What is freedom in modern society. What is Freedom
Freedom is a state that almost every individual desires. However, each person puts his own meaning into the concept of “freedom”, and what it is depends on the personality of the individual, and on the upbringing received, and on the society in which he lives.
What does freedom mean?
Philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and politicians argue about what freedom is. And they all define freedom in different ways; only one condition remains common - a person must determine his own actions. Those. Freedom can be defined this way - the absence of dependencies within the framework of law and morality.
Every person is free at the moment of birth, but over time this quality is lost, the individual acquires restrictions. A person simply cannot have absolute freedom; he will always depend, at a minimum, on the need to get food and warm himself.
Since absolute freedom is unattainable and is considered something abstract, an ordinary person can only achieve freedom:
- physical – freedom to work, move, do something, but subject to compliance with laws;
- spiritual - freedom of thought and speech, religion,
- political – freedom to reveal one’s personality without state pressure, lack of oppression of a person as a citizen;
- national – freedom to consider oneself a member of one’s society, people;
- state – the freedom to choose any country to live in.
Freedom of thought and speech
The right to freedom of thought and speech is enshrined in the Constitution and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. In a broad sense, this right can be interpreted as follows: everything that is not prohibited is permitted. This applies to oral and written speech, the creation of artistic images, etc. A person is free to express his own assessments, thoughts, judgments, and views using words.
Information is a derivative of a person’s thoughts and words, and it, in turn, shapes public opinions and moods. In any case, the information is subjective, because comes from one individual or group of people. Freedom of thought and speech can be prohibited only if it is used for extremist purposes, inciting racial, social or religious conflicts.
Political freedom
Political freedom is the constitutional right of a person to participate in the social and political life of the country. Lack of political freedom occurs in totalitarian states. You can exercise your right to this type of freedom only with the ability to reach a compromise and make a choice, in which case political freedom contributes to the development of a person as an individual.
Emotional freedom
Emotional freedom is the human right to express a wide range of emotions. This type of freedom is different from described above in that the ban on emotions in most cases is not external, but internal, but it is the result of the influence of society. The attitudes that a child receives in childhood, the rules learned in adulthood, force him to restrain himself, which leads to stress, neuroses, tension, bad mood and even illness.
Is the concept of “human freedom” real?
In modern society, a person is considered free if he has the opportunity to engage in any activity to his liking, which brings him, first of all, moral pleasure. Unfortunately, most people are mainly concerned with material wealth - and this is the main sign of lack of freedom from money. The main indicator of one’s own freedom is a person - if he is satisfied with life, has the opportunity to realize his talents, communicate, relax, travel, he is free.
the ability of a person, group, community to act in accordance with their interests and goals, realizing the socially necessary objective limitations of these actions. (“The larger the cage, the greater the freedom” is a political joke popular among intellectuals during the era of “stagnation”).
Great definition
Incomplete definition ↓
FREEDOM
the possibility of self-determination, the ability to achieve goals. In law, the possibility of certain human behavior enshrined in the constitution or other legislative act (for example, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc.).
The understanding of freedom depends on many conditions - socio-economic, political-legal, intellectual, psychological, gender and age, etc., since they influence the setting of life goals and the determination of the means to achieve them. Therefore, in the history of mankind, ideas about freedom are constantly changing.
Freedom is a multi-level phenomenon of human life, starting with independence from natural elements and the tyranny of the master and ending with the freedom of creativity and self-realization of the individual. There is an illusion that freedom is something self-explanatory, boiling down to the primitive “I do what I want.” However, the problem of freedom is one of the most difficult philosophical problems.
Since ancient times, all great thinkers have tried to comprehend it, and they often came to completely different conclusions. In ancient Greek philosophy, freedom was understood as the socio-political position of a person who does not have personal dependence on other people.
Socrates and Plato spoke about a free man, contrasting him with a slave. Freedom was understood similarly in Ancient Rome. We were talking, first of all, about the “external” social aspect of freedom. In ancient Indian philosophy, freedom had the meaning of internal psycho-emotional independence from oppressive living conditions. You can be free even in prison if your spirit is detached from the body, nature, and suffering.
