Identity, freedom, emergence. A reflection on the meaning of action

Abstract

Freedom and the meaningfulness of action are not just natural allies, as one might expect. They can be also incompatible instances, since radical absolute freedom threatens any action with emptiness and groundlessness. In the present pages we try to tackle this ‘paradox of freedom’, where actions deprived of all freedom, and actions radically free, appear both to be threatened by meaninglessness. We do so by outlining a comprehensive conception of agents’ freedom as possibilization, which reveals itself in the forms of biological, cultural and personal history, and which is capable of neutralizing the aporetic character of the ‘paradox of freedom’.