what is spiritual freedom essay

Natural and Spiritual Freedom

One late summer afternoon , I am sitting on top of a mountain in northern Sweden. The ocean below me is calm and stretches toward an open horizon. There is no other human being in sight and barely a sound can be heard. Only a solitary seagull is gliding on the wind. Like so many times before, I find it mesmerizing to follow a seagull as it hovers in the air and lingers over the landscape. For as long as I can remember, seagulls have been a part of my life. Every summer morning at our family house I wake up to their shrill vocals as they ascend over the mountains or descend into the sea. When we return from fishing they accompany us, waiting for their part of the daily catch. In the evenings, I often stand on the beach just to watch their line of flight. Even in foreign cities, the sight or sound of a seagull feels like a message from home and brings back a flood of memories. Yet I have never encountered a seagull the way it happens this afternoon. As the seagull stretches its wings and turns toward an adjacent mountain, I try to imagine how the wind may feel and how the landscape may appear for the seagull .

Of course, I will never know what it is like to be a seagull. Nevertheless, inhabiting the question of what it means to be a seagull leads me to the notion of freedom at the heart of this essay. In trying to apprehend a life that is so different from my own, I am reminded that I am both a natural being (in what I take myself to share with the seagull) and a spiritual being (in how I take myself to be different from the seagull).

Let me begin with what the seagull and I have in common. We are both living beings. As such there is always something at stake for us in our activities. We must do something–acquire nourishment, adapt to our environment–to sustain our lives. Likewise, both of us are capable of self-movement and self-determination. The seagull walks or flies of its own accord, and no one except the seagull can determine how long it will linger in the air before diving into the ocean to catch a fish or settling down on a mountain to rest. Furthermore, both the seagull and I are responsive to a distinction between appearance and essence, between how we take things and what they turn out to be . If the seagull dives for a fish that it takes to be edible and it turns out to be inedible, the seagull will respond by discarding the fish. This is not simply a response to stimuli but a response to stimuli in terms of what counts as food for the seagull. The seagull is not merely an object in the world but an agent for which things appear as nourishing or damaging, appealing or threatening.

The agency is especially clear if we compare the seagull with the mountain on which it lands. The mountain is not alive. The mountain was there long before the seagull or I existed–and it may be there long after we are gone–but the mountain does not care. Whether the sun is shining or the rain is pouring down, whether there are earthquakes that rip it apart or centuries of stability that leave it intact, the mountain does not care. Nothing that happens to the mountain will ever make a difference for the mountain, since it has no self-relation. For the same reason, the mountain has no capacity for self-movement and self-determination. Because nothing is at stake for the mountain, it cannot do anything and cannot relate to anything as anything. The mountain has no purpose for itself and only acquires one for a living being that makes use of it in some way (as when the seagull lands on the mountain to rest).

The seagull, by contrast, relates to the environment through its own sentience and responds to what happens in light of its own ends. For example, certain kinds of predators show up for the seagull as something to avoid and certain kinds of fish show up as something to catch. These forms of purposive activity can become much more advanced in highly developed animals, but they are all forms of what I call natural freedom . Natural freedom provides a freedom of self-movement, but only in light of imperatives that are treated as given and ends that cannot be called into question by the agent itself. As distinct from natural freedom, spiritual freedom requires the ability to ask which imperatives to follow in light of our ends, as well as the ability to call into question, challenge, and transform our ends themselves.

Philosophers often account for the difference between human beings and other animals in terms of a difference between norm-governed behavior and instinct-determined behavior. As human beings, we are socialized into a normative understanding of who to be–e.g., man or woman, black or white, working class or aristocrat–and we act in light of those social norms. In contrast, the behavior of all other animals is supposedly hardwired by their natural instincts. This way of describing the difference, however, is misleading for at least two reasons. First, an instinct is already expressive of a norm, since it specifies something that the animal ought to do and that it can fail to do (e.g., the seagull instinctually understands that it ought to eat fish and it can fail to find any fish to eat). Second, many animals can be socialized into forms of behavior that are not hardwired by their natural instincts. For example, there are cats that behave like dogs because they have been raised by huskies, and there are huskies that behave like cats because they have been raised by cats. Such behavior is clearly not hardwired by the nature of cats or dogs but acquired through a specific way in which they are raised.

The difference between human beings and other animals, then, cannot simply be explained by the difference between instincts and norms. Rather, the decisive difference is the difference between natural and spiritual freedom. Even when a cat behaves like a husky, she does not call into question the husky way of life but treats it as the given framework for her actions. She is able to learn the husky norms but not able to understand them as norms that could be otherwise. The cat cannot understand her norms as something for which she is answerable and which can be challenged by others, since she cannot hold herself responsible for the principles that govern her actions. The cat is responsive to success and failure in her pursuits, but whether the norms that govern her pursuits are valid–whether she ought to behave like a cat or a husky–is not at issue for her.

For human beings, by contrast, the validity of norms is always implicitly and potentially explicitly at issue. We act in light of a normative understanding of ourselves–of who we should be and what we should do–but we can also challenge and change our self-understanding. We are not merely governed by norms but answerable to one another for what we do and why we do it. Even when we are socialized into an identity as though it were a natural necessity–as when we are taken to belong naturally to a certain gender, race, or class–there remains the possibility of transforming, contesting, or critically overturning our understanding of who we are. Who we can be–as well as what we can do–is inseparable from how we acknowledge and treat one another. How we can change our self-understanding therefore depends on the social practices and institutions that shape the ability to lead our lives. Moreover, any ability to lead our lives can be impaired or lost by damages to our physical and psychological constitution. Yet as long as we have a self-relation–as long as we lead our lives in any way at all–the question of who we ought to be is alive for us, since it is at work in all our activities. In engaging the question “What should I do?” we are also engaging the question “Who should I be?”–and there is no final answer to that question. This is our spiritual freedom.

The difference between natural and spiritual freedom is not a matter of metaphysical substance but a difference in the practical self-relation exhibited by human beings and other animals. Many kinds of animals exhibit forms of mourning, play, courage, deliberation, suffering, and joy. They may even in some cases (as studies of primates have shown) be able to experience a conflict of choice when certain instincts or loyalties are at odds with one another. Yet no other species we have encountered is capable of transforming its understanding of what it means to be that species. Changes in the environment can cause animal species–or certain members of species–to change patterns in their behavior, but the principles in light of which they act remain the same for as long as the species exist.

In contrast, the understanding of what it means to be human–as manifested in the actual behavior of human beings–varies dramatically across history and across the world at any given moment of history. The difference between a monk who renounces filial bonds for an ascetic life in a monastery and a father who devotes his life to taking care of his children is not merely an individual difference in behavior. Rather, the two forms of life express radically different understandings of what it means to be human. The two men may not only have different degrees of courage, but what counts as courage for them is radically different. They may not only experience different degrees of grief and joy, but what counts as grief and joy for them is radically different. Even the experience of suffering is never merely a brute fact for us as human beings but an experience we understand and respond to in light of what matters to us. Such mattering is not reducible to our biological-physiological constitution; it depends on our commitments. We are certainly subject to biological constraints–and we cannot even in principle transcend all such constraints–but we can (and do) change our relation to these constraints. There is no natural way for us to be and no species requirements that can exhaustively determine the principles in light of which we act. Rather, what we do and who we take ourselves to be are inseparable from a historical-normative framework that must be upheld by us and may be transformed by us.

Let me be clear about the status of my argument. I am not asserting that only human beings are spiritually free. It is possible that we may discover other species that are spiritually free or that we may create artificial forms of life that are capable of spiritual freedom. That is an empirical question, which I do not seek to answer. My aim is not to decide which species are spiritually free, but to clarify the conditions of spiritual freedom . Whether certain other animals are spiritually free–or whether we can come to engineer living beings who are spiritually free–is a separate and subordinate question, which in itself presupposes an answer to the question of what it means to be a free, spiritual being.

Two clarifications are here in order. First, the distinction between natural and spiritual freedom is not a hierarchical distinction. That we are spiritually free does not make us inherently better than other animals, but it does mean that we are free in a qualitatively different sense. Because we can call into question the purposes of our own actions, we can hold ourselves to principles of justice, but we can also engage in forms of cruelty that go far beyond anything observed in other species. Second, the distinction between natural and spiritual freedom does not legitimize the exploitation of other animals. Many contemporary thinkers are critical of any distinction between humans and other animals since they fear that such a distinction will serve to justify sexism or racism, as well as buttress the mistreatment of other species and the willful extraction of natural resources. Yet such “post-humanism” rests on a conflation of historical facts and philosophical arguments. As a matter of historical fact, it is true that a human/animal distinction often has been employed to classify certain genders or races as “subhuman” and to legitimize ruthless exploitation of the nonhuman world. The critique of such politics is well taken, as is the reminder that we too are animals and dependent on the fate of our environment. However, it does not follow from these facts that any distinction between humans and other animals is illegitimate or politically pernicious. On the contrary, the pathos of post-humanist politics itself tacitly relies on a distinction between natural and spiritual freedom. When post-humanist thinkers take us to task for being sexist, racist, or too centered on our own species, they must assume that we are capable of calling into question the guiding principles of our actions. Otherwise it would make no sense to criticize our principles and enjoin us to adopt different ideals. Likewise, it is clear that no post-humanist thinker seriously believes that other animals are spiritually free. If they were, we should criticize not only humans but also other animals for being sexist and too centered on the well-being of their own species.

To deny the distinction between natural and spiritual freedom is therefore an act of bad faith. Any political struggle for a better treatment of other animals–or for a more respectful relation to the natural environment–requires spiritual freedom. We have to be able to renounce our prior commitments and hold ourselves to a new ideal. No one is inclined to place the same demands on other animals because we implicitly understand the distinction between natural and spiritual freedom. It would be absurd to reproach the seagull for eating fish, but it can make sense for me to stop eating other animals, since I am capable of transforming my relation to the norms that structure my world. For a naturally free being like the seagull, there is a normative “ought” that guides its actions (e.g., to eat fish in order to survive), but it cannot call into question the norm–the ought–itself. Natural freedom has a single ought structure, since the agent cannot question its guiding principles and ask itself what it should do. Spiritual freedom, by contrast, is characterized by a double ought structure. As a spiritually free being, I can ask myself what I should do, since I am answerable not only for my actions but also for the normative principles that guide my actions. There are not only demands concerning what I ought to do; there is also the question if I ought to do what I supposedly ought to do.

To be clear, our spiritual freedom does not entail that we can question all the norms of our lives at once, and we are not free to invent our principles out of nothing. Rather, our spiritual freedom should be understood in terms of the philosophical model that is known as Neurath’s boat. “We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry dock,” we learn from the famous argument by the philosopher of science Otto Neurath. “Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. By using the old beams and driftwood, the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.” Neurath presented his boat as a model for the acquisition and transformation of scientific knowledge, but his boat analogy can help us to grasp the conditions for any form of spiritual freedom. In leading my life, I cannot retreat to an unshakable foundation or a view from nowhere. I find myself in Neurath’s boat, which is out on the open sea from the beginning until the end. Who I can be–how my boat is built–depends on socially shared norms, which I am bound to uphold, challenge, or transform through what I do. I can alter or replace parts of the boat, as long as enough of the other parts remain in place to keep myself afloat. I can even undertake major renovations, but my life depends on maintaining some form of integrity. Even if I try to wreck the boat–or try to refrain from repairing the boat so that it will sink–I have to sustain that decision with integrity for it to be my decision; I have to try to wreck the boat and try to give up my life.

I can ask myself what I am doing with my life and transform the commitments that define who I am. Yet all such transformations are possible only from the practical standpoint of trying to lead my life, just as all renovations of the boat are possible only from a practical standpoint that is trying to maintain the integrity of the boat. Even when I question who I am–even when I tear planks from the bottom of the boat–the questioning itself only makes sense because I am committed to having integrity as a person. To grasp anything as part of my life–as something that I do or experience–is not a theoretical observation of myself but a practical activity of spiritual self-maintenance in which I am always engaged.

The activity of spiritual self-maintenance should not be conflated with self-preservation, and it is not necessarily conservative, since it is the condition of possibility for all forms of self-transformation. For anything I do to be intelligible as my action–and for anything that happens to be intelligible as something that I experience–I have to grasp it as part of my life. Moreover, since my life always runs the risk of falling apart, I must always sustain or renew my life in practice. The form of my self-consciousness is not primarily an explicit reflection regarding who I am but the implicit activity of spiritual self-maintenance that is built into everything I do and everything I experience. The integrity of my life cannot be established once and for all but is inherently fragile. Indeed, the fragility of integrity–the risk of breaking apart and sinking to the bottom of the sea–is a necessary part of why it matters to maintain any form of integrity in the first place.

For the same reason, my self-consciousness cannot place me outside of my life. Even in my most explicit forms of self-reflection, I cannot be detached. On the contrary, my self-consciousness only exists in and through the practical activity of sustaining my life, which means that there is no contemplative self to which I can withdraw. Even the project of retreating into passivity is still a project that requires my engagement–a project to which I have to hold myself–and by the same token a project that I can transform or call into question. This practical activity of leading my life is the minimal form of my self-consciousness and the condition of my spiritual freedom.

The distinction between natural and spiritual freedom proceeds from the secular notion of life that underlies all my arguments. From a religious perspective, a life that ends in death is meaningless and without purpose. For life to have meaning and purpose, it must ultimately be grounded or absorbed in something that is infinite–something that will never die. My argument is, on the contrary, that any purpose of life depends on the prospect of death. This is not to say that death is the purpose of life. Death is not a purpose, not a completion or fulfillment of anything, but rather the irrevocable loss of life. The point, however, is that nothing can be at stake in life–that no purpose can matter–without running the risk of death. Life can matter only in light of death.

Our individual and collective efforts to sustain life bear witness to our relation to death. It is a central feature of our spiritual life that we remember the dead, just as it is a central feature of our spiritual life that we seek to be remembered after our death. This importance of memory–of recollection–is inseparable from the risk of forgetting. Our fidelity to past generations is animated by the sense that they live on only insofar as we sustain their memory, just as we will live on only insofar as future generations sustain the memory of us. This form of living on should not be conflated with a religious notion of eternal life. If we are compelled to keep the memory of the dead–if we make ourselves responsible for keeping them alive in us–it is because we recognize that they are dead. Likewise, if we are concerned that we will be remembered after we are gone, it is because we recognize that we will be dead. Without the prospect of death–without the prospect that our lives will be lost forever–there would be no purpose in maintaining either natural or spiritual life. Life cannot make sense as life without death. Only a finite life can make sense as a life . This is the argument that I will deepen here, in showing how finitude is the condition of possibility for both any form of natural life and any form of spiritual life.

The starting point for my argument is the concept of life as characterized by self-maintenance. A living being cannot simply exist but must sustain and reproduce itself through its own activity. The concept of self-maintenance underlies all definitions of living organisms and living systems as self-organizing. To be alive is necessarily to have a self-relation, and any self-relation consists in the activity of self-maintenance. Nonliving entities do not have any form of self-relation because they are not doing anything to maintain their own existence. A stone simply lies on the ground for an indefinite amount of time. Whether the stone is moved or broken has nothing to do with an activity of its own. This is the categorical distinction between the nonliving and the living. Entities that exist without the activity of self-maintenance are intelligible neither as living nor as dead but as nonliving . In contrast, an entity is intelligible as living if its existence depends on its own activity of maintaining itself. If the activity of self-maintenance ceases, the entity is intelligible no longer as living but as dead .

