Great IdeasLiving together

Freedom and its limits

How much a person may do as they choose, and what limits freedom fairly.

The question

What does it mean to be free? Is freedom something inside us, or something a society gives and protects?

The stops on a time line 9 stops, from 430 BC to 1880. Each number is a stop below, placed at its year.
  1. 1 Herodotus 430 BC
  2. 2 Epictetus AD 108
  3. 3 John Milton 1644
  4. 4 Baruch Spinoza 1677
  5. 5 John Locke 1689
  6. 6 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762
  7. 7 G. W. F. Hegel 1837
  8. 8 John Stuart Mill 1859
  9. 9 Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880
  • Freedom inside: of the mind, will or soul
  • Freedom in society, under law

How the books answer

Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.

  1. c. 430 BC

    Herodotus, The History (the Persian Wars)

    Freedom in society, under law

    Herodotus tells of the Persian king Xerxes, who could not see why free Greeks with no single master would stand and fight his huge army. A Spartan exile tells him that the Greeks are free, but they have a master: their law, which they fear more than Xerxes' men fear him. For Herodotus, the Greek victory showed what free citizens can do.

    Go to the rung: Herodotus: The Histories

  2. c. AD 108 (taken down by his student Arrian)

    Epictetus, The Discourses

    Freedom inside: of the mind, will or soul

    Epictetus was born a slave. He teaches that the only true freedom is freedom of the will: wanting only what is in your power. A tyrant can chain the body, he says, but no one can force you to judge or choose against your will.

    “And the things in our power are by nature free, not subject to restraint nor hindrance: but the things not in our power are weak, slavish, subject to restraint, in the power of others.”

    Epictetus, Encheiridion (Handbook), chapter 1. Translated by George Long (George Bell and Sons, London, 1877). Internet Archive.

    Go to the rung: Epictetus: Discourses

  3. 1644–1671

    John Milton, Areopagitica, the English minor poems, Samson Agonistes

    Freedom in society, under law

    Milton writes to Parliament against licensing books before they are printed. Truth is strong, he argues, and grows by meeting falsehood in open argument, so a free people should let books be published and judged. He also says that a virtue that has never been tested is not worth much.

    “Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”

    John Milton, Areopagitica. (printed in London; Project Gutenberg text, 1644). Project Gutenberg.

    Go to the rung: Milton: Areopagitica and the Poems

  4. 1677 (published after his death)

    Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order

    Freedom inside: of the mind, will or soul

    Spinoza says that everything follows from causes, so freedom cannot mean acting without a cause. A person is free when they act from their own understanding instead of being pushed about by passions. The free person, for him, is the one who sees clearly.

    “Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune…”

    Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, Part IV, Preface. Translated by R. H. M. Elwes (The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, vol. II, George Bell & Sons, 1883). Project Gutenberg.

    Go to the rung: Spinoza: Ethics

  5. 1689

    John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration and the Second Treatise of Civil Government

    Freedom in society, under law

    Locke argues that people are by nature free and that government exists to protect their lives, liberty and property. Freedom is not doing whatever you like, he says, but living under laws you have consented to. In his letter on toleration, he adds that belief cannot be forced, so governments should not try.

    “And such is the nature of the understanding, that it cannot be compelled to the belief of any thing by outward force.”

    John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration. Translated by William Popple (A Letter Concerning Toleration, London edition, 1796). Internet Archive.

    Go to the rung: Locke: Civil Government and Toleration

  6. 1762

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

    Freedom in society, under law

    Rousseau opens with a famous line: people are born free and are everywhere in chains. He seeks a kind of society in which each person, by joining with all, still obeys only himself. Obeying a law we have given ourselves, he argues, is real freedom.

    “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.”

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book I, ch. 1. Translated by G. D. H. Cole (The Social Contract & Discourses, Everyman's Library, J. M. Dent, London, and E. P. Dutton, New York, 1913). Internet Archive.

    Go to the rung: Rousseau: The Social Contract

  7. lectures 1822–1831; published 1837

    G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History

    Freedom in society, under law

    Hegel reads all of history as the story of freedom growing. In the oldest empires, he says, only one person, the ruler, was free; in Greece and Rome, some were; in the modern world, the idea is that all people are free. He thought this freedom becomes real in laws and institutions.

    “The History of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of Freedom.”

    Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Introduction. Translated by J. Sibree (Bohn's Philosophical Library, London (1884 printing), 1857). Internet Archive.

    Go to the rung: Hegel: The Philosophy of History

  8. 1859

    John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

    Freedom in society, under law

    Mill worries less about kings than about the pressure of public opinion. His principle: society may limit a person's freedom only to prevent harm to others, not for that person's own good. He defends free speech because even a wrong opinion can help us understand the truth better.

    “That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

    Go to the rung: Mill: On Liberty

  9. 1879–1880

    Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

    Freedom inside: of the mind, will or soul

    Ivan Karamazov tells a story about a Grand Inquisitor who says most people do not want freedom: they want bread, wonder and someone to obey. Dostoevsky, who was a believer, gives this argument great force on purpose. He answers it through Alyosha and the elder Zosima, whose free, active love shows a different way.

    Go to the rung: Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov

For young readers

Being free means being able to make your own choices. Some freedoms come from outside: being allowed to speak, read and play. Your family and your country protect those freedoms with rules that keep everyone safe.

Another freedom is inside you. Even when you can't choose what happens, like a rainy day or a hard test, you can choose how you act and what you think. A Greek teacher who had been a slave said no one can take that freedom away.

Talk about it

  • Are you more free with no rules at all, or with good rules? Think of a game with no rules.
  • Mill says people should be free to do anything that doesn't harm others. Can you think of a hard case?
  • Epictetus was a slave, yet said he was free inside. What did he mean?
  • Milton says truth wins in a fair argument. Do you agree?
  • What freedoms do you have now that you didn't have when you were little? What comes with them?

Where else on the site

Every rung tagged with this idea:

These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.

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