In the Jewish tradition (and then in the Christian) the understanding of freedom as “freedom of conscience” first arose. The fact is that traditionally a citizen of the state or a guest was obliged to honor the state gods. Jews and Christians refused to make sacrifices to the pagans and demanded the freedom to pray to their God wherever and whenever they wanted.
The “internal” aspect of freedom was developed in Roman-Hellenistic philosophy and then in Christianity. The new understanding of personality proclaimed by Christ, which is related to God the Creator, regardless of social status, became a new understanding of freedom in history. True, this aspect of freedom extended only to the spiritual sphere; in society it was necessary to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”
In the teachings of the Stoics and Epicureans, freedom was thought of as obedience to the nature of things or gods: since man is subject to the law of fate, his freedom consists in knowing this law and following it. Attempts to resist fate, to do everything according to one’s own will, will lead to the fact that fate will still take its toll, and the person will experience unnecessary suffering.
In the teachings of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, freedom appears as the cause of “apostasy” - the alienation of man from the Creator, and therefore is the source of sin.
In modern times, interest in the concept of freedom is growing again. It is understood as “the absence of external obstacles, which can often deprive a person of part of his power to do what he would like” (T. Hobbes). Only the sovereign-monarch is truly free in society, while the freedom of the rest extends within the boundaries that the sovereign determines.
In the 18th century freedom is seen as the opportunity to “do everything that is not prohibited by law” (C. Montesquieu). Rousseau and Voltaire claim that all men are free from birth. At the same time, Voltaire was the first to defend the right to freedom of speech. “I hate your beliefs, but I would give my life for your right to express them,” he says.
Philosophers of the Enlightenment usually divide freedom into “negative” and “positive”: “negative” freedom means complete independence from any coercive conditions and circumstances of life, i.e. arbitrariness, and “positive” freedom means following those goals and interests which do not contradict the law of reason, i.e. natural human rights.
At the end of the 18th century. German philosopher I. Kant introduces the concept of “law of freedom”, which does not contrast “negative” and “positive” freedoms, but connects them as successive moments in the development of the human personality and society as a whole. “The Law of Freedom” means: a person is able to set the boundaries of his own arbitrariness, recognizing other people as reasonable and worthy persons.
I. Kant defines freedom as the right to “give law to oneself,” thus linking freedom with obligations. Simply freedom without obligations, without debt is called arbitrariness and is not considered freedom. Freedom begins with a personal arbitrary decision, with a personal “I want,” which allows one to reach the level of personal existence, being for oneself.
Negative freedom is the foundation of positive freedom in the case when it comes to self-denial, to the understanding that “besides me there are and will be other reasonable and worthy people.”
Positive freedom requires the adoption of one’s own law or a system of moral and legal principles of life, without which there can be no successful self-realization.
The difficulty of empirically defining the “law of freedom” is that freedom cannot be an object (thing) of the material world. It is nothing more than the idea of reason, which expresses a certain level of thinking of a person located in specific socio-historical conditions. The more a person uses his own mind and independently realizes his abilities, the more universal and generally valid the concept of “law of freedom” becomes.
Confirmation of the universalization of the concept of “freedom” is modern international law, which enshrines basic universal human rights and freedoms as integral conditions of human life.
The existence of freedom in the real world is often questioned due to the fact that all human actions are performed in accordance with material reasons, that is, natural or social necessity. But this correspondence does not mean complete dependence on these reasons: a person’s actions can be determined by other reasons, namely his own mind, the moral law.
Reasonable causality, expressed in the moral law, takes a person to another level of existence, above natural necessity. If we do not recognize this reasonable causality, then freedom turns into an illusion, and the appearance of universal determinism (geographical, economic or theological) arises.
Overcoming the opinion that freedom is illusory is not easy, but it is necessary for the development of personality, otherwise a person will have to come to terms with the position of a “machine” or “tool” of someone’s higher will. The reality of freedom can be proven by a person acting of his own free will in accordance with the laws that he accepted with his own mind. If a person is not free, he is not responsible for his actions.
