To Freedom, With Whom?
We yearn for freedom. Incorrigible utopians, though we believe in the ideal of freedom and are aware that it is unattainable, we still strive toward it. We live our lives striving for freedom; if we give up that pursuit, we await death as our liberator.
Faced with a challenge that overwhelms us, we might turn our attention outward and ask any Other: “What are you bringing to the people?” Implicitly, we hear the ironic retort: Who do you think you are? Look at yourself! What are you thinking? Get a grip! Look around you! Be realistic!
Looking at it soberly, freedom is beyond us. The sources and forces that enslave humanity are countless, ranging from genetics and the randomness of birth to the inevitability of death. The same applies to collective existence—inheriting the age-old desire to live in a free society, we can only, to a greater or lesser extent, limit the repressive apparatus of power and mutual dependencies.
Fighting in the name of freedom, we gain various footholds along the way: being ourselves, unconditional love, free speech, individual independence, national sovereignty, civic engagement, spontaneous existence in the world, and finally, the ability to look death in the face without fear. When asked, “What brings us to freedom?,” we have a story of our achievements up our sleeves; we say with pride: finally, no one will decide for me how I should live or whom I should love; we have fought for independence; I have emancipated myself from patriarchy; there is no freedom without solidarity.
At the same time, we know that these gains are never final. Not only because they are impermanent and require constant effort, but because the world is changing, and we along with it. The colonizer, occupier, domestic abuser, or fascist, may stand before us in a new guise and prove devilishly cunning in exploiting democracy, individualism, freedom of speech, love of country, or the earth’s natural resources for new forms of enslavement, disregarding international law or post-catastrophic moral obligations such as “never again.” The mocking, derisive question “What have you brought to freedom?” thrown back in our faces once again compels us to seek new answers, realizing that a return to the old strongholds of freedom proves insufficient, if not impossible, for they have been not so much destroyed as taken over.
In search of new names for freedom, I ask: “to freedom, with whom?” I transform the inherent weakness of the colloquial phrase “What have you brought”—which points to my undervaluation, inferiority, and subordination—into words of power, existential reflection, and high stakes, with freedom hanging in the balance. I effect this transformation by abandoning the word “what” which refers to the baggage of my gains in freedom. In its place, I introduce “with whom,” another being—a human, an animal, or some other existence—someone different from me, in the singular or plural. I invoke a presence that will not only strengthen me on the path to freedom but will also broaden the very understanding of freedom itself.
To freedom, with whom? By asking this, I leave behind the possibility of striving alone, by myself, in the hope of achieving individual freedom. I do not deny its value—my memory tells me I even fought for it—but it has left me with a sense of inadequacy, as well as wounds of self-enslavement that refuse to heal in seclusion. So I go on, looking around ever more attentively for a companion. Philosophers of dialogue would say that I am experiencing a transition from an era dominated by the first person singular, by the Cartesian “I,” the need for distinctiveness, independence, and self-determination, combined with the egocentrism and emancipation of Enlightenment reason, toward an era crowning humanity’s development, in which the dominant will be the second person singular “you,” and with it coexistence, compassion, shared responsibility, interdependence, and empathy.
In the heart of the darkness of 1943, Albert Camus notes: “‘You’ as a means of restoring morality.” A familiar cleric visits Father Józef Tischner, who is nearing death, with a fundamental question that we often wish to ask sages at the end of their journey: “How should one live?” In response, he hears: “It doesn’t matter how, what matters is with whom.”
When thinking about freedom, I introduce the conjunction “with”—known in linguistics as the preposition of accompaniment: with you, with you all, with another, with a stranger, with the soul, with God. In the Polish-Lithuanian borderland where I live, I still often hear people say “Go with God” as a farewell. These words refer not so much to this or that religion as to the belief that I should not be alone on the road, that there is someone else with me who watches over my wanderings and with whom I will not go astray, but will find my way.
Setting out on a journey, opening one’s horizon to the unknown and the ever-changing, is an act of freedom. This is accompanied by the anxiety of getting lost and the fear of confronting the stranger. This state is expressed by another function of the conjunction “with/for,” [in Polish it is the same and one letter/conjunction “z”] which, because of it, is also called the preposition of distance: from the side, from beyond the threshold, from the opposite bank, from the other side of the wall, from beyond the border, from another world.
By asking “to freedom, with whom,” I invoke another presence so as not to stray, and perhaps even more so to heal the wound of estrangement, the disintegration of the whole, the shattering of unity—the wound of being apart. In this way, I enter the space of freedom, the struggle for it. Separation enslaves us. The strongest weapon of the dictatorial power that robs me of my freedom is the introduction of division. From the Greek, diavolos is the one who divides.
Freedom is restored unity and finding oneself in wholeness. By seeking it where “my cottage stands apart from others,” we lose sight of its meaning. Similarly, we cannot fully attain existential freedom by going our own way or being master in our own home. Independence and ownership can bring us closer to freedom just as much as they can enslave us.
How much does freedom cost? A place for another at the shared table, not in the side tables.
