Fundamental Option and Liberty of Choice

Pierre Fransen

UNITY OF MAN

 Man not a soul lost; a spirit imprisoned in foreign matter. Man is intrinsically one: a spiritualized body, or,
more correctly, a corporeal person.
 Soul is not a body; like two poles in a unique magnetic field lines of force cross each other and continually
interpenetrate one another.

PRIMACY OF THE SPIRIT

 Body and soul, two opposing forces, practically equivalent, different, but purely complementary.
 The spirit still keeps an inalienable initiative. The image of God which He is in His creative action has
implanted in my whole being, is most deeply imprinted in this spiritual centre. It is the centre of existential
density that these features of the divine image.

A DOUBLE LIBERTY
 God is love. This fundamental power of love constitutes my person.
 For liberty is all a power of spontaneous gift form one person to another, being choice, election, judgment
and free will.
 Man is in double liberty; a corporeal spirit, bodies within a depth of life which far exceeds our earthly life.
 Free will, the liberty we all know form experience.

FUNDAMENTAL LIBERTY
 Free will, that liberty means of which man can to a certain degree order of his life.
 To become a truly a man, this liberty must be directed by something deeper, more stable, supported and
directed by a profound and total commitment by a fundamental option in which man express wholly with all
that man wish to be his world and God.

UNITY OF THESE TWO FORMS OF LIBERTY

 Two forms of liberty have no separate existence.
 Fundamental option is not one particular action, not a matter of determining in the first instant and freely
developing all the concrete implications.
 Fundamental option not a concrete action; an orientation freely imposed on our whole life. Humble human
actions rediscover their interiority and profound unity, their human meaning and nobility.
 Essential option like the soul of our daily actions and without those acts it does not exist.

PSYCHOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS
 We can train and teach children, or train them with consummate art; an ideal and a basic orientation.
 Truth provides many solutions for many modern problems.
 It is in this union of a real basic aspiration and multiple occupations inherent in our human life. That the
secret of life resides. Man is thus made and he can only make success of his life by accepting himself.

THE EXERCISE OF THIS LIBERTY

 Human situation is rather more delicate; Man is in spirit and person in this temporal and material world.
1. The fundamental option is only expressed in time.
 Liberty no bestowed but we have to conquer it, to deserve it.
 Every action which is truly free, every good action, fully responding to the truth of what we
are. Every bad action false and deceitful, freely degrades be, frees us further.
 To be a person, to be free is a lifetime task.

2. Our fundamental opinion is psychologically conditioned by the Influence of others.

 Man is linked to other by his body and his whole psychism; he receives as much as he gives.
 It is therefore important that man should possess a certain force of character, stability in his
intentions, and an amount of endurance in difficulties.
 Man also needs an atmosphere of optimism, confidence, and a nervous and affective
equilibrium. To express himself in a fundamental option.
 Health of body is important in total exercise liberty of freedom.
 Total liberty expressed in network of determinisms influences foreign to my own free will.
Conclusion:
 Man is therefore placed by God in a determined situation of which the multiple incidences are far beyond
his personal initiative.
 Determinisms; foreign good or bad influences possesses depths of divine source of life, a force of activity.
 Man is created in the image of God is love and above all, the reflection of the first love.
 Man reposes in the hands of God and God sustains him in existence.
 Merleau-Ponty’s Notion of Freedom
Manuel B. Dy Jr.

Sartre
 I cannot objectify myself; my consciousness cannot identify itself with an invalid consciousness or
cripple-consciousness.
 Consciousness not a thing but a freedom. It is inconceivable that man is free only to certain of my
actions and determined in others.
 Freedom is either absolute or non-existent.

MAN’S LIMITATION TO FREEDOM

 Man’s will is limitation to freedom. Freedom the ground and source of all meanings.
 Limitation of freedom is from freedom itself.

MERLEAU-PONTY’S REJECTION TO SARTRE

 There is free choice of freedom comes into play by taking stand, if it sees a value in a situation. In
Sartre it is already absolute and required.

