FREEDOM and Human
Responsibility
Introduction:
We have
introduced 'Philosophy' as something along the lines of, thinking things through more deeply beyond the taken for granted
(together). As such, it is something
we may all indulge in, not just technical, university based philosophers. It is or may well be part of our own personal
searching and striving after wisdom in the midst of life, based in a genuine philia of sophia, for theologians perhaps integrating
and feeding in to their philia of divine Sophia, that love of and
striving after Wisdom spoken of particularly in the so-called Wisdom
literature. This as well as adding our tuppence worth to the
Conversation of Human Kind on matters of common and sometimes vital
concern.
I propose that
we begin this conversation together with a topic or complex of questions and
issues that we all may already have done some thinking about, and indeed have
our own convictions concerning, namely issues related to human freedom and the responsibility that
supposedly goes with it. 'Freedom' and its cognates and derivatives 'liberty',
'liberation' etc. have been much in use on all sides of politics since before
the French Revolution, after all, as well as an individual personal concern in
our daily lives. But what exactly do we
mean by it, what exactly is it, and do people always know what they are talking
about when they go on about it? Or is there even such a thing as 'freedom', or
is it just rhetoric, are we all in fact completely determined in our thoughts
and actions, whether by God, by the laws of nature or genes plus environment or
perhaps by all of these?
We might start
our consideration of the topic of Freedom and Responsibility by giving some time
to some or all of the questions below.
This is just to get your mind going.
You might if you want answer the questions in writing, and use this as
your first entry into your philosophical journal. Feel 'free' also to add your own questions,
if not included in the questions below.
Some questions
to think about:
1) What, offhand or at first glance, do you
think freedom is?
2) Have there
been/are there any situations in which you or your community or group have felt not free?
3) Have there been
any actions that you or someone you know have been
involved in, which you would not say were freely done?
What did 'not being free' mean in each
case? What would it have been like to
have been 'free' in these cases?
4) Can you be
held responsible for any action or the consequences of any action that you did
not freely do?
Can you be
blamed for such? Can you be punished for
such? Is this always the case?
Can you be
praised for such?
What about qualities of character which you did not
freely acquire but derived from birth and upbringing or got as if by
grace? Can you be blamed for these? blamed for actions
which they make likely? Less
blamed? More blamed?? Less punished? More
punished? We put habitual
criminals in jail for longer, not shorter, even though they have got to the
point where they can hardly help committing crime. Is this right?
Do we praise
people for qualities of character whose acquisition they themselves had little
or nothing to do with?
[be careful here: look at our actual practice, not at what
you think our practice should be.]
5) Why do we
put people in jail?
Widening the discussion
Please read
and respond as you can to one or more of the following
Thomas Nagel, What does it all mean?
John Macquarrie, In Search
of Humanity, Ch. II, "Freedom".
Harry
Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care
About,
Plus, of
course, the Lecturer's Input below.
Some Questions
to ask yourself:
(a) To what
extent does what this person says, in so far as I understand it, fit with my
own experience? Try to relate it, in so
far as this can be done, to actual life and ministry situations.
(b) What do I
find myself agreeing with, what sounds reasonable, and what doesn't? Why don't I agree with the latter? Is there anything which strikes me really
strongly, as real wisdom? Is there
anything which strikes me as utter nonsense!?
(c) What don't
I understand, but would like to ask someone?
For further
reading, for those so inclined, see
Tim Gray, Freedom (Macmillan, London, 1990).
Gray distinguishes seven conceptions
of freedom, as follows:
1) absence of impediments;
2) availability of choices;
3) effective power;
4) status (as in a 'free citizen');
5) self-determination;
6) doing what one wants: and
7) self-mastery.
He concludes
after a discussion of each one that while none of these are adequate, they all
have something to do with freedom, and that which conception we make use of
depends a lot on circumstances.
LECTURE NOTES ON FREEDOM
This
lecturer's input is meant as an easier and certainly more accessible method of
stimulating your thinking and discussion.
