In contemporary public discourse, freedom is a ubiquitous and, for this very reason, increasingly fragile word. It is invoked to justify lifestyles, personal tastes, consumer choices, opinions and is often identified with the possibility of choosing between available alternatives, expressing preferences, moving without immediately visible obstacles. And yet, never before has freedom seemed to coexist with a widespread feeling of heterodirection: the impression of moving within an already traced horizon, of desiring what others have arranged, of choosing what has been made desirable.

It is in this gap, between proclamation and experience, that that conception of freedom, generally traceable to German idealism, according to which it ultimately consists in the ‘consciousness of one’s own chains’, can assume significant importance.

Freedom as process and critical work

The expression, which may have sprung from the mind of Hegel or Schelling, suggests that freedom does not coincide with the absence of constraints, but rather with the ability to recognise the constraints that determine us – natural, historical, social, cultural – and to consciously act within them to overcome them. Freedom is thus not a starting point, but a process; not an original condition, but the result of incessant critical work, what Hegel would have called ‘the work of the concept’, through which it gradually becomes more effective and concrete.

Renunciation and law in the modern tradition

The idea that the exercise of freedom is based on renunciation no less than on the recognition of fundamental rights had already been clearly formulated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In the Social Contract he states that ‘what man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty; […] what he gains is civil liberty’. Natural freedom, understood as unlimited right, is incompatible with coexistence; it leads to permanent conflict, not to freedom for all. Civil liberty, on the other hand, stems from mutual recognition and law.

This principle finds a decisive normative formulation in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, according to which freedom consists in being able to do everything that does not harm others, within limits determined by law. Modern freedom is thus born as a limited freedom not to be denied, but to be made possible.

Moral autonomy and internalisation of constraints

With Kant, the question of freedom shifts more explicitly within the subject. Man is not free when he follows sensible inclinations or mere utility, but when he obeys the moral law that his reason imposes on him. Freedom coincides here with the autonomy of the will, with the ability to give oneself one’s own law. The ‘chains’ are therefore not only external, but also internal: impulses, desires, self-love. They can only be countered by other chains, those of reason.

Ethics and freedom in the Hegelian perspective

However, Hegel makes it clear why Kantian freedom remains abstract as long as it remains confined to interiority. It only becomes real and concrete when it is confronted with history and the dimension of the objective spirit. The individual is free when he recognises himself in shared ethical values and works to transform them. In this ethical dimension, individual morality avoids being reduced to the self-referentiality of a socially sterile ‘beautiful soul’.

Liberalism and the market of choices

This conception differs markedly from that of Anglo-Saxon liberalism, exemplified by John Stuart Mill, who tends to conceive of freedom as the prerogative of the individual and his conscience. In On Liberty Mill strongly defends freedom of opinion, arguing that even a single dissenting voice has the right to speak out against the whole of humanity.

In contemporary liberal-democratic societies, however, the individual is called upon to exercise his or her freedom in a context dominated by the market, which continually offers goods, lifestyles and worldviews, directing desires and needs.

Induced needs and contemporary alienation

The famous answer attributed to Socrates – ‘look how many things I do not need’ – finds an echo in the criticism of the Frankfurt School. Herbert Marcuse describes a society in which needs are produced and internalised, and in which the individual becomes ‘one-dimensional’, subordinated to the principle of performance. Seemingly liberating actions thus end up reinforcing the constraints of the system.

In this context, liberation is often confused with the removal of individual obstacles, immediately replaced by new forms of dependency. Without a real awareness of one’s own chains, any liberation risks being reduced to an ephemeral illusion that increases cultural homologation.

Bio-power and internalisation of control

Michel Foucault also insists that in contemporary societies, power no longer operates primarily through visible repression. Biopower manages life, channels impulses, produces subjectivity. The control of knowledge becomes the true source of power, which is not concentrated in a single centre, but circulates, insinuating itself into individual consciences to the point of blurring the very experience of freedom.

Loneliness, conformity and fear of freedom In the light of these analyses, one may suspect that fear of freedom has progressively prevailed over the yearning for it. As Kafka and Schopenhauer observed, freedom implies loneliness and risk, while belonging to a group offers comfort and security. For this very reason, however, it can turn into a subtle form of renunciation of one’s autonomy.

Defending the space of freedom then means accepting the solitude of thought and recognising that the most effective form of domination is not the one that suppresses freedom, but the one that convinces you that you already possess it.

Loneliness, conformity and fear of freedom

In the light of these analyses, one may suspect that fear of freedom has progressively prevailed over yearning for it. As Kafka and Schopenhauer observed, freedom implies loneliness and risk, while belonging to a group offers comfort and security. For this very reason, however, it can turn into a subtle form of renunciation of one’s autonomy.

Defending the space of freedom then means accepting the solitude of thought and recognising that the most effective form of domination is not the one that suppresses freedom, but the one that convinces you that you already possess it.

Nihilism, relativism and the crisis of the West

As Pope Ratzinger observed in a famous speech in Regensburg in 2006, the current decadence of the West derives mainly from a widespread nihilism, which leads not only to the abandonment of the founding values of Christianity, but also to a form of absolute relativism. The result is an overall loss of meaning, a society that repudiates the principles that have marked its history for centuries, progressively replacing trust in reason with trust in technology, the new master of a world produced wherever it is convenient to produce it. In this process, the West ends up rejecting its own identity, attempting to annul it in an abstract multiculturalism that translates, in fact, into a powerful form of international conformism.

In this context, in the game of political tastes that characterises the current historical phase, there seem to be fewer shared reasons for preferring liberal democracies to dictatorships. On the contrary, the latter appear to many – bewildered citizens and conscious actors of media manipulation – even more democratic, as they are easier to understand and more accessible to those who, out of fear of freedom and its consequences, aspire more to ignore than to know. It is not surprising then that phenomena such as return illiteracy and the impoverishment of critical capabilities are growing, signs of a cultural regression that accompanies the growing indifference to freedom.

Awareness of chains as a historical task

Of these signs of decay, indifference to freedom and democracy is perhaps the most disturbing. It is not just a symptom, but the extreme outcome of a long-standing renunciation of critical responsibility. This raises decisive questions: will societies that still call themselves democratic be able to react to this indifference? Will they know how to prevent it from producing irreversible consequences on human history? And will Europe, if it wants to continue to recognise itself as a political space of freedom, be able to devise a common response capable of defending the principles on which it was founded?

The very possibility of a response, however, depends on a precondition: that the West, as a whole, returns to an awareness of its own shackles. Of all that has limited its ability to react with lucidity, courage and foresight, while preferring to ignore the signs of a deep crisis. Only this act of awareness can prevent the illusion of freedom from turning definitively into its negation and allow us to preserve the idea of freedom that has shaped Western civilisation, its past and, perhaps, even its future.

“Dostoevsky and the Children of Abraham. Freedom, guilt and hope”– S.M. Capilupi, L’Europeista