In the previous chapter we saw that changing the ideal changes everything in our life. If my ultimate goal is knowledge in order to dominate and enjoy, I start down the spiral slope towards the dissolution that is vertigo. If I point my life toward knowing and in order to enable reality to better serve others take the path to ecstasy, with this turn my whole life takes on a positive color. I feel the enthusiasm aroused in my spirit on seeing that I am fulfilling my vocation, my mission.

A TRUE IDEAL GIVES ONE FREEDOM

Every now and then it is worth while looking inside oneself and thinking about the sort of life to which I am called: the ideal I should have in virtue of my own requirements. The philosopher, Xavier Zubiri said that ethical life begins when one asks seriously; "What is going to happen to me?" It is one’s own decision, and one decides when one chooses an ideal which determines the thousand of decisions one has to make each day.

For example, if you are a young man attracted to a particular girl, you like talking to her, accompanying her, making plans together. Is the relationship to which you are called sexual apart from deep friendship, or personal commitment, generous surrender, the wish to serve, the desire to be fruitful together? If the latter your noblest part – the "little prince" within – will show that you are called to something else: to create valuable forms of unity in an encounter leading to human fulfillment. If so your inner voice urges you to treat this girl with respect because she is not reduced to a means for your ends, but is an end in herself and of absolute value. Only if you recognize in her such absolute value will you profess unconditional love, not subject to your greater or lesser interests. Only then will you be freed from bondage to your appetites and able to choose with the right outlook and to give meaning to your life.

This form of freedom is far above that which today is taken as supreme. Generally free choice is thought sufficient for ethical behavior. This conviction has spread because it gratifies our desire for the independence to impose our will without having to listen to the call of values. On the contrary, it is heeding the call of what is valuable and responding actively that makes us responsible; not to respond would be literally "irresponsible".

But is an irresponsible person free? When we take our life seriously and decide to give it full significance, we face the issue of ideals which, in turn, refer us to vocation, values and freedom.

It was an emotional moment when Berliners climbed the wall that divided them for 28 years. After bitter separation, they were to communicate between family members and friends: freedom here meant lack of prohibition, freedom from an obstacle. But, is every achievement of freedom limited to this? We should find out, because being free is equivalent to being fully developed as a person.

Being human is complex, because it is so meaningful. The person is truly fortunate who from an early age has a clear idea of what freedom is, how many types of freedom exist, which are real and which false, which types of freedom lead to constructing one’s own personality and which lead to its destruction.

It is not enough to talk in the abstract of freedom for that enables one who would manipulate us to twist concepts so as to use them for his or her own ends. One who loves truth, however, does not wish to rule them through a strategic abuse of language; therefore he tries instead to clarify concepts. How many types of freedom are there; what role does each play in our life; which is the highest? Here we are touching on the most delicate points of our existence, where our destiny is decided. Let us analyze this subject with the help of concrete cases, in order to obtain a series of precise conclusions which will be keys to interpreting life and guidelines for behavior.

In the first place, we should know quite well what type of freedom is empty and thus lacking in meaning and value for human life.

The main character in the work by J.P. Sartre, Le sursis – "The Suspended" – goes to the station whence will depart all those mobilized to defend the mother country from the Nazi invasion. He should take the train, but in the end does not. He lets the train draw away, packed with young men, and returns to Paris. There he wanders the streets aimlessly, contemplates the Seine at length, turns thousands of thoughts around in his head, and feels himself invaded by freedom. He is all freedom; but finally he asks himself: "And what shall I do with all this freedom?" He felt his freedom to be empty; it led to no goal, nor was he inspired by any ideal.

A deserter is someone who breaks ties with his mother country. When a country is invaded by an enemy, there is complete mobilization for defence. Everything changes meaning. The goals in each life are subject to the great goal of defending the mother country. This is when the life of each citizen has meaning.

Fortunately, there is another form of freedom, a freedom overflowing with human life because it is linked with generosity.

In the beautiful work by Saint-Exupéry, Land of Man, two pilots find themselves able to do nothing to escape imminent death. They have dropped into the desert and are about to die of thirst. Their whole lives depend on whether the minute figure advancing on the horizon, turns his head towards them. He does and approaches. He is a Bedouin and offers them water. They gulp it down and, when satiated, one of the pilots addresses the man on the camel, the humblest person in the desert, and with emotion says:

Two people from refined society, highly civilized, had left their people and had broken with the rest of humankind. They are about to perish, and a simple, unknown man renounces the best he has – the water reserves indispensable for crossing the desert – in order to save their lives. This generosity is seen by them as a miracle of freedom and reveals to them the greatness of man, of Man with a capital letter. Hence they are saved for the life of co-existence. "You are the beloved brother. And I, in turn, will recognize you in all men". Is this form of generosity and freedom found in man, or must be it acquired? In the latter case, what sort of achievement is involved?

