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Political freedom (also known as political autonomy or political agency) is a central philosophy in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important (real or ideal) features of democratic societies.^[1] It has been described as a relationship free of oppression^[2] or coercion;^[3] the absence of disabling conditions for an individual and the fulfillment of enabling conditions;^[4] or the absence of lived conditions of compulsion, e.g. economic compulsion, in a society.^[5] Although political freedom is often interpreted negatively as the freedom from unreasonable external constraints on action,^[6] it can also refer to the positive exercise of rights, capacities and possibilities for action, and the exercise of social or group rights.^[7] The concept can also include freedom from "internal" constraints on political action or speech (e.g. social conformity, consistency, or "inauthentic" behaviour.)^[8] The concept of political freedom is closely connected with the concepts of civil liberties and human rights, which in democratic societies are usually afforded legal protection from the state.

History[link]

Hannah Arendt traces the origins of the concept of freedom to the practice of politics in ancient Greece. According to her study, the concept of freedom was historically inseparable from political action. Politics could only be practiced by those who had freed themselves from the necessities of life, so that they could attend to the realm of political affairs. According to Arendt, the concept of freedom became associated with the Christian notion of freedom of the will, or inner freedom, around the 5th century C.E. and since then, freedom as a form of political action has been neglected, even though, as she says, freedom is "the raison d'être of politics."^[9]

Arendt says that political freedom is historically opposed to sovereignty or will-power, since in ancient Greece and Rome, the concept of freedom was inseparable from performance, and did not arise as a conflict between the "will" and the "self." Similarly, the idea of freedom as freedom from politics is a notion that developed in modern times. This is opposed to the idea of freedom as the capacity to "begin anew," which Arendt sees as a corollary to the innate human condition of natality, or our nature as "new beginnings and hence beginners."

In Arendt's view, political action is an interruption of automatic process, either natural or historical. The freedom to begin anew is thus an extension of "the freedom to call something into being which did not exist before, which was not given, not even as an object of cognition or imagination, and which therefore, strictly speaking, could not be known."

Views[link]

Various groups along the political spectrum naturally differ on what they believe constitutes "true" political freedom.

Left wing political philosophy generally couples the notion of freedom with that of positive liberty, or the enabling of a group or individual to determine their own life or realize their own potential. Freedom, in this sense, may include freedom from poverty, starvation, treatable disease, and oppression, as well as freedom from force and coercion, from whomever they may issue.

Friedrich Hayek, a well-known classical liberal, criticized this as a misconception of freedom:

[T]he use of "liberty" to describe the physical "ability to do what I want", the power to satisfy our wishes, or the extent of the choice of alternatives open to us ... has been deliberately fostered as part of the socialist argument ... the notion of collective power over circumstances has been substituted for that of individual liberty.^[10]

Many social anarchists see negative and positive liberty as complementary concepts of freedom. They describe the negative liberty-centric view endorsed by capitalists as "selfish freedom".^[11]

Some notable philosophers, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, have theorized freedom in terms of our social interdependence with other people.^[12]

According to political philosopher Nikolas Kompridis, the pursuit of freedom in the modern era can be broadly divided into two motivating ideals: freedom as autonomy, or independence; and freedom as the ability to cooperatively initiate a new beginning.^[13]

Political freedom has also been theorized in its opposition to (and a condition of) "power relations", or the power of "action upon actions," by Michel Foucault.^[14] It has also been closely identified with certain kinds of artistic and cultural practice by Cornelius Castoriadis, Antonio Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse, Jacques Ranciere, and Theodor Adorno.

Environmentalists often argue that political freedoms should include some constraint on use of ecosystems. They maintain there is no such thing, for instance, as "freedom to pollute" or "freedom to deforest" given that such activities create negative externalities. The popularity of SUVs, golf, and urban sprawl has been used as evidence that some ideas of freedom and ecological conservation can clash. This leads at times to serious confrontations and clashes of values reflected in advertising campaigns, e.g. that of PETA regarding fur.