It is also meant to illustrate philosophy as probing, questioning,
trying out various possibilities, even questing..., philosophizing as a
continuing journey or journeying, beyond the taken for granted... Nor should you take it as gospel. It is based on a passage of thinking which I
picked up once in Leuven, Belgium, during a course
from a Prof. Herman De Dijn, but has undergone a lot
of editorial revision since then.
(I) A look at some of the possibilities in respect of the
question, what freedom might be:
It is useful,
first of all, to distinguish two different but not entirely separate contexts
for discussions about freedom:
POLITICAL:
freedom, sometimes its latinised linguistic
variations 'liberty' and 'liberation', in their social, cultural, national and
international political contexts; and
PERSONAL:
freedom of the will, whether we human persons and perhaps other possible
persons really are free in some special sense beyond other things in nature.
We will look
briefly at political freedom, and then concentrate our attention on the
personal.
'FREEDOM' IN THE POLITICAL CONTEXT:
(A) Freedom =
not being under the control of a foreign government or foreign culture or
civilization or language? Not having
your culture and destiny in the control of some national group other than your
own. E.g. the
But this does
not preclude being under a home-grown dictatorship, authoritarian or
totalitarian. So perhaps:
(B) Freedom =
as in (a), but not being under the control of a home-grown dictatorship either,
participation by people in determining their government, and limitations on the
spheres of life into which government may intrude. As in the 'democracies' in the so-called
'free' world.
Not as in
Cuba, Vietnam, China, military regimes in south and central America or Africa
or Asia, the 'blacks' and 'coloured people' until
recently in South Africa? What about
But is
everybody in the
Are the
poorest of the poor in the cities of south or central America more or less free
than the average person in Cuba, who in spite of lack of political freedom at
least till recently had their basic human needs provided for and effectively
probably many more possibilities in life?
Furthermore,
how much room do countries nowadays have to determine their future, even if not
actually under the domination of other countries? This would vary from country to country,
dependent on size and population and resources and economic power. It seems that ‘globalization’ has reduced
rather than increased control over our own destiny.
(C) So FREEDOM
even in the political context probably does not mean just lack of external
constraint. It also seems to have
something to do with the range of what we are or are not positively and
effectively able to do, whether as individuals or as groups, the situation
being as it is?? Social and political
freedom, it seems, requires a situation in which I or you or a group of people
have effective capacity to positively determine their own destiny in the
directions in which they want to do so, not just no one outside actually
stopping them. Or something like
this. As someone once said, the homeless
are free to sleep or not to sleep - under the bridge.
By way of a
concluding comment: it is obvious that these are somewhat controversial
questions, and that answers given in one direction or another themselves have
political significance. Freedom and its
linguistic alternatives are positive buzz-words, not just purely neutral or
descriptive. Moreover, they are words
which are used sometimes without clear meaning: 'I want freedom' can mean
almost anything, and while the context of the statement may help to determine
its meaning, this is not always sufficient.
Sometimes such a statement is little more than a graphic way of saying
I'm more or less severely dissatisfied with my present situation, without being
very clear, even in my own mind, of what I desire in its place.
'FREEDOM IN THE PERSONAL CONTEXT:
There have
been two main families of theories:
THEORY ONE: freedom = being
able to do what I want. This is one of two classic families of
theories among philosophers in respect of freedom the other one being Theory
Two below, freedom = being able to have done otherwise. Both of these are attempts to define
individual or personal freedom.
But what does
this mean, being able to do what I/you want?
Some
possibilities, arranged below beginning with the weakest:
(a) Freedom = absence of
external constraint.
So that, a
person is free, provided he or she is not a prisoner or in chains (Hume,
sometimes). This is frequently the sense
that it has in the politics and ideology of individualism. A person is free, provided there is no law
against it.