The examples cited show us that the notion of freedom is complex. It seems easy and clear, but when we try to evaluate it, it dissolves into a multitude of meanings. Contrary to slavery and imprisonment, the word freedom denotes being unfettered. It reveals affinity with "absence of ties". Being free means not being subjected, being able to move at one’s own will. The difficulties begin in determining what one is subjected to and therefore from what one must free oneself.

The first liberation for which one strives is to be able to put into play one’s physiological and psychic powers: moving, seeing, hearing, touching, thinking, remembering and loving. The paralytic feels tied, unable to give full rein to his yearning to walk by himself, to unfold energy, to travel, to reach those places he wishes, to take initiative; he does not feel free. The person who has health, but lacks the freedom to move in society, feels imprisoned. Although the prison may occupy the space of a city or a whole nation, the lack of freedom of movement provokes an uneasy sensation of suffocation.

Such confinement is experienced also, spiritually by those who feel subjected to pressures due to their ideology, politics, morals or religion. They wish to follow their conscience, but face a ring of hostility which turns each decision into a torment and a danger. Those who have lived moments or periods of terror in their life can never forget how vehemently they desired to be released from that insufferable strain.

Another form of spiritual slavery is imposed by manipulation of images and language. Without realizing it, millions of human beings are today reduced to slavery by those who shape their thoughts, their willpower and their feelings, and put them at their mercy. In democratic systems it is easier to lose one’s inner freedom than it was in a dictatorship, because there oppression was obvious and one was on the alert, whereas in democracies one’s freedom can be fraudulently taken away under the decoy of liberties conceded.

Freeing oneself from these physical and spiritual ties is so important for man, so basic with regard to gaining the meaning of life as a person, that the concept of "freedom from ties" is closely linked to human freedom. This is so close that, if we are not on the alert, we run the risk of thinking that every sort of freedom is a type of liberation from all that appears coercive and obligatory.

But is all that is obligatory coercive so that it annuls freedom? Clarifying this is decisive for the formation of the human being. Any misunderstanding on this point could leave us stumped, without the possibility of exercising our creative capacity and developing as free beings. We must be clear on this question.

An ethical rule, a musical form, a judicial law, a traffic regulation impose in some way on a person’s will, condition it and restrict their freedom. If I accept a rule, a law, a form or a dogma I recognize that my freedom is not absolute.

This is difficult for modern day man to recognize for the important reason that the word freedom is nowadays a magic stone so prestigious that it seems to encompass all that is excellent in life. Curtailing, conditioning, restricting its radius of action is interpreted as an unjustified depletion of the very foundations of human life. Such interpretation is considered by many people as obvious, but we will see that this is far from being well founded, and it is very important that this be realized quickly. Is every type of limitation and channelling opposed to all types of freedom? In no way. One must channel one’s existence along the path marked by duty and obligation. And one must do this in such a way that one assumes the obligation and the duty as one’s own, that is, as something which not only does not limit one’s freedom, but stimulates it. How is this link between freedom and duty possible?

When a young person discovers this, he or she takes a leap into maturity. Let us try to discover this for ourselves.

Our first form of freedom consists in our ability to exercise without any impediments our faculties of walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, relating, etc. But the exercise of one’s faculties will be fruitless unless one takes accounts of what makes their action possible.

I can see, hear, move, and wish to travel, but if I have no plane I cannot fly. However, in order that we have access to a plane today, earlier generations have had to transmit to modern society an accumulation of possibilities. In Latin transmit is tradere, from which comes traditio or in English ‘tradition’. Tradition then is not a dead weight on the shoulders of modern man; on the contrary, it is what makes possible his creative freedom.

A lack of possibilities implies a decline in freedom. One who cannot find a way to acquire for himself and his family the necessities of food and clothing, feels deprived of freedom. Hence, to go from extreme poverty to economic affluence is deeply felt as being a liberation.

Yerma, the heroine in the play by Federico García Lorca, lacked nothing except an ability to relate to her environment. But this left her spiritually asphyxiated or lacking in freedom. This led to real tragedy when, she physically asphyxiated her husband, Juan, to show him that biological life without freedom is false, indeed, a farce.

