HUMAN FREEDOM: How much and what kinds of freedom do human beings possess?

Kinds of freedom:

1. B.F. Skinner:

All present behavior is controlled by previous behavior/ by antecedent events in the environment. All behavior has motivational causes which are necessiting causes. Feelings and inner states, such as plans and purposes, are by-products, not causes. Since the environment makes us what we are, Skinner concludes that we need a society carefully designed to bring forth and reinforce responses leading to human survival. In short, Skinner is saying that MAN is determined by his historicity. Our human nature is completely shaped by culture and society.

2. Jean-Paul Sartre:

For Sartre: MAN IS ABSOLUTELY FREE. Man has no history. The individual has only his future project which he makes entirely of himself and he alone is responsible. In short, He is free and indeterminate. According to Sartre:

“Individuals must define themselves; “human nature” is constantly being invented and redefined through choices of each individual. Authentic individuals are aware of their total emptiness – that they are condemned to be free – free to accept the full responsibility to define themselves and the meaning of their lives”.

3. Abraham Maslow:

For Maslow: MAN cannot be reduced to historicity & determinism nor be divorced from them. To be a human person means: to have potentialities… and to be inserted into an environment & history.

According to Abraham Maslow:

“Deep within every person exists an urge to actualize the full potentialities of the self. A healthy, fully functioning persons do not accept an image of self-imposed by others and experienced as what one “should be”; they resist enculturation and conformity to social norms and pressures; they refused to be shaped passively by the society around them… An authentic individual derives satisfaction from self-development and inner growth; they move toward being the complex process that they inwardly and actively are; and they move toward becoming self-directing, autonomous, and responsible for themselves.” We are not “empty organisms” merely reacting and adjusting to outside stimuli and pressures. Although “culture makes us human”, it must be balanced with “human beings make culture”.

From these three conceptions, comes the reflection and questioning:

1. Can we question our historicity and past?2. Can we achieved a distance from and control over the immediate environment?3. Can we create our own horizons, potentialities, and what I might want to make of myself?4. Do we really have learn to be free?5. Do we need freedom at all?

Goals of freedom:

1. Achieving a distance from blind necessity with respect to external stimuli, values, etc.2. Achieving a distance from myself… seeing & questioning myself in relation to present needs and conditions.3. Achieving self-possession.4. Achieving self-determination – what I am.

Components of Freedom:

1. Will - the power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations. 2. Choice - the ability voluntarily to decide to perform one of several possible acts, or to avoid action entirely. a. Free choice - b. Determined choice -all choices are inevitable consequences of antecedent sufficient

causes; often understood as denying the possibility of free will. 3. Reason/Knowledge

In making a choice, it involves a certain kind of deliberation on:

1. in relation to our knowledge of who we are and our potentialities. 2. points to the importance of environment, habit, emotion, preferences, history, etc.

In process, one must a. question b. self-reflect c. inquire intelligently

before making a choice.

In most cases, our will is tending towards a “good” choice and this choice is either determined/conditioned or a free choice. But, does that mean we never choose evil?

We, sometimes, choose evil because we thought we have Absolute Freedom, thus, @ Man is absolutely free because there is no God to conceive man as a definable essence. @ The essence of human being is suspended in his freedom… There is no difference between the being of man and his being free. @ Man is the only source which decides ends, motives, & causes... @ Man is not tied down by his facticity and the world in which he finds himself... Freedom’s meaning is a struggle with and negation of what is given. @ Man is not tied down by his past or by the choices of the past... @ There is no definable limitation to my identity, since I choose it and make my own essence…

Thus: “I am my Freedom” – one’s identity is freedom itself.

However, freedom must be between the extremes advocated by Skinner and Sartre:

Absolute determinism (Skinner) either omits the data of transcendence and questioning or tries to reduce it to “external forces.” Absolute indeterminism (Sartre) ignores man’s history and structure or tries to wish it out of existence. Freedom of man involves both “extremes”… It must be a Structured Freedom.

“To be me involves the structure of what being me; and whenever I may go or flee, I will carry myself with me. My structure is my arrangement and organization of interrelated essences and accidents in me. My structure is my limitation to my freedom. But my structures are also my potentialities. My own freely created life project is also a structure…”

In sum, man is freedom within structure/within “others’.

But freedom carries with it anxieties and ambiguities:

The Anxieties of Freedom;

1. Freedom can be a lonely & terrifying thing… It is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne (Camus).2. There is no escape from freedom. In a way we are condemned to be free (Sartre).3. In our exercises of freedom, we are alone… No one else can do it for us and our choices are irrevocable, since the present moment is never to be repeated. We cannot undo what we have chosen.4. In our exercises of freedom, we are alone… No one else can do it for us and our choices are irrevocable, since the present moment is never to be repeated. We cannot undo what we have chosen.

The Ambiguities of Freedom:

1. Man is able to know that he is free… and able to say something about himself. But my identity as a questioner I am thrust out of my encapsulated self. I am carried into the world of the other and into the entire cosmos which is open rather than closed dynamism. This is the major ambiguity of freedom.

2. I can freely, irrevocably choose to be closed… Man would at times avoid the terror of the choice… However, if one takes away the ambiguities of life, if you take away tensions, difficulties, etc., one takes away freedom…

3. However, freedom is also the most important and fulfilling action a man can place. A man can know himself and can possess himself and his destiny. Yet his destiny & meaning is other-directed, open in his potentialities to know and love…

However, despite all these, the most important effect of freedom is:

Making a choice is a commitment. It penetrates the roots of responsibility to do what you have chosen, for it involves your concrete life world. You are personally responsible for what you do, for who you are, for the way you face and deal with the world, and ultimately for the way the world is, because you cannot shift the burden onto God or Nature. You cannot blame God or Nature for your failures. There are no excuses in making a choice. Your choice may not be able to tell you something is right or wrong, true or false but it will clarify the ground upon which you can make a responsible reflection and a responsible decision. It is not your rational mind and its knowledge, but your rational will and its commitment that makes the big difference in the choice that you made in this concrete world.