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Hello, my fellow TLers. There was a recent thread about ones favourite philospohers, and I told people about a short text I wrote about freedom. Some wanted me to translate it into English. Here is the first of seven parts.
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In a Glass Prison
by Siegfried Spirek
A look at the philosophical ideal of freedom and its compatibility with modern law.
Prologue: Definition of freedom
1. Genesis of law and the consequential limitation of freedom
2. Types of freedom and their conflict
3. Necessity of law & final conlusion
Prologue: Definition of freedom
The question to start with is of course: "What is freedom? What does 'being free' mean? What does freedom mean for me?" The last out of those three question is to answer by everyone themselves, but I would like to deal with the other two briefly.
First and foremost, freedom means being free in ones thoughts and doings. A really free person is only subject to his own conscience. This conscience is the only instance in our human awareness that keeps us from acting arbitrarily. But doesn't this mean, that that conscience, the thing that makes a human a human, isn't actually the first and maybe even the biggest incision to freedom?
Our conscience dictates our actions; it tells us to gauge and pick the morally best solution. On the other hand, total freedom would include acting consciencelessly, being able to act unmoral without having to think about it first. But because every human being is endowed with reason, he doesn't want to have such an extreme kind of freedom that isn't even found in the animal world to some extent. Due to this, I will narrow the term "freedom" down to the ability to think and act within the scope of human conscience.
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every human being is endowed with reason
I really wish this was true.
Anyways, Freedom is very hard to really understand and define, as there can never be absolute freedom. You are always limited by some form of constraints, be it moral, ethical, physical, psychical, political, religious or other boundaries.
Someone in prison can still think whatever he wants, he still isn't free, there are boundaries for him that are set by law (external boundary).
Someone in a hospital can think whatever he wants, he is still bound by physical illness that prevents him from doing anything (personal boundary).
Someone who strongly believes in god will stop having "unreligious" thoughts, he can still think anything else but he is bound by his religious boundaries (internal boundary).
An orphan living on the street can still think about being rich and having a family, but he most probably will never be, he is bound by his past (inherited boundary).
(Terms made up by me, there are probably better terms for that, but well, i don't know them).
Also, conscience is a relative factor, for some people, killing "evil" people is something good, even if he defines "evil" as "He plays Protoss, all Protoss players are evil" (Yay, religious example avoided). There is no "human conscience". In your example, he is not free because while he can still think what he want, he is not allowed to act upon it. So there is no freedom for him?
Sorry if it doesn't make much sense, i'm at work and have no time to put it into better words :p
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I totally understand your point, and how else could it be? I will adress exactly this one one of the other six parts that are still not translated. But I see, you're from Germany, I suppose you speak German. I could hand you over the original file, if you'd like to read it.
EDIT: "There cann not be absolute freedom." That's the reason why I made up this definition 
And by "endowed with reason", I mean the german word "vernunftbegabt", which means that every human being has the ability to think - nothing more.
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Hope you have read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Freedom_of_the_Will .
The beauty of Schopenhauer is that the paradox of free will disappears: our will has given us a certain character which dictates our choices and our will is dictated and in accordance with said character.
"[M]an does at all times only what he wills, and yet he does this necessarily. But this is because he already is what he wills."
Perhaps you were talking about physical freedom..
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EPT
