DOI: 10.5176/2382-5677_PYTT14.18
Authors: Murat ARICI
Abstract:
There is a fundamentally important philosophical problem with the notion of ideological freedom: If an individual is ideologically free, it means she may hold a certain body of beliefs and may act on the basis of principles derived from this body of beliefs. When the same freedom goes for other individuals, different world-views emerge leading to different body of actions in the same group of people living together. Conflicting actions depending on different world-views can be ordered by laws in order to ensure the peace of this group of individuals, but the internal systems of beliefs that these individuals possess will not accord with their restricted actions. Nor will it comply with some of others’ actions allowed by the established order. The situation will ultimately give rise to an “axiological tension” for most of the individuals. In order to ease this tension, individual needs to gain a kind of “ideological respect” on which their internal systems of beliefs (their ideology) comply both with their restricted actions and some of others’ allowed actions. This paper claims that behavioral approach that aims to implement some social behaviors such as “tolerance,” “connivance,” and “allowance” does not have the potential to constitute a tenable philosophical basis to resolve the problem. Rather these approaches create further problems. Instead, the background metaphysical and epistemological beliefs should be the focus. Three apparent options are examined: (i) revising the extant, (ii) stressing on the common, and (iii) generating new metaphysical and epistemological beliefs that can be shared by all relevant parties. The last option, this paper claims, is the most promising one to overcome the problem of axiological tension.
Keywords: Ideological freedom, axiological tension, ideological respect
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