In this week’s Hub book review, Patrick Luciani examines On Freedom, by Timothy Snyder (Crown, Random House, 2024), and breaks down where Snyder goes wrong in his advocating for limiting certain types of liberty.
If asked about what Canadians value, they would identify with the values of justice, fairness, or even charity. Seldom would they answer that freedom or liberty are at the top of their list. Canadians are somewhat vexed by the words “liberty and justice for all.”
Which is a pity.
Freedom goes to the heart of Western enlightenment, as taught by John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty. Mill emphasizes the individual’s freedom to live as we choose to the point we do no physical harm to others. Or consider one of the foundational statements on freedom, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” by Sir Isaiah Berlin, the late English-Latvian scholar at All Souls, Oxford.
Berlin articulates two kinds of freedom. First, negative freedom is freedom from external restrictions on liberty. Government actions must be restricted to allow individual freedom the broadest possible latitude. This is the core of the classical liberal creed.
However, there is another form of freedom called positive liberty. In a free and just society, liberty only exists if we enjoy personal freedom to achieve our goals, not just to keep the state at bay. This is where things get dicey.
If my freedom, as a poor person, relies on taxing the rich, now we have a conflict of values between justice and liberty. Berlin saw the loss of freedom for some while trying to achieve the goal of equality for others as a lessening of freedom overall. Through negative liberty, more freedom is a good in and of itself, not something used as a means to achieve other social goals. Berlin also saw the dangers of positive freedom. Here, tyranny lurks as authoritarian governments purport to know what makes humans authentically free from some blocked or repressed potential. Fascism and communism are political ideas that promise total personal freedom through coercion and indoctrination.
Timothy Snyder takes an entirely different view in his new book, On Freedom. He forcefully opposes Berlin’s defence of negative freedom as dangerous. Professor Snyder says we must move beyond “the absence of something,” such as getting governments out of the way to secure the freedoms demanded by some. He would have opposed the truckers’ demands in Ottawa to remove arbitrary government mandates during the COVID-19 crisis.
The author, who teaches at Yale University, has written extensively as a historian on oppression, wars, and conflict, particularly in Eastern Europe. His classic works include Bloodlands and The Road to Unfreedom. He now turns his attention to political theory and argues that negative freedom is the wrong way to think about freedom. He takes a broadside against its preference, which he describes as “the self-deception of people who do not really wish to be free.” Freedom, he insists, justifies government; it doesn’t repel it.
Snyder stresses the need for governments to acknowledge that liberty starts with the human body and emphasizes the need for social connection throughout life. He also believes that the state is responsible for monitoring truth. We can hardly be liberated in a world where data and algorithms distort reality through social media.
He argues that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s determination to fight Russian aggression exemplifies positive freedom. At the same time, the U.S. attack on Iraq in 2003 was an example of negative liberty, which led to less freedom for America and greater surveillance of its citizens. But is he right? One could argue Ukraine is fighting for its negative freedom to stop Russian coercion. In the case of Iraq, the U.S. tried to give Iraqis a wider latitude of freedom—a perfect example of positive liberty, the opposite of Snyder’s claim. Whether the U.S. succeeded isn’t the point.
He also doesn’t leave much room for nuance in his criticism of American capitalism and wealth accumulation as examples of negative freedom leading to monopolies and a concentration of wealth gone mad—all enemies of true freedom.
The author believes in government “to establish the forms of freedom” and sees no problem as to who should pay for it: the rich. He wants to establish a system beyond the reach of oligarchs to control our thoughts and opinions through their technologies. He has a particular venom for oligarchs such as Elon Musk and lumps him with the likes of Putin and Trump. Only the state can bring true freedom beyond the negative liberties of past philosophers. But who will save us from governments when they go wrong and impose their sense of freedom regardless of good intentions?
Does Professor Snyder convince readers that positive freedom leads to greater liberty and human flourishing? We may accept that more positive freedom is good for society, but let’s acknowledge that some liberty has been lost elsewhere, as Berlin warns. And any argument that doesn’t—at a minimum—acknowledge its weaknesses makes a poor case in its defence.
Although an admirer of Mill, “the most important liberal in the Anglo-Saxon tradition,” and a great defender of free speech, Snyder believes that free speech should be reserved mainly for those who speak truth to power and should not be available to the powerful, because as he says, “The lies of the powerful are never in danger.” Here, he forgets Maimonedes’ admonition that we must accept the truth, regardless of who speaks it—even Elon Musk.
Patrick Luciani is a writer and book reviewer for The Hub and former executive director of the Donner Canadian Foundation.
