On Freedom

Drawing on Edith Stein’s philosophy of empathy, Snyder distinguishes between the Körper—an object-body governed by physical laws—and the Leib, a living body with feeling, agency, and a subjective “zero point.” Stein argues that knowledge of self arises by acknowledging others as subjects; Snyder presents this as foundational for freedom. Treating people as objects produces ignorance and vulnerability to manipulation, while recognizing their agency and subjectivity creates the understanding required to act with purpose. From this base, he critiques “negative freedom” as a mistake that ignores what bodies need to understand and build together; for him, freedom is positive, oriented to capacities and structures.

Again drawing from Stein, he connects Nazi racial ideology, which imagined a Volkskörper (a body of “the people,” imagined as exclusively the “Aryan” people) menaced by Fremdkörper (a foreign body), to the dehumanization and murder of Jewish people. Snyder cites the early-20th-century French philosopher Simone Weil, who describes our bodies as the site where gravity meets grace and insists that recognizing the stranger helps us see ourselves. Weil’s life and ideas anchor a view of sovereignty as an ability to translate constraints into purposes in the world.