I. G. Fichte understands freedom as autonomy and independence. Only one who provides himself with everything himself and does not depend on anyone can be called free, therefore all masters are not free, since they have slaves on whom the masters depend materially.
J. Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel also divided freedom into “negative” and “positive”. It is not enough to be free from nature, external living conditions, etc. Rather a position of resistance to needs and so on. indicates lack of freedom. On the contrary, by consuming and influencing, a person proves his freedom over the object of consumption, over nature. Freedom is the freedom to achieve one's intended goals and not simply oppose the goals of others. In this sense, an Indian yogi or homeless person is not free, because although they do not depend on needs, on property, society, etc., they still cannot change anything in this world or achieve goals.
Both Schelling and Hegel give very complex and detailed concepts of freedom. Thus, in Hegel, freedom develops up to the state, which itself is understood as the highest embodiment of freedom. A person is most free precisely in the state, and without the state he is nothing, he has no rights. When the government "suppresses freedom" it is a misnomer. According to Hegel, on the contrary, the state suppresses arbitrariness in a person, which harms freedom, “society forces the individual to be free, that is, to fulfill his obligations.”
F. Nietzsche also said that freedom does not consist in the fact that you refuse someone else’s law, but in the fact that you know how to make your will the law of others: “If you are free, show me the idea that can inspire me.” In the radicalist concepts of the 19th century. (for example, in anarchism) freedom is understood as unburdened by external circumstances and internal restrictions, the ability to act according to one’s own will.
In Marxism, the freedom of the subject lies “not in imaginary independence” from the objective laws of social development, but in the ability to choose and make decisions “with knowledge of the matter.”
Liberal interpretations of freedom (see Liberalism) are based on the thesis that general prosperity and the progress of individual freedom depend on limiting the activities of the state in the socio-economic relations of citizens, as well as on people’s independent disposal of their property and the pursuit of their own interests within the framework of existing law, but There is a contradiction here, since it is not clear who, in the absence of the state, can generally guarantee rights.
In a consumer society, freedom is often reduced to “freedom of choice” of goods, services, parties, etc. But this interpretation has also been repeatedly criticized, since the person here acts as a passive subject, and true freedom consists in offering a choice, and not choosing.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Philosophers have spent a lot of time thinking about the paradoxes of freedom. Freedom turns out to be a burden for many people who decide to take responsibility for their lives and the lives of others. It is painful due to the unpredictability of the results and is amazing in that it elevates a person to a creator, a creator, to a self-valued personality that has no market price. Anyone who decides to become a free person can experience this.
A. Pushkin, in one of his poems dedicated to human rights, says that he does not complain that the gods “denied him the sweet fate of challenging taxes,” he is only interested in the highest right - the right of creativity.
F. Dostoevsky began to talk about the severity and even unbearability of individual freedom, and in the middle of the twentieth century. he was supported by French existentialists (A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre). Freedom, in their opinion, requires continuous intellectual work, a huge effort of moral strength for constant life choices. From such efforts, some people go crazy, ready to renounce their own personality and subordinate their will to another. Often after this, the pendulum “swings” in the other direction: a need arises for spontaneous emancipation, unbridled revelry, that is, for negative freedom. Therefore, the “external” aspect of freedom, understood as the absence of obstacles to action, the absence of constraint, still prevails in the public consciousness.
Many political programs are built on such an understanding of freedom, and revolutions are made in the name of such anarchist “freedom.” However, as history shows, it is in politics that the primitive “negativist” understanding of freedom entails irreparable consequences - society (or its citizens) becomes even more unfree.
Discussions about freedom have been going on for thousands of years; there are no clear answers here and cannot be due to the complexity of the subject, therefore calls for freedom are often the tricks of manipulators, and not true liberation.
