Freedom is so often applied in
the political and economic domains in terms of external freedom, such as in speech
or action—things that a state can regulate, a boss can forbid, and a religious cleric
can excoriate—that internal freedom is often overlooked. We live in a
collectivist world of states, businesses, universities, and religious organizations
so it is easy to overlook interior freedom. In viewing ourselves in terms of groups,
we are subject to the artificial constraints of group-think. Individualism is often
conflated with lawlessness and licentiousness.
Nietzsche’s notion of freedom
as the ability of a person to create values must surely seem foreign to us. We
tend to embrace the tenets and strictures of moral codes and principles without
realizing that they can and have been used as virtual clubs by people who
resent the strong. Relatedly, Sartre saw freedom as being able to exist without
being defined by others. Presupposed in having the freedom to create values
(and define oneself) is the freedom to question, which Socrates advances in the
dialogues, and Marcus Aurelius’ idea of freedom as having master over one’s own
mind. Nietzsche refers to just such mastery as a person can achieve over one’s
most intractable instinctual urges as strength (i.e., power), which the weak
lack and therefore resent.
The conceptual shift to
externals in conceptualizing freedom is evinced in Kierkegaard’s notion of
freedom as having and using the courage to take responsibility for what one has
chosen. Typically, responsibility is assumed to point to, and even require an
exterior dimension to freedom; freedom should not be used in a way that results
in other people being harmed. By implication, freedom is not merely creating
values, defining oneself, and mental mastery by reason (Plato) or the most
powerful instinctual urge (Nietzsche). Kant’s view of autonomy, as voluntarily obeying
the moral laws that one’s use of reason as set for oneself, is also internal
and yet connotes responsibility. It is out of love for the moral laws, rather than
as a result of being forced by an external power to obey one’s own (moral) laws
that freedom is exercised. To Kant, reason has absolute, or undefined value
because it is by reason that rational beings assign value to things. More
typically, however, responsibility implies or pertains to speech, decisions, or
actions because they can harm other people. Mills, for example, viewed freedom
is as being able to think and live any way as long as it doesn’t harm other
people. Responsibility applies in voluntarily not saying or doing something that
could be expected to harm other people (and animals, and perhaps even plants). Moral
questions as to responsibility’s coverage emphasize the external dimension of
freedom.
Lastly, some conceptions of
freedom are almost completely oriented to externalities, such as external
constraints on the use of freedom. For example, Marx advocated greater freedom
of workers from economic exploitation by the owners of the means of
production (i.e., the capitalists). Lao Tzu, on the other hand, had emphasized the
natural flow, or Tao, with which human freedom should be in harmony. Lastly,
Foucault stressed systems of power as being in conflict with freedom. Although
external constraints unquestionably impinge on freedom, the concept of freedom is
not based on constraint, so externally-oriented approaches can be seen as
partial at best. To be sure, even though the interior-oriented conceptions depict
freedom itself better, even they proffer a partial view.
In modern times, overstating the interior
dimension is rarely done. Instead, the political and economic senses of freedom,
and therefore constraints on freedom, are typically emphasized more than the
sense of freedom as internalized mental mastery over oneself as a self-defined
creator of values. Cognitive and perceptual constraints of economic, social,
political and even religious paradigms may not even be realized consciously,
yet the contours of which arguably forestall value creation by individuals.
Even the salience of group identity can eclipse people from creating our own
values, especially values that contradict or even invalidate one or more of the
collectivist paradigms.
The tilt
toward the externals may facilitate and even protect the stability of a collective,
but this comes at the cost of a partial view of freedom itself because
constraints and even responsibility in the sense of respecting them are not integral
to freedom itself as a concept. Ironically, an electorate full of individuals capable
and aware of value-creation may be capable of a more stable democracy because the
contours of public debate would be wider. If such breadth exceeds the terrain
of a particular assumption underpinning a paradigm, then value creation by
individuals could make assumptional analysis more likely in public debates and
discourse. I submit that such analysis, referred to as critical thinking, would
strengthen democracy and therefore render a society more stable rather than
more susceptible to anarchy.
For instance, during the unduly long campaign season of the 2026 U.S. congressional election, the simplistic platform that ending the “Iran War” would drastically lower oil and food prices was not put in a wider context in which structural economic consolidation of several industries would be subject to critique, from which a policy prescription of anti-trust law enforcement to restore market competition could have been proposed and debated. Not enough people created or resurrected the value of economic competition for the public discourse to be broadened. Instead, debate centered on President Trump’s role in Iran’s restrictions on commercial transport through the Strait. As a result, the political freedom exercised by the electorate was unduly limited.
Therefore, rather than viewing the
internal and external dimensions of freedom as dichotomous, a synthesis can be
envisioned such that encouraging people to create their own values, rather than
simply take those established and enforced by collective power-structures, actually
strengthens a republic rather than pulls it apart at the seams. This prescription
is in line with Hegel’s theory of progressive freedom through history by means
of successive antitheses and syntheses.
