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With Your Rule
Exercising Our Proper Freedom...
"The highest freedom then, depends upon a person choosing rightly in terms of what a human being should be. True liberty will not be found in the libertine, who enslaves himself to his animal instincts. It will not be found in the men who refuse commitment for fear of losing their freedom, for these men have already chosen, and what they have chosen is nothingness. Neither will it be found in the men who have chosen wealth and power as their fulfillment, for history tells us how easy it is for them to pervert their freedom to egoistic and vicious ends, so that while outwardly free, they are inwardly slaves to vice, greed, pride and ambition.
True freedom is found only in the man who has mastered himself, so that neither the constraint of instinct from within nor the pressure of force from without can make him deviate from the line of his conscience; it is the freedom of the man who has freed himself from the chains of ignorance and vice.... The manner in which we employ our freedom determines the kind of persons we are. "We are our loves," says St Augustine...."
from "An Introduction to Philosophy: The Perennial Principles of the Classical Realist Tradition" by Daniel J Sullivan, Tan Books & Publishers, Rockford Illinois, , c 1957, pp100-101
posted by Holly at 11:51 PM
1 Comments:
What really strikes me about this is the definition of freedom. Our society has so many false or lesser meanings for the word.
It can mean freedom from restraint - that freedom is really just being able to do whatever I want, without being interfered with, and in the end, it doesn't really matter whom I hurt as long as I am free to do as I please. This freedom fosters slavery to our own whims and passions.
It can mean freedom to choose. Just the fact of having lots of choices seems to be a good thing. And it is. But with every choice comes a necessary limitation. If I choose the cake, I can't have the pie. If I marry Max I can't marry Joey. Some people who want to keep their options open, try not to choose at all by not committing -like to never getting around to making a rule - and they end up losing because they don't get doen what they need to.
People like money & power when they adhere to this level of freedom, because money & power give them lots of options. And so, wealth and power become necessary to be free.
But really, freedom is to take responsibility for oneself. To do for oneself (and others) what is 'best' and 'good'. For in doing this, we fall in line with the original intent of God for us, and in doing so, reach our true fulfillment.
So our freeedom manifests itself in making free choices to ''do the good that needs to be done' in our daily lives, our hearts, our actions, our family lives. In other words... "living a mother's rule well' !!!
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