Recent advances in the understanding of the person are being made by interweaving two main streams of thought regarding the person: one considers the subject as existing in one’s own right as conscious and free; the other situates this consciousness and freedom in the person as acting in the world with other persons. Together they provide a context for understanding the development of the moral awareness of the person.

A person should be understood also in terms of one’s goals, for activities progressively modify and transform one in relation to the perfection of which one is by nature capable and which one freely chooses. Thus, though infants are truly and quite simply human beings, they are good only in an initial sense, namely, as being members of the human species. What they will become, however, lies in the future; hence they begin to be categorized as good or bad people only after, and in view of, their actions. Even then it is thought unfair to judge or evaluate persons at an early age before it can be seen how they will "turn out" or what they will "make of themselves," that is, what constant pattern of action and hence what character they will develop.

Further, one’s progress or lack thereof can be judged only in terms of acting in a manner proportionate to one’s nature: a horse may be characterized as good or bad on the basis of its ability to run, but not to fly. One must be true to one’s nature, which in that sense serves as a norm of action. In this new sense I am a law to myself, namely, I must never act as less than one having a human nature with its self-consciousness and freedom. Below we shall see a way in which being true to this nature implies constituting both myself and my world.

This self-conscious experience depends upon the objective reality of the subject with all the characteristics described above in the section on the self-conscious and free subject. This, in turn, is shaped by the reflexive and hence free experiences of discovering, choosing, and committing oneself. In these reflexive acts the subject in a sense constitutes oneself, being manifested or disclosed to oneself as concrete, distinct, and indeed unique. This is the distinctively personal manner of the self actuation of the conscious being or person.

The result for the person is a unique realization of that independence which above was seen to characterize all subsistent individuals. Beyond the mirroring of surrounding conditions and of those things that happen to one, beyond even the objective realization of oneself as affected by those events, the person exists reflexively as their subject and as a source of action. As a person one has an inward, interior life of which oneself alone is the responsible source. This implies for the person an element of mystery which can never be fully explicated or exhausted. Much can be proposed to me by other persons and things, much can even be imposed upon me. But my self-consciousness is finally my act and no one else’s. How I assess and respond to my circumstances is finally my decision; this relates to, but is never simply the result of, exterior factors. 

Here finally lies the essence of freedom, of which the ability to choose between alternatives is but one implication. What is essential for a free life is not that I always retain an alternative, but that I can determine myself and carry through with consistency the implications of my self-determination–even, and at times especially, in the most straightening of circumstances. In this the person finally transcends that growth process originally called physis or the physical, and hence the personal has rightly been considered to be spiritual.

Self-determination in action has another implication: in originating an action the person’s experience is not merely of that action as happening to or in him, but of a dynamism in which he participates efficaciously. As a self, I experience myself immanently as wholly engaged in acting and know this efficacy to be properly my own, my responsibility. Hence, by willing a good or evil action, I specify, not only the action which results, but myself as the originator of that action.

On the other hand, this activity is marked characteristically by responsibility. This implies that, while the physical or social goods that one can choose are within one’s power, they do not overpower one. Whatever their importance, in the light of the person’s openness to the good as such one can always overrule the power of their attraction. When one does choose them it is the person–not the goods–who is responsible for that choice.

Both of these point to two foundations of the person’s freedom, and hence of one’s ability to be a self-determining end-in-oneself. First, one’s mind or intellect is oriented, not to one or another true thing or object of knowledge, but to Truth Itself and hence to whatever is or can be. Second and in a parallel manner, the person’s will is not limited to–or hence by–any particular good or set of goods. Rather, because oriented to the Good Itself, it is freely open to any and all goods.

Below in tracing the emergence of a culture we will look at the dynamic involved in the evolution of values from free choices made among the range of possible routes to development and perfection. We will see how values serve as lenses which focus our attention and aspirations. Further, we will note the character of virtues as capabilities which one develops and which enable one to pursue the work of shaping his or her life according to his or her values.

Bodily or somatic dynamisms, such as the pumping of blood, are basically non-reflective and reactive. They are implemented through the nervous system in response to stimuli; generally they are below the level of human consciousness, from which they enjoy a degree of autonomy. Nonetheless, they are in harmony with the person as a whole, of which they are an integral dimension. As such they are implicit in my conscious and self-determined choices regarding personal action with others in this world.

Dynamisms of the psyche are typified by emotivity. In some contrast to the more reactive character of lower bodily dynamism and in a certain degree to the somatic as a whole, these are based rather within the person. They include, not only affectivity, but sensation and emotions as well, which feelings range from some which are physical to others which are moral, religious and aesthetic. Such emotions have two important characteristics. First, they are not isolated or compartmentalized, but include and interweave the various dimensions of the person. Hence, they are crucial to the integration of a personal life. They play a central role in the proximity one feels to values and to the intensity of one’s response thereto. Secondly, they are relatively spontaneous and contribute to the intensity of a personal life. This, however, is not adequate to make them fully personal for, as personal, life is not only what happens in me, but above all what I determine to happen. This can range beyond and even against my feelings.

It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish two directions or dimensions of one’s personal transcendence. The first relates to one’s world as the object of one’s knowledge and/or one’s will. This might be called horizontal as an activation of a person inasmuch as he or she relates to other things and especially to other persons. Such a relation would be poorly conceived were it thought to be merely an addition to a fully constituted person. On the contrary, the person as such is essentially transcendent, that is, open to others. One requires this interaction with others in order to have a language and all that this implies for the formation of thought, to have a moral code to assist one in the direction of one’s will, and above all to have a family and community, and thus the possibility of sharing in the hopes and anguish, the love and concern, which give meaning to life.

