Continuing my course toward studying such a self-evident and meaning-forming concept as “freedom,” I would now like to dwell on one consequence of my previous observation.
In my previous work, I attempted to examine the relationship between the concepts of svoboda and volya in Russian and some other Slavic languages. I was interested not so much in the origins of these words themselves, but in what they allow us to see in the structure of our understanding of freedom. Svoboda and volya, despite their different semantic emphases, can function as designations of the same phenomenal field: the former draws attention to the state of open space, the latter to the subject’s inner aspiration and their ability to act voluntarily.
This raises a consequence that I find interesting: are these two registers of freedom two aspects of a more general phenomenon, which modern language and philosophy are already inclined to consider separately? This question begins to sound especially interesting when freedom becomes not just a human ability, but a system-forming legal and political principle.
“Where there is no law, there is no liberty,” Locke observed. Interestingly, the presence of freedom in this short phrase is conditioned by the presence of law. But the phrase appears paradoxical only as long as freedom is understood as the absolute absence of restrictions. In reality, law makes freedom possible precisely because it limits one subject’s ability to destroy another’s space of action. In Kant, this relationship becomes even more obvious: freedom is associated not with the absence of any restrictions, but with a specific relationship of the subject to the law.
In the process of such institutionalization, an interesting inversion occurs: freedom ceases to denote the simple absence of restrictions and becomes something that can be guaranteed, protected, limited, and expanded. Simply put, freedom takes the form of a rule. Freedom becomes a normative principle, defining the domain within which the absence of certain restrictions is recognized as the norm.
“We want more freedoms!” Note the content of this statement by street protesters: they want fewer restrictions, by expanding the positively expressed framework.
This point is crucial to highlight. Of course, each of us already understands that “negative” freedom is difficult to express except by establishing boundaries in new places. After all, it’s impossible to define the absence of something.
But what’s more interesting is what happened to the will in this historical meat grinder.
To recognize a person as free, the modern legal order doesn’t need to know what exactly they want. It suffices to define and protect the space within which they can realize their desires. The will doesn’t disappear, but is placed within an existing regime of possibilities. The will acts, but it acts within forms that exist prior to its specific action.
If freedom is a normative space, then the will is the ability to act within this normative space.
However, does the will now include the ability to establish a normative space? Yes. In a liberal society, there is an idea that everyone is capable of participating in this process, electing their representative to government bodies and even nominating themselves for membership in a representative body. But all this is possible only within new frameworks and procedures, within collective and public approval. At the individual level, the will of an individual subject establishes nothing beyond the accepted norm of “freedom.”
It’s also important to note that even when discussing the constitutive will, a catch emerges: a parliamentary representative will claim to be dependent on the opinions of other party members, a constitutional court judge on the constitution, and the president will claim to be the executive branch and the executor of the will of the people. Who, then, in this entire construct, is the bearer of the constitutive will? Isn’t it the people raised on the ideals of freedom?
So, we have two modes of will:
- The will that realizes freedom
- The will that establishes the conditions of freedom
At the individual level, the first is constrained by freedom, the second is outside the framework of freedom. Ultimately, the constitutive will turns out to be a “systemic phantom”: it is necessary as a theoretical justification for the legitimacy of the entire construct, but physically, none of the real actors possess it. Of course, at critical moments in history, the constitutive will manifests itself through an act of reassembly. At the same time, any state system strives to ensure that these moments never occur during normal functioning.
Now let’s look at the phrase “free will” (in a political and legal context). What could it mean? In a positive sense, the only definition that comes to mind is this: “Freedom of will” is the subject’s ability to make volitional choices within guaranteed frameworks and permitted outcomes.
To summarize, I would write the following: In the process of institutionalization, freedom itself becomes a normative rule, resulting in the constitutive will being extended beyond the very concept of “freedom.”
That’s all I wanted to discuss today. I doubt there’s any discovery or great originality here. But calling a spade a spade is a necessary first step toward subsequent discoveries.