在本文中,我努力解决为什么我们,有时,体验自己不自由。在这样做的过程中,我概述了一个粗略的代理理论(以及我们对自己自由的经验),这是一个在不可逆转的时间中发生的动态过程。在试图回答这个问题时,我把代理定义为追求我们欲望的能力,我声称,只要我们能做到这一点,我们就会体验到自己是自由的——需要注意的是,推理能力是一个必要的标准。我证明代理是一种社会文化发展,表现为推理能力在婴儿期和成年期通过社交互动逐渐发展。至关重要的是,我指出,理性是一把双刃剑:它使我们能够质疑我们的行为和欲望,以及它们是否值得追求,这就是把我们提升为真正的生物的原因。然而,它也让我们疏远自己的行为和欲望,从而剥夺了我们的自由体验。最后,我展示了我们的主观自由是如何在一个不断的过程中失去和获得的,由与我们自己相关的反身产生的。当我们行动时,我们不断遇到限制(身体和心理),使我们无法根据自己的欲望行事。这迫使我们反思我们的行为和愿望,所以,我们对自由的感觉消失了.然而,通过回顾性的遗忘,或者重建,我们遇到的限制,我们可能会重获自由的经验。
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.