Freedom Without Limits

 

Introduction

This is a short essay I’ve written for my Literature class and whose topic was ‘Nowadays, everyone advocates for “freedom without limits” without taking into consideration the well-being of others. Write an essay in which you explain your view on the matter’. Despite the fact it is not a rigorously logical proof, I suppose it may be interesting. Enjoy.

Freedom Without Limits

The concept of “freedom without limits” frightens many, but the aim of this essay is to prove that the application of absolute freedom would be the most desirable state of all.

First, freedom is defined as the state in which the individual has complete control over his own life and property.

Thus, only freedom without limits is true freedom, for freedom with limits is a contradiction – one is either free or not free: either one is the sole ruler of one’s own life and property or one is not and, therefore, is at the mercy of somebody else. Therefore, anyone who attacks freedom without limits is, in effect, attacking freedom itself.

For those who fear that absolute freedom might lead to the law of the strongest, the one thing to do is consider again the definition of freedom: if each individual is the supreme judge of his own body and property, then nobody else can hold that position, nor can anyone initiate violence against him.

This being established, two axioms must be assumed: that every man has the right to sustain his own life (or the right to life), and that a man does not have the right to impose on other men the duty of supporting him, for that would amount to slavery.

Based on these two postulates, if a man intends to live, he must support himself.

If an individual were not free, then he would not own his own life and property; consequently, someone else would. In such a case, he would have to obey another individual, yielding his property—and, in the most extreme cases, his very life—without any right to resist (since his life and property would no longer belong to him). 

However, this would contradict the very axioms that every man has the right to sustain his own life and that no one should be allowed to reduce others to slavery.

Ergo, freedom is the conditio sine qua non of the right to life; thus, whoever denies freedom, denies the right to life. Since freedom without limits equates freedom and there is no state more desirable than one in which all human beings have the right to life, there is no state more desirable than freedom without limits.