Philosophically considered, the concept of life must be distinguished from specific biological forms of life. To assume that life depends on specific forms of biology is question begging. We cannot define life merely by listing the traits we encounter in various species of life, since this begs the question of what makes it possible to identify these species as species of life in the first place. Current biological notions of life confirm the concept of life as self-maintenance, but they do not exhaust all possible forms of life. The concept of life is formal in the sense that it is not specific to a certain substance or substrate. We may be able to engineer forms of life that rely on an artificial substrate, and we may discover species of life (e.g., on other planets) that do not exhibit the carbon base of our currently known forms of life.

The philosophical question is what makes any life intelligible as a life. Identifying a material substance or a set of material properties is not by itself sufficient to make something intelligible as living. Rather, an entity is intelligible as living only insofar as it exhibits the purposive activity of self-maintenance. If E.T. lands in your living room, you can make sense of him as a living being, even though he is made of a material that you have never seen before. Likewise, if you land on another planet, whether the entities you encounter are living or not depends on the activity they exhibit rather than on the material of which they are made.

Which kinds of material substrates are compatible with living activity is an empirical question that cannot be settled in advance. The philosophical task is to deduce the necessary features of life from the formal characteristic of self-maintenance. What is at stake is the very idea of life–all the way from the most elementary forms of natural life to the most elevated forms of spiritual life.

The first feature we can deduce is that life must be inherently finite. The purposive activity of self-maintenance presupposes that the life of the living being depends on the activity, which is to say that the living being would disintegrate and die if it were not maintaining itself. Without this prospect of death, the purpose of self-maintenance would be unintelligible. Living activity is intelligible only for someone or something that has to keep itself alive in relation to an immanent possibility of death. If life could not be lost, there would be no vital interest in the activity of self-maintenance.

The second feature we can deduce is that life must be dependent on a fragile material body. Life cannot be reduced to a specific material substrate, but it requires some form of material body that is in need of self-maintenance. The material body of a life must be fragile in the sense that it must run the risk of disintegrating or ceasing to function. If the living being were not dependent on a fragile material body, there would be neither a subject nor an object of self-maintenance. To be alive is necessarily to be engaged in the activity of sustaining a material body that may cease to be animated.

The third feature we can deduce is that there must be an asymmetrical relation of dependence between the living and the nonliving. Any form of animation necessarily has a relation to the inanimate (the prospect of its own death), but the inverse argument does not hold. Inanimate matter does not need any form of animation in order to exist. While the living cannot exist without a relation to nonliving matter, nonliving matter can exist without any relation to the living. This is why it is intelligible that a material universe can exist before there are any living beings and why it is intelligible that a material universe can remain after all forms of life are extinguished. The very existence of life is a fragile and destructible phenomenon.

The concept of life as self-maintaining must therefore be distinguished from any idea of life as self-sufficient. The form of self-maintenance is not a form of sovereignty but a form of finitude. The reason a living being must maintain and reproduce itself is that it is not self-sufficient but susceptible to disintegration and death.

These features of the concept of life make any life intelligible as a life. To be alive is a formally distinctive way of being an entity, which is characterized by the self-maintaining activity of a fragile material being. The concept of life has two genera, which I call natural life and spiritual life. In keeping with the concept of life itself, the genera of life are defined not in terms of material substances or material properties but in terms of two different forms of life-activities. The genera of natural and spiritual life are two formally distinctive ways of being a living being, which are characterized by natural and spiritual freedom, respectively.

The genus of natural life comprises all species that exhibit the traits of natural freedom. Any species that is engaged in the purposive activity of self-maintenance–while being unable to call into question the purpose of the activity itself–belongs to the genus of natural life. The genus of natural life thereby encompasses all known species of life except human beings, all the way from plants to the most advanced primates. While these forms of life are vastly different, they all belong to the genus of natural life insofar as they remain within the bounds of natural freedom. Any forms of life that we would be able to engineer–and any forms of life that we would discover on other planets–would also formally belong to the genus of natural life, insofar as the life activities of these species were restricted to a form of natural freedom.

The first trait of natural freedom is the activity of self-reproduction. Any form of natural life is acting for the sake of self-preservation or the preservation of the species and thereby exhibits a fundamental form of self-determination. The continuous reproduction of the individual organism across a lifetime, as well as its possible replication or procreation in the form of other individuals, is an expression of the natural freedom of self-determination. The capacity for self-determination can vary greatly among different species of natural life. There is a vast difference between a plant that can replicate merely by disseminating its seeds or an insect that necessarily dies in the act of copulation, and an animal that can survive its own act of procreation to live on with its descendants. The latter has a greater capacity for self-determination, since it can care for its own progeny and recognize itself in a generational chain, rather than being immediately subsumed by the reproduction of the species. Yet all these forms of life remain within the bounds of natural freedom, insofar as they cannot call into question the purpose of procreation and cannot transform the given ends of generational life.

The second trait of natural freedom is the ability of a living being to bear a negative self-relation. When faced with adversity, a living being does not passively submit to what happens but engages in some form of active resistance in accordance with its own self-determination. Even in disease or other forms of internal rupture, a living being is not simply negated but maintains itself in the negative experience of suffering. A stone, by contrast, cannot suffer from anything, since it has no self-relation and no ability to bear the negative within itself. The latter ability is a minimal condition for the natural freedom of self-determination. The ability to bear a negative self-relation makes it possible for a living being to strive to be itself, even when the striving entails great difficulty and pain. Moreover, the striving to be itself is intrinsic to any form of life. A living being always has to continue striving, not because it is incomplete or necessarily lacking anything but because it has to keep itself alive. There is no final goal or completion of life, since life can come to an end only in death. Even in its fullest actuality, a living being must continue to strive to be alive, since life is essentially a temporal activity. The relation to the negative cannot be eliminated, since a living being is subject to constant alteration and has to maintain itself as it changes across time. The relation to the negative is therefore internal to the living being itself and part of its positive constitution.

The third trait of natural freedom is the relation to a surplus of time. The striving self-maintenance of a living being necessarily generates more lifetime than is required to secure the means of survival, so there is at least a minimal amount of “free time” for every living being. The capacity to engage with free time is of course something that varies greatly among different species of natural life. Even a simple plant generates free time in itself, since it does not necessarily have to devote all its time to absorbing the light, water, and other forms of nourishment that are needed for its sustenance. If you remove a plant from any form of nourishment, it can still survive for a period of time, which is why the plant is a source of surplus. A plant, however, does not have the capacity to use its free time for itself, insofar as there is no activity that is distinct from the activity of self-preservation in the life of plants. In contrast, animals that can play games, explore new aspects of their environment, or be absorbed in purring, have a capacity for self-enjoyment that is distinct from self-preservation. Through this capacity, they are able not only to generate free time in themselves but also to enjoy their free time for themselves. In the free time of self-enjoyment, animals exceed the realm of necessity that is defined by self-preservation and open the realm of freedom. Yet even animals with highly refined capacities for self-enjoyment remain within the bounds of natural freedom, insofar as they cannot ask themselves how they should spend their time and thereby cannot relate to their time as free.

The seagull is once again an instructive example. Like all living beings, the seagull is acting in relation to its own death. Even the most elementary purposive behavior of a living organism (the purpose of maintaining the life of the organism and the species) only makes sense in relation to the prospect of death. Yet the purpose of maintaining the life of the organism and the species is not itself in question for the seagull. The seagull is always acting in light of that purpose and is therefore restricted to a form of natural freedom. For us, on the contrary, the purpose of our lives is itself in question. Even when we are completely devoted to what we do and who we take ourselves to be, our fundamental commitments can come into question. We can wake up in the middle of the night, asking ourselves what we are doing with our lives. What used to be utterly meaningful can lose its grip and what we do can cease to make sense to us. These forms of existential anxiety can be paralyzing (as in boredom or depression), but they can also transform, change, and reinvigorate our commitments. Existential anxiety is a sign of our spiritual freedom. It is because our fundamental commitments are not given that we can bind ourselves to an ideal rather than a natural purpose. Moreover, it is because our fundamental commitments are mutable and may fall apart that we can even engage the question of what to do with our lives.

Rachel Cusk

Renaissance women, fady joudah, you might also like, turning the soil, new perspectives, enduring writing..

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What is Spiritual Freedom?

Most of us are very aware of what it looks like and feels like to be emotionally or physically oppressed in our humanity. Whether it’s spiritually, as in fear, stress, rejection, guilt, and bitterness; or physically, as in diseases, disorders, and infirmities. But what does true spiritual freedom look like? God provides truth in His Word that helps us overcome the enemy’s works and oppression in our lives and leads us into spiritual freedom as overcomers.

Spiritual freedom is an opportunity we’ve all been given

Christ Jesus came to offer an opportunity for us to be freed from oppression and from the curse of sin and death and to live in wholeness and spiritual freedom. He says this in His Word:

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. John 8:36 KJV

The word ‘Free’ in this scripture as defined from the original Greek text is this: unrestrained (to go at pleasure), i.e. (as a citizen), not a slave (whether freeborn or manumitted), or (genitive case) exempt (from obligation or liability):—free (person), at liberty.

This freedom sets us in a position of being accepted by God, as a ‘citizen’ of God’s spiritual kingdom. God takes this position a step further in His Word, and says that not only are we citizens but accepted sons and daughters of Go d!

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. Romans 8:15 KJV

Submission to God is a key to spiritual freedom

As long as we serve sin or iniquity in any area of our life, in that area, we are in bondage to sin and death. However, when we choose to pursue God’s heart and His ways, we submit ourselves to His righteousness through obedience. This is a key to spiritual freedom.

Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? Romans 6:16 KJV

What Spiritual Freedom is not

When we hear the words “righteousness” or “obedience” we may be triggered into a pattern of drivenness and performance to do things “right” and “correct,” striving for perfection. This performance-based behavior is relying on ourselves and our own understanding, and does not operate by God’s leading and in submission to Him. It keeps us from being able to accept and receive Christ Jesus’ free gift from the cross. The enemy can be tricky because he can use even godly principles and turn them into a form of bondage and oppression again through religious spirits and fear.

God’s ways vs. our ways

Romans 8 is a powerful example of the difference between walking in righteousness according to God’s Spirit or bondage to the law through works. A person can do the “right thing” yet be motivated by the wrong spirit and still be separated from God.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. 5 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. 6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Romans 8:1-6 KJV

God provided a way to spiritual freedom through Christ Jesus

God knows, according to Romans 8:3, that as humans, we are weak in the flesh to fulfill the law. So rather than putting His foot down and rubbing our faces in our weakness, He provided a better way; a more excellent way .

In Luke, Christ Jesus defines His purpose for coming to the Earth by referring to a prophecy of Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. Luke 4:18 KJV

Christ Jesus came to represent the truth to us and destroy the works of the enemy in our lives. He put the keys in our hands so that we could choose to walk away from the bondage and oppression of the enemy’s camp and back into our Father’s house where we can find peace and safety. He desires to lead us to the spirit of freedom, yet He still gives us the option to make a personal choice to follow Him. This is not a single event but a journey of growing in our relationship, trust, and submission to God once we’ve received Him as our Lord and Savior. At Be in Health, we call this our overcomers’ journey.

The Holy Spirit is essential for spiritual freedom

When He left this Earth to go up to Heaven and sit at the right hand of His Father, Jesus Christ said that He would not leave us comfortless . So Father God sent us His Holy Spirit. This was like Him giving us an open phone line straight up to the throne of grace to bridge the gap between our physical dimension and God’s spiritual reality. The Holy Spirit is our helper and our lifeline so we are never alone on our journey of walking into the spirit of freedom.

If ye love me, keep my commandments. 16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; 17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. 18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. John 14:15-18 KJV

The Holy Spirit is also the power of God living in us, giving us the authority in Jesus Christ’s name to destroy the works of the devil in our lives and in the earth.

Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Luke 10:19 KJV

The enemy wants to sever our lifeline to spiritual freedom

The enemy desperately fears the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Therefore, he will do whatever he can to sever that lifeline to God and to pull us back into bondage. One tactic he uses is to keep us focused on our self and our personal, physical, or emotional issues. He will try to rob us of our hope and our joy and try to bring in accusation, fear, guilt, shame , bitterness , and whatever else he can. He will try to make anything and anyone other than himself seem like our enemy so that we will get caught up and be separated from God, others, and even ourselves.

The fruit of righteousness is a key to spiritual freedom

John 14:15 says that if we love Him, we will keep His commandments. So righteousness works by the leading of the Holy Spirit, and is fulfilled by the fruit of love in our hearts. If our agreement with the enemy causes separatio n from God, ourselves, and/or others, love is the glue that brings us back to spirit of freedom and holds us in the Kingdom of God. In fact, the Word says that by love the whole law is fulfilled.

Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned. 1 Timothy 1:5 KJV

The word ‘charity’ directly translated from the Greek is the English word ‘love.’ The phrase, ‘faith unfeigned’ means undisguised or sincere faith. We cannot always lean on our own understanding of what this freedom looks like or feels like. The love of God is not something that we can force or fabricate, but it is a work of the Holy Spirit that lines our heart up with the love of God and His Word. This verse encompasses the completeness of spirit of freedom in God our Father.

How do we get a pure heart?

God helps us purify our hearts through submission to Him. If He exposes a work of the enemy we can be diligent to repent for our agreement with it and remove it , and we also need to remain teachable and open to God’s leading and guidance.

Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 KJV

What does God’s love look like?

Love is not a mere emotion. According to the Word of God, love is God’s very nature; it’s who He is. When we understand His nature, we will have a better point of reference to understand who He is in us and through us as a work of the Holy Spirit. God’s character and nature are clearly defined in Galatians 5 and 1 Corinthians 13 .

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23 KJV Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; 6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 8 Charity never faileth… 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 KJV

If the Word says that God is love, that’s what we should be too. 1 Corinthians 13 defines for us what that love really i s. This is the love that God already has for us that He wants us to believe and receive, and then He wants to form it in us so that we can represent Him to others. By abiding in His love, we will receive the wholeness of spiritual freedom in our lives.

Discernment is essential for true spiritual freedom

We need not let fear, guilt, sham e, and condemnation have power in our lives. We need to learn how to recognize them and know how to overcome them. We must also learn how to pick ourselves back up again if we fall because we know that God does not define us according to our failures but according to t he person that He created us to be from the foundation of the world.

Psalm 103 is a beautiful glimpse of how our Father in Heaven, Jesus Christ, sees us and deals with us:

The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. 9 He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever. 10 He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. 11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. 12 As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. 13 Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. 14 For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we [are] dust. Psalm 103:8-14 KJV

Can we receive the fullness of forgiveness from Him?

Can we receive forgiveness from God, leave the past in the past, and move forward into our future in Him? Can we have that same sort of mercy for ourselves and for others that our Father has for us?

