The ideal of freedom has been a desire for man since the time of the Cavemen and even earlier. In all parts of the Earth, throughout time and across races, people have been fighting for freedom. Such a necessary condition for our lives! «Έμφυτος πάσιν ανθρώποις ο της ελευθερίας πόθος» (The desire for freedom is innate in all people), Dionysius of Halicarnassus told us.
With such a long – and arduous – search for freedom, one would expect that man would have managed to win it, to acquire it. And yet. Even in today’s supposedly “civilized” days, the main struggle of people concerns the assurance of freedom.
It may be economic freedom, or freedom through justice or freedom to self-determination, or simply the right to life, to survival, which is as much a given in Europe as it is not a given, for example, in Gaza or Afghanistan or Somalia.
Why does the human species fail to satisfy such a basic need?
- Montesquieu said: “Freedom is the right to do whatever the laws allow.” But why did people, in their search for freedom, create societies that offer exactly the opposite, namely its restriction?
- European societies, traditionally the most sensitive to culture and law, are today derivatives of a capitalist system. Historically, capitalism preaches political freedom, considers itself a “necessary condition” for political freedom. Today, after centuries of capitalist weaving, the garment has been torn to such an extent that it is clear that, even if it is “necessary,” it is certainly not a “sufficient condition.” That is why the Scottish writer Robert Stevenson wrote: “The price we have to pay for money is sometimes freedom.”
- In addition, the liberal view of freedom, with roots in the French Revolutionary Commune, which defines freedom in the context of the “harm principle” that individuals should be left free by society to act in any way, as long as their actions do not undermine the interests of others. Every modern person knows that this is a limited principle, which hardly pays off.
On the other hand, we humans see birds flying freely, chirping happily, overturning what for us are natural restrictions and have no boundaries. But is this so?
Since birds are so free, why do they necessarily migrate? And in group communities? If birds are so free, why are they “forced” by nature to find food for their young and to fight for their protection? How strange! Even the, in the eyes of humans, absolute freedom of birds, necessarily obeys rules. Obligations. Conditions. Is freedom ultimately a utopian ideal? An elusive illusion? A road without a destination, without an end?
Aristotle – The Ideal Definition of Freedom
The brightest spirit of Greek intellect, the philosopher Aristotle, “accepted as free, only that man who understood and fulfilled his duties towards the community”.
Another strange thought about freedom. A thought that detaches it from the god of our days, individualism, and gives it an ideal communalism, crushing the individual and highlighting the person and personality. It diverts the human species from the path of individual freedom and leads it to the avenue of essential freedom that has as its termination, the protection and progress of the community. This avenue is both traditional and modern. It has many lanes. It has the lane of duty, the lane of contribution, the lane of social support, the lane of progress. On this avenue, it is obvious that even birds travel.
Sigmund Freud also based his conclusion on Aristotle’s view of freedom: “Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom presupposes taking responsibility, and most people tremble at taking responsibility.” This would explain the perennial failure to achieve the ideal of individual freedom, and since such a thing does not exist, people end up living with “generics.”
On the other hand, isolating oneself in individualism and seeking one’s share of freedom is wrong. The anarchist Bakunin clearly explains why it is wrong when he wrote: “You cannot cut off even a single piece of freedom, because immediately all freedom is concentrated in this piece.”
- So why is freedom acquired through duty?
- Why freedom of person and not of individual?
- Why freedom of offering and not of entitlement?
The American General Peyton Conway March gave a very apt answer to these questions: “There is a wonderful secret rule in nature, which states that the three things we desire most in our lives, happiness, freedom, and peace of mind, we always obtain after we first offer them to someone else.”
Is freedom happiness?
Aristotle had realized that it is not. It is described very beautifully by the Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin (Евге́ний Замя́тин) best known for his novel “We” (1921), a dystopian story of the future that influenced George Orwell’s 1984. So the Russian thinker tells us: “Those two in Paradise had two choices: happiness without freedom or freedom without happiness. There was no third choice.”