Great definition
Incomplete definition ↓
Every living being, including humans, always strives for freedom. What does it mean to be free? Each of us reveals this concept in our own way, but at the same time, each of us wants to be free. A person’s freedom depends on himself, as well as on the society in which he lives, as well as on the content that he puts into the concept of “freedom”.
The Relativity of Freedom
Let's give an example. A person, while still a child, dreams of growing up and becoming free: he doesn’t have to listen to his parents, doesn’t have to learn his lessons, doesn’t have to go to school. And this hour comes, but it brings with it other problems: work, children, family. The question arises: when did this person have more freedom? Probably during childhood. Because it is now even more loaded and depends on many life factors. Time has passed. Our hero did not make friends with the law and ended up in prison. Is he free today? Physically, of course not. Morally? It depends on his character: does his conscience gnaw at him about what he did? Does he worry about his family? From this it is clear that such a concept as personal freedom is relative.
From the example we can conclude that different people under the same conditions will consider their position to be different: one may say that he is free, and the second will not be a free person.
What are the types of freedom?
Scientists consider the concept of “freedom” in all its manifestations, and based on this they define four types of freedom. Namely:
The first type is physical freedom. If a person is physically free, it means he has the opportunity to go where he wants and do what he wants.
The second type is spiritual freedom. It allows a person to live in his perception of the world, he has the opportunity to express what he thinks about.
The third type is national freedom. A person can live with his people and consider himself a part of it.
The fourth type of freedom is state freedom. It allows a person to choose the government under whose rule he would like to live.
What does it mean to be a free person
We return again to the issue of human freedom. First of all, the freedom of the individual must be considered as freedom of employment. He should do exactly what he likes. His activities should bring him not only benefits, but also moral pleasure. Are we free from this point of view? Probably not, because today’s time does not give us the opportunity to choose the type of activity. We are forced to do what will bring us prosperity. But material wealth does not provide us with a state of freedom.
Every day, when we come to work, we submit to our management, the work schedule of the institution or enterprise, its charter and rules. In his own way, a person becomes a slave to the structure in which he works. It’s good when the smallest human relationships exist between employer and employee, when his work and efforts are appreciated. Otherwise, he becomes a small screw of the system that oppresses him.
This suggests the conclusion that it is not wealth and the satiety of a person that determines his freedom. A person must work creatively, he must open his soul, give people his skills and show his talent. Then it will be possible to say about him that he is truly free.
The concept of human freedom can be viewed from many sides and positions, but the main indicator of determining one’s freedom is the person himself, his thoughts and his attitude towards life and the surrounding society.
How can you always be free
Most often, “freedom” is spoken of as freedom in the political sense, freedom from tyranny and oppression by other people. The Bible begins its story of freedom at this most basic level. The God of the Bible is a liberator, and a liberator in the literal and literal sense. The Ten Commandments begin with a solemn declaration: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery (Exodus 20:2). God leads His people out of slavery—the very literal slavery in which the Jews were in Egypt—by breaking the stubbornness of their oppressors with formidable signs and wonders.
It is impossible to overestimate the influence that the story of the Exodus had on the formation of the consciousness of Christendom. Some things that we now take for granted looked quite strange in the pre-biblical world. A God who takes the side of the slaves, the side of the oppressed, the side of the powerless, against the powerful of this world - this was strange, incomprehensible and even outrageous news for contemporaries. The gods of the pagans symbolized strength, power, victory; they were closer to the dominant, reigning strata of human society - and farthest from the oppressed and slaves.
But the God of the Law and the Prophets time after time turns against the powerful and glorious and takes the side of the powerless and unknown. This is the fast that I have chosen: loose the chains of wickedness, untie the bands of the yoke, and set the oppressed free, and break every yoke (Isaiah 58:6).
It is no coincidence that the perception of freedom as a universal value developed precisely in the Christian world; and even those who rebelled against the Church and against faith in God in general, thinking that they would thereby gain greater freedom, consciously or not, appealed to biblical images.
Freedom without God
Biblical prophets attacked unrighteous rulers - including religious ones - in the name of God; and many movements that opposed oppression were distinctly religious in nature, be it the abolitionists advocating the abolition of black slavery or the US civil rights movement of the 1960s, led by Baptist minister Martin Luther King.