In the aforementioned 1943 notebook, Camus jots down thoughts related to the novel The Plague, which he was working on at the time—one of the most important books of the 20th century, which would once again be recognized as prophetic a few years ago during the pandemic. For Camus, the plague is a metaphor for the disease of modern civilization. What is this disease? We read: “In the chapter on isolation camps: relatives are already separated from the deceased—then, for sanitary reasons, children are separated from parents and men from women. Thus, s e p a r a t i o n b e c o m e s u n i v e r s a l. Everyone is condemned to loneliness. In this way, separation becomes the novel’s central theme.” Elsewhere we read: “…very important. ‘You didn’t even rebel, because they fed you and separated you from one another.’ […] The plague emphasizes separation. But being together is merely a prolonged exception. The plague is the rule.”
Camus’s reflections on separation as the source of modern enslavement correspond with the ideas of Erich Fromm, author of Escape from Freedom. For him, too, the quintessence of enslavement is fascism, born of a sense of the human powerlessness and insignificance. The source of this condition is the isolation of the individual. “When we examined… the aspects of modern man’s freedom,” writes Fromm, “we pointed to the economic conditions that lead to the increasing isolation and powerlessness of the individual in our age; by discussing the psychological effects of this, we demonstrated that powerlessness leads either to a kind of escape, typical of the authoritarian character, or to a sort of forced conformism, in which the isolated individual becomes an automaton, loses their ‘self,’ even though they consciously consider themselves a free being and subject only to themselves.”
The question is: how to overcome this separation and the associated isolation of the individual? Or, to put it another way—referring to Fromm’s thought—how to move from negative freedom—freedom from something—to positive freedom—freedom to? Fromm, already foreshadowing the advent of the counterculture, writes about the complete and uncompromising realization of one’s “self,” in the hope that “then the fundamental cause of man’s antisocial impulses will disappear.” Today, I approach Fromm’s words with great reserve, remembering how unconstructive the countercultural rebellion turned out to be, often transforming into the isolationism of closed and, over time, increasingly violent communes, and consequently proving to be yet another—perhaps only better disguised—form of escape from freedom.
That is why I ask the question: “To freedom, with whom?” I do not believe, however, that this should be the opposite pole to the self-realization of the “I,” complete and uncompromising. Perhaps the presence of the “you,” complete and uncompromising, is the only chance for our self-realization, for our being ourselves?
There is something deeply liberating in the decision to walk toward freedom with someone. Exactly, it is my decision. There is no determinism in this—neither biological nor rational—no directive imposed from above, nor a closed cultural pattern. Following someone remains entirely in my hands; it is a free choice and an inner opening to hospitality, to sharing freedom.
How much does freedom cost? Giving up one’s share for the sake of a shared value. This means that while I have my share, I still have nothing—I am not yet free. Only by relinquishing what is exclusively mine, including my own freedom, and sharing it with others, do I have a chance to be free.
Walking with a companion has other, transformative consequences for our understanding of freedom. This applies, for example, to the introduction of hospitality into the horizon of freedom, and with it the specific quality of unconditionality. By asking what I will get out of it, or by imposing demands and restrictions on it, I undermine the very essence of hospitality. The same applies to freedom—it cannot be traded or subject to conditions. And if that is the case, then we can say that only a truly free person can build a hospitable home.
How much does freedom cost? An open door to visitors, with no preconditions, regardless of skin color, nationality, religion, gender, social status, or other the vagaries of fate. We might say that this is an excessive openness, posing a threat to our security and our values. But a wall will not defuse this threat or make otherness more familiar; it will merely push it aside, until the foreignness and the fear of it swell, until they turn into a conflict that is destructive to both sides.
Walking with someone toward freedom, I have time to talk, get to know one another, and undergo an inner transformation. Each participant in this journey, upon reaching its end, will already be a different person. Metanoia shows that true freedom begins where the illusion that we are already free ends.
How much does freedom cost? Constantly pushing beyond oneself, without a lifetime job, without permanent residency, and without return policy.
To freedom, with whom? With a different self—one attuned to the other and jointly responsible for one’s neighbor, making room and finding oneself in the rebirth of unity, discovering the other as a part of oneself, as an inner voice going against the tide of one’s own reasons and self-image—with a self free enough to be hospitable.
How much does freedom cost? Making oneself a subject of the earth, not in service of the self, but—along with all living beings—in service of the common.
Photo by Aneta Stabinska
Krzysztof Czyżewski is a practitioner of ideas, writer, philosopher, culture animator, theatre director, editor and translator. President of the Borderland Foundation, director of the Centre “Borderland of Arts, Cultures and Nations” in Sejny, Poland, initiator of the International Center for Dialog in Krasnogruda at the Polish-Lithuanian border. Teacher and lecturer, and a visiting professor at the University of Bologna and Rutgers University. Among his books of poetry and essays published in English are: The Path of the Borderland, Trust & Identity: A Handbook of Dialogue, Miłosz – Dialog – Borderland, A Small Center of the World, Firewords: Tiny Poems, Toward Xenopoli, Visions from the Borderland, and Practicing Utopia.