True spirit of freedom is not perfection. It’s being open and pliable to the Holy Spirit to shape us and form us more and more into the image of our Father, moment by moment. Spirit of freedom is not a feeling, emotion, or event. It’s a state of being. It’s not passive or something that happens once and we’re “good enough.” It’s a journey of actively pursuing our Father’s heart and overcoming those areas in our life that are not from Him, yet still being at peace with ourselves and loving ourselves where we are at in our current state.

Being spiritually free is our most normal state of being in life

Spirit of freedom is having a firm foundation of the truth from God’s Word established in our hearts so that we can stand our ground against the enemy and overcome him in our own life. Spiritual freedom is being who we were truly created to be , receiving God’s love and, in turn, loving God, loving ourselves, and loving others. True freedom is the joy of experiencing the unfeigned fruit of the Spirit as it flows from our heart that has been made pure by the washing of the water of the Word.

What is spiritual freedom? Spiritual freedom is a treasure!

Spiritual freedom is a treasure to be pursued. Yet it is not just a moment that happens overnight. We have to allow God to help us grow up into it; He can strengthen us and mature us in our spiritual growth. We need to develop strength and enduranc e in this race. We may run through different levels of spirit of freedom as we walk out of more and more of the enemy’s bondage.

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Hebrew 12:1 KJV

Spiritual freedom is part of your personal story and journey through life.

So, dear brothers and sisters, will you choose at this moment to grab hold of your Heavenly Father’s hand in meekness and allow Him to lead you as His child so that you can grow up in Him? If spiritual freedom is your desire, will you pursue His heart and His righteousness with your whole heart?

Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Psalm 37:4 KJV

The Be in Health® Team

If you found this article or any of our other articles helpful, please share this link with your friends and family!

Would you like to read more articles like this.

• What Does the Bible Say About Trusting in God? – by David Levitt Trusting God is essential to our overcomers’ journey because without his help, we are helpless in our journey to spiritual freedom. He needs to be our source and through Him we can overcome the enemy’s strongholds in our lives.
• What Does the Bible Say About Trials and Temptations? – by Pastor Adrienne Shales God didn’t say that life would be easy. However, He did say that He would help us through every trial and temptation that we encounter. Discover how you can walk in spiritual freedom even through hardships with God’s help.
• God’s Character in Us – Growing the Fruit of the Spirit Learning how to walk in spiritual freedom is a process of removing the old ways that the enemy has trained us in and growing up in God’s ways and into His image. Discover the image that He created us in before the foundation of the world. Who are you really?

Here are some resources on this topic

His Ways Versus Our Ways – a Teaching by Dr. Henry W. Wright

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Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom

Other essays.

Divine sovereignty, which is that God exercises efficacious, universal, and loving control over all things, is compatible with human freedom in that humans are free to do what they want to do, although God is sovereign over our desires.

The sovereignty of God is the same as the lordship of God, for God is the sovereign over all of creation. The major components of God’s lordship are his control, authority, and presence. To discuss the sovereignty of God, though, is to focus particularly on the aspect of control, though this should not bracket God’s authority and gracious presence out of the discussion. The control that God exercises over all things is both efficacious and universal; there is not one thing outside of his control. This even extends to human sin and faith. However, people still remain free and God remains innocent of sin. This is because humans have the freedom to do whatever it is that they want, while their desires are in turn decided by their natures, situations, and, ultimately, God.

The term sovereignty is rarely found in recent translations of Scripture, but it represents an important biblical concept. A sovereign is a ruler, a king, a lord, and Scripture often refers to God as the one who rules over all. His most common proper name, Yahweh (see Ex. 3:14) is regularly translated Lord in the English Bible. And Lord, in turn, is found there over 7,000 times as a name of God and specifically as a name of Jesus Christ. So, to discuss the sovereignty of God is to discuss the lordship of God—that is, to discuss the Godness of God, the qualities that make him to be God.

The major components of the biblical concept of divine sovereignty or lordship are God’s control , authority , and presence (see John Frame, The Doctrine of God , 21–115). His control means that everything happens according to his plan and intention. Authority means that all his commands ought to be obeyed. Presence means that we encounter God’s control and authority in all our experience, so that we cannot escape from his justice or from his love.

When theologians discuss divine sovereignty and human freedom, however, they usually focus on only one of these three aspects of God’s sovereignty, what I have called his control. This aspect will be in focus in the remainder of this article, but we should keep in mind that God’s control over the world is only one aspect of his rule. When we consider only his control, we tend to forget that his rule is also gracious, gentle, intimate, covenantal, wise, good, and so on. God’s sovereignty is an exercise of all his divine attributes, not just his causal power.

God’s Sovereign Control

It is important to have a clear idea of God’s sovereign control of the world he has made. That control is a major part of the context in which God reveals himself to Israel as Yahweh, the Lord. That revelation comes to Israel when that nation is in slavery to Egypt. When he reveals his name to Moses, he promises a powerful deliverance:

But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go. (Ex. 3:19–20)

I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.’” (Exo 6:7–8)

God shows Israel that he truly is the Lord by defeating the greatest totalitarian empire of the ancient world and by giving Israel a homeland in the land promised centuries before to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Nothing can defeat Israel’s sovereign. He will keep his promise, displaying incredible controlling power, or he is not the Lord.

God’s control is efficacious :

Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. (Ps. 115:3)

Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps. (Ps. 135:6)

The Lord of hosts has sworn: “As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand, that I will break the Assyrian in my land, and on my mountains trample him underfoot; and his yoke shall depart from them, and his burden from their shoulder.” This is the purpose that is purposed concerning the whole earth, and this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations. For the Lord of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back? (Isa. 14:24–27)

Also henceforth I am he [Yahweh]; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work, and who can turn it back?” (Isa .43:13)

…so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isa. 55:11)

‘The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens. (Rev. 3:7)

Not only is God’s control efficacious, it is also universal . It governs every event that takes place anywhere in the universe. Firstly, the events of the natural world come from his hand (Ps. 65:9–11, 135:6–7, 147:15–18, Matt. 5:45, 6:26–30, 10:29–30, Luke 12:4–7). Secondly, the details of human history come from God’s plan and his power. He determines where people of every nation will dwell (Acts 17:26). Thirdly, God determines the events of each individual human life (Ex. 21:12–13, 1 Sam. 2:6–7, Ps. 37:23–24, 139:13–16, Jer. 1:5, Eph. 1:4, James 4:13–16). Fourthly, God governs the free decisions we make (Prov. 16:9) including our attitudes toward others (Ex. 34:24, Judg. 7:22, Dan. 1:9, Ezra 6:22).

More problematically, God foreordains people’s sins (Ex. 4:4, 8, 21, 7:3, 13, 9:12, 10:1, 20, 27, Deut. 2:30, Josh. 11:18–20, 1 Sam. 2:25, 16:14, 1 Kings 22:20–23, 2 Chron. 25:20, Ps. 105:24, Isa. 6:9–10, 10:6, 63:17, Rom. 9:17–18, 11:7–8, 2 Cor. 2:15–16). But lastly, he is also the God of grace, who sovereignly ordains that people will come to faith and salvation :

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:4–10)

Therefore, salvation is God’s work from beginning to end, doing for us what we could never dream of doing for ourselves.

If we need any further evidence of the efficacy and universality of God’s sovereign control, here are passages that summarize the doctrine:

Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? 38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? (Lam. 3:37)

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (Rom. 8:28)

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. (Eph. 1:11)

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Rom. 11:33)

Human Freedom

So the question posed by the title of this article is very pointed. Granted the overwhelming power of God’s sovereign control, its efficacy and universality, how can human freedom have any significance at all?

The term freedom has been taken in various senses. In our current discussion, two of these are particularly relevant: (1) compatibilism, which is the freedom to do what you want to do, and (2) libertarianism , which is the freedom to do the opposite of everything you choose to do. Compatibilism indicates that freedom is compatible with causation. Someone may force me to eat broccoli; but if that is something I want to do anyway, I do it freely in the compatibilist sense.  Alternatively, if you have libertarian freedom, your choices are in no sense caused or constrained, either by your nature, your experience, your history, your own desires, or God. Libertarianism is sometimes called “incompatibilism,” because it is inconsistent with necessity or determination. If someone forces me to eat broccoli, I am not free, in the libertarian sense, to eat it or not eat it. On a libertarian account, any kind of “forcing” removes freedom.

In ordinary life, when we talk about being “free,” we usually have the compatibilist sense in mind. I am free when I do what I want to do. Usually, when someone asks me if I am free, say, to walk across the street, I don’t have to analyze all sorts of questions about causal factors in order to answer the question. If I am able to do what I want to do, then I am free, and that’s all there is to it. In the Bible, human beings normally have this kind of freedom. God told Adam not to eat of the forbidden fruit, but Adam had the power to do what he wanted. In the end, he and Eve did the wrong thing, but they did it freely. God’s sovereignty didn’t prevent Adam from doing what he wanted to do.

Our earlier discussion shows, however, that according to the Bible human beings do not have libertarian freedom:  As we have seen, God ordains what we will choose to do, so he causes our choices. We are not free to choose the contrary of what he chooses for us to do. Scripture also teaches that the condition of our heart constrains our decisions, so there are no unconstrained human decisions, decisions that are free in the libertarian sense.

People sometimes think that we must have libertarian freedom, for how can we be morally responsible if God controls our choices? That is a difficult question. The ultimate answer is that moral responsibility is up to God to define. He is the moral arbiter of the universe. This is the exact question that comes up in Romans 9:

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? (Rom. 9:19–24)

This passage rules out any attempt to argue libertarian freedom as a basis of moral responsibility.

Nevertheless, we should remember that even this passage presupposes freedom in the compatibilist sense: God prepared the two kinds of vessels, each for their respective destiny. He made the honorable vessels so that they would appropriately receive honor, and vice versa. When a human being trusts in Christ, he does what he wants to do and therefore acts freely in the compatibilist sense. We know from that choice that God has prepared him beforehand to make that choice freely. That divine preparation is grace. The believer did not earn the right to receive that divine preparation. But he responds, as he must, by freely embracing Christ. Without that free choice of Christ, prepared beforehand by God himself, it is impossible for anyone to be saved.

Further Reading

• Benjamin B. Warfield, Biblical Doctrines
• Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority
• Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology
• D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension . See book summary here .
• J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God
• John Frame, The Doctrine of God
• John Frame, No Other God: a Response to Open Theism
• John MacArthur, “ What is the Relationship Between Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility? ”
• Scott Christensen, What About Free Will? Reconciling Our Choices with Divine Sovereignty . See book summary here .
• Vern Poythress, Chance and the Sovereignty of God . See book review here .

This essay is part of the Concise Theology series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material. If you are interested in translating our content or are interested in joining our community of translators,  please reach out to us .

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What Is Freedom? How Do We Become Free?

• Colin Smith Unlocking the Bible
• Updated Jun 29, 2023

As a culture, we want to feel that we are in control of our lives, and especially that we are in control of the things that matter most. That includes our salvation . You hear this all the time on the talk shows: “You can be anything you want to be.” That’s the spirit of our culture. But there are some things you cannot be, that only Jesus can free you to be. So, Jesus is telling us that this simply is not true.

We are not as free as we think we are. In John 8:31-34 , Jesus addresses the Jews about what makes a person truly free:

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free? Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”

“Anyone who sins.” That’s all of us. By nature, “All of us are slaves to sin.” Our Lord is not saying that sinning makes you a slave. He is saying that your slavery makes you sin. Our sinning is the evidence of our slavery and it is universal. By nature, we are not as free as we think we are.

What Kind of Freedom Do We Have?

We make real choices and we make them freely.

We are responsible for the choices that we make.

We cannot blame other people for our choices. You can’t blame God or the devil. You can’t blame your wife, your husband, or your friend for your choices. Adam tried that: “The woman gave me the fruit.” That won’t work, Adam. You ate it. That was your choice and you are responsible for it.

God has created the world in such a way that we have real choices and real responsibility. The big question lies deeper:  Why do we choose what we choose? Why do we do what we do?

We choose according to the prevailing desires of our heart.

“Free will” is a slippery term. The Bible never uses it, and people mean different things by it. If you want to talk about “free will,” always remember that the freedom we have is the freedom to follow the deepest desires of our own hearts.

I was talking to someone recently who said to me, “I reinvent myself every five years.” How far can you go with that? You can change jobs, you can change where you live, or you can change your appearance—the color of your hair, your eyes, lose weight and get a new wardrobe—but you cannot change yourself.

Your mind is still your mind, your heart is still your heart, and your will is still your will. Can the leopard change its spots? No, only God can make you a new creation. Only God can save you.

Christ Tells Us That He Can Make Us Free

If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. ( John 8:36 )

Christ does not drag you, kicking and screaming, against your will to follow him. What does he do? God shines his light into your mind and pours his love into your heart.

When God works in us, the will is changed under the sweet influence of the Spirit of God…It desires and acts, not of compulsion, but of its own desire and spontaneous inclination .

Does this mean that we always choose what is good after we have been regenerated and become Christians? No. The freedom Christ promises in this life is not freedom from the  struggle with sin, but freedom from  slavery to sin.

You will be tempted in many ways, and often you will fail. The prevailing disposition of your soul is not the only disposition of your soul. There may be times when you fall into pride or lust or lies, but at the core of your being, you know that is not what you want. You want to honor Christ because you are a new creation in him.

Our freedom in Christ makes sense of our struggles with sin, brings us enduring hope in Jesus Christ, gives glory to God for his saving work in us, and gives us confidence that God is faithful and will keep us in his grip until Christ comes, and into eternity.

So be who you are! True freedom is when what God calls you to do and what you most want to do turn out to be the same thing. That is the freedom Christ gives. If you have this freedom you are free indeed!

This article originally appeared on unlockingtheBible.org . Used with permission.

Colin Smith (@PastorColinS) is senior pastor of The Orchard Evangelical Free Church in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and a Council member with The Gospel Coalition.

Photo Courtesy: Thinkstock

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Reflections on christianity and freedom.

By: William Inboden

December 17, 2012

Yet as a theological principle, Christianity’s emphasis on the interior and eternal dimensions of freedom establishes a foundation for some of the exterior and temporal dimensions of freedom, including freedom of conscience and freedom from religious coercion. Thus Christ’s famous command to “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17) was not just a directive that his followers obey the civic authorities, but also a declaration distinguishing between the areas of life that Caesar was competent to rule in, and those he was not. The interior freedom promised by Christianity had at least an exterior implication.

Any inquiry into the relationship between Christianity and religious freedom soon encounters a paradox of history. Christianity has been associated with some of the most notorious episodes of religious intolerance in history, yet Christianity is also associated with some of the greatest advances of religious freedom in history. Indeed, it is these former instances that are often cited as examples of the alleged hypocrisy of Christianity: the Spanish Inquisition, the burning of Servetus in Geneva, the social constraints of Puritanism, and so on. But the accompanying historical record of the Christian tradition’s role in the realization and advance of religious liberty bears another witness. Indeed, perhaps it is this implicit (and sometimes explicit) expectation that the Christian faith support religious freedom that accounts for the severe judgments incurred when it has not. One way to view the unfolding of church history is as an ongoing interaction between the biblical principles described at the outset and the human experience. This historical drama in turn has produced some consequential figures who, in drawing on the theological resources of the Christian tradition during times of great tumult, laid key foundation stones in the development of religious liberty as a political right. Three of them, discussed below, are Martin Luther, Roger Williams, and Charles Malik.