But in European history, a different understanding of freedom has developed - a freedom that is not only divorced from its biblical foundations, but also directly rebels against faith in God. This movement first made its presence known in France at the end of the 18th century, where a number of famous thinkers began to perceive the Church as a support of royal power and a source of oppression - oppression that had to be gotten rid of in order to build a new life on the principles of reason, freedom and fraternity. Most of these thinkers adhered to a kind of vague and adogmatic religiosity, faith in God, which had to be “cleansed” of church “superstitions”; but in the same movement “pure” atheists also appeared, such as Baron Paul Holbach, who fiercely rebelled against any faith, especially the biblical one.
The “Dawn of Freedom” that shone over France during the Great French Revolution at first caused an explosion of delight among the thinking European public, but then the news coming from Paris began to become more and more gloomy: the kingdom of reason and freedom turned into a kingdom of blood and terror. Beginning with the “September Massacre,” when mobs massacred thousands of people in Paris and other cities, considering them “counter-revolutionaries,” and continuing with General Turreau’s “hellish columns” that carried out what was later called the “French-French genocide” in the Vendée, the revolution turned its other side.
As the British thinker Edmund Burke wrote in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, “What is freedom without wisdom and virtue? This is the greatest of all possible evils; this is recklessness, vice and madness that cannot be curbed.”
Since then, the world has experienced a number of bloody revolutions, and one of the worst took place in our country. Slogans of freedom, equality, brotherhood were proclaimed, freedom from oppression was promised, people were inspired by dreams of a brave new world, but for some reason it all ended in massacres and the establishment of such tyranny that in comparison with it the regime overthrown by the revolution turned out to be a model of freedom.
From the “September Massacre” at the end of the 18th century to the Cambodian “killing fields” at the end of the 20th century, the promise of freedom turned into much blood. Why? Let us quote another statement from Edmund Burke: “The meaning of freedom for every individual is that he can do as he pleases: we must understand what he likes before we send congratulations, which may soon turn into condolences.”
Freedom from external constraints, if acquired by a person devoid of internal principles, turns into disaster. “Should I congratulate the murderer or the highwayman who has broken the bonds of prison,” wrote Burke, “on the acquisition of his natural rights? It would be like the episode of the liberation of criminals condemned to the galleys by the heroic philosopher - the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.”
Therefore, the freedom that the Bible speaks of is much more than just freedom from oppression by other people.
There is always a choice
In the ancient world, bandits attacking anyone traveling on the roads were a constant problem. The authorities could not organize patrols or cope with the task in any other way; therefore, they tried to compensate for their powerlessness with increased severity - the captured robbers were given a particularly painful death, which, as expected, should have had a sobering effect on the rest. We can imagine a robber who, as we would say, walks free - he must fear the authorities, but, on the other hand, no one is his master, he is not forced to work hard for some master, he can go wherever he wants. And this man was caught, tied up and thrown into prison. Does he retain his freedom? Obviously not. Thick stone walls, iron bars and stern guards stand between him and the free air. Finally, he was sentenced and, according to the custom of that time, crucified - so that he could not even move his hand and was forced to endure unbearable torment. Is this person free? The question itself may seem mocking. But this is a completely meaningful question, and there is a precise answer to it. A man who cannot move is nevertheless free to make the most important decision of his life. We read about this man in the Gospel of Luke: One of the hanged evildoers slandered Him and said: If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us. The other, on the contrary, calmed him down and said: Or are you not afraid of God, when you yourself are condemned to the same thing? And we were [condemned] justly, because we accepted what was worthy of our deeds, but He did nothing bad. And he said to Jesus: remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom! And Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:39-43).
There is a freedom that nothing can take away from us—we have a choice in every circumstance. The prisoner may become embittered or repent; a person confined to a wheelchair can be filled with bitterness, resentment and hatred towards the whole world, or he can turn to God and become a source of support and consolation for the healthy people around him. Circumstances put us before a choice, but they do not determine what we choose. We always determine this ourselves. It seems that freedom of choice is a self-evident, directly experienced experience; nevertheless, we are all inclined to deny it.
