Sunday, April 22, 2012

Radical Freedom

As I wrote my Q&A I thought about whether or not people really do want radical freedom? Obviously everyone would say that they do, because what is better than freedom right? It's what America stands for! (little bit of sarcasm for the conversation a few weeks ago...) But can people handle the responsibility that comes with this freedom? I think that laws are around to help us make the hard decisions in life. If there was pure anarchy and we all had radical freedom, why wouldn't we steal if we were hungry? We need to satisfy those basic human needs that Sartre admitted to in his later work, so what is to say that we wouldn't steal food for ourselves? The idea that stealing is illegal restricts our radical freedom in a way that allows us to avoid difficult situations. Without the law we would simply have a moral struggle with ourselves to decide whether or not to steal the food, but with that freedom slightly restrained, the decision is easy. So I still can't decide if people would want to live a truly radically free life, I think that many would find it far too demanding on their morals and would crawl back to the easy life of laws and regulations.

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