The other, or vertical dimension of transcendence follows the sequence of levels of personal reality. Personal actions are carried out through a will which is open and responsive to the Good or goodness itself and as such is able to respond to, without being determined by, any particular good or value. Thus, it is finally up to the person to determine him/herself to act. One is able to do this because personal consciousness is not only reflective of myself as an additional object of knowledge, but reflexive or self-aware in its conscious acts.

If such actions derived merely from my powers or faculties of knowledge or will, in acting I would determine only the object of my action. Instead, these actions derive from my self as subject or person; hence, in acting I determine equally, and even primarily, myself. This is self-determination, self-realization and self-fulfilment in the strongest sense of those terms. Not only are others to be treated as ends in themselves; in acting I myself am an end.

It is possible to trace abstractly a general table of virtues required for particular circumstances in order to help clarify the overall terrain of moral action. As with values, however, such a table would not articulate the particulars of one’s own experience nor dictate the next steps in one’s project toward personal realization with others in relation to the Good. This does not mean, however, that such decisions are arbitrary; conscience makes its moral judgments in terms of real goods and real structures of values and virtues. Nevertheless, through and within the breadth of these categories, it is the person who must decide, and in so doing enrich his or her unique experience of the virtues. No one can act without courage and wisdom, but each exercise of these is distinctive and typically one’s own. Progressively they form a personality that facilitates one’s exercise of freedom as it becomes more mature and correlatively more unique. This often is expressed simply as ‘more personal.’

A person’s values reflect then, not only his/her culture and heritage, but within this what he has done with its set of values. One shapes and refines these values through one’s personal, and hence free, search to realize the good with others in one’s world. They reflect, therefore, not only present circumstances which our forebears could not have experienced, but our free response to the challenges to interpersonal, familial and social justice and love in our days.

In the final analysis, moral development as a process of personal maturation consists in bringing my pattern of personal and social virtues into harmony with the corresponding sets of values along the vertical pole of transcendence. In this manner we achieve a coordinated pattern of personal capabilities for the realization of our unique response to the Good.

Though free and hence properly personal, as was seen above, this is done essentially with others. For this reason the harmony sought within oneself for moral development must be mirrored in a corresponding harmony between modes of action and values in the community and nation in which one lives. (Thus, Aristotle considered his ethics of individual moral action to be an integral part of politics.) If that be true then the moral development of the person as a search for self-fulfilment is most properly the search for that dynamic harmony, both within and without, called peace.

Two great campaigns appear to have marked the history of the last century. One has been to develop science and its related technology. This has achieved a new command by man over energy and electricity and has led, in turn, to a great expansion of the industrial base and of communications.

There was hope that this alone would usher in a new and more humane world, but by the first third of this century the totalitarian and colonial powers had proved that these achievements could be used in quite ambivalent manners. There followed a vast project of liberation from totalitarianism, colonialism, and prejudice of many sorts with a view to recognizing and realizing the freedom of all persons. The last half century might be said to have been marked especially by the march of humankind toward freedom. From the marches of Mahatma Gandhi and the "Long March" of Chinese lore in the 30s, to that of Martin Luther King in the 60s, and the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, the aspiration of freedom has electrified hearts, evoked great sacrifices and defined human progress in our age.

Conversely, in each case the achievement of freedom confronts a people with new responsibility for its own welfare, thereby necessitating an intensive program of scientifically coordinated agricultural and industrial development and fiscal management, with corresponding developments in the mode and content of education. Scientific knowledge, practice and formation come increasingly to be seen as keys to the exercise of freedom. Some indeed have thought that what is not according to universal and necessary laws of science, such as political freedom and the creative freedom of culture, to be impediments which should at best be ignored in education or restricted in practice. Thus, the freedom to be truly oneself for which Gandhi fought has been attacked and a new form of colonialism begun, not only from external political power, but from within.

At present this imbalance is being redressed and science has been rejoined first by democracy and now by culture as the watchwords of our times. It is true, here as elsewhere, that wherever there are two or more their unity and integration becomes central to the realization and value of both. So at the present moment a more adequate context is sought which will enable both science and the political and creative freedom of persons and peoples to be realized in order to implement life that is free, democratic and humane.

This suggests that we might helpfully reflect upon life in our century by considering science and freedom and the conditions for their conjoined realization. For this, we shall consider key points in the philosophy of Kant in the hope that this will suggest ways in which the multiple traditions can make a substantive contribution to the conjoint realization of physical, socio-political and cultural well-being.

Descartes’ requirements of clarity and distinctness for the human mind pointed modern philosophy toward what is fixed and necessary. Generally, this was below man; as human life and relationships transcend any neat categorizations. Freedom is by definition not necessitated, and love as self-giving is essentially unique and spontaneous. If freedom and love are the highest of human realities, then the search for what is required for them (and hence manifest by them) promises an especially penetrating exploration into the heart of being itself.

What is of special interest here is not only that, after Descartes, this search was taken up by Kant, but that, in this process, Kant came inexorably to an aesthetic context for reality and for thought. This may suggest areas in other philosophical traditions, such as those of Islam and Asia, which are increasingly central to the human quest of our time. Indeed, it is the intent here to suggest that, far from being in impediment to progress, the metaphysical traditions of India may hold the key to employing the sciences in a way that truly promotes the development of a free people.

To explore this we will: (1) survey philosophical notions of freedom in order to search out the common area of autonomy in contrast to the necessary and universal realm of scientific laws; (2) see how the inadequacies of the minimal sense of freedom as choice found in the liberal tradition and common in our day point to the principled sense of freedom in Kant; (3) analyze the overall structure of Kant’s Critiques as this leads the mind to the need for, and the notion of, an aesthetic context for realizing conjointly science and freedom in both its political and cultural dimensions; and (4) look for resources of the Hindu tradition to respond to this need.

