Reasonable Freedom – Upcycling Philosophy

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Christoph Böhm
20. August 2025
Reading time:
~ 5 min

Reasonable Freedom

Concept of Reasonable Freedom

A Figure of Freedom, Control, and Digital Isolation

Freedom and reason are often interpreted and discussed as separate concepts. Nevertheless, they are inextricably linked. With the advent of digital practices and virtuality in contemporary life, a new era has dawned in which people’s awareness of the means by which they attempt to shape individual freedom is changing. Digital practices are also shaped by the use of reason – but this reason seems to differ entirely from that derived from the conditions of a reproducing society in the philosophical tradition. But what is the actual difference in the use of reason? Let us look at three phenomena of the digital world to examine how the philosophical idea of “rational freedom” continues to exist in them.

(1) Cryptocurrency / Bitcoin: The trigger for the emergence of the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and the subsequent collapse of banks in the USA.[i] Shortly afterwards, this had repercussions almost everywhere in the world. The crisis of confidence in state actors, which had been brewing for years, gave rise to a counter-movement in the digital space known as the Cypherpunks. For this libertarian group of tech-savvy individuals, the digital realm is a space that should remain free from government influence. Prominent representatives of this community striving for independence from the state include whistleblower Edward Snowden, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

In response to the banking crisis that followed the collapse of Lehmann Brothers, a person or group still unknown today created the cryptocurrency Bitcoin under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto and made it known among cypherpunks. Although the founders of Bitcoin remain unknown to this day, it is certain that the person or group possesses both above-average talent in the fields of programming and cryptography and a deep understanding of economics and finance. Through programming and cryptographic technology, Bitcoin embodies the ideals of the Cypherpunk Manifesto, which are embedded in the currency in the form of anonymity in use, independence from the financial system and technical limits on money creation.

(2) Media streaming: The history of mass media is characterised by a unique symbiosis between the media and communications industries. Both the production and distribution of film and music benefit not only from technological developments, but conversely, the creativity inherent in the media industry also stimulates technical innovation. The goal and result of the interaction between media and technical innovation can be measured by the steady increase in the reach and effectiveness of media products. Particularly striking signs of permanent paradigm shifts in the entertainment industry are technological developments in sound carriers and computer-generated 3D animation in the film industry. The media industry is undergoing an equally profound change, as the digital storage and distribution of media has decoupled the actual product from its carrier material. Both film and images are reduced from their diverse and rich forms of representation to standardised digital coding processes. Thanks to constantly improving compression of digital storage and increased network capacities, media products are becoming so transportable that they can be transmitted individually, paving the way for the business model of media streaming. Digitised music and video productions are now ubiquitously available via Internet-based distribution channels. As a result of digital compression and network technology, media are no longer distributed uniformly to a broad audience, but also individually, and consumption habits are adapting to the free availability of media. Life practices are changing in such a way that daily routines are no longer geared to fixed times of limited media availability.[ii]

(3) Content moderation in social media: In the wake of the debate about harmful misrepresentations on the internet and the resulting threats of sanctions, platform operators established the practice of content moderation. This euphemistic term is a code word for blocking content that causes outrage from the platforms. Content moderation has now developed into an industry of its own, in which people in precarious employment conditions, mostly behind closed doors, have to perform the psychologically stressful task of reviewing disturbing content on the internet and deciding in a matter of seconds whether it can be displayed.[iii] The content ranges from rape, child pornography and mutilation to live videos of suicides. Platform operators are faced with the task of deciding whether to suppress content based on cultural and political context, which cannot be managed using commercial logic. Added to this is the requirement to respond immediately to events so that the information is not spread further through multiple copies on the network. Another problematic phenomenon is cyberbullying. A series of studies conducted in 2024 on behaviour on social media in Germany found that 500,000 young people had already contemplated suicide as a result of cyberbullying.[iv]

These three phenomena – Bitcoin, media streaming and content moderation – are examples of the liberal use of digital technologies and the consequences arising from them, which can be used to recapitulate the concept of reasonable freedom. Not covered here are the current developments in generative artificial intelligence, which use language models and audiovisual representations to constitute a new reality behind which human authorship is obscured. Due to the current pace of technological innovation, few conventions have yet been established in this area. Although it is interesting because of the ideas of freedom it conveys, it has not yet been commodified to such an extent that the ideas underlying generative artificial intelligence have become an integral part of institutionally established everyday practices.

