Freedom in the philosophical sense is the human being’s capacity to determine himself. The human being is not fixed upon a single mode of behavior like the animal, which follows its instincts. He can choose: for this or that, for good or for evil, for truth or falsehood. Robert Spaemann emphasizes: this freedom is not merely a choice between options. It is the capacity for self-determination in the radical sense — in acting, the human being decides at the same time who he is and who he wills to be.
From the book
“Blaise Pascal once called the human being a ‘thinking reed’: fragile as a stalk in the wind, and yet greater than the entire universe, because he knows that he is fragile.”
— Three Dimensions of Human Personhood, Chapter 4
Freedom belongs to the essential characteristics of the second dimension of personhood. The conscious human being is “master of himself”: he can govern his drives, say no where everything within him cries yes, and say yes where everything within him cries no. This mastery over himself implies responsibility: whoever is master of his actions must also answer for them. Freedom is thus the precondition of moral action in the third dimension — of merit and guilt, of the realization or failure of one’s own authenticity (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 202—230).
The tradition distinguishes between the actus humanus (the conscious, free personal action) and the actus hominis (the involuntary activity). Only the actus humanus manifests person-behavior in its full force and engages the person as the personally-first-causal agent.
From freedom there also arises the possibility of self-transcendence: to move beyond oneself, to encounter the other as a someone and to love him. Karol Wojtyła has worked out the interplay of freedom and the personalist norm with particular care.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concepts: archphenomenon, essential characteristic (as FreeWill)
Ontological relations:
- is presupposed by: personal love, self-gift, self-mastery
- is ground for: right to freedom (is grounded in)
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What is human personhood? (esp. 4.7.4)
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Spaemann, Robert: Persons: The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’, transl. Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
- Pascal, Blaise: Pensées, no. 347 (Brunschvicg) (“roseau pensant” — “thinking reed”).