Luther’s appearance in 1521 before the Diet of Worms is regarded by Protestants as a landmark theological moment, but it was also a landmark moment for religious liberty as well. The words of his famous refusal to recant his teachings and writings are instructive: “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason…my conscience is captive to the Word of God, I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.” While Luther’s primary concern was defending his theological convictions about salvation and ecclesial authority, the basis of his appeal was liberty of conscience – a precedent that countless other religious dissenters who followed would take as their lodestar. Luther soon applied this insight to his understanding of the very nature of religious faith. “Faith is a free work to which no one can be forced. It is a divine work in the spirit. Let alone then that outward force should compel or create it.” For Luther, his belief that Christian salvation began as a sovereign act of God led naturally to the conclusion that the State had no competence to interfere. To be sure, in practice Luther did not always honor the spirit or letter of these insights, but more important is the precedent he set for those who later did. Historian Roland Bainton has described religious liberty as one of the signature legacies of the Protestant Reformation. “The age of the Reformation prepared the way [for religious liberty] in the realm of fact by breaking the monopoly of a single confession, and in the realm of idea elaborated all of the salient concepts which in the West came into their own through the Enlightenment.”

One hundred years after Luther, a Cambridge graduate ordained as an Anglican minister named Roger Williams became disillusioned with what he believed to be the errors of Anglicanism and sought refuge in New England. Arriving in Boston in 1631, he soon began attracting many followers – and attracting the displeasure of the Puritan authorities – with his then-unusual views. He held that civil authorities had no authority in religious matters, and so could not require church attendance on the Sabbath or punish citizens for violating any of the first four commandments. For a Puritan society founded on the conviction that they had a national covenant with God, and that He would bless and provide for them only so long as the society stayed united and pure, such views were not only unsettling – they were seditious. After being rebuked by the Massachusetts Bay Colony authorities, Williams just became more radical. He soon began teaching that the King of England had no authority to grant the colony its charter in the first place, and charged the King with blasphemy for usurping the prerogatives of God. Not surprisingly, this upset the Puritan leaders even more; when they denounced Williams again, he responded by declaring all of their churches apostate. At their wits end, the Puritan authorities banished Williams from the province. He headed south in the dead of winter, depending on the care of Indians whom he had befriended previously, until he arrived in present-day Rhode Island and founded Providence. Williams by this time had come to embrace believer’s baptism, and in March of 1639, a man named Ezekiel Hollyman baptized Williams, who in turn baptized Hollyman and ten others to form the first Baptist church in America. From that point to his death, Williams was not a member of any particular church. As the eminent Puritan historian Edmund Morgan has described him, Williams was “a charming, sweet-tempered, winning man, courageous, selfless, God-intoxicated – and stubborn – the very soul of separation…[he] would separate not only from erroneous churches but also from everyone who would not denounce erroneous churches as confidently as he did…he could follow a belief to its conclusion with a passionate literalness that bordered on the ridiculous.” Eccentric and hyper-schismatic though he was, Williams’ distinction between civil and religious authority, his progressive relations with the Native Americans, and his resolute commitment to freedom of conscience all stand as admirable legacies.

If Roger Williams laid the groundwork for religious liberty to be realized in the eventual founding of the United States, three centuries later Charles Malik helped codify it as a right for the rest of the world. A Harvard philosophy professor, distinguished diplomat, and one of the main architects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Malik made a particular priority of ensuring that the UDHR include a protection of religious freedom. Malik’s own background as a Lebanese Christian who grew up amidst the multiple faiths of his homeland, including Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, Druze, and Christians, gave him a particularly acute firsthand appreciation for the importance of religious toleration. Indispensable to this, Malik believed, was the right not only to believe and practice one’s faith, but also to change it. Any restrictions on the right to leave one’s religion and adopt another (or none at all for that matter) amounted to an unconscionable interposition of the State between the human person and the transcendent. Accordingly the final wording of Article 18 of the UDHR bears Malik’s distinct imprint: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; this includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.” As significant as the principle of religious liberty that Malik articulated was the foundation that he asserted. Human rights in general, and religious liberty in particular, he believed, were endowed in all human beings not by an abstract deity but by the “Lord of History” by which Malik meant the biblical God. He was clear that belief in this deity was not a prerequisite for having the right to religious liberty – thus his advocacy for the rights of all people – but in his mind this right had a transcendent grounding derived from the Christian faith.

Considered from the vantage point of history, the relationship between Christianity and religious freedom is not a mere set of abstraction ideational influences, but a demonstration of the role of individual Christians, attempting to be faithful to the implications of their faith in their own lives, yet with great consequence for the lives of others and for generations to come.

Discover similar content through these related topics and regions.

Christianity & Freedom: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

What Use Has Society for a Free Spirit?

What do free individuals do for a society? I am grateful for the opportunity to answer the question, as I also explore this theme in my own work, principally Recovering the Liberal Spirit: Nietzsche, Individuality and Spiritual Freedom (SUNY 2020). This question also compels us to talk about freedom in a somewhat unusual way. That is, rather than focusing on the liberating effects of rights and liberal institutions, we will focus more on the lived experiences of individuals in society. We do this by contemplating what I call spiritual freedom, which I consider a species or category of liberal freedom. The discourse on freedom in liberal societies is usually dominated by questions of economic and political liberty. These categories are undoubtedly important, and I do not mean to suggest that liberty lovers should cease discussing and defending economic and political liberties. But freedom extends past economic and political dimensions; it extends to our spiritual life. Spiritual freedom is an additional category of liberal freedom, which does not supplant but instead complements the economic and political liberties that we enjoy in the West.

I define spiritual freedom as intellectual freedom plus a concern for spiritual fullness. In the book I explain these terms in detail, but here I will provide just a brief sketch. Intellectual freedom is a good that almost everyone—and all liberals—are wont to affirm. If we are not intellectually free, then our thoughts are not our own, and our thoughts are not self-generated—we are prisoners to the thoughts of someone or something else. We might be in the grips of ideology or under the spell of an authoritative figure, but in any case our minds are not free to gain knowledge independently. Spiritual freedom contains intellectual freedom—which is often tied to the ideals of the Enlightenment—within it. Yet it further contains a concern for spiritual fulfillment. To be spiritually free is not as desirable as being spiritually full . Spiritual seekers pursue some sort of satisfied, or full, spiritual state. I call this a state of “spiritual fullness.” This sketch of spiritual freedom is quite abstract, and to make it more concrete I describe the free spirit, the embodiment or model of spiritual freedom. A free spirit is someone who is both intellectually free and one who pursues spiritual fullness on his/her own terms.

Who are these free spirits? After all, “free spirit” is a bit of a hackneyed term in modern culture, as they appear in Hollywood movies, pop culture and the vernacular. The “free spirit” tends to be portrayed as one who lives an alternative lifestyle, an escapist, one who refuses to follow the basic rules of social convention. They refuse to face “reality,” they are disenfranchised by the “system,” they cannot or will not work a “regular” job, and often they dabble in mysticism. In short, the popularized “free spirit” is generally taken to shun the “real world,” and to live instead in a world of dreams, illusions, and mystical intuitions.

The free spirit I discuss is quite different from the popularized “free spirit.” He is precisely concerned with avoiding dreams and illusions. Our free spirit is not an escapist; rather, he is concerned with avoiding the common pitfalls of escapism. Our free spirit, which borrows much from Nietzsche, is a skeptic who seeks above all to be free of illusions about the world. He desires to interact with the world on his own terms, and using his own faculties. Free spirits are skeptics, and here we see the emphasis on independence of mind or intellectual freedom. Our free spirit is also remarkable in the way she pursues meaning and fulfillment in her life, namely in her quest for spiritual fullness. She is able to face reality without falling to despair. Free spirits welcome a world without obvious rational meaning and without authoritative doctrines. These are a cause for wonder rather than crushing doubt; as an invitation to create meaning rather than as a terrifying abyss. The free spirit affirms life and creates value in it—that is, she achieves spiritual fullness—through independent discovery and through aesthetic perspective (which I will not discuss here for brevity’s sake), as opposed to traditional perspectives such as communal or religious doctrines, or through belief in a teleological human progress of some sort. Consequently, a free spirit is likely to be detached, to a large degree, from the traditions, morals, and general ethos of the community in which she lives. They wish to be free from custom and convention; free from groups and associations, and communities, that interrupt their solitude and create harmful attachments; and free from dogmatic claims to truth and authority.

Free spirits, then, will always be to some degree opposed to society as it exists around them. They require detachment from many things that others believe in and value most highly. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that they are often treated with suspicion by the majority of people. As thinkers like Mill, Tocqueville, Emerson and others have observed, society (particularly democratic society) doesn’t like difference. Conformity is the norm, and independent individuals are pressured in myriad ways to go along, at times even threatened. Emerson pithily explains this tension between society and “independent spirit”: “Society, to be sure, does not like this very well; it saith, Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world; he declares all to be unfit to be his companions; it is very uncivil, nay, insulting; Society will retaliate.” [1] There will always be tension between free spirits and society, but this tension is not merely adversarial. Each needs the other, for reasons we can just briefly discuss here. Free spirits are free compared to others in society; one is more or less spiritually free than others in a relative, not absolute, sense. Moreover, the independence of mind and aesthetic perspective characteristic of the free spirit are aspirational rather than permanent, and they admit of degrees (i.e., some are more spiritually free than others, and individuals themselves are more or less free at different times). Thus, a free spirit experiences and exercises spiritual freedom within the norms and conventions of the society in which they live, in what is an ongoing process of acceptance or rejection of what society presents to them.

But why does society, which views such individuals with suspicion, need free spirits? In short, because they are a bulwark against spiritual and political oppression. Such oppression may take the form of political propaganda, which free spirits will clearly resist, internally at the very least. In modern liberal democracies, the power of public opinion requires a check. Free spirits are consistently resistant to public opinion and the putative authority it can possess. Many political thinkers, such as Hume, Tocqueville, and Mill have cautioned liberal societies about the dangers of public opinion. Modern liberal societies are often not, in practice, as tolerant of freedom of thought as they are in theory. Tocqueville warned of the democratic “tyranny of the majority”; Hume worried that a politics of opinion would be run by parties running on extreme, and especially abstract, speculative principles that were in reality merely prejudices. And Mill: “Protection against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose…its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.” He continues, “there is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism.” [2] Free spirits have a role to play here: they demonstrate how intellectual and spiritual freedom in theory—i.e., freedom of thought protected through political rights—also becomes intellectual and spiritual freedom in practice . It is not merely the skeptical outlook of the free spirit that checks oppression, it is the way in which they live . Their independence, stubbornness, and resistance to social pressure in many forms provide a visible alternative to conventional norms. I stress this practice of spiritual freedom, perhaps obnoxiously, because the freedoms we do enjoy in the West are worth very little without exercise. We too often take for granted our freedoms, when they only reap rewards if we use them. A remark by Soren Kierkegaard makes the point plain, “aren’t people absurd! They never use the freedoms they do have but demand those they don’t have; they have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.” [3] Genuine freedom is something we all must continually work towards—it is aspirational.

I hope this brief sketch of the free spirit does justice to the idea, and I look forward to an opportunity to answer whatever questions come from readers and the other contributors to this forum. To conclude, I have suggested here that one important way to answer the question of what freedom does for a society is to look at the effects that genuinely free individuals have on that society. On the one hand, the lived experience of free spirits clarifies and expands what freedom can mean for us, as it evinces the aspirational quality of independence of mind and spiritual fullness. On the other hand, these same free individuals demonstrate these qualities and resist the power of conformity and the putative authority of public opinion. In so doing, they provide a check on dogmatism and fanaticism, and they loosen the knot of ideology. Put differently, what freedom does for society is enables the individuals within it to achieve spiritual freedom—these individuals in turn demonstrate and protect genuine independence of mind, supporting and furthering the freedom of society. These effects of free individuals seem to me beneficial in any age, but are perhaps even more necessary over the last century and to the present. The catastrophic damage caused by the mass movements of the 20 th century, both fascist and communist, point emphatically to the need for independent figures willing to resist the growth of collective ideology, like our free spirits. Today, illiberal movements on both the left and the right are forming rigid ideological doctrines and seeking to enforce conformity to them through a variety of methods, some more coercive than others. Individuals willing and able to resist these forces—to remain spiritually free despite great pressure to go along with the crowd—are crucial to the maintenance of a free society and should, in my view, be encouraged and admired. My humble goal in writing about spiritual freedom is to clarify what these individuals do for society and remind the rest of us why we should be grateful for them.

Finally, I wish to re-iterate the complementary, even symbiotic, nature of the categories of liberal freedom mentioned at the beginning of the essay. I focus on spiritual freedom, but insist also on the importance of more recognizable categories of freedom as part of a sort of liberal recipe. Our economic freedoms (freedom to work, engage in contracts, etc.) and political and civil freedoms (First Amendment protections, due process, etc.) combine with spiritual freedom to constitute genuine individual liberty (as I see it, economic, political, and spiritual freedom are all necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for the proper exercise of each other). This liberal combination is a robust and sophisticated recipe for freedom, and remains the greatest intellectual defense that lovers of liberty have against a whole host of political theories and movements that seek to diminish or eliminate the freedom of individuals.

[1] Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (EWRWE) ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: Penguin/Random House, 2000), 87.

[2] John Stuart Mill, On Liberty ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb (New York: Penguin Books, 1981), 63.

[3] Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life trans. Alastair Hannay (London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1992), 43. At the time of Kierkegaard’s writing, Denmark was still a monarchy, and freedom of speech was not a protected right.

Also from this issue

Steven Pittz describes spiritual freedom as a kind of intellectual freedom that is concerned chiefly with achieving spiritual goals. In a liberal society, a free spirit may also stand as a bulwark against oppression, provincialism, and mindless conformity. As a result, those who are willing to rethink their society’s received wisdom are both vital and often persecuted.

Response Essays

David Owen offers two challenges to the claim that spiritual freedom is necessary for a free society: First, he suggests that voluntary associations and value-coalitions will naturally emerge in a free society and break up social despotism all on their own. The free spirit may not be all that necessary. But in his second challenge, he argues that it could be the case that free spirits do best with a degree of perhaps paradoxical social support, especially in the areas of education and the media, which are crucial to the production of free spirits and the spread of their ideas and examples.

The free spirit—unbound by social norms and received ideas—may or may not be an asset to liberalism, says Matthew Meyer. The fearless investigation of norms and ideas may lead an individual to reject liberalism itself. Meyer argues that, on a careful reading of Nietzsche, that philosopher’s free spirit ideal may even have more of an affinity with authoritarianism and empire than liberals like Steven Pittz would like to admit.

The Conversation

• To David Owen on Free Spirits, the Liberal Temperament, and Liberal Education by Steven Pittz
• To Matthew Meyer on Nietzsche’s Relationship to the Liberal Order by Steven Pittz
• The Free Spirit and the Vocations by David Owen
• Will a Free Spirit Be a Liberal Spirit? by Matthew Meyer
• Some Final Replies to Owen and Meyer by Steven Pittz

View the discussion thread.

