One. Truth and Freedom

‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’

- John 8:31 -

Across my essays on this Substack I build up the proposal that the Classical Model of Education (a bit adapted to our contemporary needs) is the best approach to primary and secondary school education that we can take. I will argue that a Classical education inspires and equips children to become the best people (and hence citizens) that they can become.

Of course, humans disagree about everything. My readers will notice that proponents of very different approaches to education – ones that I deem to be misguided – will make similar lofty claims. We will disagree about almost every aspect of our preferred pedagogies and at the same time we will all consider that these educational processes are the ones that best serve the needs of people and communities.

Why does this discord happen? It happens simply because we see the world differently. The underlying assumptions that we make, which inform our views of education, are different. When we speak about pedagogies that benefit people and societies, we are employing ideas about what a person is; what it means for them to flourish; and what human wellbeing is (individually and for communities).

Before we can speak coherently about educational processes that best serve the needs of people and communities, we need to become clear about what we consider those needs to be. Before we can consider the merits of Classical Education, or before we are able to compare it to any other model instructively, we need to first clarify some higher-order concepts that define the character and function of every pedagogy. For this reason we start our exposition by looking at two basic concepts: the concept of freedom and the concept of truth.

Why are we talking about Truth and Freedom?

Truth, freedom and education are all inextricably and tightly knit together. The three concepts each feed into each other. The relationship between the three goes something like this

-       Education wants to enable people to live good lives, to make the right choices and to have profitable responses to the reality around them.

-        Using education to provide people with the knowledge and skills to respond to their world well only makes sense in so far as the person is free to influence or determine their world. Education sets its remits based on how it understands human freedom – the importance and possibility of human action. In this sense, every pedagogy has implicit in it a philosophy of freedom.

-       As I hope will become clear by the end of this essay, the question of freedom is interesting to us because it is essentially tied up with questions of what actions are good and bad, and which will bring about our wellbeing. 

-       At the same time, all pedagogies form their views of freedom based on their views on truth. What does it mean to be free? What is a good use of our freedom? These questions can only be answered by making clear our position regarding what is true. What is true about our world, and what is true about us (these are the ontological and anthropological questions referred to in my introductory essay).

Let me give you a comically obvious example of how this is the case: we do not teach children to flap their arms like a bird learns to use its wings - because our human nature will never allow us to fly. We only use education to develop skills that are within the ‘remit of our freedom’ as defined by our nature (the reality, or truth, about us).

-       Furthermore, truth is the main ‘tool of education’. Education enables people to be agents directing their own lives well by giving them insight into truth. If you understand the thing, you can manage it properly and respond to it properly. Only the most ruthless propagandist would knowingly teach untruths to others. Most educators, no matter how incorrect and harmful we may consider their views to be, themselves believe that what they are teaching is true.

These three concepts are inseparable. I dare say that a definition of any education is nothing more than: a description of its pedagogical practices (its techniques) plus its inherent views of freedom plus its inherent view of truth. That is another way of saying the same thing I was claiming in my introductory essay: that every pedagogy is predicated upon ontological and anthropological axioms. This essay (and the next which brings a Christian perspective to these matters) may feel a bit theoretical, but I ask you to bear with me. We will emerge from this pair of essays with a very useful framework. Our purpose is to make very clear some fundamental axioms. It will be a lot easier for us thereafter to talk about educational concepts, to order them and make sense of their value. 

I will now lay out side by side two contrasting views of freedom. The two views are based on two different views about truth (which we will discuss afterwards). The first view is a depiction of what Hart will call the modern view of freedom. It is characteristic of how many of us commonly think about freedom today. I will then contrast this with a second view that I myself agree with, which Hart will call the ‘Platonic view of freedom’.

The Platonic view of freedom is the one I will uphold across my essays. Put simply it is that people have a wonderful intrinsic nature that under healthy conditions can be realised fully. To be free means to be supported (or uninhibited) in developing and maturing that nature – becoming yourself. Much like a flower has its nature written inside the seed. The flower requires good soil, water and sunlight to grow and realise its being. Freedom to grow for the flower means that nothing damages its development. This is opposed to the ‘modern view’ that people are free in as far as they have capacity to make their own choices according to their own wills.

Notions of Freedom

"...man is condemned to be free... because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."

