Golds Gym Xr5 Exercises

Topic oral philosophy Khâgne B / L type ENS

natural Freedom and civil liberty

The issue of freedom corresponds to a universal issue transcends all times and all places. The question of freedom in fact arise specifically human and specifically in the context of civil society. Since we spent the usual opposition between civil liberty and natural liberty, it is necessary to examine how these freedoms are different and if we can think differently in a report antithetical. Civil liberty necking it natural freedom?

I) Freedom is naturally thought of as performing acts unhindered

In the philosophy of the eighteenth century, found in great thinkers at the time, the theme of natural liberty in a context of clerical control of the institution.
example, Voltaire shows that the decision objective and free of Huron in the innocent is better than male victims of the system that has indoctrinated. The Huron asking the right questions and highlights the contradiction of believers. Such an attitude is possible because of the natural freedom which has benefited Huron. Thanks to her, Huron has no prejudices instead of Catholics of civil society.
Rousseau in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men, highlights happiness of primitive men who did not suffer from the constraints civil society but fully enjoy the natural freedom. It seems that natural liberty is the true freedom because their natural state, man has no limits to its power to act according to Hobbes's conception of freedom.

But how conceive that natural liberty corresponds to the true freedom in which man would be accomplished if, as Aristotle says, "Man is a political animal" that is to say that his achievement as that man can not be done in society?

II) Civil liberty fulfillment of man

Starting from the premise that freedom consists of an unlimited power to act, an error may be committed. Indeed, freedom is a moral concept. If we say that animals live in freedom, we can not say that animals are free to the extent that freedom requires a moral conscience. But the moral conscience presupposes the distinction between good and evil.
Moreover, freedom is realized in the context of community life, because one man is like a beast (cf. Aristotle). Indeed, such a man is doomed to the drive that is to say, a otherness. Indeed, such an animal natural forces dominate and is the kingdom of nature prevails. For there to be liberty, man must have the autonomy as suggested by Kant. Civil liberty entails obligations hence the name of dialectical aspect. This is not giving free rein to his impulses which freedom.
Even Rousseau says in The Social Contract: "The impulse of appetite alone is slavery but obedience to the law has prescribed that is freedom." Freedom implies thus law recognized by civil society. There is freedom of choice when there is moral choice.
Human life is truly respected by laws that prevent that man is a wolf to man. So civil liberty presupposes a state.

III) The dialectic of civil liberty

The duty is a fundamental civil liberty. Because in natural liberty, the man did in fact neither right nor duty to speak of. Indeed, there is no law allowing or banning.
Civil liberty requires the law and therefore the obligation. In the natural freedom, man can potentially be subject to any constraint, the constraint is characterized by the fact that there is submitted can not help but obey. For this purpose, acting under the threat of a firearm falls under duress and not an obligation. Yet civil liberty differs from the natural liberty as the obligation or duty is moral and well designed. The requirement is unnecessary so irresistible. In principle, the law seeks the good of society but assumed to limit the natural freedom of individuals.
Thus, the difference between obligation and coercion is fundamental to understanding the dialectic civil liberty. It's giving up his natural liberty, that is truly free society that is to say that fulfilling a moral duty and choice of law.


Civil liberty corresponds to an excess of natural liberty, and constitutes a higher stage in which man really accomplished in civil society as a moral being as conceived by Rousseau in The Social Contract. Indeed, man is more subject to nature but chooses truly participating in the organization of the city (polis). Freedom Preparedness is the freedom of the citizen.