Introduction
Freedom is a person’s ability to act in line with his aims and interests, to realize his will, and to choose a concrete project for his life. There are two opposing philosophical and ethical viewpoints on the issue of freedom. First, there is fatalism, which holds that everything in the universe has clear causes and consequences, and so human acts are predestined by forces. It is simple to engage in immoral activity when guided by fatalistic ideas.
Second, voluntarism holds that a person has complete moral freedom and should act solely based on their essence, beliefs, and wants (Kováčik, 2020). A person guided by such views is more likely to engage in unethical behavior under the slogan “what I want, I do” (Paez, 2021). Moral freedom is the exercise of ethically appropriate activity driven by personal ideals. The goal of ethics is to demonstrate that true freedom exists within the realm of morality.
Thus, choosing virtue leads to moral freedom, but choosing evil leads to immoral freedom. Moral freedom is realized through the individual’s moral decision. This is a decision not merely between behavioral variations but, more importantly, between ideals expressed in various forms: between honesty and dishonesty, virtue and vice, and, ultimately, good and evil.
However, there may be difficult decisions between distinct moral principles, such as between duty and conscience, and between honor and dignity (Stuhr, 2023). Martin Heidegger, the philosopher-thought leader, addresses the issue of actual freedom extensively in his writings. In Heidegger’s later thinking, human freedom is defined by the need to clarify the reality of being, thereby problematizing this concept.
Understanding True Freedom
In the current context, freedom is defined as the absence of compulsion, arising from awareness of indeterminate power and the capacity for absolute agency, which is more vulgarly expressed as the ability to do anything. This freedom may be found everywhere, but it always comes with constraints, whether in society through law, in morality through a moral conscience, or in nature through its physical rules and general determinism (Ajour, 2021). Philosophers have long wasted themselves in futile opposition between objective determinism and subjective freedom, demonstrating that both may be considered concurrently and that the same action may be both deterministic and free (Schubert, 2020). Freedom is often opposed to determinism, fatalism, and any idea that supports the doctrine that natural beings are subject to a rigid necessity that entirely determines them and renders the human will unfree. From the start, it did not appear easy to reconcile scientific determinism with human freedom and responsibility.
The only problem that a thinking creature should be concerned with is that of freedom. No other issue is as significant and crucial. As a result, freedom has always been, is, and will always be the essence of all ambitions and forces for the thinking being, as represented by man today. As it may not be a surprise, freedom has a meaning beyond the existential or even the ontological. Being is not only rooted in freedom but also finds an optimistic perspective in the face of nothingness (de Ville, 2020). This is why freedom has an ontological-transitional significance. These preconditions of knowledge have drawn humanity’s attention to the topic of freedom through the work of its greatest thinkers throughout history.
Ancient Greek philosophy extensively investigated the relationship between individual freedom and collectivity, as well as the issue of arbitrariness as boundless freedom and freedom that may be constrained in one way or another. Western philosophy emphasizes the ontological context of freedom, whereas Eastern philosophy (perfectionism) emphasizes it (Okrent, 2020). Both of these threads addressed comparable issues but from quite different perspectives (Hoeltzel, 2020). In philosophy, freedom is first and foremost defined as the freedom of volition. In this sense, freedom refers to the ability to exercise one’s will. The collective goal is always coupled with a direct loss of individual freedom, since it requires giving up individual freedom to help the collectivity achieve its will.
Heidegger does not discuss freedom in his most renowned work, Being and Time, but rather the issue of knowledge of the surrounding reality. The quantity of knowledge about the most distinct and distant civilizations available today looks to be beneficial for a constructive approach to this undertaking, yet this is only an appearance (Zuboff, 2022). As a result, more than familiarity with the available cultural traditions is required for education.
Another relatively short book by Heidegger that deserves consideration is The Origin of the Work of Art (Bartolini, 2019). It is not as well-known as his primary work, yet it is impossible to find a book from Heidegger’s vast legacy that played a more vital role at a critical point in the German thinker’s creative path (Smythe and Spence, 2019). In this book, he concludes his existence as Heidegger-1 (an existentialist philosopher) and begins it as Heidegger-2 (a hermeneutic philosopher) (Santis, Hopkins, and Majolino, 2020). This work was not only highly regarded by the author during his lifetime, but is also vigorously defended by the German thinker’s pupils and followers – those who know Heidegger primarily as a representative of philosophical hermeneutics.
Heidegger’s Understanding of Being
In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger discusses the cognition of existence through art, specifically a work of art. The uniqueness of creative creation is that beings do not encircle the gaping middle; instead, the enlightened middle surrounds all beings, circling it as emptiness, which most people are unaware of (Pageau‐St‐Hilaire, 2022). Being can only be what it is when it enters and stands in the “enlightenment of the pro-enlightenment” (Schmidt, 2019, p. 249). Only this enlightenment grants and enables access to the Being, both the Being that is not the same as people and the Being that is the same as humans.
