4TH QTR EXAM REVIEWER Flashcards by Annika Te

● Can be understood as an individual’s power to think, act, and speak without restraints
● Individual power to exercise our will

FREEDOM

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● Presented 2 types of freedom
○ Negative freedom and
positive freedom

Isiah Berlin

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● Without an external restriction
● “Freedom from”
Meaning freedom from people or systems that affect your personal decisions

Negative freedom

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● Author of the book “Leviathan”
● Wrote “Leviathan” in response to the violence and chaos he experienced in his time
● He described the nature of humans in a pessimist point of view, he called this the state of nature.

Thomas Hobbes

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○ We are naturally competitive and greedy.
○ We are selfish beings.
○ Life is nasty, brutish, and
short
○ To reconcile this state of
nature, society needs a
leviathan

State of nature according to Thomas Hobbes

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For him, true freedom is achieved by surrendering our natural rights to a sovereign authority through social contract. (best possible government led by a Leviathan)

Thomas Hobbes

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○ A state of purest freedom
○ There is a paradox: absolute
freedom makes our rights
violable
○ Given the fact that we have
absolute freedom, the danger is that there is a big possibility that other people violate other people’s rights.

Locke on the state of nature

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● An important figure in the Enlightenment period regarded as the father of liberation
● Believed that human persons are born with inalienable but violable rights.
○ This means that we are born with rights that cannot be taken away from us but other people can violate these rights.
● Fundamental rights: life, liberty, property

John Locke

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○ Unwritten argument between the government and the people
○ Giving up of rights to the leviathan (government)
○ To maintain peace and order

Hobbes on Social Contract

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○ Giving up rights to the
leviathan (government)
○ The government has limited
power over their citizens.

Locke on social contract

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A political and ethical philosophical theory emphasizing the greatest happiness principle.

Utilitarianism

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Highlights utilitarianism, individual liberty, and freedom of thought. For ____, people must have the maximum possible freedom to achieve their interests, as long as their actions are not causing harm or pain to other people.

John Stuart Mill

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○ Harm principle - freedom
must be restricted
○ Too much freedom from
people = ANARCHY
○ Too much freedom from
government = OPPRESSION
○ Freedom of thought is
crucial in society’s progress.

Mill on freedom

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States that the action is right if it promotes happiness. An action is wrong if it promotes unhappiness.
○ When we say happiness, we refer to pleasure.
○ For him, pleasure is the main goal of a person in life.
○ Pleasure is the absence of pain

Greatest Happiness Principle

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Too much freedom from
government =

oppression

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Too much freedom from
people =

anarchy

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● “Freedom to”
● Self-governance or self mastery
● We deal with freedom internally since we determine what action is necessary
● The freedom to create your course of action

Positive Freedom

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Originated in India more than 2000 years ago and believed that human life is suffering.

Buddhism

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the cycle of birth, life, and death, human life is suffering.

Samsara

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A cycle of suffering, Buddhists believe that human life is encased in a cycle of suffering and that we need to liberate ourselves from this cycle.

Samsara

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we are responsible for our actions since we can choose between right and wrong

Moral autonomy

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○ enlightenment or liberation
○ Liberation from suffering
○ Foremost goal of Buddhism
○ To attain this, we must
detach ourselves from desires of the flesh

Nirvana

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○ On freedom: freedom is acting in accordance with the categorical imperative
○ categorical imperative states that an action is morally justified if it applies to every person. This guides us to make moral decisions based on rational decisions.
○ Rational autonomy enables moral freedom

Kant on Freedom

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● Also highlighted the social contract
● Focused on the relationship
between freedom and society
● FREEDOM means PARTICIPATION
in the SOCIAL CONTRACT

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Collective will and common interest of the people ○ Makes up the social contact which hinders violent tendencies ○ Makes up Rousseau’s view on the social contract ○ Contributes to us making a better society

General will

● A prominent psychoanalyst and humanist philosopher who authored “Escape from Freedom” (1941) ● Says that it is our responsibility to develop self-awareness

Erick Fromm

Freedom means self-realization To achieve self-realization is to actively express our emotional and intellectual potentialities

Fromm on Freedom

○ Activity of the self and your free will ○ “Freedom to” ○ Creativity in your will ○ Watering your love for the community and building meaningful relationships

Spontaneous activity

● He presented the holistic perspective ○ It is the interconnection of spiritual, social, and individual freedom

Rudolf Steiner

○ Freedom comes from spiritual development and ethical considerations ○ Freedom for moral development = greater good of the community ○ When we use our freedom for moral development, we contribute to the greater good of the community.

Steiner on freedom

The foundation of Human Relation

Intersubjectivity

○ More than just owning/possessing ○ Objectivation of the world ○ Abandoning the significance of “being” ○ We see the world as an object that we can possess or manipulate. We see the things around us as objects we can own. In this attitude of having, we see the world as merely a function and we objectify it. ○ We also tend to objectify the people around us.

