WEEK 10: What does it mean to be free?

NEGATIVE
“freedom from”- refers to “the absence of interference or the absence of external
limits.

• By interference we mean something that is intentionally imposed on a person.

POSITIVE
“capacity to” - the absence of internal limits a kind of freedom that requires active
effort on the person who is said to be free
• That true liberty is that man is able to act on his free will. If one wishes to do
something, they should be able to do it.
From a negative liberty standpoint, Mark is still completely free to get that toy,
because nobody is preventing him from getting that toy, his personal circumstances with
wealth not with standing.
However, a believer in positive liberty would state that because Mark does not have
the capacity to buy that toy, Mark is not truly free

What is real?

Real is not floating idea but Freedom should not only be when a person
should be directly linked to a conceived as an idea or a exercises her/his
person's life. it should be notion. it is something that is freedom, she becomes
visible. - Existentialists exercised through our choices. real

Week 11: FREEDOM OF HUMAN PERSON

- Freedom, generally, is having the ability to act or change without any constraint.
- Something is "free" if it can change easily and is not constrained in its present
state.
- In philosophy, it is associated with having free will and being free without undue
or unjust constraints, or enslavement.
- A person has the freedom to do things that will not be prevented by other forces.
- Thus we can explain, Freedom is the capacity or the ability to do something and
the absence of limits and restrictions.
TWO TYPES OF FREEDOM
 NEGATIVE FREEDOM
“FREEDOM FROM” refers to “the
absence of interference or the absence of
external limits.” By interference we mean
something that is intentionally imposed
on a person.
POSITIVE FREEDOM
“CAPACITY TO”
a type of freedom that requires active effort on
the person who is said to be free. Man is able
to act on his free will. If one wishes to do
something, they should be able to do it.

FREEDOM AS A PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPT

Freedom can be translated first into free will which is the capacity of agents(humans
etc.) to choose between different possible courses of action unrestricted.
Free Will as Philosophical Concept of Freedom
- Free will has traditionally been conceived of as a kind of power to control one’s
choices and actions.
- When an agent exercises free will over his/her choices and actions, her choices
and actions are up to his/her.
EXAMPLES OF FREE WILL:
1. The feeling when you are in a top of a building or a bridge that there is this
feeling to whether jump or not.
2. People can make a free choice as to whether to commit a crime or not.
3. Children can make a free choice as to lie to their parents or not when they want
to go out at night.
FREEDOM AS SOCIETAL CONCEPT
- Freedom can be translated into society as liberty which is the ability to do as one
pleases as a right or immunity enjoyed by a stated privilege or it is prescribed by
a law or constitution.
- It is a synonym for the word freedom as liberty is the state of being free within
society from control or oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way
of life, behavior, or political or societal views.

Liberty vs. Freedom

In this sense, the exercise of liberty is subject to capability and limited by the rights
of others. Thus liberty entails the responsible use of freedom under the rule of law
without depriving anyone else of their freedom.
Freedom is more broad in that it represents a total lack of restraint or the
unrestrained ability to fulfill one's desires.
For example, a person can have the freedom to murder, but not have the liberty to
murder, as the example deprives others of their right not to be harmed.
 Liberty can be taken away as a form of punishment.
In many countries, people can be deprived of their liberty if they are convicted of
criminal acts.

The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
on Monday, January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech he
proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to
enjoy:

Freedom of Speech
 This is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a
community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of
retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction.
 The right to freedom of expression has been recognized as a human
right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international
human rights law by the United Nations.
Freedom of worship
 Freedom of religion or religious liberty is a principle that supports the
freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to
manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and
observance.
 It also includes the freedom to change one's religion or beliefs, "the
right not to profess any religion or belief" or "not to practice a
religion".
 Freedom from want
Freedom from want basically means to be in a situation where you don't
have to worry about such things as where your next meal is coming from,
how you can clothe yourself and your children or get a roof over your head.
"Want" is this context refers to terrible poverty, such as is experienced by
many people in the third world.
Freedom from fear
Freedom from fear means that no one should be in fear of their
government, its armed forces, police who act undemocratically.
Freedom from fear also includes criminals, violence and gangs.
Summary
Freedom is not absolute in humans, and it human society.
Freedom has a lot of faces and types which explains the complicated
web of human existence.
The role of Philosophy is to always open our minds in the concept of
freedom which is very important for our society to be stable and
working.
Other important fields in which freedom is an issue include economic
freedom, academic freedom, intellectual freedom, scientific freedom
and political freedom which also help the philosophical understanding
of freedom.
Week 12 & 13:
INTERSUBJECTIVITY -