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Martin Hagglund's "This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom" (A Book Review)

2022, Phavisminda Journal (vol. 20)

Addressed to both religious and secular audiences (p. 13), This Life offers a challenge to those who believe in eternal life and a proposal to those who continue to ask whether such exists after death. The author, Martin Hägglund, is convinced that although spiritual freedom is the goal of each life, but this must not be understood in the religious sense that we live a life in the here and now in preparation for a world (far more real) to come. Instead, we are to live with conviction and commitment to do something responsible as we spend our time together in this world. Death, human finitude, reminds us of our vulnerabilities, but at the same time it calls us to hold on to faith that something more can be done other than spending our time in fear.

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How Spirituality Can Benefit Your Health and Well-Being

Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing.

Megan Monahan is a certified meditation instructor and has studied under Dr. Deepak Chopra. She is also the author of the book, Don't Hate, Meditate.

What Is Spirituality?

Spirituality vs. religion.

• How to Practice

Potential Pitfalls

Spirituality is the broad concept of a belief in something beyond the self. It strives to answer questions about the meaning of life, how people are connected to each other, truths about the universe, and other mysteries of human existence.

Spirituality offers a worldview that suggests there is more to life than just what people experience on a sensory and physical level. Instead, it suggests that there is something greater that connects all beings to each other and to the universe itself.

It may involve religious traditions centering on the belief in a higher power. It can also involve a holistic belief in an individual connection to others and the world as a whole.

Spirituality has been a source of comfort and relief from stress for multitudes of people. While people use many different paths to find God or a higher power, ​research has shown that those who are more religious or spiritual and use their spirituality to cope with challenges in life experience many benefits to their health and well-being.

Signs of Spirituality

Spirituality is not a single path or belief system. There are many ways to experience spirituality and the benefits of a spiritual experience. How you define spirituality will vary. For some people, it's the belief in a higher power or a specific religious practice.

For others, it may involve experiencing a sense of connection to a higher state or a sense of inter-connectedness with the rest of humanity and nature. Some signs of spirituality can include:

• Asking deep questions about topics such as suffering or what happens after death
• Deepening connections with other people
• Experiencing compassion and empathy for others
• Experiencing feelings of interconnectedness
• Feelings of awe and wonder
• Seeking happiness beyond material possessions or other external rewards
• Seeking meaning and purpose
• Wanting to make the world a better place

Not everyone experiences or expresses spirituality in the same way. Some people may seek spiritual experiences in every aspect of their lives, while others may be more likely to have these feelings under specific conditions or in certain locations.

For example, some people may be more likely to have spiritual experiences in churches or other religious temples, while others might have these feelings when they're out enjoying nature.

Types of Spirituality

There are many different types of spirituality. Some examples of how people get in touch with their own spirituality include:

• Meditation or quiet time
• New age spirituality
• Service to their community
• Spending time in nature
• Spiritual retreats

Other people express their spirituality through religious traditions such as:

• Christianity

It is important to remember that there are many other spiritual traditions that exist throughout the world, including traditional African and Indigenous spiritual practices. Such spiritual practices can be particularly important to groups of people who have been subjected to the effects of colonialism.

Though there can be a lot of overlap between people who are spiritual and people who are religious, below are some key points to help differentiate spirituality vs. religion.

Can be practiced individually

Doesn't have to adhere to a specific set of rules

Often focuses on a personal journey of discovering what is meaningful in life

Often practiced in a community

Usually based on a specific set of rules and customs

Often focuses on the belief in deities or gods, religious texts, and tradition

Uses for Spirituality

There are a number of different reasons why people may turn to spirituality, including but not limited to:

• To find purpose and meaning : Exploring spirituality can help people find answers to philosophical questions they have such as "What is the meaning of life?" and "What purpose does my life serve?"
• To cope with feelings of stress, depression, and anxiety : Spiritual experiences can be helpful when coping with the stresses of life. 
• To restore hope and optimism : Spirituality can help people develop a more hopeful outlook on life.
• To find a sense of community and support : Because spiritual traditions often involve organized religions or groups , becoming a part of such a group can serve as an important source of social support .

Impact of Spirituality

While specific spiritual views are a matter of faith, research has demonstrated some of the benefits of spirituality and spiritual activity. The results may surprise no one who has found comfort in their religious or spiritual views, but they are definitely noteworthy in that they demonstrate in a scientific way that these activities do have benefits for many people.

The following are a few more of the many positive findings related to spirituality and health:

• Research has shown that religion and spirituality can help people cope with the effects of everyday stress. One study found that everyday spiritual experiences helped older adults better cope with negative feelings, and enhanced positive feelings.
• Research shows that older women are more grateful to God than older men, and they receive greater ​stress-buffering health effects due to this gratitude.
• According to research, those with an intrinsic religious orientation, regardless of gender, exhibited less physiological reactivity toward stress than those with an extrinsic religious orientation. Those who were intrinsically oriented dedicated their lives to God or a "higher power," while the extrinsically oriented ones used religion for external ends like making friends or increasing community social standing.

This, along with other research, demonstrates that there may be tangible and lasting benefits to maintaining involvement with a spiritual community. This involvement, along with the gratitude that can accompany spirituality, can be a buffer against stress and is linked to greater levels of physical health.

Dedication to God or a higher power translated into less stress reactivity, greater feelings of well-being, and ultimately even a decreased fear of death.

People who feel comfortable and comforted using spirituality as a coping mechanism for stress can rest assured that there's even more evidence that this is a good idea for them. Prayer works for young and old alike. Prayer and spirituality have been linked to:

• Better health
• Greater psychological well-being
• Less depression  
• Less hypertension
• Less stress, even during difficult times  
• More positive feelings
• Superior ability to handle stress

How to Practice Spirituality

Whether you are rediscovering a forgotten spiritual path, reinforcing your commitment to an already well-established one, or wanting to learn more about spirituality for beginners, there are countless ways to start exploring your spiritual side and help improve your well-being.

Spirituality is a very personal experience, and everyone’s spiritual path may be unique. Research shows, however, that some spiritual stress relief strategies have been helpful to many, regardless of faith. Some things you can do to start exploring spirituality include:

• Pay attention to how you are feeling : Part of embracing spirituality means also embracing what it means to be human, both the good and the bad. 
• Focus on others : Opening your heart, feeling empathy, and helping others are important aspects of spirituality.
• Meditate : Try spending 10 to 15 minutes each morning engaged in some form of meditation .
• Practice gratitude : Start a gratitude journal and record what you are grateful for each day. This can be a great reminder of what is most important to you and what brings you the greatest happiness.
• Try mindfulness : By becoming more mindful, you can become more aware and appreciative of the present. Mindfulness encourages you to be less judgmental (both of yourself and others) and focus more on the present moment rather than dwelling on the past or future.

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One potential pitfall of spirituality is a phenomenon known as spiritual bypassing . This involves a tendency to use spirituality as a way to avoid or sidestep problems, emotions, or conflicts.

For example, rather than apologizing for some type of emotional wound you have caused someone else, you might bypass the problem by simply excusing it and saying that "everything happens for a reason" or suggesting that the other person just needs to "focus on the positive."

Spirituality can enrich your life and lead to a number of benefits, but it is important to be cautious to not let spiritual ideals lead to pitfalls such as dogmatism or a reason to ignore the needs of others.

Akbari M, Hossaini SM. The relationship of spiritual health with quality of life, mental health, and burnout: The mediating role of emotional regulation . Iran J Psychiatry . 2018;13(1):22-31. PMID:29892314

Whitehead BR, Bergeman CS. Coping with daily stress: Differential role of spiritual experience on daily positive and negative affect .  J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci . 2012;67(4):456-459. doi:10.1093/geronb/gbr136

Manning LK. Spirituality as a lived experience: Exploring the essence of spirituality for women in late life . Int J Aging Hum Dev . 2012;75(2):95-113. doi:10.2190/AG.75.2.a

McMahon, BT, Biggs HC. Examining spirituality and intrinsic religious orientation as a means of coping with exam anxiety . Society, Health & Vulnerability . 2012;3(1). doi:10.3402/vgi.v3i0.14918

Johnson KA. Prayer: A helpful aid in recovery from depression . J Relig Health . 2018;57(6):2290-2300. doi:10.1007/s10943-018-0564-8

Wachholtz AB, Sambamthoori U. National trends in prayer use as a coping mechanism for depression: Changes from 2002 to 2007 . J Relig Health . 2013;52(4):1356-68. doi:10.1007/s10943-012-9649-y

Gonçalves JP, Lucchetti G, Menezes PR, Vallada H. Religious and spiritual interventions in mental health care: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled clinical trials . Psychol Med . 2015;45(14):2937-49. doi:10.1017/S0033291715001166

Arrey AE, Bilsen J, Lacor P, Deschepper R. Spirituality/religiosity: A cultural and psychological resource among sub-Saharan African migrant women with HIV/AIDS in Belgium .  PLoS One . 2016;11(7):e0159488. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0159488

Paul Victor CG, Treschuk JV. Critical literature review on the definition clarity of the concept of faith, religion, and spirituality . J Holist Nurs. 2019;38(1):107-113. doi:10.1177/0898010119895368

By Elizabeth Scott, PhD Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing.

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Essays on spiritual freedom

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Going Behind What Appears

The examen: prayer in real-time, continuing friendship in the easter season, discernment at different stages of life.

But discernment is not the same at every stage of life. Each season presents unique challenges that require yet another nuance of Spirit-helped discernment.

When we’re young—in late childhood and the teen years—much discernment has to do with recognizing right from wrong. We discern what it means to be honest, to treat others fairly, to admit when we’re wrong, and to calculate the outcome of potential actions. Discernment in these early stages helps us understand ourselves morally. As Christians, we learn, through discernment, to identify what is Christ-like behavior and what is not.

In the years of young adulthood, we face—sometimes quite suddenly—major decisions that can have great impact on the rest of life. Our discernment at this time has much to do with self-understanding. Am I a good fit to be in relationship with this person, or that one? Am I suited well to this kind of work/career or to something else? By this time, we should have right and wrong figured out for the most part. But what about our priorities? Do our daily choices and actions move us toward what we see as a life purpose?

Into middle adulthood—by this I mean late 30s into the 50s—the discernment gets even trickier, because by now we likely have multiple and appropriate attachments. Many of us are in serious relationships, are parents, have begun careers or at least have established a steady working life. Much of our discernment involves figuring out how all these aspects of life are interacting and where corrections need to be made. We are discerning how to discipline and guide children and how to work through marital difficulties; at the same time, we are moving outward, trying to help others, to be people for others . We probably were helping others years ago, but it’s more complicated now that we have multiple obligations.

And in our later years, we must discern how best to use the energies and resources we have. We are likely diminished in some respects—health and income—but may have become freer from unhealthy attachments thanks to a lifetime of learning and discerning. We must discern how involved to become in the problems and pressures of people in our families and our communities. We must discern how we will face our physical/mental decline and also our death.

At each stage of life, discernment may include:

• Identifying patterns of thought or behavior that we need to face and change.
• Identifying deep and lasting wounds and learning how to seek healing and restoration.
• Choosing the best out of multiple good options.
• Dealing with unhealthy attachments; praying and working toward spiritual freedom .
• Discovering the best way to use our resources—gifts, money, time, and energy—to help the world.

Of course, this short article does not touch every area of discernment, only some of the highlights. May you embrace the discernment important to your spiritual journey this day.

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15 comments.

Very helpful, clear and informative. God bless you!!!

Thank Vinta for such a clear description of discernment. I am a 64-year-old semi-retired minister and have been presented with an opportunity to start a new chapter in life. Your article provided comfort and clarity that my spouse and I are on the right track. Many blessings to you!

Thank you Vinita for sharing this blog with us. Profoundly relevant on discrenment. I truly agree that it includes unhealthy attachments.

This was very thought-provoking. Sometimes it’s tough to make a call and we often second-guess ourselves because discernment on whether what we decide can massively impact the course of the direction of our lives. I think making that call on our own can be daunting, and only through Discovery and lots of help from the Almighty can we fully appreciate the process.

Being a busybody, my well-meaning friends very often have to remind me to slow down. Your article reinforces their advice. I do believe that I am on this earth not only to serve, but more so because God loves me and He waits for me to love him, his other children and the whole of creation. Million thanks, Vinita.

this was all very interesting.. I really just wanted to know what discernment really meant… I am 81 y/o and at the end soon and I still ask the question… what is/was my purpose in being Here or to be alive…. I still wonder did I fulfill anyone or help someone in need… I could not have children and all my relationships ended poorly…so I stll wonder… what have done???

Dear Joy, I read your question with compassion for you. I’m glad you shared your age because I can reference the Baltimore Catechism that you & I were made to Know God, Love Him, Serve Him & Be Happy with Him forever. That is your/our purpose! I am 30 yrs younger than you so that is the only catechism quote i memorized… they used other teaching methods in my formative years. Do not feel you have to accomplish something Great in a material way. You ARE something great! You are a window through which people can look to see the love of God & fruits of the Holy Spirit. If you can bring/share a moment of peace or kindness to a person, that is a greater contribution than we can weigh. Only God knows what each human heart needs, so we just say “here I am, send me.” We may not be sent to a 3rd world country, but we can be sent to a bus stop or grocery store and be His light there – He is needed in the ordinariness of life. Meditate on St. Ignatius’ prayer: Take Lord & receive all my liberty – give me only Your Love & Grace, that’s enough for me. Be content to be a resting place for the Holy Spirit in your heart. Love to you –

I could have written Joy’s letter this morning. I am 75 and wondering the same things. When I read your answer, I felt like God was sitting right next to me. Thankyou so much. And you wrote that 4 years ago!

Thanks for sharing. This article is good about discernment, God does reveal in various ways which way to follow. Currently I am studying Theology out of interest but don’t know what to do after completion though with the help of the Holy Spirit I will be ready and prepared and the answer is just there waiting for me.

Such a great article! I am in the last chapters of my life and still look for discernment. I prayed and prayed after the death of my husband, for the Lord to let me know what my next phase of life was supposed to be. I felt like I never got an answer to that. Then one day I realized maybe I was right where I was supposed to be. And maybe my gift now was simply prayer. Prayer for our church, prayer for our family’s prayer for our children, and prayer for our nations. I stopped asking our Father what my purpose was supposed to be because from what seemed like no answer, he was answering me. Sometimes the silence has answers .

As blessed John Henry Newman said To live is to have changed often. Approaching 60 I am facing more major life decisions, mostly imposed by circumstances…husbands ill health financial constraints and adult children with their own very demanding lifes . A 17 year old to hopefully get to the next stage in his life. I have found your thoughts on discerning useful. One can become overwhelmed by the at times strong emotions accompanying all these situations it is helpful to know ways of navigating stormy waters. Ultimately as the at times we can only cry out like the disciples save me Lord I am sinking. Many thanks for another usefull artical Vinita. Norah ❤

Thank you. Found Discernment in the late stage of life most helpful

How do i tell the difference between discernment and thought when i get a vision while praying in church? Can someone explain to me please? Thank you and God bless.

