If he does not jump, it is because he wants to live and in this will to live we can read the instinct for survival, which is a print that has been put unto us by nature. If he decides to jump in order to prove his total freedom, his action will be equally determined by the need to demonstrate something.
This latter need is another characteristic that the individual was not born with but probably acquired during his life. A man who commits suicide may be considered man and madness can be connected to passions and not reason. However, no matter if one is a slave to his reason or to his passions, he is still a slave.
Happiness on the other hand is another concept which we all build in time, according to our own personal experiences. It is in our nature to search for things which make us happy. It can be argued that man doe nothing else but become what he was meant to become.
From the moment of our birth we are enrolled, independently of our will, into a race towards death. This is our nature. Everything that we do is nothing but become our nature. Our fulfilment is the fulfilment of our nature. From this perspective, the only conclusions that one can reach is that our actions are always necessarily determined and that the ideal of human freedom is a hoax.
Holbach is right from a multitude of perspectives. He draws attention to the fact that even when we make a choice, the choice we make is determined either by an object which is external to our will, either by an interior need which depends either on our blood (nature) or on some sort of belief that has been acquired through education and influences from the surrounding environment. The fact that we are...
Free Will A friend of mine has just offered to give me a well-written paper that he wrote for a philosophy class. It just so happens that the paper topic is just like the one I have been assigned in my philosophy class. His paper got an "A," and I know that he has not sold this paper or posted it on his blog. The chances of my being caught, therefore,
This work provided an intensive discussion historical forces that were to lead to modern humanism but also succeeds in placing these aspects into the context of the larger social, historical and political milieu. . Online sources and databases proved to be a valid and often insightful recourse area for this topic. Of particular note is a concise and well-written article by Stephen Weldon entitled Secular Humanism in the United States.
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