LEARNING ACTIVITY SHEET

Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person

(Grade 12 – Quarter 2 – Week 1)

Name: _______________________________ Grade & Section: ______________

School: ______________________________ District: ______________________

THE MEANING OF FREEDOM

COMPETENCIES: Evaluate and exercise prudence in choices

Realize that:
a. Choices have consequences.
b. Some things are given up while others are
obtained in making choices

OBJECTIVES: At the end of the week, you shall have

1.defined freedom,
2.explained that choices have consequences.
3. examined somethings that are given up while others are
obtained in making choices.
4. solve a given situation by exercising prudence.

Suggested Activities Reference/

Schedule Resource
Activity 1.
(Day 1-2 /
Time) a. On a piece of paper, write down a list of things
that you would do if you were granted absolute
freedom for a day. (Absolute freedom literally
means no form of hindrance or impediment would
prevent you from doing what you want. For
example, there will be no laws or any form of
corresponding punishment that awaits you once
you do what you intend to do). After which answer
the following questions: write at least five.

1. Should freedom be absolute?

2. If freedom should be limited, what would be its
limits?
3. Who should determine the limits of freedom? An
authoritarian leader? Our individual selves? The
great majority?

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 a. KEY CONCEPTS/DISCUSSION
See Enclosure
Please read and understand the key pages 1-4
concepts/discussion attached in this Learning Activity
Sheet.

b. ACTIVITY 1

What should you do in this situation?

A student has been absent due to sickness as

contained in her parents’ letter you. In your school,
the rule is nobody who has been absent, excused or
unexcused, can be admitted in class unless he/she
has an admission slip from the Unit Leader’s Office.
The sick student comes to class, was not able to
obtain an admission slip from the Unit Leader’s Office
because the Unit Leader was not there when the
student went. You are giving a quiz. If you send the
student out because she has no admission slip, she
will miss the quiz.

c. Read the situations below. Infer if the decision made

is right or wrong. Write the possible consequences.

Lean’s mother is sick, and the midterm exam is fast

approaching. Lean was not able to study since he took care
of his ailing mother day and night. Lean is dreaming to
become a seaman someday because he wants to help his
family who is in extreme poverty. During the midterm exam
lean has cheated to pass the exam without being caught up
by his teacher.

1. Did lean do/choose the right decision?

2. What must have happened if lean did not cheat?
3. If you were lean, would you do the same?

(Day 3 / d. ACTIVITY 2
Time)
Examined your past experiences. Write down three
situations that made you give up. Write three
situations that made you choose and write the
consequences of your action in each situation you
give.

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 Made you give up
1.
2.
3.

Made you choose.

1.
2.
3.

e. SELF-CHECK
(Day 4 /
Time) Check your answers in Activity 1 through the given answer
key.

f. ACTIVITY 2
(Day 5 /
Time) Explain what freedom means using the letters of
FREEDOM.

F
R
E
E
D
O
M

ANSWER KEY

Activity 1 Activity 2 Activity 3

1. Freedom Answers may vary Answers may vary

2. Physical Freedom
3. Psychological Freedom
4. Moral Freedom
5. Positive freedom

REFERENCES
Corpuz, Brenda B. et al. Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person for Senior
High School. Quezon City, Metro Manila: Lorimar Publishing, Inc., 2016.

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Abella, Roberto D. Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person. Quezon City,
Metro Manila: C & E Publishing, Inc., 2016

THE MEANING OF FREEDOM

What is Freedom?

Freedom is an intrinsic and essential property of the person. This means that
the human person by nature is a free being and that it is his or her nature to seek
freedom. An important indication of human freedom is the ability to make choices and
perform actions. Our freedom to act sets us apart from other being.

Freedom is a widely applied concept in different branches of philosophy. For the

sake of focus, however, it would be important to clarify what we mean by freedom in
this lesson. We begin with the important distinction between positive and negative
freedom according to Isaiah Berlin:

Negative freedom refers to “the absence of interference.” By interference, we

mean something that is intentionally imposed on a person. It may come in the form of
“physical coercion” such as kidnapping or imprisonment, or verbal coercion such as
the issuing of threats to another person. One is free, in the negative sense, when he
does not experience either forms of coercion.

