Our world is going through its most turbulent times — and, one cannot brush aside the big, also difficult, question that pops up with computerised consistency. This is: whither freedom and ethics in the present dispensation? Your response depends on how you look at the whole spectrum — from within and without. It may also be argued that what comprises the beginning, or the end of morals, or its edict, would, anyway, be affected by the lofty, or derelict, ripostes that we may, as individuals, have. One plausible, or balanced, view that may not wobble either side of the scale would, perhaps, be the prospect of achieving our rightful, also optimal, objective and not just winning the argument, or point-of-view.
To go back to the age and time of the great Greek philosopher Plato for a better understanding of the consequences of freedom, one may, willy-nilly, distil the word as being composed of what Alexander F Skutch, the naturalist and writer, observed in his perceptive work, Moral Foundations: An Introduction to Ethics — that freedom when used in certain contexts is more than pertinent to ethics. In other words, freedom from prior determination and freedom to express one’s own nature. You’d also, in so doing, interpret freedom as being emergent from the fulfilment of our desires — one that is erected by law and custom, including political freedom. This explains why complete freedom may also connote a lack of all restraint by law, or nature — an unattainable condition
Kant’s Doctrine
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant believed that freedom was, in more than one sense, a gift of nature; or, something beyond nature, what with the transcendent realm of things within themselves. You’d think of freedom in this ‘connect’ as something that ought to be earned by our exertions too. Or, to paraphrase Skutch again,“struggling against all obstacles which the state, society, and nature oppose to our will” — while being besieged by the baser elements of our own nature, or ‘surmounting’ external obstacles.
-30-
Copyright©Madras Courier, All Rights Reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from madrascourier.com and redistribute by email, post to the web, mobile phone or social media.Please send in your feed back and comments to editor@madrascourier.com
