This essay is the fourth in the book known as Between Past and Future.
You can tell she is working on ideas about the concept of the will later expanded upon in Willing the second volume of the Life of the Mind.
One of the most interesting ideas in here is that liberation and freedom are not synonymous, because liberation is a “freedom from” while freedom involves the additional empowerment of “freedom to”.
Augustine, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Machiavelli are all referenced. One of the reasons I like this essay is that it shows how if you are a reader of the tradition of Western Thought, you can pull different strands you remembered from different thinkers and bring them to bear on a question or a theme.
You can see her referencing some of her ideas that will appear in other works, like the importance of a plurality and appearance.
She’s talking about the manifestation of a principle and describes the principle also as an inspiring spirit which I have always found fascinating.
see page 152.
