How to gain personal freedom: practical advice 

Adviсe

• Freedom or responsibility
• Basic theory
• Is there such a thing as unconditional freedom?
• How to become a free person?
• How to understand your own freedom

Freedom and the concept of “freedom” is an eternal question, relevant at all times. Freedom is a very controversial aspect of life, causing a lot of judgment and controversy, because the realities of life are such that the concept of “freedom” is different for everyone.

At the same time, personal freedom is a multifaceted concept. Freedom is expressed in the economic aspect, in freedom of action. There are other types of freedoms - political, spiritual freedom and others.

Thinkers and philosophers have tried to understand freedom, giving the concept different interpretations.

T. Hobbes believed that the meaning of freedom is that a free person has no obstacles to action. I. Bentham believed that laws destroy freedom. Existentialists argued that man is free from birth. N. Berdyaev - that a person is initially in freedom and it is impossible to remove it. J.P. Satre saw the meaning of freedom in the preservation of human essence.

Freedom or responsibility

The definition of human freedom has changed over the centuries. In the modern sense, they first started talking about it during the Renaissance. It was then that people began to be considered the highest value, and their freedom as an inalienable right.

During the reign of the Protestant Reformation, the word “freedom” changed its meaning slightly. It implied the opportunity to find your own way to God and interpret the Bible in your own way.

Since the 19th century, individual freedom has become synonymous with self-expression. It meant economic stability, the ability to independently choose religion, behavior, and social circle.

Nothing has changed these days. Personal freedom occupies an important place in the structure of society. The individual is free to set priorities, choose goals and methods for achieving them. But there is one condition. Your freedom must coexist harmoniously with the freedoms of other people. This is called responsibility. A more free person is also a more responsible person. The opposite situation is called arbitrariness.

Human freedom in society. What is freedom in modern society

For thousands of years, since prohibitions, power and morality appeared, the concept of freedom has existed.
Some people define it as the absence of the above factors. Others as a person's power over his actions, provided that they do not harm other people. Still others believe that freedom is a subjective concept and depends on the aspirations of each individual. So what is freedom? Let's try to figure it out.

Freedom in philosophy is defined as a state of a subject in which he can independently determine his life path, his goals, opinions and means. That is, in fact, this concept brings together all the judgments given above. The freedom of each person depends on the degree to which he accepts it as a life value. That is why we see so many different approaches to its understanding and self-realization. And therefore, all people understand differently what freedom is.

It is customary to distinguish between two freedoms: positive and negative. The second presupposes the independence of the individual from any external or internal manifestations that interfere with its realization. It can be obtained by eliminating them. Positive freedom is achieved through the spiritual development of a person and his achievement of inner harmony. Some philosophers believe that it is impossible to achieve this freedom without going through the desire for the negative. Such a division does not in any way contradict the integrity of the concept. On the contrary, it helps expand our understanding of what freedom is.

Personal freedom is directly related to creative freedom, since the second is a natural consequence and expression of the first. Therefore, many writers and artists, who at one time did not have the opportunity to create their works due to censorship prohibitions, turned against the authorities. But it is worth distinguishing between freedom of expression and not confusing it with freedom of aggression. The ban on the latter is not a restriction on the individual. On the contrary, it was created to protect her freedom. Such prohibitions will exist until they pass into human consciousness as a natural necessity.

Nowadays, people are increasingly looking for freedom not from external factors, but from within themselves. Modern man has begun to understand in a new way what freedom is. And he tries to achieve it through inner harmony, self-determination and expression in the areas available to him. This view is close to the concept of positive freedom, but also contains echoes of negative freedom. It was formed in connection with the weakening of social prohibitions. Therefore, now internal freedom comes to the fore - the achievement of the integrity of the individual and the possibility of its expression.

So, almost every generation develops a new view of what freedom is. And it cannot be said that any of them are wrong. After all, each person is free to give his own answer to this question and give this word a meaning close to him. For some, freedom is the opportunity to express one’s opinion, for others it is the absence of a ban on creativity, for others it is harmony with the world around us... But in any case, it plays an important role for every individual and society as a whole.

Basic theory

Famous public and cultural figures have described individual freedom in different ways:

1. The ability to act in accordance with your interests and goals. Belinsky.
2. The absence of political and economic oppression, restrictions in political and social life and the activities of a class or society as a whole. Dobrolyubov.
3. Absence of slavery and serfdom. Chernyshevsky.
4. Personal independence, independence. No dependency or constraint. The opportunity to do as you want. Dostoevsky.
5. Ease, no difficulties. L. Tolstoy.

Personal freedom is often associated with voluntarism and fatalism. The first word really has to do with a free person. This is the desire to achieve goals without paying attention to objective circumstances and consequences. Fatalism is the exact opposite concept of voluntarism. According to fatalists, the personal freedom of each individual is nothing more than a utopia. Human life is predetermined by external factors. They cannot be changed. How are things really going?

