On Freedom

A brilliant exploration of freedom--what it is, how it’s been misunderstood, and why it’s our only chance for survival--by the acclaimed Yale historian and author of the #1 Timothy Snyder has been called “the leading interpreter of our dark times.” As a historian, he has given us startling reinterpretations of political collapse and mass killing. As a public intellectual, he has turned that knowledge toward counsel and prediction, working against authoritarianism here and abroad. His book Freedom is the great American commitment, but as Snyder argues, we have lost sight of what it means--and this is leading us into crisis. Too many of us look at freedom as the absence of state power: We think we''re free if we can do and say as we please, and protect ourselves from government overreach. But true freedom isn’t so much freedom <On Freedom< takes us on a thrilling intellectual journey. Drawing on the work of philosophers and political dissidents, conversations with contemporary thinkers, and his own experiences coming of age in a time of American exceptionalism, Snyder identifies the practices and attitudes--the habits of mind--that will allow us to design a government in which we and future generations can flourish. We come to appreciate the importance of traditions (championed by the right) but also the role of institutions (the purview of the left). Intimate yet ambitious, this book helps forge a new consensus rooted in a politics of abundance, generosity, and grace.

Auteur

Timothy Snyder is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. His books, which have been published in over forty languages, include Bloodlands, Black Earth, On Tyranny, Road to Unfreedom, Our Malady, and On Freedom. His work has inspired poster campaigns and exhibitions, sculptures, a punk rock song, a rap song, a play, and an opera, and he has appeared in over fifty films and documentaries. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Texte du rabat

"A brilliant exploration of freedom-what it is, how it's been misunderstood, and why it's our only chance for survival-by the acclaimed Yale historian and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller On Tyranny"--

Résumé
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A brilliant exploration of freedom—what it is, how it’s been misunderstood, and why it’s our only chance for survival—by the acclaimed Yale historian and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller On Tyranny

“A rigorous and visionary argument . . . Buy or borrow this book, read it, take it to heart.”—The Guardian

Timothy Snyder has been called “the leading interpreter of our dark times.” As a historian, he has given us startling reinterpretations of political collapse and mass killing. As a public intellectual, he has turned that knowledge toward counsel and prediction, working against authoritarianism here and abroad. His book On Tyranny has inspired millions around the world to fight for freedom. Now, in this tour de force of political philosophy, he helps us see exactly what we’re fighting for.

Freedom is the great American commitment, but as Snyder argues, we have lost sight of what it means—and this is leading us into crisis. Too many of us look at freedom as the absence of state power: We think we're free if we can do and say as we please, and protect ourselves from government overreach. But true freedom isn’t so much freedom from as freedom to—the freedom to thrive, to take risks for futures we choose by working together. Freedom is the value that makes all other values possible.

On Freedom takes us on a thrilling intellectual journey. Drawing on the work of philosophers and political dissidents, conversations with contemporary thinkers, and his own experiences coming of age in a time of American exceptionalism, Snyder identifies the practices and attitudes—the habits of mind—that will allow us to design a government in which we and future generations can flourish. We come to appreciate the importance of traditions (championed by the right) but also the role of institutions (the purview of the left). Intimate yet ambitious, this book helps forge a new consensus rooted in a politics of abundance, generosity, and grace.

Échantillon de lecture
Sovereignty

Leib

The German philosopher Edith Stein put her own body forward during the First World War. A graduate student, she took leave to volunteer as a nurse. When she returned to her dissertation, her time with the wounded guided her argument about empathy. “Do we not,” she asked, “need the mediation of the body to assure ourselves of the existence of another person?”

The word she used for “body” was Leib.

The first form of freedom, as I hope to show, is sovereignty. A sovereign person knows themselves and the world sufficiently to make judgments about values and to realize those judgments.

For Stein, we gain knowledge of ourselves when we acknowledge others. Only when we recognize that other people are in the same predicament as we are, live as bodies as we do, can we take seriously how they see us. When we identify with them as they regard us, we understand ourselves as we otherwise might not. Our own objectivity, in other words, depends on the subjectivity of others.

This is not how we are accustomed to seeing things. We imagine that we can just take in information ourselves, as isolated individuals. We believe that when we are alone, we are free. This mistake ensures that we are not.

The word Leib gets us to a new standpoint. The German language has two terms for “body,” Korper and Leib. The word Korper can denote a person’s body but also a “foreign body” (Fremdkorper), a “heavenly body” (Himmelskorper), the “racial body” (Volkskorper), and other objects thought to be subject to physical laws. A Korper might be alive, but it need not be (compare corpse). Stein says, “There can be a Korper without me, but no Leib without me.”

The word Leib designates a living human body, or an animal body, or the body of an imaginary creature in a story. A Leib is a Korper, subject to physical laws, but that is not all it is. It has its own rules and so its own opportunities. A Leib can move, a Leib can feel, and a Leib has its own center, impossible to graph precisely in space, which Stein calls a “zero point.” We can always see some of our Leib, but we can never see all of it.

Our liveliness is shared. When we understand another person as Leib rather than Korper, we see the whole world differently. The other person has a zero point, just as we do; those zero points make connections, creating a new web of understanding. It is thanks to the Leib of another that we are liberated from thinking of ourselves as outside the world, or against the world. A little leap of empathy is at the beginning of the knowledge we need for freedom.

If it is just me against the world, then all my grumpy late-night pronouncements are justified and true and deserving of attention. But let us imagine that my daughter (also) gets cranky when she is tired and says entirely unreasonable things. Seeing her, seeing that, I recognize a phenomenon in the world, and suddenly know more about myself. That example I owe to questioning of my son about the argument of this book. Knowing me and knowing his sister, he immediately knew what I meant, and then he could also see that this is objective knowledge, of the kind we cannot get alone.

Thanks to the Leib, phenomena come into view, those that are essential for life and for freedom: birth, sleep, waking, health, breathing, eating, drinking…