On the Nature of Freedom

“Liberty,” Herbert Marcuse writes, “is self-determination, autonomy … But the subject of this autonomy is never the contingent, private individual as that which he actually is or happens to be; it is rather the individual. . . who is capable of being free with the others.”

“Freedom,” replies David Spitz, “is not .. . ‘self-determination, autonomy’ …It is rather, as Hobbes properly said, the absence of chains.” Here...