A Few Lines on Svoboda and Volya

[Astorre]

As a native Russian speaker with a keen interest in Western philosophy, I frequently encounter friction when attempting to map certain Western philosophical categories onto the language in which I think. Whether this stems from the problem of the “untranslatable remainder” or fundamental differences in intellectual traditions, comparing the ontology of concepts often leads me to meaningful insights.

Last year, I posted on a forum about my attempt to examine “being” through the lens of various cultures. That comparative approach allowed for a deeper look into the well-known problem of understanding being. While I would not claim this method is entirely pure or immune to speculation, as a philosophical tool it merits attention.

To unpack the method itself: when studying Western philosophy and its frameworks for core categories, I filter those ideas through my own intuitions and pre-understandings—preconditions shaped by my language, culture, and tradition. At this intersection, I notice a certain dissonance. This dissonance becomes fertile ground for expanding conceptual boundaries and re-examining Western philosophical insights. Language and culture thus offer something beyond what is written in texts, yielding perspectives that allow us to rethink familiar concepts and meanings.

I do not view my native culture or language as inherently unique, nor do I believe it magically preserved “Proto-Indo-European” roots that contain some essential core of truth. Such views strike me as shortsighted and foolish, serving primarily to stir up provincial sentiments. Languages and cultures constantly evolve and enrich one another; concepts accumulate new meanings that are easily borrowed across borders.

Yet, certain ancient words, idioms, and concepts retain an intuitive depth that diverges remarkably from mainstream discourse.

Today, I want to examine the pair svoboda (freedom) and volya (will/volition/unbound freedom). In Russian, as in many Slavic languages, these two terms operate as synonyms—yet they embody distinct orientations toward the same underlying phenomenon. In everyday speech, one can say either a “free Cossack” (svobodny kazak) or a “volny Cossack” (volny kazak), and the practical meaning is almost identical. But not quite.

Consider their standard English renderings: svoboda is translated as freedom, while volya becomes will. In English, these two terms are by no means synonymous.

Returning to etymology:

• The word svoboda derives from Old Church Slavonic svojь(“one’s own”). Broadly speaking: one’s own → one’s kin → not a stranger, not a slave → free.

(свобода | Этимологический онлайн-словарь Фасмера М. | ΛΓΩ)

• The word volya derives from Old Church Slavonic volja (“will/desire”). Broadly speaking: will → desire, inclination → the capacity to act according to one’s wanting → the antithesis of compulsion. Crucially, volya also denotes “a space free from external restraint”—as in volnitsa (free lands, open expanse devoid of an overriding external will).

(воля | Этимологический онлайн-словарь Фасмера М. | ΛΓΩ)

Thus, despite their distinct conceptual genealogies, both words function as synonyms in everyday language.

While I remain skeptical of etymological arguments that feel retrofitted to support a point, this conceptual mapping reveals something crucial: in Slavic languages, and in Russian in particular, the pre-conceptual phenomenon of “freedom” is expressed both objectified (through svoboda) and subjectified (through volya). Svoboda is understood as an external absence of constraints (encompassing both “freedom from” and “freedom to”), whereas volya is an internal drive to realize one’s desires. Yet the language treats them as synonymous.

A reader might ask: So what? You have outlined terms that exist in English as well; even if they are not synonymous there, why does this distinction matter?

It matters for how freedom is constituted as a phenomenon. Notice how easily svoboda (as an objectified state) becomes a noun of possession. We say: “to give someone freedom,” “to deprive someone of freedom,” “to fight for freedom,” “to protect freedom,” “to guarantee freedom,” “to restrict freedom.” Svoboda becomes an object that can be granted, guaranteed, taken away, expanded, or curtailed. It becomes an ideal to be possessed—and thus easily morphs into a politico-legal ideologeme: a normative spatial condition within which a subject is positioned. For instance: “A citizen has freedom of speech.” Here, freedom is not the subject’s act, but a sanctioned realm of permissible action secured by a norm.

With volya, a tension emerges that does not apply to svoboda to the same degree. One can simply say “my volya” or “by my volya.” Here, volya does not stand between the subject and the world as an external field of possibilities; it originates directly within the subject. This yields two distinct registers of “being free”: volya born inside the subject versus svoboda functioning as an external regulator. This distinction is paramount. Volya becomes something more than a mere escape beyond existing limits—it is the capacity to institute those limits through one’s own act.

While svoboda functions as an external construct defined by the absence of boundaries (a bounded definition used to express unboundness), volya offers not merely an absence of boundaries, but the power to establish them “by one’s own will.”

This opens up a broader inquiry: genuine freedom may consist less in the absence of obstacles than in the power to institute—including the power to establish limits for oneself and others. That trajectory warrants further development.

