PHILOSOPY

Mr. Carlo A. Marcelo

• 5) Introduction

This lesson highlights freedom from the

intellectual, political, spiritual and economic
aspects. To be free is a part of humanity’s
authenticity. In one way understanding freedom
is part of our transcendence. Freedom consists of
going beyond situations such as physical or
economic.
5.1 Realize that “All action have consequences”

A. Aristotle
The power of volition

The imperative quality of a judgment of practical intellect is

meaningless apart from will. Reason can legislate but only through
will can its legislation be translated into action. The task of practical
intellect is to guide will be enlightening it.

The will of humanity is an instrument of free choice, it is within

the power of everyone to be good or bad, worthy or worthless . This is
borne out by:
•our inner awareness of an aptitude to do right or wrong
•The common testimony of all human beings;
•the general :employed of praise and blame
 For Aristotle, a human being is rational. Reason is
divine characteristic , human have a spark of the divine, if
there were no intellect, there would be no will. Reason
can legislate, but only through will can its legislation be
turned into action.
B. St. Thomas Aquinas

Love is freedom

Of all creatures of God, human beings have the

unique power to change themselves and things around
them for the better. St. Thomas Aquinas considers the
human being as a moral agent. The unity between both
elements indeed helps us to understand our complexity as
human beings. Our spiritually separates us from animals,
through our spirituality, we have a conscience. Whether
we choose to be “good” or “evil”, becomes our
responsibility.
 A human being, therefore, has a supernatural,
transcendental destiny. This means that he can rise above
his ordinary being or self to a highest being or self. This
is in line with the idea of St. Thomas that in the plan of
God, human being has to develop and perfect himself by
doing hid daily tasks

The power of change, however, can’t be done by

human being alone, but is achieved through cooperation
with God.
 Aquinas gives a fourfold classification of law the
eternal law, natural law, human law and divine law, the
natural law, then, in its ethical sense, applies only to
human being.

The government officials who use full media

coverage when they help their constituents so that people
would vote for them. A person, thus, should not be judged
through his actions along but also through his sincerity
behind his acts.
 For Aquinas, both natural and human laws are
concerned with ends determined simply by humanity’s
nature. However, since a human being is in fact, ordained
to an end transcending his nature, it is necessary that he
has a law ordering him to that end, and this is divine law
or revelation.

This divine law is divided into old(Mosaic) and the

new (Christian) that are related as the immature and
imperfect to the perfect and complete.
 ETERNAL LAW
The decree of God that governs all creation. It is,
“That law which is the supreme reason cannot be
understood to be otherwise than unchangeable and
eternal.”

 NATURAL LAW
The human “participation” in the eternal law and is
discovered by a reason. Natural law is based on “first
principles”.
The principle of sufficient reason states that nothing
exists without a sufficient reason for its being and
existence.
For Aristotle, the purpose of a human being is to be
happy. To be one, one has to be live a virtuous life. In
other words, human beings have to develop to the dull of
their powers- rational, moral, social, emotional and
physical here on earth.

For St. Thomas, points to a higher form of happiness

possible to a humanity beyond this life, and that is perfect
happiness that everyone seeks but could be found only in
God alone.
St. Thomas, wisely and aptly chose and proposed Love
rather than Law bring about the transformation of
humanity. St. Thomas also emphasizes the freedom of
humanity but chooses love in governing humanity’s life.
Since God is love, the love is the guiding principle of
humanity toward his self-perception and happiness his
ultimate destiny.
C. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS: SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

St. Thomas, establishes the existence of God as a

first cause. Of all God’s creation, human beings have
the unique power to change themselves and things
around them for the better. As humans, we are both
material and spiritual. We have a conscience because of
our spirituality. God is Love and Love is our destiny.
D. JEAN PAUL SARTE: INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM

Sarte’s philosophy is considered to be a

representative of existentialism. For Sarte, the human
person is the desire to be God: the desire to exist as a
being which has its sufficient ground in itself (en sui
causa).
Sarte’s existentialism stems from this principle:
existence precedes essence.
• The person, first, exist, encounters himself and surges up in
the world then defines himself afterward. The person is
nothing else but that what he makes oh himself.
• The person is provided with a supreme opportunity to give
meaning to one’s life. In the cause of giving meaning to
one’s life, one fills the world with meaning.
• Freedom is, therefore, the very core and the door to
authentic existence. Authentic existence is realized only in
deeds that are committed alone, in absolute freedom and
responsibility and which, therefore, the character of true
creation.
• The person is what one has done and is doing.
• On the other hand, the human person who tries to escape
obligations and strives to be en-soi (i.e., excuses such as “ I
was born this way” or “I grew up in a bad environment”) is
acting on bad faith (mauvais foi).
 Sarte emphasizes the importance of free individual
choice, regardless of the power of other people to
influence and coerce our desires, beliefs and decisions. To
be human, to be conscious, is to be free to imagine, free
to choose, and be responsible for one’s life.
E. Thomas Hobbes

Theory of Social Contract

A Law of Nature (lex naturalis) is a percept or
general rule established by reason, by which a person is
forbidden to do that which id destructive of his life or
takes away the means of preserving the same; and to omit
that by which he thinks it may be best preserved.
 Hobbes conclude that we should seek peace. This
becomes his first law of nature. The reasonableness of
seeking peace immediately suggests a second law of
nature, which is that we mutually divest ourselves of
certain rights (such as the right to take another person’s
life) so as to achieve peace. That a person be willing,
when others so too (this is necessary for peace-building)
to lay down this right to all things; and be contended so
much liberty against other people, as he would allow
other people against himself.

