Two Kinds of Freedom

"The price of freedom is loneliness." - C.S. Lewis

Aug 02, 2024

Shortly before I planned to publish this column, Arthur Brooks fortuitously wrote a piece for The Atlantic entitled “Dostoevsky’s Five Principles of Personal Freedom.” I’ve addressed some of his thoughtful insights below.

What Does It Mean to Be Free?

Years ago, I came across a fitness influencer named Christie Anderson whose identical twin sister is a Catholic religious sister. Here is an article with a link to a video of the two of them working out together if you are curious - and yes, the twin sister exercises in her habit!

In another post about her sister, Anderson described the misconceptions people have about her sister, seeing her as oppressed and even as a “cult” member. But Anderson says she looks at her sister and sees beauty, peace, kindness…and freedom.

It’s amazing how something as mundane as an Instagram post can point to a profound truth.

Anderson’s sister lives with restrictions that are unfathomable to most modern people. She does not choose what she wears, what she eats, or how she spends her days. In a sense, she is very restricted. Yet she is freer than most of us.

Something that Dostoevsky and St. Pope John Paul II may have agreed upon is that “true freedom consists of the ability to do what we ought.”1

Dostoevsky devotes much space to this idea—that two types of freedom exist, a kind of illusory, worldly freedom and a deeper, more substantial freedom.

Freedom to Versus Freedom from

The Brothers Karamazov is about three brothers (and their depraved father). Dmitri is a libertine, Ivan is a cerebral atheist, and Alyosha is a novice monk at a Russian Orthodox monastery. Alyohsa leads a life of prayer and poverty and shares a cell with a professed monk. Meanwhile, his brothers (and especially his father) carouse, drink, and chase women. Alyosha’s life is more restricted than the lives of his brother or father, but he also does not experience their attachments to money, drinking, or worldly status.

Alyosha’s mentor at the monastery, a saintly priest/monk (or hieromonk) named Father Zosima, articulates Dostoevsky’s understanding of true freedom in a monologue:

“Obedience, prayer, and fasting are laughed at, yet they alone constitute the way to real and true freedom: I cut away my superfluous and unnecessary needs, through obedience I humble and chasten my vain and proud will, and thereby, with God’s help, attain freedom of spirit, and with that, spiritual joy!”2

Dostoevsky also touches on this theme, albeit more subtly, via our old friend The Grand Inquisitor. The Grand Inquisitor, who represents the worst excesses of the Catholic Church, is preoccupied with the idea of freedom. The Inquisitor believes that Jesus was wrong to give human beings free will, since they are “forever incapable of being free, because they are feeble, depraved, nonentities and rebels.”3 What’s more, the Inquisitor says, “freedom and earthly bread in plenty for everyone are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share among themselves.”4

The Grand Inquisitor contends that the Church and its leaders must “suffer freedom” and govern the masses with rules. Left to their own devices, men are likely to prioritize their physical appetites instead of moral imperatives. In other words, when they have free will, men are too weak to choose God.

But the Grand Inquisitor misunderstands freedom. He believes that freedom is the freedom to, for man “to decide for himself, with a free heart, what is good and what is evil[.]”5

But the Grand Inquisitor is wrong. Christ did not give us the freedom to decide what is good and what is evil, but rather gave us the grace to pursue the path of righteousness despite our sinful nature. Christ gave us freedom from sin and vice and all of the other consequences of sin. All we can do is accept this freedom.

What Good Is Freedom?

Freedom is generally good. As Dostoevsky recognizes, human beings must have the chance to follow God freely.

Still, true freedom invites us to pursue the good, which in turn creates obligations. True freedom is thus inseparable from obligation. Freedom to pursue the good means pursuing our God-given vocations, including marriage, religious life, and consecrated singleness. It also means embracing our cross and following the way of God.

Many would argue that taking up the cross to walk with Jesus means anything but freedom, much as I’m sure many doubt that Christie Anderson’s sister can be free in the religious life. Yet it is the great mystery of earthly life that only self-denial results in true happiness. This paradox is at the heart of Christian teaching. As St. Francis famously said, “[I]t is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”6

The Paradox of Freedom

Arthur Brooks recently published an essay in The Atlantic about Dostoevsky and the concept of freedom, which is incredibly fortunate timing for someone who is also writing about this fairly niche subject. Brooks eloquently describes the paradox of how personal freedom can enslave us:

“We know that, in fact, unbounded freedom is most assuredly not the secret to happiness. As psychologists have long pointed out, freedom—especially in an individualistic culture—easily becomes a tyranny for precisely the kinds of reasons listed by the Grand Inquisitor.”7

Brooks elaborates by quoting Dostoevsky:

“So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship[.]”8

Freedom engenders the need for order, then. In a way, the Grand Inquisitor understood this, as he noted that Church leadership needed to make rules for the laity. Yet these rules for life should be freely chosen, as with Alyosha, who decides to join a monastery, and those who choose these rules must understand their function. Religious authority is there to guide us and not act as dictators from high. This isn’t to say hard and fast rules can’t exist; just as the Catholic Church cements dogmas through ex cathedra statements regarding certain matters, Alyosha’s monastery prohibits women from entering. What’s important is that religious people choose to obey religious strictures with some understanding of why they exist. Even if we can’t fully comprehend religious authorities’ reasoning for a certain teaching, we should understand where that authority originates and why we should follow it.

St. Augustine—that famous reformed libertine—left a wild life (not unlike that of Dmitri Karamazov) to follow Jesus. Augustine said of God, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”9 The nature of freedom is confusing, perhaps even self-contradictory, but St. Augustine described it well. The more worldly freedom we experience, the more we are often drawn to some kind of restrictive orderliness. I suspect this has much to do with the rise of veganism and ecological activism in the past few decades. There are legitimate arguments behind these movements, but certain elements mimic religious moral precepts. For many people, animal rights and rainforests have become something for which to suffer and even die.

What’s more, the desire to avoid eating meat and other rich foods, along with embracing nature, are both significantly tied to monastic and convent life. Monks and nuns fast often, and many tend to nature by maintaining elaborate gardens and beekeeping, and by nature professed religious live simple lives (with low carbon footprints). Our desire for self-abnegation has not disappeared as formal religious participation has ebbed. Perhaps that is because personal freedom will never be enough.