-       Jean-Paul Sartre -

Sartre¹ shows a philosophical view of freedom known as the existentialist view. He reasons from a starting point that God does not exists, and essentially that therefore there is no authority to maintain any essence. Existentialism is the view that existence precedes essence. This just means that the way we understand things to be is not inherent in the way they are. Things just exist, and their meaning is experienced (or created) later. Sartre is just trying to break the relationship between meaning and existence (being). I just exist, then afterwards, I define what it means to be me. We (and everything else) are not defined by our nature. We exist, we define our nature.

Sartre claims that: man is 'too free' to be able to explain his actions by reference to any 'specific human nature'. We are not "provided with any values or commands that could legitimize our behaviour". As Sartre says, there is no realm of values, or any real essence that determines man in any way. We invent ourselves in every way. Such an existentialist view of radical freedom as indeterminism has become very popular in our day where it is claimed that each person can define themselves even down to the biological level.

This view is compatible with the practical view of freedom expounded by John Locke who defined freedom (liberty) as a sort of natural condition that man is capable of. He linked freedom to power and spoke about how being free means to have the power to do things. His definition was along these lines: "a human being (person, agent) is free with respect to a particular action A (or forbearance to perform A) inasmuch as (i) if she wills to do A then she has the power to do A and (ii) if she wills to forbear doing A then she has the power to forbear doing A"². You are free in as far as you are able to do or not do what you want.

Differing from Sartre however, Locke held that a natural law (something like a moral law) exists that obliges us to voluntarily curtail our inherent powers of freedom. In his Second Treatise on Government he wrote: "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."John Stuart Mill (1974: 141) expounded the same idea saying the limits of our freedom ought to be that we do not cause harm to others.

Essentially both Locke and Mill saw freedom as the ‘free’ act of our wills to choose – even though (unlike Sartre) they wanted to curb the will somewhat with reference to some moral reality. Both authors agreed that the powers of the state to contain human activity meet personal freedom at this point: that we are not allowed to interfere with the rights of others.

This line is of course an overly blurry one. It is the reality that humans have profound effects on one another. No one is independent in a full sense of the others, and therefore, all our actions impact on others. The cry of the feminist movement in the West in the 1960's recognised this reality: 'the personal is political'.

Christianity also avows this reality saying that sin is public. Our personal sin has effects on other people and on our environment, just like our personal virtue can bring goodness into the world. St Issac the Syrian³ in his Ascetical Homily no. 2 said: "Be peaceful within yourself, and heaven and earth will be at peace with you." Likewise saint Seraphim of Sarov⁴ said: "Acquire the Spirit of Peace and a thousand souls around you will be saved." For this reason Christ said: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell." (Matthew 5:21)⁵

Locke and Mill wrote in a time perhaps when people shared a general code of conduct derived from Christian principles that allowed their societies to take a general standard of human behaviour for granted and to speak of virtuous conduct as natural. On its own, their theory does not offer enough structure to be useful in our own days. We disagree fundamentally on what it means to harm others. A nursery teacher may consider it beneficial to start the day by gathering all the children for prayer, and a different teacher will consider this very harmful and will prefer to start the day with a yoga class. A head teacher at a primary school might feel that hosting a transvestite event at the school's assembly will help children to have an open mind. Others will consider it an act of cruelty that confuses children about matters that they do not yet have the maturity to process. The examples where we affect one another, and we have no agreement about the benefits and harms involved are innumerable.

Another related more political notion of freedom can be found in the works of communist liberation-theology educational theorists. We will look at these pedagogies in greater detail in subsequent essays and examine how they relate to our preferred educational model of Classical Education. For now we will merely say that: like Classical Education, this (sometimes called) radical tradition also speaks of education as liberating, yet they mean something different.

The classical tradition refers to the liberal arts as bodies of learning that free man's sentiment from the mundane and allow his heart and mind to rise towards what is true, good and beautiful⁶. Liberation theologists instead are speaking of using education to emancipate man from the oppressive forces restricting him⁷. Like Locke they see freedom bound up with the power to do what you will; following Foucault they see society as structured by relationships of power that dictate to people how they ought to be⁸; and like Sartre they believe that man should take his own destiny in hand; and as communism suggests, break free from the bonds of oppression. For them education should bring about 'conscientisation'⁹. That is, it ought to make 'oppressed people' aware of their true situation as oppressed, to reveal to them their actual potential as actors who have the existential freedom to change history and define their own lives, and to give them the tools to achieve this overthrow of the dominant powers that press on them.

