FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBLITY

“Everything we say or do in life is a Choice”

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes” – Mahatma Gandhi

What is Freedom?
- It is the power rooted in reason and will act or not to act, to do this or that and so to
perform deliberate actions.

Definitions of Freedom
- Freewill - Freedom of Speech
- Liberty - Freedom of Choice
- Rights - Autonomy

What Freedom is NOT?

- Freedom is not LICENTIOUSNESS
- Licentiousness - is doing anything you want without restraint

What is Freedom?
- Freedom is doing what is good
- Always doing what is good.

Types of Freedom
- Internal Freedom - Spiritual Freedom
- Self-Freedom - Collective Freedom
- Political Freedom - External Freedom

Freedom of Choice
- First and commonly understood experience of freedom: ability to choose goods,
- Our choice implies prior or may lead to a preference of values – this freedom is called
fundamental option because it is our general direction or orientation of life.
- Freedom of Choice = Horizontal Freedom; Fundamental Option = Vertical Freedom

Two Extreme and a Middle Position

- Man is absolutely determined (B.F. Skinner)
- Man is absolutely free (Jean Paul Sartre)
- Situated freedom (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)

The Position of Total Determinism

B.F Skinner, an extremely influential behavioral psychologist from Harvard, is one of
those who questioned the very existence of human freedom. He seems to affirm that man is
not free because
a) All present behavior is controlled by previous behavior and
b) All behavior has motivational causes which are necessitating causes.
 In other words, man is not free because he is determined by his historicity.
“The hypothesis that man is not free is essential to the application of the scientific method
to the study of human behavior. Man is not free since all his thoughts and actions are
determined by historicity. For him, man’s behavior is shaped and determined by external
forces and stimuli whether they can be familial or cultural sanction, verbal or non-verbal
reinforcement, or complex systems of reward and punishment. It appears that individuals
can be programmed like a machine whose behavior is not predicted but controlled.”

The Case for Absolute Freedom

For Jean-Paul Sartre, the fullest realization of one’s manhood is found in the
recognition that one’s very activity is freedom itself.
“I am my Freedom.”
Man is absolutely free and indeterminate because there is no God to conceive man as
a definable essence. Rather than being an essence, man is structureless phenomenon of
consciousness in the world.
For Sartre, existence precedes essence, and not the other way around.
I must exist first before I define myself; not that I am defined even before I
existed.
Man’s freedom is overwhelmingly evident to Sartre because man is able to detach
himself from the world by his act of questioning and doubt. Determinists assume that
freedom is an act that has no cause, the cause that necessitates someone to act. They are
led to conclude that since every act has a cause, then there is no freedom at all.
Sartre held this assumption meaningless. “Indeed, the case could be otherwise, since
every action must be intentional, every action must in fact have an end, and the end in
turn is referred to a cause.”
“It is the act which decides its ends and its motives, and the act is the expression of freedom.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Situated Freedom

- Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his last chapter of the phenomenology of perception,
criticizes Sartrean Absolute Freedom and holds the middle position of structure
freedom.
- For him, if freedom is absolute, always and everywhere present, then freedom is
impossible and nowhere.
- There would be no distinction between freedom and unfreedom. E.g., the slave in
chains is just then as free as the one who revolts and breaks his chains. We are free
when we control our situation as well as we are powerless.
- For him, freedom is SITUATED FREEDOM
- Freedom is interwoven with a field of existence. Our choices are not made from
absolute zero, but from this field of meanings.
- Outside myself, there is no limit to my freedom, but in myself, there are limits.
 - In his philosophy, men faced a previously constituted world that nevertheless
accommodated free action. This world acted upon the individual as surely as he
acted upon it, in a perpetual exchange.
- For him, there was “never determination and never absolute choice,” by the very
nature of man’s being in the world.
“Freedom is not operative not as a force against structure, but as a force emerging from structure. Man is neither
absolutely free nor absolutely determined. Man is freedom within structure.”
“The key to genuine outer freedom is to develop inner freedom.” – G. Arguelles, SJ

Go Forward
- In the exercise of freedom, we are definitively and ultimately alone. Nobody is there to
decide for us. We are the only ones who have the possession of our freedom. Being
alone in the act of freedom, we have no one to blame or praise but ourselves.
- The exercise of freedom goes with the demand of responsibility.
- I have the ultimate responsibility over my life. Nobody is there to live my life for me.
- Freedom is both beautiful and terrible. It is a power which hails me, and can destroy
me. This is the greatest problem with freedom; it is terrible, but if you take it away,
you take away my meaning, my dignity, and my creativity. But all is not bleak with
freedom.
- A man can know himself. Consequently, he can possess himself and his destiny.
However, this destiny and meaning is directed not only to himself but most
importantly to others.
- Man’s meaning is not only to possess himself freely . Since he is other-directed, his
identity is not full-achieved until, having possessed himself, he gives himself to the
other.

Freedom is
- Freedom always entails obligation.
- Moral obligations enter when a man exercises his freedom.

What is Responsibility?
- A duty or obligation to satisfactorily perform or complete a task (assigned by
someone, or circumstances) that one must fulfill, and which consequent penalty for
failure.

Four Kind of Responsibility

1. Role Responsibility
a. The duties one has for doing various things which come with occupying a
certain role in the society.
2. Casual Responsibility
a. What caused something to happen.
3. Liability Responsibility
a. Who is responsible for something’s happening.
4. Capacity Responsibility
a. The capacity of a person to be held liability responsible for their actions.
The Relata of Responsibility
1. The Agent of Responsibility
2. The Object of Responsibility
3. The Party Agent is Responsible to

“Responsibility is the price of freedom” – Elbert Hubbard