Philo reviewer

• Freedom


  • Vital to human existence
  • Only humans have the capacity to choose (to be free from and to be free for)
  • The highest good that all people struggle to protect
• Problems with the nature of freedom


  • Controversy between freedom and determinism
  • Determinism rejects the idea of freedom because human behavior is affected by factors (history, socioeconomic context, and physiological makeup among others)
• Is human freedom limited or absolute?


  The necessity of freedom lies always in the call of the context or the situation that defines the time
• The context of time or historical context shows how freedom is being deprived from certain historical players and how badly a people demand for the recognition of their freedom (e.g. EDSA People's Power Revolution directed at Marcos Dictatorship in 1986)
• Conceptual guises of freedom

  A character in a short story is a person, in some stories an animal, who takes part in the action of the story or other literary work
• Existential freedom by Jean-Paul Sartre


  • Freedom lies in the human person's conscious awareness that she is "thrown" in this world prior to her choice
  • From here she has to make a choice to make up her own life, like a project; a responsibility for another life
• Existence is freedom


  • Freedom lies in the person's being conscious of her being in a life that she never even chose to be born into
  • Freedom rests on the realization that we exist and from here we create the meaning of our life
  • This self-awareness enables her to apprehend a self-image and prescribe guidance for her actions
• "In one sense, the choice is always possible; what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must also realize that, if I decide not to choose, that still constitutes a choice" (Sartre, 2008, p. 44)
• Existence precedes essence


  • Humans create their own essence
  • A person cannot escape freedom, because not choosing is also a choice
  • In the course of giving meaning to one's life, one fills the world with meaning
  • Freedom is the very core and the door to authentic existence
• En-soi


  A human that tries to escape obligations (with excuses such as "being born that way")
• Mauvais-foi


  Pertains to bad faith where en-soi acts into
• Free individual choice


  • What Jean-Paul Sartre emphasized the importance of, regardless of other people's influence in our desires, beliefs and decisions
  • To be human, to be conscious is to be free to imagine, free to choose and responsible for one's life
• "The only thing that a person cannot be is not being free."
• Limitation of freedom


  • A product of our being conscious of things - it is our choice of limitation
  • The limitation that you think does not limit freedom itself, because you are still the one who chooses that limitation
  • Most often, we stop thinking and creating possibilities, so we immediately say that we are not free
  • There are unlimited choices for the person to think, but what limits is the thought of limiting our actions
• Liberal freedom by Immanuel Kant


  • Freedom rests in the inalienable autonomy of the human person
  • The virtue of the person's capacity to think independently, she has the full control over her decisions
  • The full control of one's decisions that connotes a respect for other person's decision as a co-equal person
  • For Kant, liberal autonomy then is a full expression of the self's governing rational power
• Components of liberalism theory


  • In liberalism, every person always has a say about literally everything
  • Liberalism is the most moral ideology, as it is the only ideology that always ensures moral individuals are not oppressed by less moral factors, and that everyone can truly act upon their moral consciences
  • Liberalism is the continual modification amid conditions of choice and enabling diversity
• Transcendental ego


  • The capacity to detach from the surrounding contexts when drawing upon decisions about important things
  • In exercising freedom that is "autonomy", the ego strips itself of all its attachments to the world
  • The transcendental subject treats itself as self-sufficing or autonomous, exercising rational capacity
• The voice of reason

  • The autonomous subject follows only the command, which is issued by and from her very self
  • This is the full expression of rationality: to be certain about the rectitude of a decision or an action, one has to consult only the voice of her own reason and none other
  • For Kant, liberal autonomy is submission to the self-made duty founded on independent decision-making guided by one's own capacity for understanding
• Categorical imperative


  • The duty that sets no condition
  • 1st formulation: "Act in such a way that the maxim of your actions can become a universal law"
  • 2nd formulation: "Always treat the human person as your own, and not simply as means"
• Social freedom by Axel Honneth

  • Freedom is self-determination alongside external selves, hence, social
  • The individual freedom cannot be the full picture of freedom, because self-determination and the capacity to determine oneself is possible because there are surrounding selves that enable one to do so
  • Social freedom manifests in the kind of active participation by an individual person to activities that promote the commonweal regardless of whether the outcome limits the very exercise of individual freedom
• Intersubjectivity


  • We all live in the world surrounded by different people with different backgrounds and personalities
  • Relating with others and settling our differences is not always an easy task but we have to embrace since we all desire to live peacefully in a world that we share with them no matter how different they are to us
  • We benefit from living with others, like security and companionship, so we tried to establish harmonious relationships with them
• Martin Buber's I-Thou philosophical theory


  • The major theme is that authentic human existence manifests in genuine dialogue with each other, with the world, and even with God
  • I-It is the mode that modern man almost exclusively uses, where no real relationship occurs and the "it" is viewed as a thing to be utilized, a thing to be known, or put for some purpose
  • I-Thou enters into a genuine relationship as active participants, where human beings do not perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated qualities, but engage in a dialogue involving each other's whole being and, in which, the 'other' is transformed into a "Thou" or "You"
• Love in Buber's I-Thou relation


  Love is a genuine relation between the loving beings, where both subjects share a sense of caring, respect, commitment, and responsibility
• Emmanuel Levinas' face of the other


  • Sacrificing one's life for the sake of the "Other" is the mark of one's humanity and spirituality
• 1. Thou relation


  Subjects do not perceive each other as objects but subjects, engage in a dialogue involving each other's whole being
• Love


  A genuine relation between loving beings, where subjects share a sense of caring, respect, commitment, and responsibility
• In the I-Thou relation, all living beings meet each other as having a unity of being and engage in a dialogue involving each other's whole being
• The I-Thou relation is a direct interpersonal relation where there is no object intervening
• Emmanuel Levinas: '"Sacrificing one's life for the sake of the 'Other' is the mark of one's humanity and spirituality."'
• Levinasian ethics


  Does not legislate nor propose any moral laws or rules, but emphasizes an infinite responsibility to the 'Other'
• Levinas was born in Kovno (now Kaunas), Lithuania in 1906 to a culturally-rich Jewish family
• Levinas' French uniform saved him from deportation to the gas chambers when he was captured by the Germans, while all his family members were murdered by the Nazis
• Levinas' 1961 book Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority was instrumental in creating his philosophy
• Levinas' concept of responsibility to the 'Other'


  Has preference for those who are poor, weak, and marginalized in the society
• Society


  A large, independent, and organized group of people living in the same territory and sharing a common culture and heritage
• Social philosophy


  Focuses on studying society and its influence on the human person, applies philosophical concepts in social context and looks into how social interactions shape people's perception, experience, ideas, and values
• Types of societies


  • Hunting-and-gathering societies
  • Agricultural societies
  • Industrial societies
  • Modern societies
  • Virtual societies
• Hunting-and-gathering societies


  The simplest and earliest societies that adopt a lifestyle dependent on resources readily available from their surroundings, often described as "primitive" since they utilize the simplest technology
• Agricultural societies


  Those engaged primarily in agricultural activities such as farming, fishing, and livestock-raising as a primary way of life
• Industrial societies


  Centered on mechanized production and the exchange of goods and services