1. Circumstantial <–––––––-> 1. Self-realization

2. Acquired <––––––––> 2. Self-perfection

3. Natural <–––––-––-> 3. Self-determination

To this schema, political liberty could be added as a variant of circumstantial self-realization and collective freedom as a variant of acquired self-perfection. The modes of self correspond to the modes of freedom, each thereby constituting a class; e.g., self-realization (as permitting an individual to act as he wishes for his own good as he sees it) will always relate to the circumstantial mode of freedom. It is possible, however, that a mode of self might correspond as well to an additional mode of freedom. Thus, the circumstantial mode of freedom is significant not only for self-realization, but also for self-perfection and self-determination.

I. Circumstantial self-realization: Ayer, Benthem

II. Acquired self-perfection: Plato, Spinoza

III. Natural self-determination: Descartes, Sartre

IV. Collective freedom: Marx, Nietzsche

N.B. Some philosophers could encompass two or more of these, while Aquinas, Locke, Maritain, Montesquieu and Simon encompass all four.

This categorization has a number of uses: first, it enables one, at a glance, to identify something of the understanding and concerns of a particular thinker regarding freedom; second, it enables one to gauge what comparisons between which philosophers might be possible and potentially helpful on a specific issue.

For our purpose of discovering not only the divisions, but the nature of freedom, this categorization serves a third purpose, namely, it can provide the material for an initial search for the common and, hence, the foundational notion of freedom. This will not be the same as a basic understanding of the ontology or psychology of the politics of freedom–that must be the search of particular theoreticians. However, if an area of convergence in the multiple understandings of freedom can be determined this can orient the attention of the historical and theoretical search toward answering the question, "What is freedom?" and thereby the question "What is the person?"

(A) Circumstantial freedom of self-realization: "To be free is to be able, under favorable circumstances, to act as one wishes for one’s own individual good as one sees it";

(B) Acquired freedom of self-perfection: "To be free is to be able, through the acquired virtue or wisdom, to will or live as one ought in conformity to the moral law or an ideal befitting human nature"; and

(C) Natural freedom of self-determination: "To be free is to be able, by a power inherent in human nature, to change one’s own character creatively by deciding for oneself what one shall do or shall become"; to this can be added:

(D) Political liberty; and

(E) Collective freedom.

Note that each of these statements is not a generic statement over and above which the particular theories in the category add a specific difference. Rather, they are analogous statements of the common content of the theories in that category. They are sufficiently open to embrace the different instances in the category and yet sufficiently distinct to enable these to be contrasted to the theories in another category. For example, (B) "To be free is to be able, through acquired virtue or wisdom, to will or live as one ought in conformity to the moral law or an ideal befitting human nature" states a common understanding, which is diversely realized by:

All of these differ from A and C in that none of these thinkers would say that A or C are instances of the freedom which they propose, namely, that to be free is: (A) "to be able under favorable circumstances to act as one wishes," or (C) "by a power inherent in human nature to change one’s own character creatively by deciding for oneself what one shall do or shall become."

A man who is able

 

(A) under favorable circumstances, to act as he wishes for his own individual good as he sees it

or

B) through acquired virtue or wisdom, to will or live as he ought in conformity to the moral law or an ideal befitting human nature

or

(C) by a power inherent in human nature, to change his own character creatively by deciding for himself what he shall or shall not become

 

is free in the sense that he (X).

In carrying out this process of generalization in order to determine what is common to A and C, attention to the following points will be helpful:

a. Ability to Act: the power to act appears in A, B and C. It should be taken as open not only to actuation, but to the possibility of acting or not acting, even if that ability is not exercised or is related to different goals. Thus it is:

- A. "the circumstantial ability to perform the movements called for by one’s own desires and purposes," i.e., the good as one sees it for oneself,

- B. "the acquired ability to will or live as one ought," i.e. for a goal that is set for, and attracts, everyone, and

b. Analogous Concept: A general notion of freedom must be open to all of these as regards actuation or at least the power to act, the nature of the ability, as well as its goal. This openness, however, is not one of limitation achieved by simply omitting the difference; it is rather that of being broad enough to include all of these actually, though not explicitly.

c. Self and Other: Note that all these concern the self, whether as "self realization," "self-perfection" or "self-determination," and that all do this with some implied contrast to an "other." In the vast survey of related philosophic literature this contrast to the "other" appears in terms of freedom as arising from within, or from my own will in contrast to something or someone outside of myself, or even to the lower and morally intransigent side of human nature if it opposes one’s freedom. One’s decisions and plans are one’s own only if made by this present active self, and not merely to and for him.

The self, then, is the principle or source of freedom, of the acts he performs which manifest freedom. As the person is not free when subject to an alien power rather than to his own, the terms "independence" and "autonomy" are generally synonymous for "freedom" and "liberty." This is reflected in the treatment of freedom as liberation in ancient as well as contemporary times, of being one’s own master (Aquinas, Spinoza) or of autonomy (Kant).

Thence arises the following composite statement of freedom in its three modalities (A-C) and in its most general form (X):

A man who is able

 

(A) under favorable circumstances, to act as he wishes for his own individual good as he sees it

or

B) through acquired virtue or wisdom, to will or live as he ought in conformity to the moral law or an ideal befitting human nature

or

(C) by a power inherent in human nature, to change his own character creatively by deciding for himself what he shall or shall not become

 

What has been done thus far is to follow Adler’s team at the Institute for Philosophical Research as it winnowed the breadth of philosophical literature to identify certain basic categories of freedom and then to draw out a general analogous statement of freedom. This has not been a theoretical or deductive procedure, but a dialectical one. It looked historically for the various human understandings of freedom and drew from them a sufficiently open description of freedom to include–though not in explicit detail–the positive content of this basic and shared human project and experience.

