Freedom rests on the realization that we exists and from here we create the meaning of our life.

And this is the characteristic of human freedom, one which proceeds from his nature as being
conscious of his own being, as a “for-itself.” The “being-for-itself” refers exclusively to
the human person.

The Human Person and Freedom

Introduction

Accordingly, freedom is the most sublime of all human preoccupations. It is the highest good that all
persons struggle to protect (Aldea & Allen, 2016; Moggach, 2009).

I’ll take it that while one hardly finds few compelling reasons to refute the claim above, it remains our
task, that is, our serious labour to clarify the meaning of the sweet name, “freedom.” From here, our
rather rhetorical questions beg: “What by the way is freedom? Better yet, what does it really mean to
be free?”

As ordinary as they appear, these questions on the meaning of freedom have been on the academic
stage for quite some time already. Both in the Oriental and the Western worlds, “freedom” has been
a perennial subject of both conceptual debates and practical determinations (Dussel, 2009, p. 505).
These various attempts at understanding the nature of freedom compel us to think that as human
beings, we are constantly confronted by the sheer need to know the limits of the exercise of our
human affairs. What I mean is that we always have the propensity for the knowledge of the extent to
which we can only act upon things. But surprisingly, on one hand, we understand that we are
capacitated to do innumerable things and pursue a variety of plans yet, on the other hand, we still
question why is it that apparently we are only allowed to do so much. Surprisingly, at times, one
feels as if she is so free while at the same time could still sense that this very freedom is
embarrassingly constrained. And the awareness of this inadequacy leads to a consciousness of the
limitation of one’s freedom. This situates us now in a paradoxical juncture: we recognize that we
have so much freedom although are prohibited from doing a lot of things at the same time.

This is the reason why few significant researches in psychoanalysis, for instance, never share full
optimism about whether we can really fully grasp the motivations behind our actions or that whether
we can be fully conscious of them at all (Sartre, 2009, pp. 37-38).[1] And interestingly, this
psychoanalytic pessimism poses already a Herculean challenge to our efforts to understanding
freedom. Presumably, what these researches tell us is that our being unaware of the things we do
necessarily implies our being unaware also of the reasons why we do the things we do.
Unfortunately, this psychoanalytic deprivation of the possibility of our being-conscious of our actions
pulls everything down into the level of “natural inclinations” (Pippin, 2009, pp. 38-39). So, if we are
not conscious of our actions and our motivations of doing them then they escape our intentions. And
if we don’t intend them, they become sporadic actions, which don’t manifest freedom at all because,
accordingly, they are not issued from the dictates of our reason (ibid., p. 37). Perhaps, one most
simplistic and almost a reductionist response to the question of freedom states: we do the things we
do because we are inclined to doing them, nothing more and nothing less. Our biological drives, for
instance, the neuron-transmissions of electrical charges in the brain, move us that even if we are
aware of being driven by them, still we obey them, plain and simple. It’s as if there were no exits
away from these natural demands: we are not really free; we simply are tied to the strings of
differentiated degrees of natural inclinations. And I would like to call this “the psychoanalytic
surrender”.

So, can we behave in defeatism as response to the psychoanalytic challenge? Well, I don’t think so!
I’m rather convinced that just because men do have natural inclinations or drives does not
necessarily mean that all our acting is propelled by mere inner compulsions. But if we were
fundamentally tied to our biological-naturalistic inclination can we ever be free at all?

These difficult questions push us to do the following tasks: first, establish the reason why there is a
need for the discussion of freedom, and second, contextualize its meanings by staging a few
prominent Western perspectives regarding freedom.

My first approach lies by way of an analysis of our need to consider that we are really free, or that
we human beings are free despite our built-in naturalistic tendencies or inclinations toward a variety
of preferences. At least we can claim that even if our decisions are affected by the
unreasonableness of some of our desires-preferences, still we have the capacity either to cling to
them or delay. What I’m getting at is that we are free despite our built-in drives. We have the power,
although at times weak, to manage our preferences. Not only that, we can also feel the necessity to
redirect our energies to more sublime ends – to justice and righteousness – or even to the contrary
of these virtues, namely, perversion and wickedness. Either toward virtue or toward the perversion of
it, one has the decision – she is always free to decide over them.

