Freedom

DOWNLOAD REFERAT

Preview referat: Freedom

Historically speaking, people have associated the notion of freedom with their being free to impose on the others their own will, while the others were "slaves", or imposed upon. This social meaning was challenged when certain people discovered that we are born naturally free - all of us - ; consequently, the individual and the community became fully aware of their social and political rights as free people. Following the path opened by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, some philosophers such as John Locke, David Hume, Edmund Burke, Thomas Hobbes defined "natural state" as a state of "perfect freedom" of man to decide upon their actions and make choices according to their will.

This meant political and juridical equality between people: they are equal in front of the law and in front of the political institution. But these considerations refer to political philosophy, demonstrating that fear and freedom are compatible (we do something out of fear but we may refuse to do it; for example, paying taxes - we are free not to pay them, but we still do it for fear that we might get sanctions). Liberty is also compatible with necessity.

Philosophically speaking, we need to adopt a form of negative definition so as to apply it to all form of freedom: freedom is the absence of constraints, or restrictions. So, we can accept the existence of types of freedom. For example, in Physics, we speak about free fall. In Politics, we speak about freedom of association opinion (being independent of the authority of the government), in Economy, we refer to free economic change, meaning trade free from customs taxes, or imposes payments.

Starting from this anlarged definition, the metaphysical philosophers created the concept of absolute freedom. This idea opposes nature, consisting a kind of passage to the limits: we represent our free action as successively "free" from any types of causes. But this type of freedom is the power of acting independently not only in connection with outer, or exterior restrictions, but also in connection with any inner determination. This is called the free will of the metaphysical philosophy, and refers to the misterious power of carrying out actions that are not previously determined by my ideas, my instincts or my aptitudes.

Referring to the free will, we find out that we can not demonstrate the existence of such a type of freedom. To do so, we have to come back to necessity, and liberty or freedom supposes contingency, or the absence of necessity.Paradoxically, a piece of evidence of freedom would kill freedom.Nevertheless, if we can not demonstrate the existence of freedom, we could experience it under the form of free will. « mai multe referate din Engleza