Paradoxes of Freedom

This is a study of the historical and philosophical conception of liberty. Centring his argument upon the Romantic exaltation of freedom that followed the psychic explosion of the French Revolution, the author identifies freedom as one of the three chief transcendencies, along with love and religion, by which humanity orientates itself. Departing from contemplation of the significance of the revolutionary motto ‘live free or die’, he examines the apotheosis of freedom along with its vicissitudes, and indicates, by an examination ranging from Shakespeare and Luther to the writings of Nietzsche and Wagner, both the reasons for the supreme valuation of freedom and the nature of the hindrances, in theory and in fact, that enmesh the actual realization of freedom. The book concludes with a sombre assessment of the future of freedom as an orientating transcendence.