Second, I will present at least three conceptions of freedom in order to contextualize its meaning. I
will talk about freedom the way it is viewed in (a) the liberal tradition, (b) existentialism, and (c) social
freedom. In the foregoing, I will refrain from discussing freedom from the natural sciences’ way
because of two reasons: one is that I believe that the natural sciences, especially the neurosciences,
are skeptical about freedom and instead would posit through the aid of some laboratory
experimentations/observations that our human conducts can be explained in a naturally deterministic
way. This banishment of the role of freedom in determining our human affairs is for me too
detrimental in qualifying, later on, the justness of our human actions. Why? Because if we are not
free to begin with, then we can’t be held responsible for our actions, can we? And I think this
question is way too obvious to answer. The second reason why I won’t discuss the natural sciences’
take on freedom is much more complicated than the first one: it’s beyond my scholarship at the
moment. That is my outright excuse for the limit of this justification.

However, for the meantime, starting with a provisional definition, we say that freedom in the
affirmative sense is understood as the human person’s innermost capacity for exercising
independent actions, which are based on independent judgments mostly about what an individual
considers to be true or false claims and right or wrong actions. In the negative sense, to be free is to
be not hindered by anything that limits an individual’s striving for what she considers to be important
in her life’s plans and goals. Both senses perhaps contain the most inclusive idea of understanding
freedom. And this broad outline of the nature of freedom justifies the offshoot of a variety of claims to
freedom. These claims are explicit in the following forms, namely, freedom of
expression and aesthetic freedom among others. The former covers the individual rights to free
speech, to free press, to form a political assembly that maybe sometimes is critical to the policies of
the government, and the right to choose which religious institutions to belong. Meanwhile aesthetic
freedom lies in the individual person’s capacity to choose, promote and express her inner
sensibilities and conceptions of beauty. This covers the free expression in the arts and can be
extended to the distinction of taste that is the preference for certain dress codes to wear,
conversational styles to say, and even in acquired taste of food to eat. However, in most cases, both
the freedom of expression and of the aesthetics intertwine in the multi-layered spaces in the social
reality. What this means is that our freedom to religious belonging to some extent delimits our
preference of beauty. For example, if one is born a Christian, she is bound to obey the precepts of
her religion. On this regard, she is bound to avoid the instances that offends the faith that she
professes in her being a Christian. Hence, for instance, she would avoid making fun of religious
images even at the pretext of the arts. In this context, tampering religious images in the name of arts
is then guilty of a religious offense in the name of aesthetic freedom. Among other possible
examples, the intertwining between aesthetic and religious freedom compels us even more to clarify
the nature of freedom and the importance of understanding freedom as the most important human
quality.

The Necessity of Freedom: Running-through Historical Struggles for Freedom

Why by the way is there a need for a discussion of freedom?

The question of need is necessarily tied to the question of relevance. In turn, the latter points to
relative situations where the applicability of the principles in question must be explicitly drawn. What
this means for our question regarding freedom is simple: the necessity of freedom lies always in the
call of the context or the situation that defines the time. The context of time, viz., the historical
context shows how freedom is being deprived from certain historical players and how badly a people
demand for the recognition of their freedom. Not only that, historical contexts too serve as a
reception of the somewhat differentiated manifestations of the struggles for freedom. These
changing landscapes of historical struggles are testimonies that the on-going social concerns
demand an examination of the existing conceptual framework we use in trying to conduct
philosophical diagnosis of the so-called societal problems. For beneath the historical frame, it has
already been proven as fact that there are human confrontations that are waged all for the glory of
freedom, however it is conceived.