The mutual transferring of these rights is called a

contract and is basis of the notion of moral obligation and
duty.
 The rational pursuit of self-preservation is what
leads us to form commonwealths or states; the laws of
nature give the conditions for the establishment of society
and government. The state is the resultant of the interplay
of forces; and the human reason, displayed in the conduct
expressed by these rules, is one of the determining forces
(Garvey 2006)

"What are the conditions under which the transition

from the natural state of the war to the state of human
beings living in organized societies becomes intelligible".
Nor do they state absolute values according to Hobbes,
but Garvey "there are no absolute values (Garvey 200 6).
In Leviathan, Hobbes asserts:
"The fundamental law of nature seeks peace and
follows it, while at the same time, by the sum of natural
right, we should defend ourselves by all means that we
can.

The third law of nature is that human beings

perform their covenant made. This law is the foundation
of justice. Hobbies upholds that human beings seek self
preservation and security. This law are unable to achieve
the desired end by themselves alone; that is, unless there
is coercive power able to enforce their observance by
sanctions.
 That is to say, they must appoint one man (or
woman), or assembly of human beings, to bear their
person, a person being defined as “he whose word or
actions of another human being, or of any other thing, to
whom they are attributed, whether truly or by fiction.”
Hobbes makes a distinction between a commonwealth by
institution and by acquisition.
1. A commonwealth is said to exist by institution when it
has been established.
2. A commonwealth is said to exist by acquisition when the
sovereign power has been acquired by force.
F. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau is one of the most famous influential

philosophers of the French enlightenment in the 18th century.
He elaborated "The social contract" as his theory of human
nature. The "EDSA Revolution" is an example of imperfect
one, of what the theory of social contract is all about.

The two philosophers are not the same interpretations.

Hobbes developed his idea in favor of absolute monarchy,
while Rousseau interpreted the idea in terms of absolute
democracy and individualism. Both have one thing in
common, that is, human beings have to form a community or
civil community to protect themselves for one other
 Humanity tends toward self-preservation, then it
follows that they have come to a free mutual agreement to
protect themselves.

Rousseau, believes that a human being is born free

and good. He is in chains and has become bad due to the
evil influence of society, civilization, learning and
progress. A human being lost his original goodness.
 In order to restore peace, bring his freedom back,
and as he returned to his true self. The term "Social
Contract" is not an actual historical event . The
Constitution and the ball of rights constituted, as an
instance of a social contract, however, is not a metaphor
but an actual agreement and actually "signed" by the
representatives (Solomon and Higgins 1996). The "EDSA
Revolution" was not a bloody one. This had inspired
changes not only in our own country but also in Eastern
Europe's Perestroika.
5.2 Evaluate and Exercise Prudence in Choices

For B. F Skinner;
• The environment selects which is similar with natural
selection. We must take account to what the environment
does to the organism before and after it respond.
• maintains that behaviour is shaped and maintained by its
consequences. -behaviour that operates upon the
environment to produce consequences (operant
conditioning) which specific consequences are contingent
upon it.
• The second result is practical; the environment can be
manipulated. __ Yelon (1996)
• accepted that behavioural psychology is at fault for
having over analyzed the words, "reward" and
"punishment".
• there should be balanced in our relationship with others
and the environment. In our dealing with our felloe
human beings, there is a strong and obvious temptation to
blame the environment if they do not conform to our
expectations.
• According to Skinner, our struggle for freedom is not due to a
will to be free as Aristotle or Sartre, but to certain behavioral
processes characteristics of human organism, the chief effect
of which is the avoidance of or escape from "adverse" features
of the environment.

• According to Skinner, the feeling of freedom become an

unreliable guide as soon as would-be controllers turn to non-
aversive measures, as they are likely to do to avoid the
problems raised when the controllers escape or attack.
Following the adage of John Stuart Mill, "Liberty consist in
doing what our desires", Skinner states that when a person
wants something, he acts to get it when the occasion arises.
Skinner argues that even though behavior is completely
determined, it is better that a person "feels free" or "believe
that he is free".
 The issue is controllability. We cannot change genetic
defeats by punishment; we can work only through genetic
measures that operates on a mush longer time scale. What
must be change is not the responsibility of autonomous
individual but the conditions, environment or gesture of
which a person's behavior is a function