John Dalberg-Acton stated that "The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities."^[15]

See also[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Freedom

• Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism from Alberto Abadie – Harvard University and NBER, October 2004 (pdf)
• Brief review of trends in political change: freedom and conflict Global trends

Nahlah Ayed is a foreign correspondent with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

Ayed was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is of Palestinian descent, and is fluent in both Arabic and English. She joined the CBC in 2002, having previously served as a parliamentary reporter for the Canadian Press. Ayed is a graduate of Carleton University School of Journalism with a Master's Degree in Journalism. She also holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Manitoba in genetics. On October 29, 2007, she was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Manitoba in recognition of her coverage of the Middle East. In 2003, as the Amman correspondent for the CBC, Ayed spent months in Baghdad prior to the Iraq War, then later returned to report live from Baghdad as the city fell. Her coverage of Iraq in the aftermath earned her a Gemini Award nomination.

From 2004 until 2009, Ayed was the CBC's Beirut correspondent, covering events throughout the Middle East region, including the 2006 Lebanon War and the Gaza War. In late 2009, she returned to Canada. She received her second Gemini Award nomination in 2010 for her coverage of the Iran presidential elections the year prior.

Ayed is now based in Toronto, regularly covering international stories, most recently the Middle East pro-democracy movement.

External links[link]

• Hanlon, Christine (April 2008). "Nahlah Ayed, The Road to Baghdad". OnManitoba. http://www.umanitoba.ca/alumni/media/OnMB_Apr08_web.pdf.  University of Manitoba alumni journal.
• "Biography of Nahlah Ayed". CBC. http://www.cbc.ca/programguide/personality/nahlah_ayed. 
• Nahlah Ayed, etc.. "Mideast Dispatches". CBC. http://www.cbc.ca/news/reportsfromabroad/middleeast/. 

John Sayles
John Sayles, March 2008
Born	John Thomas Sayles (1950-09-28) September 28, 1950 (age 61) Schenectady, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Director/Screenwriter
Years active	1978–present

John Thomas Sayles (born September 28, 1950) is an American independent film director, screenwriter and author.

Early life[link]

Sayles was born in Schenectady, New York, the son of Mary (née Rausch), a teacher, and Donald John Sayles, a school administrator.^[1] He was raised Catholic and took to labeling himself "a Catholic atheist".^{[citation needed]} Both of Sayles's parents were of half-Irish descent.^[2]

Career[link]

Like Martin Scorsese and James Cameron, among others, Sayles began his film career working with Roger Corman. Sayles went on to fund his first film, Return of the Secaucus 7, with $30,000 he had in the bank from writing scripts for Corman.^{[citation needed]} He set the film in a large house so that he did not have to travel to or get permits for different locations, set it over a three-day weekend to limit costume changes, and wrote about people his age so that he could have his friends act in it. In November 1997, the National Film Preservation Board announced that Return of the Secaucus 7 would be one of the 25 films selected that year for preservation in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.

In 1983, after the films Baby It's You (starring Rosanna Arquette) and Lianna (a sympathetic story in which a married woman becomes discontented with her marriage and falls in love with another woman), Sayles received a MacArthur Fellowship. He used the money to partially fund the fantasy The Brother from Another Planet,^[3] a film about a black, three-toed slave who escapes from another planet and finds himself at home among the people of Harlem.

Sayles at the Miami Book Fair International 2011

In 1989, he created and wrote the pilot episode for the short-lived television show Shannon's Deal about a down-and-out Philadelphia lawyer played by Jamey Sheridan. Sayles received a 1990 Edgar Award for his teleplay for the pilot. The show ran for only 16 episodes before being canceled in 1991.

Sayles has funded most of his films by writing genre scripts such as Piranha, Alligator, The Howling and The Challenge.^{[citation needed]} Having collaborated with Joe Dante on Piranha and The Howling, Sayles acted in Dante's movie Matinee. In deciding whether to take a job, Sayles reports that he mostly is interested in whether there is the germ of an idea for a movie which he would want to watch.^{[citation needed]} Sayles gets the rest of his funding by working as a script doctor; he did rewrites for Apollo 13, and Mimic.

One such genre script, called Night Skies, inspired what would eventually become the highly successful film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.^{[citation needed]} That film's director, Steven Spielberg, later commissioned Sayles to write the script for Jurassic Park IV.

He has written and directed his own films, including Lone Star, Passion Fish, Eight Men Out, The Secret of Roan Inish, and Matewan. He serves on the advisory board for the Austin Film Society.^{[citation needed]}

Sayles works with a regular repertory of actors, most notably Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, and Gordon Clapp, each of whom has appeared in at least four of his films.

