Strategies of Political Emanci¬pation has resulted from six public lectures delivered by Professor Christian Bay at Loyola in 1977. The original lectures have been revised sub¬sequently in view of criticisms and questions raised. The pre¬sent work is a sequel to the author’s earlier major work, The Structure of Freedom, which appeared over two deca¬des ago. In his earlier work he had explored the psychological contours of freedom with re¬ference to early childhood and family experiences, and its relationship with the authoritarian syndrome. Here he situates freedom and eman¬cipation in the context of human predicaments in modern times. In the introduction, Bay says his basic concern is to explore ways of understanding and advancing human freedom. Freedom, conceived as self-expression, is examined accor-ding to ‘rational humanist’ priorities in politics. Rational, because it carefully studies ‘realities and possibilities’; and humanist, because the purpose of politics is to enhance and preserve human life. The task of politics is to make one continually aware of what is and ‘what ought to be’ and perhaps provide incentives for reducing the gap between the two.
Nov-Dec 1982, volume 7, No 3