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Freedom and Human Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Antony Flew
Antony Flew
Affiliation:
University of Reading
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Extract

The present paper is an attempt to show that Kolakowski's contention is fundamentally correct. But Part I begins by distinguishing, as here he does not, two very different senses of ‘freedom’. In one freedom is a possible but not a necessary condition and objective of human activity: it is a condition which may or may not obtain on particular occasions; and an objective which particular people may or may not choose to pursue. In the other freedom is indeed inescapably ‘rooted in the very quality of being human’. So the remainder of Part I is devoted to the elucidation of this second sense, and to showing that any study of human behaviour which is to deserve the diploma description ‘science’ must start by recognizing rather than denying this definitive fact of our nature. It is argued that no one would be able even to understand such a denial unless they were equipped with premises sufficient for a demonstration of its falsity. Part II goes on to make an example of a widely read work by a leading behavioural scientist. The author starts by insisting, contrary to the contentions of Part I, that any true science of human psychology must presuppose the truth of that denial. He then proceeds to make it clear that, in consequence, he himself places no value upon freedom in the first sense.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 66 , Issue 255 , January 1991, pp. 53 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1991

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References

1 Hume, D., A Treatise of Human Nature, Nidditch, P. H. (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 95.Google Scholar

2 Flew, A. G. N., Thinking about Thinking, Sections 5.9 and 6.11 (London: Collins/Fontana, 1975).Google Scholar

3 An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter XXI, Nidditch, P. H. (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975).Google Scholar

4 Treatise, I (iii), 14 and II (iii), 1–2Google Scholar and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Sections VII and VIII, Nidditch, P. H. (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975)Google Scholar. Flew, Compare, David Hume: Philosopher of Moral Science, Chs. 5 and 8 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).Google Scholar

5 Flew, Compare, 1986, Ch. 6Google Scholar and Flew, , The Logic of Mortality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), passim.Google Scholar

6 Locke, , Essay, II (xxi) 5, 236.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., II (xxi) 7, 237.

8 Ibid., II (xxi) 11, 239: the Latin means ‘St. Vitus' dance’.

9 Sartre, J-P., Being and Nothingness, translated by Barnes, Hazel (London: Methuen, 1957), 481Google Scholar. The ‘en effet’ translated ‘in fact’ might here for once have been better rendered as ‘in effect’.

10 Locke, , Essay, II (xxi), 23, 245–246.Google Scholar

11 Skinner, B. F., Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Knopf, 1971), 7Google Scholar. This work was also published in the UK, and later Pelicanned.

12 Ibid., 8.

13 Ibid., 9.

14 Ibid., 25.

15 Ibid., 20–21.

16 Ibid., 12–13.

17 Ibid., 13.

18 Ibid., 19.

19 Flew, Contrast, Thinking about Social Thinking (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985).Google Scholar

20 Ayer, A. J., ‘Freedom and Necessity’ in his Philosophical Essays (London: Macmillan, 1954), 283.Google Scholar

21 Skinner, , op. cit., 3, 4, 5 and 215.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., 97.

23 Ibid., 91.

24 Ibid., 39.

25 Ibid., 91.

26 Flew, 1975Google Scholar, Sections 4.4 and 4.5.

27 Skinner, , op. cit., 96.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., 84.