INTRODUCTION
Average persons, unschooled in philosophical reasoning,
assume that when they make a choice they are free to choose from among various alternatives, the simplest of which are to assent or deny - to say yes
or no - to some simple action.
Humans
everywhere have what Immanuel Kant called "The Idea of
Freedom" in his great work Groundwork
of the Metaphysic of Morals. Kant based his "categorical
imperatives" - without which morality and responsibility would be
impossible - on the presumed fact that freedom is a universal idea. Now determinists generally deny both freedom and moral responsibility, while compatibilists generally assert a special form of
free will compatible with determinism that allows them to defend responsibility. But note the curious fact that all the
participants in the free will debates are in basic agreement with Kant that
there exists an Idea of Freedom,
even as some deny that there is something phenomenally and physically real corresponding
to the Idea and others redefine
the meaning of the term "free
will".
Very
subtle logical arguments, common today among many philosophers, claim that this
common sense notion of a "free will" is an illusion. This would seem to require that the burden of proof should be on the shoulders of those
determinists, compatibilists, and others who deny the existence
of free will in the ordinary common sense usage (that alternative possibilities for action not only exist but can
be generated as needed by agents).
PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPT OF FREEDOM
Freedom means self-determination, autonomy,
and spontaneity of a rational subject, the absence of submissiveness and servility.
The
concept of freedom may be conceived as an abstract and normative
value of human action, or as a concrete experience of humans. The two
perspectives can overlap, leading to mistakes regarding categories. Thus,
different meanings of the word must be distinguished.
Freedom
can mean an attribute of man and his will. Freedom can mean the condition for
rights enabled by natural or positive law,
but also of duty. However, an action is a personal experience, so carrying out
a deliberate action cannot be summed up to rights and duties. These two levels
of human existence - an attribute of man or the condition for enabled rights -
are not necessarily compatible. One can establish that judicial liberties are
in place, but reality (in
our actions) and essence (in our conception) of our liberty are missing.
The existence of judicial law
protecting freedom can be the object of a social and political investigation,
while the metaphysical foundation of freedom and the second level mentioned
above are more closely related to the philosophical question of freedom. Freedom
can mean an absence of external restraints; in this case it signifies the
opposite of slavery. The achievement of this form of freedom depends upon the
environment; if I am in jail or even limited by a lack of resources, I am not
free to do all that I might wish to do. Even natural laws restrict this form of
freedom; no one is free to fly without wings (though we may or may not be free
to attempt to do so). Freedom can also signify mastery over one's inner life.
In a play by Hans Sachs, the Greek
philosopher Diogenes speaks to Alexander the Great,
saying: You are my servants' servant.
Diogenes has conquered fear, lust, and anger; they are now his servants.
Alexander must serve these masters; though he has conquered the world without,
he has not yet mastered the world within. This kind of mastery is dependent
upon no one and nothing other than ourselves. Richard Lovelace's poem
echoes this experience:
CONCLUSION
The French philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
asserted that the condition of freedom was inherent to humanity, an inevitable
facet of the possession of a soul and sapience, with the implication that all
social interactions subsequent to birth imply a loss of freedom, voluntarily or
involuntarily.
Freedom has often been used a rallying cry for revolution or rebellion. For instance, the Bible records the story of Moses leading his people out of slavery, and into freedom. In his
famous "I
Have a Dream"
speech Martin
Luther King, Jr.
quoted an old spiritual song sung by black American slaves: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God
Almighty we are free at last!"
REFERENCE
Meyer, T. H. (2014). D.N. Dunlop, A Man of Our Time: A Biography.
Forest Row, UK: Temple Lodge Publishing. p. 125.
Christoph Lindenberg, Rudolf Steiner: Eine Biographie,
(Stuttgart: Verlag Freies Geistesleben 1997), pp. 212.
Rudolf Steiner, Die Philosophie der Freiheit: Grundzuege
einer modernen Weltanschauung, (Berlin: Emil Felder, 1894).
Welburn, Andrew, Rudolf
Steiner's Philosophy and the Crisis of Contemporary Thought (2004),
chapter 2.
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