On Freedom

by Timothy Snyder

The countries where people tend to think of freedom as freedom to are doing better by our own measures, which tend to focus on freedom from. That should give pause for thought. Political systems that are oriented toward freedom to are doing better than we are on freedom from. This suggests that there is no contradiction between the two. Indeed, it suggests that freedom to comes first. That is not what we are used to thinking or want to think. It helps to look at others if we want to understand ourselves. We tend to think of freedom just as freedom from, as negative. But conceiving of freedom as an escape or an evasion does not tell us what freedom is nor how it would be brought into the world. Freedom to, positive freedom, involves thinking about who we want to become. What do we value? How do we realize our values in the world? If we don’t think of freedom as positive, we won’t even get freedom in the negative sense, since we will be unable to tell what is in fact a barrier, how barriers can be taken in hand and become tools, and how tools extend our freedom. Freedom from is a conceptual trap. It is also a political trap, in that it involves self-deception, contains no program for its own realization, and offers opportunities to tyrants. Both a philosophy and a politics of freedom have to begin with freedom to.

More 'freedom to' as positive freedom and 'freedom frolm' as negative. There tends to be more civic and political freedom in 'freedom to' countries such as Canada than 'freedom from' countries such as the US, Panama, and South Korea.