FREEDOM

OF THE
HUMAN
PERSON

Module 8
NATURE OF HUMAN FREEDOM
(EXISTENTIALISM )

– Existentialism is opposed to the idea that man has a fixed nature.

– Instead, it asserts that to understand man’s nature, one has go
beyond the claims of biology, physics, and psychology that man
is a substance with fixed properties or subject interacting in the
world of objects.
WHAT IS ANXIETY?
Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher and phenomenologist, disclosed
that the mood of anxiety reveals the nothing.

In anxiety, we say, “one feels ill at ease.” What is “it” that

makes “one” feel ill at ease? We cannot say what it is before
which one feels ill at ease. As a whole it is so for him. All
things and we ourselves sink into indifference. This is,
however, not in the sense beings as a whole that closes in on
us in anxiety oppresses us. We can get no hold on things. In
the slipping away of beings only this “no hold on things”
comes over us and remains. Anxiety reveals the nothing.
DETERMINISM:
UNDERMINING FREE CHOICE

-CASUAL DETERMINISM

-PHYSICAL DETERMINISM
CASUAL DETERMINISM
- It is incompatible with the notion of free will because it can
undermine free choice if past events will be revealed as the
cause of future actions and not really chosen by the
individual as a free agent.

PHYSICAL DETERMINISM
- Claims that since the body is physical , every event
involving the body is determined. According to this view,
given a set of determinate conditions in the brain and the
laws of nature, bodily movements are causally
determined. The state of the brain immediately before a
decision is made is what makes the person do a certain
act , and that decision is the only possible outcome at the
particular moment when the action is being done.
VALUE OF CHOICES IN
RELATION TO FREEDOM
– Freedom involves choice. It is man’s capacity to do otherwise. As Satre said, it
is through choice that man lives an authentic human life.

– Why is choice valuable?

– Why are people concerned about how determinism takes away the value of
humanity when they are prevented to choose?
NATURE OF THE CHOICES WE MAKE

ACT OF MAKING A CHOICE