On Freedom

On Freedom Plot Summary

Introduction

Freedom is commonly understood as the absence of external constraints, but this negative conception fails to capture the richness and complexity of what freedom truly entails. True freedom encompasses five distinct yet interconnected dimensions: sovereignty, unpredictability, mobility, factuality, and solidarity. Sovereignty refers to our capacity for self-determination and bodily autonomy—the ability to make decisions about our lives without undue interference. Unpredictability involves breaking free from algorithmic control and predetermined patterns, allowing for spontaneity and creativity. Mobility encompasses not just physical movement but social mobility and the ability to navigate different spaces and social contexts. Factuality grounds freedom in truth and reality, recognizing that without access to accurate information, meaningful choice becomes impossible. Solidarity completes the circle by acknowledging that freedom is inherently relational, emerging through our connections with others rather than in isolation from them. These dimensions of freedom operate in a symbiotic relationship, each reinforcing and enabling the others. When we reduce freedom merely to the absence of restraint, we miss the positive aspects that make freedom worth pursuing in the first place. This reductive view has dominated political discourse, particularly in Western democracies, leading to policies that prioritize deregulation and individualism while neglecting the structures needed to support genuine liberty. By reconceptualizing freedom as a multidimensional concept that begins with the embodied experience of being human, we can develop more nuanced approaches to fostering liberty in the digital age. This expanded understanding provides a framework for addressing contemporary challenges to personal autonomy, from surveillance capitalism to political manipulation through social media.

Chapter 1: Sovereignty: The Foundation of Individual Freedom

Sovereignty begins with the recognition of our embodied existence. We experience the world first and foremost through our physical bodies, which serve as both the medium of our freedom and its primary constraint. The German philosopher Edith Stein distinguished between Körper (the objective, physical body) and Leib (the subjectively experienced, living body). This distinction is crucial for understanding sovereignty as a dimension of freedom. Through our Leib, we encounter both the possibilities and limitations of our existence, learning that we are finite beings subject to physical laws yet capable of intentional action within those constraints. The development of sovereignty begins in childhood through relationships with caregivers who recognize and respond to our needs. Children require secure attachment and consistent care to develop the cognitive and emotional capacities necessary for autonomous functioning later in life. Early childhood experiences shape our sense of agency and self-efficacy, influencing our ability to exercise freedom throughout our lives. Policies that support families, provide quality childcare, and ensure adequate nutrition and healthcare for all children are therefore essential investments in future freedom. The recognition of others' embodied existence forms the foundation of empathy and mutual respect. When we acknowledge others as sovereign beings with their own subjective experiences, we establish the basis for ethical relationships and just societies. This recognition is not automatic but requires cultivation through social interaction and cultural practices. In modern digital environments, the embodied nature of human existence is often obscured, leading to forms of interaction that treat others as abstract entities rather than living, feeling beings with inherent dignity. Health and bodily integrity are essential preconditions for sovereignty. Without basic physical well-being, our capacity for self-determination is severely compromised. This understanding challenges purely market-based approaches to healthcare, which treat health as a commodity rather than a foundation for freedom. A society committed to freedom must ensure universal access to healthcare as a matter of justice, not charity. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how deeply our individual sovereignty depends on collective action and mutual care, demonstrating that personal liberty cannot be separated from public health. Sovereignty also entails the ability to shape one's identity and life course through meaningful choices. This requires not just formal rights but substantive opportunities and capabilities. Economic security, education, and access to cultural resources enable people to develop and pursue their own conceptions of the good life. When these enabling conditions are distributed unequally along lines of race, gender, class, or other social categories, freedom becomes a privilege rather than a universal right. True sovereignty thus demands attention to structural inequalities and systemic barriers to self-determination.

