On Freedom

On Freedom (2024) is a work of political philosophy by Timothy Snyder, the Levin Professor of History at Yale University and author of acclaimed books such as Bloodlands (2010) and On Tyranny (2017). Known for linking historical insight to urgent political challenges, Snyder reframes liberty for the 21st century as something active and collective rather than passive or inherited. Across its five central chapters, the book argues that democracy survives only when citizens cultivate freedom through shared practices, communal responsibility, and a commitment to truth. Snyder explores enduring questions through three interlocking themes: Freedom as Communal Responsibility, Solidarity as a Prerequisite for Liberty, and Truth and Historical Memory as Safeguards Against Authoritarianism. Blending philosophy, history, and memoir, On Freedom makes a moral case for democracy at a time of global authoritarian resurgence, widening inequality, and rampant disinformation.

This study guide references the 2024 Crown eBook edition.

Content Warning: Snyder’s discussion includes accounts of racial violence, antisemitism, war, ecological crisis, and mass incarceration.

Summary

Snyder begins with a warning against complacency: Freedom is never given but must be created and sustained. He insists that liberty cannot be understood as “negative freedom,” or the mere absence of restraint, because such a conception leaves people vulnerable to domination, manipulation, and despair. Instead, he urges readers to embrace positive freedom, which requires empathy, shared institutions, and the willingness to take responsibility for one another.

Throughout the book, Snyder weaves together reflections on his own experiences, close readings of philosophers and dissidents, and vivid historical examples. Drawing on German phenomenologist Edith Stein’s philosophy of embodiment, he argues that sovereignty begins with the recognition of others as living subjects. From this insight comes the responsibility to treat human bodies not as objects but as sources of meaning and capacity. He extends this argument into the political sphere, contending that democracies are strongest when they build conditions that allow individuals—especially children, caregivers, and marginalized groups—to develop agency.

Freedom, in Snyder’s view, also entails unpredictability. Acts of conscience, solidarity, and creativity resist the mechanical predictability sought by authoritarian regimes and digital platforms alike. Author and former Czech President Václav Havel’s plays and essays illustrate how conformity deadens public life, while modest acts of dissidence restore vitality. Snyder warns that today’s algorithms manufacture predictability by narrowing human attention and exploiting vulnerabilities. True liberty resists these forces by cultivating values, sustaining memory, and practicing judgment that cannot be automated.

Mobility represents another dimension of liberty. For Snyder, the ability to move through space, time, and values depends on collective supports including physical infrastructure, accessible healthcare, pensions, and education. Civil rights struggles, immigration battles, and histories of incarceration demonstrate how mobility can be either expanded or curtailed. He connects this to global history, showing how both fascism and communism immobilized people by insisting on a single idealized future or territorial destiny, while modern oligarchies immobilize through inequality. To be free, Snyder argues, societies must provide the means for people to choose and pursue multiple possible futures.

Factuality forms the fourth pillar of Snyder’s argument. Freedom collapses when lies dominate public life, because action depends on a shared reality. From climate denial to the “big lie” about the 2020 US election, Snyder shows how disinformation corrodes sovereignty, undermines mobility, and curtails unpredictability. Facts, he insists, are not just pieces of knowledge but conditions for freedom itself. Without them, politics devolves into spectacle and war.

Finally, Snyder turns to solidarity. Freedom of speech, he argues, is not an individual accomplishment but a collective achievement that depends on trust, institutions, and the courage of others. Voting, journalism, and civic engagement exemplify liberty as an act of applied solidarity. Against libertarian notions that glorify the market, Snyder insists that genuine freedom is indivisible: If others are unfree, no one remains free for long. He warns that societies that mistake nostalgia or nihilism for liberty drift into authoritarianism, while those that invest in one another preserve the possibility of democratic life.

The book concludes with Snyder’s reflections on Ukraine, where acts of resistance and sacrifice reveal that freedom is not guaranteed by markets, wealth, or impersonal forces but by human responsibility. For him, democracy is less a label than a verb: something enacted daily through empathy, truth-telling, and solidarity. Freedom, he insists, is fragile but renewable—anchored in bodies, relationships, and shared commitments that must be practiced again and again.