It's not me!
The third chapter of the Book of Genesis contains a surprisingly deep and accurate story about sin - the first sin, but at the same time sin in general. Have you not eaten from the tree from which I forbade you to eat? - God asks Adam. There seem to be only two answers: “yes, I ate” or “no, I didn’t.” But Adam said: The woman whom You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate (Genesis 3:11,12). The fact that Adam broke the commandment is the fault of his wife - and, indirectly, of God, who slipped this wife to him.
Adam made a conscious choice to eat the forbidden fruit. But he says that this choice is not his, that he is determined by someone or something else - a wife, a serpent, God, just not by him, poor Adam.
A lot of time has passed since this story was written, but the attitude of people towards their lives remains the same: we tend to claim that our actions are determined by someone else. We get angry because other people make us angry; we sin because other people lead us into temptation; We hate our neighbor because he is such a scoundrel that we cannot help but hate him.
Our actions are forced by the circumstances around us - the weather, the country in which we live, genes, anything else - excluding our personal will. It’s not our fault—it’s someone else’s fault, or perhaps—this is fine with everyone—Mother Nature.
Why are we so eager to abdicate responsibility? After all, this is monstrously stupid and destructive from a purely earthly, practical point of view. When we refuse to acknowledge our actions as fully our own, we lose control of our lives.
Who turns out to be the author of the book of our lives, if not ourselves? Other people, circumstances, our own internal impulses that we don’t even try to control. Every passer-by finds himself on the captain's bridge of our lives, our rudder is turned by every random gust of wind, every seagull that sits down on it to rest.
What will happen to our lives? Nothing good. At best, it will be simply empty and pitiful - we will achieve nothing and gain nothing. At worst, we will simply crash into the reefs of alcoholism, drug addiction, or end our days in prison. In fact, what unites people who have suffered a downfall in life? Their belief is that their life and their actions are determined by someone else. They started drinking because those around them treated them like pigs; abandoned their family because their family “never understood them”; committed a crime because they were driven or forced. Even in order to put our lives in order on a purely worldly, this-worldly level, we must admit that we are free in the sense that we make our own decisions and are responsible for them.
Sometimes people resort to a more subtle way of denying the reality of choice and responsibility: they adhere to a philosophy that generally declares free will an illusion. The atheistic philosophy of materialism assumes that there is nothing in the world except matter moving according to unchanging laws, and that what we perceive as acts of thinking or free choice are the result of incredibly complex, but purely material processes. Your choice to read this article is determined by the electrochemical processes in your cerebral cortex, these processes by the previous state of the system, input signals and the unchanging laws of nature. You have no more freedom of choice than any other natural process. It seems to you that you are making a free choice, but, from the point of view of materialists, this is an illusion.
But what is the reason for such ridiculous behavior? What is so terrible that people are trying to escape from by resorting to such destructive lies?
What we can't help but know
People can deny both the reality of objective law and the reality of our free choice; but this is such an awl that you can’t hide it in a bag. In reality, we all deeply believe in both, and this is evident in our tendency to judge other people. As the holy Apostle Paul writes, therefore, you are inexcusable, every man who judges [another], for with the same judgment with which you judge another, you condemn yourself, because in judging [another], you do the same (Rom. 2:1).
Indeed, in order for human actions to constitute the subject of guilt or merit, two conditions are necessary: first, people must perform them freely; secondly, we must evaluate them from the point of view of some law, some criterion of good and evil. A natural process—for example, digestion—is not subject to moral evaluation. We do not scold a person for having a sick stomach and do not praise him for a healthy one. Only his free decisions can make a person guilty. By blaming someone, we are already recognizing that he made a free choice, and this choice is wrong. It was his will to break the moral law or to keep it, and he violated it; this is what makes him guilty and worthy of condemnation.