To feel free one must have different possibilities from which to choose. Thus, in childhood and youth the person with many opportunities and able to choose those he wishes is considered very free. He who offers new possibilities to others spontaneously is seen as a liberator, someone who increases freedom. Is this a fair evaluation? Perhaps not, because mere freedom of choice among many possibilities is not personal freedom, but only a condition for being free, as was the expeditious exercise of the faculties themselves.

One elects some possibilities from among others within the context of one’s life. One’s choice makes sense if it is well adapted to the requirements of one’s development as a person. These demands are the same as those for a true encounter with others, since one lives as a person, develops and perfects one’s personality through encounters which are high forms of unity. Such unity is the goal and ideal of one’s life. All one is and does, including one’s capacity to act freely, should be directed.

This enables us to specify when true human freedom begins. The person who is capable of choosing at every moment what he should accomplish in order to gain his ideal is acting freely. The object of one’s life is not simply to do what one likes at every moment, choosing between various possibilities as one’s fancy dictates. For a choice may be capricious and not respond to any solid criteria; it could be but obedience to an instinct.

Certainly, this has some value and manifests a capacity to give different answers to the same stimuli. An animal cannot do this: when a hungry cat sees a fish it takes it automatically and eats it, unless some reflex condition persuades it otherwise. It does not choose, but reacts automatically according to a pattern preset by its species which takes care of its sustenance. A hungry man, however, may react differently before appetizing food: eat it immediately, keep it for later, give it to someone else.

Being able to choose is an extremely high faculty which is absolutely necessary for the development of a person as a being who is gifted with creativity. For this reason the greatest wish of children and young people is to have many and varied possibilities, the more the better, because having possibilities is indispensable to a life of human freedom and dignity.

They are right to strive for the possibilities to develop themselves as persons, but they will not achieve this unless they see that merely choosing among various possibilities is not enough to live a truly human life. Choices must be made in the light of a clear idea of what a human being is and what constitutes a vocation and mission in life. Freedom of choice must be oriented and directed according to the image of the person we are called to realize. Human beings can realize themselves freely in various forms. Freedom will be genuine if one’s development responds to one’s true vocation, to the most profound requirements of one’s being. It will be unauthentic if one’s use of it leads one away from the human pattern we should have been forming throughout our life.

What should this pattern be like? One does not become a person through rejection of others, but must establish encounters. Such encounters must be created: one must open oneself to others, receive the possibilities for living that the other offers and vice versa, and set up a common field of interchange. The creativity offered by an encounter, as with all forms of creativity, is dual and supposes at least two realities. Just as one cannot be fertile biologically by oneself, neither can one be creative on the personal plane unless one opens up to other realities and is ready actively to take up the possibilities offered. Thus, choosing in the solitude of one’s own egoism is a vacuous freedom which is useless for constructing human life. Doing what one wishes without collaboration with others does not denote genuine freedom because human beings have been called to weave a life in community. Doing as one fancies implies freedom of manoeuvre. But while this has some value in that it implies exemption from external ties and a capacity to choose between various possibilities, it must be subject to another, higher value, namely, one’s full realization. Without relating to this value, freedom is uprooted and infertile.

On the contrary, freedom as the choice of that which offers the possibilities for achieving the ideal is full, overflowing and genuine. When I choose something, not because it is pleasant or immediately useful, but because it suits the ideal in my life, I separate myself from what happens to be immediately at hand and escape being merged with that; this liberation is freedom.

For this reason freedom is basically an unselfish, disinterested or generous attitude. These enable freedom of vision as the capacity to see a concrete action in the light of the ideal which simultaneously inspires it and gives it meaning. The ideal pursued enlivens all of life, inspiring actions, directing them towards fulfillment, making one wish freely to accomplish what is one’s duty. The person who feels attached to an ideal that is freely accepted knows how to see an obligation as a link to perfect development.

Such free choice of duty can be made for various reasons; it is from this variety that different levels of perfection of liberty emerge. If I choose what I ought to as an obligation imposed on me by my own reality, I am free, but at an elementary level. If I assume such duty with love, because I see it as a means to accomplish my ideal in life, my freedom is more perfect. It is love for a genuine ideal that bestows greater inner freedom. When this love reaches the peak of enthusiasm, freedom becomes supreme and I carry out my duty enthusiastically. The effort is thereby transfigured; it is lightened and becomes part of the process of elevation to the best in oneself; it is no longer repression but sublimation.

