Free and Not-Free

Definition

Free and not-free names the opposition Soulillou identifies as "a fundamental given of Western aesthetic judgement": the distinction between the free man (eleutheros) and he who is not, encoded in the visual field and inherited by the whole genealogy of the arts' division. Its textual anchors: in Plato's Gorgias, Socrates's flattery-theory ranks dress (kommô, to decorate) as "a pernicious substitute for gymnastics" — the natural against the artificial — which is "an opposition that, from ancient society to the beginning of modern times, is of fundamental significance: the opposition between a free man (eleutheros) and he who is not"; when the sophist Antiphôn attacks Socrates before his noble students, the charge is sartorial — "the philosopher does not have the dignified look of a free man; in summer and winter he wears the same coat and goes barefoot" (p. 317). In Greek language and thought the free man "cannot be dissociated… from the exterior appearance and the ornamentation that goes with it. In Hegelian terms one might say that the appearance is the essence; there is no appearance which could conceal or contradict the essence" (p. 317) — eleutheros means "'one who talks or acts like a free man,' 'one who is compatible with the station of a free man'" and, of animals, "'of noble appearance.'" The genealogy's development: the liberal/mechanical arts split produces "the opposition between the arts (sometimes called 'noble') and the applied arts, also called decorative," and Kant's "art is that which is realized through freedom" — "apparently exempt from all social considerations" — "carries in itself the age-old opposition between the free and the non-free" (pp. 317–318).

The concept's critical point is that the decorative "will come to occupy the pole of both the free and the non-free": in Kant the pure decorative gravitates to the free (beauty "not subject to the demands of a concept"), while for Gleizes, Metzinger and Léger the decorative (art "subject to a specific space") is drawn to the not-free; Ruskin read medieval artisans' ornaments as "imprints of a free man" against the ancients' perfection that "betrays a servile origin," while Worringer read abstract ornament as enslavement and Greek realism as freedom — "constructions… form[ing] veritable fantasies" (p. 318). The opposition's Western limit is then posed as a question: "Can one imagine the decorative outside the horizon which delineates the opposition of free and not-free? And this horizon itself, does it belong specifically to Western thought – an idea determined by metaphysics – or is it, on the contrary, an horizon encompassing all understanding of ornament?" (p. 318). For interior design, the concept supplies the split's deepest genealogy: the applied/decorative arts are the mechanical arts' inheritance — the arts of the unfree — which is why the interior design vs architecture debate carries a class-and-slavery layer beneath its professional one, and why the nineteenth-century "detour of rationality" was needed once the aristocratic warrant for ornament's legitimacy collapsed.

Key Thinkers

• Jacques Soulillou — the concept's theorist: eleutheros as the aesthetic-judgement ground; the genealogy from the Gorgias through the liberal/mechanical arts to the noble/applied split; the decorative's oscillation between both poles; the "veritable fantasies" of Ruskin and Worringer (2002/2006).
• Plato — the Gorgias passage (kolakeia; dress as pernicious substitute for gymnastics) that founds the natural/artificial opposition as a status opposition.
• Immanuel Kant — the concept's ambiguous heir: the pure decorative at the pole of the free (beauty "not subject to the demands of a concept") against "the beauty of a building"; "art is that which is realized through freedom" as the opposition's modern carrier.
• John Ruskin — the medieval-imprint fantasy: the artisans' ornaments as "imprints of a free man," Greek perfection as "servile origin" (not yet paged — see log).
• Wilhelm Worringer — the inverted fantasy: abstract ornament as the clue to man's enslavement before nature, Greek bodily realism as freedom's testimony (not yet paged — see log).
• G. W. F. Hegel — the formula the genealogy presupposes: "the appearance is the essence" — status legible in ornament without remainder.
• Gleizes, Metzinger and Léger — the modern painters who drew the decorative to the not-free pole by binding it "to a specific space."

Related Concepts

• Ornamental Ground Plan — the vertical axis this opposition content-izes: "the intra-sexual dimension where the dominating male is opposed to the dominated male and, more generally, free man to the non-free."
• The Decorative — the opposition's displaced object: the decorative occupies "the pole of both the free and the non-free," which is why its logic endlessly re-divides.
• Interior Design vs. Architecture — the debate's deepest genealogy: the noble/applied arts split as the institutional heir of free/not-free — architecture's claim to freedom and the decorative arts' servile inheritance.
• The Upholsterer — the mechanical arts' trade descendant: the "fallacies" reform attacked as the servile pole's practice.
• Design Reform — the re-founding that the opposition's modern collapse necessitated: "reason" replacing class as the warrant of ornamental legitimacy.
• Aesthetic Judgment — the judgement-type whose "fundamental given" this opposition is: Kantian disinterest carrying "the age-old opposition between the free and the non-free."
• Ornamental Excess — the expense-system that registers the vertical axis: legitimacy of expense as the practical form of the free/not-free distinction.
• Universalism vs. Relativism — the debate the closing question feeds: is the free/not-free horizon Western metaphysics' own or a universal grammar of ornament?

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Ornament and Order (Soulillou 2002/2006) — the concept's source: the Gorgias passage and eleutheros (p. 317); Antiphôn's barefoot attack on Socrates (p. 317); "In Hegelian terms one might say that the appearance is the essence" (p. 317); the liberal/mechanical arts genealogy and Kant's freedom-carrier (pp. 317–318); the decorative's oscillation between the free and the not-free (p. 318); the Ruskin/Worringer "veritable fantasies" (p. 318); the opposition's modern collapse and the rational detour (p. 319); and the Western-horizon question (p. 318).

Open Questions

• Soulillou names the Ruskin and Worringer constructions "veritable fantasies" — but the wiki's ornament pages treat Ruskin's medieval-artisan reading sympathetically (via Braham's structural-polychromy lineage). Is the free-man-imprint reading a fantasy to be dispelled or a genuine insight into ornament's social authorship — and can both be held?
• The opposition's modern fate is asymmetric: the free/not-free "gradually lost its meaning" (p. 319), yet the wiki's design-reform lineage shows the reformers claiming legitimacy precisely on class-free rational grounds. Is "rationality" the free man's ornament re-founded — the aristocratic appearance-principle surviving as a claim about reason — and does the Mies armchair ("more 'rational' than a Bergère Louis XVI") prove the survival?
• If the appearance is the essence (the Hegelian formula), can the applied/decorative arts ever escape their servile genealogy, or must they — as the Garretts argued — be judged "by the same standards applied to other forms of art" to break the inheritance? See the-decorative, house-decorator.
• Can the decorative be imagined "outside the horizon which delineates the opposition of free and not-free" (p. 318)? The wiki's non-Western and global-interior material (Hadjiyanni, Houze's Vienna, the Viennese handcraft lineage) may already hold the counter-case: is the Viennese ornament-as-fashion economy — built on "women's traditional handcrafts" — inside or outside the Western horizon? See universalism-vs-relativism, wiener-werkstatte.