We have recently celebrated Shavuot, a holiday that commemorates the giving of the Ten Commandments to the Jewish People, on Mount Sinai.
After emerging from slavery in Egypt, those who followed Moses sometimes felt hopeless or lost and sometimes assumed a misunderstood freedom.
If Jean Paul Sartre said “man is condemned to be free,” the giving of the Torah is tantamount to giving a framework of responsibility to that condition.
Freedom and responsibility are values that must be present in our individual and collective actions. Understanding its limits is what allows us to move forward as a society.
It is not a question of “choosing” or “acting of our own free will”, as some define freedom, but of acting under certain parameters that we have been defining throughout our history.
When there is a growing sense that “the world is wrong”, we should ask ourselves what about it, what about what we are regretting or criticizing, says relationship with freedom misunderstood, devoid of the counterweight of responsibility.
Shavuot is a Jewish holiday, but also, a good opportunity to think of freedom as a responsibility with the universal values of honesty, altruism, peace, solidarity, the common good, among others.
Responsible freedom allows us to face together what is “wrong” to build a better world.
Follow us on
The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
