JESUS, The Suffering Son of God

The Gospel according to Mark

Actiones nostras,

quaesumus Domine,

aspirando praeveni et adiuvando

prosequere: ut cuncta nostra

oratio et operatio a te semper

incipiat et per te coepta finiatur. Per Christum

Dominum nostrum.

Amen.

Oremus!

Sancte Iohannes Baptista de La Salle!

Ora pro nobis!

Vivat Iesus in cordibus nostris,

in aeternum!

HUMAN FREEDOM

All of us seem to be at least experientially aware of freedom in choice.

In fact, it is difficult to comprehend most of human activities without the immanence of freewill.

“I do this”, “She thinks that…” “They choose this”, “You admit that”“ I want this…”“You accept this…”

With just knowing that we are doing/thinking something, and that we are conscious that we are doing/thinking such, we can say that there is in what we think/do an element of responsibility we put to ourselves. Consequently, we don’t have anyone than ourselves to be blamed or praised because of our action.

It has often been

maintained, therefore, that this universal experience of

freedom provides the

greatest proof for its own existence.

Bago ko pa man gawin ang isang bagay, alam ko na nasaakin ang desisyong kung gagawin ko ba ito o hindi. Sa kalagitnaan ng paggawa ko ng isang bagay,alam ko rin na ang pagpapatuloy sa gawaing ito ay nakadepende sa akin. Pagkatapos kong gawin ito, alam ko na ako ang gumawa nito. Kaya’t masasabi ko na mayroon akong responsibilidad dito.

However, it is this primary universal experience of freedom that has been called into question by philosophers, theologians,

psychologists, and even historians.

 B.F. Skinner, an extremely influential behavioral psychologist from Harvard, is one of those who questioned the very existence of human freedom. He seems to affirm that man is not free because (a) all present behavior is controlled by previous behavior and (b) all behavior has motivational causes which are necessitating causes.

In other words, man is not free because he is determined by his historicity.

Nevertheless, there are also people who believed otherwise. One of them was Jean-Paul Sartre, an existentialist philosopher of the contemporary period. His position seems to be one of absolute indeterminism or total freedom. He believed that man has no historicity. All he has are future possibilities the possession of which he absolutely holds. He is not defined and determined; he defines and determines himself.

Abraham Maslow, on the other hand, seems to offer a compromise position. On the one hand, he agrees that man has historicity which colours his identity and action. On the other hand, he denies that this historicity impedes man’s freedom. Rather, it gives man opportunities wherein he can exercise his freedom. For him, human freedom is a structured freedom.

Phenomenological Analysis of Reflection and Questioning

- All of us have the ability to question, to hesitate, to achieve a distance from immediate necessity.

Halimbawa, kapag ako’y gutom at may makita akong pagkain, may kakayahan akong pigilan ang sarili ko na kunin ang pagkaing iyon.

• Therefore at least the immediate objects before us and the immediate tasks at hand do not compel or force us.

• I can achieve a distance from the demanding stimuli of things and I am able to say something about my response.

• A second important point is that I can reflect upon myself. To this extent, I achieve a distance from myself.

• With this distance I achieved from myself in self-reflection, I am able to achieve at least to some extent – self-possession and self-determination.

• In the distance of self-reflection, I am able to take myself, my environment, my needs, and my values and say, “Wait a second – I do not have to do that.”

• By the very act of calling something into question I am liberating myself from the chains of necessity.

• Questioning, therefore, implies that the questioner is free.

• And only when I can possess myself can I give myself to the life-project which I, in my philosophizing, have formulated.

• Questioning initiates me into the formulation of my own creative project which is my life.

Freedom, then, entails:a. achieving a distance in

reflection from blind necessity.

b. achieving a distance from myself in self-reflection.

c. achieving a possession of myself – self-possession.

d. being able to say something about myself – self-determination.