Although there are as wide selections of historical junctures as there are numerous global events,
we will be already better off to cite at least two major 20th Century events, which captured the
attention of the international scene. One of which is local, though. I am referring to first, the
Holocaust committed by the Nazi Germany to the Jews from 1933-1945, and second, to the EDSA
People Power Revolution directed at the Marcos Dictatorship in 1986. As common knowledge, the
Holocaust is said to be the largest genocidal act of terror conducted by a legitimate state. During
which time, not less than six-million Jews suffered at the concentration camps and were later on
exterminated in the gas chambers. Today as ever, the memory of this hideous event lives on.
Meanwhile, the imposition of the Martial Law under the Marcos Regime awakened the Filipinos’
political sensitivity, motivating them to collectively go out in the street as in the case of the EDSA
Revolution. During the Martial Law, accounts of human rights abuses were high. These abuses
came in many forms. To name a few, a series of abduction cases of key opposition personalities
was staged; the writ of habeas corpus was suspended, escalating the cases of extra judicial killing
via brute police and military torture; civil society movements were suppressed every time street
demonstrations were held, and many more. And the list of abuses goes on and on (Tiu, 2016).
Eventually, as history unfolded and as the collective struggle grew, the despotic regime was
overcome.

Although these events fell on the same century, they remain isolated historical pathways. But
despite the more than thirty years of chronological distance, not to mention the geographical
location, which divided these social-political malaises, it remains clear that the series of attempts
(although some of those failed) at overcoming them point in the direction of eliminating an
oppressive state actions which not only disrespected human freedom but also poached human lives
of their indelible rights to protection. Undeniably, both the genocidal state actions of Nazi Germany
as well as the dictatorship of the Marcos regime are, beyond question, serious violations of both
freedom and human rights. We don’t even anymore have to consult specialists in the field of ethics
or political theory in order to know whether such violations do really manifest. We only need to
engage in what the earlier chapter of this text refers to as “phenomenological intuition” to be able to
see directly that those historical ordeals are really disrespectful of the fundamental aspect of the
human person, that is, dignity founded on their inalienable freedom.
That is why, with these historical examples, it can be argued now that national struggles cannot be
reduced to mere “naturalistic inclinations.” On a side note, the fight against slavery, which is a
repression of human freedom is rational enough to dismiss the deterministic claims. If human actions
are a mere response to external stimulus, whatever it may be, then it would be difficult for us to
justify collective forms of solidarity responding to violence, for instance, as rationally coordinated
action to be possible. But in so far as our human experiences are concerned, we are never bereft of
those activities. Coordinated responses to end violence are possible not only in the local but also in
the international scenes. It is not our concern at the moment to evaluate which of these responses
fail or succeed. For the moment, we can already be content with the fact that they are within our
reach and that even amidst our psychological or cognitive incapacity we can carry them out in our
little ways. Such is the relevance of the necessity for arguing on the possibility of freedom: freedom
as the guarantee of the right to be given the opportunity to realize human potentials.

The Conceptual Guises of Freedom

At the outset, we are content with a provisional outline of the characteristic of freedom, viz., the
guarantor of the rights to fulfil the human person’s full potential. It is the fundamental capability of
any human person – regardless of race, political leaning, class distinction, etc. – to fulfil her life plans
and involvements head on. It is the most fundamental human capacity for self-determination. This
section, then, presents some nuances of understanding freedom. It presents freedom’s different
guises as put forward by key philosophical thinkers from the tradition of liberalism, existentialism and
communitarianism. On liberal freedom, we focus on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant who argued
that freedom rests in the inalienable autonomy of the human person. This means for Kant that by
virtue of the person’s capacity to think independently, she has the full control over her decisions. And
this full control of one’s decisions also connotes a respect for other person’s decision as well as a
co-equal person. Meanwhile, we follow Jean-Paul Sartre’s idea on freedom based on his
existentialist background. For Sartre, freedom lies in the human person’s conscious awareness that
she is “thrown” in this world prior to her choice and that from here she has to make a choice to make
up her own life, like a project. And that this project entails a responsibility toward another life,
another project. Last, we conclude with a discussion on Axel Honneth’s view of freedom as
essentially social. For Honneth, the individual freedom, which liberalism keeps on emphasizing
cannot be the full picture of freedom. This is because if freedom is the capacity for self-
determination, then one has to acknowledge that self-determination doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
The capacity to determine oneself is possible because there are surrounding selves that enable one
to do so. So, for Honneth, freedom is self-determination alongside external selves, hence, social.
Thus, the goal of our presentation is simple: that we become oriented to a multi-dimensional outlook
of freedom.