Social vs Interhuman
- The social refers to the life of a group bound together by common
experiences and reactions.
- The interhuman refers to the life between and among persons; it
refers to the interpersonal, that is, a life of dialoge.
Dialogue
- It is a deep and genuine relationship between persons.
 - It happens when two persons truly acknowledge each other’s
presence and treat each other as equals.
Ich-Es (I-It) relationship
- It refers to the world of experience and sensation where there are
objects.
- The beings do not actually meet. Instead, the “I” confronts and
qualifies an idea, or conceptualization, of the being in its presence
and treats that being as an object.
- An individual treats other things, people, etc/, as objects to be used
and experienced. Essentially, this form of objectivity relates to the
world in terms of the self-how an object can serve the individual’s
interest.
- It is in fact a relationship with oneself; it is not a dialogue, but a
monologue.
Ich-Du (I-Thou) relationship
- It refers to the world of encounters and relationships where there are
persons.
- It is a concrete encounter without any qualification or objectification of
one another.
- It is a dialogue.
OBSTACLES TO DIALOGUE CONTRASTED WITH
Seeming Being
Speechifying Personal making present
Imposition Unfolding

1. Seeming
- It is a way of approaching the other governed by the image one
desires to impress on the other.
- It involves deliberately playing up or hiding aspects of yourself to
appear more desirable or impressive.
Being
- It proceeds not from an image, but from what one really is.
 - It is an acceptance of the other in the way that it is also an
acceptance of the self as it is.
2. Speechifying
- It refers to one’s talking past another
- It is hearing without listening to what one says.
PERSONAL MAKING PRESENT
- It is the process of fully opening oneself to the other.
TENDENCIES THAT MAKE DIALOGUE AND PERSONAL MAKING
PRESENT DIFFICULT
Analytical thinking when we break person into parts
Reductive thinking when we reduce the richness of a person
to a schema, a structure, and/or a concept
Derivational thinking when we derive the person from a mixed
formula
3. Imposition
- It constitutes holding one’s own opinion, values, attitudes and oneself
without regard for those of another.
- It is telling the other how he or she should act, behave and respond to
things.
Unfolding
- It constitutes finding in the other the disposition toward what one
recognizes as true, good and beautiful.
- It involves seeing the other as a unique, singular individual capable of
freely actualizing himself/herself.
Why do we misunderstand love as something that we fall into?
The art of loving (FROMM, 1956)
- We give more importance to being loved that to loving.
- People think that to love is easy and what is difficult is to find the right
person to love or be loved by.
- We confuse the initial falling in-love with the permanent state of being
in love.
Loneliness
 - One of the most basic experiences of the human being because of
self- awareness.
WAYS BY WHICH PEOPLE ADDRESS LONELINESS
Escapism Use of drugs, rituals, sex, and alcohol to
find one’s self
Conformity with groups Joining group, organization, club or fraternity

Creative and productive Planning, producing and seeing the result of a

work or activity hobby, pastime or passion
ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF LOVE
Love is historical because the other is a concrete particular
person with his/her own being history
Love is total because persons are indivisible
Love is eternal because love is not given only for a limited
period of time.
Love is sacred because in love, persons are valuable in
themselves.

Week 14 & 15: Different Social Relations and their Corresponding

Interactions: Jurgen Habermas
Two kinds of Social Relationships according to Habermas:
Personal interactions are based on a mutual regard for each other as
persons
Transactional where interactions are based on a regard for each other as
means for attaining one's goals.
TWO TYPES OF INTERACTION IN THE SOCIETY
Social Relation Kind of interaction How one treats
the other in the
social relationship
Transactional Instrumental or As an object, a
Strategic Action means for attaining
one's goals
(Subject-object)
Personal Communicative Action As a fellow Subject, a
fellow person
(Intersubjective)
 - The Table above shows that transactional relation is treating the
other as an object, a means for attaining one's goals. That is why it is
described as an instrumental or strategic action. In contrast, personal
relation is treating the other as a fellow subject, a fellow person and
the action is termed as communicative action.

- personal social relations in our extent, instrumental or strategic action

is just as important as communicative action in the development of
individuals and of societies as a whole.

SOCIETY- encounters a problem when one of the two forms of social

relations takes predominance over the other.
How do you interpret personal relationships in the situation I'd given
to you a while ago?
- There is a situation in which personal relationships are
interpreted as transactional relationships.

- The friend treats an act of generosity and hospitality, which are

valued and idealized in the context of intersubjective relationships, as
an object or means to attain monetary reward.

- from theoretical perspective, Habermas would refer to this as the

COLONIZATION of the lifeworld by the social systems.