This idea of liberation is based on a theology of power. The focus is on competing societal groups that define reality to the extent that they hold the power to do so. Man is not looking upwards at the will of God to understand his condition. He is looking at his ‘oppressors' and wishing to redefine 'their world' for the purpose of creating a more comfortable place for himself¹⁰. 

Sartre talks about freedom as the ability to be what we will (apply our choices to ourselves). Locke and Mill thought of freedom as the ability to choose for yourself what you will. Likewise, the communist radical education use of the notion understands freedom as becoming free to create your own world, liberated from those who constraint you (oppress you). The three versions share the same basic understanding that freedom is linked to choice. David Bentley Hart labelled this as the 'modern understanding of freedom'. If I can choose what I like, then I am free. Where I am restricted in my choices, either by being limited by a lack of resources or by the actions of other agents, I am less free.

In Hart’s view this conception of freedom is best characterized as ‘nihilist’. He has this to say about it (2009, p. 21):

‘To be entirely modern... is to believe in nothing. This is not to say it is to have no beliefs: the truly modern person may believe in almost anything, or even perhaps in everything, so long as all these beliefs rest securely upon a more fundamental and radical faith in the nothing – or, better, in nothingness as such.

Modernity’s highest ideal – its special understanding of personal autonomy – requires us to place our trust in an original absence underlying all reality, a fertile void in which all things are possible, from which arises no impediment to our wills, and before which we may consequently choose to make of ourselves what we choose. We trust…that there is no substantial criterion by which to judge our choices that stands higher that the unquestioned good of free choice itself, and that therefore all judgment, divine no less than human, is in some sense an infringement upon our freedom. This is our primal ideology.... the ethos of modernity is – to be perfectly precise – nihilism.’

Following from such a notion, Hart tells us, is that the inviolable liberty of personal volition has become for us a chief value.

Let us now compare this with a second notion of freedom¹¹. Hart says (2009, 24):

‘True freedom was understood as something inseparable from one’s nature: to be truly free, that is to say, was to be at liberty to realize one’s proper “essence” and so flourish as the kind of being one was.

For Plato... true human freedom is emancipation from whatever constrains us from living the life of rational virtue, or from experiencing the full fruition of our nature; and among the things that constrain us are our own untutored passions, our wilful surrender to momentary impulses, our own foolish or wicked choices.

In this view of things, we are free when we achieve that end towards which our inmost nature is oriented from the first moment of existence, and whatever separates us from that end – even if it comes from our own wills – is a form of bondage. We become free, that is, in something of the same way that (in Michelangelo’s image) the form is “liberated” from the marble by the sculptor.

This means we are not free merely because we can choose, but only when we have chosen well. For to choose poorly, through folly or malice, in a way that thwarts our nature and distorts our proper form, is to enslave ourselves to the transitory, the irrational, the purposeless, the (to be precise) subhuman.

To choose well we must ever more clearly see the “sun of the Good” ... and to see more clearly we must continue to choose well; and the more we are emancipated from illusion and caprice, the more perfect our vision becomes, and the less there is really to choose.’

The first assumption that is proposed by Hart’s notion of freedom is that people are thought of as having a nature, and that one’s aim is to realize that nature – to achieve the flowering of their essence. In this way of perceiving human beings, not every development in a person is appropriate or desirable, but only those developments that bring about a state in the person which is in accordance with how they ought to be – how they are meant to be.

There are two factors to notice here. Firstly, that it is implied by such a notion of freedom that its supporter believes that there is a ‘condition of being’ that is the correct one for a person. If a person achieves such a condition of being then they have achieved the expression, or the realization, of their real essence. If they fall short of this, then, since they have not achieved the ideal standard for humans, they are as Hart called it, somehow ‘subhuman’.

Simultaneously however, it is not assumed that this condition is natural in the sense that it is inevitable. It is not necessarily the case that each person will achieve this ‘natural’ condition. It is possible that people may not realize this potential. In fact, we are told – by the very fact that one who is free is free to become their essence – that there exist various reasons that can inhibit one from realizing their essence.

The notion of freedom as ‘being at liberty to realize one’s proper essence’ makes sense coextensively with its alternative: that one may be un-free and unable to realize their ‘proper essence’. In this notion of freedom is included the following claim: that a person who is not free – a prisoner of sorts – will exist in a condition that is less appropriate to their being.