Now we shall reverse the field, that is, we shall look into the philosophical basis from which have arisen the various theories of freedom identified in the above process of generalization. Our goal here will be to bring to explicit detail the bases, modes and goals of freedom.

What appears striking is that, if one takes not the ways in which some theories overlap and include a number of types of freedom, but the pattern of those which are focused upon only one type of freedom, or if one looks to the highest type of freedom which a theory can take into account, then one finds that each of the three types of freedom delineated by the Institute of Philosophical Research corresponds to an epistemology and metaphysics. Circumstantial freedom of self-realization is the only type of freedom recognized by many empirically-oriented philosophers; acquired freedom of self-perfection is characteristic of more rationalist, formalist and essentialist philosophers; natural freedom of self-determination is developed by philosophers who attend also to the existential dimension of being. This suggests that the metaphysical underpinnings of a philosophy control its epistemology and that especially in modern times this controls its philosophical anthropology and ethics. With this in mind, the following review of the three types of freedom will begin from their respective metaphysical and epistemological contexts and, in that light, proceed to the notion of freedom held by each.

The restrictions implicit in this appear starkly in Rudolf Carnap’s "Vienna Manifesto" which shrinks the scope of meaningful knowledge and significant discourse to describing "some state of affairs" in terms of empirical "sets of facts." This excludes speech about wholes, God, the unconscious or entelechies; the grounds of meaning, as well as all that transcends the immediate content of sense experience, are excluded.

As noted above by Adler and his team, the decision in metaphysics concerning the nature of reality and the corresponding decision in epistemology determine our understanding of the nature and meaning of freedom and, indeed, of the person and its life. The results of the exclusions made according to this empiricism are devastating for human life and meaning: there can be no sense of human nature and, hence, no freedom of self-perfection; there can be no sense of human existence and, hence, no natural freedom of self-determination.

This first level of freedom is reflected in the contemporary sense of "choice" in North America. As a theory, this is underwritten by a pervasive series of legal precedents following notion of privacy of Justices Holmes and Brandeis, which now has come to be recognized as a constitutional right. In the American legal system the meaning of freedom has been reduced to this. It should be noted that this derived from John Locke’s politically motivated decision (itself an exercise of freedom), not merely to focus upon empirical meaning, but to eliminate from public discourse any other knowledge. Its progressively rigorous implementation, which we have but sampled in the references to Hume and Carnap, constitutes an ideology in the sense of a selected and restrictive vision which controls minds and reduces freedom to willfulness. In this perspective, liberalism is grossly misnamed, and itself calls for a process of liberation and enrichment.

FREEDOM OF LAW AND ESSENCE: ACQUIRED

FREEDOM OF SELF-PERFECTION

 

But then we face the dilemma of freedom. If to be of value it must be ordered, can freedom be truly autonomous and, hence, free; conversely, if to be free is to be autonomous will it be surely a value. In both cases the question is: can freedom be free? The dilemma is how persons can retain both meaning and value, on the one hand, and autonomy or freedom, on the other. One without the other–meaning without freedom, or freedom without meaning–would be a contradiction. This kind of question takes us to the intimate nature of reality and makes possible new discovery. I would suggest that it may even allow us to appreciate from within the more intuitive insight of the Vedas and, thereby, to engage that thought in new ways particularly adapted to the contemporary issue of freedom and person. To see this, we must look at the structure of the three critiques which Kant wrote between 1781 and 1790: The Critical Decade.

It is unfortunate that the range of Kant’s work has been so little appreciated. Until recently, the rationalist impact directed almost exclusive attention to the first of Kant’s critiques, the Critique of Pure Reason, which concerned the conditions of possibility of the physical sciences. Its rejection of metaphysics as a science was warmly greeted in empiricist, positivist and, hence, materialist circles, as a dispensation from the need for any search beyond what was reductively sensible and, hence, phenomenal in the sense of being inherently spatial and/or temporal.

Kant himself, however, quite insisted upon going further. If the terms of the sciences were inherently phenomenal, then his justification of the sciences was precisely to identify and to justify, through metaphysical and transcendental deductions respectively, the sets of categories which enable the phenomenal world to have intelligibility and scientific meaning. Since sense experience is always limited and partial, the universality and necessity of the laws of science be sought elsewhere, they must come from the human mind. Such a priori categories belong properly to the subject and precisely inasmuch as it is not material.

We are here at the essential turning point for the modern mind, where Kant takes a definitive step in identifying the subject as more than a wayfarer in a world encountered as a given to which one can but react. Rather, he shows the subject to be an active force engaged in the creation even of the empirical world in which one lives. The meaning or intelligible order of things is due not only to their creation according to a divine intellect, but also to the work of the human intellect and its categories. If, however, man is to have such a central role in the constitution of his world, then certain elements will be required, and this requirement itself will be their justification.

In sum, it is the task of the reproductive imagination to bring together the multiple elements of sense intuition in some unity or order capable of being informed by a concept or category of the intellect with a view to making a judgment. On the part of the subject, the imagination is active, authentically one’s own and creative. Ultimately, however, its work is not free, but necessitated by the categories or concepts as integral to the work of sciences which are characterized by necessity and universality.

How realistic then is talk about freedom? Do we really have the choice of which so much is said? On the one hand, we are structured in a set of circumstances which circumscribe, develop and direct our actions. This is the actual experience of people which Marx and Hegel articulate when they note the importance of knowledge of the underlying pattern of necessity and make freedom consist in conforming thereto.

