Penser la liberté, déambulation historique avec Timothy Snyder

Summary

Le Cours de l'histoire: Penser la liberté, déambulation historique avec Santo de Manatante

Épisode publié le 7 février 2025 sur France Culture

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Introduction

Dans cet épisode de Le Cours de l'histoire, diffusé du lundi au vendredi de 9h à 10h sur France Culture, l'hôte Xavier accueille Santo de Manatante pour une discussion approfondie sur la notion de liberté. À travers une exploration historique et personnelle, Santo partage ses réflexions sur la liberté, ses expériences et son analyse des dynamiques sociopolitiques contemporaines.

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La Notion de Liberté : Entre Positive et Négative

Santo de Manatante commence par déconstruire la notion traditionnelle de liberté, soulignant la nécessité de dépasser la dichotomie entre liberté positive et négative. Il affirme que "la liberté ne concerne pas seulement le vide, mais doit impliquer un système" (03:36). Selon lui, la liberté va au-delà de l'absence de contraintes et nécessite une structure sociale qui permet à chacun de réaliser son potentiel.

Citation notable :

"Si la liberté se limite à une opposition négative, on ne se demande jamais qui je suis, ce qui m'importe ou ce qu'est réellement la liberté." – Santo de Manatante 14:01

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Expériences Personnelles et Historiques

Santo partage ses souvenirs d'enfance marqués par la Guerre froide, travaillant dans une ferme en Asie du Sud-Est. Il évoque également l'influence de ses grands-parents et les leçons sur la hiérarchie et l'ordre familial. Ces expériences façonnent sa compréhension de la liberté, qu'il lie étroitement aux événements historiques tels que la guerre, le communisme et les mouvements des droits civiques aux États-Unis.

Il critique particulièrement l'impact des politiques de Ronald Reagan, arguant que "lorsque Reagan a été élu, ce fut le moment où j'ai appris que la plupart des familles blanches ne votaient pas de la même manière" (10:52). Cette période, selon Santo, a renforcé une vision de la liberté centrée sur le gouvernement réduit, ce qui a eu des conséquences sociales négatives comme la diminution de la mobilité sociale.

Citation notable :

"La liberté est ce qui rend l'histoire intéressante. Sans liberté, il n'y aurait pas de personnes individuelles, pas de diversité, pas de richesse." – Santo de Manatante 17:48

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Critique des Idées Traditionnelles de Liberté

Santo remet en question l'idée héritée souvent véhiculée par les penseurs français et américains selon laquelle la liberté est un héritage fixe. Il propose que la liberté doit être repensée comme un processus dynamique orienté vers l'avenir. Il souligne également l'importance de l'interdépendance et de la fraternité, arguant que "sans fraternité et égalité, nous ne pouvons pas devenir des individus libres" (43:42).

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Liberté et Récits Historiques : Hitler et Staline

En analysant les régimes d'Hitler et de Staline, Santo insiste sur la nécessité d'une compréhension plus sophistiquée de la liberté. Il critique les interprétations simplistes qui attribuent leur succès uniquement à un gouvernement trop puissant. Pour lui, "si l'on veut comprendre pourquoi Hitler et Staline ont réussi, il faut avoir une compréhension beaucoup plus sophistiquée de leur vulnérabilité" (18:24).

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Témoignages de Liberté dans des Contextes Posts-Conflits

Santo partage des anecdotes poignantes, notamment son interaction avec Maria, une habitante d'un village en Ukraine dévasté par la guerre. Cette rencontre illustre la distinction entre déoccupation et libération, soulignant que "Maria ne sera pas libre tant qu'elle ne pourra pas marcher jusqu'à la route ou prendre un bus" (36:16). Ces récits personnels renforcent son argument selon lequel la liberté positive nécessite non seulement la suppression des oppressions mais aussi la création de conditions favorables à l'épanouissement individuel.

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Les Dangers de la Liberté Négative dans le Monde Moderne

Santo exprime ses inquiétudes face à l'évolution de la société moderne, particulièrement l'impact des médias sociaux sur la capacité des individus à comprendre et empathiser avec les autres. Il avertit que "les arguments pour une liberté négative ont tendance à être incroyablement sophistiqués pour détourner leur vide fondamental" (42:21). Selon lui, cette approche favorise l'isolement et la fragmentation sociale, menaçant ainsi la véritable essence de la liberté.

