Freedom is choice. As Neil Peart says, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice!” No matter what you do, you are required to make decisions.
There’s a responsibility with your freedom (does that make it less free?) that you should actively participate in it. If you just, like DaTa said, go watch TV like some drone without really considering your alternatives, you could be abusing your freedom.
Freedom for me means noticing what is not freedom.
You could look on the news and hear about how others have their freedom taken away from them, be it liberty or being sent to jail. Then think about how you are free to do as you wish without causing offence to others.
I have to admit there are many types of freedom. One can be free to do as they want, but then if people do things without considering the consequences e.g. free to take drugs or alcohol without limits then how are they completely free? The basic idea of freedom is being able to do as you please without fear of reprisals.
Although one has to be specific when asking what it means to be free. Could it be?
Freedom as an expression? Like writing or stating ones views?
Freedom within society? How should one conform? Although I think when it comes to being part of a society then your freedom becomes slightly restricted, because your doing things for others you might not want to always do.
Freedom from oneself? It may seem weird, but we are bombarded ideas and rules on how we should choose to live. Many of our thoughts have come from someone else’s ideas. How can one choose what is right for oneself? I guess this is where philosophy comes in because we can begin to analyse what we are being told.
Freedom concerning acts? This might be tied up with expressing oneself. but i am not so sure. It could be down to what we automatically do. Do you robotically do tasks each day without question? or are you aware of actions and question and then change them?
Although you’ve defined freedom purely in the political sense of the word… I think it’s important to understand that as with philosophical freedom…which at its extremes (think anarchism, nietzche, de Saade) becomes unworkable… free speech, freedom of assembly etc also must be tempered by common sense.
I’m studying law in Australia… and its surprising to see how much ‘free speech’ is qualified. BUt the reasoning behind it is understandable. if your “liberal thought police” existed in Nazi Germany … Hitler would never had gained mainstream prominence.
Of course… PC gone mad is no good either… but the more you generalise the less satisfactory the results of your assertions (and unfortunately… the more easily your assertions penetrate the ‘average’ mind)
It’s easy to take philsophically absolutist stances… but can they really be applied to the real world?
Historical experiences forces me to conclude that with a resounding no. Attempts to implement communism, fascism, anarchy, and a whole lot of other ‘utopian’ ideals have all failed. unequivocally.
And so while its comforting to retreat to platonic ideals … its the interplay between those ideals and reality that gives philosophy its meaning. Paraphrasing Nietzche (or was it Marx?), philosophy has as much pertinence to the real world as masturbation has to sex.
From what everyone says it seems that true freedom of action cannot exist in civilization/society - there will always be rules, laws, cause and effect. It seems that true freedom can only be freedom of thought/belief?
Freedom is the power that one attains by being more understanding and aware of his or her own nature. Freedom is not the power to dominate within nature, but to recognize one’s own status and relation to all things. Once you do this, you will have intellectual and “spiritual” freedom; but you cannot disrupt the flow of what has already been necessitated.
Freedom thus becomes one’s conscious power to act given one’s own nature. Restriction comes from the physical forces which necessarily will act upon you and incite your passions. The physical forces would be all external entities and sense experience external to yourself. Freedom is not the power to control yourself or your surroundings, but to understand that you stand within the world and in relation to the things similarly within it.
Granted, there is no afterlife and there is no idealistic realm where immaterial things reside. The “spirit” is the meeting place where the intellect controls the emotions. Absolute despair comes, or eventually comes, when someone thinks them self free because they let their emotions follow the whims of external causes.
The spirit is no real thing. It is the manifestation within us that is the resultant of the difference between the intellect and one’s own emotions. Thus, a weak spirit is someone who cannot tame his or her own emotions.