Positive freedom on the other hand is not just about the absence of coercion or
interference. It is “more than just being let alone by others.” It is a kind of freedom
that requires active effort on the person who is said to be free. He/She who is free is
the one who has the “control or mastery of himself/herself.” This is freedom from
coercion or interference for one to be able to do good. A concrete example is when I
want to attend the barrio fiesta and yet it is examination time, so I need to study for
the exams. I am free when I give up the fiesta for the sake of a more important remote
goal. On the other hand, I am not free when deep in my heart I know I should study
for the exams and not be absent, yet I go to the fiesta and enjoy and do not study for
the exams.

A person who is free (possesses positive freedom) has control or mastery of

herself and so has the strength to do what is good. Policies, rules and regulations are
there to ensure the good of every person. Thus, a person who is free is hardly aware of

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rules and regulations that others think limit a person’s freedom. A person who is free
is not allergic to rules and regulations. Rules and regulations help her to grow in
freedom since freedom is the power or the strength to master himself to do good.

Roberto D. Abella also gave us three kinds of freedom namely, physical,

psychological, and moral freedom.

Physical freedom refers to the absence of any physical restraint. The person has
the freedom of mobility to go where he or she wants to go. He or she is not impeded in
his or her actions by any physical force. Granted that the person has natural
limitations, physical freedom allows him or her to act and move in a determined
manner. You cannot be everywhere at once, but your freedom allows you to move from
one place to another and to go wherever you want to go.

Psychological freedom is also called freedom of choice. The person is free to

perform actions that he or she considers right and wise. A person is also free to act or
not to act. Psychological freedom is innate and cannot be denied a person. No outside
force or influence can compel a person to take against his or her will.

Lastly, Moral freedom refers to using freedom in a manner that upholds human
dignity and goodness. Freedom is not an object that a person may use in whatever
way he or she pleases. A person must use his or her freedom to grow as a person. A
person becomes more free when he or she uses freedom well, but becomes less free
when he or she uses it in a bad way.

Existentialism: Freedom is Exercised through Choices

We have learned in our lesson on Truth that one of the classical questions of
philosophy is on the really real. We recall how in the history of philosophy the
question, “What is real?” has been answered by philosophers in various ways. For
example, Plato said that the real is in the world of ideas, and that material things are
only “shadows” or representations of what is real. We can speak of a beautiful chair or
a beautiful space, but beauty in all its reality and perfection can only be apprehended
by the mind.

One of the marks of existentialism is its answer to this question of philosophy

on the really real. For existentialists, the real is not a floating idea but should be
directly linked to a person’s life. It should be visible in action.

In relation to our topic in this lesson, existentialists thus argue that freedom
should not only be conceived as an idea or a notion. Freedom is something that is
exercised though our choices. When a person exercises her freedom, she becomes real.

A simple illustration for this can be found in our lesson in developmental

psychology on the development of a person towards maturity.

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 From infancy to early childhood, a person cannot yet be said to be completely
free, both in the negative and positive sense of freedom. First, parents are always there
to constrain her freedom as she wanders about and explores the world. They say no to
many things she wants to put in her mouth, or to the dangerous things she would
curiously hold and tinker with. They put her in a corner when she misbehaves.

As to the positive sense of freedom, we say that a child’s actions are not yet the
product of her own choices. Most of it is driven by external motivation, either of
rewards or of punishment. A child behaves mostly because she is afraid of being
punished or she wants to please her parents. In both cases, we say that the child is
not yet fully her real self.

When a child grows into a mature adult, the situation changes. The adult now
realizes that she can steer the direction of her life story through her own choices. The
adult learns that she is not a puppet that only moves through the hands and decisions
of others. This may sound all rosy, but this is also the stage of a person’s life when she
realizes that freedom can be very overwhelming. This shows that a person is not “born
free” as the song goes. Rather, she is born to be free. She is meant to grow in freedom.

There is a high tendency for young adults to feel lost life driftwood in a
boundless sea. Because one realizes that one’s life direction is mostly up to her
choices, one tends to paralyzed in the face of so many possibilities. In other words, an
emerging adult may not find enough courage to make decisions for herself. She,
instead, remains motionless and lets the strong tide take the course of her life. Given
this, freedom comes across as a burden to an adult.
In that example, we have seen how the system in the life of a cog in a machine
imposes its weight on it by demanding that it fulfills its function well. In this
condition, one becomes “anonymous” because she loses her individuality. Her
meaning or significance is lost in anonymity, or silenced by the strong voice of the
dominant system. To assert your individuality and freedom would mean to move
beyond the dictates of a machine. As we all know with basic mechanical systems,
when a part does not act according to what the machine specifies as its function, the
whole machine is compromised. For this reason, systems have a mechanism of
eliminating individual freedom.