Immanuel Kant’s Conception of Liberal Autonomy

For what is meant by the liberal conception of freedom?

For Kant, liberal autonomy then is a full expression of the self’s governing rational power. But to be
sure, the term “liberal” has become as common as any word in our ordinary lives. Usually, and this is
the colloquial understanding of it, one understanding of liberalism states that to be liberal is to hold a
position which may be contrary to what is already assumed in our common practices or in the
conventions of a specific community. More specifically, it connotes that a liberal mind tends to
deviate from common viewpoints. And most often it stands away from the latter, as if to say, “Hey,
my judgment about things are better off when drawn from myself alone than when based on other
people’s solicited positions, no matter how solicited they may be.” Or to put it in the positive sense,
the liberal person only consents to a certain decision or idea, for instance, if all the terms that are
being agreed upon already pass through her qualified independent way of thinking. In any of these
cases, the excessive trust in the self’s capacity for independent judgment and decision making is the
foundation of this liberal attitude. And this manifests most of the time when one is engaged in either
epistemic inquiry or moral discernment.

Liberalism found both its full theoretical inception and articulation in the Modern Time, most
specifically, in the work of the GermanEnlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant (Kant, 2006). To
note, starting with Kant, we can now narrow down our discussion on the scope of the origin of the
so-called liberal viewpoint. For Kant, there are two important components of the theory of
liberalism: one is moral; the other, epistemological. This means that when considering the liberal
position, we must also consider the nuances of the scope that this concept covers. Holding on to
liberalism makes us think that we are entitled to the spaces of independent individual justifications
for either speech-act or actions committed. In liberalism, every person always has a say about
literally everything.

So for instance, if I claim that stealing is morally unacceptable, I know, for sure, that I am obliged to
justify or defend my claim. At the same time, I also must recognize that other individuals can
disprove my claim depending on the convincing capacity of their counter-rebuttals. At the level of
discourse, at least, the liberal expression always embodies the character of being free from outside
imposition, although it remains also true that indispensable criticisms are always defensible too.
Again, she needs not consult other people or any established cultural institution when adjudicating
either epistemologically or morally.

Further, Kant’s liberalism is a theoretical tool, which posits an existence of a “universal subject” or “a
transcendental ego” who possess the capacity of understanding how the physical nature emerges
from its basic material components and can predict her movements (McCarthy, 1994, pp. 472-473).
To wit, we can think of this “universal subject” as a reference to each and every human person we
deal with every day. But what makes this universal subject a “transcendental one” is her capacity to
abstract or detach from the surrounding contexts when drawing upon decisions about important
things. Equipped with a rational capacity, the human person is raised to the level of an idea and now
calls herself a “transcendental ego.” Therefore, in exercising her freedom, that is, in other word
“autonomy,” the ego strips itself of all of its attachments to the world. When deciding what is right
from wrong, she summons the conceptual themes on her mind as bases for her decisions. The
transcendental subject then is the host for the perfect exercise of the rational capacity, viz., the
capacity to talk about things or events and ideas rationally. These ultra-powerful cognitive templates
Kant calls “the categories of the human understanding” (Kant, 2007, pp. 95-110). Further, the most
important thing to consider is that for Kant the transcendental subject treats itself to be autonomous
or self-sufficing.