The difficulty
with this is that such a person may still be the slave to all kinds of
influences, e.g. advertisements, mass media generally, politicians, other
strong personalities, the peer group, the whim of the moment, indeed of anyone
or anything capable of determining his or her wants. It is not enough to be able to do what I
want, if someone else or something else is determining the want.
so perhaps
(b) Freedom = effective ability to do what I want,
where the wants which
actually determine my action are
expressive of the real me rather than outside forces: freedom to do what I want, with the proviso
that what I want is connected with something durable and constant in the
person, his/her character, the inner core of my personality, as expressing the
real me. Freedom is being in a
situation and having the ability to determine myself in a direction which is
really me.
If not going
through these internal principles, if what determines the want from which the
action flows is really something from outside, societal pressure, peer group
pressure, parental pressure, advertisements, political propaganda, if I am
reacting rather than responding in my life as they say, then not free.
This freedom
has two sides to it, one negative and one positive:
Freedom here,
negatively considered, is a strong version of absence of external constraint,
including not only physically dragged about and e.g. hypnosis or a drug or a
pistol to the back, but any strong pressure from outside considered as
determining the wants or needs or desires which determine my action, rather
than a connection with the internal principles, the want according to which I
choose being an expression of the real me rather than a reaction to a force
from outside.
Positively
considered, freedom here = self-determination, determination rather than
indeterminism --properly considered, it is actually compatible with determinism, determinism from within, from the
direction of the real me, rather than without.
Call it 'self-determination type
1', as we shall soon see some other varieties of freedom as
self-determination. (For this idea in the history of philosophy, cf. esp.
Spinoza, and Hume also most of the time.)
In this
version, we don't radically decide what decides our wants, though, these
internal principles, our character and fundamental affections and passions, our
fundamental internal makeup. This is
given to us, for example by God. We do
not finally choose our wants, though we may influence them a little bit, but
even then, in line with certain super-wants, key forces within our
personality structure, certain fundamental stances of the heart so to
speak. Moral development in this idea
would then consist in a determination of the forces by the deeper more
fundamental forces already at work, helped a bit by increasing self-knowledge,
and increasing knowledge of what really counts for happiness and of the real
implications of the drive for meaning, these being two of the fundamental
forces in human nature.
One
interesting distinguishing feature is that freedom in this conception admits of
growth, as the person gets him/herself more together, becomes more and more
their own master, master of their everyday lower level 'desires' and of their
actions. The mind and heart, the inner
spirit, gradually comes to control the whole person and all his/her
actions. The person becomes more and
more self-motivating, running his/her own show, increasing in self-mastery.
This second
possibility can cope with a lot of the phenomena connected with the idea of
freedom and makes fair sense of much of our moral practice. It is not a bad fall-back position if we
can't find a basis for anything stronger.
But some people do want more.
(c) Freedom = radical self-determination,
determining even the super-wants, the key desires of the heart that constitute
human beings as human beings, you as you and me as me, somehow creating even
the innermost me. Some people want more
than (b): not only to do what we want to do and the wants expressing the real
me, coming from inside rather than outside,
which includes super-wants in terms of which we can change our everyday
wants a little bit;
we should also
be the creator so to speak of our
wants or motives, and even of our super-wants, to be the creator somehow or
other even of the innermost me. Total
absence of internal as well as external constraint.
Freedom here = radical freedom to want what
I want (this in addition to (b)), to decide even with respect to the wants
themselves.
Call it 'self-determination type 2'. Unlike type 1, this is a variety of indeterminism. It is consistent with everything being
caused, e.g. some of it by me, but not with everything being determined by what
has already happened in the past or the way things are already. I decide my wants, in a quite radical
fashion, at least sometimes, and in so doing I create myself.
It may be that
the truth lies in a combination of this radical self-creation option with the
less radical previous option, i.e. type 1 with a variety of type 2. I create my life and myself as a work of art,
or at least I may do so if I really have things together, or, alternatively or
additionally are appropriately graced, either by God or by the situation, and
this may be something radically new. But
artistic creation after all is a receptive activity, receptive of the way I
have been given already by God and by my parents and of previously constituted
values and models (e.g. saints, heroes) in my society and religion in order to
make something new. That is to say, a
more or less creative responding and operating with the way I have been given. Creativity, in practice, is always a creative
taking into account and re-working of what is there already, this also for my
own self-creation.