Frequently, one flees from this highest form of freedom for lack of the courage responsibly to take hold of the reins of one’s life. Men – wrote Fichte incisively – prefer to be considered as a piece of lunar lava, rather than to be responsible and free subjects. To be responsible means being attentive to everything valuable that asks me to adopt it and accomplish it in my life. Things are of value to me when they offer possibilities for meaningful action. If I respond positively I act responsibly and make myself responsible for the result of my actions.

Only responsible persons are free, for only they are free from selfish and comfortable reclusion in one’s own solitude and find themselves ready to engage their creativity and personal development. When one knows how actively to respond to the highest value – the unity with others of one prepared to give his life for friends and enemies – one obtains perfect freedom.

In the hell of a concentration camp, the father of a family is about to be put in a dungeon to die of hunger. Another prisoner steps in front of him and, gently touching his shoulder, says: "You stay, you have a family; I am alone!" and takes his place. One is not born with such unselfish heroic freedom. It is the fruit of a long struggle, a sign that life has scaled a high peak and gained supreme elevation of spirit. To go into a dungeon to die of starvation contradicts the instinct for survival by whatever means. At this limit point, one spared from that punishment steps forward to replace another he will never see again. It is difficult to imagine the kind of inner freedom necessary to make such a decision. This freedom is not merely a lack of ties, nor pure freedom of movement to choose at one’s discretion between two possibilities. Rather, this highest freedom means perfect self control and occurs only when one identifies with the ideal of supreme unity with others to such an extent that any other value is insignificant in comparison.

A young Jew is dragged like a leper outside the walls of Jerusalem. They shoved him about and then dragged him a short way off and begin to stone him. There is spiritual helplessness in dying surrounded by hate; even dying animals usually seek refuge so they feel less unprotected. Yet Stephen is alone before his executioners. It would be normal to try to run, shout, defend himself in desperation, to die killing. However, he remained calm with gaze fixed on high as if seeing a superior reality. From this extreme height he spoke a word of pardon for those who, seconds later, would leave him speechless for ever.

We need a superhuman capacity for unselfishness, for isolation from the particular situation and adverse fate in order to rise above the present and take the viewpoint of pure love. This love expects nothing, reproaches nothing, and demands nothing. Rather, even in the most stressful moments in life, it consecrates its last energies to restoring the unity the enemies are tearing away in the cruellest manner. This identification with absolute, unconditional love, marks the peak in human freedom.

In the painting by El Greco, El expolio, hanging in the sacristy of the Cathedral in Toledo, Jesus is surrounded by a world of hate. The enemies crowd around him, forming a suffocating space. The Roman centurion looks on impassively, whilst Mary and the holy women look fearfully at the cross being prepared. Jesus, however, seems unaffected by the hostile climate. He does not respond with hate. He looks upwards, ecstatically, in an attitude of prayer and introspection. In the painting his figure stands out as a consequence of the radiating power of the scarlet of his tunic. We might well think that the Savior, in his own world, is praying for those who do not understand that hate destroys the personal life of those professing it. This impressive majesty of spirit represents the most relevant form of freedom.

Let us synthesize all we have said. If you do not accomplish what you know you should, then you are not free. If you feel duty as a coercive obligation and carry it out under force, you exercise freedom but you do not yet have inner freedom, that is, a joyful spontaneity in carrying out your duty. But one day you realize that acting in accord with duty perfects you and you accept duty as a friendly voice; you begin to love it when you discover its value. Then you act with flexibility, promptness and pleasure for you have gained true inner freedom.

But one day you discover the highest goodness in your life, your ideal and your greatest duty: establishing the highest bonds of unity with others – with another. Follow this ideal with all your soul, with the drive of the enthusiasm you feel when you take as a goal the perfection towards which you are called and compelled. Then you will easily merge duty with wish and reach the highest level of freedom. You will feel compelled but not forced, inwardly linked but not coerced, for an inner voice reveals that what is obliging is different from you but not distant. This is the very beginning of one’s self-realization as a person. That is why you embrace it with the enthusiasm given by the encounter with duty seen as an ideal. As the North Pole which points towards the fulfillment of one’s vocation and mission, this is the achievement of true freedom.

Try really to find yourself in all aspects of life: love, beauty, ethics, professional duty and religion, and freedom will flourish within you . "It is day when we are together; it is night when we are apart," said the blind man to his guide, Marianela, in the book by Pérez Galdós (of the same name). What a beautiful sentence! It is day, there are floods of light when we live in the unity of the encounter; when we break the unity night falls and we are plunged into darkness. The encounter is a source of light in which we see clearly the infinite poverty of the forms of freedom spiraling down to the nausea of vertigo.