In early 2003, Sayles signed the Not In Our Name "Statement of Conscience" (along with Noam Chomsky, Steve Earle, Brian Eno, Jesse Jackson, Viggo Mortensen, Bonnie Raitt, Oliver Stone, Marisa Tomei, Susan Sarandon and others) which opposed the invasion of Iraq.^{[citation needed]}

In February 2009, Sayles was reported to be writing an upcoming HBO series based on the early life of Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The drama, tentatively titled Scar Tissue, centers on Kiedis's early years living in West Hollywood with his father. At that time, Kiedis's father, known as Spider, sold drugs (according to legend, his clients included The Who and Led Zeppelin) and mingled with rock stars on the Sunset Strip, all while aspiring to get into showbiz.^[4]

In February 2010, Sayles began shooting his 17th feature film, the historical war drama Amigo, in the Philippines. The film is a fictional account of events during the Philippine–American War, with a cast that includes Joel Torre, Chris Cooper, and Garret Dillahunt.^[5]

His novel A Moment in the Sun, set during the same period as Amigo, in the Philippines, Cuba, and the US, was released in 2011 by McSweeney’s.^[6]

Filmography[link]

• Piranha (1978) (Writer)
• Return of the Secaucus 7 (1979) (Director/Writer)
• The Lady in Red (1979) (Writer)
• Alligator (1980) (Writer)
• Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) (Writer)
• A Perfect Match (with Mel Damski) (1980) (TV)
• The Howling (1981) (Writer)
• The Challenge (with Richard Maxwell) (1982) (Writer)
• Lianna (1983) (Director/Writer)
• Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (with Susan Rice) (1983)
• Baby It's You (1983) (Director/Writer)
• The Brother from Another Planet (1984) (Director/Writer)
• The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986)
• Unnatural Causes (1986) (TV)
• Wild Thing (1987) (Writer)
• Matewan (1987) (Director/Writer)
• Eight Men Out (1988) (Director/Writer/Actor portraying Ring Lardner)
• Shannon's Deal (1989) (TV) (Creator)
• Breaking In (1989) (Writer)
• City of Hope (1991) (Director/Writer)
• Passion Fish (1992) (Director/Writer)
• The Secret of Roan Inish (1994) (Director/Writer)
• Men of War (with Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris) (1994) (Writer)
• Apollo 13 (1995) (uncredited)
• Lone Star (1996) (Director/Writer)
• Men with Guns (1997) (Director/Writer)
• Limbo (1999) (Director/Writer)
• Sunshine State (2002) (Director/Writer)
• Casa de los Babys (2003) (Director/Writer)
• Silver City (2004) (Director/Writer)
• Honeydripper (2007) (Director/Writer)
• The Spiderwick Chronicles (with David Berenbaum and Karey Kirkpatrick) (2008)
• Amigo (2010) (Director/Writer)

Bibliography[link]

Novels[link]

• Pride of the Bimbos (1975) (novel)
• Union Dues (1977) (novel)
• Los Gusanos (1991) (novel)
• A Moment in the Sun (2011) (novel)

Collections and Non-Fiction[link]

• The Anarchists Convention (1979) (short story collection)
• Thinking in Pictures: The Making of the Movie "Matewan" (1987) (non-fiction)
• Dillinger in Hollywood (2004) (short story collection)

Music videos[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (August 2010)

• Bruce Springsteen - Born in the U.S.A.
• Bruce Springsteen - I'm on Fire
• Bruce Springsteen - Glory Days

Awards/nominations[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (August 2010)

Films[link]

Awards for Honeydripper:

• Outstanding Independent or Foreign Film (Win) – 2008 NAACP Image Awards
• Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture (Theatrical or Television) (Nominated) – John Sayles – 2008 NAACP Image Awards
• Top 10 Independent Films of 2007 - National Board of Review
• Best Screenplay (Win) – John Sayles - 2007 San Sebastián International Film Festival (Tied with Gracia Querejeta and David Planell for Siete mesas de billar francés (2007)

Award for SILVER CITY:

• Golden Seashell Award for Best Film (Nominated) - John Sayles - 2004 San Sebastián International Film Festival

Awards for SUNSHINE STATE:

• Golden Orange Award (Win) - John Sayles - 2003 Florida Film Critics Circle Awards
• Special Mention For Excellence In Filmmaking (Win) - 2002 National Board of Review