Chapter 2: Unpredictability: Breaking Free from Algorithmic Control

Unpredictability stands in stark contrast to the deterministic worldview that dominates our digital landscape. In his writings about life under communist Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel described how totalitarian systems function by reducing human behavior to predictable patterns, eliminating spontaneity and creativity. Today, we face similar pressures from algorithmic systems designed to predict and influence our choices. These systems operate through continuous surveillance of our online activities, creating detailed profiles that enable increasingly precise behavioral manipulation. The result is a gradual erosion of our capacity for genuine choice and autonomous action. Digital platforms employ sophisticated techniques to shape user behavior, drawing on insights from behavioral psychology and neuroscience. Through mechanisms like intermittent reinforcement, filter bubbles, and personalized content delivery, these platforms create addictive feedback loops that keep users engaged while narrowing their range of experiences. The business model of surveillance capitalism depends on this predictability, as user data becomes more valuable when behavior becomes more consistent and therefore more easily monetized. This creates a fundamental conflict between commercial imperatives and human freedom. The brain hacks employed by digital platforms exploit cognitive vulnerabilities that evolved in very different environments. Our attention is captured through constant novelty and emotional triggering, while our critical faculties are bypassed through frictionless design and information overload. These techniques work precisely because they operate below the threshold of conscious awareness, making them difficult to resist through willpower alone. Breaking free from algorithmic control requires both individual practices of digital mindfulness and collective action to create alternative technological infrastructures and regulatory frameworks. Unpredictability as freedom manifests in our capacity for creativity, spontaneity, and genuine surprise. It allows us to transcend predetermined patterns and discover new possibilities. Artists, dissidents, and innovators throughout history have embodied this dimension of freedom by challenging conventions and imagining alternatives to the status quo. The jazz musician improvising a solo, the protester devising new tactics of resistance, and the scientist pursuing an unconventional hypothesis all express freedom through unpredictability. These forms of creative expression become increasingly difficult in environments optimized for predictability and control. The recovery of unpredictability begins with reclaiming attention and creating spaces for genuine reflection. Practices like digital sabbaticals, meditation, and deep reading can help restore cognitive capacities eroded by constant connectivity. Equally important are social movements that challenge the dominance of surveillance capitalism and advocate for alternative technological paradigms. By combining personal practices with political engagement, we can create conditions more conducive to unpredictability and thus to freedom. This requires recognizing that unpredictability is not chaos but rather the space of possibility that emerges when we are not fully determined by external forces or internal conditioning.

Chapter 3: Mobility: Physical and Social Movement as Essential Liberty

Mobility encompasses far more than physical movement; it represents the fundamental human capacity to navigate across different social contexts, economic conditions, and life circumstances. Throughout history, restrictions on mobility have been central to systems of oppression, from slavery and serfdom to modern immigration controls and mass incarceration. The freedom to move—whether across geographic borders, social classes, or cultural boundaries—enables individuals to escape oppressive conditions and pursue better opportunities. When mobility is restricted, freedom is severely compromised, regardless of other formal rights that might exist on paper. The civil rights movement in the United States powerfully illustrated the connection between mobility and freedom through actions like the Freedom Rides of 1961. These integrated groups of activists deliberately challenged segregation in interstate transportation, asserting their right to move freely through public spaces regardless of race. Their actions highlighted how seemingly neutral regulations about where people could sit, eat, or sleep served to maintain racial hierarchies by restricting Black mobility. The violent backlash against these peaceful protesters revealed how threatening unrestricted mobility was to the established order. Similar dynamics can be observed in other liberation movements worldwide, where the right to move freely has been central to broader struggles for justice. Social mobility—the ability to improve one's economic and social position—constitutes another crucial aspect of this dimension of freedom. The post-World War II period saw unprecedented social mobility in many Western democracies, supported by policies like the GI Bill, progressive taxation, and expanded public education. This era, often remembered as the "American Dream," enabled millions to achieve greater economic security and opportunity than their parents had known. However, since the 1980s, social mobility has declined significantly in the United States and other countries, with wealth and opportunity increasingly concentrated among those already privileged. The decline in social mobility has been accompanied by what might be called "sadopopulism"—a politics that offers not redistribution or opportunity, but the spectacle of others suffering more. Rather than building infrastructure that would help everyone, this approach directs the attention of a fragile middle class toward those doing worse, activating racism and other prejudices as substitutes for a better future. This strategy normalizes oligarchy by making people comfortable with stagnation as long as others are drowning, effectively replacing the American Dream with an American nightmare of competitive suffering. True mobility requires collective attention to the logic of life: the risk of injury and illness, the progression from infancy to old age. It means ensuring access to healthcare, education, transportation, and retirement security. Countries with robust welfare states have achieved greater mobility and longer lifespans than the United States precisely because they understand freedom as positive presence rather than mere absence of constraints. Their citizens can change jobs without losing healthcare, take risks without facing destitution, and trust that basic needs will be met throughout life's transitions. This approach recognizes that mobility is not just about removing barriers but about building bridges and safety nets that enable people to move confidently through life's challenges and opportunities.