Lifeworld: commonsense world of everyday life interpersonal

communication
System : Structures (family, legal system, economy) that have source in
lifeworld Develop own distinct existence, gradually separate from lifeworld.
Basic concepts: Market, State and Lifeworld ✧ society is made up of
three main spheres: ■ the social system of money, ■ the social system of
power, and ■ the lifeworld.
✦ In the market and the state, relationships are more of transactional, and
so individuals view each other as means for a particular goal or end.
✦ In our actual societies, these spheres take the form of: ✧ economic
system (the market), ✧ political system (the state) and ✧ our everyday
world of communicative relations (family, school, religious communities,
civil society).
- In the market and the state, relationships are more of transactional,
and so individuals view each other as means for a particular goal or
end.
- The situation in the lifeworld is significantly different from social
systems. When we are within the confines of our homes, or in our
immediate communities
- we naturally assume that all who are part of the community are
persons, and must be consciously recognized and treated as such.
- This Is a presupposition of communicative action.
✦ Communicative action is thus an inherently consensual form of
social coordination in which actors “mobilize the potential for rationality”
given with ordinary language and its telos of rationally motivated
agreement.

Four Validity Claims of Habermas

Lifeworld is vulnerable to manipulation by interested parties who
act instrumentally.
EXAMPLE: commercial advertisements that masquerade as
authentic communications.
Summary
✦ In Habermas' social theory, society is composed of three main spheres:
the social system of money (economic), the social system of power
(political), and the lifeworld (everyday world of communicative relations).

✦ Individual members of society act within social systems , differently from

the lifeworld. In the market and the state, relationships are more
transactional, and so individuals view each other as means for a particular
economic or political goal.In both cases, the relationship between persons
cannot be purely intersubjective. At least one participant in a transactional
relationship gets to be objectified for the attainment of a certain end.
Economic and political social systems follow the logic of having and not
having (economic), or the logic of commanding and obeying (politics).
- For the development of individuals and society, however, we need
both transactional and personal relations. Both of which have their
specific functions and roles. And one should never encroach on the
other. The moment it happens, feelings of alienation arise (when
social systems colonize the lifeworld), or social systems become less
efficient (when personal relations is applied in business/political
transactions, e.g., padrino system, utang na loob).
WEEK 16 & 17:
THE HUMAN PERSON AS BEING-UNTO-DEATH: Martin Heidegger’s
Phenomenology of Death
When can we say that a human person is dead?
According to Heidegger, the being/essence of man is a being-in-the-
world.
This is an important assertion since it highlights tha man’s being is
not other-wordly, that man is man precisely because he is a being
in the world.

Consequently, if man is a being in the world, then man will cease to

be as man when he is no longer in the world.

Heidegger specifically denotes man’s being as Dasein, a German

term which means “being there” (Da – There, Sein – Being

By being in the world, Dasein is able to realize itself. Like a plant that
needs a soil to grow, the world serves as place where self-
realization and actualization is made possible for Dasein.

By being thrown (“thrown” since the human person did not choose to
exist in the world before he was conceived) into the world, Dasein
 realizes its own possibilities, and it constantly actualizes its
potentialities of existence.

Hence, by being in the world, man’s potentiality for being is never

exhausted. For example, “I cannot say that I will only actualize my
potentials and realize myself for twenty years, then after that I will no
longer do actualization and realization”.

Man, as long as he exists, has never reached his wholeness.

“Man has always an unfinished character.”
If by being in the world I am a “not-yet”, an unfinished project, then by
being no longer in the world , everything is already done, already
finished. Man can no longer “be” when he is no longer in the world.
Being no longer in the world is only possible in death.
“Ang buhay ng tao ay parang isang pagsusulat ng nobela na hindi
pwedeng tuldukan habang nabubuhay pa siya. Matatapos lamang
nobelang ito kapag wala na siya sa mundo.”
In death, man loses his potentiality for being. He is no longer being
there. He is no longer a Dasein.
What is death for Heidegger?
- Our first experience of death is the death of others.
However, we never experienced death of another as he
experienced it. In death, the totality of man is involved; it is
Dasein coming to an end.
-
- Death is not representable; “No one can take away the
other’s dying from him.” Death is always mine. Death is
therefore the possibility of man, a ‘not- yet’ which will be. It
is an impending event that must happen to every individual.
BEING-TOWARDS-DEATH
Heidegger explains that the state of man as being-in-the-world is also the
state of being- ahead-of-himself.
This means that man is his state of existence projects himself in advance.
This projection is made manifest is man’s being conscious of his
potentialities and possibilities.
“By being conscious that I can do this or that, or that I can be this or that,
then I become ahead of myself, ahead of what I actually am at this point in
time.”
Inauthentic Attitude Towards Death
In our daily life, death is seen as something like a mishap that often
occurs.
However, we hide our own possibility of death by putting this as an event
that only happens to others.
“Alam mo ba, malapit nang pumanaw si Mang Tasio.” “Ah, ganun ba?
Kawawa naman ang pamilya niya.”
This kind of sympathy enables us somehow to dissuade ourselves that
death is something that may happen to us but not at this moment.
“People die…one of these days one will die too, in the end; but right
now it has nothing to do with us.”
This is the inauthentic mode of man of being-towards-death.
This attitude presupposes that death is certain, “but not right now”.
Hence, it is at the same time a denial of the certainty of death.
In other words, this attitude is an evasion of an impending event, an
event that must happen.