Sunday, November 16, 2014
Freedom
Even though some people are not physically free. We are all free mentally, according to Sarte we as beings can never be not free. We spoke in class about mental freedom in different ways, the one that caught my attention the most is brain functions. If someone is on life support and is unresponsive with brain activity, then the only thing about him that is still laying there is his or her body. As long as you are able to use your brain, and are able to have that mental freedom, then you are truly a free being.
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ReplyDeleteFreedom is defined as having the right to act, think, or speak as one wishes. To say that we are free as long as we have the ability to think does not fulfill the concept of freedom. Having the ability to think as we wish, is only part of what freedom really consists of. If you are not given the option of being physically free even though your mind is, then only a portion of freedom is actually given. In a case scenario, if I was in prison and I believed I was free that doesn't actually make me a physically free agent; It is only the mind that is allowed to freely think whatever it desires to think. Therefore, I think freedom is subjective to the agent whom is given choices to.
I agree with what you say in that having freedom of thought is truly free. When you think about guys like Stephen Hawking, who are totally paralyzed and still do the things they do, you can't argue much on that point. I also think Maritza makes a good point. What if you were paralyzed and couldn't even type like Stephen Hawking, but you had full use of your mental functions? You could dream and think about things all day, but you could never express them with others. Can you say that is freedom when technically your thoughts are locked away in your head?
ReplyDeleteI agree with the author in the sense that we are free as long as we have the ability to think, however we may not be free to act on our thoughts. We definitely could act on our thoughts, but consequences are to follow depending on the action, of course. Anyone can think whatever they want but there may be outside influences affecting their course of action.
ReplyDeleteI think it is healthy to either voice or act rationally on what you’re thinking about. We’ve seen from the news that it’s not very healthy to keep everything bottled up. Generally, that’s when people crack and act irrationally, like school shootings and bombings. Most of the time that's someone who kept their thoughts and emotions inside themselves and were seeking attention. I think it’s important for people to talk about what their feeling and thinking in order to keep the stress level down.
So, everyone can and has the free will to think whatever they want. The issue arises when people don’t talk about their thoughts and don’t act on them in a rational fashion.