women.
PAVONE: It’s not very clear to me either. It could be argued that they portray a belated compensation due to women, who historically enjoyed less freedom than men. Hence the woman “symbol” of freedom. Another key to understanding is what the woman wants, as she who loves and is less conditioned than man by institutions, a “symbol” that pertains to freedom as a “rupture” of what everyone, men, and women, they would like to fight, and as “independence” with respect to norms and rules.
QUESTION 3
STUDENT: Don’t you think that this is to “symbolize” rather a form of redemption that women demand from society?
PAVONE: Undoubtedly, I believe that it is a form of redemption, more or less implicit or conscious. Generally, the image of the “nation” and its freedom is embodied more by a woman than by a man.
QUESTION 4
STUDENT: In my opinion the relationship that exists between freedom and history is more appropriately translated with the term “choice”. It is the “choice” that makes man totally free. But isn’t freedom reduced to being a pious “illusion” given that the “choice” is understood as the fruit of the historical events that determined it?
PAVONE: I believe that the “choice” must always take place between two or more “concrete” alternatives. The conditions that then lead to one type of “choice” rather than another are always dictated by the historical situation. Following the armistice signed by Marshal Badoglio coBadoglio with the Allies and made public on 8 September 1943, the Italians found themselves, due to a historical condition, faced with a “choice” that was by no means “abstract”: it was a matter of deciding whether to side with the Germans and with the Fascists, or oppose them. Only from this emerges and exasperates the sense of freedom, because it is undoubtedly a “choice” to be made and which will entail certain consequences.
QUESTION 5
STUDENT: According to Hegel, revolutions start with thought. In your opinion, how much did the revolution depend on the thinking of the people, and how much not on the thought and freedom of action of those who led it?
PAVONE: The people include the most and least educated people. The people are the masses. At the time of the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, most citizens were illiterate. In those cases, the “choices” were precisely more political and intellectual, and therefore taken by an elite. This does not mean that the “choices”, only because they are taken by a minority of men, are not taken for granted by others or instead do not fall into thin air. If the words uttered by the “enlightenment” during the French Revolution or the Bolsheviks during the first years of the Russian revolution were heard, it is because they were able to interpret what people, even uneducated, or at least less cultured, felt inside themselves. Now look at this second video contribution.
See this dialogue:
MAN: I killed early. I killed after ten days, or fifteen, I do not remember … I saw a …, a figure like this, in the dark, with a long coat, I bent down, I got a burst of …, maybe seventy bullets, that touched my forehead. So, with a hand grenade, like that, I threw a hand grenade. We found a boy, perhaps eighteen years old, lying on his back, looking …, looking at the sky. I remember that we all looked at him, just like you look at one of our dead, really. I had come out of that experience with …, weakened, evidently, I didn’t believe …, I thought I no longer believed in human values, and so on. It was … I joined the Resistance because in the Resistance I felt, just by instinct, I felt like … to find a war against the war, in short. After all, the Resistance meant this to me.
PAVONE: Maybe some of you have read Nuto Revelli’s book The war of the poor. It tells of a former fighter of the ARMIR troops and veteran of the great “retreat” of Russia who later joins nuclei of partisans fighting in the Resistance, which is precisely that “war against war”. The image that comes out of the “dead enemies”, “enemies” up to the moment they were fired at, is human and moving. It speaks of the inexorability that follows from freedom of choice and that somehow reunites “friends” and “enemies”. It is said that only dead men are the same, so much so that alive they fought with each other.
QUESTION 6
STUDENT: In your opinion, are the “myths” of progress and science that make man the ruler of the world, if not the universe, and who therefore see him in his full freedom?
PAVONE: Currently it is debated whether progress represented a “myth” or whether it was a “real” phenomenon. I would tend to consider the whole “ideology” of progress a mistake if we consider that history can only be a history “towards progress”. Progress, like science, obeys a straight path: both indicate an evolution, a development, an improvement. History, especially that of the twentieth century, has shown that through progress man can move forward or even regress. This is the fatality of progress as an infallible product of history. “Positive” progress and science imply the legitimate human aspiration to get better, both morally and materially, as well as the results that follow. This does not mean that neither progress nor science vaccinates man against the risk of possible regression.
QUESTION 7
STUDENT: The necessary events, which are the basis of the story, should not, however, limit man’s ability to progress.
PAVONE: We need to see what is meant by “necessary”. There is absolutely nothing in history of “necessary” in an “absolute” sense. It is men who make history, with a concurrence of individual choices and the will of “enlightened” leadership groups, or assumed to be such, which influence the rest of the population. If anything, there were things in past dictatorships which, as they accumulated, made it increasingly difficult to do or think of different ones. Democratic regimes of today offer a greater choice between different options. The subjects are less conditioned and follow the tendencies, even of thought, that they most desire. I would say that the increase in choice is a small form of progress.
QUESTION 8
STUDENT: Throughout history there has always been someone to lead the crowds. Once in power, this someone denied the same ideals of freedom that he used to defend. In your opinion, why does this happen?
PAVONE: This happened because these ruling elites, in terms of legitimate aspirations, were too far ahead of the people they intended to bring to the fore. To maintain their power over a people that did not fully correspond, these elites ended up conditioning them also by force, first eliminating the opponents as did Josef Stalin, whose first victims were the Bolsheviks of the “old guard”. This trend refers to the typical problem of modern “industrial” societies which, as they progress, become more complex in terms of governability. Relations between the various social classes and groups are becoming more difficult, and it is increasingly difficult to find an element of power there. No revolution has so far succeeded in eliminating the tendency to power. Anarchism was perhaps the only one, among the various political doctrines, to still believe in a society without a state, and in the absence of any “form” of “organized power”. The “anarchist” doctrines posed themselves as a radical rejection of the capitalist economic system and its state organization made up of “administrations”, “armies” and “courts”. Kropotkin said that “much of the order that reigns among men is not the effect of government. It has its origins in the principles of society and in the natural constitution of men”. We know this is a utopia, since so far no revolution has managed to achieve it. Then the problem of power returns. The exercise of power brings back within itself all the problems attached to “forms”, and to the relationship between the “absoluteness” of a tyrannical power and that of a democratic power and therefore of a control of the representatives of the people by the people themselves.
QUESTION 9
STUDENT: In this case it becomes almost an obligation to renounce one’s own ideologies?
PAVONE: I would say the opposite. Those who, having come to power following a revolution that was conducted in the name of freedoms, renounce their ideology do themselves and others a wrong, but do not respond to an obligation. Probably they do it because they are not up to the situation that has arisen or because the historical situation itself did not allow it. What is more controversial than seeing the three words Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, which made the French Revolution famous and represented at the same time, now stand out on the building of the Paris Stock Exchange, the least egalitarian institution you can imagine?
QUESTION 10
STUDENT: You said a while ago that history follows a path towards progress, a straight path …
PAVONE: I didn’t say it does it straight. I said that it would be a mistake to consider progress a straight path always, and that it does not know for this reason any possible “regresses”. This does not mean that there are progresses that must be achieved from time to time and that we must ensure that they are not, so to speak, “eaten back” by history.
QUESTION 11
STUDENT: The story appears to our eyes “dialectic”, for its continuous succession of events, and therefore for its continuous progress. How should we consider this history, precisely “dialectic”, regarding those “primitive” peoples for which it seems to have stopped at that of a distant time?
PAVONE: Perhaps you are referring to the problem that has arisen with “multiculturalism” and to the respect we owe to these populations anyway. There are many problems that arise in the relationship between the purely “Western” point of view and that of these cultures, somehow enclosed within themselves. These relationships bring out the “Western” one as the only model of culture that can be exported to the world, precisely because it is always evolving.
The West is making itself strong in this of its evolution in everything, economically, technically, as well as culturally. This has produced in the past the expansion and domination of Europe over the other continents with the policy aimed at “colonialism”. Precisely the effects of “colonialism” have accentuated, if ever it were necessary, the difference between the typically “Western” conception of civil and cultural development and true progress. In respect of the various cultures, however, it is necessary to guarantee the protection of freedoms and civilization, also fighting ancient practices in use in primitive peoples such as that of “infibulation”, whether imported or carried out in the countries of origin. I repeat, always with respect for the individual, and never in flogging or mistreatment. It is necessary to make the individual understand that those practices go against the healthiest principles of civilization.
QUESTION 12
STUDENT: Given that the concept of freedom has progressed throughout history, how should we imagine our future? A future in which men use their freedom to live better together or a future in which freedom is in chaos?
PAVONE: Everyone hopes that freedom creates feeling better instead of chaos! The man who is convinced that he is immune from the risk of misusing his freedom is wrong. Where there is more freedom, much more self-criticism is needed, much more ability to understand what the risks and counter-risks are associated with using it. Freedom is not guaranteed to anyone, nor to the individual, nor to the collectively, much less to humanity as a whole.
QUESTION No. 13
STUDENT: We have established that history conditions man’s choices and freedom, but also that history must teach us not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Doesn’t it seem to you that the uproar aroused by Haider’s party in Austria revives certain atmospheres from Hitler’s times?
PAVONE: There is never a final goal of freedom and democracy, or of greater civilization. The risk of going back is always around the corner. Even St. Peter denied Jesus Christ in the Garden of Olives. Every man can deny everything, from one moment to the next. We need to be humbler when we criticize the mistakes of others. There has always been a “pro-Nazi” undergrowth in some strips of Austria, from the 1938 Anschluss to Germany, following the invasion of Hitler’s German troops. The “extremist” party of Haider, governor of Carinthia, gaining support in his own region, has done nothing but break this fifty-year hypocrisy. It is true that in Austria the tendency to see an “inferior race” in immigrants is frighteningly expanding, and especially in immigrants of color or from Eastern Europe, former socialist. Haider is in debt when he revives certain nostalgia for Nazism, simply by transferring one way of considering the other to entire populations, which at this moment are the weakest and most in disrepair, as in his time Hitler did with the Jews.
