Slaves of Desire
Immanuel Kant was one of the greatest philosophers of the 18th century. In one of his works (Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, chapter 2), he brought the idea that being free is not doing what you want, but doing what you don’t want. And today I want to talk about this idea and how it appears in different ways in the bible too. The power to evaluate “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh. Rather, serve one another humbly in love.” Galatians 5:13 As humans we have the false feeling that, if we do what we want, we are free. Kant breaks this pattern and shows that, if you do what you want, without measuring consequences, you become a slave to desire and, from that, it is impossible to be someone free. To be free is to do what we don’t want to. For example, I train in a gym. If someone offers me a lot of candies and fried foods after a workout, my craving would be immediately accept it and eat it all at once. But that way I would become a slave to desire, which […]
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