At 07:43 PM 19-11-05, you wrote:
In terms of your question, I interpret this as:
Freedom is bounded by rights (as established by context - or the local moral
order ref: Rom Harre's work), but conscience (the truth is in yourself) can
lead one to the limits of freedom.
I would assert that the only examination of conscience which can lead one to the 'limits of freedom' is a historical/sociological examination- as opposed to a 'philosophical' or 'spiritual' or 'psychological' examination- such an examination delineates the formation of the individual conscience as part and parcel of a culture's "historical apriori". Moreover such an examination not only renders apparent the limits of freedom as it applies to the dictates of the 'conscience'- but, and this is crucial, provides the individual with the necessary knowledge to transgress these limits, limits which have been imposed upon us and have slowly become self-evident and immobile interior 'truths' only through being hardened in what Foucault termed 'the long baking process of history' [again from _Nietzsche, Genealogy and History_]. Such an understanding of the sociological and historical formation of the conscience or, in Fruedian terms, the 'superego', was also the project of Norbert Elias whose work is valuable in this context. The lesson to be learned? that the conscience resides not in the ethereal realm of universal truth, but belongs to what Foucault referred to as the "exteriority of accidents" [again from _Nietzsche, Genealogy and History]. Indeed Foucault begins his essay on _Nietzsche, Genealogy and History_ by explaining that genealogy, as he understands it, "must record the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality; it must seek them in the most unpromising places, in what we tend to feel is without history- in sentiments, love, conscience, instincts."
best
bradley
"Of all writings I love only those which the writer writeth with his blood. Write in blood, and thou shalt learn that blood is spirit"
Nietzsche. "Thus Spake Zarathustra".