Connection with progress

In ancient times, people had fairly limited freedom. The need for human activity was not always realized. People depended on nature, the secrets of which the human mind could not comprehend. There was a so-called unknown necessity. Man was not free, he remained a slave for a long time, blindly obeying the laws of nature.

As science developed, people found answers to many questions. Phenomena that were previously divine for humans received a logical explanation. People's actions became meaningful, and cause-and-effect relationships made it possible to realize the need for certain actions. The higher the progress of society, the freer a person becomes in it. In the modern world in developed countries, the limit of individual freedom is only the rights of other people.

Is there such a thing as unconditional freedom?

In an ideal world, yes. No one is able to limit the flight of thought. However, this concept is not applicable to real life. Absolute or unconditional personal freedom is, of course, tempting. But the idea itself has a number of shortcomings. For example, the inability to become free from one's body, conscience, discipline or responsibility. Such conditions can cause harm to both the person himself and those around him. In any case, freedom is endowed with specificity and certainty. Therefore, it is not unconditional, but relative. But this does not mean that there are always some restrictions. Often they are nothing more than empowerment. It turns out that there is no need to strive for absolute personal freedom. It's an illusion.

What do you understand by human freedom and why is it needed? DURING THE CLASSES

Today in class we will talk about freedom. What expressions with this word do you know? (Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of choice, freedom of creativity, etc.). As an epigraph to the lesson, I offer you the Latin saying Vita sine libertate, nihil!, which translates as “Life without freedom means nothing.”

During the lesson we will have to consider a number of questions: firstly, what is freedom, what are its main aspects, how is it limited and how is it violated; secondly, we will look at how freedom manifests itself in various spheres of social life (in which? - economic, political, social and spiritual), thirdly, why we need freedom. It is not by chance that we turn to this topic. Freedom is one of the eternal values, and today it is more important than ever to know what freedoms and to what extent we have and how we can defend our freedom.

What is freedom? Let's turn to fragment No. 1 of the didactic material and get acquainted with one of the definitions of the concept of “freedom”. S.I. Ozhegov’s dictionary gives us the following definition of the concept of “freedom”: it is “independence, the absence of constraints and restrictions connecting the socio-political life and activities ... of society and its members.” But this definition was not always like this. In different historical eras, freedom was perceived by people in different ways. For primitive man, being free meant belonging to a clan, tribe, “being one of your own.” In antiquity, freedom was the ability to control fate, which was in the hands of the gods, as well as freedom from political despotism. In the Middle Ages, under freedom meant leading a spiritual, righteous and sinless life. In the Renaissance, freedom was understood as the unhindered development of the human personality, the emancipation of the creative consciousness of people. In modern times, this word was written on the banners of all Western European revolutions and symbolized the equality of all citizens. For the industrial man of our modern society, freedom has acquired economic and legal meaning. What is freedom for you personally? (this is the opportunity to have political and civil rights; manage your resources, your capital, your time).

How to become a free person

First, realize that true freedom comes from within. It depends on attitudes embedded deep in the consciousness and subconscious. A free person has a number of distinctive features:

1. Controls his instincts and reflexes. Thanks to this, he behaves correctly in society.
2. He doesn’t set limits for himself, doesn’t dictate a strict regime. Free individuals subtly sense the signals of the body. They know when they need rest, when it is the best time to work or eat.
3. A free person has no complexes. This is especially true for self-doubt and low self-esteem. These negative qualities take away vital energy and eat from the inside. That is why freedom from them takes so long to develop.
4. Not at the mercy of emotions. A person dependent on feelings and sensations often commits rash acts. Afterwards he regrets them, but cannot change anything. As a result, another complex develops. A free person independent of emotions easily makes decisions, can evaluate his actions from the outside and consciously correct mistakes.

Another sign of a free person is childlike spontaneity along with adult thinking.