Having / I have a body

○ Seeing humans as objects. ○ Capital and profit are seen to be the most important things in the world which leads to accumulation in capital. How do big companies do this? Selling goods and services way more expensive than they truly cost. ○ In its most basic essence, humans are not seen as humans anymore.

Broken world

○ The world appears as something that I “participate in” ○ The world appears not as an object, but as a presence. ○ Essential in personal relationships. ○ You see the world as a presence, which means the active engagement to the world around you. ○ You become open to others in such a way where you recognize that they are subjects. You are receptive to their feelings.

Being

■ Active engagement with the world around you ■ Openness to others

Presence

● You are not solely a thinking subject ● You are an embodied subject ● Intimacy between you and your body ● No gap between you ang your body ● You are your body ● You are a self-revealing subject

Embodied subjectivity

concrete and given conditions/circumstances that we inherit and confront. (birthdays, color) A certain context where we are thrown into Something (a fact) that we cannot choose nor control Objective and unchangeable aspects in our human existence ■ Also talks about our potential and what can be as a product of our freedom of choice The realization that humans, as subjects, are relational beings .

Facticity

○ “Being-there” ○ Always belonging somewhere. You always have an origin or belong somewhere as a human person. ● The human existence characterized by self-awareness ● Emphasized the relational nature of our human existence ● You are not a present at hand ○ You are a conscious person, which means you should not be used like an object.

Dasein (Martin Heidegger)

2 conditions of Dasein

Facticity and Transcendence

Individual power to exercise the will. ● Individual power to think, to speak, and to act.

Freedom

○ Human capacity to surpass the given conditions of our facticity through freedom and conscious choice ○ Ability to transcend external circumstances and make decisions ○ Signifies the subjective and transformative capacity to rise above your conditions ○ Relate is to people and utilize is to objects ■ We are relational beings.

Transcendence

A school of thought famous because of its relatability in our life. questions about our identity, life purpose, and world place. These questions are manifestations of our thoughts.

Existentialism

● Remove the essence of an object, and it becomes useless. ● Everything has an essence. Everyone has an essence. ● An essence is what makes something what it is. Without the essence, it cannot serve its purpose. ○ Ex: ballpen and ink ● We are born into this world with an essence, which means we already have a purpose. The essence comes first before we exist.

Essentialism

According to him... ● “Existence precedes essence” ● Means that we exist first before creating our essence in life. It depends on our choices and how we act in life. These determine our essence in life. ○ You realize your essence as soon as you are a human. This is where your freedom comes in, and you decide to make choices in life.

Jean-Paul Sartre

● Accepting that the world is meaningless. ● Accepting the reality that we are responsible for our actions

Authenticity according to Sartre

● A central theme in existentialism ● “We are doomed to be free” means that freedom has a negative implication. He implies that we become free when we are aware of our reality. When this happens, we are burdened to take on actions and responsibilities.

Freedom According to Sartre

anxiety and feeling of being lost due to the burden of responsibility. ● The human life is a constant struggle

Existential anguish

● Inauthenticity ● Rejection of the meaninglessness of the world ● Denial of one's freedom ● Avoidance of one’s responsibility ● We reject the meaning of life. This forms our denial of freedom. We tend to be dependent on external influences, this makes us live an inauthentic life. This implies that we cannot think on our own. When we use bad faith in struggles, as a band-aid solution, we become more prone to suffering a long-term decline in our wellbeing.

Bad Faith According to Sartre

○ This harm cannot be avoided, it is inevitable. Harm is a determination of a deterministic point of view. ○ Avoidance is the indication of our free will. As a human person, you will have a reaction to this harm. ○ This reaction is an indication of our determination as human beings.

Daniel Dennet's Hard Avoidance

Freedom allows us to make ethical choices in our life and be responsible for our actions. Because of our freedom, we are responsible for our own actions. This is where our questions come in. (is this right? Should I do this?

Moral autonomy

○ You can make decisions for your body. You have the freedom to choose what to do with your body.

Personal autonomy

Allows us to pursue our goals and aspirations in life. We speak of the respect we give to other people and the respect we receive from other people. This is how you show respect to yourself by pursuing your aspirations in your life in relation to freedom and human dignity.

Human dignity

○ you are free to explore your surroundings, you are free to move and be mobile.

Freedom of movement

You have the freedom not to be encased in jail.

Freedom from imprisonment

you are free to think, imagine, and form your own opinions independently.

Freedom of thought

you can let out your emotions and showcase how you feel.

Emotional freedom

you are free to engage in any intellectual activity or activity that feeds your mind. You are free to interact with other people in the hopes of putting awareness in yourself.

