The chosen issue is the correlation between freedom and responsibility. These two notions are interrelated through social, political, and ethical norms. The freedom of the individual in its various manifestations is today an essential value of society. There can be no limitless, absolute freedom while there is a social order. A person is a member of the community and is obliged to reckon with its laws, primarily because the complete freedom of one person would mean arbitrariness in relation to another. Freedom of choice involves the responsibility for the consequences of particular actions. Responsibility is considered an integral component of freedom.
The topic is vital for me in terms of personal development. I consider responsibility as a basis of individual social morality, which determines human behavior. The analysis of the concept of freedom limited by social and moral responsibilities develops my understanding of society’s functioning. Moreover, the topic is of great interest because I am devoted to learning the psychology of personality. Freedom and responsibility are the main aspects of individual functioning in society (Ladouceur and Shaffer 1076). The most interesting about this topic is the possibility to learn about the outstanding psychologists’ approaches to identifying freedom and responsibility. Many sociologists and psychologists stated that freedom and responsibility are two sides of conscious human activity (Ladouceur and Shaffer 1074). Most social problems such as violence, crimes, and others are born out of the conflict of freedom and responsibility. For example, from Freud’s perspective, most people are afraid of responsibility, which means they experience no absolute freedom (Ladouceur and Shaffer 1072). Therefore, the topic is pretty complex in relation to freedom and responsibility’s social and psychological aspects.
Annotated Bibliography
Bok, Hilary. Freedom and Responsibility. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998.
The book puts together the dichotomy of freedom and responsibility with the idea of determinism. The author explores the idea of responsibility that accompanies freedom of action for any human being. This work questions whether people are innately free and always bear responsibility for this right. Free will is described as a prerogative of a person solely in the cases of the so-called practical reasoning, when a person considers the consequences of the actions in perspective. Deterministic standpoint is applied whenever events and actions are analyzed in retrospect, as there is no discussion about freedom and responsibility in this case. This book encouraged me to think about the innateness of such concepts as freedom and responsibility to human nature and broadened the perception on the issue, as it questions freedom and responsibility for people within theoretical reasoning.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism Is a Humanism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
In this work, a great French philosopher of the XX century explores the correlation between human’s existence and freedom. One of the main ideas of the work is that radical freedom is innate to human nature. According to Sartre’s existentialist philosophy, people have total power to choose any action that they will take and have eternal freedom to their lives. The course of Sartre’s thought in this essay showed me that essential freedom that the humans possess comes along with responsibility for every single aspect of a human being, what they do, think, believe and choose. Thus, it made me realize that the infinite and total freedom is inseparable from total responsibility. The scope of such responsibility poses a great philosophical question of freedom’s possibility of being a curse along with being a blessing.
“Jordan Peterson on the Fall and Hope for Society (2021 Interview).” YouTube, uploaded by Lauren Chen, 2021.
In this interview, a renown Canadian scholar and psychoanalyst Jordan Peterson brings up the idea that responsibility is the only way to true freedom and illustrates this concept on real life examples. For example, he argues that freedom is the ability to choose in between the way of fulfilling the social roles in any way that the individual chooses, rather than the choice of taking the role itself. According to Peterson, when we are constrained by the social roles that we choose to bear responsibility for we become truly free. The interview provided me with a look at responsibility as an essential factor of performing the freedom of choice.
Works Cited
Ladouceur, Robert and Shaffer, Howard. “Moving Away from Individual Responsibility: A Comment.” Journal of Gambling Studies, vol. 37, 2021, pp. 1071-1078. doi: 10.1007/s10899-021-10046-x