The autonomous subject then follows only the command, which is issued by and from her very self.
This is the full expression of rationality: to be certain about the rectitude of a decision or an action,
one has to consult only the voice of her own reason and none other. This entails an abandonment of
the instinctual inclinations that resulted in the trickling up of a desire. Kant would want us not to give
in to our desires. Rather we have to submit our desires to the scrutiny of our reason. Only in this
manner can our decisions become discretion themselves. What this means is that when we weigh
things up, we must always consider that other people are involved in the discerning moment itself. It
may be true that other people are important although we do not really have to abide by every wish
(either explicit or subtle) that the other would want us do them as favor, for instance.

Thus, for Kant, liberal autonomy is submission to the self-made duty founded on independent
decision-making guided by one’s own capacity for understanding. Here, “deontology” is born.
According to Michael Sandel, deontology refers to the adherence to the call of duty (Sandel,
2009, pp. 31-35). And this duty issues from human reason, not from the varying instinctual interplay
in each human person. The highest human expression is the fulfillment of his duty to God and
humanity, or as what Kant calls “the starry heavens above and the moral law within.” Only when one
is able to deny her pleasures for the sake of carrying out her duty can one truly exercise the full
expression of her freedom. As for Kant, freedom, then, manifests in the exercise of one’s duty.

But if there is this duty that embodies our freedom, it is what Kant calls, “the categorical
imperative.” It is the duty that sets no condition. There are three expressions of this. Let me
however highlight what I think are most important formulations. The first one states, “Act in such a
way that the maxim of your actions can become a universal law.” It means that upon doing
something, one has to consider whether what she is about to do qualifies to be everybody’s moral
law. She has to think whether she could accept the same action if and when other people would do
the same. To illustrate, suppose that one is about to steal. Deliberating with the Kantian categorical
imperative, she has to think if she could also by far accept other people stealing. If in her right
decision, she would allow other people to steal then she will approve stealing as acceptable. In this
case, stealing becomes a universal moral law. But I guess nobody in her right mind would say that
stealing is right nor would there anyone who would promote stealing as a universal morality. So,
needless to say, stealing is not acceptable as a universal law. The other one goes, “Always treat the
human person whether in your own person or that of another as ends and not simply as means.”
The idea beneath this norm is simple: it would be not right to consider human persons as mere tools
to use in furthering one’s interest. The reason for this is because according to Kant treating human
persons as mere tools violates their dignity as man.

In the end, what we’ve got thus far are these are beautifully crafted moral duties which for Immanuel
Kant are compass to exercising our human freedom.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existential Freedom

“The essence of the human being,” says Jean-Paul Sartre, “is suspended in his freedom” (Sartre
2003, p. 25). Put another way, freedom is intrinsic in the being of man who is “being-for-itself” (ibid.,
p. 78). For Sartre, freedom lies in the person’s being conscious of her being in a life that she never
even chose to be born into and manifests in her responsible response to her daily encounter with the
Other without necessarily giving in as a hostage by the Other. Freedom rests on the realization that
we exists and from here we create the meaning of our life. And this is the characteristic of human
freedom, one which proceeds from his nature as being conscious of his own being, as a “for-itself.”

The “being-for-itself” refers exclusively to the human person. It further means that the human person
is the only kind of being who is conscious of its own, even conscious about its own consciousness.
But as being-for-itself, man first exists as an “entity.” An entity is anything that exists, for instance, a
chair, book, hammer, or guitar, etc. In other words, everything that occupies space in both the visible
and invisible dimension of the physical world, as well as in the apparently accessible regions of the
psychological domain, is an entity. And according to Sartre, an entity manifests a specific “facticity,”
or the recognizable feature of the thing that is “there”―“a there-being” (ibid., pp. 79-80, 239).
Following this short inference, we can now say that the person as an entity is its own facticity. So,
the first condition of human freedom is her being-there, that is, “presence” (ibid., p. 85).