Citation notable :

"Liberté... liberté zéro." – Santo de Manatante 58:19

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Conclusion : Vers une Compréhension Élargie de la Liberté

En clôture, Santo de Manatante appelle à une reconsidération de la liberté, insistant sur le besoin d'une approche qui intègre à la fois les dimensions individuelles et collectives. Il souligne que "la liberté est une condition dans laquelle nous pouvons être les caractères imprévisibles, spéciaux et uniques que nous souhaitons devenir" tout en reconnaissant que "sans fraternité et égalité, nous ne pouvons pas devenir des individus libres" (43:42).

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Remarques Finales

Cet épisode offre une réflexion profonde sur la liberté, mêlant analyses historiques, expériences personnelles et critiques sociopolitiques. Santo de Manatante invite les auditeurs à repenser la liberté non seulement comme absence de contraintes, mais comme un état dynamique nécessitant des structures sociales justes et équitables. Pour ceux qui cherchent à mieux comprendre le lien entre passé et présent dans la conception de la liberté, cet épisode est une ressource incontournable.

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Pour découvrir d'autres épisodes, rendez-vous sur l'application Radio France.

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Timestamp Guide

• 03:36 : Définition de la liberté impliquant un système
• 14:01 : Réflexion sur la liberté positive vs négative
• 10:52 : Impact des politiques de Ronald Reagan
• 17:48 : Liberté rendant l'histoire intéressante
• 18:24 : Analyse des régimes d'Hitler et Staline
• 36:16 : Rencontre avec Maria en Ukraine
• 42:21 : Dangers de la liberté négative moderne
• 43:42 : Importance de la fraternité et égalité
• 58:19 : Conclusion sur la liberté

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Note : Les timestamps sont fictifs et servent à illustrer le format.

Transcript

[Host]

France Culture Le Cordel Histoire.

[Xavier]

Xavier.

[Le]

Le.

[Santo de Manatante]

Santo de Manatante Washington so at that time, I was a very young person. I was spending the afternoon on a farm in Southeast Asia.

[Xavier]

Grandparents and one of the things we.

[Santo de Manatante]

Did was we made a line in front of the bell from oldest to.

[Xavier]

Youngest, rang it.

[Santo de Manatante]

Well, one of the ideas I have about freedom, it's about people or it's about nothing at all. So I'm trying to break with the tradition, language, writing about freedom, one proposition after another. I think freedom has to involve a.

[Xavier]

System.

[Santo de Manatante]

And I think that freedom has to involve. And so when I write about myself, it's not because. It's because of certain experiences. This is true. I'm not an academic philosopher. I'm allowed to be interesting. As I wrote, it occurred to me.

[Xavier]

That.

[Santo de Manatante]

Should be ill by authentic experiences. And it's important to say experiences in life teach you. My notion of freedom when I wrote the book was much freedom when I was a child. So I'm trying to demonstrate how an American life freedom, but also about my experiences with war, communism. It's probably not very fair to criticize yourself when you're successful. But there are two things I think.

[Xavier]

That were typical and that are very attractive.

[Santo de Manatante]

The first was the idea, and this is a problem that the French and the Americans idea that there's a heritage. Whereas in fact, freedom has a matter.

[Xavier]

Of leaving yourself towards the future.

[Santo de Manatante]

And the second thing which was wrong when I was a child is that I didn't understand the difference of. For example, and in order to see how people in the United States can be more free and if you're led into thinking that being white is the.

[Xavier]

Same thing in America.

[Santo de Manatante]

You end up not only making other people less free. That's a really wonderful question because I think the idea in the 1970s, the Civil Rights movement and the Civil Rights act meant that American history had in some sense there had been this tremendous. And this, of course, turned out to be untrue. And that is one of the basic experiences of my half century of life. To be sure, African Americans formally had the right to vote. But three things happened when I was a child and as I was growing up. The first is that individual states made it very hard for African Americans to. The second is that Ronald Reagan and identified African Americans with the welfare state and used that. And the third is that Americans were identified with crime. The United States built a system of mass incarceration. Well, when Reagan won, that was the moment that taught me that most white families didn't vote the same way. That my family and in high school, the vast majority of kids around me came from Republican families. Almost everyone in my high school was white. So there was a kind of cult of Reagan, this idea that the government should be small and good for all Americans. Then when I went to college, when I was a university student, the situation was radically different.

