Concept Of Freedom And Risks To Achieve It

Concept of freedom and risks to achieve it

Introduction

When students are asked in class, what is freedom? They usually answer what is to do what one wants, the way he wants at the time he wants without any impediment. Freedom understood in this way is that where there are no rules or limits and, of course, others are not even contemplated. In this sense, being free seems that it is a merely individual issue, where their own interests are the protagonists and is exercised independently of the rest of the people. As teachers, this issue of freedom has a lot to do with our practice, since to the extent that we constitute ourselves as free beings we can give our students enough tools so that they are too. Michel Foucault invites us to reflect on this issue of freedom and gives us a different perspective where the people around us play a relevant role in the exercise of this, which also implies the care of itself and, therefore, of others. That is, it is an ethical act that is inclusive and leaves behind the banality of its understanding, which can often be risky and get carried away by desires, domination over others, how many times as teachers we have not longed for students to obey studentsThe rules are fully? Is it that this domination we try to exercise in the classroom or that authority that we want to impose enslaves us at the same time and limits our practice?

Developing

For Michel Foucault, freedom has nothing to do with freeing us from everything that does not do us well, to separate ourselves from the world to achieve an absolute liberation, to give off from the affections of others, as all those superficial approaches say they currently proposeThe doctrines of personal improvement.

He talks about freedom, as the Greeks understood it, as an ethical problem “but ethics, in the sense that the Greeks could understand ethos, was the way of being and the way to conduct themselves. It was a way of being of the subject and a certain way of doing, visible to others ”(Foucault, 1984, p.263) that is, that the exercise of freedom implies a care of itself, because for a person to be exemplary and honorable it means that he takes care of himself and taking care of himself takes care of others and, at the same time, it is constituted as a subject. Therefore, the one who pursues to appropriate others or to possess them to achieve certain purposes is not a free subject because in the first instance his actions is far from ethical. "The man who has a beautiful ethos, who can be admired and cited as an example, is one that practices the freedom in a certain way" (Foucault, 1984, p.263).

Exercising freedom or acting freely does not imply any risk when the subject takes care of himself and for Foucault taking care of himself is not a selfish act, but is a way of taking into account the other. However, he who is not able to govern himself, who does not exercise a domain that allows him to control his impulses, desires or actions that may hurt or affect others, runs the risk of wanting to impose his law and hisauthority arbitrarily. Then the abuse of power can arise “[…] the risk of dominating others and exercising a tyrannical power over them, precisely comes from the fact that one does not take care of himself and that he has become a slave to his wishes” (Foucault, 1984, P. 265)

It is important not to lose sight of the fact that self-care has also to do with the knowledge of itself. Know what is what you require to be well, seek well -being and worry about itself means that we look towards us without looking at others. "The concern for oneself is the activity that you exercise over itself" (Garcés and Giraldo, 2013, P.190). And this is where bioethics becomes important and is relevant to support this issue of self-care in relation to others. For Foucault, "Bioethics must lead the reflection of new principles and values according to the problems that threaten the lives of humans today" (Garcés and Giraldo, 2013, P. 195) and this ethical reflection, our author tells us, is the reflexive practice of freedom, which implies knowing how. The human being not only has a commitment with himself that he acquires when taking care of himself, but he has to take care of everything around him, his environment. “Assess what the world has given us and especially nature corresponds to human beings as rational beings;Man cannot be selfish for believing himself owner of nature, who with his acts manipulates and destroys it;Man must recognize himself as part of nature and care for different ways of life ”(Garcés and Giraldo, 2013, P.195). However, this is a big problem, human beings do not dimension the damage we do to ourselves and nature, we take from it what serves us, negligently we destroy everything because everything revolves around interests that they do not respectlife. At present it is alarming to listen. As teachers, it costs a lot. We require that we reflect seriously about the importance of these issues in the classroom and incorporate them urgently, since our students are teenagers who are forming their own criteria and it is the most appropriate time to foster in them the care of themselves, butFirst you have to start by us giving good example with our actions, say and think as a teacher in front of the group.

conclusion

One of the most frequent problems in the classroom is precisely that students seemThey know themselves, do not take care of themselves, do not seek and do not worry. They are focused on the outside world, towards others through social networks, but not in an appropriate way, not from an ethical act. Therefore, the definition they have about what freedom is is so ambiguous and so little reflective that it generates in them the impression that freedom is nothing more to do what one pleases, thus running the risk of suffering orexercise abuse. Therefore, students are vulnerable to being deceived and subjected. Freedom then becomes unattainable or at least for them the possibility of exercising it is gradually diluted, mainly if you live in an environment where most of the time power is imposed through violence. As teachers it is essential to reflect on ours. If from the reflection of teaching practice we notice that we are not exercising our freedom, it means that we have neglected or are indifferent to us.