Reasonable freedom in the digital realm

The pursuit of freedom in the sense of liberation from state paternalism and control was the motivation for the technology-enthusiastic youth of the Californian Bay Area in the 1980s. They experimented with programmable semiconductors and, as a result of increasingly powerful and easier-to-use automation, allowed digital technology to become a ubiquitous commodity. Venture capitalists became interested in the growth potential of these highly multiplicative digital functions. The combination of capital and locally concentrated expertise gave rise to the financially powerful myth of freedom in Silicon Valley. Its momentum is still driven by the instrumental rationality of having to realise growth potential in order not to be overwhelmed by a new wave of innovation in the growth dynamics. With the spread of the internet and mobile networks, the aspect of liberation is taking a back seat to the opportunities that users of ubiquitous digital technology are discovering in the liberal self-design that could be found in newly opened spaces of digital possibilities. The revolutionary genius of the group of digital oligopolies that today make up Big Tech essentially lay in their ability to create space for liberal lifestyles and offer these opportunities to as large a part of the world’s population as possible.

However, the fact that increasingly sophisticated incentive systems are woven into the innovation offerings of digital companies cannot be the sole reason for the widespread acceptance of these offerings. One explanation for the mass adoption of technology offerings lies in the need for social relevance, which can be derived from Bourdieu’s model of social distinction, symbolic power and an update of recognition theory based on this model.[v] Another reason for the speed at which digital innovations are spreading could lie in the opening up of new spaces of contingency. Andreas Reckwitz recognises the pattern of social change in the fact that contingencies open up and are then closed off again by dominant actors, stabilising social structures in the process.[vi] In a contemporary historical comparison, the rapid succession of digital innovations is the consequence of a risk capital-driven race to open up new spaces of contingency for the liberal realisation of self-determined lifestyles, in the development of which subject cultures are becoming increasingly homogenised through the use of digital practices.

The three selected examples of digital phenomena share the common feature of having gone through cycles of contingency opening and contingency closure, which are reflected in fixed design principles. The cryptocurrency Bitcoin is established as a currency, but its use is so restricted that expertise and secure infrastructure are required to protect individual users from total loss of value. Media streaming has become a dominant factor in the media industry with its business models based on the analysis of personal preferences. The contingency space of digital and individualised media consumption is equally closed due to preference-oriented user behaviour, so that other media providers without a preference logic are increasingly being forced out of the market. The initially liberal authorship in social media has been overlaid by disturbing, hurtful and disruptive content, prompting political institutions to intervene through regulation and push digital platform providers to take steps to clean up the publicly accessible internet of undesirable content. In the case of social media, it is political and economic institutions that are closing off the contingency of free authorship. Taking the digital phenomena of Bitcoin, media streaming and social media as examples, it can be observed that, under the idea of liberal realisation, open and generally accessible spaces of contingency have been closed again within a very short period of time in historical terms, spanning just a few years.

The development of contingency spaces in the digital realm is empirical evidence that the use of liberal design options without institutional control threatens to lead to untenable situations. The design features of Bitcoin are intended to ensure that it develops free from any controlling influence by institutional actors. However, the history of Bitcoin shows that this purely technically controlled space of freedom falls far short of the original ideas of trustworthy use – if it does not actually contradict them. Further evidence of the collapse of a purely technically controlled and freely accessible platform was Microsoft’s self-learning chatbot Tay in 2016. It had to be shut down after only one day because it became racist due to interactive contributions. Media streaming is the unidirectional distribution of content controlled by economic institutions. Unlike the freely accessible video platform YouTube, media providers such as Netflix control, edit and create media content. In doing so, media providers pursue their economic interests of market dominance through rapid growth and profit maximisation. The interest in dissemination and profit, as well as the business purpose of offering self-contained media productions, acts as a systemic control mechanism. Social media providers now find themselves in the precarious situation of having to implement control guidelines against free authorship to prevent their platforms from becoming unusable for the general public due to hate posts and content that is disturbing or even criminal. The question remains open as to whether undesirable developments in open and generally accessible contingency spaces can be explained solely by the design features of digital technology, which are imbued with instrumental self-interest.

