HUMAN FREEDOM

Lesson VI

HUMAN FREEDOM

A Philosophical Exposition(by John F. Kavanaugh)

FREEDOM in the minds of B.F. Skinner, Sartre & Maslow

1. B.F. Skinner :He seems to affirm that MAN IS NOT FREE.A. All present behavior is controlled by previous

behavior. B. All behavior has motivational causes which are

necessiting causes.

In short, Skinner is saying that MAN is determined by his

historicity.

2. Jean-Paul Sartre:

For Sartre:MAN IS ABSOLUTELY FREE.

Man has no history. The individual has only his future project which he makes entirely of himself and he alone is responsible.

In short, He is free and indeterminate.

2. Abraham Maslow :

For Maslow: MAN cannot be reduced to

historicity & determinism nor be divorced from them.

To be a human person means: to have potentialities… and to inserted into an environment & history…

Analysis of Reflection & Questioning

1. All of us share in the ability to question our historicity and past. By our questioning, we have achieved a distance from and a certain control over the immediate environment.

Analysis of Reflection & Questioning

2. I can act upon this knowledge… consider my horizons, potentialities, and what I might want to make of myself. Hence, I am able to achieve self-possession & determination

Freedom: Preliminary considerations:

1. Achieving a distance from blind necessity with respect to external stimuli, values, etc.2. Achieving a distance from myself… seeing & questioning myself in relation to present needs and conditions.3. Achieving self-possession.4. Achieving self-determination – what I am.

Free Choice: Analysis of the Will

• The Will – it is an intellectual tendency toward an intellectually good… It is the “good” quality of the thing by which the will is drawn or moved. • This “tendency” is always concerned with a real world, thus, finite, limited, conditioned, etc.

Some reasons:1. It is the “good” aspect of the object which attracts my will.2. The only object which necessitates the will is good that is unconditional & unqualified.3. However, many choices of the “goods” are all conditioned, limited & qualified.4. Therefore, freedom of choice can be operative in my behavior.

The big question:

• If the will tends towards “good” all the time, does that mean we never choose evil?

• It is in deliberation… in relation to our knowledge of who we are and our potentialities that moral failure occurs… a “good-for-me-now.”

• The importance of knowledge: we cannot have self-possession if we do not have an understanding of the self & its meaning…

The big question: some points

• Formation of choices: points to the importance of environment, habit, emotion, preferences, history, etc.

Determinism – is a philosophical theory

holding that all events are inevitable consequences of

antecedent sufficient causes; often understood as denying the possibility

of free will.

The Position of Total Determinism

1. The free inner man is a pre-scientific substitute for the kinds of causes thru scientific analysis. Total determinism is much fruitful than the concept of freedom.

Skinner’s Position:

2. Other interpretations of human bahvior, e.g., human freedom are pre-scientific.

3. The causes of human action lie outside the man and these are necessitating.

Skinner Vs. KavanaughSKINNER:1. Genetics, biological & physical structures influence one’s behavior – part of the total person which is involved in choosing.

2. The environmental structures – psychological development, culture, ecclesiastical factors wherein the self is situated in.

Skinner Vs. KavanaughSKINNER:3. The awareness of external forces that demands impingement upon individual, thus creating needs & values.

In sum, We are historically situated through environmental

control and conditioning.

Skinner Vs. KavanaughKavanaugh:1. Man can still channel & improve his awareness of external forces that demands impingement upon him/her.2. Man can question his environmental structures; can revolt against them; can undergo psychological experience to restructure them…

Skinner Vs. KavanaughKavanaugh:3. Man can achieve distance from external demand and forces; can hesitate, reflect, challenge and delibe-rate; can talk about them.

In sum, Man can challenge and change his/her own history.

Determinism has a great deal in helping us understand how one’s historicity influences one’s behavior. However, as a total explanation of human behavior, it fails to account for the data of questioning, self-reflection and intelligent inquiry; cannot succeed in validating its own position nor the value of scientific investigation.

Summary Critique on the Position of Total Determinism

“I am my Freedom” – one’s identity is freedom itself.

The Case for Absolute FREEDOM

• Man is absolutely free because there is no God to conceive man as a definable essence.

• The essence of human being is suspended in his freedom… There is no difference between the being of man and his being free.

• Man is the only source which decides ends, motives, & causes...

1. Man is not tied down by his facticity and the world in which he finds himself... Freedom’s meaning is a struggle with and negation of what is given.

3 Important points:

2. Man is not tied down by his past or by the choices of the past...

3. There is no definable limitation to my identity, since I choose it and make my own essence…

3 Important points:

• Kavanaugh points out that the freedom that Sartre is trying to emphasizes is like the freedom of a rock…

• To be me involves the structure of what being me is; and whenever I may go or flee, I will carry myself with me.

• We cannot just be free without structure...

Structured Freedom:

Freedom of man involves both “extremes”…

• Absolute determinism (Skinner) either omits the data of transcendence and questioning or tries to reduce it to “external forces.” Absolute indeterminism (Sartre) ignores man’s history and structure or tries to wish it out of existence.

Structured Freedom:

1. Structures are the offerings of the world to which I come…

2. It is also the internal constitution of being a man with human potentialities.

3. My own freely created life project is also a structure…

In sum, man is freedom within structure.

On Freedom & AnxietyFreedom can be a lonely &

terrifying thing… It is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne

(Camus).

There is no escape from freedom. In a way we are condemned to be free

(Sartre).

On Freedom & Anxiety

• In our exercises of freedom, we are alone… No one else can do it for us and our choices are irrevocable, since the present moment is never to be repeated. We cannot undo what we have chosen.• Freedom is the source of human ambiguity (Frankl). It is terrible and it is beautiful.

The Ambiguities of Freedom

• Man is able to know that he is free… and able to say something about himself. But my identity as a questioner I am thrust out of mu encapsulated self. I am carried into the world of the other and into the entire cosmos which is open rather than closed dynamism. This is the major ambiguity of freedom.

The Ambiguities of Freedom

• I can freely, irrevocably choose to be closed… Man would at times avoid the terror of the choice… However, if one takes away the ambiguities of life, if you take away tensions, difficulties, etc., one takes away freedom…

The Ambiguities of Freedom

•However, freedom is also the most important and fulfilling action a man can place. A man can know himself and can possess himself and his destiny. Yet his destiny & meaning is other-directed, open in his potentialities to know and love…

In sum, Man’s meaning is not only to possess himself

freely. His identity is not fully achieved until, having

possessed himself, he gives himself to other.