LESSON 3

Freedom and Morality

The concept of freedom, as well as the application of freedom to individual rights,

has been widely used in different levels of analysis in Philippine society as a whole.

Freedom as a concept that pertains to the moral realm is examined in this section. An

important question that must be brought to light is: What is freedom and how is it

exercised in the realm of morals? John Paul Sartre, an existentialist philosopher,

assumes the idea of radical freedom by claiming that “man is condemned to be free”.

Sartre conceives of “man” as an uncon-strained free moral agent in the sense that he

always has a choice in every aspect of his life. Even if somebody points a gun at his head,

he still has a choice whether to follow the wishes of his captors. Sartre claims that “Man

is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.” “Man” is never compelled or

determined; he is totally free and therefore, totally responsible for all the things that he

does. When you exercise freedom in making your choices, you are taking control and

assuming full responsibility for those choices. However, there is one important caveat:

you are free but this freedom is not absolute. You cannot do anything that you please

without taking into consideration the norms of your society. Mores are there to serve as

a form of social control to limit, govern, or regulate your behavior in order to maintain

order in your soci-ety. For example, you cannot just go about killing people you consider

as obnoxious. You are perhaps familiar with the saying ‘your freedom ends where my

freedom begins’. Within the given parameters of our environment, including the economic,

political and social environment, we assume freedom. Our discussion will come to nothing
if we assume otherwise — i.e. that human beings are not free and their choices are always

deter-mined by factors or forces in their environment. This deterministic view is

tantamount to saying that human beings are like robots or machines whose actions and

functions can be predicted like cause and effect given the parameters of the variables in

his/her environment. Nor can we embrace fully the extreme view of radical freedom

without taking into consideration the norms of our society. Freedom of the human person

in the moral sense of the word assumes that one is a free moral agent. Moral, in this

sense, refers to the freedom to make one's choice in accordance with one’s own moral

discernment of what is good and bad, and one is taking full responsibility for one’s own

actions and is using his/her rational and empathetic capacity as a moral being. Aside from

our reason and critical thinking, we also have the ability to empathize or to feel what other

beings feel and to situate ourselves in their shoes.

Free Will describes our capacity to make choices that are genuinely our own. With free

will comes moral responsibility – our ownership of our good and bad deeds.

That ownership indicates that if we make a choice that is good, we deserve the

resulting rewards. If in turn we make a choice that is bad, we probably deserve those

consequences as well. In the case of a really bad choice, such as committing murder, we

may have to accept severe punishment.

The link between free will and responsibility has both theological and philosophical roots.
Within theology, for example, the claim that humans are ‘made in the image of God’ (a

central tenet of major religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam) is not that they are

the physical image of their creator.

Rather, the claim is made that humans are made in the ‘moral image’ of God – which is

to say that they are endowed with the ‘divine’ capacity to exercise free will of course, the

experience of free will is not limited to those who hold a religious belief. Philosophers also

argue that it would be unjust to blame someone for a choice over which they have no

control. Determinism is the belief that all choices are determined by an unbroken chain of

cause and effect. Those who believe in ‘determinism’ oppose free will, arguing that that

the belief that we are the authors of our own actions is a delusion. While scientific

evidence has found that there is brain activity prior to the sensation of having made a

choice, is unable to the resolve the question of which account is correct. Should that gap

close – and free will be proven to be an illusion, then the basis for ascribing guilt to those

who act unethically (including criminals) will also be destroyed. How could we justify

punishing a person who claims that they had no choice but to do evil?

Kant's Morality of Law and Morality of Freedom

Kant's comments on moral philosophy prior to the Groundwork of the Metaphysics

of Morals of1785 include two striking claims. The first is the substantive claim

that freedom is the source of all value-that it is intrinsically valuable, and that other

valuable thingsmust not merely be compatible with freedom but actually derive their value

from the value of freedom. Kant made this claim in the lectures on ethics that he gave in

the early 1780s: Freedom is, on the one hand, that faculty which gives unlimited
usefulness to all the other faculties. It is the highest order of life, which serves as the

foundation of all perfections and is their necessary condition. All animals have the faculty

of using their powers according to will. But this will is not free. It is necessitated through

the incitement of stimuli, and the actions of animals involve a but a necessity as. If the will

of all beings were so bound to sensuous impulse, the world would possess no value. The

inherent value of the world, the summon bound, is freedom in accordance with a will which

is not necessitated to action. Freedom is thus the inner value of the world. Translated by

Infield (1930)

ACTIVITY 3:
1. For you, what is true Freedom? (200 words)

2. How can a person achieve his/her Freedom? (200 words)