Reflection

The striking paths of established digital practices show that the use of reason by no means guarantees an increase in freedom. Has the philosophical concept of reasonable freedom thus been reduced to absurdity by the digital revolution of social practices? Not entirely, because how we understand ourselves as subjects as part of the world around us depends on what we are able to perceive as the world. The theoretical sequence of self-relations is so fundamental to our current understanding of the world that Jürgen Habermas has devoted an entire book to this developmental history of rational freedom.[vii] The theory of subject philosophy gained momentum with René Descartes’ (1596-1650) statement “cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am). Since then, the individual has been given the task, as it were, of using their reason to free themselves from dependencies on others – as Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) later formulated it. From these origins, theoretical currents developed, like a river delta, which differentiate between freedom and the use of reason. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) shifted the focus of subject formation to the connection between society and history. Through his meticulous and almost global linguistic investigations, Humboldt recognised that in all languages there is always an “I”, “you” and “he/she”. These personal pronouns mark the roles in which subjects interact with each other. Freedom can only be understood and conceived in these reciprocal relationships. In the interdisciplinary psychological and philosophical school of American pragmatism, led by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), the functionalist aspect of problem solving is added. Individuals use their reason to maintain a balance between social dependence and individuality in the web of social relationships.

In the three digital practices mentioned above – cryptocurrency, media streaming and content moderation – the connection to a real counterpart is increasingly lost. The other person, with their demands for reciprocal reference, is increasingly ignored in the digital world and replaced by a wide range of offers provided by the broad spectrum of digital services. It is becoming less and less necessary to engage with the perspectives of others, which are expressed in their sometimes inexplicable actions and demands. If the digital world means that we no longer have to negotiate mutual demands with one another, this could be seen as a gain in individual freedom. However, this freedom is linked to conditions that exist in the operation and production of the digital infrastructure required for it to be. But what guarantees its continued existence? Here, the use of reason reveals a contradiction. At this point, it becomes clear that reasonable freedom is relevant regardless of any digitality. For freedom without the use of reason cannot be recognised as freedom and, more importantly, freedom cannot be maintained without the use of reason.

References

[i] An extremely informative overview of Bitcoin, enriched with surprising details, can be found at: Rosenberger, Patrick (2023): Bitcoin und Blockchain. Vom Scheitern Einer Ideologie und dem Erfolg einer Revolutionären Technik. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg.

[ii] The way in which streaming has changed the media world is explained in a knowledgeable manner here: Schütte, Oliver (2019): Die Netﬂix-Revolution. Wie Streaming unser Leben verändert. Zürich: Midas Verlag.

[iii] Despite the constant need to adapt to the ever-growing problems of Internet posting, this work can be considered a standard reference for the background of content moderation: Gillespie, Tarleton. (2018). Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media. Yale University Press.

[iv] This study reveals the hidden consequences of cyberbullying: Bündnis gegen Cybermobbing (2024): Cyberlife V – Spannungsfeld zwischen Faszination und Gefahr Cybermobbing bei Schülerinnen und Schülern; URL: https://buendnis-gegen-cybermobbing.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Cyberlife_Studie_2024_Endversion.pdf (Zugriff am 09.08.2025)

[v] An explanation from a recognition theory perspective as to why social media is spreading so quickly can be found here: Böhm, Christoph (2023): Verantwortungsvolle Digitalität. Warum wir den digitalen Wandel gestalten sollten, Berlin: Metzler-Verlag.

[vi] This comprehensive work traces how the structure of society is changing in the digital age: Reckwitz, Andreas (2017): Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten. Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

[vii] A historically based work that is highly topical because it explores the discourse between beliefs and knowledge: Habermas, Jürgen (2019): Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie. Darmstadt: Suhrkamp.