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Notion Of Freedom And Law In St. Thomas Aquinas
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 5]
Page 1 of 5
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CHAPTER ONE
1.0 THE GENERAL NOTION OF FREEDOM
The concept of freedom is an analogous one, predicated in different ways to beings of very different types. The various forms of attribution depend, to a certain extent, not by defining the same specific content, but by indicating formal relation, which remains the same. This relation can be put negatively or positively.
Negatively, freedom means being free from the relation of not being bound to a given being or law, of being independent from something and of not being determined by a given principle of determination. This negative concept is also a relative one because every finite being belongs to a world and is related to the other being in the world. It may be free from this direct relationship to this or that, but only because their place are taken by others.
A being fully free in the negative sense could not be a being in the world, without relationship fully isolated, it would be based on nothing and be nothing.1
Thus in contrast to the negative, relative concept, there is a positive absolute concept of freedom. A being is positively free in so far as it is in possession of itself and possesses in this relationship the sufficient condition for all its being and relations. Here, freedom means self-possession being completely present to oneself, completely self-sufficient.
According to Maslaw
Freedom is the basic acknowledgment
that the individual is more important
than his society.2
However, human freedom is clearly neither merely negative and relative nor fully positive and absolute. Man has dominion over himself and so also over parts of the world. But he is non-the-less inserted into the world and dependent on the beings he finds himself. The basic mode of human freedom may be called transcendental freedom, which is the fundamental propriety of man by which he alone can say he is.
It follows that man can never be deprived of this transcendental freedom, which is part and parcel of his existence. But its emptiness and importance point on to another mode of freedom. Man is not simply there, he does not simply grow, he has to be, he is a task absolutely imposed on himself he has to decide to be himself or what he will be and there is no way in which he can evade this decision.
This mode is called the freedom of decision or existential freedom. This directly implies freedom of choice since an arbitrary freedom would be no freedom, a man free in this sense, will leave his actions at the mercy of mood whim or chance.
Freedom in general may be defined as
the absence of obstacles to the realization
of desires.3
1.1 THE MEANING OF FREEDOM
Freedom! Everybody wants it, it makes a man a human being, poets praise it, and politicians promise or proclaim it. Some people have given their lives to win it for themselves or for others, but what actually is it? St Thomas Aquinas sees it as absence of coercion. Coercion or compulsion bears on the external action and corresponds to the absence of external coercion. This is variously named according to the kind of activity involved.
Thus we have physical freedom, civil freedom, political freedom, freedom of self-realization, freedom of choice, and freedom for self-perfection. Psychological freedom or freedom of choice corresponds to absence of internal coercion, that is the power of the will to will something or not. External is contingent on internal freedom, since the former has no meaning without the latter, but the converse is not necessarily true.
A Survey of Yves R. Simons book ‘Freedom of Choice,’ contrasts to some extent the St Thomas Aquinas notion of freedom. For example he investigated on freedom and voluntariness, and said that “there is unqualified voluntariness without freedomâ€4
1.2 KINDS OF FREEDOM
Man is full of dynamism, and his activities are equally the same. Hence his conception of freedom differs according to their different activities. Man’s activities are not just determined by external factors like a piece of stone that is moved or a computer game that is moved by the pads. It sometimes comes from his awareness of his own freedom and ability to decide for himself. Among all these, freedom still remain verse to comprehend at each moment, but for better apprehension, I will examine briefly the kinds of freedom in the following sequence.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 5]
Page 1 of 5
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