Freedom -- Date: before 12th century * 1 : the quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
Liberty -- Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French liberté, from Latin libertat-, libertas, from liber free -- more at LIBERAL * Date: 14th century * 1 : the quality or state of being free: a : the power to do as one pleases b : freedom from physical restraint c : freedom from arbitrary or despotic control d : the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges e : the power of choice
... and Ortega De Gasset [link book online : and -- google books, too] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolt_of_the_Masses : In this work, Ortega traces the genesis of the "mass-man" and analyzes his constitution en route to describing the rise to power and action of the masses in society. Ortega is throughout quite critical of both the masses and the mass-men of which they are concerned, contrasting "noble life and common life" and excoriating the barbarism and primitivism he sees in the mass-man. He does not, however, refer to specific social classes, as has been so commonly misunderstood in the anglophone world. Ortega states that the mass-man could be from any social background, but his specific target is the bourgeouis educated man, the señorito satisfecho (satisfied little prince), the specialist who believes he has it all and extends the domain he has of his subject to others, contemptuous of his ignorance in all of them. His summary of what he attempted in the book exemplifies this quite well, while simultaneously providing the author's own views on his work: "In this essay an attempt has been made to sketch a certain type of European, mainly by analysing his behaviour as regards the very civilization into which he was born. This had to be done because that individual "does not represent a new civilisation struggling with a previous one, but a mere negation.
... Nietzsche did read Stirner's book, yet even he did not mention Stirner anywhere in his work, his letters, or his papers. [?]
Макс Шти́рнер (нем. Max Stirner), настоящее имя Иоганн Каспар Шмидт (нем. Johann Caspar Schmidt; 25 октября 1806, Байройт, Германия — 26 июня 1856, Берлин) — немецкий философ.
* Saul Newman calls Stirner a proto-poststructuralist who on the one hand basically anticipated modern post-structuralists such as Foucault, Lacan, Deleuze, and Derrida, but on the other had already transcended them, thus providing what they were unable to: paving the ground for a "Non-Essentialist" critique of present liberal capitalist society. However, Stirner might have disagreed with the poststructuralist idea that as a product of systems, the self is a determination of external factors. For Stirner, the self cannot be a mere product of systems. There remains, for Stirner, a place deep within the self which language cannot explain and that social systems cannot destroy.