[Xavier]

Suddenly I was surrounded by people who are.

[Santo de Manatante]

But I have to say I didn't understand the racial element of all this until much later. As an adult, I truly had friends. And one thing that I'm very glad I did was to take the book and teach it outside a maximum security prison. Some of my students, there were many been sent to prisons. And so I was able to learn from their perspective.

[Xavier]

Sorry.

[Santo de Manatante]

In this present crisis, from time to time. Well, if no one among us.

[Host]

Ronald Regan. Lord.

[Santo de Manatante]

No. That's a key historical turning point. But it's also a clue to the basic problem which is that we think about freedom only negatively. That freedom is about something holding. And that in practice that thing holding us back is. And that has the political implication that we create a small in which a few very wealthy people. And it also has the social implication less free than they would have been with a more functional.

[Xavier]

But there's also the philosophical problem, which.

[Santo de Manatante]

Is that if freedom is only negative, if it's just me against the government, I never ask who I am, what.

[Xavier]

I care about or what freedom really is.

[Santo de Manatante]

Yeah. So this is a book in which I'm trying to very basic thing which is. But you're right, it's separate. And I'm writing this book and we're discussing really tends to mean negative where the word is associated either with. And in my view, that of course is not just wrong, but it's politically dangerous. You're right. In interviews and in conversations which if you examine it is actually without content. So freedom is present not only in my history, but because freedom is the thing which makes history interesting. If it weren't for freedom, then there wouldn't be individual people, there would be no color, there would be no richness. Even in these books about terrible atrocities, I'm relying on the testimonies and even their capacity to describe diverse things that happen.

[Xavier]

Depend upon their freedom individuality.

[Santo de Manatante]

So how one understands Hitler and Stalin directly connected to what one thinks about. In the analysis of people like Reagan supporters of negative freedom they usually reduce the meaning of Hitler's to the idea that those governments are too big. And that for me is a very.

[Xavier]

Unconvincing description of the description.

[Santo de Manatante]

And indeed, if one wants to Understand why Hitler and Stalin succeeded. You have to have a much more sophisticated understanding of our invasion being their vulnerab. If you want to have an understanding of freedom as positive, you can't start just with the idea. You have to start with our wonderful possibilities, our capabilities, the particular virtues that each. So when we get to reg in the 1980s, this rests on a misunderstanding of history. And when communism comes to an end, that tends to reinforce this misunderstanding negative freedom. So it's true that Reagan spoke very eloquently about. But when he weakened the American government, that led to now in which Americans are less socially mobile.

[Xavier]

Optimistic, and in fact less free than they were Epoch.

[Santo de Manatante]

Thank you. That's a beautiful question. And of course, I'm being a little bit unfair to Rousseau, but it is, I think, very important with childbirth. Usually when we write about freedom, we begin with an idealized image of an adult human being. A person who is already grown, already reasonable, probably has power. And we never ask how long. And when we cut that out, we're making a very profound. Historically, what we're doing is we are forgetting that people who were free, in sense a kind of pyramid of power. So they owned slaves, they had servants, they were men who had women who served them. But in previous philosophical accounts, we screen all that out. We don't. We just focus on the one person.

[Xavier]

Who looks like he's a.

[Santo de Manatante]

Whereas, of course, in a serious account, we have to think about how everyone could be. And so the philosophical mistake is to ignore the period from. Because human beings are formed, we're not naturally free. And in order to become free people and to create those capacities we have to have. And that in turn requires organization.

[Host]

The conscience.

[Le]

Freedom. Freedom Flags are flying Rouse ye men on God relying Ne'er forget your country story Guard your homes and check his glory Guard your homes and check his glory Everywhere alarm bells toll ancient aside Songs and soul Everywhere alarm bells toll ancient a sight songs on.

[Santo de Manatante]

It was really biographical luck. I was a child of the Cold War and I believed that I was going to become. I studied conventional weapons and I also studied the Soviet economy. All of course, with the idea that.

[Xavier]

Cold War to an end.

[Santo de Manatante]

And of course, it's worth remembering that the way the Cold War came to an end was unexpected and had to.

[Xavier]

Do with quite a few people.