I am not an expert on visions, but any image or vision or impression you receive during prayer should be considered along with other information, such as your reason, Scripture, your situation, wise advice from other people. A special message from the Holy Spirit will act in concert with other aspects of your life.

Spiritual freedom is a major treasure, indeed the fruit of constant discernment.

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116 Spiritual Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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Spirituality is a deeply personal and profound aspect of the human experience. It encompasses a wide range of beliefs, practices, and experiences that connect individuals to something greater than themselves. Whether you are a seasoned spiritual seeker or just beginning to explore your own spiritual path, writing essays on spiritual topics can be a powerful way to deepen your understanding and connection to the spiritual realm.

To help inspire your writing, here are 116 spiritual essay topic ideas and examples:

• The Power of Mindfulness in Spiritual Practice
• Exploring the Concept of Oneness in Different Spiritual Traditions
• The Role of Rituals in Cultivating Spiritual Connection
• Finding Inner Peace Through Daily Meditation
• The Healing Power of Forgiveness in Spiritual Growth
• Connecting with Nature as a Spiritual Practice
• The Importance of Gratitude in Spiritual Development
• Overcoming Fear Through Faith and Trust
• Embracing Surrender as a Path to Spiritual Awakening
• The Intersection of Science and Spirituality
• Exploring the Concept of Soulmates in Spiritual Relationships
• Navigating Grief and Loss Through Spiritual Practices
• The Role of Music and Art in Spiritual Expression
• Cultivating Compassion and Empathy Through Spiritual Practice
• The Spiritual Benefits of Practicing Yoga
• Exploring the Concept of Karma in Eastern Spiritual Traditions
• The Power of Prayer in Connecting with the Divine
• Overcoming Challenges Through Spiritual Resilience
• The Role of Community in Spiritual Growth
• Finding Meaning and Purpose Through Spiritual Exploration
• The Practice of Mindful Eating as a Spiritual Discipline
• Exploring the Concept of Dharma in Hinduism and Buddhism
• The Role of Dreams in Spiritual Guidance
• Embracing Vulnerability as a Path to Spiritual Healing
• Navigating Spiritual Doubt and Uncertainty
• The Power of Sacred Symbols in Spiritual Practice
• Exploring the Concept of Reincarnation in Spiritual Belief Systems
• The Role of Meditation in Cultivating Inner Wisdom
• Overcoming Ego Through Spiritual Surrender
• The Importance of Self-Reflection in Spiritual Growth
• Cultivating a Daily Spiritual Practice for Personal Transformation
• Exploring the Concept of Divine Love in Spiritual Traditions
• The Role of Rituals in Celebrating Life Transitions
• Finding Peace in the Midst of Chaos Through Spiritual Connection
• Navigating Spiritual Crises and Dark Nights of the Soul
• The Power of Forgiveness in Healing Past Wounds
• Embracing Imperfection as a Path to Spiritual Liberation
• The Role of Silence and Solitude in Spiritual Renewal
• Finding Joy and Gratitude in Everyday Moments
• Exploring the Concept of Enlightenment in Eastern Spiritual Traditions
• The Practice of Mindful Walking as a Spiritual Discipline
• Overcoming Self-Doubt Through Spiritual Empowerment
• Navigating Relationship Challenges Through Spiritual Wisdom
• The Role of Sacred Texts in Guiding Spiritual Practice
• Cultivating Compassion for Oneself and Others Through Spiritual Awareness
• Exploring the Concept of Divine Feminine in Spiritual Traditions
• The Power of Sacred Ceremony in Honoring Life's Milestones
• Overcoming Fear of Death Through Spiritual Acceptance
• Navigating Identity and Belonging Through Spiritual Exploration
• The Role of Rituals in Cultivating Mindfulness and Presence
• Finding Meaning and Purpose Through Spiritual Service
• The Practice of Gratitude as a Path to Spiritual Fulfillment
• Exploring the Concept of Unity Consciousness in Spiritual Awakening
• The Role of Sacred Spaces in Nurturing Spiritual Connection
• Embracing Vulnerability as a Path to Spiritual Growth
• Navigating Spiritual Doubt and Uncertainty with Faith
• The Power of Sacred Sound in Elevating Consciousness
• Overcoming Ego Through Surrender to the Divine
• The Importance of Self-Compassion in Spiritual Practice
• Cultivating a Daily Meditation Practice for Inner Peace
• Exploring the Concept of Divine Guidance in Spiritual Belief Systems
• The Role of Prayer in Connecting with Higher Power
• Finding Peace in the Present Moment Through Mindfulness
• Navigating Spiritual Crises and Challenges with Grace
• The Power of Forgiveness in Healing Relationships
• Embracing Impermanence as a Path to Spiritual Liberation
• The Role of Silence and Stillness in Spiritual Renewal
• Finding Joy and Contentment in Simple Pleasures
• Exploring the Concept of Enlightenment in Western Spiritual Traditions
• The Practice of Mindful Breathing as a Spiritual Discipline
• Overcoming Self-Criticism Through Spiritual Self-Acceptance
• Navigating Life's Ups and Downs Through Spiritual Resilience
• The Role of Sacred Symbols in Guiding Spiritual Practice
• Exploring the Concept of Divine Masculine in Spiritual Traditions
• The Power of Sacred Rituals in Honoring Life's Challenges
• Overcoming Fear of Change Through Spiritual Transformation
• Navigating Identity and Belonging Through Spiritual Community
• The Role of Rituals in Cultivating Mindful Presence
• Finding Meaning and Purpose Through Spiritual Creativity
• The Practice of Gratitude as a Path to Spiritual Wholeness
• Exploring the Concept of Unity Consciousness in Spiritual Connection
• The Role of Sacred Art in Elevating Spiritual Consciousness
• Embracing Vulnerability as a Path to Spiritual Awakening
• Navigating Spiritual Doubt and Uncertainty with Trust
• The Power of Sacred Dance in Expressing Spiritual Joy
• Overcoming Ego Through Surrender to the Divine Will
• The Importance of Self-Compassion in Spiritual Growth
• Cultivating a Daily Yoga Practice for Inner Balance
• Exploring the Concept of Divine Love in Spiritual Relationships
• The Role of Prayer in Connecting with Higher Realms
• Finding Peace in the Present Moment Through Mindful Awareness
• Navigating Spiritual Crises and Challenges with Grace and Gratitude
• The Power of Forgiveness in Healing Past Traumas
• Embracing Impermanence as a Path to Spiritual Freedom
• The Role of Silence and Solitude in Spiritual Reflection
• Finding Joy and Contentment in Surrendering to the Divine Plan
• Exploring the Concept of Enlightenment in Different Spiritual Paths
• Overcoming Self-Doubt Through Spiritual Self-Compassion
• Navigating Life's Challenges with Spiritual Resilience and Strength
• The Role of Sacred Symbols in Guiding Spiritual Practices
• Cultivating Compassion for Oneself and Others Through Spiritual Practice
• Exploring the Concept of Divine Energy in Spiritual Belief Systems
• The Power of Sacred Rituals in Honoring Life's Transitions
• Overcoming Fear of Failure Through Spiritual Trust and Faith
• The Role of Rituals in Cultivating Mindful Presence and Awareness
• Finding Meaning and Purpose Through Spiritual Creativity and Expression
• The Practice of Gratitude as a Path to Spiritual Wholeness and Fulfillment
• Exploring the Concept of Unity Consciousness in Spiritual Connection and Oneness
• The Role of Sacred Art in Elevating Spiritual Consciousness and Awareness
• Embracing Vulnerability as a Path to Spiritual Awakening and Growth
• Navigating Spiritual Doubt and Uncertainty with Trust and Surrender
• The Power of Sacred Music in Elevating Spiritual Vibrations and Consciousness
• Overcoming Ego Through Surrender to the Divine Will and Higher Purpose

These are just a few examples of the many spiritual essay topics you can explore in your writing. Whether you are delving into the depths of your own spiritual journey or seeking to understand the spiritual paths of others, writing essays on spiritual topics can be a powerful way to connect with the divine and deepen your understanding of the spiritual realm. So grab your pen and paper, or fire up your computer, and start exploring these spiritual essay topics today!

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Freedom: A Meditation

Pray with this passage from the Gospel of Luke by clicking play. Or use the text below.

He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read   and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,      because he has anointed me          to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives      and recovery of sight to the blind,          to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus speaks some life-changing words. What is holding me captive? Is it a pressure I place upon myself? A sin? Pride? An unhealthy relationship? A material thing? – I take a moment to bring before my consciousness anything that might be placing a burden on my life.

A life of freedom in God is not without difficulty. Am I free enough to accept the challenges of life and move through them with the power of God?

In his Principle and Foundation St Ignatius says we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things. Sometimes we cling to comfort or money or health. These things are gift, but sometimes we become too attached to them. Are there pleasurable things in my life that become an unfreedom, a distraction from living my life for God?

In the synagogue that day Jesus takes a risk to speak the truth to his community. He freely accepts his calling. Sometimes I am blinded to my true self. I need sight. Am I free to acknowledge the truth of who God is calling me to be?

Jesus said he came to bring glad tidings and liberty to captives. As I read to the scripture passage again, I consider my reflection in the last few minutes. What do I need to ask Jesus to free me from? What good news does he want to share with me?

I speak now with Jesus, like a friend, in my own words. I tell him all that is in my heart right now.

Lord God, You give me the gift of freedom, guiding me to a life of joy, calling me to be my truest self. As you freed Lazarus from the burial cloths, and gave sight to the blind, and called the rich man to detachment, free me from the unfreedoms that pile up, which blockade me from the life-giving joy you have for me. Remove those things which hinder my life with you. I can freely choose this. And I do. Amen.

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Spirituality is a broad and subjective concept that encompasses a sense of connection to something greater than oneself. It often involves exploring questions about the meaning of life, the nature of existence, and the purpose of our existence.

Different cultures, belief systems, and philosophies have their own interpretations of spirituality. For some, it is linked to organized religion and faith in a higher power or deity. For others, it may be more secular, focusing on inner peace, mindfulness, and a sense of interconnectedness with the universe.

Hello, I have a similar line of thought. I am atheist but things fell into place about all this a few months ago I did not need to throw away the idea of the all-powerful after all. It is not God. It is greater than all Gods and religions. Some religions believe almost the same thing. The “all powerful all” is simply the totality of what is. It had no mind or beingness at first. It was what we call the big bang. Life evolved with no designer or God. This totality still is all and still has all power. Sentients is within it. We serve the all powerful and its servant. This is a very big very old universe. I speculate very advanced extremely advanced beings are here and can be connected to with prayer and mediation. Of course they agree with spiritual atheism. They also know about the all powerful all. It is where they came from just like us. please check out my website www/thewayoffairness.com.

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A Summary and Analysis of Immanuel Kant’s ‘What is Enlightenment?’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘What is Enlightenment?’, full title ‘Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?’, is a 1784 essay by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). As the longer title suggests, Kant’s essay is a response to a question (posed by a clergyman, Reverend Johann Friedrich Zöllner) concerning the nature of philosophical enlightenment .

What is enlightenment, and how best might it be achieved in a civilised society? These are the key questions Kant addresses, and poses answers to, in his essay, which can be read in full here . Below, we summarise the main points of his argument and offer an analysis of Kant’s position.

‘What is Enlightenment?’: summary

Kant begins ‘What is Enlightenment?’ by asserting that enlightenment is man’s emergence from self-imposed immaturity. He defines ‘immaturity’ here as the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. Kant’s message to his readers is that they should have the courage to use their own understanding, rather than relying on another person’s guidance. That is the ‘motto’ of enlightenment.

Kant acknowledges that remaining ‘immature’ is the easy option for most people, because it’s the lazy option. People can turn to a priest to be their moral conscience for them, or a doctor to determine their diet. Women have been rendered perpetually immature by men in order to keep them meek and ignorant.

The key to enlightenment, Kant asserts, is freedom. If people are granted that, enlightenment will follow. The problem is that most people aren’t free. Even those ‘guardians’ and authority figures who keep others enslaved are themselves victim of this system, which they inherit from those who have gone before them.

Kant distinguishes between what he considers a public freedom to exercise one’s reason (and to question the way things are) and the civic duty we have to obey orders without questioning them. For instance, a soldier engaged in military action cannot afford to question the order his superior gives him: he needs to obey the order without question, because that is his ‘civic’ duty at that moment.

But off-duty, if that soldier wished to philosophise publicly (e.g., in the role of a scholar) about the flaws in the military system, he should be free to do so.

The same goes for paying taxes. One can argue in parliament, or write pamphlets and newspaper articles about whether high taxation is a good thing (i.e., exercising one’s public duty to question things), but when the taxman sends you a bill, you’d better pay up (i.e., observe your civic duty).

Kant invites us to consider whether a society of priests could set down some rules which would be binding for generations to come. He says this would be wrong, because it denies future generations the chance to question such rules, and social development would be impeded as a result. He also argues that an enlightened monarch would allow his subjects true freedom to think and do as they wish in religious matters, and the monarch should keep his nose out of such matters.

Next, Kant argues that, at the time of writing, people are not living in an ‘enlightened age’ but in an ‘age of enlightenment’: that is, we’ve not attained full enlightenment yet because the process is a long one, but progress is (gradually) being made, thanks largely to the enlightened monarch under whom Kant himself is living, Frederick the Great.

Kant concludes ‘What is Enlightenment?’ by considering the difference between civil and intellectual and spiritual freedom. Perhaps paradoxically, the less civil freedom people have, the more intellectual freedom they gain, and as their intellectual abilities grow, so the health of a particular society grows as governments can start treating people with dignity.

‘What is Enlightenment?’: analysis

‘What is Enlightenment?’ is concerned with every citizen’s public right to use their reason: everyone in a civilised society, Kant argues, should have the freedom to question the status quo and take part in a debate about how society should be governed and maintained. But such public rights and freedoms need to be balanced by the citizen’s private or civic responsibility to obey the law, and observe the status quo, when required to.

In other words, even while we discuss and philosophise about how to improve society, we have to live in the one we currently have, and civilisation would break down if people chose, for instance, to stop following laws they considered unjust or refused to pay their taxes because they disagreed with the levels of taxation.

‘What is Enlightenment?’ is fundamentally a clarion-call to people about the need to ‘dare to be wise’. What is required is not merely intellect but also a willingness to engage one’s reason and exercise that reason upon the everyday things that govern our lives: political systems, financial structures, education, trade, and much else.

Enlightenment is mankind’s coming-to-maturity, a willingness to think for oneself and emerge from an immature state where we hand over the power and responsibility to authority figures, whether they’re priests, doctors, teachers, or politicians.

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What does Emerson say about self-reliance?

In Emerson's essay “ Self-Reliance ,” he boldly states society (especially today’s politically correct environment) hurts a person’s growth.

Emerson wrote that self-sufficiency gives a person in society the freedom they need to discover their true self and attain their true independence.

Believing that individualism, personal responsibility , and nonconformity were essential to a thriving society. But to get there, Emerson knew that each individual had to work on themselves to achieve this level of individualism. 