But for the law to make him guilty, it must be an objective law that we are all obliged to obey, regardless of whether we recognize it or not. By reproaching someone for immorality, we thereby affirm the reality of such a thing as morality, which the other person was obliged to adhere to. But, says the Apostle, since such a law exists (and we ourselves recognize this in relation to other people), then it also exists in relation to ourselves. We ourselves can be - and will be - held accountable for violating it.
Behind the law is the Lawgiver and the Judge, to whom we must give an account. The prospect of possible condemnation frightens us—like Adam. And - like Adam - we try to alleviate our fear by shifting the blame to others or inventing complex systems of self-justification for ourselves.
If the Son sets you free...
Man was originally created free - and has abused his free will to become very corrupt. Christ comes to save us from this corruption. But why was Golgotha necessary for this? Why can't God just undo the consequences of our sins? Because God gives us real freedom of choice - with real consequences. Our choice cannot simply be undone; that would mean that His gift of freedom was invalid from the very beginning. God acts differently - He descends to us and becomes a Man in the person of Jesus Christ to die for our sins. As He himself said at the Last Supper - and as the Church has repeated at every Liturgy since then - this is My Blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins (Matthew 26:28). This forgiveness of sins is obtained by everyone who runs to Him with repentance and faith; but the freedom that Christ brings is not only freedom from the guilt of sins.
Imagine a drug addict who committed a crime while trying to get money for his next dose - if only he is released from conviction without curing his vice, in a short time he will break the law again. Likewise, a sinful person needs not only forgiveness, but also a deep inner change that will free him from the craving for sin. Therefore, the Apostles speak of freedom in a deeper sense - freedom from sin, freedom for righteousness, freedom to correspond to the true good and purpose of man.
In the absence of external constraints, a person can do what he wants - but what does he want? The alcoholic desperately wants to get drunk; at the same time, deep down, he wants to get rid of his vice and live a sober and healthy life. The fornicator wants an easy, non-binding connection - but at the same time, in his heart he yearns for true, devoted love. We want different things at the same time, and often our own desires bind us much more strongly than prisons and chains.
The inability to live as we should - and as we want in moments of enlightenment - constitutes that bitter slavery about which the Lord says: everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin (John 8:34). An angry person is not free to remain calm; the fornicator is not free to remain faithful; a greedy person does not control money, but tolerates being controlled by money. So any sin says that our human nature is flawed, insufficient, sick.
And Christ brings us new life, which gradually changes us from the inside; prayer, personal and church, instructions from priests, participation in the Sacraments, reading the word of God - these are the means that God gives us for spiritual growth. This process of finding true freedom will not be easy or smooth - God does not deal with clay, but with free individuals who continue to fall and make mistakes - but if we follow Him, Christ will lead us to that eternal and blessed life for which He created us.
What if I say no?
The Gospel is a book of hope: the most lost sinner, a person who, by all accounts, is hopelessly lost, can turn to Christ and find salvation. But what if I refuse? How often do you hear a direct or implied demand: “I’m not going to believe and repent, but you promise me that everything will be okay with me.” But this actually means that we must deny people their free choice and assure them that they will be dragged into heaven without their consent. We cannot do this - it would simply not be true. God does absolutely everything possible for the salvation of every person - and the Cross of Christ reminds of this. But a person can say “no” and refuse the gift offered to him. He may refuse to enter the door where he is persistently invited - and remain behind the door.
It is sometimes said that God is too good to leave anyone at the door - and this is, of course, true. God will accept even the lowest sinner, but even God cannot do anything with those who refuse to be accepted. He wants us to remain free until the end. It's just our choice. And our responsibility is whether we say yes or no, respond to the call or refuse to come.
The door of His house is open; nothing and no one can prevent us from entering - like that prudent robber. But no one can do this for us.
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 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 have different understandings of 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. I began to understand in a new way what freedom is. And he tries to achieve it through 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 some it is the absence of a ban on creativity, for others it is harmony with the outside world... But in any case, it plays an important role for every individual and society in in general.