Among the habits of thought normal to sociologists, those statements that we assume certain without thinking too much, is to associate the agency with the plan, reflect, evaluate alternatives, etc., The action that does not follow these parameters, it is thought of as automatic, almost as if it’s not really action. The comment of Weber on traditional action would be beyond the significant action continues in this line. As in addition in reality behind the concern for the agency is a concern for the freedom of the actor (so it is very clear in Archer for example), it follows that the actor is more free the more he reflects on his action.
The case is that, to tell you the truth, this vision is not me ends up convincing. And this, at the end, based on personal experience. Throughout my life, I guess that it is also thus in other cases, but I will speak from the only experience that truly I know that it is mine, some of the decisions more keys that I have taken I have been a very rapid, following the path of action, which showed itself as self-evident; and these moments have been, I think, where I’ve been I myself, who more clearly represent me. In some way, has been when I’ve done what I thought was what I had to do was when I was most myself, and in that sense, more free. And all this without going through a reflective process.
On the other hand, might well say that in the occasions in which effectively I have followed the model of reflective action have not been moments in which you felt the greatest freedom. Rather, it seemed to try to solve an optimization problem: What is the best way to achieve such a goal? In this sense, there was no freedom whatsoever, just a matter of recognizing something that was the best option.
The immediate determination is not a mere automatic reflex. Identify, ‘hit’ if you want an action like the one that goes from his conduct it is not the absence of freedom. To understand this, I think that is key. At all times in which we are effectively locked into a course of action and what we perform to the fullest is when we are not reflectively thinking about how it makes (in the same way that when I write these phrases, just write -and simply correct them – without going through a thoughtful process of weighing options). The time thoughtful appear at other times, when usually we require to troubleshoot something that takes us out of the implementation of the action (or when, to continue the example, a process to perform a subsequent review to write); but it is only in those moments when we are being fully actors of our life.
Ultimately, we are free when we are ourselves; and if we be ourselves when most of our action reveals to us in our being; and this occurs when the more clearly we feel that this is the right thing to do; then our freedom is most fully precisely where you do what you feel needs to be done.
From the modern perspective of freedom, as a conscious choice and not determined between alternatives, the biblical phrase that the truth will make us free (Jn 8:32) sounds strange. If the truth is only then recognize it, and what liberty can there be where there is no choice between options? The experience of totalitarian regimes of the TWENTIETH century, on the other hand, brings us back to the experience that is at the base of it. In 1984, Winston regains his sense of freedom when it recognizes one truth (2+2=4), and lost when that claim ceases to have the character of freedom (when it is possible to think of anything else). If to recognize a truth, we recognize part of who we are (what we only can be taken away with violence); then indeed the truth makes us free. Freedom and agency of the actor’s own self-disclosure of himself.