Freedom: Brief Story of a Question

If there is at least one point about freedom at which all the thinkers in some way agree, it is not but the difficulties involved in the meaning and interpretation of freedom. A long history of philosophical discussions and political discourses lay behind various ideas of freedom; still the evolving phenomenon of freedom doesn’t seem to be fully captured neither in theory nor in practice.  As stated by Hume, it is “the most problematic question of modern metaphysics” (An enquiry concerning human understanding, P. 163). Kant has also thought that the transcendental idea of freedom, which has always put the speculative reason in a “big embarrassment,” is the “real stumbling block of the philosophy” (The critique of pure reason, P. 444). Even Schopenhauer considered the question of freedom of will as one of “the most profound and the most serious problems of modern philosophy” (Prize essay on the freedom of will, P. 114).
If freedom is the problematic question, the stumbling block, and the most troublesome problem of philosophy, it is not such a surprise that many philosophers have devoted some parts of their works to find solutions to the question of freedom. It involves defining the specifications of man and his actions in relation with the natural world surrounding him. In previous centuries our notion of the physical world was dogged by a series of causal events that occur mechanically based on a logical predetermined system of laws.   The mechanical nature of natural laws of physics along with the logical aspect of causal effects has raised a serious question about the originality of human actions: Is human act merely determined as a result of natural reaction to stimulus?  Are the laws of causal type enough for explaining human behaviors?
At least one of the sources of disbelief in freedom comes from theology. By translating these interrogations in their own terms, theologians found it hard to approve originality of freedom of mankind along with constant intervention of a divine grace. If existence of mankind is simply due to a creating God who is dominant and omnipresent, it is hard to suppose that his agents (humans) can be free, in other words it would be problematic to admit that a human being acts by himself against God’s will.
Although the manifestations of freedom were present in ancient Greece - given as an affair of soul by Plato - our modern notion of freedom dates back almost to enlightenment thinkers who fed the French revolution. In the middle of sixteenth century La Boetie thought that he had found a paradox in human behavior in the feudal system of the time. We are naturally born free and we are not servants of anyone else by birth, but the society assigns many as voluntary servants of a tyranny for benefit of few. “How is it so deep-rooted this voluntary servitude that love for freedom seems to be unnatural today?” (Le Discours de la servitude volontaire, P. 150) he asked boldly. He thought that people are so used to their yoke that they have lost their senses for freedom.
His thoughts was resonated by Rousseau: “Man is borne free but he is in bounds everywhere” (Du contrat social, I,1) . Rousseau tried to target the origin of inequality within humans and to explain in his Second Discourse, what the natural human is or what the nature of human is. After a comparison, in the first part, between physical aspects of human nature and that of other species of animals, he continues his discourse in the metaphysical and moral side. Though from the time of Aristotle human was known as the rational animal, Rousseau sets new criteria for radical contrast between species, by knowing freedom as the specified privilege of humans over animals.  Man is man because he is a free agent. Nature commands animals and they obey it. Humans have the same impressions by their nature but they feel free to obey or to resist; and this is surely in the conscience of this freedom that spirituality of human nature appears. Physics can explain in some ways the mechanisms of senses and formation of ideas but in the course of decision making we don’t find but the spiritual actions that are not explained by mechanical laws.
At the same time another great thinker was not thinking exactly the same way. Voltaire believed that we are not totally free for willing what we want. When he was asked if he is free or not, he would have replied that he is not in prison, he has the key of his room, and he is therefore “perfectly free” (Le Philosophe ignorant, XIII).  This answer, seems to be easy, but is indeed very deeply rooted in the conception of freedom inherited from John Locke for whom “the freedom consists of the ability to do or not to do, based on what we want.” For Voltaire the real freedom is the ability, the capacity and the power of acting as you want not the ability to desire the action. when I can do what I want I am free; but what I want is a necessity which is dictated by my situation, my environment, and my logical decision making. Voltaire said that the freedom of animals and humans are of the same quality if they can both do whatever they want, but the quantity of freedom can be different. So there are degrees of freedom. Freedom of animals is in the degree of wanting and operating based on desires, but men have an additional power to use some thoughts and to operate certain movement.
These ideas must have increased conscience about freedom and duplicated the importance of this notion among people for generations. It is not by chance that freedom had been the first slogan of French revolutionaries. These ideas have spread in geographical and chronological orders and have caused many traceable and invisible influences all around the world, and freedom still evolves and remains an important issue of humanity. In the next issue I will discuss some other selected ideas.