However, to be present is one thing, and to be conscious of this very presence is another. And yet
the for-itself is both present and conscious of this very presence. “Being-conscious-of-itself,” then, is
the other character of the human person. Better yet, the human person is the only self-conscious
entity among other entities existing in the natural world. And this self-awareness enables her to
apprehend a self-image and prescribe guidance for her actions. Other entities such as chairs, tables,
animals, and plants don’t have the same kind of consciousness that man enjoys. These other
entities than the human person Sartre calls “being-in-itself”.

The in-itself exists in a variety of ways, animate and inanimate alike. The fullness of existence then
is made explicit by the fact that things exist or that everywhere, there is being. Fortunately, though,
man can account for all of these existents. So without man, there is no world. Setting its literary
connotation aside, without man, Sartre says, even the idea of the world is not possible. Just a note,
the term world here can be taken in two connotations: one connotation refers to the world as the
objective physical nature or the physical environment; the other refers to the interpersonal realm of
cultural relations whose members share fundamental assumptions about for instance, faith in
religion, observance of ethical laws, and implant these laws in the institutional spaces of the family or
in matters that pertain to kinship, etc. The human person holds these worlds in her consciousness.

Since then, the for-itself which, according to Sartre, is “the ontological foundation of consciousness”
becomes the origin of both being and nothingness, at least at the head level (ibid., p. 77). For one
thing, the creation of being doesn’t have to be taken in the sense of productive work only. By
productive work, I mean the creative power of the human person who turns something into
something else by employing either manual techniques or with modern technological tools. (An
instance of this productive world is carpentry where the raw material wood is turned into a furniture.)
For Sartre, the creation of being first occurs in consciousness. The for-itself decides what becomes
of an in-itself: the former either destroys, that is, “nihilates” or transforms the latter. Either one, the in-
itself remains at the mercy of the for-itself.

This is where human freedom comes into the scene. As we see, freedom can be fully understood
once we think along what Sartre refers to as the presence of the for-itself in the world. This presence
he beautifully calls the “upsurge” of the for-it-self as “being-in-the-world,” as “being-thrown-into-the-
world” (Sartre, p. 96). The human person’s “thrownness” suggests the fact that the human person
exists, and that this very existence, regardless of fortune, is not even a choice. This means that prior
to our birth, we never were given the options or decisions or even the rights to determine what kind
of life to live. And even if we were, we would still find ourselves on the crossroad of making decisions
whether to continue to live or not. And just so we know, Sartre says, “In one sense, choice is always
possible; what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must also realize that, if I
decide not to choose, that still constitutes a choice” (Sartre, 2008, p. 44).

Hence, freedom is thrownness into the world. “We are immediately thrust into the world,” as Satre
says (ibid., p. 42). The creative power of consciousness opens up the infinite possibility for actions
which Sartre calls “absolute freedom of choice” (ibid., p. 43). What to do with one’s life and how to
do it is now up to the for-itself. If she decides to pursue life in this or that way, she is left on her own
just as she always is on her own. While this does not discount the fact that other people’s decisions
or admonitions also do affect our own plans, it still is almost a truism that the advices we generate
from other people remain dependent on our dispensation. The thing is suggestions either make
sense or not. If they don’t, fine; if they do, good. They come and go, anyway. What stays is the one
who dispenses with these suggestions. For Sartre, there is this “Ego” which remains like a resilient
residue, an ego that cuts across time while making itself up for its very choice (Sartre, 2003, p. 114).

The for-itself, the one who dispenses with choice, enjoys the fullness of its freedom until something
breaches up on its individual horizon, until the other human being confronts me as another
consciousness and for-itself. “There is a relation,” Sartre says, “of the for-itself with the in-itself in the
presence of the Other” (ibid., 361). This means that while I―who myself already am a for-
itself―have the exclusive proprietorship over my life and alone have the rights to decide on what to
do with it, I cannot but acknowledge the same fact that there are other individualities who get to be
affected by my own decisions, too. Other people are involved in my life and I have to recognize this
fact otherwise I’d be living in “bad faith” or “an escape from facticity” (ibid., pp. 48-49).

