Philosophy – Lesson 5: Freedom of the Human Person

“All Actions Have Consequences”

 Aristotle – The Power of Volition (Will)

 The will of humanity is an 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
 For Aristotle, human beings are rational
 If there was no intellect, there would be no will
 Reason, will, and action drive each other
 For Aristotle, the purpose of a human being is to be happy

 St. Thomas Aquinas – Love is Freedom

 Of all creatures of God, human beings have the unique power to change themselves and
the things surround them for the better
 St. Thomas considers the human being as a moral agent
 The power of change, however, cannot be dome by human beings alone but is achieved
through cooperation with God
 St. Thomas gives a fourfold classification of law:
 Eternal law – the decree of God that governs all creation
 Natural law – in is ethical sense, applies only to human beings. It is the human
“participation” in eternal law and is discoverable by reason
 Human law – laws that should be obeyed, for example traffic rules
 Divine law – divided into old (Mosaic) and new (Christian)

 Jean-Paul Sartre – Individual Freedom

 For Sartre the human person is the desire to be God: the desire to exist as a being which
has its sufficient ground in itself
 Sartre’s existentialism stems from his principle existence precedes essence
 The person first exists, encounters himself and surges up in the world then
defines himself afterward
 The person is provided with a supreme opportunity to give meaning to one’s life
 Freedom is, therefore, the very core and the door to authentic existence
 The person is what one has done and is doing
 Sartre emphasizes the importance of free individual choice regardless of the
power of other people to influence and coerce our desires

 B.F. Skinner – Operant Conditioning

 For B.F. Skinner, the environment selects which is similar with natural selection
 Skinner maintains that behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences
 Behavior that operates upon the environment to produce consequences (operant
conditioning) can be studied by arranging the environments in which specific consequences are
contingent upon it

Philosophy – Lesson 5 21
V1.0 (20 August 2017)