On the other hand, we learn also from our experience that we do have a special responsibility in this world to work with the circumstances of nature, to harness and channel these forces toward greater harmony and human goals. A flood which kills thousands is an occasion not for murdering more, but for mobilizing to protect as many as possible, for determining what flood control projects need to be instituted for the future, and even for learning how to so construct them that they can generate electricity for power and crop irrigation. All of this is properly the work of the human spirit which emerges therein. Similarly, in facing a trying day, I eat a larger breakfast rather than cut out part of my schedule; that is, rather than ignoring the circumstances and laws of my physical being, I coordinate these and direct them for human purposes.

This much can be said by pragmatism. But it leaves unclear whether man remains merely an instrument of physical progress and, hence, whether his powers remain a function of matter. This is where Kant takes a decisive step in his second Critique.

The Critique of Practical Reason and The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals

Beyond the set of universal, necessary and ultimately material relations upon which he focuses in his first Critique, Kant points out that the human responsibility lies in the realm of practical reason. If man is responsible, then there is about him a distinctive level of reality irreducible to the universal and necessary laws of physical nature. This is the reality of freedom and spirit; it is what characterizes and distinguishes the person. It is here that the bonds of matter are broken, that transcendence is affirmed, and that creativity is founded. Without this nature would remain a repetitive machine, peoples would prove incapable of sustaining their burgeoning populations, and the dynamic spirit required for modern life would die.

Once one crosses this divide, however, life unfolds a new set of requirements. The definitiveness of human commitments and the unlimitedness required for its free creativity reflect characteristics of being which soar far beyond the limited, fixed and hypothetical relations of the physical order. They reflect rather the characteristics of knowledge and love: infinity, absoluteness and commitment. To understand the personal characteristics experienced in our own life, we need to understand ourselves not as functions of matter, but as loving expressions of unlimited wisdom and creative generosity.

Locke had tried too hard to make all public by reducing everything to the physical dimensions and concrete circumstances of human life. Instead, in order to understand the proper place of man in the universe, we must read ourselves and our situation from the opposite end, namely, as expressions of a conscious life that is progressively unfolding and becoming more refined.

Many materialist philosophies of a reductionist character, such as positivism and the materialistic dialectic, would have been at the level of Kant’s first Critique. The necessity of the sciences provides control over one’s life, while their universality extends this control to others. The positivist hopes by means of Kant’s categories to suffuse the concrete Humean facts with a clarity corresponding to the rationalist’s simple natures, and thereby to achieve Descartes’ goal of walking with confidence in the world.

For Kant, however, this simply will not do. Clarity which comes with the cost of necessity may be acceptable and even desirable for works of nature, but it is an appalling way to envisage human life. Hence, in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant proceeds to identify that which is distinctive of the moral order. His analysis pushes forcefully beyond utilitarian goals, inner instincts and rational (scientific) relationships–precisely beyond the necessitated order which can be constructed in terms of his first Critique. None of these recognizes that which is distinctive of the human person, namely, freedom. For Kant, in order for an act to be moral, it must be based upon the will of the person as autonomous, not as heteronomous or subject to others or to necessary external laws.

This becomes the basic touchstone of his philosophy; everything he writes thence forward will be adapted thereto, and what had been written before will be recontextualized in this new light. The remainder of his Foundations and his second Critique of Practical Reason will be composed in terms of freedom; in the following two years he would write a third Critique of the Faculty of Judgment in order to provide a context that enables the previous two critiques to be read in a way that protects human freedom.

When we attempt to act in this world or to reach out to others, must all our categories be universal and hence insensitive to that which marks others as unique and personal? Must they be necessary, and hence, leave no room for creative freedom, which would be entrapped and then entombed in the human mind? If so, then public life can be only impersonal, necessitated, repetitive and stagnant. Must the human spirit be reduced to the sterile content of empirical facts or to the necessitated modes of scientific laws? If so, then philosophers cannot escape forcing upon wisdom a suicidal choice between either being traffic directors in the jungle of unfettered competition or being tragically complicit in setting a predetermined order for the human spirit. Freedom would, indeed, have been killed; it would pulse no more as the heart of humankind.

Before these alternatives, Kant’s answer is a resounding No! Taking as his basis the reality of freedom–so passionately and often tragically affirmed in our lifetime by Ganhdi and Martin Luther King–Kant proceeded to develop his third Critique of the Faculty of Judgment as a context within which freedom and scientific necessity could coexist, indeed, in which necessity would be the support and instrument of freedom. Recently, this has become more manifest as human sensibilities have opened to the significance of culture and to awareness that being itself is emergent in time through the human spirit (see Heidegger above).

There is something similar here to the Critique of Pure Reason. In both, the work of the imagination in assembling the phenomena is not simply to register, but to produce the objective order. As in the first critique, the approach is not from a set of a priori principles which are clear all by themselves and used in order to bind the multiple phenomena into a unity. On the contrary, under the rule of unity, the imagination orders and reorders the multiple phenomena until they are ready to be informed by a unifying principle whose appropriateness emerges from the reordering carried out by the productive imagination.

Here in "The Critique of the Aesthetic Judgment," the imagination has a similar task of constructing the object, but not in a manner necessitated by universal categories or concepts. In contrast, here the imagination, in working toward an integrating unity, is not confined by the necessitating structures of categories and concepts, but ranges freely over the full sweep of reality in all its dimensions to see whether and wherein relatedness and purposiveness or teleology can emerge, and how the world and our personal and social life can achieve its meaning and value. Hence, in standing before a work of nature or of art, the imagination might focus upon light or form, sound or word, economic or interpersonal relations–or, indeed, upon any combination of these in a natural environment or a society, whether encountered concretely or expressed in symbols.

