What is

Freedom?
What We'll
Discuss

CHAPTER V: WHAT
 F RE E D O M I S N O T H ING
E L S E B UT A CH A N CE T O B E
B E T T ER.
I. Our •

Ordinary
Sense of
•

Freedom •
•When was the time
that you experienced:
• being free?
• being unfree?
 Let’s Learn

“man is nothing but

what he makes of
himself”
-Jean Paul Sartre
 Let’s Learn
• What is determinism?
• What are the concepts of
absolute and relative
freedom?
• How about the concept of
the self and the notion of
choice?
 Let’s examine

Is human life really something

that a person’s choice totally
determines or is it something
that is defined by internal and
external structures?
FREEDOM AS AN ILLUSION
Pan-Determinism
 Pan-Determinism
Human person is not free
because his/her decisions,
actions, and behavior are
determined by his/her
BIOLOGICAL,
PSYCHOLOGICAL, AND
SOCIOLOGIGAL CONDITION
 Pan-Determinism
Therefore…

FREEDOM is an ILLUSION!
 BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
•I am calm, kind, friendly,
and sociable; others have
the opposite traits.
•These traits affect the way
I decide, act and behave.
Ex. New Year’s Resolution
 Psychological Determinism
SIGMUND FREUD
•Father of the School of
Psychoanalysis
•He is known for his
concepts of the three
aspects of human
personality (id, ego, and
superego) and the three
levels of the mind
(conscious, subconscious,
and unconscious)
 Psychological Determinism
Supposed, you have three suitors. The first one
is young, tall, dark, and handsome. The other
one is young, intelligent, and rich. And the third
one is 15 years older than you, not good
looking but kind, and not rich bur financially
stable. Supposed they have been courting you
for year now, an ample time for you to know
each one. You are giving yourself one month to
deliberate on your choice. You may choose guy
number one because you are attracted to him.
 Psychological Determinism
You may also choose guy number two, thinking
of your secure future. Or you may also choose
guy number three for his kindness. But, whom
will you choose?

Freud: your choice is predetermined!

 Psychological Determinism

Your choice is a product of your values,

preferences, wishes and hopes and past
experiences that continue to determine your
present decision, action and behavior..
Sociological
Determinism

Burrhus Frederic Skinner commonly known as

B. F. Skinner
• Popular proponent of the
science of behaviorism

• Human behavior can be

controlled by way of positive
and negative reinforcement,
reward and punishment, and
extinction.
• The environment
-Creates human being
–Skinner suggests:
governments may prescribe
the perfect and desirable
human behavior
 The environment
Goal: to increase the
statistical rate of seeing a
good behavior - REWARD
Goal: to decrease the probability
of recurrence of a particular bad
behavior - PUNISHMENT
 The environment
Therefore:
•People can be directed to
adhere to a form of
discipline and the strict
compliance of rules of
behavior in order to
achieve a form of
controlled social order
 Skinner’s view is clearly
deterministic
Determinism

•Made popular by Skinner

•All events, including human
actions are ultimately determined
by causes external to the human
will.
•Individual human beings have no
free will and cannot be held
morally responsible for their
actions
 Skinner’s view is clearly
deterministic
In his investigation, the
reaction of any organism to
stimuli is a result of
controlled behavior -
malleable
 Victor E. Frankl
• Austrian philosopher,
neurologist, and
psychotherapist.
• He is the founder of logo
therapy, the third school of
psychotherapy.
Human Person as a Self-
determining Being
BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
• I am calm, kind, friendly, and
sociable; others have the
opposite traits.
• These traits affect the way I
decide, act and behave.
AGAINST BD
How can we explain the
triumphs in life of those
persons who suffer from
physical disabilities, and the
failures of those who got what
it takes to succeed in life?
Human Person as a Self-
determining Being
BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
• I am calm, kind, friendly, and
sociable; others have the
opposite traits.
• These traits affect the way I
decide, act and behave.
Ex. The Child who attempted to
commit suicide at the age of
ten is now one of the world’s
most popular evangelical and
motivational speakers
spreading the power of love,
hope, faith and will power.
Nick Vujicic
Human Person as a Self-
determining Being
PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
• Human freedom is impossible
because human behavior is
determined by mental states
that human persons have no
awareness and control.
AGAINST PD
•To condition does not mean to
determine.
•Freud is correct if we allow
these drives and past
experiences govern our lives.
•We can control, process and
direct our mental states.
Human Person as a Self-
determining Being
Sociological Determinism
• The person’s perspective,
attitudes, values, and beliefs
are nothing but a product of
his/her social condition.
AGAINST SD
•The environment does not
completely determine persons
behavior.
•What becomes of a person is
a product of his/her decisions
and creations
Human Person as a Self-
determining Being
Sociological Determinism
• The person’s perspective,
attitudes, values, and beliefs
are nothing but a product of
his/her social condition.
AGAINST SD
•SELF-DETERMINATION
It is an innate capacity of the
human person to determine
his/her decisions and actions
and ultimately his/her own life
amidst constraining conditions.
 FREEDOM