One argument
in favour of some form of indeterminism: no matter
how strong a person's belief in universal determinism, as soon as you put that
person into a situation of having to choose, they act as if they were
free. In our philosophical closets we
may be determinists; in situations of action in daily life however this
goes into the
same place as most of the rest of our abstruse philosophies.
The main problems
with indeterminism would seem to be 1) to make sense of what we might mean by
it; and 2) to reconcile it with what we suppose to be the scientific picture of
the world. On the other side, 3) there
are conceptual problems also with determinism; and 4) it is perhaps no longer
so clear that we have to be strict determinists in order to do science; and 5)
even, it may not be the case that reality is such that we can do science about
all of it…
THEORY TWO: freedom = the
ability to do or have done otherwise: else we don't blame
them and they are not to be punished, because they weren't acting freely.
This is the
other of the classic philosophical answers in respect of the question, what
freedom is. It is not the same as Theory
One above: one could be in a situation in which one is doing what one in fact
wants, even though, realistically one could not have done otherwise. See especially the interesting article by
This theory is
fairly closely connected with considerations of morality, of praise and blame
and punishment.
But once
again, what does it mean, the ability
to do or have done otherwise? Once
again, various possibilities:
1) I could
have done otherwise if things were
different?
2) "
" " "
if I had been different?
But we don't
mean either of these, do we? we mean,
3) I could have done otherwise here and now,
me being as I am and the others and the circumstances being the same --
otherwise not to be blamed, we blame the others or the circumstances.
But 3) itself
admits of two further possibilities:
(a) it was equal, it depended entirely on
his/her choice, fundamental indifference in respect of the various motives, it
was entirely up to me to decide which way.
Freedom here =
freedom of indifference, the capacity to indifferently do certain
things, absolute origin, random choice.
Is this what
freedom is? Such that, from the outside it is no different from pure chance. We
human beings have freedom of indifference, unlike Buridan's
Ass. Cf. esp. Descartes.
There are a
number of difficulties with this:
·
(i) this is to ignore the influence of motives: even free
actions are motivated; even with free decisions, we can still ask a person why
s/he did something. In cases where we do
blame people it is very frequently not equal, there were strong temptations yet
we still blame them, for not resisting the temptation when they could well
have, in spite of it being perhaps a bit difficult; it looks like, in practice whatever about in
theory, it doesn't have to be absolutely equal before we blame them or regard
them as still free, albeit sometimes sorely tempted.
·
(ii)
(perhaps equivalently) it would make human action entirely unpredictable, would
seem to go too far in that direction.
People are largely predictable, at least in large enough groups. And yet we still like to think that they are
free, at least some of the time and perhaps even most of the time.
·
(iii)
it would make morality impossible (this is an insight to be found in the Scottish
philosopher David Hume, First Enquiry, p. 98)
--we commonly judge a person less
harshly for actions which are out of character, which do not have a
relation with something durable and constant in the person. We tend to excuse a bit, s/he is out of sorts
today, sick, grieving, got up on the wrong side of the bed, rather than judging
more harshly for them. If freedom were freedom of indifference we should judge
them more harshly;
--moral life has projects and
a certain order: though founded on freedom it is not arbitrary.
so perhaps:
(b) it was not equal, one motive was
stronger than the others, but still he/she could have chosen the other
way.
'could have
chosen the other way' meaning? (i)if things were
different??, (ii)had he/she been different??, (iii)had the other motive been
the stronger?? These all have their
problems.
N.B. N.B., do we always choose the 'stronger
motive'? If so are we determined
by motives, not really free?