One who takes one’s wishes as the supreme criteria of action loses inner freedom to be creative which requires opening up to valuable realities; the person subject to his fancies remains enclosed in his selfish interior. If desires plague you and you are incapable of seeing as a whole the different values asking to be carried out and of giving priority to those that are higher, then you are not free within.

Macbeth in Shakespeare’s tragedy is surrounded in his castle by the "walking wood" and perishes to show that on surrendering to the vertigo of unmeasured ambition to become king, he totally loses the genuine freedom to open himself creatively to what is valuable, and so he suffocates.

When human freedom is seen in depth with the horizons of wealth and happiness it opens, one must feel infinite pity on seeing that tremendous effort is now put into persuading youth that they are free when they surrender to the excitement produced by fascination. If young people confuse the excitement of vertigo with the exultation of ecstasy they will never enjoy true freedom, but will be exposed to all kinds of intellectual, moral and political slavery.

One is free not when one remains fixed in the immediate present, but when one is steeped in the ideal and acts at every moment on its impulses. The human ideal is the encounter; however, the mere practice of sexuality does not make an encounter, but only a juxtaposition of two solitudes. The encounter is arrived at when two people engage each other, not when two egos are linked. The various elements integrated in the life of a person’s sexuality have a personal character only when actively joined with love.

It is not possible to continue to defend eroticism today except as a manipulative manner of attaining easy power over peoples converted into masses. But, then these are not people, but a degenerative product or what is left of the people when its most prized possessions: creativity, personal dignity and freedom, are taken away.

We see clearly then that one who is capable of assuming different values and integrating them correctly is wholly free. This integration is achieved by giving priority to the highest value and assembling all values in a harmonious, meaningful complex under this ideal of unity.

Three conclusions can be drawn from the foregoing:

1. Being free is being capable of giving full meaning to one’s life.

2. Education for freedom is gaining a sensitivity to questions of meaning.

3. Giving meaning to life implies the art of integrating various, complementary elements.

How this difficult and prolific art may be acquired will the subject of the following chapter.

According to Marcello Peretti, the education of freedom is not secondary to training for love:

In a letter to Eckermann, Goethe, as excellent a thinker as he was a writer, expressed in concise and lucid form his idea of true freedom:

We are not made free by not accepting anything superior to ourselves, but by obeying something that is above us.

 

This type of collaborative obedience gives, total scope to our existence, it endows it with full meaning and makes it deeply happy. The task of showing this in detail and correctly falls to ethics as a discipline.

Unfortunately it has been forgotten that ethics only attempts to assure our life its full scope and meaning, and make it truly happy. One can have very intense experiences, but if they have no meaning in one’s life as a whole, it will be empty, absurd and one will feel embittered. This is the opposite of being happy, and serious spiritual depression follows from this bitterness.

Nowadays it is often thought that concern with giving meaning to life and guiding it towards a high ideal means evading the demands of daily life and, therefore, constitutes an unrealistic attitude. Viktor Frankl, forestalls this misunderstanding in his work, Psychoanalysis and Existentialism:

Albert Camus emphasizes the importance of the meaning of life in his own forceful manner:

Dostoyevsky, with his profound wisdom, considered the question of meaning essential:

The secret of human existence consists not only in living, but also in knowing what one is living for.

 

Present day writers teach us that man’s life is established as genuinely human and thus full of meaning when each one treats his or her neighbor as a "thou", a possible companion; not as "it", a possible object of control and manipulation.

To Viktor Frankl:

2. Cf. Terre des hommes (Paris: Gallimard, 1939), pp. 216-217.

3. Cf. El Túnel (Madrid: Cátedra, 1982). A full explanation of this work can be seen in my Análisis literario y formación humanística (Madrid: Escuela Española, 1986), pp. 146-167.

4. "Der Mensch vor der Frage nach dem Sinn", p. 93.

5. Cf. "La formación sexual como formación para el amor" in the collective work La educación sexual (Barcelona: Herder, 1975), pp. 199-200.

6. Cf. "Der Mensch vor der Frage nach dem Sinn", p. 141. Spanish version (Barcelona: Editorial Herder) entitled: El hombre en busca de sentido. The texts given were translated directly from the German.

7. Ibid., p. 196.

8. Ibid., p. 142.

9. Ibid., p. 154.

10. Ibid. (Mexico: F.C.E., 1967), pp. 40-43.

11. Cf. El mito de Sísifo (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1981), p. 89.

12. Cf. Der Mensch vor der Frage nach dem Sinn, p. 93.