1. The historical development of freedom

“The raison d’être of politics is freedom.” (Hannah Arendt) (Arendt, 1961, p. 151) Freedom appears to be a self-explanatory concept in political language. Yet, as soon as we try to interrogate it, it seems to slip away. From Aristotle and the Stoics to Hannah Arendt and modern constitutional law, freedom has been understood in a remarkable number of different experiences: political participation, inner independence, protection from interference, or the guarantee of rights. This raises a question, exceeding the linguistic realm: can political order and dialogue function when people deciding upon it attach different meanings to the same concepts? The history of the concept of freedom does not reveal a very linear development but rather a succession of fundamentally different understandings. In Aristotle´s Politics, he associates freedom with living as one wishes, while also placing this freedom within the political life of the polis. This later develops into the broader Greek understanding of freedom as the ability to publicly act among equals. Within this ancient understanding, freedom was associated with liberation from necessity and domination. For Arendt, this also meant having a private sphere, a home, from which one could enter the public realm. The notion of the concept changes again with Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher who lived during the Roman Empire and spent part of his life enslaved. He established freedom as a relation to oneself primarily: one is free insofar as one limits one´s judgement and desires to what lies within one´s own power, rather than depending on external circumstances. In contrast to Arendt´s statement, freedom is here completely detached from politics, which opens the possibility of being free while physically being imprisoned. Therefore, the picture of an inner home gradually emerges – one that appears more secure and shielded than any worldly home could ever be. The Christian tradition further transformed this inward conception of freedom by relating it to the soul´s orientation towards God, through the pursuit of the so-called vita contemplativa. Augustine of Hippo, a Christian theologian, then establishes a strong relation between freedom and the will (O´Donnell, 2026, Britannica). He perceives human experience to be an inner conflict between desire, will and God, to which the soul ought to be directed.

2. Arendt´s intervention

One may of course adopt whichever conception of freedom best corresponds to one's own understanding. Nevertheless, Arendt's account is particularly interesting, because it assembles elements of distinct historical understandings while simultaneously challenging their underlying assumptions and questioning the contemporary conception of freedom as primarily a matter of individual choice. At the core of her argument lies the Greek idea that freedom can only be experienced through engagement with others. This requires speech or action to make our will and judgement real. That said, inner freedom or “feeling free” would be politically irrelevant, because it is not directly visible in action. Using Epictetus as an example, Arendt argues that this inward freedom became especially important for those deprived of worldly freedom. The inner self could then serve as a refuge from circumstances that could no longer be controlled. Yet, for Arendt, this inward freedom is a derivative: it becomes meaningful precisely because an individual has experienced the possibility of worldly freedom and its loss. This process, though, is characterized by unpredictability and uncertainty, because the reality we shape with our actions is also influenced by other people´s actions, which disconnects freedom from the idea of having total control over outcomes. A distinction that needs to be made here is between freedom and sovereignty. Sovereignty implies the ability to determine one´s actions and their consequences independently of others (Arendt, 1960). Freedom, by contrast, does not require control over consequences. Rather is requires a world in which others are free to act as well. The moment this simultaneity is accepted and joint action is fostered, power can emerge. Conversely, despotism undermines society's capacity to act together and restricts the conditions under which political freedom can be cultivated. Moreover, our modern world tends to orient itself increasingly towards work, production, economic necessity, and reduced interaction with real people. This raises a distinctively contemporary question. If political freedom requires a public space in which people appear before one another through speech and action, does the digital sphere, shaping our epoch, actually provide such a space? – While social media might create the appearance of constant interaction, it largely and actively reduces political participation to expression, reaction and consumption.

3. Why politics and freedom became separated

This development also reflects a deeper tension between politics and freedom. Paradoxically, freedom is often perceived to flourish where the influence of politics recedes: politics is considered legitimate insofar as it secures the conditions for individuals to remain free from political interference. This understanding is closely connected to the historical association between political freedom and security. In modern political thought, however, freedom is often understood precisely as protection from political interference. The paradox is therefore that politics is expected to create and protect the conditions of freedom while freedom itself is frequently defined as freedom from politics. This tension might be linked to the distinction, later described by Isiah Berlin, between negative liberty, being the absence of interference, and positive liberty, which is the ability to direct one´s own life or participate in collective self-government (PolSci Institute, 2025). Arendt´s notion of freedom interestingly does not fit either of these notions, as she neither detaches freedom from politics, nor does she perceive it to be having full control over one´s life.