TWO INTENTIONS
1. Explicit Intention and General Intention.
 Explicit Intention must be distinguished form general intentions-the meaning that
fills my surroundings.
 General Intentions are in the sense that they are not of man’s own making.

MERLEAU-PONTY’S
 Examines certain dispositions which are not under control of freedom.
 Devotes a great deal of attention to the historical situation. Free acts stand against the
background of history.
 There is an exchange of this individual and general existence in history. No consciousness to
assume direct history.
 A zone of generalized existence, a medium, a natural world, a place for all possible themes and
styles. The generality and individuality of the subject are not to be thought of as two conceptions
either of which is to be chosen; they are but stages, two faces of a unique structure of the subject.
 Freedom does not start from nothing, refusal to be anything is still a form of being.

WHAT IS FREEDOM?
 To be born is both of the world and to be born in to the world. World is constituted but not
completely; neither pure determinism characteristic of the thing nor the absolute choice of
freedom.
 According to Husserl, there is a field of freedom and conditioned freedom.

IN FREEDOM
 Man takes up present and in doing so draw together the past and transform it, Choice is
always based on certain givenness; the significance of nature and history does not limit access
to the world on contrary it is means of entering into communication.
 THE QUESTION ON MAN’S FREEDOM

Jose A. Cruz

 Freedom is always confused with man’s capacity to do anything he wants or his capacity to say “no” to a
request or to have his last say on things.
 The statement above describes a perfect meaning for freedom; but on further reflection they are ambivalent
as they can be.
 Freedom cannot be explained or defined on the level of everyday ordinary experience. One must learn to
meet the problem at a deeper level of reflection.
 To be aware of the steps involved in the whole process leading towards a decision is called “Choice.”
 Values are and cannot be looked at in isolation from the total paradigm or ideal.
 Every choice is based on a value, a perfect for the self to be attained or exercised. Secondly, a value is
never to be taken in isolation. It must integrate within an ideal towards which the total aspires to become.
 The two-fold level of free choice, the horizontal choices and vertical choices.
 Horizontal choice; much more on the ID consciousness and Vertical choice; much more on the super
egoistic side of consciousness.

MAN’S QUEST FOR FREEDOM

RAINIER R.A IBANA
WHAT IS FREEDOM?
The definition of freedom has traditionally been delimited by proponents of determinism.
Hard determinists
 even contend that there is no freedom. They claimed that human freedom can be manipulated or
programmed. Man should not be determined with the physical world; man must be free from the
physical world itself.
Platonic Refutation of Determinism.
 Determinists claim that even if man is free to choose, he is not free to choose what he wants to choose.
(soft determinism.)
Soft determinism
 B. F Skinner; human freedom is irrelevant to the development of the human person because human
behavior can ultimately be conditioned by means of rewards and punishments. And human behavior
can be trained by means of “reinforcement.”
 Kantian distinction between determination by natural necessity and the freedom attributed to man; in
order to account fir any kind of responsible human behavior; degree of reward and punishments
correspond to the degree of responsibility.
 Freedom must be presupposed by determinists; to argue for determinism presupposes that the
determinist is free to argue for determinism.
 Freedom is the cause that determines human behavior,

WHY IS FREEDOM IMPORTANT?

 It is more interesting to ask is the concrete direction on which this power to choose is aimed.
 Without concrete embodiment of an actual choice, freedom will only remain as a potential power.

Proper Direction of freedom

1. is to first ascertain the essential nature of man; freedom must be directed to conform with it.;
the best choice, the choice that promotes the essence of man; the worst choice, the choice is
not free choice at all.

 History of philosophy exhibited too many ways of conceiving essence of man.

