An introduction to freedom

Why the word we cherish might name an impossibility

What do we mean when we say we want to be free? Is it the ability to choose without constraint? The absence of external control? A state where nothing binds us? The question seems simple, but the more we press, the more elusive the answer becomes. Perhaps we have been asking the wrong question entirely.

We feel freedom as something precious—a condition worth fighting for, a foundation of human dignity. But when we try to define what it actually is, we find ourselves grasping at air. Is freedom a place we can occupy? A quality we possess? Or is it a name for something we cannot have, a fantasy that misdirects our attention from what truly matters? This introduction invites us to sit with that unease and see where it leads.

The shape of an old argument

The struggle to understand freedom is as old as philosophy itself. The Stoics of ancient Greece proposed that true freedom lay not in changing one's circumstances but in accepting them—harmonising with the inevitable order of the cosmos. Freedom, for them, was alignment with fate, not escape from it.

A thousand years later, Augustine and Aquinas wrestled with a troubling tension: if God knows everything we will do, how can we be genuinely free? They framed freedom as a faculty for choosing between good and evil, but this choice operated entirely within a divinely ordained order. One was still bound, just bound to a higher purpose.

The Enlightenment brought a dramatic pivot. Kant located freedom in the autonomous rational will—the capacity to give oneself a moral law, independent of natural inclinations. Sartre, centuries later, pushed this autonomy to its radical extreme: humans are 'condemned to be free', burdened with creating their own essence through choices, unbound by any predetermined nature.

Running against all these visions stands the formidable tradition of scientific materialism. Modern neuroscience presents a stark picture: our decisions are the determined products of prior physical causes, emerging from neural activity before we consciously choose. Where, then, is the space for freedom?

The conversation is very much alive, and its stakes are profound.

A definition that unsettles

Let us look at the word itself. Freedom comes from Old English frēodōm: frēo meaning 'unbound' and -dōm meaning 'place' or 'dominion'. The morphological definition, the essential one, is simply 'place unbound'.

But consider what this means. A place is defined by its bounds—its location, its boundaries, its relations with other places. An unbound place would be no place at all. It would have no location, no identity, no relations. It would be indistinguishable from non-being.

The definition exposes a contradiction at the heart of the concept: freedom, understood as unboundedness, is an impossibility. To be is to be bound. A quantum particle, an organism, a society, a thought—none can be unbound because to exist is to be in relation. The term 'freedom' simply does not apply to anything real.

This does not mean we should abandon the word. But it asks us to use it with far greater precision. Instead of asking: is a person free? we might ask: what are the bounds of this being's situation, and how does that being move within them? This shift leads to more accurate description and, perhaps, to more honest living.

What follows from this

If there is no freedom, then what of free will? Does its absence mean we are simply predetermined—clockwork beings playing out a script written long before we arrived?

The old argument about free will versus determinism asks us to pick a side. But both sides are wrong.

Free will says we are free to choose anything, anytime, with nothing influencing us. But this is a naïve view. We are not free to do this. We are always shaped by something—our bodies, our families, our history, our situation. We are not choosers who stand outside of the influence of existence we are part of it and thus influenced by it.

Determinism says everything is already decided. The future is fixed. Our choices do not really matter because the outcome was always going to happen. But again this is also a naïve view on how the world works. Existence is not pre-ordained. Yes, the process of existence bearing together differences is deterministic but the actual differences that bear together in that process transform probabilistically. Things are not written in advance. They unfold. Difference and relation create new possibilities.

Both sides miss what is actually happening.

The cost of the fantasy

The illusion of unbounded freedom is not harmless. It creates a hunger for a condition that cannot exist, a wish for a state without relation, a being without regulation. This misdirected desire—for absolute unboundedness—if fulfilled, would mean the cessation of existence itself.

We see this fantasy at work when we imagine freedom as the absence of consequences, as the power to act without response. It appears in our politics, our relationships, and our private longings. It asks us to believe that we can be islands, that our choices need not echo, that we can escape the web of mutual dependence.

But the price of this fantasy is high. It blinds us to the actual sources of our flourishing, which lie not in escape from the boundaries that define relation but in responsibly negotiating those boundaries together.

A question to carry

We began by asking what we mean when we say we want to be free. Perhaps we have arrived at a more useful question: what do we truly want when we long for freedom?

If freedom as unboundedness is impossible, and if our bonds are not a prison but the medium through which we realize and amplify our power, then the pursuit of freedom becomes something else entirely. It becomes the pursuit of skillful negotiation, of graceful navigation, of making our way within a cosmos that is not indifferent to our efforts but responsive to our participation.

This is not a comfortable conclusion. It asks us to give up a cherished fantasy. It asks us to accept that we are never outside the web of relation, never beyond the reach of consequence, never truly unbound.

But perhaps this release from the impossible is itself a kind of liberation. If we are not striving for an unattainable state, we are free to attend to what is actual: the real, difficult, and beautiful work of living well within the bounds that make life possible. What would it mean, in your own life, to stop seeking freedom from constraint and start learning to dance within it?

The Gospel of Being

by John Mackay

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