Introduction to the

Philosophy
of the Human Person
Quarter 2 – Module 5
Freedom of the Human Person
 What I Need to Know?

At the end of this module, the learners will be able to:

1. understand the true essence of freedom;

2. exercise prudence in making choices;
3. rationalize that:
a. choices have consequences;
b. some things are given up while others are obtained in making
choices, and
4. show situations that demonstrate freedom of choice and its consequences.

The following are your guides for the proper use of this module:

1. Follow closely the instructions in every activity.

2. Be honest in answering and checking your exercises.
3. Answer the pre-test before going over the material to find out what you al-
ready know.
4. Answer the exercises at the end of every lesson.
5. Review the lesson that you find difficult to understand.
6. Seek assistance from your teacher if you need help.

7. Ask permission from y our parents/guardians whenever you have research and

requirements to be conducted outside your home.

What I know?

A. Encircle the letter that corresponds your answer. Write your answers in your
activity notebook.

1. This refers to the ability to make choices and perform actions. It is an intrinsic
and essential property of the human person.
a. Freedom
b. Free Will
c. Psychological freedom
d. Voluntariness
 2. A type of freedom from physical restraint.
a. Moral freedom
b. Physical freedom
c. Psychological free-
dom d. Voluntariness

3. This is the kind of freedom which allows a person to perform actions which he
or she considers right and wise.
a. Freedom of choosing
b. Voluntarism
c. Psychological free-
dom d. Moral Freedom

4. It is the ability to act out one’s free will and self-determination.

a. Volunteerism
b. Responsibility
c. Psychological free-
dom d. Voluntariness

5. This means that a person is being accountable for his or her actions and their
consequences.
a. Responsibly
b. Responsibility
c. Irresponsible-
ness d. Voluntari-
ness

B. Put a check beside each number of the statement which shows responsible use
of freedom.

1. Instead of buying new dress for a party she is going to attend, Sheena
decides to borrow a dress from her sister.
2. Knowing that her classmate will be humiliated by the photo she took, Mika still
posted the photo in their class group chat.
3. Despite his classmate’s friends threatening him, Mark decided to tell his
teacher that his classmates stole a test paper for their final examination.
4. Instead of going out with his friends on a Saturday night, Miguel spends his time
with his family.
5. Although the beauty product Kim is selling is very in demand, Kim stopped
selling it knowing that it can cause harm to the skin if used for a long time.

C. Analyzing situations.
 Read the following situations below. How are you going to apply prudence in
making a choice to exercise your freedom more responsibly? Encircle the letter that
corresponds your answer

1. Your family is experiencing financial difficulty. You are being enrolled in a

private school with a high tuition fee but your parents do not want you to
transfer to a public school despite your situation. As their daughter/son what are
you going to do?

a. You are going to stay in your school because that is what your parents
want you to do.
b. You won’t mind because that is your parent’s problem.
c. You will explain to your parents that transferring school is the best way
to resolve the family’s financial problem. d.
You will stop going to school.

2. A teacher informed you that your brother has to repeat some subjects due to his
failing grades. She asked you to tell your parents about it and that she
wanted to meet them. But your brother asked you not to tell your parents and that
he will find another person to stand as your parents. What are you going to do?

a. You will not tell your parents because your brother asked you not to do it.
b. You will not tell your parents in exchange of your brother’s allowance.
c. You won’t mind because you do not care about your brother’s problem.

d. You will tell your parents because you know that granting your brothers request
will not do any good but instead will just lead him to do to things that could
again affect his studies.

3. Your best friend humiliated you, making you a laughing stock in your school.
As her best friend you also knew a lot about her that would humiliate her as well
when exposed. What then are you going to do?

a. You will not do what she did to you because you know that it will not do any
good.
b. You will expose her secrets so that she will have the same fate as you. c.
You will confront and start a fight with her.
d. You will not do the same, instead you’ll do actions that will gain back
your friendship.

4. You are invited to a debut party of your best friend. She expected you to be there.
Her birthday falls on a Wednesday but you’re having a final exam the next day.
How are you going to deal with the situation?
a. You will go to the party and will not study for your exam.
b. You will not go to the party and you will study for your exam. c.
You will go to the party but you will go home early to study. d. You
will not go to the party and will not study.
5. You saw a classmate bullied by your schoolmates outside your school. You just
turned a blind eye and walked the other way because you do not want to get in-
volved. The next day, you heard the news that your bullied classmate was ad -
mitted to the hospital due to injuries. The school and the family of the bullied child
is asking if someone saw the incident to have someone to testify. The bullies al-
ready warned you not say a single word otherwise they will do the same to you.
What are you going to do then?

a. You will not report because your safety is at stake.

b. You will report to prevent the bullies from doing it again.
c. You will not report because you do not care about your classmate. d.
You will report the incident in exchange for money.

