It is the duty of intellectuals to liberate

Freedom consists of nothing...It is a moral, which is to say, a spiritual form...Freedom has nothing to do with what you have, or the massess have...Slaves can be and often have been relatively well off... Did they have authority over their own affairs???.If they were not competent, did they have the support of their communities???When we are free, it is by common consent, like all just acts, because those concerned agree it is just... It is both charge of ones own affairs and help from others: the common defense, and the common demand for justice... Of course, freedom demands democracy, but democracy with limits... No one should have a vote over your affairs if it does not concern them...Democracy is not a device to give the majority power over the minority, but to protect the minority from the majority and the majority from the minority...And all this means that individuals and communities have rights, which is to say power; and that government only has the authority given to it by the people to accomplish a certain goal.... The question of what rights we possess is perhaps more salient... Do we have a right to property... The country is ours, and even it private hands it must still support the population... So freedom will be limited by the necessity to get along... Until freedoms conflict, until my freedom begins to affect you negatively, my freedom must be considered as an absolute- without natural limits until it meets and bounds the freedom of others...

Whether or not it is the philosopher's DUTY to liberate, doesn't he do so by the very act of philosophising?

Might one not turn it around and declare that it is the DUTY of "the masses" to liberate themselves?

Look at all the philosophers, even today who work in slave societies...Yet in seeking truth they seek the stone by which all are transformed...I cannot think of the name of that Roman era philosopher who was sold into slavery and then because he thought more than worked was beaten so unmercifully that he was crippled and so, useless for life and so unfitted for freedom... We are all cast into bondage from our earliest moments when as children we are baptized...Led into the way of faith some can never be freed...Most of us must accept some form of servitude to have any kind of living that is not hand to mouth, as a primitive...Surviving that, some of us are then set free as unprofitable, to sit upon our pained asses and complain...

Knowledge is virtue said Socrates...No; knowledge is power said the master so that one who controls knowledge controls humanity; but where is the self control??? Should not the object of philosophy and democracy be the same: That all should make well considered judgements???Who can say that if all of humanity were not free tomorrow that they would not be slaves of their passions by afternoon???The fact is that no one can free another, but that all people with the sense to seek freedom have already found the essentials of freedom...Those slaves who freed themselves were of a different caliber from those who were freed... Those who left by their own will, daring, intelligence, and cunning, who then supported themselves by the labor of their own hands were always free, but without the respect from others freedom always demands...