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Publication Details

On Freedom

(Original title: O slobode)
Filozofia, 29 (1974), 1, 16-21.
Type of work: Papers and Discussions
Publication language: Slovak
Abstract
Any assessment of the ontic and ontological stature of man includes also the statement of his freedom. Conceived from the purely formal standpoint freedom becomes evident as a paradox: it means gaining independence, autonomization amidst the limitation of inevitabilities, i. e. amidst a certain contingency and dependence. Freedom consists in the transforming action that occurs in the sphere of incidental events, by which the inevitability is accomplished. When defining freedom as self-interested development of (social) human power Marx acquired, by our opinion, an understanding of freedom as an open action, an action of cognition evaluation and contemporary getting control of accidents in which the inevitability belonging to the ontological statute of man appears. Freedom has its sense only as a concrete possibility and potentiality, a power selective on the broader basis and capable of producing, reproducing anew the conditions of its own realization and self-surmounting. "Freedom“ as "status quo“ is nonsense. Man is not free towards the authentic inevitability — towards the authentic inevitability — towards his ontic statute of determination of his own — but towards incidentalness.
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