1. man as: homo-sapiens, homo-theos, homo-faber, homo-ludens.
2. it created a conflict that in history of philosophy that they couldn’t seem to agree on one thing.
3. modern philosophers attempted to start all over again.
 Husserl decried, “Blinded by naturalism of humanistic science have completely neglected
even to the pose the problem of a universal and pure science of the spirit and to seek
theory of the essence of the spirit as spirit.
 Dewey, fundamental postulate of the discussion is that isolation of any one factor, no
matter how strong its working at a given time.
 Existentialist, resonate this claim whenever they emphasize that: freedom, refers to the
condition of human existence rather than to a characteristic of human nature.
Philosophy could no longer be dismissed as faddish
 Radical cry for freedom: Absolute Freedom and the Terror of the Enlightenment.
 Western man after historical period became more conscious then and he will seek to be free from nature,
fellowman, society and God.
Karl Marx legacy
 Human liberation could not be descended from the sky, but must be achieved by transforming the
alienating conditions of human life by means of human labor.
 Starting point of freedom not to be found by contemplating abstract essences, but fulfilled by means of
praxis.
 Distinction in levels of alienation.
1. “in conceptual terms” as “alienated labor”
2. alienation itself need not to be reduced to only one essential determination.
3. Karol Wojtyla, “the root of alienation of human beings by human beings is contained in the neglect
of depth of participation contained in the subject, CLOSENESS and the relevant assimilation of
people in humanity as basic community.
 Wojtyla’s solidification of inherent CLOSENESS of human beings. Instead of class struggle, Wojtyla’s
vehicle for social transformation: “Solidarity Movements” and “Participatory Democracies.”

1. Wojtylan’s perspective; it does not necessarily follow that one and only way to attain liberation is by
means of a revolutionary overthrow of those who do not share in the essence of man as homo-
faber.
2. Political methodology, the more positive affirmation of the human being qua Being in terms of
solidarity and participation. Opposition a very, very valuable part of solidarity.
3. An attempt to grasp more wholistic conception and richer experience of humanity.
4. every human is called upon in the process of liberation. Freedom is therefore intimately connected
with man’s being,
HOW IS FREEDOM POSSIBLE?

 Being is the source of freedom is still not enough.

 There is an empty-fullness-kind-of-matrix-in this being conceptual frameworks which can only frame for the
sake of highlighting a particular feature of reality.
 Difficult for a man to be with his own innermost being, distracted from the intentional content of his being.
These intentionalities must be recognized and accepted as his legitimate part.
 Human being who conforms objectivity of these values benefits from the liberation offered by being able to
attain higher levels of actualization.
 Frredom is always intentional and intending, reaching and striving out for good.
 Man is driven to realize the freedom to will the good in his concrete acts of choosing.
 If human being is to keep his freedom, he needs objective sense of justice.
 In social philosophy, there must be a structural order in the society in such a way that the higher values are
not subordinated to the lower ones.
 Realistic needs and means is imperative as starting point of this notion and freedom and justice. The
freedom and justice is due to the unique personality matrix of individuals….
 Classic Values, freedom need not to be in contradiction with justice and vice-versa,
 Destructive dilemma between freedom and justice only happens if justice is stated in crude populist terms
and freedom is stated in individualistic assertions.
 Constructive dilemmas, dilemma between freedom and equality, accommodate positive elements from the
parties of deliberation.
 Balance between freedom and justice can be made possible not only in terms of individual beings but also
through socialism.
 It is through dialectic interplay between the just organization of the personal and social structures vis-à-vis
the objective order of goods that authentic freedom could really become possible.

EPILOGUE:
 Freedom is important, it is the source which makes human behavior possible. It cannot be
reduced to any form of determinisms, it is the cause that made determined conditions of freedom
possible,
 It is the dynamic drive that propels human beings towards liberation of his total being from any
form of alienation
 Wojtylan’s exercise of participation, human freedom made possible by being co-conditioned by a
sense of justice.
 Freedom must be transformed in the mode of justice. It takes it various forms a source, the
dynamic drive of liberation from alienation, and as the important co-condition for the possibility of
justice.
 Man as Absolute
Rudolph H. Visker S.J

INTRODUCTION
 The inner need for grounding which was found present in the experience if the subject’s free acts. Need is
considered in the free-act of the I-thou interaction.
 The widening if the ground of the free act does not lessen the autonomy of the subject, whereas it
increases its feeling of making sense.
 A new phenomenon, human interaction proves to be a first answer to the need for groundings the free act,
it proves to remain dissatisfactory.
 Line of argumentation will take form of final consequence; the phenomena of human existence find their
interpretation in the subject’s dialectic bond with other beings.