Enlightenment causes the Being to be unconcealed to some extent, if not entirely (Prabakaran, 2019). Existence can only be veiled in the immensity of the enlightened. Thus, the “enlightenment of the enlightenment” that is creative production unites the two forms of existence – subjective and objective. As a result, Heidegger believes that art is the formation and realization of truth.
Heidegger concludes that art is the emergence and realization of truth. Poetic composition realizes truth as the illumination and enclosure of existence. All art that adheres to the truth of being as such is poetry at its core (Agu, 2023). Poetry is already present in language itself because language, according to the German thinker, retains poetry’s true nature.
With language, art would flow more easily with reality. As the establishing guard, it emanates the reality of being in all creation. This is what the term “source” means: anything that exudes or pours out into being by a constitutive leap from within the basic origin. Art is the source of creative production, that is, the source of creators as well as protectors, and hence the source of the people’s perfect historical existence (Stevens, 2022). This is because art, in its essence, is the source – the amazing manner of becoming the truth, which, due to art, becomes essence, the achievement of truth.
Heidegger argues that truth lies in being rather than in thinking. And if man fails to establish it, it is because truth pertains to objects. When an event occurs, truth becomes apparent.
Later, the German thinker expanded on these principles with further provisions (Elgat, 2021). In particular, he believes that the notion of truth is inextricably linked to philosophical language since truth exists in language (Nir, 2021). The truth is rarely evident and must frequently be decoded (Conque, 2019). Within the framework of creative creativity, truth appears as a revelation of hiddenness.
The same may be true of language. Heidegger’s use of metaphors rather than explicit definitions distinguishes him as an example of irrationalism. The inseparability of truth and freedom is also represented in the fact that truth does not come as something ready-made, unconstrained by anything. Truth, like freedom, must be mastered. Man’s freedom of choice includes the ability to develop his own criterion for truth.
Over time, the German thinker characterizes his practice in philosophy in virtually Socratic terms. When asked, “What is Heideggerian philosophy?” he said, “There is no such thing as Heideggerian philosophy. For sixty years, I have been attempting to figure out what philosophy is, not to present my own.” However, the years of his existence were not in vain. The thinker reaches his conclusion on the relationship between truth and freedom in this latter stage of his life and career, drawing on his earlier work.
Problems of the Connection between Truth and Freedom
He analyzes this link in “On the Essence of Truth,” a modest but powerful essay by Heideggerian standards. “What is to be understood by ‘truth’?” Heidegger addresses the question, calling this term sublime and, at the same time, “obliterated and blunt” (Lepis, 2023, p. 488). The term “truth” relates to what determines if something is true.
The first item that may be claimed to be true in this context is the actual (Ma, 2019). Furthermore, he contends that whether it is a fact or a notion, what is true is what is correct and what is consistent (Culbertson, 2019). Being true and truth refer to coherence, namely, coherence of two types: on the one hand, the coincidence of the object with what was previously believed of it, and on the other hand, the coincidence of what is thought of in the statement with the thing. Similarly, subject truth refers to the coincidence of a thing’s existence with the rational understanding of its essence.
In the strength of the simplicity of the supplied idea of truth, one seldom pays attention to this simplicity as something self-evident in its essence. It is also thought that truth has an antithesis and that there exists non-truth (Pearce et al., 2019). The falsehood of a proposition (its incorrectness) is the statement’s disagreement with the thing (Larivière and Quintin, 2021).
The term “untruthfulness” refers to a thing’s discrepancy from its essence (Warren, 2020). Non-truthfulness can be viewed as a mismatch at all times (Hunt, 2019). The latter is not the essence of truth; thus, when it is essential to discern the pure essence of truth, non-truth, as the polar opposite of truth, may be eliminated.
So far, the logic has been that truth has value in metaphysics as something permanent and eternal, and that it cannot be predicated on the transience and perishability of humans. At this point, however, Heidegger poses a new question: “In what way can the essence of truth find its presence and justification in human freedom?” The thinker instantly asserts that our intellectual understanding of freedom could be more complex.
However, freedom is not limited to what common sense readily accepts as the definition of this word: the desire to refuse to accept this or that proposition that occasionally arises. Freedom is not only the unboundedness of action or the potential of not doing anything; it is also not only the willingness to perform what is required and essential (and so exists to some extent). Freedom, which comes before all of this (“negative” and “positive” freedom), is part of the revelation of being as such. Disclosure is offered by existential involvement, which allows the simple to be what it is. In being, the last man is granted the hitherto unsubstantiated base of essence that permits him to exist.
Once again, the mind returns to reality, as if retiring to take the lead in overcoming this difficult idea of “freedom.” Since he continues, truth is the basis of freedom, the historical man can presume that being is more than just being as it is. The existent is, therefore, closed and twisted, allowing the appearance to dominate. The non-existence of truth is revealed by this dominance (Mentuz, 2019).
Again, Heidegger returns to the issue of freedom with respect to truth (and non-truth). He contends that because freedom as the essence of truth is not a property of the human being, but rather that the human being exists as a property of this freedom and thus becomes capable of history, it is possible that the non-essence of truth does not always arise as a result of human incapacity or negligence (Appiah, 2022). Furthermore, the thinker contends that non-truth must come from the core of truth.
