Fri 15 Sep 2006
Freedom
Posted by Montague Brown under Montague Brown , Philosophy Department Blog , Weekly Word[2] Comments
Self-directedness
Freedom is taking “responsibility for our own life. Insofar as it is compatible with the common good, people should be allowed to choose freely how they want to live.
Freedom, within the context of mutual “respect, leads to independent and energetic action. This is certainly preferable to forced conformity. It is good for individuals and the “community If I can choose to become a teacher or a doctor or an entrepreneur rather than being forced into some job, I will be “happier in my work and more likely to succeed. This certainly benefits me, but it also benefits the community. Of course, freedom is not an absolute: if my free action seriously violates the common good, it should not be permitted.
Freedom is a positive force in many areas. In writing a paper for history class, a certain independence in choosing the topic and method aids the learning process. A coach has to give her athletes a degree of freedom to make decisions in a game, for new situations will arise that demand creative solutions. In government, the freedom to vote gives people a stake in their future. In all of these examples, self-discipline and responsibility are required if the freedom is to be fruitful.
Freedom and license must not be confused:
freedom embraces responsibility and is guided by reason and virtue; license is choice without restraint.
| ASK YOURSELF: Is it my choice? Am I acting reasonably and responsibly? If so, my action is the exercise of freedom. |
‘Freedom refers to self-determination. … To the extent that we can determine for ourselves who we shall be, we are responsible for our lives.”
Germain Grisez and Russell Shaw
Beyond the New Morality, Ch. 1 |
License
Self-abandonment
License is the throwing off of all “responsibility. It is a carte blanche to do as we feel. As such, it is incompatible with virtue and destroys “community.
License, as the throwing off of all responsibility leads to absurd and dangerous action. On the personal level, license leads to “moral chaos. If my actions are based merely on whim or the “impulse of the moment, they are completely unpredictable, even to me. On the social level, license leads to anarchy — the lack of all dedication to the common good. This is obviously bad for the community, but license is also bad for those who exercise it. I strive to be free from responsibility rather than to be free to take charge of my
life.
License can cause damage in the very places where freedom enriches. If license rules in choosing topic and method, a history paper might not even remotely relate to history. Athletes cannot succeed in a sport by acting on mere whim, for each sport requires discipline, and team sports demand a high degree of cooperation. If the members of a society ignore all restrictions of “law, that society will not survive. License abandons personal responsibility and so loses the creative energy and fruitfulness of freedom.
| “None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom but license John Milton Tenure of Kings and Magistrates |
ASK YOURSELF:
Is it my choice? Am I acting without concern for reason or responsibility? If so, my action is the exercise not of freedom, but of license.
|
Freedom is reason-guided self-determination combined with a reciprocal sense of responsibility between the free agent and the community. There is a difference between the free act and the ordinary act of choosing. On the one hand, a free act can be shown as having reason as its primary guide. On the other hand, a mere choice cannot be conclusively shown to have reason as its guide, and so is as likely driven by whims and impulses as it is by reason.
The distinction between freedom as self directedness and license as an arbitrary abandonment of all restraint is a very useful one, one that is reflected in the philosophical problem of free will.
What is the self that directs us? Once we trace the connections that bind us to our creator or to the natural world and its laws, once we see that our nature may come to us from God or arise from the laws of nature as they determine our bodies and brains, we might question just how free we are. The various forms of determinism stress our connections to things outside us, to the necessary logical connections of fated events, to the eternity and all-comprehending nature of God’s knowledge and will, to the inevitable clockwork of causal connections that moves the physical universe.
Modern conceptions of freedom try to find room for the self by recasting it in isolation from our connections to the world, as an isolated island of subjectivity, free in its disconnection from the ties that bind. The freedom of the existentialist is the license to act in a way determined by nothing, by no reason whatsoever. It is an empty and absurd arbitrary act of will, completely free and determined by nothing; aiming at nothing.
Is there a middle ground between being completely determined and being completely free? Can we forge a self that is neither lost in its connections to all that is, nor isolated in its allegiance to nothing? Real freedom depends upon it.