Having been the topic of numerous historic debates and speeches, freedom is a human concept sought after almost instinctively. Some altruistically give up their own lives and freedoms for others’, but is that cost too great for the expected return? True freedom is an asymptotic idea; a real, yet inaccessible idea which increases in difficulty to obtain just as it seems obtainable, the measure of witch often being human life and toil.

The opening line of Jean Jacque Rousseau’s The Social Contract reads as follows: “Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains” (Rousseau 1). In that first line, the major problem of defining freedom – it variability – is defined. As much as the writer of this paper wishes he were allowed to back this argument up with numerous universal truths and sound logic, a rubric is to be followed which prevents him from doing so. Instead, the backing will be extrapolated further from The Social Contract, using logic and reason the writer agrees with, however unoriginal he perceives doing so to be. In his work, Rousseau divides freedom into individual freedom and general freedom, using “will” in place of freedom. The paradox he presents expresses the conflict between an individual’s ability to act, and their responsibility to act. In essence, every person alive “may have one particular will [as a man] that is different from – or contrary to – the general will which he has as a citizen.” (2). Due to the varying degrees of wants across individuals in a population, statistically speaking, conflict of interest will arise which lowers the relative freedoms (in this case, volitions) of the population as a whole as others intervene to prevent said conflict.

The second half of the argument, regarding the cost people are willing to pay for freedom, is possibly the simplest question any person could ask. No cost is too great for freedom, even if it entails the lives of hundreds, even thousands. In his “Four Freedoms” speech, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt talks of the responsibility of the United States to protect the freedoms of the rest of the world and to give support “to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them,” (Roosevelt 44). Martin Luther King followed this principle in his march on Birmingham, for which he was jailed. His justification for doing so is that one must willingly accept the reciprocation of the actions they make, to “have a willingness to accept the penalty.” (King 326). Both sources agree that a price must be paid for freedom, one in the lives of men, and the other in the sacrifice of another’s freedoms.

It can be said, however, that freedom is a personal experience and is obtainable from the perspective lens of an individual. This is true. However, perception and absolute truth are two separate ideas and confusing one for the other would simply be classified as a logical fallacy. Referencing again to The Social Contract, freedom is a conflict of interest. As soon as attention deviates from the individual to the general or vice versa, freedoms initially ignored become prevalent. Belief in a perfect world is denial in its most basic form, although it is one society could not function without.

Freedom itself is an abstract constant. When people refer to “true freedom”, they do not refer to that universal constant, they instead refer to human freedoms; those freedoms practically accessible by the limits of the current social norm and given personality to fit the challenges faced in one’s lifetime. Even though those freedoms pose no fabric existence outside the realm of a life, their value is as unquantifiable if not more so than the freedoms themselves. This human value is what leads masses to fight and sacrifice for even the slightest glint of a sliver of freedom.

Works Cited

Rousseau, Jean Jacque. “Excerpt from The Social Contract.” Florida Collections. Orlando, FL:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215. PDF.
Roosevelt, Franklin D. “Four Freedoms.” Florida Collections. Orlando, FL. Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 2015. R22. Print.
King, Martin Luther. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Florida Collections. Orlando, FL.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015. 319-336. Print.