Intellectual freedom

you are free to make ethical choices in life

Freedom of conscience

you are free to choose what you want to believe in.

Freedom of religion

you are free to make moral decisions

Moral decision making

You are free to join groups and associate with other people.

Freedom of association

you are free to express yourself through speech without censorship. You have the freedom to express your thoughts without feeling censored.

Freedom of speech

you are free to practice the culture you belong to. You are free to practice the ways of living that are manifested by your culture.

Cultural freedom

You are free to protest as a group.

Freedom of assembly

you are free to provide information and express through media without censorship

Freedom of the press

You are free to choose your leaders, you are free to vote and participate in elections

Democratic participation

you are free to be authentic or to be true to yourself.

authenticity

You are free to create or find your own purpose and meaning in life.

Freedom of meaning

you are free to be responsible for you are responsible for your own actions in life.

Freedom of responsibility

● entails the notion of acting freely in alignment with one's subjective wishes. ○ In executing your freedom, you have to consider that you are bound to moral and ethical consequences.

Subjectivistic misconception of freedom

● Use of freedom in excessive reliance on faith. ○ There are people who overly depend on God. The danger in this is their excessive reliance on faith and that is not the case for freedom. ○ Our meaning in life comes in life, and we make our own path. This becomes a misconception because every action you make you relate it as God’s doing.

Transcendental misconception of freedom

● Implies that freedom can be quantified or measured ○ Freedom cannot be quantified and put into numerical terms.

Scientific misconception of freedom

Emphasizes individual desire without consideration for broader societal context ○ Nagkakaroon ka ng opinions without considering the whole picture.

Populist misconception of freedom

● A philosophical position believing that all events, including human actions and choices, are determined by causal laws. ● Every event has a cause and this cause determines future events.

Determinism

○ Since all events are already determined and inevitable, free will is an illusion. ○ It says that we as human persons cannot do anything because our path has already been planned out. ○ There is already a designated path for you to take.

Hard or incompatibility

○ Even though external factors are present, we humans still have a degree of free will. ○ You also have that designated path to take but how you’re going to take that path depends on you, this is where free will comes in.

Soft or compatibilism

Proposed atomism

Leucippus and Democritus

theory that everything in the world is made up of atoms and these atoms cause the events around us.

Atomism

Proposed demon thought experiment.

Pierre-Simon Laplace

○ There is an entity called the demon who knows or has been in the past and knows the future. ○ This is an entity that knows what is happening in the present.

Demon thought experiment

provides a sense of order and predictability, everything is consistent

Causal consistency

theories such as Newtonian physics.

Scientific basis

Natural laws govern the behavior of all things.

Compatibility with natural laws

Unmeasurable subatomic levels, challenging strict determinism. If they cannot be measured, it proposes the idea that determinism is a false idea.

Quantum indeterminacy

Individuals might not be genuinely responsible for their actions.

Human agency

An individual‘s capacity to make moral decisions and be morally responsible based on their own values, principles, and conscience.

Moral agency

● A set of good moral qualities, habits, and character traits that enable individuals to act morally and virtuously. ○ Aristotle’s eudaimonia, cultivating your virtues and character in life.

Moral Virtue

● Resolutely directed towards a goal ● not enough in a relationship because it does not guarantee change and process ● directed towards a specific goal where you really stick to attaining the specific goal but according to Gabriel Marcel, no growth takes place here because we are constant in just attaining that goal. ● being constant in a relationship is not enough because it does not guarantee change and development in the relationship.

Constancy

● deeper than loyalty because it highlights disponibilité / availability ● For Gabriel Marcel, this is different from loyalty ● deep commitment is present ● there is an exchange of ideas and thoughts or life sharings. In this way, it makes this deeper than loyalty. this also leads to deep commitment in the relationship.

Fidelity

● We human persons are not stagnant human beings. We are always under the constant creative process. The presence of improvement and development shows creativity. ● not just about producing art outcomes or doing art activities, it is about authenticity and connecting with yourself and the people around you. ● our lives are improved by a constant creative process ● Approaching life thru authenticity and engagement ● connecting with oneself and other people ● Fostering one's growth

Creativity

● Significance of interpersonal relationships in our personal development and search for meaning ● a fundamental aspect in the existentialist belief of gabriel marcel ● you are not just recognizing that your friend is a subjective person with feelings and emotions, but also acknowledging your own. as you enter a relationship, its not just about your friend's subjectivity, but you having your own as well.

Creative fidelity

the very basis of our understanding of the world. you are expected to show goodness to other people. there is a relationship and involvement. This is why he thinks this is the first philosophy.

The face of the other

to strangers or no personal relationship speaks about our ethical responsibility towards another human being ● not a mere physical feature but a human’s whole being a metaphor for a whole person. This is where ethical responsibility comes in. When encountering another person, we see them as a face that deserves ethical treatment.

The face