On Freedom

by Timothy Snyder

Solidarity closes a circle. None of the things that we need to become free, including knowledge, can we produce by ourselves. The most fundamental truths, the ones about ourselves that allow us to see the world, we must owe to others—as both Stein and Weil argued. To be free, each of us needs the truth, but factuality requires institutions as well as risk-takers. If freedom is the value of life, one of its forms is the self-conscious labor of making freedom possible for others. Solidarity is the guiding light of a land of the free. Solidarity is the mark of a just person. Our values differ, as they should and must. Freedom is the value of values, because it is what allows that difference to reside in us and in the world we make around us. Each of us has the right to a freedom that allows us to learn, choose, and combine values. We are not the same, but in the most essential sense, we are equal.