• Man can never be reduced to the

automatic reactions to the stimuli he
finds in the environment.
• Man can always transcend his physical
condition if chooses to.
• The person is the owner of his life.
• He cannot be solely be determined by
his environment
 FREEDOM

• Incarnate existence, through the

choices that we make, is essentially
lived.
• It cannot be reduced into the sheer
influence of external factors.
 FREEDOM
“It would seem that determinism as a
scientific method has a great deal to
offer us in helping us understand how
one’s historicity influences one’s
behavior. As a total explanation of all
human behavior, it fails to account for
the data of questioning, self-
reflection, and intelligent inquiry.”
-Kavanaugh
 What sort of behavioral motivation does a ship
captain possess in order to avoid something bad to
happen?
What is at work is the truth:

• That the captain sees something that is

greater than him
–A grand purpose,
–A dream
–Or the future of his children

Human destiny may very well mean that he

is in charge of something: LIFE
 FOCUS QUESTIONS
1. How does the
environment affect
human behavior?
2. Why does B.F. Skinner
say that human
freedom is an illusion?
"Man is condemned
to be free"

CHAPTER V |WHAT IS FREEDOM?

ABSOLUTE FREEDOM
Is man free to do everything
he wants?
Jean Paul Sartre
Absolute Freedom

The three types of being:

1. En-soi (in itself)
2. Pour-soi (for itself)
3. Pour-autrui (for others)
Absolute Freedom

The three types of being:

1. En-soi (in itself)
• Refers to that which
is static and self-
contained, Human
facticity, Human
situatedness
Absolute Freedom

The three types of being:

2. pour-soi (for itself)
• is truly dynamic and
reflexive. It is not fixed.
• It refers to
transcendence and
possibility
Absolute Freedom
The three types of being:
2. pour-soi (for itself)
• Man holds the ability to
go beyond his given
situations
• He can rise above his
circumstances.
• It is not a question of
being born poor but
how to emerge from
poverty through work
Absolute Freedom
The three types of being:
2. pour-soi (for itself)
• Man holds the ability to
go beyond his given
situations
• He can rise above his
circumstances.
• It is not a question of
being born poor but
how to emerge from
poverty through work
Absolute Freedom
The three types of being:
2. pour-soi (for itself)
• I am abandoned in the
world. I am alone
without help.
• An experience of
alienation
• This creates a sense of
despair, boredom,
nausea and absurdity.
Absolute Freedom
The three types of being:
2. pour-soi (for itself)
• I am abandoned in the
world. I am alone
without help.
• An experience of
alienation
• This creates a sense of
despair, boredom,
nausea and absurdity.
Absolute Freedom
The three types of being:
2. pour-soi (for itself)
• Existence precedes
essence (man decides
and act)
• Free choice constitute
the individual’s dignity
as a person
• To violate this is to
violate the very essence
of man as man
Absolute Freedom
The three types of being:
2. pour-soi (for itself)
• Man is responsible for
himself.
• He makes and re-
makes himself
• Man becomes the
person that he has
chosen himself to be.
Absolute Freedom
The three types of being:
3. pour-autrui (for-others)
• Man chooses not only
for himself but for all of
humankind
• He is responsible not
only for his own
individuality but for
everyone.
Absolute Freedom
Anguish
• man mas take
responsibility for what he
does
•This means that he
carries with him the
great moral burden of
being responsible for his
fellow human being.
• To abandon this means to
abandon one’s humanity
Absolute Freedom
Anguish
• in the act of choosing,
man chooses alone for
he is the one and final
arbiter of his choice.
•Freedom in this regard is
absolute
Absolute Freedom

“freedom is man; man is

freedom.