This is the context in which the existentialist movement arose in the early part
of the 20th century. Men and women of this century found themselves absorbed in
various, sometimes conflicting, systems. It is as if the person is controlled by an
anonymous “crowd.” She has come to a point that she merely goes through the
motions of waking up, eating, and going to work, only to come home to sleep and
repeat the whole process again the next day.

Existentialists argue that the human person must take care not to get lost in
anonymity, in a crowd. To do so would amount to living a life of a zombie, going
through life that one does not really own. Existentialism highlights the word exist. To
exist – ex-stare – is to stand out from facelessness and anonymity. Existence is more

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than mere biological living. One can breathe, perform and sustain his physiological
functions, but may not truly exist. If all that a person does are eat, drink, breathe,
defecate, she is no different from a rabbit that goes through the same biological
processes. But one who truly exists is one who owns up to her existence. The moment
she does, she takes responsibility and steers the direction of her own life.

The main tenet of existentialism is that we are the authors of our lives. In every
story with its own plot twists, it is the author who creates those turning points. If we
take responsibility over our own lives, then we can say that those plot twists are not
the products of fate or destiny, but of our own choices.

Freedom as Choosing for Oneself that Leads to Personality Consolidation

One of the main precursors of this movement is Soren Kierkegaard (1813-

1855), a Danish philosopher. He was one of the first to articulate one of the difficult
insights on freedom in the existentialist sense. Freedom is related to our capacity to
choose. According to Kierkegaard, “in choosing, the personality is consolidated.”

According to Kierkegaard, when we allow dominant forces or personalities

around us to choose for ourselves the most important aspects of our lives – our career
path, whom to marry, whether to marry or not marry, whom to befriend, our faith or
religion, where to settle and live for the most part of our adult lives – ourselves remain
inauthentic. These are the questions that determine the important turning points of
our life story. Therefore, they must be carefully discerned. The answers should largely
come from your own resolve and decision. As soon as we take over the steering wheel
of our lives and direct them according to the choices we make, our identity, who we
are, begins to be consolidated or integrated. We are no longer this listless twig or
driftwood that simply gets tossed by the wind. The actions and small decisions that we
make everyday cohere together based on those goals and aspirations that we have
chosen for ourselves.

Jean-Paul Sartre said that there is no essence that precedes existence. Essence
can be understood as a pre-given nature of a person. To be essentialist when it comes
to the self is to assume that there is an existing “real self” that has already been pre-
cut for me, and that all that is left for me to do with my existence is to confine all of
my actions according to this essences. For example, some people think that there is a
real essence of a man or a woman. A man has rough skin, muscular in built and
aggressive while a woman hast soft skin, Coca-Cola-shaped body, and is submissive.
Because of this given essence, when a man or a woman does not fulfill the criteria of
being a man or a woman, he/she is judged as inauthentic or abnormal.

Existentialists argue that every human begins from birth as zero, nothing. She
begins to be somebody only as she begins to be the author of her acts, when she starts
making choices for herself. She becomes her real self as soon as she exercises her
freedom. We are nobody until we start making our choices. We become what we
choose to be. Existence precedes essence.

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 Freedom, therefore, means exercising our capacity to make decisions, choose
our life path and directs the course of our lives through our own steering.

Freedom for existentialists is concrete freedom. It is not just words. It means it

can be acted upon. Hence, the task of a human person who wants to be real and
authentic is to take care of this capacity. This means that one must put in energy,
power and strength in all dimensions of his life. When one looks at people who are
genuinely free, one observes that they are the ones who have kept themselves healthy;
the one who exercised the choice to say no to the temptations of vice; the ones who
worked hard to improve themselves economically and spent their money wisely; the
ones who have studied hard in order to gain important life skills for one’s
development. Therefore, genuine freedom needs a lot of daily work. Those who did the
reverse mostly find themselves enslaved by others. These are the people who are
victims of their laziness, their vices, their indifference, their prejudices or these are the
people who blame their miserable life to circumstances like extreme poverty, vicious
and irresponsible parents, “terror” teachers, etc.

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