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Notion Of Freedom And Law In St. Thomas Aquinas
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 5]
Page 2 of 5
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Human Freedom
This is simply a matter of accepting the Universe
because you understand its mathematical necessity. This done, you will
gain peace of mind, be free from passions and be able to return good for
evil. This human freedom implies that man has the natural ability to
act at length without being injurious to others.
Freedom Of Religion
Freedom
of religion could be identified as the right of a person to have free
exercise of religion without compulsion or coercion. He is allowed to
worship anything, anywhere, anytime according to the dictates of his
conscience. Murray said on his own part that religious freedom is ‘…an
immunity from Coercion in what concerns personal relation with God’5
For the authenticity of religion to be realized, many societies adopt freedom of religion.
Freedom Of Choice
This
is the principle of action by which man judges freely. Apart from this,
Aquinas maintained that freedom of choice is not a habit but a power
since it proceeds from man. He called it an election. He compared ‘man’
and ‘animal’ and stated that man acts out of comparism in the reason,
while animals acts from natural instinct. Since man acts out of
comparism, he acts by free Judgment and equally retains the power of
being inclined to many things. Thus man has free choice.
Freedom of
choice refers either to the act of the will, or to the object of the
will. In the first instance, there is freedom of exercise, in the
second, freedom of specification. Freedom of exercise means that the
will is at liberty to choose or not to choose, to operate or not to
operate. The point to emphasize here is that one is not compelled to
act.
Freedom Of Self-Perfection
Here St. Thomas believed and
taught that man ought to tamper and train his Soul, and the dignity of
man lies in self-mastery. Now, man’s nature is constituted in such a way
that reason and will must always guide and direct his actions. In so
doing man has self-control, since that makes him a person. Any man who
allows passion, money, power etc to overtake him, is not free, since he
feels free outwardly, but inwardly remain enslaved to vice, greed,
power, pride, and ambition.
Fulton Sheen in his book ‘On Being
Human’ maintained that freedom is not gained at once, but a gradual
process, which continues until one reaches the peak. Man is not expected
to become an angel, but man, which is his ontological vocation, man
cannot be perfect in an imperfect world.
Freedom of Self Realization
Each
man is a microcosm, in other words, said to be represented in a small
scale. He occupies an important and irreplaceable position in the entire
universe. He is a being who has a mission in the world. And the
achievement of this mission is the realization of himself. Each man is a
bundle of potentialities. These potentialities when realized or
actualized become the individual’s contribution to development of the
entire human family.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 5]
Page 2 of 5
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