Dynamics of Freedom: Negotiating Constraints

Abstract In this paper, I grapple with the question of why we, at times, experience ourselves as not free. In doing so I outline a crude theory of agency (and our experience of ourselves as free) as a dynamic process happening in irreversible time. In attempting to answer this question, I define agency as the ability to pursue our desires, and I claim that we experience ourselves as free as long as we can do this – with the caveat that the ability to reason is a necessary criterion. I show that agency is a sociocultural development that manifests as the ability to reason gradually develops through social interaction during infancy and into adulthood. Crucially, I point out that reason is a double-edged sword: It allows us to question our actions and desires and whether they are worth pursuing, which is what elevates us to agentic beings. However, it also allows us to alienate ourselves from our actions and desires, and thus rob ourselves of our experience of freedom. Lastly, I show how our subjective freedom is lost and gained in a constant process, generated by a reflexive-relating-to ourselves. As we act, we continually encounter constraints (physical and psychological) that bar us from acting upon our desires. This compels us to reflect on our actions and desires, and so, our feeling of freedom evaporates. However, through a retrospective forgetting, or reconstruction, of the constraints we encounter, we may regain our experience of being free.