What is Freedom? We encountered more than one answer to that question in the 2024 US elections. Democrats told us that fighting for freedom was to fight against constraints, oppressive laws and the plutocracy. Republicans told us that fighting for freedom was a fight to control borders, preserve security and lower taxes. Were they really talking about the same “freedom”? And even if they were, is it a valuable concept when it can include such distinct political projects?

In his book, On Freedom, Timothy Snyder wants to rediscover the true meaning of freedom. He also wants to show that the prevailing concept of freedom, what he calls “negative freedom” that we currently employ in our politics, is fundamentally flawed. Negative freedom is flawed because it fails to recognize the conditions that allow us to be free. At its core, this book makes a case for conceptual change in our use of the concept of freedom. We should fix freedom, Snyder argues, so that when we promote it, we also promote the conditions that make freedom itself possible. We should also abandon our current “negative freedom,” since it doesn’t do justice to what is required to produce free human beings and a free society. 

Snyder argues for both parts of his thesis with history and autobiography. The book is philosophy, history, memoir, and manifesto in one. On one page you find an argument, on the next, a vignette, and on the following, a description of an historical event. At one moment, you’re in prison as Snyder teaches a class of inmates about freedom, in another moment, you’re in war-torn Ukraine, before  crashing headlong into Yale. Prepare for a journey as you read.

Synder thinks that the concept of freedom we encounter in our politics and culture tends to be “negative freedom.” According to this kind of freedom, in order to be free, we need to be free from the interference of government and from each other. When you can do as you please without interference, you’re free. That’s negative freedom. 

But Snyder thinks negative freedom doesn’t really tell us much about how to promote freedom or how to create more free individuals. It fails to make any room for the conditions that allow for human beings to be free, and instead, focuses on human beings who are already fully set up, materially and psychologically, for freedom. For instance, negative freedom starts with fully-grown human beings who are already autonomous and capable of independent action, and then it demands that these human beings be left alone to do as they please. But how do they become adults? How do they become autonomous? And how do they become capable of independent action? 

A better concept of freedom would answer these questions, and Snyder builds that concept over the course of the book. He argues that free human beings don’t pop out of Zeus’ head already free. We have bodies that grow, that develop, and that become free. And before we can ever become free, we must become adult human beings. So, if we care about freedom, we should care about the development of a human being. While negative freedom has nothing to say about this development, a more positive concept of freedom does. The positive concept recognizes that we need to promote certain kinds of abilities in our children if they are to become free. For instance, we should make sure our children can make choices in accordance with their own values. If we never learn to make choices in accordance with our own values, we’ll never be free. Instead, we will choose as we are instructed to choose, by whatever norms we have unreflectively accepted. Snyder calls that ability—the ability we need to promote in children to act in accordance with their own values—sovereignty. If we wish to promote freedom, we should encourage sovereignty in children.[1]

In just this brief line of argument you find one of the most important themes of Snyder’s book: his relentless focus on the development of human beings into free, adult citizens. That development requires all sorts of conditions, and the best concept of freedom will compel us to promote those conditions, rather than abstract away from them. 

He uses this framework to drastically expand the scope of freedom and to produce several different kinds of freedom: 

1. If we wish to promote freedom, then we should cultivate a disposition for freedom in babies (sovereignty).[2]
2. If we wish to promote freedom, we should make sure those sovereign children become young adults who can use their values to change the world (unpredictability).[3]
3. And if we value freedom, we should look to improve our institutions so that the next generation has an even greater chance of being free (mobility).[4] 

While negative freedom focuses on abstract individuals outside of space and time, Snyder’s freedom starts from the kinds of creatures we are.

Perhaps you agree with Snyder that what he calls “negative freedom” is fundamentally flawed. But you may object: why should we try and replace the popular, but negative concept of freedom at all? Perhaps the concept of freedom is so broken, that we should value all the conditions Snyder discusses under a different heading. We could call it “Freedom+,” or “autonomy,” or use some other neologism. If Snyder is right and negative freedom is broken, why not just drop freedom-talk altogether?

But I think that would be to miss the point. For better or for worse, the word and the concept, “freedom,” has garnered enormous cultural and political significance. Currently, to call an institution oppressive, or designate a policy freedom-promoting, is often to provide citizens with a weighty or decisive reason to reject, or to endorse that institution or policy. We have come to value freedom so highly that it dominates political messaging. So, unless we want to cede Freedom to the proponents of purely negative freedom, we can’t ignore the rhetorical power of the word or the influence of the concept. And since we cannot ignore it, we should fix it. So, even if you disagree with Snyder’s specific conclusions or come up with a different list of conditions for freedom, you can’t ignore the importance of this kind of project.

This is a deeply personal book and that is what is best about it. Snyder describes his own journey towards valuing freedom and the realization that a better kind of freedom exists. The personal quality of Snyder’s journey might mirror the way most of us come to value freedom. You probably don’t value freedom because you’ve read Locke. Rather, you value freedom because of how it has changed your life, or allowed you to escape from another life. So, it may be that Snyder’s personal account of freedom and how he came to value it more accurately mirrors the way each of us comes to understand the importance of freedom in our own lives. 

Editorial note: Many thanks to Penguin Random House for providing Arcade with a galley copy of On Freedom.

Notes