In short, Plato’s notion of freedom includes the following:

(a) that there is a condition that people ought to strive for

(b) that when a person fails to achieve this condition, they exist in a way that is somehow ‘lesser’ than the desirable one.

(c) that there are factors which can inhibit a person from realizing this potential

(d) and finally, that Socrates believed that to be free means to be free from any such constraints, and to thus be able to achieve this condition.

Furthermore, points (a) through (d) are regarding the claim that we have a ‘nature’ to develop. Alongside this let us add the following:

(e) that the choices a person makes are important, since these choices compound to lead a person to one state of being or another¹².

Plato’s view of freedom is directly at odds with the ‘modern view’. For Plato being free to choose is not a good in itself. Choice is not a good in itself. Choices can be good or bad, depending on whether you choose what is good for you or what is bad for you. Choosing freely in fact, if your choices are not wise, will be harmful.

Choices that we make can contribute to our authentic wellbeing or can be detrimental. Our own volition is not a good in itself, but it needs to be put to work to drive us towards what is good. I would say it like this: Choice is an act that humans are capable of, but it is only a mechanism. Its contribution to our freedom depends on how it is employed.

Truth, or no Truth?

If we accept Plato’s view of freedom and wellbeing, then, there exist some external criteria by which we can evaluate our choices and know if these choices are profitable for us or not. It is prudent therefore to seek to understand ourselves and the world around us, to become wise as to how to live in line with reality, that we may be properly oriented. As the ancient Greeks had inscribed upon the temple of Apollo in Delphi: Γνῶθι σαυτόν. In Sartre’s view however, where there are no objective realities that we would want to align ourselves with, but we are free to define ourselves, our scope for choice is potentially much wider.

If we want to follow Plato and say that persons benefit from A or B, this implies that we predicate a defined human nature. People are created in such ways that they have such and such needs. Fish for example are created in such a way that they need to be kept in water. Humans need oxygen and food to stay alive. We all take these basic physical premises for granted, but when it comes to more complex emotional, mental or spiritual needs opinions diverge. It is not only that people disagree about how to delineate which needs are characteristic of all humans. As we can see all around us in contemporary societies, disagreement goes further than that. On many questions we even disagree about whether or not human nature is predefined at all.

To illustrate this with an extreme example, it is even possible to find those eccentric individuals (oh no wait, that was Scotland’s national policy working as designed…) who say that they are being supportive of a child to make their own choices and have their own opinion about ‘decisions concerning themselves’ – when they affirm a child’s belief that he is in fact a wolf  in a human body.

We want to speak about the conditions that support human flourishing and how education can help to establish these. As we compare educational theories however we will come across those pedagogies that reject our project entirely and try to predicate that human flourishing can only be determined by what each individual wants for themselves.

This brings us to a second basic philosophical question: the question of Truth. How a person thinks about truth is probably the most elemental foundation of their thought. It will define ultimately how they think about almost everything else. 

Let me explain that with an example. A car is designed by engineers to function in a particular way. It is a machine, a body of processes that needs to be handled in a particular way, because it was designed that way. So, if you want the car to do what it is capable of doing (what it is intended to do) you need to put petrol in the tank, it needs to have electricity, you need to step on the gas to make it move, you need to use the gears in the correct way. One learns how to handle the car and how to drive it, in accordance with how it was designed to function. In a similar way, if our world (and we ourselves) are created with some intention or according to some definite schema, then there is a proper way to ‘drive’. There is a proper way to be that is according to our nature and will ensure that we are enabled to function according to our abilities. Regarding the world itself also, there is a correct way to understand natural processes that captures the defining aspects of those processes.

If, however, the world was not created by any intelligence according to any schema but it has developed characteristics that are loosely and somewhat randomly held together, then we don’t need to know the ‘true’ way to be or to understand our world. Instead, we can develop our own creative ways to manipulate our material towards whatever aim we set.

By this you can see that how we treat ourselves and knowledge of our world is directly related to what sort of mechanism we and our world are. Ontological questions, sociological questions, moral and theological questions are facets of the same issue.

All thinkers can be divided into two camps: those who think that ultimate truths exists and those who don’t. Ultimately it is the most decisive characteristic of how we think about the world. You can understand a lot about a person’s philosophy if you first identify how they answer this question. What is truth (and how can we know it)?