After analyzing Heidegger’s vision, it is possible to conclude that before humans lay the fatal hiddenness of being, that essential presupposed road of “search” and “wandering” can only lead to the truth. Only because truth and non-truth are not basically indifferent to one another but rather connected can a true assertion completely circumvent the sharpness of the opposite and so transform it into a non-true proposition (Seol, 2019). The inquiry regarding the essence of truth, therefore, enters the original domain of what is being asked when, while taking into consideration the entirety of the essence of truth, the revelation of the essence also includes the verification of non-truth (Rae, 2021).
The debate over truth is not an extra filling of the gap created, but rather an essential step in establishing the sufficiency of the ground for challenging the essence of truth (Smith, 2022). The core of truth is exposed via freedom. Freedom is an existential, liberating belief about the nature of existence(Zaborowski, 2020). Every open relation exists inside the field of the assumption of being and is always related to one or more beings.
From the moment of assumption to the reveal of the being as a whole, freedom has already led to coherence in the entire. However, this coherence must never be regarded as sensation and feeling, or it will lose its essence and be interpreted in terms of what only appearance may claim to be an essence (Winfield, 2022). The being’s overall openness governs all human conduct. However, in ordinary calculations and other situations, this looks incalculable and unfathomable (Braver, 2023). It is impossible to understand just from the open being, whether it is about nature or history (Di Martino, 2021).
True, even when everything is agreed upon, there is still the unagreed and undefined, which corresponds with the ordinary and unthought-out. However, the concordant is nothing but the concealing of one’s entire self. Simply because the assumption of being in a separate act assumes the being of the being to which it refers and therefore confirms its existence, the assumption of being hides the entire being. According to Heidegger, the assumption of existence is also a concealment. In the existential freedom of man’s actual being, the being as a whole is hidden; there is concealment.
This final remark is virtually diametrically opposite to the well-known Hegelian “Freedom has realized necessity.” A person’s freedom might be lost if there is no “hiddenness,” mystery, or need for preservation, as Heidegger emphasizes. The very freedom of intellect. That is why the German philosopher’s formulation of the link between truth and freedom is most appropriate for current philosophy.
Heidegger understands freedom not merely as limitless action or the option to remain idle, but as the readiness to undertake what is truly necessary. Freedom is a component of the discovery of being as such, and the discovery itself is provided by existential involvement, through which the simplicity of the simple “being” becomes what it is. In the latter’s being, man is given the long-unfounded base of essence that permits him to exist; thus, existence in Heidegger does not imply existential in the sense of the event or the cash existence of being (Markov, 2022). Existential – also not existential in the sense of man’s moral endeavor directed toward himself and based on his physiological and psychological structure to assume the being of the essence.
Heidegger’s philosophy declares that thought is the only viable channel of liberation. Heidegger’s attempt at a general basic understanding of being links man to existence through the chains of language and other existential concepts. Existence is man’s problematic freedom, characterized by the fact that he exists in the face of the terror of nonexistence.
The manifestation of this freedom/non-freedom is interpretative language, in which a person is present as if in the home of being, yet does not wish to leave since they feel comfortable in this house (Polt, 2020). Existence is much more accentuated in technology, which subjugates man because man is subordinated to his own externalized nature. As a result, man achieves complete freedom only via thinking – thinking acts not because it is validated in practice or socialized in society, but because it is thought.
In connection with the subject development of the ideas of freedom in psychology, sociology, and political science, the concept of freedom acquires an entirely humanitarian-scientific character because all and any ways of conditioning freedom in the ideas of the conscious and subconscious, individual and group, competent and incompetent, in the process of freedom realization are investigated. The humanities make the limitations of a solely scientific view of freedom clear (Rehman, 2022).
Postmodernism fundamentally emancipates the person by critiquing all borders, prohibitions, and constraints. Postmodernism broadens the concept of freedom by identifying power dynamics within culture and normative communication and advocating for their abolition. The whole framework is entrenched, and the rhizome is liberated. Postmodernism liberates thought, yet it is unclear why.
Postmodernism also raises questions about the scientific notion of freedom (Fürst, 2019). Postmodernism, as a nihilistic thinking project, does not provide positive meanings for humanity. As a result, by freeing cognition with a multiplicity of truths, postmodernism destroys meaning, renders the viewpoint of freedom spontaneous, and freedom itself relative.
Conclusion
As a result, the problem of actual freedom is related to existence, which is difficult to comprehend. Being, according to Heidegger, is a type of non-object beginning that provides for the entire world of things. It is immanent because people experience it in their daily lives; being does not have to be searched far away; it is the closest thing to man. Being opposes “being” – subjectivity and reality – and the world is where being and consciousness interact.
According to Heidegger, freedom encompasses not just the ability to act without limits or to remain inactive, but also the readiness to engage in what is necessary and truly important. Freedom is a component of the disclosure of being as such, and the disclosure is provided by existential involvement. The latter’s being provides man with the long-unfounded foundation of essence that permits him to exist.
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