The Land of the Free

Freedom is one hell of a bird. Keep it imprisoned inside a cage, and it will shriek its heart out until you have set it loose; and yet, no sooner have you set it free than it seeks to return to the cosiness of its former bondage. Or at least, that is the impression that I get when I read through various texts on the issue of 'freedom', starting from those of St Augustine to Karl Marx to Jean-Paul Sartre to J.B. Watson to B.F. Skinnner. (Note, by the way, that all of these are men, men who have made weighty declarations about the bondage of women, if not actually furthered it.) A historical survey of these writings will reveal that one group of activists, politicians, and writers exalt freedom 'to the skies', while another group is hell-bent on denying its very existence. As a guiding-thread into the labyrinthine caverns of these debates, one can hold on to a distinction between two notions of freedom, which I shall refer to here as 'Objective Freedom' and 'Subjective Freedom'.

Objective Freedom can be defined as the lack of external impediments towards the accomplishment of a certain task or an inter-connected set of goals, or the fulfillment of a specific end. Therefore, if these impediments are non-existent or have been removed, peacefully, legally, or violently, then you are --- in the objective sense --- free. For example, I do not have the objective freedom of being in New Zealand within the next twenty minutes, for we have (unfortunately?) not yet built any instrument that shall make such instant travel possible; I do have, however, the objective freedom of being in London in another two hours. Similarly, the claim of the British suffragettes was that women cannot be denied the objective freedom to vote; of (some of) the Indian 'freedom fighters' was that Indians must be given the objective freedom for self-rule; of many dissidents in the past was that people must have the objective freedom to practise their own religious and political beliefs; and of contemporary feminists is that governments must pass laws that will make it possible for women to enjoy the objective freedom, at the very least, of living in a world without gender discrimination. In short, when old man Rousseau declared, 'Man is born free, but is everywhere found in chains', he was primarily speaking about the objective freedom which (he believed that) humanity lacks.

Subjective freedom, on the other hand, is a much more delicate affair, and the philosophical terrain that various thinkers have tried to negotiate down the centuries is strewn with hidden minefields. Those who say that subjective freedom is real claim that we are subjectively free if we are able to choose whether or not to do something that we are objectively free to do; those who say that such subjective freedom is an illusion claim that we are not, in fact, free in this latter sense. I shall now describe, in greater detail, these two positions.

(A) Consider this hypothetical question : Are you free to commit suicide right now? In the objective sense, you are; all you need to do is, say, buy a bottle of cyanide, or find a knife, or get a gun. But are you free to do so in the subjective sense? Or consider two more questions : Are you free to kill your wife? and Are you free to burn down your house? Once again, objectively speaking, you may be free to do both, but whether or not you are free, subjectively speaking, to do so is another matter. (Note that the basic issue in this context is not 'morality'. Whether or not these actions are 'moral' is, indeed, a closely related type of question, but it is conceptually distinct from the type that we are considering here. We are not discussing what we ought to do, but whether we can do what we ought to.)

There is one group of thinkers who claim that you are subjectively free to do all of the above. You are indeed subjectively free to commit suicide right now, to kill your wife, and to burn down your house. You may (mistakenly) think, of course, that you are not free, but this is an example of 'bad faith' on your part. You are unable to bear the 'weight of your freedom', and so you shrink back with the excuse that you do not have this freedom. In truth, however, you do not have freedom (in the sense in which you 'have a car' or 'have pimples') but you are Freedom. Therefore, if you are objectively free to do something (jump down from the next clock-tower, eat a pizza, torture an infant, digest a worm, become a hermit, throw your money into the street, or shoot your sister) you are subjectively free as well to do it.

(B) Diametrically opposed to such thinkers are those who claim that subjective freedom does not exist (or, is an illusion). Some of them argue that a person's behaviour is completely fixed by ser (for the meaning of 'ser' refer to my post immediately below this one) genetic structure, environmental history, and immediate circumstances. All causes are physical, which means that what we refer to as 'mental events', that is, events such as desires, beliefs, feelings, wishes, purposes, intentions, and hopes, are ultimately physical phenomena. Therefore, according to these thinkers, it is wrong to say that we do something because we want to do it; rather, we do whatever we do because of our genetic endowment, enviromental history, and present circumstances, and all of these are physical causes.

Therefore, when faced with the question : 'Am I (subjectively) free to kill my wife?', you do not really have, as they say it in the movies, a choice in the matter. Either you kill her or you don't, but in either case your action has nothing to do with your wants, desires, or beliefs (and not least with whatever you might mean by that word 'morality'). However, even if you do kill your wife, you are not morally responsible for her death, for you were not really (subjectively) free not to have chosen to kill her. Both the notions of 'subjective freedom' and 'moral responsibility' are illusions which science has helped us to dispel. Thinkers of this group (may) further argue that in order to make sure that you do not kill any more of your future wives, what the law must do is not to send you to a 'reformation centre' but to change your genetic structure and environmental locations. To be sure, we do not presently know how such changes can be made or precisely what they would involve, but it is the task of the 'science of the future' to find out more about such things and inform the judiciary of the country about them.

There is, in addition to these polarised views, a third 'middle-of-the-road' position which is, in a certain sense, a paradox. To the question : 'Are our actions fixed by antecedent actions or events?' it replies : 'Yes', and to the question : 'Are we then subjectively free?', it again replies : 'Yes'. That is, though our behaviour flows out of our past choices, decisions, and actions, we are nevertheless subjectively free in the present in doing whatever we want to do. Consider this question : Was I subjectively free in setting up this blog? It is true that certain antecedent events preceded my creating this blog, such as my reading through some books and having discussions with some friends, on the basis of which I write some of these posts; my obtaining an internet connection; my finding out what a blog is and how to set up one; and, more fundamentally, my acquiring the belief that it is a good thing to write a blog. Nevertheless, when I did eventually set up the blog, I was subjectively free in the sense that this action flowed from my desire, intention, and wish to have one. Therefore, according to this view, we are subjectively free when we do, whatever we do, because we have the wish to do so (and not because we have been drugged, threatened, compelled, or hypnotised into doing so).

To return to the question : 'Am I free to kill my wife?', you are subjectively free to do so if you have acquired, as a result of certain past events over a certain duration of time, the desire and intention to do so. However, if you do kill your wife, you will be held as morally responsible for that deed since it was a voluntary act which you were not compelled to perform by anything (or anyone) extrinsic to you. Therefore, according to this 'middle-of-the-road' view, punishment must be regarded not as punitive but as reformatory/rehabilitative. Since it is possible to change the nature of a person's desires, beliefs, wishes and intentions, it is consequently possible to change these latter, if necessary, by punishment. (Who is to be given the authority for bringing about or supervising such changes, whether it is 'ethical' to attempt such changes, and who is to decide what the best method is for achieving such changes, are crucial questions in themselves for politicians, educationists, psychologists, and social workers.)

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