This raises
the question: why was one motive stronger than the others? The only possible answer which still
preserves freedom is: because s/he made it stronger! But how? By transfer of attention (
Now, WHAT DO YOU THINK FREEDOM MIGHT BE? Which of the above do you feel comes
closest/fits in best with your experience? Is there perhaps a convergence as we
probe the various possibilities? Or is
it 'horses for courses', inevitably plural, what freedom means seems to depend
on the context?
Feel free now to add to your journal, by way of response to
the above input.
This concludes
our treatment of this complex of issues, so
far as this unit is concerned. Obviously it does not exhaust all
possibilities on the road to 'freedom' or at least an awareness of what it
might be or mean. Nor need it conclude
your own personal journey in the direction of freedom and an awareness of what
'true' freedom might consist in.
(II) Free Will and
Issues in Morality:
some notes, in case you don't already have enough to read.
Common theory: a
person is not to be held responsible for, nor made the object of praise or
blame, reward or punishment in respect of, something which he or she could not
help. Positively, in order for a
person to be held responsible for ... it has to have been or have come as a
result of an act of free choice on their part.
How well does
this common theory which we mostly take for granted measure up as an
interpretation of the way people actually behave, actual human practice in
respect of the attribution of responsibility, praise or blame, reward or
punishment?
Not so well,
it seems: the practice is rather more complicated than is allowed for by the
theory and in certain respects different or even contrary:
(a) Free will, praise and blame:
It may be that
people are not blamed for what they couldn't help, less blamed for
actions performed under duress, and even, less blamed for such actions as they
perform hastily and unpremeditately than for such as
proceed from deliberation, "acts coming from a sudden and unknown
frenzy". So far so good.
Our praising
practice however is not nearly so picky as this:
·
We
do not praise an action the less merely because it flows almost naturally from
the particular character --flowing almost naturally out of the virtues which a
person has developed or which have been developed in the person over the
years. In fact, we make it our aim to
become such people --people who do as if by nature what the law of God requires (
We
don't not praise actions out of character but it is hardly as if we praise them all the more: we are
more likely to wonder about the motive!
·
Perhaps
then it is the freedom behind the acquisition of the character which counts?
We do esteem
highly a person who, against all the odds, is yet kind-hearted, good-natured,
good-humoured, generous, loving, courageous in spite
of becoming easily afraid.
But we don't
not praise and esteem people who are naturally that way, for whom, we might
think, it was quite likely that they be that way -- there are even people whom
it seems are just naturally good. We are
often very attracted to these, these natural saints. Also we try to bring up our children to make
it more likely that they will be that way -- that's kindness; to make it more
difficult so that there will be more "free will" involved, that's not
kindness. This is also why we endeavour to develop blessed community.
In our
tradition there are saints of both kinds: we are largely gift, though we
might think the gift has at some stage to be accepted and affirmed,
confirmed. For
In summary:
the existence of free will (whatever it may mean) is much more important for
our blaming practice than for our praising practice. Problem: in terms of what
kinds of interests are we to explain such a discrepency?
Why is this
so?
(b) Blame versus responsibility
To be blamable
for something and to be held or to hold myself responsible for it are not quite the same (cf. Various
people w.r.t. the aboriginees,
the stolen generation and dispossession of the land.)
·
Sometimes
we may decide to and even be expected to feel responsibility for the
consequences of actions we couldn't help and couldn't be blamed for. Though not blamable for the action we may
become blamable for not taking responsibility in respect of the consequences.
e.g. traffic accidents
--in which someone is badly hurt or killed;
e.g. the child
in the nuclear silo, during a dry run practice, the security guard has to shoot
the child to prevent a missle launch (cf. the movie,
"The Silent Voice"); s/he is responsible and would certainly feel
really bad about it, feels responsible, even though not blamable.
e.g. the
police service or defence personnel in performance of
their duty.