Chapter 4: Factuality: Truth as the Prerequisite for Freedom

Factuality grounds freedom in reality, recognizing that meaningful choice requires accurate information about the world. Without access to reliable facts, our decisions become disconnected from their actual consequences, rendering freedom illusory. The Enlightenment tradition emphasized this connection between knowledge and liberty, viewing education and the free exchange of ideas as essential to human emancipation. Today, this dimension of freedom faces unprecedented challenges from disinformation campaigns, algorithmic filter bubbles, and the deliberate erosion of shared epistemic standards. The digital information environment has transformed how we encounter and evaluate facts. Social media platforms prioritize engagement over accuracy, amplifying content that triggers emotional responses regardless of its truth value. This creates fertile ground for conspiracy theories and propaganda, which spread rapidly through networks optimized for virality rather than veracity. Meanwhile, traditional journalism—particularly local news—has been decimated by economic pressures, leaving many communities without reliable sources of information about issues directly affecting their lives. These developments undermine factuality and, by extension, freedom itself. Authoritarian regimes have always attacked truth as a prerequisite to controlling their populations. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union maintained elaborate propaganda systems not just to spread specific lies but to create confusion about whether truth itself was possible. As Hannah Arendt observed, "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists." When we cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, we become dependent on authorities to tell us what is real, surrendering a fundamental aspect of our freedom. Modern attacks on factuality often take more subtle forms than outright censorship. They include information overload (flooding the zone with so much content that finding truth becomes exhausting), relativism (claiming all perspectives are equally valid), strategic doubt (questioning established facts without providing alternatives), and conspiracy theories (offering simplistic explanations for complex phenomena). These techniques don't require people to believe specific falsehoods—they merely need to induce confusion, cynicism, and disengagement, creating a population too exhausted or cynical to pursue truth. Defending factuality requires both individual and collective action. Individually, we must develop habits of critical thinking, seek diverse sources of information, and resist confirmation bias. We need to distinguish between facts (which can be verified), opinions (which cannot be proven right or wrong), and falsehoods (which can be disproven). Collectively, we need institutions that support factuality: independent journalism, scientific research, education systems that teach critical thinking, and legal frameworks that hold powerful actors accountable for deliberate deception. We need social norms that value truth-telling and stigmatize deliberate falsehood. Most importantly, we need to understand that factuality serves freedom—not by telling people what to think, but by giving them reliable information with which to think.

Chapter 5: Solidarity: Freedom as a Collective Project

Solidarity recognizes that freedom is inherently relational, emerging through our connections with others rather than in isolation from them. This dimension of freedom challenges the false dichotomy between individual liberty and collective welfare, revealing how genuine freedom requires mutual support and shared commitment to common flourishing. Solidarity manifests in concrete practices of care, cooperation, and collective action that enable individuals to develop and exercise their capacities for self-determination. Without these practices, formal rights remain empty promises for those lacking the resources and relationships needed to make meaningful use of them. At its core, solidarity challenges the individualistic misconception that my freedom ends where yours begins. Instead, it recognizes that our freedoms are fundamentally interconnected—that the conditions enabling one person's freedom simultaneously enable others'. When we view freedom through solidarity, we see that expanding others' freedom doesn't diminish our own but rather strengthens the foundations upon which all freedom rests. This understanding transforms how we approach social problems, encouraging us to recognize common interests across differences rather than seeing others' struggles as separate from our own. Historical movements for freedom have consistently demonstrated the power of solidarity. From abolitionism to labor organizing, civil rights to LGBTQ+ liberation, significant advances in freedom have come through collective struggle rather than individual achievement. The labor movement exemplified this principle with the slogan "an injury to one is an injury to all," understanding that workplace protections for any worker ultimately benefited all workers. Similarly, the civil rights movement recognized that racial injustice undermined democracy itself, not just the freedom of those directly targeted. These movements succeeded by building communities of mutual support that sustained participants through hardship and created spaces where new forms of freedom could be practiced and experienced. Solidarity doesn't require uniformity of identity or experience. Indeed, it thrives on diversity by bringing together different perspectives and capabilities toward common goals. What solidarity does require is empathy—the ability to see others as subjects like ourselves with their own valid experiences and aspirations. This empathetic recognition forms the basis for mutual aid and collective action that expands freedom for everyone. It allows us to move beyond narrow self-interest toward a more expansive understanding of our own wellbeing as inextricably linked to the wellbeing of others. The opposite of solidarity is atomization—the isolation of individuals from one another through physical separation, economic competition, and cultural division. Atomization serves power by preventing collective action and making people easier to control. Digital technologies often exacerbate this isolation despite their promise of connection, sorting us into echo chambers and reducing human interaction to algorithmic engagement. Reclaiming solidarity requires deliberate effort to build and maintain human connections across differences. It means creating physical spaces where people can gather, supporting institutions that serve common needs, and developing narratives that emphasize shared interests without erasing unique experiences. Most fundamentally, it means recognizing that freedom itself is a collective project—one that succeeds or fails together.

