Freedom Struggling

Jacob Needleman was an American philosopher and teacher who articulated in clear, straightforward prose the basic questions of philosophy which have preoccupied civilizations from the ancient world to the present. Among his many titles are Real Philosophy: An Anthology of Universal Search for Meaning; Money and the Meaning of Life; and The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders.

In addition to his many books and articles, Needleman once wrote a commencement address which he read to a graduating class of high school students. In it, he tells the story of being recently in Concord, Massachusetts, and visiting the site of the Old North Bridge, where American Minutemen fired the “shot heard round the world,” marking the onset of the American War of Independence. Needleman then explains to the new graduates before him the contemporary implications of that struggle:

There’s a plaque there that speaks about the love of freedom, and I asked myself, when I looked at that, “What do you love when you love freedom?” If you ask yourself that question – “I love freedom, but what is it that I love when I love freedom?”– it’s not just the freedom to buy things, to do what I want, when I want, how I want – that’s for children. But real freedom, for the Founders, and, as the country went on, for those who kept renewing the meaning of the country – people like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, the keepers of the Native American tradition – freedom meant the freedom to live one’s life in relation to something higher, within oneself or above oneself; the freedom to search for conscience. And that is still protected by the government, however many mistakes and crimes America has been guilty of over the years. That’s one way of looking at the meaning of some of America’s ideals and values, a way that bases American democracy on deep spiritual and philosophical principles.

Needleman’s address is entitled “The One Great Question,” and you can find it, along with many other essays, articles, audio, and video, at his website, www.jacobneedleman.com. Needleman was concerned from early in his career with explaining and advancing the work of traditional—sometimes called primordial—philosophy, and his foreword to an anthology entitled The Sword of Gnosis: Metaphysics, Cosmology, Tradition, Symbolism is very much worth time and close reflection. After a life of intelligent work keeping the road of philosophy open to all, Jacob Needleman died in 2022 at the age of eighty-eight.

***