Filosofio.Ru

Human freedom is the opportunity and ability to act in the direction of realizing one’s own interests. A person, as noted above, can not only adapt to the reality around him, but also change this reality itself, adapt it “for himself.” At the same time, the freedom of human will inevitably runs into natural and social necessity. There are three models for resolving this conflict of freedom and necessity: 1. A person tries to recklessly and unconditionally impose his will on the world around him, at all costs to realize his goals. At the same time, he ignores the effect of objective natural and social laws. As a rule, such attempts end in failure. For example, a person is trying to grow plants that require a lot of heat and sunlight in a risky farming zone, in northern latitudes. Or it implants the institutions of liberal democracy in a country that is at the stage of feudalism. This model of behavior is called voluntarism. 2. Striving to put his ideas into practice, a person is faced with the harsh realities of life that seem insurmountable and paralyze his will. From this he concludes that it is impossible to go against the laws of nature and abandons his original plans. This position is called fatalism (from the Latin fatum - fate). 3. In his activities, a person proceeds from the fact that the laws of nature and society are objective in nature, that is, they act independently of the will, desires and interests of man. Therefore, the optimal solution is to know these laws and use them for your own purposes. According to the law of universal gravitation, any body heavier than air, thrown upward, will certainly fall to the ground. But man, without challenging this law, nevertheless created flying machines capable of overcoming gravity and moving in airspace. Freedom in this case is manifested in a person’s ability to act not contrary to necessity, but in agreement with it, in using the law in the interests of freedom. F. Engels generalized this understanding of freedom with the following definition: “Freedom is a perceived necessity”36. Human freedom is tested not only in collision with necessity, but also in contact with the freedom of another person. The fact that many people live in the same living space, each of whom has their own ideas about what life should be, inevitably leads to conflicts. Thomas Hobbes, one of the authors of social contract theory, called this state of original freedom a “war of all against all.” The only reasonable way out of the situation of a clash of free wills is to reach agreement, which should be based on a restriction of freedom. To oversee compliance with this restriction, institutions of state and law were established, which, through coercion, ensure an average measure of freedom in society. Necessity, this time in social form, stands in the way of free will. There is a rather hackneyed maxim about this: “You cannot live in society and be free from society.” The knowledge about man that we have today gives reason to doubt that absolute free will, understood as the ability and possibility of a person to act in accordance with his ideas about life, really exists. There are a lot of objective factors that determine people’s behavior from the outside, making it unfree. These are: climate and other natural phenomena; ideological propaganda; parental influence; exposure to advertising; social prejudices, etc. Our actions and thoughts are largely influenced by biological potential, social environment, upbringing and education. This circumstance gives rise not only to theoretical conflicts, but also to practical difficulties. For example, a soldier in a war, following orders, kills people and destroys things. He does this not of his own free will and desire, but in obedience to orders from above. He is not free, that is, in essence, he does not belong to himself. The boundaries of armed violence in war are quite blurred, and this creates the problem of excessive, excessive use of force, bordering on a war crime. How moral and legal is it to blame the military for such crimes if they are not free in their actions? Another circumstance that casts doubt on the possibility of free will is explained by the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Research by psychoanalysts proves that human assessments, judgments and actions are to one degree or another predetermined by factors that are not consciously recognized by people, forming the sphere of the so-called “unconscious”. Therefore, even when a person acts, as he himself believes, freely, his behavior is still determined. Often a person is given freedom to choose one or another course of action, but the rules that guide him in this free choice are not established by him, but are given from the outside. He cannot influence the content of these rules and bear responsibility for them, and therefore the action he chooses is not free. The philosophical position that asserts that human freedom does not exist is called determinism. The position of indeterminism, on the contrary, allows, to varying degrees, freedom of human will. The history of philosophy has accumulated many arguments in favor of both the first and second points of view. The most heated discussions between followers of determinism and indeterminism take place in the field of theology. All world religions proceed from the fact that human life in every detail is predetermined by God's providence. God, being the Absolute, has omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence and therefore nothing happens without his will. Otherwise he would not be the Absolute. In addition to the theological justification for determinism, there is a philosophical one that follows from the statement: “Every event must have a cause.” The English philosopher David Hume, who paid more attention to the problem of philosophical justification of causality than others, argued that in acts of will one can find the same sequence and alternation that exists in natural events. And therefore, it is possible to predict with sufficient accuracy what a person’s choice will be in a given situation. Determinism is supported by facts recorded in various branches of scientific knowledge: discoveries have been made in psychology, neurophysiology, and biochemistry that allow us to assert that human behavior is controlled at all stages, from conception to its practical implementation. However, despite the convincing arguments put forward by the party of determinism, the arguments of opponents are no less impressive and convincing. Proponents of the doctrine of free will proceed from the fact that a person is free to the extent that he is aware of his freedom. Therefore, a person can be free, even while in captivity, and, on the contrary, will be unfree, living in a democratic society itself. After the creation of quantum mechanics, indeterminists are trying to take advantage of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, according to which even in nature, at the level of elementary particles, there is no strict causal determination of events. If this is possible in nature, then even more so it is possible in relation to humans. A strong argument in favor of free will is the presence of a conscience in a person. Feelings of shame and remorse for an act committed can only be understood based on the fact that people are free, that is, they could not have done what they did. The fact that free will exists is evidenced by holding people accountable for their actions. If there is no free will, then how can a person be punished for a criminal act he has committed? After all, we do not prosecute a wolf that kills a sheep, or a landslide that buries a mountain village, because we do not consider these objects to be free and responsible for their actions. How, then, does man differ from them, if we consider him unfree? Freedom should not be perceived as some kind of gift to man from nature or God, intended to provide him with a calm and comfortable life. Freedom is always a choice, which means responsibility for the results of this choice. It is rare that the choice of the optimal course of action is made based on knowledge of all the features of the situation and possible consequences. There is always the possibility of risk. Only the animal does not take risks, because it does not choose, but follows the dictates of the law - the instinct of self-preservation. This is the most reliable guide in a world where everything is subordinated to necessity. The responsibility that accompanies freedom is the cause of the phenomenon that has been called “flight from freedom.”37 This phenomenon is explained by the contradiction between the external freedom that is provided to the individual by social and state institutions, and his inability to realize these opportunities and identify for himself the prospects that open up with them. A.I. Herzen said on this occasion that a person cannot be freed externally to a greater extent than he is free internally. If a person does not realize what freedom is, he naturally begins to fear it. A clear confirmation of the reality of the phenomenon of “flight from freedom” can be considered the attitude of the average Russian citizen to the political, economic and social transformations that began in the country since the collapse of the USSR and the formation of Russia as a sovereign state. The rejection of a planned, state-regulated economy and the course towards creating a market economy encountered the psychological unpreparedness of people to live in a society where everyone is “the architect of their own happiness and well-being.” The theme of freedom is closely related to the problems of military service. In all countries and among all peoples, military service is considered one of the most strenuous activities associated with significant hardships and hardships. As a rule, the specificity of military service is seen in the fact that it is directly related to risk and danger to life, with the fact that a military person must be ready to go into battle at any moment. This is true. However, the real tragedy of military service does not lie in the dangers that accompany it. A miner who goes down to the mine every day risks his life and health no less than a military man. A policeman patrolling a crime-dangerous area can be attacked and killed at any moment, and a firefighter who goes out to fire several times during a shift is exposed to many dangerous factors that are not always encountered in combat. Danger is not only the destiny of a military man. But only a military man, due to the specifics of his profession, is limited in the most valuable right for a person - freedom. Moreover, this restriction is voluntary and conscious. The main virtue of a military man is the ability to obey orders and the ability to give these orders. The first involves subordinating one's will to the will of a superior commander, and the second is accompanied by imposing one's will on subordinates. If the order is not carried out, then success in battle or in a special operation, which are the main elements of war, is impossible. A person who is not aware of the need and importance of self-restraint of will, manifested in unconditional obedience to orders, will never become a professional military man. A review of various aspects of freedom as an essential feature of a person allows us to conclude that freedom is inherent in every person as an opportunity to project their subjective intentions into the outside world. However, the real existence of freedom presupposes its awareness by man. In other words, a person is free to the extent that he is aware of what freedom is, what opportunities and what consequences are associated with it. Therefore, the development of a person does not mean the emergence of some qualitatively new abilities or characteristics in him, but is associated with the development of the consciousness of freedom. A person will be considered a fully developed person when he finally realizes what it means to be free. But for now he is only at the beginning of this path. To understand the features and prospects of human development, it is necessary to understand the currently existing concepts of anthropogenesis.