Throughout all of this, the ordering and reordering by the imagination can bring about numberless unities. Unrestricted by any a priori categories, it can nevertheless integrate necessary dialectical patterns within its own free and, therefore, creative production and scientific universals within its unique concrete harmonies. This is properly creative work. More than merely evaluating all according to a set pattern in one’s culture, it chooses the values and orders reality accordingly. This is the very constitution of the culture itself.

It is the productive rather than merely reproductive work of the human person as living in his or her physical world. Here, I use the possessive form advisedly. Without this capacity man would exist in the physical universe as another object, not only subjected to its laws but restricted and possessed by them. One would be not a free citizen of the material world, but a mere function or servant. In his third Critique Kant unfolds how one can truly be master of one’s life in this world, not in an arbitrary and destructive manner, but precisely as a creative artist bringing being to new realization in ways which make possible new growth in freedom.

Developing the level of aesthetic sensitivity enables one to take into account ever broader dimensions of reality and creativity and to imagine responses which are more rich in purpose, more adapted to present circumstances and more creative in promise for the future. This is manifest in a good leader such as a Churchill or a Roosevelt–and, supereminently, in a Ganhdi or a Christ. Their power to mobilize a people lies especially in their rare ability to assess the overall situation, to express it in a manner which rings true to the great variety of persons, and thereby to evoke appropriate and varied responses from each according to his or her capabilities. The danger is that the example of such genius will be reduced to a formula, become an ideology and either exclude innovation or restrict it to a limited range of values. In reality, as personable, free and creative, and if understood as the work of the aesthetic judgment, their example is inclusive both in content and application, as well as in the new responses it continually evokes from others.

Kant’s third Critique points in another direction. Though it integrates scientific universal and necessary social relations, it does not focus upon them, nor does it focus directly upon the beauty or ugliness of concrete relations, or even directly upon beauty or ugliness as things in themselves. Its focus is rather upon our contemplation of the integrating images of these which we imaginatively create, that is, our culture as manifesting the many facets of beauty and ugliness, actual and potential. In turn, we evaluate these in terms of the free and integrating response of pleasure or displeasure, of the enjoyment or revulsion they generate most deeply within our whole person.

The Asian traditions probably could feel very comfortable with this if structured in terms of an appreciation of harmony. In this way, they could see freedom itself at the height of its sensibility, not merely as an instrument of a moral life, but as serving through the imagination as a lens or means for presenting the richness of reality in varied and intensified ways. Freedom, thus understood, is both spectroscope and kaleidoscope of being. As spectroscope it unfolds the full range of the possiblities of human life, so that all can be examined, evaluated and admired. As kaleidoscope, it continually works out the endless possible combinations and patterns of reality so that the beauty of each can be examined, reflected upon and chosen when desired. Freely, purposively and creatively, imagination weaves through reality focusing now upon certain dimensions, now reversing its flow, now making new connections and interrelations. In the process reality manifests not only scientific forms and their potential interrelations, but its power to evoke our free response not only of hate and disgust but especially of love and admiration.

In this manner freedom becomes at once the creative source, the manifestation, the evaluation and the arbiter of all that imaginatively we can propose. It is goal, namely to realize life as rational and free in this world; it is creative source, for with the imagination it unfolds the endless possibilities of human creativity, it is manifestation, because it presents these to our consciousness in ways appropriate to our capabilities for knowledge of limited realities and relates these to the circumstances of our life; it is criterion, because its response manifests a possible mode of action to be variously desirable or not in terms of a total personal response of pleasure or displeasure, enjoyment or revulsion; and it is arbiter, because it provides the basis upon which our freedom chooses to affirm or reject, realize or avoid this way of self-realization. In this way, freedom emerges as the dynamic center of human existence.

There is much in this which evokes the content and spirit of Hindu philosophy, and much which that philosophy can contribute in response to the needs such a path implies. Whether aesthetic content is to be found in Hindu culture is not at issue. The outstanding richness of its music, dance and architecture, not to mention the beauty of its patterns of family and village life, or the work of such outstanding poets and writers as Rabindranath Tagore – all reflect the richness of this culture in shaping life from its simplest patterns of human relations to the highest work in the humanities. Nor is there any question that this is a central element in many philosophical schools.

But the advaita of Shankara would seem to express the deepest kernal of the Hindu metaphysical inspiration. Some have said that the key role of avidyia therein removes definitive meaning from the realm of the senses and imagination, and hence that the basic metaphysics of Hinduism – or Hinduism basically – is at least insensitive to and distracts from, or even that it obstructs and is antipathetic to, the creativity needed by a people who would face aggressively the challenges of contemporary change. Even if it were a major element for the past, could it now play a part in constructing the future?

T.M.P. Mahadevan, a great advaitin scholar, was not only quite sensitive to this critique, but took it as a major challenge in response to which he wrote two lectures, published in 1969 as The Philosophy of Beauty by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan as part of their Book University. Early in that work Mahadevan takes a number of basic steps.

For human life this has the greatest importance. We participate in the absolute. This is lived most truly and fully not by following out calculations of self-interest and utility, to which corresponds servitude. Rather it is in play that we live our freedom. This is not a rejection of the quantitative or of utility – all that is integrated but is given further meaning or sublimated in human creativity understood as manifesting a part of divine effulgence. An artist does not leave aside the dark, the ugly or the tragic, but reintegrates these according to the imagination within a divinely grounded vision in which all is redeemed and made part of the awe-inspiring play of Creation. This is real accomplishment; this is true life.