1.) DESCRIPTION OF THE FEELING OF DISSATISFACTION

 Much needed in this task of describing; the method of reaching awareness of a transcendence. Here comes
the need of secondary reflection.
 Indistinct sense of total existence refers to body always a body. Secondary reflection is necessary to
emphasize the importance of considering feelings.
 The massive sense of total existence comes in very useful to warn us that not just any experience of
dissatisfaction at a level if intersubjectivity can be expected to be a starting-point for a new kind of
awareness.
 The level of intersubjectivity will enable us to describe the feeling of dissatisfaction into more detail.
 The interaction of appeal and response, will dialogue and manifest in both directions a desire for more
meaning and value.
 There is more than a feeling of disillusionment; there various sources of dissatisfaction, (a) the “you” which
the other was at first to me, may fade away into a “he/she.” (b) I may have idealized the other, and reality
now proves me wrong. (c) The other is being taken away from me by death. All three reasons may be
entirely “inculpable shortcomings.”
 It is no good that man should be alone; The phenomena of human existence are interpreted only in dialectic
bond; the subject ‘is-receiving” and “is giving.”

COMPONENT ELEMENTS OF COMPLAINT

 In his need for a partner, the subjects keeps looking for “you”
 The human person can be called in this regard “a Born actor”; needs an audience.
 Fellowmen do not satisfy as spectators; (a) Acting means giving oneself; the audience listens but
person wants a more total kind of absorption into them. (b) actor likes to receive an applause.
Person wants a more total applause than men can give.

 Dissatisfaction stems from the fact that nobody can assert man as man would really want to be
asserted. And nobody can receive man as man really wants in his responding.
 The demands on “you’ are humanly irreconcilable. The person says each time in one and the same
sentence two things that cannot be combined in a “you.”
 The kind of knowing which is called believing and willing which is called loving; and both activities
involve the partners as subject-being.
 The feeling of dissatisfaction at the level of intersubjectivity says” it must be complete.” “You” can
only receive of myself is not enough, a “you” also can only affirm part of me.
 The human impossibility of the demand in these two questions. (1) can the other know me
completely as I am, without being me? (2) And, suppose he is me, can he still know me as another?

2.) INTERPRETATION OF THE FEELING OF DISSATISFACTION

 A.) Why decline the acceptance of ultimately absurdity of man?

 Ultimately, our existence does not make absolute sense. It is the conviction that, if so far all the
phenomena which we came across were-for their interpretation-pointing to a dialectic bond of being
between the subject and other beings there is good reason for thinking that here it will not be different.
Persuading force which leads us to conclude to a third level of dialectic bond is given with very way
in which man has become understood up to this point. The phenomena of the human person point to
existence in dialectic bond as to their interpretation, the new phenomenon of dissatisfaction at the level of
intersubjectivity points to a dialectic bond. An ultimate absurdity of the person does not square with the
method which was established itself in the meantime as reliable.

 B.) What certainty is there regarding a new source of value?

Precisely in massive and total interaction with my fellowmen, still unfulfilled, still longing –which is
undeniably there- does not bring to me a wishful thinking, ; thus resulting to an answer to the feeling of
dissatisfaction.
Marcel confronts us with an attitude in which there is no doubt at all that the partner, arising as a
need to give sense to the subject’s feeling of dissatisfaction, is truly there for me.
Secondary reflection while not yet being itself faith, succeeds at least in preparing or fostering what
I am ready to call the spiritual setting of faith. Here it the term faith for a reaching of the awareness of God,
thus applying it to a narrower area than we have done.
 C.) Does a new source of value exist?
The existence of a new source should be first proven empirically. “There can only be a real fidelity
the empirical level with respect to a thou having an objective and objectifiable reality”; “A logical
demonstration of God’s existence does not such a demonstration, after all, have to come first.”

