Human freedom is a matter of either/or. When an individual is confronted by an option, such as the choice to buy a white or black shirt with the last of his money, he must pick one over the other. We are not aware of it, but we are presented with many such options every day of our lives. The concrete, specific, and often mundane decisions are called categorical options.
However, not all human decisions are simple as choosing a white shirt or a black shirt. There exist certain actions that affect our lives significantly because it changes our very beings. This is what we call the fundamental option. It is what gives our lives direction, and it is what guides our actions. A fundamental option is not a concrete decision since there is no universal definition on what kind of life we should live. It is something that we must all discover for ourselves.
What makes human beings fundamentally different from animals is that we do not live our lives acting through an inborn “survival instinct”. It is essential that we decide the course our lives should take because unless we do so, we are no better off than a blind man without so much as a cane to guide him. This is where the relationship of fundamental option and categorical option comes into the picture. It has been mentioned that the fundamental option is the crucial moment where we decide what kind of person we want to be. But the choice doesn’t end there. A person cannot just wake up one morning, declare that he will become a good Christian, and then ascend to heaven the very next minute. The decision to be the person we want to be is merely the first step towards developing an identity.
It is through the exercise of categorical options that we fulfill the fundamental option we have made. A person who desires to be a good Christian can only make this a reality when he manifests his goodness in his everyday actions, such as giving alms, or fulfilling such other Christian virtues. A person who desires to be good but who retains bad habits like cheating in tests and stealing money cannot be considered a good person.
It is the relationship of the two options that eventually gives birth to our identity—the kind of person that we are. However, our identities are not permanent; they have to be constantly reaffirmed through the means of categorical options. In the case of the person who wants to be good, he must consistently do good deeds in order to maintain this sort of identity. Our identities are not a static thing either, just as humans are not static beings. There are times in a person’s life when he is confronted with the choice to become someone completely different from the person he is now. And if the person chooses to go through a different path, the whole interplay of the fundamental and categorical options repeats itself.