What turns out then is that the very consideration of this other human being delimits what earlier was
a wide coverage of my freedom. It deprives me of some peculiar chance for human expressions. In
this way, I cannot anymore pursue all things that I would want to do because there is always a
confrontation by the other. It’s funny because even when I think of the Other, I notice that some
ideas on my mind slip into the background of my attention. For instance, suppose that I am having
dinner with colleagues. On this occasion, it is just customary that those present would exchange
pleasantries/niceties and other stuff with one another. Here, politeness is the standard of the
conversational tact. But in any case, there are important guests who don’t show up for whatever
reason they may have. The absence of these enigmatic guests is a “scandal” to consciousness. It is
a scandal because I find it fascinating to observe that there are instances when our conscious gaze
are hooked on a particular absence. In this event, I am fixated on the persons who are not around,
thereby neglecting those who now are present. With my consciousness fixing its eyes on the absent
individualities, all else who I see, encounter, or even talk with at the dining table shrink into an
unimportance. The other guests who I seek of hold my attention captive. In an elegant passage,
Sartre puts: “…it is relation to every living man that every human reality is present or absent as the
ground of an original presence” (ibid., p. 279).

As a scandal to my consciousness, the Other then is the limitation of my freedom. I am now held
captive by the Other. In the things that I do, there is a consideration of the other person. This
situates me in a reverse relational stance. In my everyday dealing with the Other, I realize that I am
creating this centerless relationship already. It is a kind of relating where I don’t hold the central
command. Instead, it is the kind of relating with which I realize that my actions actually don’t
originate from a pre-established sense of autonomy but are seen as mere response to how the
Other person influences my decision. In a way, the acceptance of the Other is the acceptance that
there is also an external source that dispenses with my everyday actions. For Sartre, this makes me
to realize that I am a “being-with-another-for-itself.” “Therefore the Other penetrates me to the heart.
I cannot doubt him without doubting myself since ‘self-consciousness is real only in so far as it
recognizes its echo (and its reflection) in another’” (ibid., p. 237). Sartre calls this “the twin upsurge”
of simultaneous “for-itself and for-Others” (ibid., p. 282). I who myself am a for-itself is also a for-
Others. We both limit our being through relating.

Thus, in the encounter with the Other, my freedom starts to bear responsibility and ceases to be
absolute.

Axel Honneth on Social Freedom

The term social freedom connotes two things: first, it connotes that there is a kind of self-expression
that stands out before the surrounding external selves; second, it may refer to a standing out of
collective individuality itself. Either way, one thing is made clear: that there is a relationship between
individual manifestations of freedom with the collective ones. I am neither saying that the relationship
is always smooth, that the individual will always have to adjust to the demand of the collective nor do
I mean that there is always a tension between individual and collective expressions of freedom. Far
from that, I would like to find a way out of this perfect disjunction. What I would like to show here is
that individual freedom can be married with the collective one – that there is an overlapping
relationship between my freedom and the freedom of other people.