• Skinner thinks that the problem is to free human beings

not from control but from certain kinds of control and it
can be solve only if we accept the fact that we depend
upon the world around us and we simply change the
nature of dependency.
• Skinner proposed that make the social environment as
free as possible of aversive stimuli; we don't need to
destroy the environment or escape. What we need
according to Skinner is to redesign it.
 Life is full of paradoxes. We have to be open to life,
learn to accept and live with paradoxes. The paradoxes
account for the reasons why life cannot be hold still In
Spirituality of Imperfection, we learn to accept that life,
our environment is both "evil" and "good" B. F Skinner
believes that morality is a conditioned response
impressed on a child society. However, creating static
environment, such as controlled environment is not
applicable in the reality of everyday world (Schouten and
Looren de Jong 2012). Skinner is right, however pointing
out the influence the environment especially in the
socialization of children.
 Unfortunately, there is an emphasis today in the
acquisition of money, property, and prestige, regardless of
values--or lack of those--that children learns. Indeed the
theory of freedom has negative and positive tasks. Our
lives should not be merely controlled by rewards and
punishments. As a human being, we are capable of
reaching different level of height and ideals. According to
Yelon, punishment is an educative measure and as such is
a means to the formation of motives, which are in part to
prevent the wrongdoer from repeating the act and in part
to prevent others from committing a similar act.
Analogously, in a case of reward we are concerned with
incentive (Schouten and Looren de Jong 2012).
 However, much more important than the question of
when a person is said to be responsible is that of when he
himself feels responsible. Evidently, not merely that it
was he who took the steps required for its performance;
but there must be added awareness that he did it
"independently" "of his own initiative " or whatever the
term is. This feeling is simply the consciousness of
freedom, which id merely the knowledge of having acted
of one's desires. And of one's own desire " are those
which have their origin in the regularity of one character
in the given situation and are not imposed by an external
power, such as stimulus. Indeed the environment plays a
significant part in our lives. However since the Stone
Age, we had proven that we are not completely under its
mercy.
 We have and shall continue to tame and adapt the
changes in the conditions of environment. As Plato
believes, the soul of every individual possesses the power
of learning the truth and living in a society that is a in
accordance to its nature. We are responsible, whether we
admit it or not. Human effort can be re-determine the
direction of events, even though it cannot determine the
conditions that make human effort possible. It is true that
we did not choose to be born. It is also true that we
choose, most of us, to keep living. It is not true that
everything that happens to us like " Being struck down n
by a dreadful disease". And what we can make different,
we are responsible.
 5.3 Choices Have Consequences and Some Things Are
Given Up while Others Are Obtain on Making Choices

20th century gave rise to the importance of the

individual, the opposite of medieval thought that was God-
centered.

• For Ayn Rand (1996) the individualism mind is the tool for
economic progress vis-a-vis laissez faire capitalism. The sector
molds it shouldn't be controlled by the government.
• Similar to Aristotle, Rand believes that the thinking is
volitional. A person has a freedom to think or not. Though, the
majority belongs to the passive supporters who chose not to
think.
• Individual rights - as espoused by Hobbes and Rousseau.
• Rand rejects collectivism because of its brute force.
Though humans have rights, there should be also
responsibility.
• Individual rights where upheld in capitalism, the only
system that can uphold and protect them. The principle of
individual rights represented the extension of morality
into social system.
• Rand cited the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose
the material value.
• Individualism
 as espoused by Rand, is lined in family dependency because
Easterners believe that the individual needs the community
and vice versa. - it stress the human relationship that
emphasize that the person is not necessarily an independent
entity. -in Filipino's loob , the individual is the captain of his
own ship that is not entirely devoid of uncertainties. Loob
touches the daily aspect of the Filipinos. Filipinos embraced
family and political parties. For them, one does not only
fulfill reasons of the mind but of the heart and personal
involvement as well. whereas Rand upheld the individual,
Filipinos' loob is essentially an interpersonal and social
concert before it is a privately, personal concept.
Filipinos look themselves as holistic from interior
dimension under the principle of harmony. This
compasses the Filipinos’ humanity, personality,
theological perspective and daily experiences. It aspires
harmony with others and nature to be union with God.
Filipinos holistic, intern dimension, and sensitivity that
inhibits one's personal and individual fulfillment.
 There is the apprehension on the group-oriented
approach of the Filipino that might hamper the
individual’s initiative and responsibility. It is contented
that the individual should be disciplined from within
rather than fear from authority figure. Discipline and
responsibility should be inculcated especially through
education.
Filipinos’ loob is the basis of Christian value of
sensitivity to the needs of others and gratitude. It
encompassed “give-and-take” relationship among
Filipinos. As such, repaying those who have helped us is
a manifestation of utang na loob or debt of gratitude.
Loob is similar with other Eastern views that aspire for
harmony with others.
• Kagandahang loob, kabutihang loob, and kalooban are
terms that show sharing of one’s self to others. This is the
freedom within loob. Loob puts one in touch with his
fellow beings. Great Philippine values, in fact, are
essentially interpersonal. The use of intermediates or go-
betweens, the values of such values of loyalty, hospitality,