Truths that compel assent cannot sustain a freedom-based movement.

Evidence

But the history of efforts to avoid such truths is plenty messy, too. Want only the kinds of truths that can compel assent, in math or logic? You are likely to find yourself in a world you don’t like. Because freedom is freedom, and freedom is central to the beings we are—the beings we know we can be. Those beings, these beings, need something other than “compelled assent.” We need the open space of exploration, the glory of discovery, the experience of understanding. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 178

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Giving birth cannot confer existential meaning because freedom must found itself. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1450; Appealing to transcendent values secretly denies one’s own freedom as the source of normativity. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 198; Performing assent to authority’s claims is a form of submission, not belief. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 165