Freedom

"Everywhere man is free, but everywhere he is in chains." With this phrase, Jean Jacques Rousseau was immortalized in the minds of moderns.

Freedom is based on the sovereignty of the individual. For this reason, it is defined in the negative sense--as freedom from (namely state interference). However, the modern individual is chained to behaviours, psychic automatisms and duties that require the repression of natural urges and wills. These are the requirements, or the price to pay, to be a member of society. They represent the social contract.

Nietzsche, the therapist of modern culture, begs his disciples to be free. And he is very explicit in how he wants them to be free:

You call yourself free? Your dominant thought I want to hear, and not that you have escaped from a yoke. Are you one of those who had the right to escape from a yoke? There are some that through away their last value when they threw away their servitude.

Free from what? As if that mattered to Zarathustra! But your eyes should tell me brightly: free FOR what?

What is the significance of this passage? What is Nietzsche's intention?

Freedom from is meaningless. Nothing is anything solved by running away.

Freedom for what? Free because the fate of humanity hasn't been written by a divine hand up in the sky. Free because there are many alternatives to our current reality. Not for a revaluation of values where right means left and left means right. But for a radical revaluation of values, beyond good and evil. Free for the future.

In Nietzsche's view, philosophising is not about uncovering its "truth", but about finding "health, future, growth, power, life." We cannot justify humanity by finding its purpose or meaning. Rather, we have to create our purpose and meaning.

We can't just run away from the mess we created. We must take a step-- No. We must LEAP into the unknown, become comfortable with uncertainty, and become the legislators and judges of a new set of values. For this reason, we are free.