Totalitarianism offers an appealingly simple resolution: all the apparent diversity can be reduced to a single good. But this solution, said Kołakowski, is simply not true. The “world of values” is not a puzzle in which every piece has its proper place. There is no greater whole. Negative freedom also offers an easy dodge: once the barriers go down, all is permitted, and somehow all will be well. But this approach provides no definition of freedom and gives no sense of how a free person behaves. The story of freedom cannot be told without virtue, since freedom is the state in which we can
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