Freedom of thought has been my primary orientation since July 2023, when I first set out the concept of an “orientation of life”,1 and it remained so until now. In keeping with the Enlightenment,2 I conceived of it as a way of rationally calling dogmas, prejudices and practices into question. However, I was aware of the dangers of an unbounded freedom of thought,3 which allows one to create and inhabit one’s own ‘world’ while isolating oneself as far as possible from constraining realities and truths.
Without necessarily taking such extreme forms, each of us, within our own sphere, sustains idealisations bound up with logics of security, mastery, and even domination. From this perspective, freedom of thought is not tied to rationality and science, but to the possibility of thinking whatever one desires. That is why it now seems to me too ambivalent. What the Enlightenment’s freedom of thought and unbounded freedom of thought have in common is the refusal of intellectual subjection. But whereas the Enlightenment relied on reason to call prejudices into question, contemporary forms of conservatism reject reason itself.
The historical context in which we live, influenced by social media and political extremes, shows how the creation of imaginary worlds, disconnected from reality, can give rise to planetary disasters. In such conditions, should we allow ourselves to be guided by “rationality”? Reason has this limitation: it can rest on moral premises from which various forms of violence follow. There is not a single rationality, but rather a plurality of logics, each dependent on the assumptions on which it rests.
Prior to any logic, itself the product of a rational construction, there are questions. My intellectual path has arisen from major acts of re-examination, which constitute the primary impulse more than freedom of thought does. Questioning broadens horizons, keeps prejudices at bay, and makes it possible to re-examine things and cast doubt upon them, without settling indefinitely into the absence of answers, in the manner of the sceptic.
This is why freedom of thought now gives way to re-examination as my primary orientation. It is indeed primary in the intellectual process, and it facilitates the distance that, in turn, fosters a certain peace.
Notes
1 https://damiengimenez.fr/wpdgi_article_en/on-the-preponderance-of-choice-in-western-cultures/#Choice_vs_Design_of_Orientations
2 https://damiengimenez.fr/wpdgi_article_en/progress-and-limits-of-freedom-of-thought-in-europe-from-the-16th-to-the-18th-century/
3 https://damiengimenez.fr/wpdgi_snapshot/dangers-of-unbounded-freedom-of-thought-and-expression/