VasileiosMakrypoulias, phd in philosophy
vasilios888@yahoo.gr
Title: The dialectical nature of Freedom.
Summary: Freedom is not a simple concept,
freedom is a situation in constant reference to various concepts.Freedom in not
an immanent matter because there is no freedom when we are in a nature
situation where we just do things for living. This virtue starts when men
understand universal principles which create moral systems. Ideas and
moralities are based on morality because we are talking about this idea and
morality and the opposite idea and morality. The first dilemma is between chaos
and logos. Freedom is the choice of logos and not of chaos. But we have to
think that there is no freedom if we conceive one way which starts from chaos,
continues to logos, and then leads to chaos. So far freedom is the slavery of
the world of ideas and morality.This world starts with two opposites ideas and
moralities, freedom is the slavery of the choice between good and bad.
Key words:freedom, dialectic, conception,
understanding, morality, religious.
The ontological
existence of “freedom”.
There is a fundamental question: Did
the first man know the word freedom? We say “word” because there is no specific
nature as far as we discuss about freedom. There is an evolutionary process
until the moment philosophers called freedom a force, an idea, or anything
else. In the begining we believe that the first man did not know this word
because there was men and the universe. Plato in his famous dialogue
“Protagoras” remembers that unce upon a time there were no men, when they came
in existence nous was the only weapon
they acquired by the gods. Up to that moment men were unprotected. Plato did
not write “they were slaves”or “they were not free”. So far we understand that the whole of ideas
–freedom as well- were something like a nooumenal apprehension. Man did not
fell free or slave in the very beginning of his earthly life because they have
just one ability, the ability of thinking. There were only men and the chaotic
nature at that time. There were no bipolarities of thinking between good or bad
thoughts. Men were thinking of universe forces and activities. This is beyond the subsequent
apprehension of freedom.
So far Plato did not discuss about
free or not free nous in his mentioned dialogue. He wrote: «When Prometheus
visited Epimetheus he saw man being naked, without shoes, without
weapons”.(Plato, Protagoras, 321B6). If we think that Prometheus gave artificial
wisdom (as a fire) to people in order to make them capable of political
creation, we understand that freedom is not an ontological and archetypal conception.
The first man was thinking of his diabilities not of his illiberality because
he did not know the word “freedom”. We believe that Immanuel Kant discussed the
same thing, when he put the sense of freedom not in the world of phaenomena but
in the world of nooumena as an unresolved eternal problem. It is similar to say
that freedom is only in our mind.
Kant’s argument in his “Critique of
pure reason” is very known. Freedom belongs to the world of nooumena with the
problem of God and immortality of souls. We have to emphasize the fact that
German philosopher connected the concept of freedom with the force of the will.
He discussed for freedom not generally but he put freedom of the will in the
world of nooumena. Because freedom is something useless as such, unless this
word will be correlated with something else. So Kant wrote: freedom of the
will. We could compare the absence of freedom in the Platonic dialogue
Protagoras with the Kantian freedom of the will. At the outset men have just one ability. They
are able of acting in according with theorders
of their mind. There is no choice as far as we talk about survival. So men, at
that situation, are not free in a sense they do not have two choices, survival
is the only way to walk. Much time later Immanuel Kant thought that men
acguired many choices in their spiritual and moral life: Men should be morals
or immorals, Christians or something else. Men should live according to this
way or to another way. Because of this German philosopher understood that men
gained choices through their life. So he discussed that there is freedom of the
will. So choice is the cause of freedom birth.
The platonic birth of choice.