Today, we see society's breakdowns daily and wonder how we arrived at this state of society. One can see how the basic concepts of self-trust, self-awareness, and self-acceptance have significantly been ignored.

Who published self-reliance?

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the essay, published in 1841 as part of his first volume of collected essays titled "Essays: First Series."

It would go on to be known as Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self Reliance and one of the most well-known pieces of American literature.

The collection was published by James Munroe and Company.

What are the examples of self-reliance?

Examples of self-reliance can be as simple as tying your shoes and as complicated as following your inner voice and not conforming to paths set by society or religion.

Self-reliance can also be seen as getting things done without relying on others, being able to “pull your weight” by paying your bills, and caring for yourself and your family correctly.

Self-reliance involves relying on one's abilities, judgment, and resources to navigate life. Here are more examples of self-reliance seen today:

Entrepreneurship: Starting and running your own business, relying on your skills and determination to succeed.

Financial Independence: Managing your finances responsibly, saving money, and making sound investment decisions to secure your financial future.

Learning and Education: Taking the initiative to educate oneself, whether through formal education, self-directed learning, or acquiring new skills.

Problem-Solving: Tackling challenges independently, finding solutions to problems, and adapting to changing circumstances.

Personal Development: Taking responsibility for personal growth, setting goals, and working towards self-improvement.

Homesteading: Growing your food, raising livestock, or becoming self-sufficient in various aspects of daily life.

DIY Projects: Undertaking do-it-yourself projects, from home repairs to crafting, without relying on external help.

Living Off the Grid: Living independently from public utilities, generating your energy, and sourcing your water.

Decision-Making: Trusting your instincts and making decisions based on your values and beliefs rather than relying solely on external advice.

Crisis Management: Handling emergencies and crises with resilience and resourcefulness without depending on external assistance.

These examples illustrate different facets of self-reliance, emphasizing independence, resourcefulness, and the ability to navigate life autonomously.

What is the purpose of self reliance by Emerson?

In his essay, " Self Reliance, " Emerson's sole purpose is the want for people to avoid conformity. Emerson believed that in order for a man to truly be a man, he was to follow his own conscience and "do his own thing."

Essentially, do what you believe is right instead of blindly following society.

Why is it important to be self reliant?

While getting help from others, including friends and family, can be an essential part of your life and fulfilling. However, help may not always be available, or the assistance you receive may not be what you had hoped for.

It is for this reason that Emerson pushed for self-reliance. If a person were independent, could solve their problems, and fulfill their needs and desires, they would be a more vital member of society.

This can lead to growth in the following areas:

Empowerment: Self-reliance empowers individuals to take control of their lives. It fosters a sense of autonomy and the ability to make decisions independently.

Resilience: Developing self-reliance builds resilience, enabling individuals to bounce back from setbacks and face challenges with greater adaptability.

Personal Growth: Relying on oneself encourages continuous learning and personal growth. It motivates individuals to acquire new skills and knowledge.

Freedom: Self-reliance provides a sense of freedom from external dependencies. It reduces reliance on others for basic needs, decisions, or validation.

Confidence: Achieving goals through one's own efforts boosts confidence and self-esteem. It instills a belief in one's capabilities and strengthens a positive self-image.

Resourcefulness: Being self-reliant encourages resourcefulness. Individuals learn to solve problems creatively, adapt to changing circumstances, and make the most of available resources.

Adaptability: Self-reliant individuals are often more adaptable to change. They can navigate uncertainties with a proactive and positive mindset.

Reduced Stress: Dependence on others can lead to stress and anxiety, especially when waiting for external support. Self-reliance reduces reliance on external factors for emotional well-being.

Personal Responsibility: It promotes a sense of responsibility for one's own life and decisions. Self-reliant individuals are more likely to take ownership of their actions and outcomes.

Goal Achievement: Being self-reliant facilitates the pursuit and achievement of personal and professional goals. It allows individuals to overcome obstacles and stay focused on their objectives.

Overall, self-reliance contributes to personal empowerment, mental resilience, and the ability to lead a fulfilling and purposeful life. While collaboration and support from others are valuable, cultivating a strong sense of self-reliance enhances one's capacity to navigate life's challenges independently.

What did Emerson mean, "Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide"?

According to Emerson, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to you independently, but every person is given a plot of ground to till. 

In other words, Emerson believed that a person's main focus in life is to work on oneself, increasing their maturity and intellect, and overcoming insecurities, which will allow a person to be self-reliant to the point where they no longer envy others but measure themselves against how they were the day before.

When we do become self-reliant, we focus on creating rather than imitating. Being someone we are not is just as damaging to the soul as suicide.

Envy is ignorance: Emerson suggests that feeling envious of others is a form of ignorance. Envy often arises from a lack of understanding or appreciation of one's unique qualities and potential. Instead of being envious, individuals should focus on discovering and developing their talents and strengths.

Imitation is suicide: Emerson extends the idea by stating that imitation, or blindly copying others, is a form of self-destruction. He argues that true individuality and personal growth come from expressing one's unique voice and ideas. In this context, imitation is seen as surrendering one's identity and creativity, leading to a kind of "spiritual death."

What are the transcendental elements in Emerson’s self-reliance?

The five predominant elements of Transcendentalism are nonconformity, self-reliance, free thought, confidence, and the importance of nature.

The Transcendentalism movement emerged in New England between 1820 and 1836. It is essential to differentiate this movement from Transcendental Meditation, a distinct practice.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Transcendentalism is characterized as "an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson." A central tenet of this movement is the belief that individual purity can be 'corrupted' by society.

Are Emerson's writings referenced in pop culture?

Emerson has made it into popular culture. One such example is in the film Next Stop Wonderland released in 1998. The reference is a quote from Emerson's essay on Self Reliance, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

This becomes a running theme in the film as a single woman (Hope Davis ), who is quite familiar with Emerson's writings and showcases several men taking her on dates, attempting to impress her by quoting the famous line, only to botch the line and also giving attribution to the wrong person. One gentleman says confidently it was W.C. Fields, while another matches the quote with Cicero. One goes as far as stating it was Karl Marx!

Why does Emerson say about self confidence?

Content is coming very soon.

Self-Reliance: The Complete Essay

Ne te quaesiveris extra."

Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate ; Nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune Cast the bantling on the rocks, Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat; Wintered with the hawk and fox, Power and speed be hands and feet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson left the ministry to pursue a career in writing and public speaking. Emerson became one of America's best known and best-loved 19th-century figures. More About Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson Self Reliance Summary

The essay “Self-Reliance,” written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, is, by far, his most famous piece of work. Emerson, a Transcendentalist, believed focusing on the purity and goodness of individualism and community with nature was vital for a strong society. Transcendentalists despise the corruption and conformity of human society and institutions. Published in 1841, the Self Reliance essay is a deep-dive into self-sufficiency as a virtue.

In the essay "Self-Reliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson advocates for individuals to trust in their own instincts and ideas rather than blindly following the opinions of society and its institutions. He argues that society encourages conformity, stifles individuality, and encourages readers to live authentically and self-sufficient lives.

Emerson also stresses the importance of being self-reliant, relying on one's own abilities and judgment rather than external validation or approval from others. He argues that people must be honest with themselves and seek to understand their own thoughts and feelings rather than blindly following the expectations of others. Through this essay, Emerson emphasizes the value of independence, self-discovery, and personal growth.

What is the Meaning of Self-Reliance?

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to think that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius.

Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light that flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought because it is his. In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Great works of art have no more affecting lessons for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility than most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance that does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Trust Thyself: Every Heart Vibrates To That Iron String.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, and the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

What pretty oracles nature yields to us in this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, 'Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.' Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. The lintels of the door-post I would write on, Whim . It is somewhat better than whim at last I hope, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. Wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. The primary evidence I ask that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. For myself it makes no difference that I know, whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. The easy thing in the world is to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? With all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, do I not know that he will do no such thing? Do not I know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, — the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

I suppose no man can violate his nature.

All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; — read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it today because it is not of today. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; He should wish to please me, that I wish. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; — and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome"; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, 'Who are you, Sir?' Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common day's work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man.

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust.

Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it, — one as much as another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and, in the universal miracle, petty and particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; 'I think,' 'I am,' that he dares not say, but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see, — painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.

And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; not see the face of man; and you shall not hear any name;—— the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, — long intervals of time, years, centuries, — are of no account. This which I think and feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and what is called life, and what is called death.

Life only avails, not the having lived.

Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates is that the soul becomes ; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power, not confidence but an agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence , personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of its presence and impure action. I see the same law working in nature for conservation and growth. Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul.

Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches.

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary! So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, — 'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love."

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. To nourish my parents, to support my family I shall endeavour, to be the chaste husband of one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs that I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions if you are not. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh today? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. — But so you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.

The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct , or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbour, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If anyone imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!

If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction society , he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and do lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate , where strength is born.

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart.

Men say he is ruined if the young merchant fails . If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it , farms it , peddles , keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him, — and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history.

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; education; and in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.

1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. It is prayer that craves a particular commodity, — anything less than all good, — is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies, —

"His hidden meaning lies in our endeavours; Our valors are our best gods."

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. "To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, "the blessed Immortals are swift."

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect . They say with those foolish Israelites, 'Let not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey.' Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its classification on other men, and lo! a new system. In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects it touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, which are also classifications of some powerful mind acting on the elemental thought of duty, and man's relation to the Highest. Such as Calvinism, Quakerism, Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating everything to the new terminology, as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time, that the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds, the classification is idolized, passes for the end, and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see, — how you can see; 'It must be somehow that you stole the light from us.' They do not yet perceive, that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning.

2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. The Vatican, and the palaces I seek. But I am not intoxicated though I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate, and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; Shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments, but our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.

4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other and undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous,  civilized, christianized, rich and it is scientific, but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two, the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe, the equinox he knows as little, and the whole bright calendar of the year are without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic, but in Christendom, where is the Christian?

There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular equality may be observed between the great men of the first and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own man, and, in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so much in their fishing boats, as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than anyone since. Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries before. The great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked valor and disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas, "without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread himself."

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation today, next year die, and their experience with them.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. "Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; therefore, be at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse, and with each new uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon conventions, and vote and resolve in multitude. Not so, O friends! will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of men, and in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head.

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Which quotation from "Self-reliance" best summarizes Emerson’s view on belief in oneself?

One of the most famous quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" that summarizes his view on belief in oneself is:

"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."

What does Emerson argue should be the basis of human actions in the second paragraph of “self-reliance”?

In the second paragraph of "Self-Reliance," Emerson argues that individual conscience, or a person's inner voice, should be the basis of human actions. He writes, "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." He believes that society tends to impose conformity and discourage people from following their own inner truth and intuition. Emerson encourages individuals to trust themselves and to act according to their own beliefs, instead of being influenced by the opinions of others. He argues that this is the way to live a truly authentic and fulfilling life.

Which statement best describes Emerson’s opinion of communities, according to the first paragraph of society and solitude?

According to the first paragraph of Ralph Waldo Emerson's " Society and Solitude, " Emerson has a mixed opinion of communities. He recognizes the importance of social interaction and the benefits of being part of a community but also recognizes the limitations that come with it.

He writes, "Society everywhere is in a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." He argues that society can be limiting and restrictive, and can cause individuals to conform to norms and values that may not align with their own beliefs and desires. He believes that it is important for individuals to strike a balance between the benefits of social interaction and the need for solitude and self-discovery.

Which best describes Emerson’s central message to his contemporaries in "self-reliance"?

Ralph Waldo Emerson's central message to his contemporaries in "Self-Reliance" is to encourage individuals to trust in their own beliefs and instincts, and to break free from societal norms and expectations. He argues that individuals should have the courage to think for themselves and to live according to their own individual truth, rather than being influenced by the opinions of others. Through this message, he aims to empower people to live authentic and fulfilling lives, rather than living in conformity and compromise.

Yet, it is critical that we first possess the ability to conceive our own thoughts. Prior to venturing into the world, we must be intimately acquainted with our own selves and our individual minds. This sentiment echoes the concise maxim inscribed at the ancient Greek site of the Delphic Oracle: 'Know Thyself.'

In essence, Emerson's central message in "Self-Reliance" is to promote self-reliance and individualism as the key to a meaningful and purposeful life.

Understanding Emerson: "The American scholar" and his struggle for self-reliance.

Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09982-0

Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Other works from ralph waldo emerson for book clubs, the over-soul.

There is a difference between one and another hour of life, in their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

The American Scholar

An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837

Essays First Series

Essays: First Series First published in 1841 as Essays. After Essays: Second Series was published in 1844, Emerson corrected this volume and republished it in 1847 as Essays: First Series.

Emerson's Essays

Research the collective works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Read More Essay

Self-Reliance

Emerson's most famous work that can truly change your life. Check it out

Early Emerson Poems

America's best known and best-loved poems. More Poems

How to go to Heaven

How to get right with god.

What is Christian freedom?

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Academic Freedom Under Fire

By Louis Menand

The congressional appearance last month by Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia University, was a breathtaking “What was she thinking?” episode in the history of academic freedom. It was shocking to hear her negotiating with a member of Congress over disciplining two members of her own faculty, by name, for things they had written or said. The next day, in what appeared to be a signal to Congress, Shafik had more than a hundred students, many from Barnard, arrested by New York City police and booked for trespassing— on their own campus . But Columbia made their presence illegal by summarily suspending the protesters first. If you are a university official, you never want law-enforcement officers on your campus. Faculty particularly don’t like it. They regard the campus as their jurisdiction, and they have complained that the Columbia administration did not consult with them before ordering the arrests. Calling in law enforcement did not work at Berkeley in 1964, at Columbia in 1968, at Harvard in 1969, or at Kent State in 1970.

What’s more alarming than the arrests—after all, the students wanted to be arrested—is the matter of their suspensions. They had their I.D.s invalidated, and they have not been permitted to attend class, an astonishing disregard of the fact that although the students may have violated university policy, they are still students, whom Columbia and Barnard are committed to educating. You can’t educate people who cannot attend classes.

The right at stake in these events is that of academic freedom, a right that derives from the role the university plays in American life. Professors don’t work for politicians, they don’t work for trustees, and they don’t work for themselves. They work for the public. Their job is to produce scholarship and instruction that add to society’s store of knowledge. They commit themselves to doing this disinterestedly: that is, without regard to financial, partisan, or personal advantage. In exchange, society allows them to insulate themselves—and to some extent their students—against external interference in their affairs. It builds them a tower.

The concept originated in Germany—the German term is Lehrfreiheit , freedom to teach—and it was imported here in the late nineteenth century, along with the model, also German, of the research university, an educational institution in which the faculty produce scholarship and research. Since that time, it has been understood that academic freedom is the defining feature of the modern research university.

In nineteenth-century Germany, where universities were run by the government, academic freedom was a right against the state. It was needed because there was no First Amendment-style right to free speech. Lehrfreiheit protected what professors wrote and taught inside (although not outside) the academy. In the United States, where, after the Civil War, many research universities were built with private money—Chicago, Cornell, Hopkins, Stanford—the right was extended to protect professors from being fired for their views, whether expressed in the classroom or in the public square. The key event was the founding, in 1915, of the American Association of University Professors, which is, among other things, an academic-freedom watchdog.