For now, these are the core themes I wished to address. I will share the broader implications of this conceptual re-evaluation in a subsequent text. To conclude: language here is treated not as a passive descriptive medium, but as a mechanism that constitutes reality and structures how a phenomenon presents itself to thought. The Russian pair svoboda / volya holds these two poles within a single semantic field with a density rarely found in Western European languages.

(This text was translated with the assistance of AI, as standard machine translation failed to capture its underlying conceptual nuances.)

[j_j]

@Astorre

genuine freedom may consist less in the absence of obstacles than in the power to institute—including the power to establish limits for oneself and others. That trajectory warrants further development.

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind.” But only in the long run, and only a tiny few of them.

I connect this to phenomenology as a kind of pre-search. I enact inherited prejudice like chains I don’t yet feel. My deep prejudice is “out there” in the way the world shows up for me. I am the “serf” of the long dead poets who instituted what is Obvious, what Everyone Knows. My own life as a “poet” is hobbled.

A dominant prejudice today is that poetry ( poesis ) is “other than” science. Yet there’s a strong empirical case for “analogy as the core of cognition.”

The ethical-psychological element here is that courage and passion are the enabling virtues of this “strong” poetry. To dare to present alternative institutions ( different metaphors-as-vectors ) is to be seen as “crazy” or “irresponsible” or “confused.”

To “speak around prejudices” will of course be misunderstood, so the relatively free-creative institutor “pays” for his or her audacity by being relatively “alone.” Sometimes this detour through loneliness pays off socially in the long term.

[Astorre]

As you once noted, and I really liked it, “Philosophy is honest poetry.” Perhaps my post is an attempt to do just that.

But here’s the thing. I’m troubled by your romanticization of solitude. Why not make poetry together? For example, with my children, we play this game on the road: someone comes up with the first line, then the next person comes up with the next line (with their own meaning and rhyme), and so on. It’s very eclectic and fun. In this sense, the poetry I’m trying to create is simply a continuation of the previous story, which will later be completed by the lines of the next person. Or perhaps my line won’t fit the context and will be forgotten… That happens too.

In this sense, writing a single line is an individual act, but the poem itself is shared!

[j_j]

@Astorre

As you once noted, and I really liked it, “Philosophy is honest poetry.” Perhaps my post is an attempt to do just that.

But here’s the thing. I’m troubled by your romanticization of solitude.

Thanks !

So I see solitude as a painful cost that we are sometimes willing to pay. The philosopher as “honest poet” is trying to share in a sense of increased freedom with others.

I’d even connect this realization to that honest. “I really need other people. I really want to connect with people. I also want to do something great, something original, earn respect.”

Now — finally — I see that “ethics is first philosophy.” A less “self-honest” earlier version of me, who in retrospect was naively scientistic rather than scientific, would understand this claim as moralizing. “True reality” has nothing to do with ethics, he would say —enacting a “religion” of atoms and void that gave him status via proximity to “the truth.” But I was alienated from the basic structure of my own experience, which is fundamentally a “forum” I share with others.

Loneliness hurts. The poet doesn’t seek solitude. It happens as something like the resistance to his project. The poet is like an explorer who goes into the dark woods in the hope of bringing something back as a gift.

[j_j]

@Astorre

Why not make poetry together? For example, with my children, we play this game on the road: someone comes up with the first line, then the next person comes up with the next line (with their own meaning and rhyme), and so on. It’s very eclectic and fun. In this sense, the poetry I’m trying to create is simply a continuation of the previous story, which will later be completed by the lines of the next person. Or perhaps my line won’t fit the context and will be forgotten… That happens too.

In this sense, writing a single line is an individual act, but the poem itself is shared!

So I actually intensely agree with you. Research is “accidentally creative” paraphrase. I “pair a phrase.” We do this in friendly conversations. I find other words for what you say to build a sense of mutual understanding.

I became especially creative in philosophy in the last couple years because certain old books finally cracked through my “presentist” prejudice. To me it even increases the joy that the ideas that I find powerful and beautiful show themselves to me as ancient. I see — from over here anyway — a beautiful thread from Heraclitus and Plato all the way to Heidegger, passing through thinkers like Peirce and Mach and Husserl. I see this “big idea” as the main thing. These thinkers picked it up, added this or that, pruned this or that. I understand myself as finally having worked myself into this old game. I find new expressions that signify now ( ideally) as the old expressions signified then. Approximately. But that is good enough.

It’s weird. I’ve never been so inspired and yet never been so intensely aware of historical continuity and the non-originality or not-really-mine-ness of my favorite ideas. The beauty of the ideas is enough, and there is room for real work in the wet clay of phonemes and in terms of persona, this or that mask as rhetorical strategy.