Thoughts on Freedom: Two Essays

A concise examination and description of freedom per se, among humans, in human interaction with the nonhuman environ­ment, and as innate human capacity. The subject is freedom, not politics, though McMackin describes political systems in his first essay, “Alternatives and Restrictions,” and references those descriptions in illustra­tion of human presumptive exercise of choice. Democracy is accorded more atten­tion than most systems for the help it offers in his careful study of freedom. The second essay, “Choice and Determin­ism,” is devoted to determinism, the hope that all, in the full sense of that word, either flows from the personal, conscious decisions of a perfect creator who transcends his uni­verse, or the desire that all has been, is, and will be caused by the inherency of the self-existing universe, the relentless working of mindless matter. The topic suggests meta­physics; the discussion does not. McMackin is an accomplished essayist with a style uniquely his own, and the deftness he demonstrates as he clarifies concepts through his illuminating and suggestive analyses enter­tains while the insights challenge. As McMackin writes early in his first essay, “We need abstract and ideal terms not because we are amused by toying mystically with impos­sibilities but because only through them are we able to deal intelligently with the commonplace.”