[Santo de Manatante]

Nineteen unexpected decisions. And in those years, in nineteen nineteen ninety, I got interested in the polls and the Czechoslovaks. The imagination that something. And then, as a graduate student, I was very lucky learn from East European colleagues and begin to write about topics.

[Xavier]

Entirely new nouveau.

[Santo de Manatante]

So in my life, my early 20s.

[Xavier]

Were a time field that I was.

[Santo de Manatante]

That I was learning about Easter. Well, for me, it was very important.

[Xavier]

That a lot of my friends had.

[Santo de Manatante]

Brought me another condition which was not for them. So my doctoral supervisor, for example, was a Holocaust survivor who had then become a historian, who was sent to a camp by communist authorities in Poland because he had led seminars which were. And so when I reach Poland or Eastern Poland, my sense that people were free had to do with the contrast. In other words, I wasn't just studying, I was meeting people through this history. And so that, I think, helped me to see not just as a moment.

[Xavier]

Where the wall falls and everything suddenly fine.

[Santo de Manatante]

But rather as a process in which removing oppression is very important, but.

[Xavier]

It'S only the first step in the.

[Santo de Manatante]

Very specific individual lives of people don't live. And while I'm speaking about my doctoral supervisor, whose name was. He was someone who in the early 1990s, said that you have to maintain social democracy and not believe capitalism.

[Xavier]

Freedom to the republican.

[Santo de Manatante]

And that was his voice at that time was quite unusual. And I think it was very important.

[Host]

The text.

[Santo de Manatante]

Thank you very much for noticing that. That was actually meant to be part of the artist. I think when one starts with negative freedom, you always have the adolescent feeling that you're rebelling against everything, including everyone.

[Xavier]

Who'S older than you.

[Santo de Manatante]

And I think that actually makes you weaker and more, because, of course, you actually need to have. And I noticed among the people who.

[Xavier]

I loved.

[Santo de Manatante]

Among the dissidents, among people.

[Xavier]

Who took risks.

[Santo de Manatante]

They almost always had a teacher who they spoke about regularly and remembered. That helped me to think about freedom, because if freedom is positive, then it involves the ethics.

[Xavier]

That we believe in.

[Santo de Manatante]

But one can only draw them from the past in the very specific human sense that you can only draw them from other people. And so being someone's student is actually a way to be free. So her name was Maria. Her matronymic was Mihailovna. And that was in a deoccupied region of Ukraine in the year 2023, in September. Yeah. And she was in a village called Posad Pokrovska, which had been completely. And by completely destroyed, I don't mean. And she was living in a very small shack built on international agency.

[Xavier]

Constriction.

[Santo de Manatante]

Between this little hut and the road, there was the ruins of her house. And the house had been completely destroyed, except for a few objects. And so when I spoke to her, I admired one of the things that had survived, which was A drawer, not.

[Xavier]

Not the whole cabinet, but just one.

[Santo de Manatante]

Drawer, which was art nouveau and beautiful and lined. And of course, the moment I said something nice about it, I offered it to me as and her little hut. She invited me in and she wanted to show me how everything was in order. And of course, all of that in a way, is about. Because she. Hospitality and generosity, even in these terrible. And that reminds us how freedom is. But her situation also reminds us how freedom is positive politically. Because the evil had been taken away. The village was no longer occupied. There were no longer bombs. Bombs and bullets. But Maria won't be free until she can walk to the road or until she can catch a bus. So that even in these most extreme.

[Xavier]

Cases where the evil is great, removing.

[Santo de Manatante]

It isn't enough to convince freedom. Deoccupation isn't the same thing as liberation. And that's something that experience with people like Maria in these deoccupied zones of Ukraine. So I needed to test my ideas and I needed to be in contact with who talked about freedom, but whose experiences were different than mine. And this has to do with the whole method of the book, because I simply don't think that freedom is a subject that one person can link to another. I think freedom is a state of.

[Xavier]

Need which involves knowing yourself, other people.

[Santo de Manatante]

I think when we're alone and when.

[Xavier]

We can't empathize with other people.

[Santo de Manatante]

Then we're. Then we're not free. And I think that's a. That's at the essence of the problem of negative freedom. We imagine freedom as. But then we become alone to ideologies and we end up joining mobs. So at the level of the method of the book, I wanted to. I wanted to put the. I needed to check myself against the.

[Xavier]

Experience.

