Education for Freedom: Between Arbitrary Will and Responsibility

Abstract

The article reflects on one of the most important issues of modern times – the meaning of freedom and its relation to the process of education. The author points out that contemporary culture often equates freedom with the absence of limits and with arbitrariness, which distorts its essence and deprives it of deeper meaning. True freedom, however, does not consist in making any choice whatsoever, but in the ability to discern the good and to act responsibly in its name. Education thus appears as the art of guiding the human person toward mature freedom, rooted in authority, duty, and openness to the metaphysical dimension. Only such freedom protects the individual from the emptiness of self-realization detached from values, while at the same time opening the perspective of a communal and meaningful life. The article is therefore an attempt to restore to freedom its authentic meaning, which does not end in the self but leads toward others and toward truth