Lesson 1: Definition of Freedom and

It’s Kind
Learning Competency: Realize that “all actions have consequences”. (PPT11/12-
IIa-5.1)

What’s New?
Activity 1: Draw Me A Picture.
Draw the picture asked and answer the guide questions.
Place your answer in your activity notebook.

1. Draw a picture of a bird inside a cage

 2. In relation to freedom what do you think does your draw-
ing means?

__________
3. What do you think is the difference if the bird is inside the cage and if
it is outside?

What is It?

What is Freedom?
- The ability to make choices and perform those choices.
- The ability to be what we want and to decide and create oneself.

Two concepts that will help us fully understand freedom:

1. Freedom itself
According to Merriam Dictionary, it is the quality or state of being free. It
is our capacity to choose of what we wanted and an inner awareness
of what is right and wrong that is traced to our free will according to Aristotle. It
is also an intrinsic and an essential property of a human person which basi-
cally means, it is a part of our human nature.

Example:

Think of yourself as a student, your teacher told you to study your lessons for
the day for you will have a long quiz the next meeting. However, as
you reached home you find yourself having a good time doing Facebook
and online chatting with your friends. Using your freedom, you can either
choose to follow your teacher’s advice to study your lessons for your
quiz the next morning or continue doing the thing which you find enjoyable.
 2. Free will

Our free will allows us to decide on things we do depending on

the situation. It is our ability to choose between two different possible courses
of action, independently. Simply put it, free will is our ability to choose
things according to our moral reasoning.

To sum it all, our freedom then could trace down in a person’s exercise of
his rationality/intellect and free will. Simply that individual actions as it is freely
chosen by an individual it then defines who and what kind of person one is. We all are
free to choose, to be good person and act on it accordingly or be a bad person and
act in a bad way. As our actions and choices reflects us doing what is good and acting
on it is what makes you a good person while on the other hand doing the negative will
also give a negative impression to an individual. This has been tackled on
the previous lesson that self- determination or the ability to choose on what
is right and wrong, that a person’s action determines what kind of person he or she
becomes.

KINDS OF FREEDOM

1. Physical Freedom

Physical freedom refers to the absence of any physical restraint. The

person has the freedom of mobility to go where he or she wants to go. He or
she is not impeded in his or her actions by any physical force. Granted that the
person has natural limitations, physical freedom allows him or her to act and
move in determined manner. You cannot be everywhere at once, but your
freedom allows you to move one place to another and to go whenever you
want to go.

2. Psychological Freedom

Psychological freedom is also called freedom of choice. The per-

son is free to perform actions that he or she considers right and wise. A per-
son is also free to act or not to act. Psychological freedom is innate and
cannot be denied to a person. No outside force or influence can compel a
person to take action against his or her will.

3. Moral Freedom
 Moral freedom refers to using freedom in a manner that upholds hu-
man dignity and goodness. Freedom is not an object that a person may use
in whatever way he or she pleases. A person must use his or her free-
dom to grow as a person. A person becomes freer when he or she uses
freedom well, but becomes less free when he or she uses it in a bad way. Hu-
mans have a natural inclination for what is true and good, and when a person
uses his or her freedom to do acts that violates human dignity and goodness,
he or she dehumanizes himself or herself and effectively negates hu-
man freedom.

Lesson 2: Elements of Freedom

What is It?

There are two elements that define freedom:

1. Voluntariness

It is the ability of a person to act of his or her own free will and self-
determination. A person may decide to do things or not to do it according
to his own free will. It also means that even though she/he is not required
to do such things he/she could still do it or take action on it.

Voluntary acts are free acts which can be assigned a corre-

sponding moral value. One must always remember that in every action we
make, in every choice we make there is an equivalent conse-
quence. These consequences affect not just the individual who does the
decision but also other people in their surroundings. With that, one must al-
ways accept the consequences that results from his or her decisions
or actions and take responsibility for them.

2. Responsibility

Responsibility refers to the person being accountable for his or

her action and their consequences. Taking responsibility can mean either
you take responsibility to your action voluntarily or other people will hold
you responsible. For example, if you made a bad action it’s either
you take responsibility of it or other people will hold you responsible for it.

Example of voluntariness and responsibility

 Michael invited Ken to a party club. At the club, Ken was very sur -
prised to see his former classmates and some acquaintances. It was very lively,
people were dancing, singing and others were drinking and smoking. But, there is
something that caught Ken’s attention, a group of people in the corner doing some-
thing unusual. And to his surprise, Michael was one of them. He came near to
them and Michael immediately offer him a methamphetamine (shabu). At first, he
refused knowing that the use of it is illegal. However, with the persistent effort of
Michael, Ken tried it. Unexpectedly, police officers came to raid the club. Ken
was abducted.

