Freedom

The aim of this chapter is to elucidate a conception of freedom that follows directly from what we have learned about what it is to be active, and, beyond that, what it means to be a mode of Nature. It concludes that being free is a matter of realizing ourselves and therefore of enacting the peculiar and distinctive mode of Nature that we are. But before it gets to this conception of freedom, it contrasts it with two other conceptions that turn out to be inadequate. The first is widespread; it holds that freedom requires being outside the chain of causes and effects that comprise the natural world. The second is that of the Ethics itself, which conceives freedom as acting autonomously. Defining these two other conceptions of freedom, and seeing why they are inadequate, prepares the ground for the third conception of freedom: self-realization. The chapter closes with some extended remarks about the difficulties and rewards of achieving freedom understood as self-realization.