ISSUE234 绝对自由的问题，哲学意味很浓

TMACJAMESUID: 2836445

TOPIC: ISSUE234 - "Most people prefer restrictions and regulations to absolute freedom of choice, although they would probably deny such a preference."
WORDS: 724
TIME: 00:45:00
DATE: 8/25/2010 12:25:12 PM
1、自由都意味着后果与责任，人们内心深处都是希望有机制来限定的
2、人们实际上也没有否认有这种倾向
3、绝对自由带来的是混乱，所以社会提供的是相对自由

I concur with the statement on the point that people prefer certain limitations on absolute freedom of choice, what I cannot approve is the attitude the statement expressed. I do not think people tend to deny or hide their intentions for such preference for there are so many signs in the social life denoting such conspicuous belief. And under the scope of political philosophy, we might scrutinize the issue more thorough and specific.

The freedom of choice is more than a conception, but a series of actions under one terminology, which carry with consequences, responsibility and the wellbeing of society. The reason why we can live in a relatively harmonious society is that we all abdicate some freedom of choice when the society is formed. Like a fable stated, a group of hedgehogs gather together to keep warm, but they have to remain distant with one another due to their quills. The same rule applies in human society. The absolute freedom of choice usually means that one could follow his or her own instinct, desire and interest to pursue what is best to themselves, regardless of others' welfare or benefit. And such action would result in the disintegration of the whole group, the society, and then everyone in it would lose the group protection and face the cruel nature alone. Hence, to avoid the situation from happen, people agree on putting certain restrictions and regulations on the freedom of choice for the general benefit of the society.

Such attitude is not buried deep inside of people's hearts, but revealing in almost every aspect in social life. The obvious example is in the political field, where the political leaders, who are freely elected by people, control a high percentage of resources that can influence the destiny of the society greatly. So the responsibility of those leaders is consequential that there is a methodically designed mechanism to ensure the election. There are qualification requirements, such as age, residential time in the nation and even wealth that to guarantee the eligibility of candidates. If there is none restriction, then anyone can run a campaign, as long as he or she could swindle many people by any means. As a result, the character and competence of those political leaders are in question, for they might easily win the election by propaganda of some promises or vision which would never come into being, or just dominate the public by some religious, even superstitious, methods utilizing the mental flaw of common people. In that case, the wellbeing and prosperity of the society cannot be defended, and absolute freedom of choice leads to nothing but madness and deception.

The freedom, truly, is what people have strived for a long time since feudalism era, and the concept is endowed with many good wishes and prospective, however, the menace within the freedom itself should never be disregarded. From the time of Enlightenment, many great thinkers impart us with the significance of freedom, heartening us to pursue it, embedding it into the deepest part of our hearts, letting us believe that "all men are created equal". They are right on emphasizing the positive side of freedom, nevertheless, they also reminded us of the negative side which is easily be ignored by many of us. Rousseau had already expressed such idea in his remarkable work The Social Contract about how people relinquish their natural freedom in exchange for social freedom, and what is behind is the idea of avoiding anarchy and chaos incurring by the absolute freedom of choice. There are many other thinkers presented the same idea such as Hegel, Rawls and so forth. And the exertion of their idea, the precaution from entering anarchy, has been set in the social structure implicitly. All the protocols, rules and regulations represent such idea. And most people approve these implementations, as long as they would not violate most people's interests. Thereby, people understand the necessity of demarcating the boundary between absolute freedom of choice and relative freedom.

Simply put, all the people accept the idea of freedom meantime they understand that the absolute freedom of choice is not fundamentally beneficial to most of them. So people approve these rules, laws and regulations to ensure their rights and relative freedom by giving up the absolute freedom. Unlike the statement claims, people actually support such design, because of human rationality.