In this essence, man is

nothing but the choices
that he makes.
 FOCUS QUESTIONS
1. What is the implication of
Sartre’s absolute freedom?
2. Are structures and human
freedom in conflict? Why?
3. Why does existence
precede essence for Sartre?
THE PERSPECTIVE OF
THE SELF
 THE PERSPECTIVE OF
THE SELF
Structured self
• To act is to find that
there are structures and
norms of conduct.
(history, culture and
tradition)
 THE PERSPECTIVE OF
THE SELF
The human reality is structured
“even if a man were to try to
reject all structures, he would in
the very act of rejection tie
himself to the structure of
rejection; the self, in order to be
self, must have some structure to
operate at all”. -Kavanaugh
THE PERSPECTIVE OF
THE SELF

•We are a social being

–This social existence helps
determine the meaning of one’s
life.
•You are free but it is not necessary
to fight those structures
(external/internal).
•The human self may emerge
through these structures (awareness
of limitations and possibilities)
THE PERSPECTIVE OF
THE SELF

•Michael Sandel
–The freedom is always set under the
background of a particular context.
•How?
•Embodiment
•You are in a community that has communal
values
•The person then is seen as embedded in a
culture/tradition
THE PERSPECTIVE OF
THE SELF
• Prevailing
worldview/corrupt system
–This somehow controls what
is to become of human life
–Deprivation of real choices
in life.
–Away from the meaning of
truth
THE PERSPECTIVE OF
THE SELF

Happiness
–Without the fundamental capacity to
make choice, person can never attain
happiness
–The values that the person nourish and
cherish among themselves are important
in order to concretize what happiness is.
–Happiness can be found in a life that is
worth living
Absurdity and Human
Choice
Human Choice

Subjectivity is Freedom
• What is truth?
• Personal
–Find you find yourself in charge of
your life
–When you are in pursuit of your
dreams
–Always respond positively to life
Human Choice

Subjectivity is transcendence
• Man must not simply go with the
flow
• You are free to determine yourself
and become the person you want
to be
• This implies human possibilities, the
power to go beyond the
momentariness of life situations
Absurdity

Albert Camus
•Confrontation of two ideals
–Clarity
–Cold, uncaring universe
Absurdity

The only way to move forward is

actually to make a choice
1. Suicide
•Life is not worth living
•Life offers nothing
•One chooses an easy way out
Absurdity

The only way to move forward is

actually to make a choice
2. Leap of faith
•Way of escaping the absurd
•It refuses human rationality and simply defers
to abstraction
•It mutes personal experience.
Absurdity

The only way to move forward is

actually to make a choice
3. Recognition
•Of his own absurd condition
•This is the starting point of human freedom
and to give meaning
Absurdity

The only way out for man is this:

To think, to choose, and to decide

for one self
CHAPTER V | WHAT IS FREEDOM?
AUTONOMY
I. OUR ORDINARY SENSE OF FREEDOM
AUTONOMY
CHAPTER V | WHAT IS FREEDOM?
FREEDOM IS
THEREFORE
DYNAMIC !

CHAPTER V | WHAT IS FREEDOM?

Does our Freedom
determine
everything about
ourselves?

I. OUR ORDINARY SENSE OF FREEDOM

II. Freedom
and
Limitation

II. FREEDOM AND LIMITATION

FACTS:
•

II. FREEDOM AND LIMITATION

 A S A P RO D UCT Y O U A RE
G I VE N S P E CI F IC T O O L S T O
WO RK I N L I F E

II. FREEDOM AND LIMITATION

H I S T O RICAL RE A L I TI ES O F
Y O UR E X I S TENCE A RE
F A CT S
Being autonomous means that a
person is concsious and creative
source of his/her decisions

II. FREEDOM AND LIMITATION

III. Autonomy,
Accountability
and
Responsibility

III. AUTONOMY, ACCOUNTABILITY and Responsibility

Human
freedom:
Self-
awareness
 Being free means
Human that one's decision
must always be
Freedom is rationally
not a Free justifiable as
proportionate
ride responses to the
demands of every
situation.

III. AUTONOMY, ACCOUNTABILITY AND RESPONSIBILTY