The Social Context of Freedom

FREEDOM
• Freedom or liberty is a social and political concept which has great significance in how people
participate in society.
• Freedom in a political and social context means the freedom of an individual from oppression,
compulsion, or coercion from other persons, an authority figure, or from society itself.
Autonomy
• The capacity of each person to be responsible for themselves.
• If people should be in charge of their own lives, then enslaving someone does not just deprive them of a
right, but partly destroys an essential feature of their existence.
• This implies that the autonomy of each individual must be protected (even in a society where slavery is
illegal), and is a basis for asserting the full equality of women
Anarchism
• The state has no right to exist and no legitimate power
• This gives freedom and autonomy the highest possible value, because just as destroying autonomy by
enslavement is wrong, so giving up your freedom in a social contract is also impermissible.
• Given a person’s normal right to become a monk or nun, this claim is unpersuasive, but each loss of a
freedom needs to be justified in a modern society.
• Anarchism can still be defended if humans flourish much better with a high degree of autonomy,
implying that the making of a social contract is permissible but a mistake.
• Critics say that anarchism can work well when there is peace and plenty, but central organization is
needed when a crisis occurs.
Conflicting Freedoms
We all want freedom for ourselves, but are nervous about freedom for other people:
● It is nice to choose where you will live, but most states restrict immigration.
● Free speech is good, but freedom to insult people creates misery.
● Freedom to own fierce dogs or dangerous weapons is very threatening, even if no actual harm is done.
● A capitalist economy needs a free market, but ruthlessly destroying a rival small business seems wrong.

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.
• This is obvious from the way in which will is rationally denominated.
• Humanity’s capacity to make choices, also called free will, is an instrument of free choice.
• It is within the power of everyone to be good or bad, worthy or worthless.
• For Aristotle, a human being is rational.
• Reason is a divine characteristic, that is, God created humans to reason and are inclined to reason.
• Humans have the spark of the divine. In other words, humans are made according to the characteristics
of God.
• Without intellect, there is no will. Though reason rules over will, our will is an instrument of free choice
turning into action.

St. Thomas Aquinas: Love is Freedom

• Of all creatures of God, human beings have the unique power to change themselves and the things
around them for the better.
• Humans are the only creatures on earth endowed with the capacity to reshape their physical environment
and civilization according to their thoughts, plans, and beliefs.
 • All other creatures on earth merely follow their natural instinct and maintain their natural place in the
world.
• St. Thomas Aquinas considered a human being as a moral agent.

• A human being, therefore, has a supernatural, transcendental destiny.

• This means that he/she can rise above his/her ordinary being or self to a highest being or self.
• To achieve the highest level of human fulfillment and happiness, humans must aspire to go beyond their
basic needs to live, eat, and sleep.

• They must aspire to become beings that are not only guided by their animal instincts but also by their
intellectual and spiritual aspirations.
• a human being has to develop and perfect himself by doing his daily tasks.
• Hence, if a human being perseveringly lives a righteous and virtuous life, he transcends his mortal state
of life and soars to an immortal state of life.
St. Thomas Aquinas’ Spiritual Freedom
• Thomas Aquinas established the existence of God as a first cause.
• Of all god’s creations, 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

Thomas Hobbes: Theory of Social Contract

• Law of nature (lex naturalis) is a precept or general rule established by reason by which a person is
forbidden to do that which is 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.
• Given our desires to get out of the state of nature, and thereby preserve our lives, Hobbes concluded that
we should “seek peace.” This becomes his first law of nature.
• 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 are, too (this is
necessary for peace-building), to lay down this right to all things and be contented with so much liberty
against other people as he would allow other people against himself (Ramos, 2010).
• The mutual transferring of these rights is called a contract and is the basis of the notion of moral
obligation and duty.
• If one agrees to give up his right to harm you, you give up your right to harm him.
• You have then transferred these rights to each other and thereby become obligated not to hurt each other.
• From these selfish reasons alone, both are motivated to mutually transfer these and other rights, since
this will end the dreaded state of war.
• Hobbes continues by discussing the validity of certain contracts. However, one cannot contract to give
up his right to self-defense or self- preservation since it is his sole motive for entering any contract.
• 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.
 • These are the rules a reasonable being would observe in pursuing one’s own advantage if he were
conscious of humanity’s predicament in a condition in which impulse and passion alone rule. – RULED
BY THE sovereign (that has absolute power to rule.
• The individual himself should not be governed by momentary impulse and by prejudice arising from
passion.
• The state itself is the result of the interplay of forces, and the human reason, displayed in the conduct
expressed by these rules, is one of the determining forces.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Rousseau was one of the most famous and influential philosophers of the French Enlightenment in the
eighteenth century.
• In his book The Social Contract, he elaborated his theory of human nature.
• In Rousseau, a new era of sentimental piety found its beginning.
• According to Rousseau, the state owes its origin to a social contract freely entered into by its members;
the EDSA Revolution is an example, though an imperfect one. While Rousseau interpreted the idea in
terms of absolute democracy and individualism, Hobbes developed his idea in favor of absolute
monarchy.
• Both Rousseau and Hobbes have one thing in common, that is, they believe that human beings have to
form a community or civil community to protect themselves from one another, because the nature of
human beings is to wage war against one another, and since by nature, humanity tends toward self-
preservation, then it follows that they have to come to a free mutual agreement to protect themselves.
• Hobbes thought that to end the continuous and self-destructive condition of warfare, humanity founded
the state with its sovereign power of control by means of a mutual consent.
• On the other hand, Rousseau believed that a human being is born free and good. Now, he is in chains
and has become bad due to the evil influence of society, civilization, learning, and progress. Hence,
from these come dissension, conflict, fraud, and deceit.
• Therefore, a human being lost his original goodness, his primitive tranquility of spirit.
• To restore peace, his freedom should be brought back, and as he returned to his true self, he saw the
necessity and came to form the state through the social contract whereby everyone grants his individual
rights to the general will.
• The term “social contract” is not an actual historical event.
• It is a philosophical fiction, a metaphor, and a certain way of looking at a society of voluntary collection
of agreeable individuals
• However, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights constituted as an instance of a social contract, is not a
metaphor but an actual agreement and actually “signed” by the people or their representatives (Solomon
& Higgins, 1996)
• There must be a common power or government which the plurality of individuals (citizens) should
confer all their powers and strength into (freedom) one will (ruler).