PHILOSOPHY OF MAN FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM

PHILOSOPHY OF MAN FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM 

Many common people define freedom as: doing whatever one wants. If I can do what I want I’m free; if I can’t, I’m not!. In other words, any restriction or rule is seen as inherently bad, as anti-freedom. If freedom is merely “doing what I want”, then we would have to admit the drug addict who helplessly sets about fulfilling her/his deep inward craving (her/his “want”), even at the cost of brutal murder and robbery, is a totally free person. After all, s/he is doing “what s/he wants”. It can be harmful to others when I can do whatever I want in the process I may make use of the other for my selfish needs. This is against the freedom of others; so freedom can’t be doing what one wants to do.  

 If we have to further define it as doing whatever I wish, so long as no one else gets hurt.” But is that enough? What if, for instance, my parents wanted me to become a priest or a religious or get married to someone whom I detest? If I were to refuse, surely I’d “hurt” them. In which case, would it be a free act if I were to agree? Here there is a clash between what I want to do and hurting someone. This definition is also equally self-defeating.

Furthermore, if either of these popular and uncritical definitions is pushed to the extreme, no real human relationships, no love and no friendship would be possible. Indeed, Sartre is quite consistent with his views when he condemns all inter-personal relationships as either veiled forms of sadism or of masochism. For Sartre “man is freedom” and Sartre understand human freedom as something that is meant to be absolute, something that must never surrender even the slightest shred of personal autonomy to any norm or rule, however noble or spiritual it may sound. 

Critique As long as I say no to people, to ideals, to norms – in short, to anything that seeks to impose itself upon me from outside, or to draw or inspire me externally – I remain free. Sartre cannot conceive of a possible ‘Yes’ which not only does not destroy freedom but actually enhances it. 

Often outside situations, persons, events do influence, motivate or condition in our decision-making. Some people make the unrealistic error of assuming that opting for determinism (that is, that we are the ones who determine our own action – in other words, we are really free means)

Establishing a kind of total sovereignty of decision-making, that nothing from outside be detected as somehow having a part to lay in our resolve. And so, as soon as such can be detected, they hastily jump to the conclusion that we are not free. Others, starting with the same false presupposition, do a cursory survey of the data and, with equal haste conclude that there is no outside interference and rush to the claim that we are free! Both these views stem from unrealistic presuppositions about human freedom. Let us not forget that human freedom is a kind of dialectic between external influence and personal choice.

Are we really free? From all this, it seems, that we should avoid trying to define freedom in terms of absence of restraint. This gives the impression that all law, all restraint is necessarily anti-freedom but the human being who restrains, out of her/his convictions (or whatever) her/his passions and her/his thirst for unbridled power and unjustly-acquired wealth, wouldn’t we rather say s/he is freer than the unscrupulous rascal who feels no restraint upon her/himself to rob and exploit the weak? 

 Freedom can be described in more positive terms, concentrating on the other traditional definition of mastery over one’s act. I am free if the real, deep down “I” is in control of my actions. If it restrains or checks my baser urge, I may feel a kind of surface or temporary sadness or frustration. But, overall, deep-down, I find a pervasive peace and joy

7.2 Determinism

Every event has a cause. This position denies that humans have the power of self determinism of free choice. Our all activities are determined by external forces which we have no control. Not only all human behavior requires an adequate cause but that every cause is necessitating cause in their claim. Motives not only attract, they also determine; motivating forces not only influence us but also force us. Eg Plato or Karma theory.

Types of Determinism

Physical determinism: actions are caused only by physical stimulus that evokes physical and automatic response.

Psychological determinism: between stimulus and response, there is other intervening variables. These are images, thoughts, feelings, dispositions, beliefs and habits. They determine the course of our actions. 

Theological determinism: God determines the will, fate.

Exaggerated indeterminism: we are totally free. This position offers a theory of unmotivated uncaused behavior. Everything happens by chance it believes in mere co –incidents. There is nothing that limits us Eg. carvakas and Sartre : We are condemned to be free.

7.3 Nature and kinds of freedom

Physical freedom: immunity from the law of physics. (Man bound in chains).

Moral freedom: no obligation of moral law.

Political or social freedom: conditions within the framework of society in which we can exercise our human rights such as free speech, conscience or property ownership.

Freedom of choice

Freedom of exercise of contradiction: it refers to the power to do or not to do. There is no alternative.

Freedom of specification: power of choosing one or two or more alternatives (i.e. between different objects)

Freedom of contrariety: faced with choice of specifying between objects which are opposed as moral good and evil.

7.4 Freedom and necessity

Negatively, freedom is the absence of coercion or necessitation; not lack of influences, but only that these influence do not force me. Positively, free choice is self- in – action, a positive force rather than a mere absence of forces. It is self- determination. It is a positive power of selection. 

Necessity: necessity means that a being must be what it is and cannot be otherwise. There are two types of necessity.

Antecedent of predetermining necessity: what must be eliminated if we are to establish freedom of choice? It is of two types.

Extrinsic or coercion: imposed by an efficient cause (eg. What a hammer drives the nail with sufficient force, it necessarily goes into the mind). This is opposite of spontaneity. An action is spontaneous if it flows from the agent without being forced by an external efficient cause or constrained by external forces. Animals and other organism enjoy this spontaneity which is limited freedom. 

Intrinsic: it means something in the internal nature of a thing makes it act one way rather than another. This necessity may be metaphysical or absolute. (a triangle must necessarily have three sides.

Consequent necessity

Freedom means lack of both extrinsic and intrinsic antecedent necessity. It means that will enjoy the spontaneity of any elicited appetite, which cannot be coerced against its inclination by any external efficient cause.

Freedom of choice also means lack of intrinsic necessity. It is the opposite of psychological determinism. The choice is based upon indifferent motives, goods apprehend as adequate but non-necessary final causes for action. Here again, freedom does not consist in a lack of motives, but in a lack of necessity. In other words, the ego has dominion over its own acts. It is self determination in act.