{"id":4085,"date":"2026-04-23T11:49:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T15:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/?p=4085"},"modified":"2026-04-23T11:49:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T15:49:27","slug":"freedom-to-be-dependent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/?p=4085","title":{"rendered":"<h4>Freedom to be Dependent <\/h4>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/?p=4064\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"4064\">Obedience vs. Autonomy<\/a>, I proposed that the purpose of our lives is that for which we are free. In that post, I argued that the freedom to pursue happiness, the freedom to pursue righteousness, and the freedom to love &#8211; to will the good of the other do not provide a purpose for human life.  I could have given a similar argument that the freedom to pursue truth fails to provide a purpose for human life.  I concluded that a freedom to obey something external to our reason might indicate a purpose for our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this post, I want to set aside an implication that I argued that happiness, truth, righteousness, and love could not be purposes of human life. Also, I want to generalize the notion of obedience to dependence.  Only under the assumption that reason is the ultimate authority on what is true, good happiness, beautiful &#8211; only under the assumption of the autonomy of reason- can what we determine fail to provide a purpose for life.  If we accept a reality apart from our reason upon which our reason <strong>depends<\/strong> for its correctness, then truth, goodness, happiness and beauty can be what we live for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Obedience vs. Autonomy, I proposed that the purpose of our lives is that for which we are free. In that post, I argued that the freedom to pursue happiness, the freedom to pursue righteousness, and the freedom to love &#8211; to will the good of the other do not provide a purpose for human &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/?p=4085\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\"><\/p>\n<h4>Freedom to be Dependent <\/h4>\n<p><\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,35,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4085"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4088,"href":"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions\/4088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/charleskielkopf.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}