If so, then, how is it to be evaluated and directed? We could attempt to do so exclusively according to our physical nature or even according to the calculus of quantity or utility as is suggested by the modes of thinking which characterized the Enlightenment. But then we are sure to lose sight of the real goal, for we would be living according to the lower modes of the mind which is marked by dullness and passion. Rather we need to act according to a truly enlightened mode of the mind, which is marked most characteristically by bliss. What this is can be approached by reflecting on our experience of seeking the good. While the good has not yet been attained we desire it; upon its attainment, however, desire gives way to pleasure as we enjoy or are filled with happiness at the presence of the good which has been sought.

If then today our challenge is to develop the capabilities of science in order to be able to respond to the material needs of our populace and to do this through, rather than against, human freedom and creativity, then the Advaitic vision of nondualism has much to say. This is in deep accord with the karma yoga of the Gita: work, but do not be held in servitude to the goal; rather, live fully in the Lord; follow the joy that emerges in your heart, for it is the effulgence of the Atman; live not by calculation and competition, but by the deep pleasure found in manifesting the divine bliss in your world.

EXISTENTIAL FREEDOM: NATURAL FREEDOM OF

SELF-DETERMINATION

 

Thus far, we have looked at two notions of freedom which, in their difference, can compliment and unfold one another in the modern effort of humankind to achieve maturity and play an increasingly responsible role in directing social life in our times.

First, we saw how, in the context of the Enlightenment and in order to make possible universal participation in social life, Locke limited the range of meaning to what was empirically available. This assured one sense of freedom, but limited it to choices between contrary qualities. The effort was well-intentioned, but, as with popular democratic culture today, he would seem to have tried too hard and compromised too much in his single-minded pursuit of freedom of choice. As a result, the very notion of freedom has not been able to sustain itself, but over time has turned gradually into the black hole of consumerism.

Second, we saw how Kant in his second Critique opened a new and much needed dimension of freedom based upon our nature or essence as free beings. This was based upon law, precisely as I assert for myself (autonomously) a law which is fit for all men (universal). It generates a sense of acquired freedom of self-perfection according to which I am able, through acquired virtue or wisdom, to will or live as I ought in conformity to the moral law or an ideal befitting human nature.

The aesthetic sense in Kant, which I believe to be central as well to the Hindu tradition, dramatically enriches the pursuit of this freedom. The aesthetic integrates body and spirit, opens all to high ideals and locates in one’s free response to the beauty and harmony of the whole the norm of creative human engagement in reality. Kant’s work may suggest ways of unpacking the classical Indian potential for contributing to the modern aspirations for freedom; Indian culture can flesh out with centuries of lived experience the abstract model which Kant could only sketch during the decade in which he wrote his three Critiques. Together they greatly enrich the Enlightenment effort at constructing freedom and the person by raising its goals. Moreover, they locate the exercise of human freedom, not merely in terms of the human essence as autonomous, but within our aesthetic response to a sense of beauty and harmony which transcends us and inspires awe and delight.

This is progress, indeed; but, in his own philosophy, Hegel both pointed out in theory and illustrated in practice the potential this opens for seriously undermining Kant’s sense of freedom. For, if the required context for freedom is based upon proceeding only hypothetically or ‘as if’ all is teleological, then its very reality is compromised. If its exercise is restricted to the confines of the human imagination, then freedom becomes not only self-determining but self-constituting. Again, we have tried too hard and become trapped within what we can make or do.

We need to go beyond issues of nature and essence. Freedom is not only the articulation of a law, however autonomous and universal this might be (indeed, precisely to the degree that it is autonomous and universal) either in the pattern of Kant’s second Critique, or at whatever stage of universalization of the sense of justice in the pattern of Kohlberg’s stages of moral reasoning. Freedom is not merely nature reflected in moral judgements, but human life and action. It is to be humanly, that is, to live fully; this is a matter not of essence, but of existence.

Progress in being human corresponds to the sense of being. This sense advanced from forms and structures, essences and ideas, in Plato, to act in Aristotle, and especially to existence in Christian philosophy. This definitively deepened the sense of human life with its triumphs and tragedies; it set the drama we are living in our day. For it calls insistently for a humanization of the application of our technological abilities and, indeed of life itself. This must be lived not simply in terms of essence, that is, of a moral law or of an ideal befitting human nature. Rather, it must be in terms of existence, that is, of "deciding for oneself in virtue of the power inherent in human nature to change one’s own character creatively and to determine what one shall do or shall become." This is the third and most radical freedom, namely, our natural freedom of self-determination.

Here then is the real issue; indeed, it is the issue of the foundation, nature and extent of reality itself. As the deepest active striving of the human spirit, freedom is of the order of existence; indeed, it is the very meaning of human existence. In turn, it gives full human meaning to the lesser freedoms, namely, to the ability to choose between contraries and to decree universal laws, which are but shadows of the freedom of self-determination.

But if the latter freedom is in the existential order, then the transcendent principle it requires must not be merely hypothetical (‘as if’), but must really exist. If freedom presents us with a limitless range of possibilities, then its principle must be the infinite and eternal, the unique source and goal of all possibility. The Hindu tradition is without peer in its appreciation of the transcendent as the key to real liberation: it frees the human spirit from limitation to the restricted field of one’s own slow, halting and even partial creative activity; it grounds one’s reality in the Absolute; it certifies one’s self respect and one’s right to be respected by all; and it evokes the creative powers of one’s heart.

The source of the beauty imaged, progressively revealed and resoundingly reaffirmed by humans at their deepest levels of heart and mind, must be actual as are the struggles of human life. It must also be infinite as the basis for human freedom and creativity. As such, these are ever open to new affirmation, rather than exhausted, closed, delimited or predetermined. Finally, it must be personal as the principle of life lived in knowledge of truth rather than in falsehood and deception, in love and goodness rather than in hate and evil.