I call these ‘camps’ of thought because both sides include a range of positions. There is a large variety in how thinkers have understood what truth is, both amongst those who believe that it exists in some transcendent sense, and among those who hold that ‘there is no ultimate truth’.

In contemporary debate it is sometimes assumed that only people of faith (in Judeo-Christian religions) believe in transcendent truths defining how we ought to be – and that those who reject these prescriptive restrictive belief systems are more free to embrace complexity and diversity. This is not correct however. Those who believe in Truth (let’s call them camp T) might believe in some sort of unchanging Platonic forms that give reality its character, or in a God who is Truth or defines Truth, or they might be materialists who believe in some biological defining facts that resulted from evolutionary processes. Pagan civilizations have also assumed a version of reality fixed by truths (think of the Ancient Greeks, the early Romans or Pocahontas).

Those who do not believe that our world or our nature is underlined by any true reality (let’s call them camp NT) also branch out into several positions. They start out from the proposition that there is no truth at all. However, the consequences of such a belief are extreme. It is such a desperate and troubling position to hold that most NT thinkers dedicate their work to analysing how various ‘truths’ (with a small t) can occur or be created. They try to analyse how ‘truths’ are established in (what in their view is effectively) an ‘ontological vacuum’.

Thinkers who believe in Truth are interested in how truth can be known and discovered. Those who do not believe in Truth spend their efforts instead looking at mechanisms of ‘creating’ knowledge and subjective truths (truths that depend on the subject: that is, the people that uphold them). Some think that truth is socially constructed (made up and sustained by groups) and others think that truths are created privately by individuals.

Very few people can sustain a situation where they believe in no truth at all. You can try it as a mental exercise if you like. What would you do if the world had no real physics to limit the physical environment around you. Will the floor hold you up when you step on it? Does your workplace exist outside your imagination? Is your wife an alien who carries out experiments on you? This can be a fun mental game to play, but as you can imagine, it would make it impossible to get on with your day. Therefore, those of us who believe in Truth care about what this truth is and how it can be known. And those of us who do not believe it exists in any transcendent sense care about how to create it.

Those of us who enjoy abstract thinking for its own sake have spent a lot of time analysing the existence of physical reality. In what sense it exists, what is real, how we can know it or characterise it¹³.

Most of us however find this problematization of ‘obvious things’ overly obscure. Most thinkers who care about truths are really only interested in moral truths (and the closely interlinked) theological and anthropological truths. When sociologists or philosophers (and generally intellectuals from the various fields) talk about truth they are usually discussing whether there is such a thing as absolute good and evil; if we can say that some cultural practices are better than others; if there is a God; to what extent human nature is defined; or to what extent people are free to define themselves.

Of course, any deep thinker can see that the two realms cannot be properly separated. If you want to say that there are no truths underlying human behaviour, you need to back this up with an ontology where the world is such that there is no reality to define or determine what humans are and what they should be doing. The ‘ontological world’ where things exist or don’t exist is one with the world of human affairs. People are free to determine themselves if reality is somehow indifferent to them.

I won’t spend any more time on this. I just want to make clear that: even though our discussions about truth are mostly focused on ‘human affairs’, it is shallow and insufficient to think that you can make ‘moral claims’ that don’t have deeply resonating consequences. Any well-thought-out view about truth must deal with all of the deeper requirements of that view. My pet grief is that many intellectuals do not bother to take into account all of the consequences of the positions that they espouse. And so, they confuse public debates by putting their weight behind ideas that are untenable. Keep this in mind as you read the various essays on my substack. I will present and discuss many views that may sound appealing, but we should always have an eye on how reasonable such views are. What do they mean? What would the world be like if these views were correct?

Concluding remarks

‘For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue.’

-        C.S. Lewis -

We have seen two differing conceptions of freedom (and we have said something about how these are predicated on different axiomatic beliefs about Truth). The one is relatively ‘modern’, compatible with an ontology where there is no transcendent truth. It is very widespread today and you will recognise it underlying many cultural, political and educational debates that take place currently. The other one is older. In what sense is it older? If you squint, you can identify evidence of both views across the ages. Humans have always been philosophical, and we have always enjoyed exploring possible ideas. Nevertheless, we can legitimately call the Platonic view the older view, the traditional view, because it was clearly the predominant view assumed since ancient times, up to the modern era. The modern version only existed in a very rudimentary way.