Chapter 6: Governing for Freedom: Institutions That Enable Liberty

The path to freedom leads not away from government but toward good government—one designed to enable the five forms of freedom for all citizens. This conclusion challenges the false dichotomy between individual liberty and collective action, revealing how properly structured institutions can expand rather than restrict human freedom. The question is not whether government should play a role in securing freedom, but what kind of government best serves this purpose. Government serves freedom first by creating conditions for sovereignty. It ensures that children receive the care, education, and protection they need to develop into capable individuals who can make meaningful choices. This means supporting families through parental leave, childcare assistance, and universal healthcare. It means investing in education systems that develop critical thinking rather than mere compliance. It means protecting children from exploitation and abuse. These functions cannot be delegated to markets alone because children cannot create the conditions of their own development. For unpredictability to flourish, government must prevent excessive concentration of power—whether in state or private hands. This requires robust antitrust enforcement to prevent monopolies from controlling markets and manipulating consumers. It means regulating digital platforms to prevent algorithmic manipulation and protect privacy. It means maintaining spaces—both physical and virtual—where citizens can experiment with new ideas and practices without excessive surveillance or control. Good government doesn't dictate outcomes but preserves the conditions for genuine innovation and cultural evolution. Mobility depends on infrastructure—both physical and social. Government builds the roads, railways, and communication networks that enable physical movement. It provides the education, healthcare, and social insurance that enable economic and social advancement. It ensures that basic needs are met so that people can take risks and pursue opportunities. Without these foundations, mobility becomes a privilege of the few rather than a right for all. Countries with robust welfare states have achieved greater mobility precisely because they understand freedom as requiring positive support, not just the absence of barriers. Factuality requires institutions dedicated to truth-seeking and truth-telling. Government supports independent journalism, scientific research, and education. It maintains systems of accountability that check powerful interests and expose corruption. It creates legal frameworks that distinguish protected speech from harmful deception. These functions preserve the information environment within which free choice becomes possible. Without them, the public sphere becomes dominated by those with the most resources to spread their preferred narratives, regardless of their truth value. Solidarity finds expression through democratic processes that bring citizens together as equals. Government creates forums where different perspectives can be heard and conflicts peacefully resolved. It establishes rights that protect minorities from majority tyranny while maintaining collective decision-making. It balances individual autonomy with mutual responsibility through systems of taxation and public goods that benefit everyone. These functions recognize that freedom requires both rights against government overreach and rights to government protection and support. A government structured for freedom would measure its success not by GDP growth or military power but by how well it enables citizens to develop and exercise the five forms of freedom. It would ask: Are people becoming more sovereign, more unpredictable, more mobile? Do they have access to factual information? Are they acting in solidarity? These questions point toward a politics beyond left and right—one centered on the positive presence of freedom rather than its mere absence.

Summary

Freedom emerges not as an abstract ideal but as a concrete practice embedded in specific social, economic, and technological contexts. By reconceptualizing freedom through the five dimensions of sovereignty, unpredictability, mobility, factuality, and solidarity, we gain a framework for addressing contemporary challenges to liberty without falling into simplistic dichotomies. This multidimensional understanding reveals how seemingly disparate issues—from healthcare access to digital privacy, mass incarceration to climate change—connect through their impact on human freedom. It also highlights the essential role of solidarity in sustaining freedom, challenging individualistic narratives that obscure our fundamental interdependence. The path toward greater freedom begins with recognizing the embodied nature of human existence and the social conditions that enable or constrain our capacity for self-determination. It requires building institutions and practices that support all dimensions of freedom while acknowledging the tensions and trade-offs that inevitably arise in complex societies. Most fundamentally, it demands moving beyond negative conceptions of freedom as mere absence of constraint toward positive understandings that emphasize the development of human capabilities and relationships. By grounding freedom in the lived experience of embodied, social beings rather than abstract individuals, we can reclaim liberty as a shared project of human flourishing rather than a zero-sum competition for dominance.

About Author

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Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder is Housum Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1997, where he was a British Marshall Scholar. He has held fellowships in Paris, Vienna, and Warsaw, and an Academy Scholarship at Harvard. His most recent book is Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, published in September 2015 by Crown Books. He is author also of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), a history of Nazi and Soviet mass killing on the lands between Berlin and Moscow. A New York Times bestseller and a book of the year according to The Atlantic, The Independent, The Financial Times, the Telegraph, and the New Statesman, it has won twelve awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought.His other award-winning publications include Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1998); The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (2003); Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (2005); The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke (2008), and Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010). Snyder helped Tony Judt to compose a thematic history of political ideas and intellectuals in politics, Thinking the Twentieth Century (2012). He is also the co-editor of Stalin and Europe: Terror, War, Domination and Wall Around the West: State Power and Immigration Controls in Europe and North America (2001). Snyder was the recipient of an inaugural Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2015. He is a member of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and sits on the advisory council of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research Research.He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in modern East European political history.

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