Difference for Objective Existence and Relatedness to Subject

The person in activity of knowing, this brought us in contact with an attitude of mind
for which the reality of a world-out-there” because the assumed model was one of tow entities that
can be taken in themselves.
The questions of knowing and loving have demonstrated the same sequence of priority it
was not a matter of first proving objectively the existence of the other, and only then an appeal or
response would follow. The question of the related existence, or of “the-other-as-felt” has offered
itself again to us in the first place.
The conclusions: (1) the mere fact of being there appears to be something one thinks of
only in the second place. (2) the subject’s fidelity to the other brings about the other’s presence’
infidelity to the other remove his presence.

The certainty that our method of describing and interpreting human existence in dialectic bond with other
beings is more than our method of describing and interpreting human existence in dialectic bond with other
beings is more than a tool that just happens to work.

It is an ontological need that affects my existence as a value to be realized—by the very fact of its being
there beyond interhuman dimension.

Two solutions in identifying a new source.

1. Pascalian Wager- stems from Blaise Pascal, it is reasonable to risk acting on the
chance that God does exist; with more certainty than the one who finds it
reasonable to place his bets on existence rather than on non-existence of a Reality
of a “vertical” nature.
2. Hypostasized “Subjective Datum”- it is of the thought seen arising in the mind
alone, and, thus, lacking in reality, being illusory. The subjectivity of a feeling; it is
that feeling which is one with the awareness of one’s existence as a value to be
 realized. This dynamism is not to be mistaken for a fanciful wishing. In manifesting
itself as the “being-toward” of I being, even beyond intersubjectivity it indicates a
pattern, a trend of all subject being it is what Johann called, “objectivity without
objectification,” the question of personification (hypostatizing) of what is fully
believed to be there as fulfillment of one’s need of more value, as a value to be
realized.

 D.) Further identification of new source

1. Is this ultimate source subject or object?

It is a certain prolongation of myself as a kind if being, as a thing among things, as a
structure necessarily implicated in a larger structure. The source from where a new answer to my
search comes cannot well be an object.
We can safely say it is a Thou, a being that can be spoken to. Johann speaks of an
“absolute subjectivity, who is more completely within the self than the self itself.
Thou, “deeper within in me than my innermost depths.” That is, at long last, a “you” that is
both able and willing to know and assert me even more than I myself could.
There are two trends of religious attitude distinguishable in line with a stress on one or the
other side: Interiority predominates in Eastern religions, and transcendency in monotheistic
religions.

2. To what extent can this Absolute Thou be spoken to?

We cannot say it is addressed only after having been met “person to person” at one level of
human interaction we are used to that sequence of: first having a sign of the other’s identity and then
we find out more and more who he/she really is.
Marcel’s notion of fidelity; “the active perpetuation of presence, the renewal of benefits.” Although
this fidelity is strictly to be understood as related to persons, yet the following analogy may be help to
express its being a vital process., a continuous growth. Marcel expresses our encounter with the
Absolute Thou in the imagery of “a face that was shown to us before shrouded in veils.” Both face and
shrouded have to be maintained integrally in describing and interpreting human existence in its
tendency beyond intersubjectivity. The face summarizes the conclusion that it has to be a Thou who
makes the search come true but the shrouded face indicates the present remoteness of final
recognition. The veil, if taken as image of ourselves in a searching phase, is a way toward as well as
separation from the subject’s Absolute Thou.

3. The Absolute Thou: an answer to man, appealing and responding.

It would the person is dependent on the condition that the other persons should exist. Not
this is that person, though they might be the most important or outstanding at anytime, but just persons
as such. It is different in the case of the absolute personality of God.
The above-being dependent as “gift to me” from the Absolute Thou is the dependence of
being totally supported. The being dependent on fellowmen is, in final resort, still an aspect of our
collective standing on our own feet.

E.) What does the acceptance of such a dialectic bond do to men?

1.) Plato and Aristotle – dealing with man in essence approach needed a
Trancensence Reality in order to answer the question what man is. Guardini
defines man as structural Being based upon interiority, spiritually determined and
creative .
2.) The need of the person to be affirmed by the Absolute Thou, that the subject can
only “come to full stature” when he is aware of this personal relation to the Thou
who remains to be His source of value.
3.) A new source of value for the subject manifests itself as a Thou to be given to and
to be had from.