4. The conditions of freedom

For Arendt, freedom also does not exist merely as intention. While the will indeed initiates action, judgement determines how one responds to the world. Freedom becomes real when a person begins something through action. It is therefore not the outcome of an action that makes us free, but the act of beginning and acting itself. Such action requires a public space - a political community, an assembly, a square or a parliament - in which individuals can appear before one another and make their intentions and judgements manifest. Whatever occurs within such a space is inherently political, which explains Arendt’s claim that freedom is the raison d’être of politics. Political freedom therefore depends ultimately on plurality: freedom exists neither in isolation nor in sovereignty over others, but in the possibility of acting among distinct yet equal human beings who share a common world.

5. From philosophical concept to political definition

This notion of freedom, as just described, seems reasonable to me, and yet each of us is free to shape our individual understanding of the concepts. What matters, however, is how we treat the notion when we act publicly and engage in discussions, as even parties with different opinions need a common understanding of the concepts to participate in fruitful dialogue. Even the creation of ideas of one's own opinion and the inner classification of other opinions first becomes possible when you can refer to a definition of the concept. One such public description of freedom is offered in Oxford Advanced Learner´s Dictionary, which distinguishes several meanings of freedom (Oxford Learner´s Dictionaries, 2026). It describes it first as the power or right to do or say what one wants without being stopped but also uses the term for freedom from imprisonment or slavery, political independence, freedom of movement, and freedom from particular forms of constraint. The German Basic Law approaches freedom differently (Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz, 2026). Article 2 protects the free development of one's personality while explicitly placing it within the rights of others and the constitutional order. Other provisions protect freedom of faith and conscience, freedom of expression and the press, freedom of art and science, and freedom of movement. What do these two formal definitions have in common? Both translate the abstract concept of freedom into operational rights and possibilities. Yet, they do so in fundamentally different ways. Neither, however, answers the grounding philosophical question of what freedom itself is and means. They perfectly describe how freedom is protected or exercised, but neglect what makes an act genuinely free. For practical and legal purposes, these definitions may be sufficient. However, engaging more deeply with concepts shaping our everyday political life could improve our ability to formulate arguments and participate meaningfully in public debate. The contrast between the two definitions is nevertheless revealing. The Oxford definition understands freedom primarily as individual autonomy and the absence of external restraint, emphasizing the individual’s ability to act, think and choose without interference. The Grundgesetz, by contrast, frames freedom more concretely as a set of constitutionally protected rights, while explicitly recognizing that individual freedom exists within a legal order and alongside the equal freedom of others. These notions are, however, only examples for a wide variety of cross-national understandings of freedom. This raises the question that lies at the heart of this essay: Is a shared definition of fundamental concepts necessary if we are to solve shared political problems both domestically and internationally?

6. Confucius and the rectification of names

The Chinese philosopher Confucius offers a strikingly relevant perspective on this question. One of his most relevant ideas, expressed in the Analects, concerns zhèngmíng, often translated as the “rectification of names”. Confucius argues that political order depends upon names corresponding to reality (Defoort, 2021). If names are incorrect, language ceases to correspond to things and if language loses this correspondence, political affairs cannot be properly carried out. Applied to freedom, one might therefore say that rectification requires a correspondence between what a society calls freedom and the practices that actually follow from that term.

7. What freedom means to me

Considering all the notions of freedom discussed above, Arendt´s account has resonated most strongly with me. Relating freedom and action, while simultaneously insisting that politics is the realm in which freedom becomes real, enabled me to make sense of the seemingly fragmented world of political affairs, principles, opinions, and conflicts. Furthermore, reading Confucius, who expressed his ideas in such a direct manner that it was hard to withdraw yourself while reading, illustrated a way of treating the ambiguity of seemingly obvious concepts, whose precise interrogation is in fact decisive, as decisions, human wellbeing, even human existence depend upon them. Confucius's proposal may appear captivatingly simple, but its simplicity should not be mistaken for universal applicability. His political world differed greatly from ours, and concepts that were relatively clear within a particular social and institutional context become considerably more difficult to apply in a modern, pluralistic and interconnected society. I therefore would argue that our time would profit, at first and for the most part, from each of us dealing with the different notions of fundamental concepts. There may be no single definition capable of capturing every dimension of freedom, and I also doubt that this is necessary. Yet, this requires us even more to become conscious of the meanings we attach to the words we use. Perhaps, this is where Confucius´ zhèngmíng remains relevant. It does not demand linguistic uniformity but rather acts as a reminder that political language should correspond with political reality. We may disagree about what freedom ought to mean. But if we fail to recognise that we are disagreeing about its meaning in the first place, political disagreement can become almost impossible to resolve. Dialogue therefore requires not identical concepts, but a willingness to examine, clarify and revise them. In that sense, remaining intellectually mobile may be no compromise, but rather a form of protecting freedom.