Awards for LIMBO:

• Best Director Golden Space Needle Award (Win) - John Sayles -1999 Seattle International Film Festival
• Outstanding Indies (Win) - 1999 National Board of Review

Awards for MEN WITH GUNS/HOMBRES ARMADOS:

• Best Foreign Independent Film (Nominated) - 1998 British Independent Film Awards
• Best Foreign Film (Nominated) - 1999 Golden Globes
• Peace Award (Nominated) - 1999 Political Film Society
• FIPRESCI Prize (Win) - John Sayles - 1997 San Sebastián International Film Festival
• OCIC Award (Win) - John Sayles - 1997 San Sebastián International Film Festival
• Solidarity Award (Win) - John Sayles - 1997 San Sebastián International Film Festival
• Golden Seashell Award for Best Film (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1997 San Sebastián International Film Festival

Awards for LONE STAR:

• Best Original Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1997 Academy Awards
• Best Original Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1997 BAFTA Awards
• Best Screenplay, Motion Picture (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1997 Golden Globes
• Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1997 Writers Guild of America
• Best Picture (Nominated) - 1997 Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards
• Best Motion Picture Original Screenplay (Win) - John Sayles - 1997 Golden Satellite Awards
• Best Motion Picture - Drama (Nominated) - Maggie Renzi & R. Paul Miller - 1997 Golden Satellite Awards
• Best Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1997 Independent Spirit Awards
• Best Film (Win) - Lone Star - 1996 Lone Star Film & Television Awards
• Best Director (Win) - John Sayles - 1996 Lone Star Film & Television Awards
• Best Screenplay (Win) - John Sayles - 1996 Lone Star Film & Television Awards
• Special Achievement Award for Outstanding Feature Film (Win) - 1996 NCLR Bravo Awards
• Best Director (Win) - John Sayles - 1997 Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards

Awards for THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH:

• Best Genre Video Release (Nominated) - 1996 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films
• International Critics Award (Win) - John Sayles - 1996 Gérardmer Film Festival
• Best Director (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1996 Independent Spirit Awards
• Best Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1996 Independent Spirit Awards

Awards for PASSION FISH:

• Best Original Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1993 Academy Awards
• Golden Spur Award (Win) - John Sayles - 1993 Flanders International Film Festival
• Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1993 Writers Guild of America

Awards for CITY OF HOPE:

• Critics Award (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1991 Deauville Film Festival
• Special Award, Democracy Award (Win) - 1992 Political Film Society
• Tokyo Grand Prix Award (Win) - John Sayles - 1991 Tokyo International Film Festival

Awards for MATEWAN:

• Critics Award (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1987 Deauville Film Festival
• Best Director (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1988 Independent Spirit Awards
• Best Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1988 Independent Spirit Award
• Human Rights Award (Win) - 1988 Political Film Society

Awards for THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET:

• Best Screenplay Caixa de Catalunya Award (Win) - John Sayles - 1984 Catalonian International Film Festival, Sitges, Spain
• Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1985 USA Film Festival (later became the Sundance Film Festival)

Awards for RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN:

• Best Independent Film (Win) - 1981 Boston Society of Film Critics Awards
• Best Screenplay (Win) - John Sayles - 1980 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
• National Film Registry - 1997 Library of Congress, National Film Preservation Board
• Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1981 Writers Guild of America
• Best Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1980 New York Film Critics Circle
• Second Place - 1981 US Film Festival (later became the Sundance Film Festival)

Other recognition[link]

Sayles' first published story, "I-80 Nebraska," won an O. Henry Award; his novel, Union Dues, was nominated for a National Book Award as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award.

In 1985, Sayles received the John D. MacArthur Award, given to 20 Americans in diverse fields each year for their innovative work. He has also been the recipient of the Eugene V. Debs Award, the John Steinbeck Award and the John Cassavetes Award. He was honored with the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Writer's Guild of America (1999).

