On Freedom

by Timothy Snyder

Positive freedom leads us back to one another. Were freedom just negative, the mere absence of barriers, I could think of you as just one more barrier. Since it is positive, a presence of virtues I affirm in a world I shape, I see you doing the same. Positive freedom leads us to treat one another as actors in history. If freedom is something we must build together, then each of us has a stake in the other. If virtues are real but clash, then we have to declare our own as well as accommodate those of others. If freedom is about the future, we must work together to keep it open. Getting this wrong is not just a philosophical but an existential mistake. If we accept the erroneous tradition of negative freedom, we will end up turning against one another. We will have trouble seeing the other as a person, a Leib, an equal. Unable to see others, people who have fallen for negative freedom will have trouble seeing even themselves (and the harm they are doing to themselves). If we think of freedom only as a liberation from unwanted barriers, we will fail to create the right structures. If we start with the idea of freedom as “inside and outside,” we will end up with a fascism of “us and them.”