According to Axel Honneth (2010), social freedom is fundamentally “being with oneself in another”
(p. 26). In other words, freedom is the capacity to self-realization, a capacity that we acquire through
our constantly being in a relationship with the people around us. The realization of oneself is
possible because there are other selves that enable us to. What this means is a little bit not-so-easy
to understand. But what exactly does this short phrase tell us? Suppose that we consider as a fact
that there are human persons. Is it not that these human persons were already there prior to our
birth? Further, can it not be held as true that during our earlier days or years in life, we were
extremely dependent on how these other individuals would treat, nurture, and take good care of us?
And is it not that even if we now find ourselves capable already of doing a lot of things or say
performing complicated tasks, does it not remain to be equally true that our present capabilities are
positive outcomes to how our immediate external human environment shape us? Mind me: this kind
of questioning can go eternal.
Further, for Honneth, we are capable of doing a lot of things in our life because we have supports
around us. The supports we receive from our parents and friends, for example, are instrumental to
the formation of our sense of self. In other words, there is no pure self who existed on the face of the
planet out of nowhere. Our coming into this life is already predated by an undeniably porous human
existence wherein everyone bumps into one another and affects each other in terms of a lot of
things. This explains too why we can only do so much despite the inexhaustible sense of freedom
that we can draw from the inside. Our individual freedom, because its formation or development
owes so much to the Others’ freedom, has to be constrained in order for the collective to continue
flourish. Social freedom then manifests in the kind of active participation by an individual person to
activities that promote the commonweal regardless whether the outcome limits the very exercise of
individual freedom. As Honneth beautifully puts, (social) freedom “consists in self-restraint for the
sake of others” (ibid., pp. 26, 51.). Interestingly, this kind of understanding of freedom can be related
to how we conduct ourselves in relation to our loved ones in family and in friendship. In the said
relations, we can observe that a self-imposition of limiting actions is necessary in order to preserve
at least the existing relationship. In which case, the social freedom which falls at least in nuclear
family level already is possible. At the organizational level, although much more difficult to maintain,
still cooperative expressions or freedom poses necessary manifestations. Either in the intimate
spaces in the family or in the instrumental regions of group dynamics in the work place, the idea of
placing oneself in another necessitates more ideally to time and again maintain social cohesion
(ibid., p. 70).

With this consideration of freedom, the individual person, as Ashley Taylor shows, will be able to
develop “a shared identity with the group” (Taylor, 2015, p. 133). As to how, the answer is easy: self-
image is not a given phenomenon. When we were yet kids, we never had the capacity to grasp the
way we deal with our own and other kids. However, despite this incapacity, there was one thing that
already worked in the underground of our psychical capacities, that is, our human emotions or say
attachments to other people. For Taylor, this attachment is the basis for “the disposition of empathy,”
which later on will develop into a certain kind of affection for the other (ibid., p. 135).

What is then the implication of both Honneth’s and Taylor’s views of freedom? For one thing, it is
undeniable that freedom is an individual disposition toward whatever this individual may consider as
good, appropriate or just. But in as much as the individual is a social datum too that needs to be
understood from a holistic point of view, then our understanding of individual freedom or freedom in
general has to entertain a theoretical clarification. Since the individual cannot help but deal with
other individuals in her daily affairs at home, in school, in the workplace or even in her religious
affiliations or ties, she should always consider that her freedom always affects the Other. This very
encounter between two freedoms lead us to a theoretical juncture where compromise is at least
necessary in order for both freedoms to go and continue their daily subsistence. Of course, this does
not mean that cooperation between two freedoms is not possible. What we only mean here is that at
times when such confrontation exists, it is always our task to identify which exercise of freedom
leads to social cohesion and which one is destructive to it. In this manner, the need for social
freedom resulting in compromise or compromise resulting in social cohesion can be justified. With
this, both Honneth’s and Taylor’s view of freedom deserves serious attention.

Conclusion

So far, we are able to discuss at least in the form of an outline the nature of freedom and the
necessity of recasting its relevance. What the presentation above shows is that the recasting of the
consideration of freedom delivers us from the arbitrariness of instinctual determinism. On a side
note, this achievement elevates us a layer higher than the brutes. The three characterizations of
freedom, namely, the liberal, existential, and social can only provide us an outline regarding how we
should conduct our very own freedom. To be sure, individual freedom must not be sacrificed for the
sake of the collectivity but it is also a beauty to ponder that sometimes to sacrifice our individual
freedom for the sustenance of the collectivity is necessary. In the end, by way of revisiting the
historical events as mentioned in the earlier section, we are compelled to think that there is a great
danger in the excessive trust in the power of our individual freedom, and that social freedom is
powerful enough to overthrow the former.

[1] Among the possible literature to support my observation, I take it from Jean-Paul Sartre’s
criticism of Sigmund Freud’s recovery of the unconscious. Sartre is disgusted rather “shocked” by
the resort to the unconscious not necessarily because it eliminates the possibility of subjectivity but
because according to Sartre the return to the unconscious cannot annihilate the fact that such a
return is only possible because consciousness is always at play.