On Freedom

Snyder writes from Ukraine’s Kherson region during the war, describing burned gas stations, mined fields, and struggling sunflowers. Remarking on the deep history of the region, he argues that Russia’s theft of museum artifacts and its targeting of agriculture and ports echo older imperial practices in which hunger itself becomes a weapon of war. Watermelons, once the region’s signature crop, emerge as emblems of solidarity after liberation. Snyder emphasizes that freedom cannot be entrusted to impersonal forces or oligarchs; it depends on values and collective effort, echoing the ancient Greek statesman Pericles’s call to rely on “our own hearts and hands” (245).

Snyder then introduces the “geometry” of the fifth dimension—the realm of values distinct from the four dimensions of space-time. Its rules are difference (a distinction between what is and ought to be), plurality (many virtues), intransitivity (virtues cannot be neatly ranked), tension (virtues often conflict), and combinability (people can creatively mix and invent virtues). Because no single truth or perfect plan exists, human judgment and imperfection make absolute freedom possible. Freedom occurs in the “space between” what is and what ought to be, where people continually choose among values. Snyder stresses that rules need both creation and critique; value conflicts cannot be escaped, only navigated.