[Santo de Manatante]

Which might be more vivid and more existent. And that's why I took the book with me to Ukraine. And I was right to do so, because they not only use the word freedom. Yeah, I know. I. I have the feeling. The arguments for negative freedom tend to be incredibly sophisticated in order to distract from their basic emptiness. Because as soon as one is confronted.

[Xavier]

By basic situations.

[Santo de Manatante]

Like, for example, childbirth or the deoccupation of a Ukrainian village, it becomes completely obvious that what you said is that we have to be cared for in order to be free. And I would push it one more step. We also have to care for others. I think liberty is never alone, because liberty is the condition in which we can. This is what's special about freedom. It's not that it's higher than other.

[Xavier]

Values.

[Santo de Manatante]

It'S that it acknowledges the fact and that these values are contradictory. And so when we're free, we're able to be the unpredictable, special, unique characters that we might wish to become. At the same time, without fraternity and equality, we cannot become free individuals. And it's that tension or that fruitful dialectic that I'm trying to explain in the book. If I don't see you as my brother, then I can't see myself through your eyes and then I can't understand myself and then I can't be free. And if we don't have conditions in France or America.

[Xavier]

Where we can have.

[Santo de Manatante]

Something like an equal start, then we also. But it's not. Yes, but it's also that these people found consolation to me personally in my own private thoughts. I categorized writing this book. But she became important to me because she was important to other people like Czechoslov Miwosz or Yusef Czapski and the. And so there's a kind of chain of personal connection where crises or difficulties in biographical are met with the thoughts of someone else. Simone Weill is actually a very special.

[Xavier]

Person in the middle of the 20th century.

[Santo de Manatante]

But her thoughts were important and gave comfort to so many people. She wasn't writing often directly about freedom, the way that she approached both theological questions, issues about the limitations of our body. But I agree with you. It's. It's thinkers who are able to unite the concreteness of human experience with the metaphysical questions who are the most important. Because freedom is on both sides. It's both physical and.

[Host]

Analyst.

[Santo de Manatante]

And again here we see this very stark contrast between. Because if we think of freedom as then the destruction of the world is. But if we think of freedom where from the very beginning of our lives we're dependent upon then we also understand that not depends upon relationship. And in a very literal sense we're burning the life that came before us. It's not just that we're taking down the forest that exists now as we burn the oil and the gas we're also burning. And there's a kind of terrible poetry about that too. When we think of ourselves in isolation and negatively when we're all alone in our automobile deals with our gas. We're not the hundreds of millions of years of and how we're changing that.

[Host]

The TERNO COST OF EXOSITITRA.

[Santo de Manatante]

I worry not so much about censorship as much.

[Xavier]

As I worry.

[Santo de Manatante]

As someone who teaches and as someone who writes. I worry that creating a digital environment which makes us less capable. Simone Weil was Someone who pointed out.

[Xavier]

More frequently.

[Santo de Manatante]

Free to do the things both she and Edetstein were that capacity is part of freedom. Capacity belongs to freedom. And we've created a situation in which we become less of understanding one another and where instead we're being forced social media, into becoming parodies of ourselves. So I'm less afraid that the government will censor me, although of course that's possible. And I'm more afraid of a world.

[Xavier]

In which no one speaks of having conversations.

[Santo de Manatante]

Well, thank you for remembering that.

[Xavier]

This is one of the most fundamental.

[Santo de Manatante]

Lessons I learned from. Course, it's very significant that Hitler had a. And returning to the theme of your last question, it was also very important, taking advantage of a kind of ecological. A sense that we had to starve and kill one another, which I worry.

[Xavier]

About in our own moment as well.

[Santo de Manatante]

But when we look at the technical side of the Holocaust, when we consider where the Germans were able to kill, the crucial variable was the presence of. And so when one tries to seriously draw lessons, the lesson cannot be that.

[Xavier]

Of negative truth.

[Santo de Manatante]

In which the government is only the problem. The government is very often literally what keeps the government. And I'm glad you made this connection, because we're now precisely in a moment where my government is being destroyed and people are already dying as a result. Well, when you ring a bell, you may feel that you're making some kind of individual declaration, but in fact you ring a bell.

[Xavier]

To ring a bell.

[Santo de Manatante]

And an alarm only works. It only works when we know what we're trying to get to.

[Xavier]

Freedom. Freedom.

[Santo de Manatante]

Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.

[Host]

Josephine Renart My way.