Freedom is complex.
Are we ever free? Do we want to actually be? And how do we even know we are?
This article explores how true freedom is not about escaping fear and responsibility, but about embracing them
The struggle to be free is the struggle to exist. We’re driven to free ourselves from our constraints, however as we do this we encounter new constraints.
- We can be free to marry, but not from marriage
- We can be free to try something, but not from failing at it
- We can be free to express ourselves, but not from rejection
This tension generates a deep unease, a fear that haunts our choices before we even make them.
To be genuinely free we need to embrace the fear that comes from it and consider it as a relational, embodied, fluid experience of how we live in accordance with our values.
Fear of freedom
Kierkegaard recognised that freedom provokes fear because it involves the responsibility to own our behaviour and who we may become through it.
If someone wants to be an actor and is free from the constraints to try, they will experience the fear of not choosing something less risky financially. Because the freedom to make these choices carries the fear of failure. And only facing this fear can this person achieve their goal.
In The Age of Reason, a novel set in late 1930s Paris, Sartre creates characters that give us a rich intimacy of their thoughts and feelings as they try to resolve what it means to be free and live a good life.
My heart sank when I read this:
“I have done nothing and nobody needs me”
Marcelle – a woman in a non-committed relationship in her 30s – says this in despair as she considers how her freedom from responsibility has resulted in an unfulfilling life.
But why does she need to do anything – or be needed in the first place? Marcelle is not free in her heart, you see?
As we meet characters we see how everyone is trying to be free by holding onto something to avoid their fears coming true.
- Mathieu is scared of compromise so he holds onto a miserable bohemian life
- Lola is scared of loneliness so she holds to slippery external validation from others.
- Brunet is scared of thinking for himself so he joins the Communist Party.
- Boris is scared of being disapproved of so he gives up his authenticity.
In the end they all limit themselves and experience unfulfilling lives full of conflict, often not knowing what they want or why they want it.
We are condemned to be free.
J.P Sartre
Eric Fromm has also explored this idea of fear in freedom and in particular how we may resolve to “escape from freedom”, through either submission to authorities, conformity to cultural norms, or destruction either of the self or others.
He argues that Western society has lost the moral reference points provided by the church, monarchy, and government,leading to panic from the burden of having to form our own moral values.
Humanistic ethics, where we act in accordance to values based on inherent human qualities and through the principles of reason and equality are our hope to transition to a better world.
Freedom as Relational
Hegel also offered an interesting angle to the idea of freedom, as something that happens relationally, as we are able to acknowledge other people’s freedom, and have our freedom recognised by someone we also recognise as free.
In the Master/Slave thought experiment he argues that the Master – who forced the slave to recognise his freedom – was in fact not free because he relied on unfelt acknowledgment from the slave who was not free to give it.
It could be unproductive to think of freedom as detached lonesomeness and radical independence (a neurotic trend for detachment, in Horney’s theory) when in reality we can only feel free when we engage in this relational acknowledgment of freedom, an idea that echoes the core hypothesis in client-centred therapy.
In therapy too, freedom often emerges not through isolation but through the authentic recognition between therapist and client – the authentic encounter that Buber spoke about.
Interestingly, it makes us think of Diogenes and his radical authenticity. Often portrayed as the freest of all people – but was he actually free? Rejecting all social norms and distrusting of others, his options were limited to what we could fear was actually a caricature of a human being.
We’re never existentially free
Even if we have mastered the freedom vs responsibility conundrum, we’re never free from existing as long as we exist.
And that means the anxiety of aging and death.
Facing and overcoming this fear is part of everyone’s work to be free too.
Freedom comes from within
Freedom is ultimately achieved by working in two areas
- By facing the fear of making our own choices and being responsible for what comes of them, without fear of the feelings and thoughts we may experience. Instead, we can embrace these feelings and learn what’s driving them. This helps us untangle the unconscious motivations behind our choices.
- By facing our existential fears relating to death, age, illness, decay, etc.
Ultimately, freedom is embracing our self-actualisation, the process by which we emerge, we experience life in our own unique way,
and the inescapable fact that one day we cease to exist.
To be free is not to escape fear, but to walk through it and in the process “becoming who we actually are”
Which is quite a ride for all of us
References
Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from Freedom. Farrar & Rinehart.
Bakewell, S. (2016). At the existentialist café: Freedom, being, and apricot cocktails. Other Press.
Cleary, S. E. (2022). How to be authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the quest for fulfillment. St. Martin’s Press.
Rogers, C.R. (1951). Client-Centered Therapy. Houghton Mifflin.
Sartre, J.P. (1945). The Age of Reason. (Part 1 of The Roads to Freedom trilogy). Penguin.
