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The Doctrine Of Freedom And Responsibility In Jean Paul Sartre - The Fundamental Principles In An Authentic Existence
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 6]
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1.5 NATURE OF HUMAN FREE WILL
The
question of the freedom of the human free will has put up an exhibition
worth recognition within the epochs of intellectual inquiries. The
prominent question that occurs often is “is the human free will free?
If it is, how free is the human free will? But following the scheme, the
main concern here is the nature of this free will and its mode of
operation.
The free will is sometimes called free choice or free
decision. In Latin, it is termed “liberum arbitriumâ€. “Free will is an
ability characterizing man in the voluntary activity of choosing or not
choosing a particular good presented to himâ€20. It is often defined as
freedom possessed by a person to evaluate and to yield to or not to the
attraction of an object. However, with regard to this definition, it is
worthy of note that, the will is drawn towards “a good†in so far as it
is actual and attractive. Thus, a differentiation between particular and
universal goods must be made.
However, as Sartre would conceive of
it, “I could not describe a freedom which is common to both the other
and myself. I could not therefore contemplate an essence of freedomâ€21.
On the contrary, it is freedom, which is the foundation of all essences
since man reveals intra-mundane essences by surpassing the world towards
his own possibilities. “This in essence means that freedom has no
particular essence and so, since the essence is beyond realization
within a particular confine, it then means that it varies in selvesâ€22.
Thus,
one is only sure of one’s particular freedom, because freedom exists in
a particular experience. Yet it is a pure factual necessity appealing
to human consciousness.
Taking from this, the will in the presence of
particular goods, has some exercise of choice, but before a universal
good, the will necessarily chooses it.
Hence, Aquinas affirms that the “freewill is determined with regard to the infinite or universal goodâ€23.
Descartes describes the nature of the freewill in the following words:
It
is proper to the nature of the will to have a large aperture, and the
sum perfection of man is of acting by way of will- that is, freely-and
thus of being in some peculiar way the author of his action and of
meriting praise for them.24
The will is solely an independent
reality, and so it is very closely linked with the intellect as well as
other drives in man since it cannot act in the absence of the cognitive
faculty. This is why Aquinas would say “the act as good is materially an
act of will, but formally an act of reason because it is directed
towards its end by reason.â€25
Still on this effort to finding
meaning to free will and the method of performance, the proponents of
free will distinguished acts of the free will from voluntary acts
because “all acts of the free will are voluntary, but not all-voluntary
acts are acts of the free willâ€26
The human free will in its nature
tries in a way to determine and properly separate conscious and
unconscious acts in their fields of identification.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 6]
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