Based on this situation, voluntariness was manifested by Ken’s personal ac-

ceptance of the illegal drug because he uses his own freewill. Responsibility comes
with Ken’s choice of action. Meaning, he had to accept his fate to be in the prison
cell as a consequence of his freewill.

There are important factors to consider in the exercise of freedom. These

are
Prudence and Self-reflection.

 Prudence is the ability to govern and discipline oneself with

the use of reason; it is having caution and giving good
judgments in making decisions.

Because once we made a decision there is no

turning back, there is no rewind, so we should always
reflect first on the possible outcomes of the choices that
we are going to make. Self-reflection is very important in exer-
cising freedom.

 Self-reflection allows us to be more rational in making

choices, because sometimes human beings tend to be slaves
by their emotions and moods whenever they act certain
things. As free beings, exercising our freedom responsibly is
very important. Thus, it requires us to reflect on the actions
that we are going to make by considering its possible ef-
fects and the benefits it has to the people affected by it.

Lesson 3: Exercising Freedom

in a Responsible and
Beneficial Manner
Learning Competency: Show situations that demonstrate freedom of
choice and the consequences of their choices.

Giving limits to our personal freedom simply means sacrificing certain

self- interest and accept that there are things beyond our control. Our ability to think
and know what is right and what is wrong serves as guide in recognizing and decid-
ing the limitations of our freedom.

Freedom should be exercised with regard for knowledge and truth.

As a rational beings, it is natural for us to think before we act. We use our

freedom to acquire knowledge, which in turn are useful in making right and sound de-
cisions essential in dealing with our life situations.

- Example:

To correctly answer a multiple-choice item in an examination, a student has to

study his/her lessons. Otherwise, he/she cannot answer the test.

We should also be equipped with the ability to acquire information and truthful
knowledge because it will aid us in making wise and informed choices.

Example:

In casting our votes during SSG election, we will not vote to a candi -
date because of she/he is attractive or appealing but because
she/he is knowledgeable on the important school issues.

Freedom should be exercised to uphold the freedom of others.

Freedom is recognized and guaranteed right for all persons. Meaning,

freedom should be enjoyed by all. But it is important to remember that free-
dom should be exercised not as a tool to restrict the freedom of others, but as a
means to enable others to fully enjoy their own freedom.

Example:
A teacher doing his/her class discussion under the Narra tree instead of
having it inside the classroom.

You shared your hard-earned money to cater the needs of your friend who is
in dire needs of it for the realization of his/her school project.
 What I Have Learned?

 Freedom is an intrinsic and essential property of a human person.

 Human person by nature seeks freedom and our freedom makes us dis-
tinct from other beings.
 Freedom gives us the power/ability to be what we want and to decide
and create ourselves.
 There are three kinds of freedom. Physical freedom refers to the ab-
sence of physical restraint. Psychological freedom is the freedom of
choice. Moral freedom refers to the responsible use of freedom which
upholds human dignity and goodness.
 The two important elements of human freedom are voluntariness and re-
sponsibility. Voluntariness refers to the ability of the person to act out of
his or her own free will. Responsibility refers to the person being account-
able for his or her action and their consequences.
 As a person possessing self-determination, individual actions as it is
freely chosen by an individual then defines who and what kind of individ-
ual we are.
 Having freedom and exercising it bears responsibilities. All our actions
have consequences that come with it. Therefore, it is important to act with
prudence and reflect on possible courses of actions in making decision.
 Freedom should be exercised in a responsible and beneficial man-
ner. One must control and recognize limits of his or her freedom for it is our re-
sponsibility as persons to uphold not only our individual freedoms, but also the
freedom of others.

Assessment
A. Encircle the letter that corresponds your answer. Write your answers in your
activity notebook.

1. This refers to the ability to make choices and perform actions. It is an intrinsic
and essential property of the human person.
a. Freedom
b. Free Will
c. Psychological freedom
d. Voluntariness

2. A type of freedom from physical restraint.

a. Moral freedom
b. Physical freedom
c. Psychological freedom
d. Voluntariness

3. This is the kind of freedom which allows a person to perform actions which he
or she considers right and wise.
a. Freedom of choosing
b. Voluntarism
c. Psychological freedom
d. Moral Freedom

4. It is the ability to act out one’s free will and self-determination.

a. Volunteerism
b. Responsibility
c. Psychological freedom
d. Voluntariness

5. This means that a person is being accountable for his or her actions and their
consequences.
a. Responsibly
b. Responsibility
c. Irresponsibleness
d. Voluntariness
REFERENCES:
Abella, Roberto D. [Link]., [Link]. “Freedom of the Human Person” In Introduction to
the Philosophy of the Human Person. Quezon City: C&E Publishing Inc.2016

Maria Paula G. Sioco Ph. D. and Ignatius H. Vinzons, “Limitations and Transcen-
dence” In Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human [Link] Araneta Av-
enue, Quezon City: Vibal Group, Inc. 2016