Paradoxes of freedom

Yes or no: are we free to manage our lives, or is our path set in advance – upbringing, environment, character? Thinkers of different times responded differently. Philosopher Valery Gubin commented on their answers.

Are our actions predetermined?

No, says Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). We must (and can) live as if we were free, that is, responsible for our actions, for our moral choice. Of course, a person is never absolutely free, he depends on a thousand factors. However, none of them, nor all of them together, unequivocally predetermine our life and our behavior. We can live independently, that is, we can motivate our lives not so much by external reasons as by inner conviction, Kant is sure. We can fulfill ourselves in spite of everything – neither the pressure of fate, nor the fear of death. There are no natural reasons to love each other or to act according to conscience, but there are reasons of a higher order for this. For Kant, the law of freedom is higher than the laws of nature. For example, I can sacrifice my life, go against my own nature, doing my duty. This is the manifestation of human freedom.

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• Let the experts have a headache?

Yes – answer Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677)followed by Karl Marx. According to them, freedom is a recognized necessity: the more I know the laws, the more deeply I have studied the circumstances, the more freely I can act. If we approach the problem exclusively rationally, then both Spinoza and Marx are right: even in a situation of the so-called “free choice”, a person chooses only from the available alternatives and relies on his natural qualities. But then there is simply no freedom: options are given to me from the outside, I choose between them, guided by my needs (which do not depend on me), my emotions (spontaneously arising), my rational assessments (which dictate the laws of mind). In other words, there is nothing mine in the basis of my decision, which means that the decision itself is not mine. The only difference that can be seen here is between stupidly ignorant lack of freedom and intelligently enlightened lack of freedom (the latter is known as “conscious necessity”).

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Can freedom be won?

Yes, says Karl Marx (1818-1883). The whole history of the formation of man is a struggle for his liberation from natural and social forces that alienate him from his own essence. Actually, only in the struggle for freedom does a person become a person.

No, says Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). Freedom is a fundamental state that precedes our essence and predetermines its possibility: “A person does not appear in the beginning in order to be free later, but there is no difference between a person’s being and his “free being”*.

Freedom is a choice, but freedom is not chosen. We do not choose to be free, we are sentenced to freedom, thrown into it. When we stop treating ourselves as a thing, when we understand that no reliable and guaranteed place in this world has been allocated to us, it turns out that there is no solid support under our feet, that the abyss of freedom opens up before us. Therefore, you need to have the courage to rely on yourself, you need to be able to refuse those ways of making life easier that are offered by modern society, to find the strength to return yourself from being lost in the alienated world of things and material relations. In a state of anguish, I realize that I am absolutely free and that only I bring meaning to the world. It is natural to want to run away, to avoid this state, to consider oneself from the outside as another or as a “thing”.

Freedom is in us that which does not depend on us and the voice of which we can hear, such as the voice of conscience or the voice of God. Freedom cannot be won, because it is an integral part of human nature, freedom cannot be given or taken away, freedom is a person. True freedom is not freedom from anything, but freedom for something, for the work that I am called to do.

* J-P. Sartre “Being and Nothingness” (AST, 2009).

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• About Freedom

More freedom – less evil?

Yes, says Georg Hegel (1770-1831), freedom increases as a person develops, and this is good. From ancient empires, where man was completely unfree, to today’s countries, where his freedom is guaranteed by the constitution, there is a huge distance.

No – answers Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), freedom does not increase the amount of goodness in the world. From freedom comes all evil, all crimes and wars. We are afraid of freedom and are looking for someone to whom we could hand it over, so that he would remove from us the terrible burden of responsibility, in which I have to choose my own path in life, be responsible for my actions myself, without shifting them to circumstances, family, state. There is so much evil and suffering in the world, because freedom is at the heart of the world. The world that Ivan Karamazov’s rebellious “Euclidean mind” would create would be a kind and happy world, in contrast to God’s world. But there would be no freedom in it. It would initially, from the first day, be a happy social anthill, forced harmony. A person can be saved from evil, to make him happy, only by taking away his freedom. According to the Grand Inquisitor, people do not need freedom, but happiness, well-fed security and external strength, authority to hide behind. “With us, everyone will be happy,” the Grand Inquisitor says to Christ, “and they will no longer rebel or destroy each other, as in Your freedom everywhere. Oh, we will convince them that they will only become free when they give up their freedom for us and submit to us. The law, the most just and humane, destroying evil, destroys the God’s principle, destroys grace, which can only overshadow a free person.

* F. Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov” (Eksmo, 2008).