In Defense of Freedom
Gow, Haven Bradford
Haven Bradford Gow: In Defense of Freedom In civilized discourse it is essential that proper distinctions be made. This, I find, is especially true in discussions regarding freedom lest, in...
...Nevertheless, the young mother decides to have the child...
...Traditionally in the West, motives behind a person's actions are part of the morality of the actions...
...and by so doing, she has both manifested and exercised the freedom of self-determination...
...Freedom in the former sense would still imply a recognition that there are, to be sure, legitimate rules and authorities, and that these rules and authorities are needed to keep us from conflicting with the rights of others...
...It is a freedom which depends upon an individual's attainment of a certain excellence of mind and character, which, in turn, emanates from his capacity to live as he ought in accordance with the moral law or in an ideal befitting man...
...However, neither acquirements nor circumstances of any sort are able to confer or deprive this freedom...
...The assertions of the positivist are untenable, however, for physical science, because of its own limitations and restrictions, can neither affirm nor negate the freedom of man...
...Since one can get them mainly at the cost of somebody else, their quest accentuates and intensifies the struggle of individuals and groups...
...and (b) focus attention on the second meaning of freedom, since the publication of B. F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity has revived such an avid interest in the question: Does man have the inherent ability to make free choices and judgments or are they determined by forces outside of his control...
...All the medical evidence indicates that the child born to her will be deformed, and she is tempted to have an abortion in order to save her and her husband from future emotional pain...
...For example, a young mother must choose between having an abortion or giving birth to a retarded child...
...Good in a neutral philosophical sense means any object of desire...
...For if, as some (e.g...
...New York: E. P. Dutton, 1941, p. 174...
...First of all, there is the circumstantial freedom of self-realization which equates freedom with the absence of external impediments...
...Now it is, I think, imperative that a distinction be made here between the freedom of self-realization and what Pitirim A. Sorokin terms "sensate liberty...
...Moreover, it leads, as Sorokin rightly observes, to: "an incessant struggle of men and groups for as large a share of sensate values-wealth...pleasure, comfort, sensory safety, security-as one can get...
...It is a freedom that the individual possesses only under certain favorable circumstances...
...is able to transform his own character creatively by deciding for himself what he will become or do...
...The positivist claims that the only valid knowledge is that kind revealed by, and verifiable in terms of, the methods of laboratory science...
...Skinner) allege, man is not self-determining, but rather is determined by processes beyond his control, then I am unable to see how one can legitimately maintain that man should be morally accountable for his deeds...
...The positivist needs to remember (continued on page 27)ued on page 27...
...There is also the natural freedom of self-determination-a freedom which is possessed by all men, by virtue of a power inherent in human nature, whereby mar...
...For those who believe in this meaning of freedom, a person is not born free, but rather acquires freedom when he has become virtuous...
...This, I find, is especially true in discussions regarding freedom lest, in attempting to explain it to others, we end up with merely explaining it away...
...Mortimer Adler tells us in his two-volume work, The Idea of Freedom, that there are three basic senses of the term "freedom...
...For example, were the state to compel every citizen to bow down before the president whenever he walked by, freedom in Hobbes' sense simply would not exist...
...Since the techniques of the laboratory are unable to reveal that man is free, i.e., self-determining, the positivist holds that man therefore is not free, that freedom and dignity are merely figments of our imaginations...
...When a person goes to a Chinese restaurant for dinner and decides to eat chow mein instead of fried rice, he is thereby exercising his natural freedom of self-determination...
...In this sense man's choices are self-caused and are not determined by processes beyond his control...
...Besides, as Will Herberg has written, positivism has never been intellectually defensible, since: "it is notorious that positive science itself, its methods and results, depend upon metaphysical postulates and attitudes that cannot, in their nature, be established by way of science, but must be presupposed if the scientific enterprise is to get under way or mean anything at all...
...Reflection upon our common experience will yield many such instances in which we exercise our free judgment and free will by choosing between alternatives or goods...
...And if the fact of man's freedom cannot be ascertained through the methods of the laboratory, it is not because freedom and dignity do not exist, but rather because freedom and dignity exist beyond the laboratory...
...The Crisis of Our Age...
...Among those who would negate man's dignity by denying that he has a natural power to make free judgments are the positivists and behaviorists...
...Circumstances may affect the way men exercise this inherent capacity, and so may moral and mental traits that they do or do not acquire...
...Now this second meaning is, I believe, of central importance...
...What I would like to do in this essay is (a) illustrate these senses of freedom L presenting both the views of philosopher and examples from common experience...
...On the other hand, sensate liberty is a decadent form of self-realization, since it suggests that external restraint is both unnecessary and bad in itself...
...Lastly, there is the acquired freedom of self-perfection, which identifies freedom with the emancipation from moral sloth and from the slavery of certain mental habits and attitudes...
...And neither would it exist if the state, instead of indulging in coercion, constrained individuals from, say, building churches in which they could worship their God...
...Modern Man in a Metaphysical Wasteland," The Intercollegiate Review, Winter, 1968-69...
...A man is not free, Hobbes held, if he is either externally constrained or coerced...
Vol. 6 • December 1972 • No. 3
