800.33 Freedom and Responsibility/Selfhood (p.117)

hard cover page 117

freedom responsinility and self-hood:⁴⁷⁹

Eliezer Berkovits writes:

The God who calls man to responsibility is the guarantor of his freedom to act responsibly. As man accepts responsibility, he enters upon his God-given heritage of freedom. Or as the rabbis read it: “Freedom~on the Tablets.” Granting him freedom and calling him to responsibility, God has expressed his confidence in his creature, man. This, notwithstanding man’s disappointing performance in history, freedom remains for the Jew the foundation of his optimism.⁴⁸⁰

Man finds the meaning of his human existence in his capacity for decision, in his freedom of choice. It is a dreadful freedom, for it also means responsibility, but without it man would be as nothing.
-Herberg⁴⁸¹

Thus, man’s freedom is linked to man’s needs for privacy, responsibility, and selfhood. This multifaceted correlation may be traced back to the dynamic of knowledgelpotential chosen by man at Eden.⁴⁸²

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⁴⁷⁹ See Sartre, “Existentialism and Humanism,” in Frazier, Issues in Religion, p. 356. “. . . 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.”

⁴⁸⁰ Berkovits, Faith after the Holocaust, p. 61.

⁴⁸¹ Herberg, Judaism and Modern Man, p. 13.

⁴⁸² Note Soloveitchik, “The Lonely Man of Faith.” “For the sake of clarification of the double equation humanity = dignity and dignity = glorymajesty, it is necessary to add another thought. There is no dignity without responsibility.”

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