These two views are (generally speaking) the two main views that people use in their thinking. This can be seen in the field of education (as it can in other fields of thought). We have said that the differing takes on education that we will explore in this substack grow out of these two axiomatic positions about humans, our world, and how the two interrelate.

For this reason we have dedicated our first essay to clarifying this distinction. We feel that it is very useful to keep these fundamental notions in mind when we are trying to make sense of the discussions around educational methods and aims. If we always look behind the scenes to see what ‘anthropological’ and ‘ontological’ views are being presupposed, then we will comprehend the various views in much greater depth.

We will analyse both of these views in more detail in subsequent writing, but I have from now put my cards on the table and said that I consider the Platonic view to be the correct one (with a few caveats that I will discuss with you in due course). As I build up an argument for the superiority of the Classical model of education I will be using this set of fundamental axioms; and as I criticise other educational approaches for failing to meet vital human needs, I will be finding fault with (what I will describe as) incoherent and unstable foundations (the anthropological and ontological assumptions described here as modern and nihilist).

A wonderful book that I recommend to all children is The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck by Beatrix Potter. We can all learn something from that story. It is not always the person who ‘supports you’ to make your ‘own free choice’ who will most help you to be free and well.

That’s all for now folks! I look forward to reading your comments.

References:

Prepared under the auspices of the academic community of St. Athanasius Academy of Orthodox Theology (2008). The Orthodox study Bible, Thomas Nelson, Elk Grove, California.

Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate (2023) St. Isaac The Syrian: Ascetical Homily #2, (URL: https://www.stmarkboston.org/st-isaac-the-syrian-ascetical-homily-2/)

Cothran, M. (2017) What is Classical Education, Memoria Press, Kentucky

Freire, P. (1985) The politics of Education, Culture, Power and Liberation, Bergin & Garvey, London

Freire, P. and Macedo, D. (1987) Literacy, Reading the Word and the World, Bergin & Garvey, London

Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Penguin Books, London

Hooks, B. (1994) teaching to Transgress, Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, New York

Hart, D., B. (2009) Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies, Yale University Press, New Haven

Lewis, C., S. (1958) Mere Christianity, Collins, London

Lewis, C., S. (1978) The Abolition of Man, How Education Develops Man Sense of Morality, Collier Books, Texas

Locke, J. (2016) "Second Treatise on Government", published in Goldie, M. (ed) Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration, Oxford University Press, Oxford

Bishop Mileant, A. (2001) St. Seraphim of Sarov, Life and Teachings, Missionary Leaflet # EA08, (URL: https://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/seraphim_e.htm)

Mill, J., S. (1974) On Liberty, Penguin Books Ltd., England

Pantelides, F. (2013) Blessed are the Cultured: Cultivation and Wellbeing in Plato. Human Welfare, 2(2), 76-85.

Raatikainen, P. (2022), "Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), (URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/goedel-incompleteness/)

Rickless, S. (2020) "Locke On Freedom", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Zalta, E., N. (ed.), (URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/locke-freedom/)

Sartre, J., P. (1946) “Existentialism is a Humanism.”, Translated from the French by Mairet, P., published in Kaufman, W. (ed), Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, World Publishing Company, New York

Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica (2022) Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives, St Herman Of Alaska Brotherhood, California

1. The section from which this quote is taken reads: "Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself.... For if indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s action by reference to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism – man is free, man is freedom. Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimize our behavior. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse....That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. The existentialist . . . thinks that every man, without any support or help whatever, is condemned at every instant to invent man." (Sartre 1946)

2. Rickless (2020: URL)

3. See Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate (2023: URL)

4. Bishop Alexander (2001)

5. The idea that our inner sins impact the world around us is common in patristic theology. See also Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica (2022)

6. Cothran (2017)

7. Freire and Macedo (1987: 66)

8. Hooks (1994: 29)

9. Freire (1985: 67-93)

10. Macedo (1994: 6)

11. We can call this the Platonic notion, since Hart proposes that this is the way Plato thought about freedom. In later essays I will distinguish between the Platonic and Socratic versions of this view of freedom.

12. Analysis originally published in an earlier paper of mine (Pantelides 2013: 78)

13. If you are interested in such puzzles a fun accessible introduction to some of the philosophical problems of ‘existence’ can be found in Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy.