This chapter concentrates on two authors, two contexts, and two works: US schoolteacher Mary Bradley Lane’s Mizora (1881) and British-Indian author Rokeya Hossain’s “Sultana’s Dream” (1905). Extrapolating the techno-social emergence of female ballooning in the nineteenth-century United States and India, the chapter argues that the two feminist utopias intersect social and environmental freedom. Lane employs the underground setting popularised by Bulwer-Lytton to house a techno-feminist civilization controlling the climate at will, while Hossain describes the diffuse, oneiric terrain of Ladyland in which climate control supports a garden world. Comparing the two different feminist utopias and contexts, both marked by feminist aviation and atmospheric interventions, the chapters showcase the socio-political character of anthropogenic climate change: Hossain’s climate utopia is caring, inclusive, and decolonial, whereas Lane’s is cynical, exclusive, and imperialist.

This chapter introduces the fundamental idea of The Life of Freedom in Kant and Hegel: the notion that we can only make sense of autonomy by returning to the concept of life. This return is needed to understand fully the genesis, the form, and the reality of human freedom. Such an account can be developed by means of a systematic reconstruction of Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophies of freedom. As we can learn from Kant’s account, the notion of autonomy is threatened by the paradox of self-legislation and an opposition of freedom and nature that makes the reality of freedom unintelligible. As Kant already indicates and Hegel goes on to develop, we can overcome these problems by reconceiving of autonomy as a form of life. The chapter outlines the reading of Kant and Hegel supporting this view, situates the resulting systematic position in current debates on the sources of normativity and the nature of human freedom, and defines its relation to other approaches norm and nature (ethical naturalism, forms of life, and biopolitics).

In the previous chapter the fragmentation of the modern age has been discussed. In this chapter I will show that for the Romantics this fragmentation is a form of stagnation of time, where the transformative power proper of Becoming is missing and where, therefore, freedom is not deemed possible. How can the transformative power be re-introduced into history without falling into the illusion that the self could be the sovereign agent of such a transformation? The Romantic answer to this question deals with three key concepts: critical thinking, humanity, and utopia. Critical thinking is viewed as a creative act that detects in the present signs of a better future, humanity as the future non-sovereign subject of history, and utopia as the imagination of a possible future that, at the same time, does not imply a concept of history as ‘progress’. Together, as will be analysed at the end of the chapter, they allow us to think the relationship between history and nature neither as opposition nor as identity, providing thought-provoking and original perspectives on the actual debate in environmental philosophy.

Life was conceived by the Romantics as the underlying force of nature, and they sought to identify its norms and rules of transformation. For them, life oscillates between contraction and relaxion, between potentiality and actuality. Life establishes and renews the norms they set. However, these sequences do not only lead to the form of living beings. Life is immanent and its creations flourish in every sphere. As we will see in this chapter, this idea of ‘life’ prompted the Romantics to focus on rhythm and habit, as the way in which life gives itself a dynamic order. Habit is the key for the Romantic reformulation of the political lexicon: it enhances sociability; individualities are not isolated beings but rather carry in themselves the inexhaustible transformative forces of life that deploy in and outside the individual. The individual is therefore always influenced by the context. For this reason, her freedom is not formulated as autonomy but rather as creativity or wisdom. This interpretation of ‘freedom’ bridges the gap between humans and nature and demonstrates that, in order to rethink our relationship with nature, we have to reformulate our political concepts.

According to Beauvoir’s existentialist philosophy, human beings have no essence; they must create themselves through their actions and choices. Projects are central to our very humanity. But does it matter what these projects are intended to achieve? Is it up to each individual to choose their own projects and goals? Can the commitment to a project, and its goal, become unethical? Chapter 2 explores these questions and examines Beauvoir’s answers in The Ethics of Ambiguity and Pyrrhus and Cineas. These works mark the beginning of Beauvoir’s journey away from her youthful individualism. While exploring human freedom and asserting the moral imperative to exercise one’s freedom, they also start to investigate the limits of freedom, a theme that looms large in her subsequent works.

Do other people limit or even threaten our freedom and our projects, or are they necessary to their realisation? Do we only answer to ourselves for our actions, or are we accountable to other people as well, and if so, to whom? Do we have a responsibility for the welfare of other people? These questions, which Beauvoir addressed in the works she wrote from the Second World War onwards, have lost none of their relevance. Chapter 3 explores them by analysing many of her works, including The Ethics of Ambiguity, Pyrrhus and Cineas, America Day by Day, and her novels The Blood of Others and The Mandarins, which focus on social responsibility, communal action, and groups. Her anti-individualistic concept of freedom, focussed on projects and solidarity, is contrasted with the so-called negative concept of freedom and versions of the liberal concept of freedom. Beauvoir’s concepts of freedom, solidarity, and responsibility are proposed as tools to reflect on current issues, including some uses of social media, assisted suicide, the environment, and what should be done about historical wrongs such as slavery.

The Conclusion first reiterates the three main arguments of the book. It then surveys changes and continuities in global education and development policies since the 1960s, while also touching on the present state of public education in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. It closes by reflecting on education’s double-edged nature as it relates to the problem of freedom: Does education emancipate, or oppress?

The publication of Allen Ginsberg in Context marks a dramatic shift in Ginsberg Studies (and Beat Studies), clearing important new ground for scholarship on the poet. This volume offers a crucial reminder of the need for continued study of Ginsberg’s full body of work and widest range of influences. The case for Ginsberg’s importance has not always been as clear. Ginsberg’s considerable popular readership has not translated often enough into serious attention from scholars. Allen Ginsberg in Context signals to the larger critical community that Ginsberg’s life and work are essential to the study of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry, culture, and political activism. This book starts the necessary conversation as to why Ginsberg’s poetry can still matter. Ginsberg’s body of work might find its big-bang moment in the 1956 publication of “Howl” and the poem’s subsequent triumph against obscenity charges the following year, but his work in its totality can be seen as a primer for how to live and speak freely in a world that increasingly is bent upon state surveillance and restrictions upon movement and expression.

This chapter traces the development of Kant’s thought about teleology. In The Only Possible Premise for a Demonstration of the Existence of God, Kant rejects the classical ontological and cosmological arguments for the existence of God, but proposes his own argument that the existence of God is necessary as the ground of all (other) possibility in the world. He then argues that although explanation in the world should be mechanical explanation, without reference to miraculous, divine interventions, we can nevertheless see nature as an expression of divine intent, or the means through which divine ends are attained. By the time of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant has changed the key of teleology from constitutive to regulative, and argues first for the heuristic use of teleological judgment in natural science but, second, for the recognition of the full realization of human morality, in the form of freedom and the highest good, as the “final end” of the world. He still thinks it rational to believe in the existence of a theoretically indemonstrable God as the ground of the possibility of such an end, but the end is to be defined in human terms and achieved through human efforts.

In drafting a constitution for the democratic republic of the United States, the Framers took elaborate measures to control the hazards of minority and majority political factions. The Framers’ conclusion that factions are inevitable is confirmed by the partisan nature of modern American politics.

This chapter delves into the ethical dimensions of treating individuals with schizophrenia, emphasizing the need for a new perspective that integrates neuroethics into interventions. The author proposes a bio-systemic model to understand how schizophrenia impacts different levels of consciousness and freedom, highlighting the necessity for tailored interventions that restore autonomy rather than coercive measures. The chapter calls for a shift in policy towards early and assertive treatment, focusing on rebuilding autonomy and dignity for individuals with schizophrenia. Ultimately, the chapter serves as a call to action for a neuroethically informed approach to care that prioritizes the restoration of freedom and dignity for those affected by schizophrenia.

This chapter introduces the Aristotelian conception of moral character that is predominant in philosophical virtue ethics as well as in adjacent disciplines such as social psychology. According to the Aristotelian conception, moral character traits – virtues and vices – are hexeis, or dispositions to experience emotions, feelings, and desires, as well as to make choices. Following this, the chapter points to the growing number of studies in recent decades that have engaged with Kant’s concept of moral character and virtue. It concludes by sketching a philosophical problem that serves as the starting point for the subsequent study: central aspects of Kant’s practical philosophy, particularly his emphasis on transcendental freedom as the freedom of choice, seem to make it difficult to assign a significant role to the concept of character within his moral philosophy, at least as long as it is interpreted along Aristotelian lines. This suggests that the best way forward is to examine the aspects in which Kant’s conception of moral character fundamentally diverges from Aristotle’s.