How to understand your own freedom

Ask yourself 4 questions:

1. Am I an independent person? Your opinions and actions should not be influenced by external factors. Learn, develop, boldly move forward. There is no way to stop there.
2. Do I have a favorite activity or hobby? A person who does not like work can hardly be called free and happy. Therefore, think about whether your hobby can be turned into a permanent source of income.
3. Do I spend a lot of time reading? Start with books dedicated to self-development and self-knowledge. They may not add freedom. But you will know exactly where to move next.
4. Can I control my emotions? This is probably the most difficult skill.

A free person has all the skills listed above. He lives as he sees fit. Focuses only on his own values ​​and priorities, leaving behind the opinions of others. Do you act the same way? So you can be congratulated. You are a free person.

Practical recommendations

Following simple but effective tips will help you gain inner freedom and self-confidence.

Understand what's stopping you from being free

This must be done at the very beginning of the path to internal liberation. There are 7 factors that make a person dependent:

• fear, self-doubt, complexes;
• public opinion, stereotypes;
• dependence on money;
• inability to make choices independently.

Once you determine the reason for the lack of freedom, act decisively. Eliminate the listed factors one by one.

Conquer your internal barriers

These include all the same fears and complexes. This is usually a consequence of past failures. It also happens that parents, having failed in some business, unknowingly program their children for it. This is the first and most important barrier.

Conclusion

Each person is a small autonomy within a large society. And this means that he has personal freedom. Therefore, use your right to live the way you want. Don't limit your desires and dreams. Color your life in the colors that please your eyes. Others may not be able to understand your actions. But is this really so important for a person enjoying freedom?

Yana Karpova

Author of articles on self-development and relationship psychology.