Although the concept of self-possession is most fundamental to our understanding of freedom, a discussion from the analytic point of view might be valuable also. Here we try to understand more fully the meaning of the will. We will try to investigate the nature of dynamism involved in the act of choosing

Free Choice: A Metaphysical Analysis of the Will

The Will is an intellectual tendency, or a tendency toward an intellectually known good.• Anything that can be seen as good might be

an object of my will.• It is precisely because a thing or action can

be seen as having good aspects that my will goes out to it or tends toward it.

• It is the “good” quality of the thing by which the will is drawn or moved.

• We might say, then, that the will is naturally determined to seek the good; and if I were ever presented with an absolute good, my will would certainly be necessitated toward it.

Nevertheless, I also recognize that the objects of my will are always concerned with an existential, real world in which goods are precisely limited, finite and conditioned. Therefore, these good things do not necessitate my will.

Moreover, if I am about to take a course of action, it is often evident that a number of possibilities are presented to me as alternatives. None of them, however, are absolutely good.

Since none of the good things presented to my consciousness are absolutely good, and since there in fact so many of them that it becomes impossible for me to choose them all, therefore, I have the freedom to choose which one of them is what I think would be best for me.

This is our reasoning:a. the will is the tendency

toward an intellectually known good

b. the only object which could necessitate my will would be a good that is unconditional/absolute

c. in many of my choices, however, that goods from which I select are all conditioned, limited and qualified

d. therefore, freedom of choice can be operative in my behaviour

If we are all naturally directed towards the good, then why is it that some people choose to do evil things?

We never choose evil; it is precisely the

deliberation upon and selection of a particular good among the many

that moral failure occurs.

Hence, Socrates was right when he said; “The root of evil is ignorance.”

It’s when we do not know what better good we must choose that we are doomed to be doing evil things.

Reflection upon my experience leads me to

conclude at least initially that there are forces which

can shape and influence my present and future

behaviour. Nonetheless, there are also data that

cannot be ignored which point to the conclusion

that determining “forces” do not totally destroy my ability to take possession

of myself.

Preliminarily, I might say that I feel free. This is an important consideration. But

feeling free doesn’t necessarily make it so. The feeling of freedom does indicate,

however, that such an experience is quite primary and fundamental to our behaviour.

The Position of Total Determinism

Main proponent: B.F. Skinner – “The hypothesis that man is not free is essential to the application of the scientific method to the study of human behaviour.”

Man is not free since all his thoughts and actions are determined by his historicity. For him, man’s behaviour

is shaped and determined by external forces and stimuli whether they be familial or cultural sanction, verbal or non-verbal reinforcement, or complex systems of reward and punishment.

It appears that individuals can be programmed like a machine whose behaviour is not only predicted, but controlled.

When I reflect upon this, I see many levels of my own experience that construe Skinner’s position:

a. I have genetic, biological, and physical structures which influence my behaviour.

b. I have environmental structures which are part of me.

c. I am keenly aware of the external forces and demands which impinge upon me.

These factors imply that there are levels of my experience which can be reduced to my historicity, and therefore can be empirically investigated and even controlled.

Nevertheless, I also see that there are levels of my experience which cannot be reduced to my historicity. These are:

1. I can make myself aware of my biological and physical limitations.

2. I can question my own environmental structures.

3. I can achieve a distance from external demands and forces.

These levels of experience are on the level of free inquiry.

The spheres of historicity and free inquiry cannot be reduced to each other nor can they be explained away by the other. They are complementary poles of my experience.

Absolute determinism, however, seems to reduce free inquiry to historicity.

In conclusion, it would seem that determinism as a scientific method has a great deal to offer us in helping us understand how one’s historicity influences one’s behaviour. It is an important level of explanation.

However, as a total explanation of all human behaviour, it fails to account for the data of questioning, self-reflection, and intelligent inquiry; and it cannot succeed in validating its own position nor the value of scientific investigation.

The Casefor Absolute

Freedom

For Jean-Paul Sartre, the fullest realization of one’s manhood is found in the recognition that one’s very activity is freedom itself.