QUESTION No. 14
STUDENT: What value does “fate” have in history, in your opinion?
PAVONE: Fate for the ancient Greeks was the god of Destiny to whom Zeus also subjected. Later the will of God, the will of Providence, was associated with the concept of “destiny”. Finally, “positivist” scientists have called it the “law of history”, meaning that the will impressed on history was not the “blind” one of “destiny” but the “positive” one of scientific laws. After all, this was nothing more than a secularistic reading of the previous interpretations. Even today, because of the “slags” of a certain determinism made by atomic physics, we are witnessing the struggle for the survival of the fittest, which is a kind of “social Darwinism”. In every situation, even the worst, the human being remains capable of doing something different and exercising his freedom, even at the cost of horrendous sacrifices and very hard struggles, and with the risk of succumbing, like all those who are. fallen in the course of history and who, dying, thought that after them someone would succeed. If you want my answer, “fate” does not exist. There is a “necessity” that comes from the action of man. The concatenations of “actions” and “reactions”, absolutely “necessary”, even if entirely predictable, have a value in history. The “freedom of choice” then consists in knowing how to foresee the consequences of one’s actions.
QUESTION 15
STUDENT: In our days the word freedom seems to have lost the high ideological value and significance of the past. Do you agree?
PAVONE: Generally, the human being appreciates and re-evaluates freedom when deprived of it. We live in times, however, in which freedom is mistaken for “one’s own convenience”. The absolute prevalence of the laws of the market, or of “economic privatism”, is an exasperated “form” of “economism”, not of true freedom. Phenomena of this type do not consider numerous factors, first of which respect for human life. They are undoubtedly “natural phenomena”, since they are still the fruits of a “choice”, made possible by an increased “technicality”. If man decides to build more cars, he must know that, on the other side of the world, the people of Mozambique continue to die following the disaster caused by the disastrous flood of some time ago. My speech is not meant to be so simplistic, but only to point out that certain possibilities exist. So I say that there are moments in which the “choice”, such as that to be made with regard to the “Third World debt” or the more underdeveloped countries, must be characterized by great logical coherence.
QUESTION No. 16
STUDENT: We chose to elect the painting by Pablo Picasso Guernica as a “symbol” of the episode more than the French Marianne, because in the second, freedom is understood as predestination, to imply a story already predestined, already written, while we prefer to interpret the story more fragmentarily, more indecisively, as Picasso does with Guernica. Do you agree with our “choice”?
PAVONE: In Guernica Picasso depicts the “chaos” caused by a war action. It is therefore a “chaos” that does not arise by itself. It was born because in Spain the insurrection of the nationalist forces of the “caudillo” Francisco Franco enjoyed at a certain moment the military support of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The “study” of Picasso’s painting is indeed too “rational”. Picasso wants to show that, given the cold “rationality” of power, the confusion that is created on humanity and on the “bovids” is “rational”, but it is “inhuman” in its consequences. Numerous interpretations of this painting have been given. Mine may be the most inaccurate.
QUESTION 17
STUDENT: We chose the website of The Neotechnological Discovery. We found the page entitled Oppression and freedom, between past and future interesting. We chose this table for its “symbolic” value of the freedom that men and women have enjoyed throughout history. We found it “symbolic” precisely because we do not believe that we can give a number-value to human freedom in history. You first associated freedom with women by giving a reading of the French Mariana. We, even from this page, believe that women have not had the same freedom as men in history. Don’t you think that, as it is true that man has not been overwhelmed by history, woman has instead “chosen” not to have all this freedom?
PAVONE: I agree with you. It is undoubtedly difficult to quantify freedom. Conversely, the idea that women have “chosen” to be oppressed can only be a convenient motivation matured in the oppressor. Indeed, it is true that historically women have had different powers in various civilizations. They have also been entrusted with political assignments that previously were the sole responsibility of man. I therefore believe that the division of labor has given women more reasons for satisfaction. At the basis of the just or unjust division of labor there was not and there is no divine plan. There was rather a “form” of “social minority”, which had to be demolished and eradicated little by little. The start to the full conquest by women of civil, political and social rights started precisely from that Declaration of the rights of women and of the town of Olympia de Gourges which was so widespread in France after 1790, the year in which it was written, and that it is not by chance that they wanted to contrast, already in the “chosen” terms, with that of the man and the citizen of just a year earlier. I say that respect for all male and female specificities must not exclude equality in the enjoyment of fundamental civil, political and social rights that belong to the human being. Today, more than ever, it is a question of respecting equality by saving differences, without placing the latter in a hierarchical order.