See also[link]

• Night Skies - for a more complete history of the Close Encounters of the Third Kind sequel becomes E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial story

Further reading[link]

• Diane Carson and Heidi Kenaga, eds., Sayles Talk: New Perspectives on Independent Filmmaker John Sayles, Wayne State University Press, 2006
• John Sayles, Thinking in Pictures: The Making of the Movie Matewan, Da Capo Press, 2003

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John Sayles

• John Sayles' official website
• John Sayles at the Internet Movie Database
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
• Interview April 2007 by Cathy Pryor in the London Independent
• (audio) John Sayles interview at KCRW
• The Rumpus interview
• Return of the Independent: Sayles on Sayles (5-part interview) from siffblog.com
• An Extended Interview with John Sayles — video report by Democracy Now!

Tamar Szabó Gendler (born December 1965) is a Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Yale University, and Chair of the Yale University Department of Philosophy. Her primary interests include metaphysics, epistemology and philosophical psychology.

Biography[link]

Education and Employment[link]

Gendler was born in 1965 in Princeton, New Jersey to Mary and Everett Gendler.^[1] She grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, where she attended the Andover public schools and then Phillips Academy Andover.^[2]

As an undergraduate, she studied at Yale University, where she was a championship debater in the American Parliamentary Debate Association and a member of Manuscript Society.^[3] She graduated summa cum laude in 1987 with Distinction in Humanities and Math-&-Philosophy.

After graduating from college, she worked for several years as an assistant to Linda Darling-Hammond at the RAND Corporation’s education policy division in Washington, DC.^[4]

In 1996, she earned her Philosophy PhD program at Harvard University, with Robert Nozick, Derek Parfit and Hilary Putnam as her advisors.^[5]

Gendler taught Philosophy at Yale University (1996–97), Syracuse University(1997–2003) and Cornell University (2003–06), before returning to Yale in 2006 as Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Yale University Cognitive Science Program (2006–2010).^[6] On July 1, 2010, she became Chair of the Yale University Department of Philosophy, becoming the first woman to hold that position in the department’s history and the first female graduate of Yale College to Chair a Yale Department.

Gendler is married to Zoltan Gendler Szabo,^[7] a philosopher and linguist who is also a professor at Yale University.^[8] They have two sons.

Honors and Professional Accomplishments[link]

Gendler has held Fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship Program in the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies/Ryskamp Fellowship Program,^[9] the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation New Directions Program.^[10]

She is the author of Thought Experiments: On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases (Routledge, 2000) and Intuition, Imagination and Philosophical Methodology (Oxford, 2010), and editor or co-editor of The Elements of Philosophy (Oxford 2008), Perceptual Experience (Oxford, 2006), Conceivability and Possibility (Oxford 2002). She is also co-editor of the journal Oxford Studies in Epistemology.

Her philosophical articles have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Philosophical Perspectives, Mind & Language, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, and The Philosophical Quarterly. Her 2008 essay “Alief and Belief” was selected by the Philosopher’s Annual as one of the 10 best articles published in philosophy in 2008.^[11]

She also lectures occasionally for non-professional audiences as a professor with One Day University^[12] and as a diavlogger on bloggingheads.tv.^[13]

She is best known for her work on thought experiments,^[14] imagination – particularly on the phenomenon of imaginative resistance^[15] -- and for coining the term alief.^[16]

Bibliography[link]

• Intuition, Imagination and Philosophical Methodology: Selected Papers. NY/Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010.
• The Elements of Philosophy: Readings from Past and Present. Co-edited with Susanna Siegel and Steven M. Cahn, NY: Oxford, 2008.
• Perceptual Experience. Co-edited with an introduction by Tamar Szabó Gendler and John Hawthorne. NY/Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Conceivability and Possibility. Co-edited with an introduction by Tamar Szabó Gendler and John Hawthorne.NY/Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Thought Experiment: On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases. NY: Routledge, 2000.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Tamar Szabó Gendler’s personal homepage
• Tamar Szabó Gendler’s Yale webpage
• Lecture Slides from "Five Ancient Secrets to Modern Happiness"
• Bloggingheads.tv: Paul Bloom & Tamar Szabó Gendler, Percontations: Beliefs, Aliefs, and Daydreams (May 31, 2009)

Sources[link]

• Tamar Szabó Gendler’s Yale webpage
• Tamar Szabó Gendler’s personal homepage
• Yale Daily News, "Professor goes back to school" (2009)
• PhilPapers archive link to Gendler's professional papers
• Cornell Sun, "Cornell Loses Philosophy Profs" (2006)
• Yale Daily News', "Philosophy Takes Steps to Rebuild" (2006)