Freedom

• George Orwell (1984): 'We read about freedom, dream about freedom, celebrate the idea of freedom, and advocate and hope for freedom, but what do we mean by "freedom"?'
• Freedom


  The quality or state of being free, such as: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action; Liberation from slavery or from the power of another; the boldness of conception or execution; a political right
• To be free is part of humanity's authenticity
• Understanding freedom is part of humanity's transcendence
• Freedom consists of going beyond situations such as physical or economic
• Reason


  Can legislate but only through will can the legislation be translated into action
• No Intellect, No Will
• Will of humanity


  Instrument of free choice
• Moral acts are in our power and we are responsible for them
• Character or habit is no excuse for immoral conduct
• Human beings are rational
• Reason is a divine characteristic
• Reason, will, and action drives each other
• Human beings have the unique power to change themselves and the things around them
• A human being has a supernatural destiny
• Aquinas' Four Classification of Law


  • Human Law - obeyed voluntarily and with understanding (Government Law)
  • Natural Law- applies only to human beings (good is to be sought and evil is to be avoided)
  • Divine Law - it deals with interior disposition (Bible Scripture)
  • Eternal Law - Is the decree of God that governs all creation (not known to humans)
• St. Thomas Aquinas


  Eternal Happiness
• St. Thomas Aquinas establishes the existence of God as a first cause
• We have conscience because of our spirituality
• God is Love and Love is our destiny
• Jean Paul Sartre


  Individual Freedom, considered to be a representative of existentialism
• The human person


  The desire to be God: the desire to exist as a being which has its sufficient ground in itself (en sui causa)
• The human person is the creator of his/her destiny
• Existence precedes essence


  The person, first, exists, encounters himself and surges up in the world the defines himself afterward
• The person is provided with a supreme opportunity to give meaning to one's life
• Freedom is the very core and the door to authentic life
• The human person who tries to escape obligations and strives to be en-soi (excuses) is acting on bad faith
• Sartre emphasizes the importance of free individual choice, regardless of the power of other people to influence and coerce our desires, beliefs, and decisions
• Thomas Hobbes


  Theory of Social Contract, War = willingness to fight, examined the earliest stages of human development in his book Leviathan, coined and defined his own meaning of "State of nature"
• Complete freedom = savage violence/ chaos
• True freedom can only be achieve by social contract
• Contract


  The mutual transferring of rights and is the basis of the notion of moral obligation and duty
• One cannot contract to give up his right to self-defense or self-preservation since it is his sole motive for entering any contract
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau


  Authored the book entitled "The Social Contract", elaborated his theory of human nature, the new era of sentimental piety began
• B.F. Skinner


  American Psychologist, Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences, We do things because of reinforcement
• The feeling of freedom becomes an unreliable guide as soon as would-be controllers turn to non-aversive measure, as they are likely to do to avoid the problems raised when the controller escapes or attacks
• When a person wants something, he acts to get it when the occasion arises
• The problem is to free human beings NOT from control, but from certain kinds of control
• We need to redesign the environment
• Life is full of paradoxes; nobody could nor should control it