“I am my freedom.”

Man is actually free and indeterminate because there is no God to conceive man as a definable essence.

Rather than being an essence, man is the structureless phenomenon of consciousness in the world.

For Sartre, existence precedes essence, and not the other way around.

I must exist first before I define myself; not that I am defined even before I existed.

Man’s freedom is overwhelmingly evident to Sartre because man is able to detach himself from the world by his act of questioning and doubt.

Determinists assume that freedom is an act that has no cause, the cause that necessitates someone to act. They are lead to conclude that since every act has a cause, then there is no freedom at all.

Sartre held this assumption meaningless. “Indeed, the case could be otherwise, since every action must be intentional, each action must in fact have an end, and the end in turn is referred to a cause.”

“It is the act which decides its ends and its motives, and the act is the expression of freedom.”

“Hindi ang pagkakaroon ng dahilan ang gumagapos sa iyo upang magkaroon ng malayang desisyon. Datapwat, ang pagkakaroon mismo ng dahilan ang nagpapahiwatig na ikaw mismo ang may hawak ng iyong desisyon.”

I am the only source which decides ends, motives, and causes – and I point this only when I am exercising my freedom.

Basically, structure or historicity has no control over my freedom. There is no structure that defines me and no system that governs me. I am free, absolutely free.

On the one hand, absolute determinism denies man’s ability to question and to achieve distance from necessity. On the other hand, absolute indeterminism denies man’s situatedness or historicity.

Nevertheless, to be a human person is to be situated, to have historicity, and also to have the ability to question, to achieve distance from necessity. In our consideration about the question of freedom, we must take into account these two factors.

Structured Freedom: Human Reality

Sartre and Skinner, as we have seen, concentrate on levels of human reality to the exclusion of other levels. One realm covers man’s historicity and given structure; the other realm covers man’s transcendence in free questioning.

But the point is that integral human existence includes both of these realms or levels.

Consequently, if man is free, his freedom will involve both realms of his experience, and any interpretation of man must be able to integrate both realms.

As Maslow said environment is important in the development of my potentialities as a man, but environment does not give them to me.

He agrees with Sartre in that man can form his own life project, and yet he nods to Skinner in admitting the importance of the environment in helping these potentialities become actualized.

My own self-possession is not at odds with the structures in my life. Freedom and structures are complementaries rather than contradictories.

Even if man were to try to reject all structure, he would in the very act of rejection tie himself to the structure of rejection; the self, in order to be a self, must have some structure to operate at all. To reject a structure is to assume a structure.

The fact of being human will give rise to structures, values, and demands which will not militate against my freedom, but which will actually make freedom possible and enhance it.

In conclusion we might say:

a. Structures are the offerings of the human world to which I come.

b. Structure is also the internal constitution of being a man with human potentialities.

c. My own freely created life project is also a structure.

Freedom is operative not as a force against structure, but as a force emerging from structure.

Man is neither absolutely free nor absolutely determined.

Man is freedom within structure.

Freedom and Anxiety: Is freedom a good thing to have?

In the exercise of freedom we are definitively and ultimately alone. Nobody is there to decide for us. We are the only ones who have the possession of our freedom. Being alone in the act of freedom, we have no one to blame or praise but ourselves.

The exercise of freedom goes with the demand of responsibility.

I have the ultimate responsibility over my life. Nobody is there to live my life for me.

Freedom is both beautiful and terrible. It is a power which hails me, and can destroy me.

This is the greatest problem with freedom; it is terrible, but if you take it away, you take away my meaning, my dignity, and my creativity.

But all is not bleak with freedom.

A man can know himself. Consequently, he can possess himself and his destiny.

However, this destiny and meaning is directed not only to himself but most importantly to others.

Man’s meaning is not only to possess himself freely. Since he is other-directed, his identity is not fully achieved until, having possessed himself, he gives himself to the other.