This actual, infinite and personal absolute is what the Vedanta of the Hindus express so richly in the living terms of existence (sat), consciousness (cit) and bliss (ananda). It is also what Christians mean by God, and what they go on to unfold in terms of a Trinity of persons as Father, as Word (Logos or Son), and as Holy Spirit. It is what the Daoists suggest as the Spirit of all spirits and attempt to protect especially through negative terms that are echoed in Christian and Hindu negative philosophy and theology. For, precisely as Absolute, it must transcend the richest efforts of each people, while yet inspiring every person and all peoples in their own histories and cultures.

This takes us far beyond freedom as external choice between objects in our world and beyond freedom as the internal selection of universal principles for the direction of our action. It is rather self-affirmation in terms of our orientation or teleology to perfection or full realization. It implies seeking when perfection is lacking and enjoying or celebrating it as attained. It is in this sense that stability in one’s orientation to the good has classically has been termed holiness. One might say that it is life as practiced by the saints, but it would be more correct to say that it is because they lived in such a manner that they are called holy.

Thinking in these terms, it would be radically insufficient to reduce one’s horizons to a single human person in isolation from others, in a merely self-centered and self-concerned manner, for then life would be stymied at the confines of but one person. Indeed, such a person would have closed off his or her realization of being, which rather should be open to all of nature and especially to other persons. One’s concern for perfection should extend to other persons, and even then not only as regards what I determine as my participation in being or even what I determine for them as their participation in being. Such an exercise of freedom on my part would return to me and remain limited within the confines of my being. Instead, by opening myself to others as free, that is, as they uniquely determine themselves, my engagement in being extends definitively beyond myself to their life and realization.

But persons are still limited, whereas my mind and heart are open to being without end. Situated in an existential context, the pointer of Kant’s third Critique toward an infinite telos takes on further meaning. For it directs us toward the infinite, self-sufficient and properly creative source of our being. Corresponding to that act of infinite freedom by which we live and breathe and have our being, we unite with the act of being by which we are made to be, the act of love by which we have first been loved. Human growth in freedom is the process of self-correction and self-perfection to the point at which we are fully opened to that infinite act of freedom from which we come and to which we tend. The achievement of this openness is the state of Hindu and Buddhist Enlightenment and of Christian mystical union with the divine. There God loves himself in me: "I live now not I", says St. Paul, "but Christ liveth in me." This indeed is freedom writ large and the reason why such a person must be at the dynamic center of every human effort that is good and constructive. This is the real key to civic virtue; it is a transforming presence in the heart of everyone who suffers injustice and, hence, the source of new life for persons and for society.

However, it is possible for one to fall away from the ideal. Human self-consciousness is not only limited, but can be degraded; it can sink from being creative in sharing of self to a self-centered grasping for being which withholds it from others. In abuse of human responsibility, such defective modes reflect not merely their limitations as finite beings, but their refusal to open to others and their choice to close in upon self. In so doing, they abuse their freedom, which thus becomes at once not only their glory, but their exposure to moral evil and collapse.

Christianity too is centered upon this definitive human struggle. Christ has come to join humankind precisely in order to take evil upon himself on the Cross, and to overcome it in his resurrection to new life. Its purpose is not to deny, but to conquer evil. This is the challenge it extends and the hope it generates.

One Christian tradition holds that sin has corrupted human nature, Hegel would say that as a result the truth regarding the transcendent can only be revealed, though it can then be perfected by philosophy. In contrast, the Catholic tradition, which sees the effect of sin not as corrupting, but as weakening human nature, would consider insight regarding the transcendent source to be within the proper capabilities of philosophical reason. In either case, however, it is not a matter of abstract theory, but of discovering that the foundations of freedom as lived and experienced existentially are to be found only in a living God who created us out of love. Christianity brings further ‘good news’, namely, that God sent his Son to proclaim through his Resurrection that our freedom cannot be defeated by evil, but is resurgent and in the end will triumph. This is the full truth about humankind.

To the Enlightenment sense of freedom as choice, awareness of the transcendent Creator adds that life is not only a matter of having, that is, of selecting between which physical realities we will consume, but of being with its characteristics of self-identity, communication, justice and sharing. Beyond this, awareness of salvation through the Cross adds that even suffering can be redemptive and lead to resurrection in a new birth in freedom.

To the aesthetic awareness of Kant, as described above, awareness of the transcendent as the context of human life adds a sense of human meaning, dignity and rights beyond anything that man can construct. It grounds the intuition of human meaning, dignity and rights. This, in turn, evokes a dynamic and creative response from humankind to the gifts of which its very reality is constituted. Historically as well as philosophically, this not only reflects the search of humankind for freedom in our day, but is its source and inspiration, as well as its bulwark against ideological reduction to anything constructed by man, including the community itself.

Conversely, the Enlightenment and Kantian aesthetic sense are important for the unfolding of the Christian vision. The Enlightenment has given egalitarian form to the modern sense of freedom and, hence, to the search for universal participation in social decision making. The aesthetic sense can do much to temper the aggressive excesses of a fallen and, hence, self-centered sense of personal identity by contributing a broad sense of harmony with both man and nature. This is needed in our ever more complex and crowded world.

Hinduism as centered on the sense of the Absolute, with its aesthetics, can provide the space for freedom and creativity in an increasingly technical world, particularly by grounding this in an open and unlimited sense of being. In this it points the way to a life in which science can be at the service of freedom, and freedom, protected by justice, can be lived as creative love.