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‘On Freedom’, by Timothy Snyder, is a highly perspicacious exploration of liberty, hinged on its philosophical, historical, and practical strands. The author has craftily critiqued the encapsulation of freedom as being merely the absence of constraints, calling it negative freedom. He has put forth a richly layered argument for a more constructive and inclusive understanding of the concept of freedom. Freedom, as he has rightly called, ain’t a vacuum but a living and dynamic ecosystem (Edith Stein’s Leib: a living body, built on collective conscience, empathy, and shared values of understanding and accommodation).
The book’s philosophical grounding is both rigorous and relatable. It draws on thinkers like
Edith Stein, Václav Havel, Tony Judt and Simone Weil, combining their arguments into a
very forceful narrative about freedom’s moral and inclusive dimensions. The book goes, for a major part, into long, allegorical paragraphs about the evolution of the political and philosophical landscape of the world. It has argued that freedom begins with sovereignty—our ability to know ourselves and the world within limited coordinates—before expanding into the ever-expanding realms of unpredictability, mobility, factuality, and solidarity. Each of these ‘forms of freedom’ illustrates how liberty requires not only the removal of barriers but also the creation of supportive structures ‘to achieve’ and ‘to be’.
The true erudition of the author becomes apparent in the book’s eye on historical lens. As
in his previous books, the author has made a case for freedom all-embracing through the
use of contemporary reality from the USA to Europe to Russia to South Asia. He has used
myriad examples, particularly from Eastern Europe and wartime Ukraine, to underscore
fragility, elasticity and resilience of freedom. He has presented harrowing stories of towns
from War-time Ukraine where liberation from the Russian occupation is only a beginning
towards the ultimate goal of true freedom. Throughout, he has a high-degree of emphasis
on the fact that freedom is contingent on reconstruction and collective efforts to build
spaces where individuals can explore, expound and live with dignity and purpose.
The book has elaborately called out the hypocrisy of the American conception of freedom,
derived from its misplaced priority on American exceptionalism. It has challenged the
idea of “negative freedom,” dominant in U.S. culture everywhere, which equates liberty
with the absence of government interference. It has called it a very shallow understanding
of freedom that ignores the necessity of individual social responsibility and the conditions
required for social mobility. The book has demolished any semblance of pure, crass and
crude racism against Afro-Americans with anything that freedom entails. It has long illustrated the dangers of confusing unregulated capitalism, development of monopolies,
damage to climate systems etc with freedom to attain mobility.
One of the most important examples criminally missing in the book is that of Israel and
Palestine. if there is such an in-depth analysis of Holocaust, why no mention of the
violence on Palestine! While the author hasn’t pulled his punches to dispassionately lay bare the complicity and hypocrisy of the world regimes, he has simply failed to push his
argument forward on Israel.
Rest, the book is surely one of the best books of 2024. It has made freedom the consistent
leitmotif of his arguments, utilising everybody from Pluto to John Locke to Simone Weil to
Arundhati Roy. The book’s prose is engaging and accessible, enriched by Snyder’s personal anecdotes, life experiences, travels, understanding of ethics, erudition and reflections. He has tried to concatenate philosophical insights with moments from his life—whether it’s his childhood in the USA, his studies in Eastern Europe, or his experiences in Ukraine during the war. This personal touch has rendered highly complex ideas feel tangible, legible and urgent, inviting readers to see themselves in the struggle for freedom.
Perhaps the most innovative aspect of the book is its insistence on the collective
conscience that liberty entails. Snyder has rightly dismantled the myth of the self-made
individual, with social footprint, showing how freedom is always a product of relationships
and shared effort. His discussion of solidarity—the recognition that freedom for one
depends on freedom for all—is especially powerful in an era of rising inequality, inequities,
poverty and division.
The message of the book is a compound of celebration and a challenge. It celebrates the
resilience and creativity of people striving for liberty despite being fettered, while
challenging readers to rethink what freedom truly means. Snyder’s vision of freedom as an
active, generative process—rooted in empathy, factuality, and shared purpose—is a timely
antidote to the cynicism, water-tight compartmentalization and polarization of our age.
This book is rather a call to action, impelling us all to proactively lay down the conditions
where freedom can thrive.
Indeed a very powerful read. Highly recommended.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.