freedom « The Shade of Writing

By Damien Knight

I shall start with a quote from The Underground man himself. “Ha! Ha! Ha! But after all, if you like, in reality, there is such thing as choice.” (Dostoevsky, p.24), In the readings a major theme was free will and morals. Is the good life a free life or are we controlled by fate? To what limits are these freedoms?

In Fear and Trembling freedom is limited by morals or by faith. For Abraham he is both free and bound. He must, due to duty, serve God even if God orders his son’s death. Still this faith left him free. Free of ethics we become bound by faith. “A tragic hero can become a human being by his own strength, but not the knight of faith. When a person sets out on the tragic hero’s admittedly hard path, there are many who can lend him advice; but he who walks the narrow path of faith no one can advise, no one understands.” (K. p.95) This states how even Abraham who seeks freedom from ethics through the duty of faith is not free from being alone. Freedom is fickle.

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By: Damien Knight

Near the beginning of the book we are introduced to the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. Sartre was an existentialist who believed all humans are “condemned to be free” (Philosophy: A text with Readings P.67 pg 2) or in other-words have no choice but to accept that our lives are undetermined. Many philosophies declare that we are placed on the earth with a purpose, therefore leading a deterministic view.

Sartre claimed if there had been a god, he would have given us a determined purpose but without such conventions we had no purpose. We are essentially free to choose no matter what environment we grew up in. We exist and we choose how we live. To pretend we have no freedom otherwise is bad faith in the eyes of Sartre.

Reality is what we view in our conscious experience but is it? Do we make ourselves or are we shaped to some degree? If you are born poor and grow up having nothing and die with nothing is it not in part because the opportunity was not there. According to Sartre the answer is no, that man is free and his choices are made freely that a person chooses to live and die poor.

I cannot fully endorse complete freedom and the example the book petitions is a good example. I found before as a child that I was Christian. At first it was my choice but soon it became a mode of living and I was following a path determined by “god” and my family. Does this not equal a loss of freedom? Or say one takes a project to make oneself free but they slip as I had into just going with the flow are they free anymore?

The other reason I personally cannot agree fully to a complete free view is that I am a military spouse. When a sergeant makes an order to kill it is on the sergeant’s shoulders for the consequences of his men. According to Sartre each individual man is responsible for his actions but the military does not work as separate individuals they work as a unit and the head of the unit is who would manage individuals actions.

We should follow social constraints though ultimately we are free to not follow them. If we were not to follow the constraints, we set ourselves to limit and protect our freedom could get us in trouble. Yet since we do not, as Sartre implies only, affect ourselves we affect our family units causing trouble and affecting their own path.

I believe that to an extent environment affects how our lives are lived. Many decisions made in my life would have been made differently if my environment was different. Essentially we are free to make a few select choices in life but our lives while not predetermined are determined in the moment. In that moment, we have to choose out of the few we have and that choice can have lasting consequences. For example, if a man is about to be sent to war he has two choices: AWOL or go and fight. If he goes and fights he could end up with PTSD and that would not be a free choice he made in those choices but instead is a product of the environment he was in.

So Is Sartre wrong? Are men free at all are we in fact “condemned to destiny” instead? Is the novel idea of complete freedom elusive? No we still have choices after all. We have limited freedom. We carry within us desire both to be free and to please and conform. With our limited freedom we can do exactly what we are be the social creatures we are. Sartre’s true freedom would not allow for many of these social needs.

We could say that even though Sartre’s view is complete freedom mine is freedom by degree. We are given a start at our destiny by the choices our parents make for us. We have the freedom to eat or starve depending on where we are born and where chance rolls. Our education and social status helps shape our decisions. As our minds form we determine for ourselves what we want and how free we can be. While god may not have given use a destiny society constantly tries to.