What is going
on here? Paying tribute to the victim,
recognizing the dignity of the victim -- he or she is not a cockroach, they are
persons, human beings.
e.g. for some
people, abortion in an extreme situation -- some people may feel the young or
not so young woman is not so blamable, that blame rests more e.g. with the
parents or the social or cultural or economic structures or the so called
boyfriend or husband; but the woman goes up in our estimation if she does take
some responsibility for what she has allowed to be done, without necessarily
blaming herself, if she at least takes it seriously.
(c) W.r.t. punishment:
This may also
have a lot to do with paying tribute to the victim (though also restraining
crime not committed, rehabilitation of the prisoner and keeping them off the
streets for a while)
-- which is
why genuine repentence lessens the punishment: in
repenting the person is paying tribute to the victim, recognizing and
reaffirming their dignity.
(Cf. Anthony
Kenny, Freewill and Responsibility, Ch. 4: Three main theories about
punishment: (a) retribution: an eye for an eye..., restoring the balance,
paying your debt to society etc. ; (b) remedial, rehabilitation: for the sake
of the prisoner; (c) deterrence: not so
much of the criminals (according to Kenny) as of the ordinary bloke. Kenny opts for deterrence. But his argument may be based on a
misunderstanding of what we are really about in retribution. Distinguish clearly between the practice and
understandings of the practice, which then impinge on the practice itself
--cf., for example, the Eucharist.
What about
divine retribution: also the dignity of the victim, which God sets out to
reaffirm? To be understood as an aspect of God's option for the poor and
downtrodden.
(d) Freedom and human dignity: a
distinction between 'persons' and 'human beings'?
While the
human race may differ from most or all other species on earth in that some of
its members are endowed with free will,
this would not
seem to be the actual basis for the recognition of human dignity in the context
of our moral practice. Otherwise we would be leaving out mentally disturbed
people, children, some handicapped people, many aged people with senile
dementia, precisely the ones whose dignity needs mostly to be affirmed and
protected: the others, the ones endowed with free will, can frequently look
after themselves. Though the possession
of some free will may be necessary for citizenship in the moral universe, the
republic of reasonable wills (see Kant), it is not necessary for membership in
the human universe, the republic of human beings.
Though it must
be admitted that our practice in this regard has shown itself fairly sensitive
to our understanding of the practice and has also admitted of considerable
development:
-- in the Age
of Reason (17th-18th Centuries) mentally disturbed people were regarded and
treated as having reverted to the status of animals; they felt no problem, therefore, with putting
them on show, like circus animals.
-- in many
cultures children and also women have not been/are not regarded as or treated
as full citizens in the republic of human beings, not to mention the slaves.
The history of
moral development has seen a gradual extension of persons regarded as belonging
to the class of human beings.
n even in our time we may be affected in
our practice by a false understanding of the practice having its roots to some
extent in the influence of certain kinds of (popular) existentialism and an
overemphasis on the human person at the expense of the human
being.(!!)
n Also, Peter Singer seems sometimes to
be into a kind of ‘personism’ rather than a humanism,
where persons are defined in such a way as to include only part of the human
race (but also to include some other members of the animal kingdom).
So far it
hasn't affected the children, perhaps, except that is the unborn ones.
Within
philosophical anthropology, the notion of the 'person' (as in 'philosophy of
the person'), while it may be valuable, would thus finally seem to be
inadequate?
If we should
distinguish between a 'person' and a 'human being' (as in human dignity), then
most debates about abortion are badly premised.
Human dignity
= a function of potential rather than actuality or performance, and even
potential for potential. The boundary
for intelligent and morally aware people nowadays would seem to be the
possession of human genes, and even that is unstable, with a tendency to
include even more, to cross the human/animal barrier. But regression also happens.
What does it
have to do with? Possibly, capacity for feeling rather than capacity for
reason or free will: "how would you feel if s/he did that to
you?" This also has the advantage
of extending our practice into the animal kingdom, on less rationalistic and
intellectualistic grounds than that of Peter Singer. For an example of this, see the process
philosopher Daniel Dombrowski.