The Dual Conception of Freedom

The freedom to soar is not unfettered

Source: Rowan Heuvel / Unsplash

Ask people in any society about their conception of the good life, and freedom immediately comes to mind. People have personal projects to pursue, dreams to fulfill, and goals to achieve. However, it is not only about the outcome, but also very much about the journey. Having the ability to exercise self-determination and to be in control of one’s life are primordial values. Having the right to make wrong decisions is very much part of self-determination. These are the pillars of empowerment: voice and choice.

Empowerment sits right in between under-empowerment and over-empowerment. Whereas the former is the result of oppression and silencing, the latter is a manifestation of domination. In any domain of our lives, we can recognize instances of the three forms of empowerment: too little, too much, or just about right.

Freedom "from" vs. freedom "to"

The interdependence of self-determination with external circumstances is nicely captured in Erich Fromm’s (1976) dual conception of freedom: Freedom from and freedom to. The removal of barriers is very much part of empowerment. This is freedom from—freedom from psychological, economic, social, cultural, and political barriers. Our ability to pursue goals in life is eminently determined by the social and physical landscape around us. Freedom from hunger, from discrimination, from fear, from ignorance, from illness.

Only after freedom from is achieved we can meaningfully talk about freedom to. To reach the stage of freedom to, we have to attend to the collective values of social justice and support for community structures. Once the main barriers to self-determination are out of the way, humans face the question of freedom for what. What is one to do with her or his freedom?

This is, many philosophers claim, a matter of personal choice, and I agree. But we have to keep in mind that somebody’s “freedom to” can become somebody else’s freedom from. In other words, a person’s pursuit of happiness must take into account how her actions may become, however innocently, barriers to somebody else’s well-being. Witness, for example, the freedom many people claim not to wear masks during the pandemic.

The dictum looks simple enough: My freedom ends where somebody else’s begins. But people fail to see how their actions or lack thereof affect others. We are not talking here about armed robbery or domestic abuse, where the actions of one explicitly and undoubtedly diminish the freedom of the other. There are multiple ways in which subtle and even imperceptible actions perpetuate oppression. Refusing to pay more taxes to fund health care for all is a civic action with dire consequences for millions of people. Ignoring the plight of hungry children is another. These are sins of omission: My lack of action impinges substantially on the well-being of others.

Freedom has intrinsic and extrinsic value. Intrinsic merits relate to the feeling of being in control, whereas extrinsic merits refer to the pursuit of goals in the future. In short, freedom and self-determination are good for their own sake and for the sake of other goods, such as desirable ends.

By recognizing people’s strengths, we reinforce their self-determination. By supporting their freedom, we prevent stress; and by giving them voice and choice, we create opportunities to exercise decision-making power. Without changing community conditions, some people will be forever limited in their ability to pursue goals. The values of “freedom from and freedom to” are conditioned by situational and environmental factors such as access to resources, safety, economic disadvantage, discrimination, and educational opportunities. Next time somebody invokes their freedom to as a reason not to wear masks, remind them that their freedom to results in the burden of freedom from for somebody else. Moreover, the freedom to advertise, market, and sell automatic weapons to troubled people results in the abnegation of freedom from pain, suffering, and death for somebody else.