Nie Pozwalam

Abstract

I aim in this chapter to introduce the general themes of the articulation or tensions of autonomy with heteronomy, freedom with regulation, love with law. In particular I look at the tension between the freedom of the individual and the commitment to the collective. The debate seems to require either commitment to society or freedom of the individual. I will show that the debate cannot resolve itself into one or the other because both are important and worthwhile and both have, at the same time, their negative sides. We are not fated to have to choose one or the other. They do not exclude each other as being contradictory — rather they articulate in uneasy tension to make ourselves and our social institutions whole. It is that tension that we must learn to manage and in the understanding of it that I go on to explore what it means to live a life under law.