Academic freedom is related to, but not the same as, freedom of speech in the First Amendment sense. In the public square, you can say or publish ignorant things, hateful things, in many cases false things, and the state cannot touch you. Academic freedom doesn’t work that way. Academic discourse is rigorously policed. It’s just that the police are professors.

Faculty members pass judgment on the work that their colleagues produce, and they decide whom to hire, whom to fire, and what to teach. They see that the norms of academic inquiry are observed. Those norms derive from the first great battle over academic freedom in the nineteenth century—science versus religion. The model of inquiry in the modern research university is secular and scientific. All views and all hypotheses must be fairly tested, and their success depends entirely on their ability to persuade by evidence and by rational argument. No a-priori judgments are permitted, and there is no appeal to a higher authority.

There are, therefore, all kinds of professional constraints on academic expression. The scholarship that academics publish has to be approved by their peers. The protocols of citation must be observed, ad-hominem arguments are not tolerated, unsubstantiated claims are dismissed, and so on. Although academics regard the word “orthodoxy” with horror, there is a lot of tacit orthodoxy in the university, as there is in any business. People who are trained alike tend to think alike. But, as long as academic judgments are made by consensus, not by fiat, and by experts, not by amateurs, it is assumed that the knowledge machine is operating fairly and efficiently. The public can trust the product.

All professions aspire to be self-governing, because their members believe that only fellow-professionals have the expertise needed to make judgments in their fields. But professionals also know that failures of self-regulation invite outside meddling. In the case of the university, it is in the faculty’s interest to run their institution equitably and competently. They need to be trusted to operate independently of public opinion. They need to keep the tower standing.

This is why the phenomenon that goes by the shorthand October 7th was a crisis for American higher education. The impression that some universities were not policing themselves competently, that their campuses were out of control, provided an opening to parties looking to affect the kind of knowledge that universities produce, who is allowed to produce it, and how it is taught—decisions that are traditionally the prerogative of the faculty. Politicians who want to chill certain kinds of academic expression think that they can do this by threatening to revoke a university’s tax-exempt status or tax its endowment. In the current political climate, it is not hard to imagine such things happening. If they did, it would be a straight-up abrogation of the social pact.

But would it be unconstitutional? What kind of right is the right to academic freedom? Is it a legal right or a moral one? This question, long a subject of scholarly contention, is addressed in not a small number of new books, notably, “ You Can’t Teach That! ” (Polity), by Keith E. Whittington; “ The Right to Learn ” (Beacon), edited by Valerie C. Johnson, Jennifer Ruth, and Ellen Schrecker; and “ All the Campus Lawyers ” (Harvard), by Louis H. Guard and Joyce P. Jacobsen.

The fate of academic freedom is also a concern in new books by two former university administrators: Derek Bok’s “ Attacking the Elites ” (Yale) and Nicholas B. Dirks’s “ City of Intellect ” (Cambridge). Bok is a former president of Harvard; Dirks was a chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. The general sentiment in these books is that academic freedom is in peril and that it would not take much for universities to lose it.

Whittington, who says he is “on the political right,” is highly protective of academic freedom. He can see no reason why we would want politicians to dictate what can and cannot be studied and taught. It would be like putting a syllabus up to a popular vote every year. His book is concerned mainly with public colleges and universities (where some seventy per cent of American students are enrolled), since their faculties are public employees and state legislatures control their budgets. This also means, however, that their speech is protected by the First Amendment. Florida’s 2022 Individual Freedom Act, popularly known as the Stop WOKE Act, which prohibits the teaching in public educational institutions of ideas that some legislators define as “divisive,” was struck down, in part, by the Eleventh Circuit for being what it plainly is: viewpoint discrimination, which is barred by the First Amendment. (The power of states to dictate content in K-12 classrooms, on the other hand, is fairly well established.)

The Florida act was one of a hundred and forty educational gag orders passed by state legislatures in 2022; almost forty per cent of these targeted colleges and universities. The gag-order phenomenon is one of the topics covered in “The Right to Learn.” The volume’s editors argue that efforts such as these are worse than McCarthyism . McCarthyism went after individuals for their political beliefs; today, the targets are the curriculum and the classroom, the very bones of the educational system.

The editors see the defense of academic freedom as “inextricably linked to the larger struggle against the racial, gender, and other systems of oppression that continue to deform American life.” Given that disinterestedness is a central ingredient in the social pact, this view may not have universal appeal. But there are disciplines, or subfields within disciplines, in which professors (and students) understand their academic work as a form of political engagement. Academic freedom would seem to cover these cases (although not everyone would agree). What academic freedom would not cover is indoctrination, a violation of academic norms.

What about students? The student version of academic freedom is Lernfreiheit , the freedom to learn. This rule is a little harder to apply. Students don’t typically determine the curriculum, and they are usually passive subjects of a disciplinary regime called grading. Originally, “freedom to learn” referred simply to the freedom to choose one’s course of study. Now it gets invoked in the contexts of classroom speech, where instructors are witnessing a lot of self-censorship, and campus speech, where students chant, carry banners, and exercise civil disobedience.

Some students report that they don’t feel free to express their views, because what they say might be received as hurtful or offensive by other students, and instructors find themselves second-guessing the texts they assign, since students may refuse to engage with works that they find politically objectionable. Instructors worry about being anonymously reported and subjected to an institutional investigation. Instructors and students can also, needless to say, suffer trial by social media. These are not great working conditions for the knowledge business. You may lose the argument in an academic exchange, but you have to feel free, in the classroom, to have your say without sanction.

Commentators have blamed this situation on a system of “coddling” in which people who say that they feel “unsafe” just being in a room with someone they disagree with are given resources to demand that something be done about it. The institutional symbol (or scapegoat) for this culture is the campus office of diversity, equity, and inclusion (D.E.I.). State legislatures have taken steps to ban D.E.I. in public colleges and universities , and conservative critics of higher education are quite explicit that bringing down D.E.I. is a primary goal.

“All the Campus Lawyers” helpfully shows that the regime of “coddling” and D.E.I. was largely the creation of the federal government. Together, Title VI and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, or national origin in programs and activities that receive federal funds, as most universities do. The Supreme Court recently (and somewhat surprisingly) ruled that Title VII covers sexual orientation and gender identity. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits sex-based discrimination, including sexual harassment, in such programs and activities. In 2016, an expanded definition of “disability” was added to the Americans with Disabilities Act in response, in part, to advocacy on behalf of people with A.D.H.D. and learning disabilities. The act defines disability as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more “major life activities,” and “writing” is now included as a major life activity.

For universities, these laws provide a potential cause of action at every turn. Students and employees who feel harassed, unsafe, or generally uncared for by virtue of their identities are entitled, under federal law, to make a complaint. The result is what Guard and Jacobsen call the “lawyerization of higher education.” Universities live in constant fear of being taken to court because someone was treated differently.

But it’s not the individuals accused of discriminatory conduct who are being sued. The laws do not apply to them. It’s the university itself. A group of women who said that they were sexually harassed by the Harvard professor John Comaroff are not suing Comaroff. They are suing Harvard, for a Title IX violation. (Comaroff has denied their allegations.) And when, in January, a group of Jewish students sued Harvard for “enabling antisemitism” on campus, they did so under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

The pro-Palestinian demonstrators who created the conditions that the Jewish students allege are antisemitic are immunized by the First Amendment. “From the river to the sea” is a political slogan, classic protected speech. That is why Congress does not subpoena the demonstrators but goes after university presidents instead. The members of Congress who grilled Shafik want universities to punish demonstrators precisely because the government cannot.

Almost all instructors want open and robust discussion of controversial issues in their classrooms and on campus, because that is how academic inquiry works. No doubt university administrators want that as well. But the risks are not imaginary, and they arise, paradoxically, out of Congress’s desire to create a level playing field. Would you call the Civil Rights Act, Title IX, and the A.D.A. “coddling”? Probably not if you were Black or trans or had A.D.H.D. Professors often complain about bureaucratic bloat, but in a big university you need a large legal and administrative apparatus to insure compliance with the law, and you need a large student-life bureaucracy to instill feelings of, well, equity and inclusion. These are the goals that Congress envisioned when it passed those laws. The professoriat did not invent them.

As for diversity, that was a concept imposed on higher education by the Supreme Court. In 1978, in the case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Court ruled that universities could consider an applicant’s race as a factor in admissions. The Justice who wrote the opinion, Lewis Powell, said that universities had this right as a matter of academic freedom, which he said was guaranteed by the First Amendment—the first time that the concept of academic freedom had been extended to insulate an entire institution, not just individual faculty members, from outside interference.

However, Powell said, there had to be a reasonable justification (in legal terms, a “compelling state interest”) for considering an applicant’s race, which would otherwise be barred by the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection.” He rejected the argument that it was justified because it helped remedy past discrimination or because it would be socially desirable to increase the number of nonwhite doctors, lawyers, and chief executives. The only constitutionally acceptable justification for race-conscious admissions, he said, was diversity. A diverse student body was a legitimate educational goal and universities had a First Amendment right to pursue it.

Powell’s opinion was affirmed in 2003, in the case of Grutter v. Bollinger, and again in 2016, in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas. Both times, the Supreme Court said that race could be considered in admissions but only for the purpose of creating a diverse class, with the implicit understanding that diversity extends beyond race.

This means that when Harvard’s admissions case came before the Supreme Court, in 2022, Harvard and other universities had been promoting the educational value of diversity, and preaching it to students and faculty, for forty years. It was a way of preserving race-conscious admissions. In fact, it was the only way of preserving race-conscious admissions. And when the Court struck down the race-based admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, in 2023, it specifically rejected the very diversity rationale that it had initially prescribed and repeatedly approved. The concept of diversity, the Court now said, is insufficiently “measurable and concrete.” How can universities prove that racial diversity has the educational benefits that they claim it does? As for Powell’s ruling that academic freedom is a legal right constitutionally grounded in the First Amendment, the Court’s opinion completely ignored it.

“Diversity” is not as straightforward an educational good as it may seem. In the nineteen-twenties and thirties, for example, Harvard used “diversity” as a method for limiting the number of Jews it admitted. At the time, “diverse” meant geographically diverse, a student body with more Southerners and Midwesterners and fewer students from New York and New Jersey. It was affirmative action for Gentiles.

In other words, diversity can underwrite many agendas. Today, for example, there are demands that private universities be compelled to admit a socioeconomically diverse class or hire an ideologically diverse faculty. The fact that élite universities, like Harvard and Columbia, which enroll barely one per cent of all college students in the U.S., are being asked to fix social problems—wealth inequality, political polarization—that no one else can seem to fix is a chief subject of Bok’s “Attacking the Elites.” Bok clearly feels that these demands are unreasonable; Dirks, in “City of Intellect,” expresses a similar impatience. But both Bok and Dirks think that it would be unwise for universities to ignore such demands. Bok calls them “the burden of success.”

Diversity presents an educational challenge as well. If you are telling students that they were admitted in part because of their race, in the interest of viewpoint diversity, they may feel that they are expected to represent whatever viewpoints members of their racial group are presumed to have. Thinking this way is antithetical to a traditional aim of liberal education, which is to get students to think outside the box they were born in—or, these days, outside the boxes they checked on their applications. Liberal education is about questioning givens, not reaffirming them.

A university is a community, and everyone is there for the same reason—to learn. The community has every right to bar outside parties and to insist on norms of civility and respect, understanding that those ideals are not always immediately attainable. In most universities, physical confrontations, the targeting of individuals with threats or harassment, and the disruption of campus activities are explicitly proscribed. When the rules are violated, the best approach is for the community to find ways to police itself. But most forms of expression have to be tolerated. Tolerance is the price academics and students pay for the freedoms society has carved out for them.

Still, the fact remains that all the emphasis on diversity and inclusion did not prevent October 7th from becoming a powder keg. The real problem is that all these issues are playing out in the public eye, and universities are not skilled at public relations. Since 1964, they have been adapting to a legal environment created largely by Democratic Congresses and a Supreme Court still marginally liberal on racial issues. Now a different political regime is in the saddle, in Congress and on the Court, and there are few places left to hide.

Academic freedom is an understanding, not a law. It can’t just be invoked. It has to be asserted and defended. That’s why it’s so disheartening that leaders of great universities appear reluctant to speak up for the rights of independent inquiry and free expression for which Americans have fought. Even after Shafik offered up faculty sacrifices on the congressional altar and called in the N.Y.P.D., Republicans responded by demanding her resignation. If capitulation isn’t working, not much is lost by trying some defiance. ♦

An earlier version of this article misidentified the publisher of “All the Campus Lawyers.”

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Freedom for the Wolves

Neoliberal orthodoxy holds that economic freedom is the basis of every other kind. That orthodoxy, a Nobel economist says, is not only false; it is devouring itself.

A ny discussion of freedom must begin with a discussion of whose freedom we’re talking about. The freedom of some to harm others, or the freedom of others not to be harmed? Too often, we have not balanced the equation well: gun owners versus victims of gun violence; chemical companies versus the millions who suffer from toxic pollution; monopolistic drug companies versus patients who die or whose health worsens because they can’t afford to buy medicine.

Understanding the meaning of freedom is central to creating an economic and political system that delivers not only on efficiency, equity, and sustainability but also on moral values. Freedom—understood as having inherent ties to notions of equity, justice, and well-being—is itself a central value. And it is this broad notion of freedom that has been given short shrift by powerful strands in modern economic thinking—notably the one that goes by the shorthand term neoliberalism , the belief that the freedom that matters most, and from which other freedoms indeed flow, is the freedom of unregulated, unfettered markets.

F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman were the most notable 20th-century defenders of unrestrained capitalism. The idea of “unfettered markets”—markets without rules and regulations—is an oxymoron because without rules and regulations enforced by government, there could and would be little trade. Cheating would be rampant, trust low. A world without restraints would be a jungle in which only power mattered, determining who got what and who did what. It wouldn’t be a market at all.

Nonetheless, Hayek and Friedman argued that capitalism as they interpreted it, with free and unfettered markets, was the best system in terms of efficiency, and that without free markets and free enterprise, we could not and would not have individual freedom. They believed that markets on their own would somehow remain competitive. Remarkably, they had already forgotten—or ignored—the experiences of monopolization and concentration of economic power that had led to the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) and the Clayton Antitrust Act (1914). As government intervention grew in response to the Great Depression, Hayek worried that we were on “the road to serfdom,” as he put it in his 1944 book of that title; that is, on the road to a society in which individuals would become subservient to the state.

Rogé Karma: Why America abandoned the greatest economy in history

My own conclusions have been radically different. It was because of democratic demands that democratic governments, such as that of the U.S., responded to the Great Depression through collective action. The failure of governments to respond adequately to soaring unemployment in Germany led to the rise of Hitler. Today, it is neoliberalism that has brought massive inequalities and provided fertile ground for dangerous populists. Neoliberalism’s grim record includes freeing financial markets to precipitate the largest financial crisis in three-quarters of a century, freeing international trade to accelerate deindustrialization, and freeing corporations to exploit consumers, workers, and the environment alike. Contrary to what Friedman suggested in his 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom , this form of capitalism does not enhance freedom in our society. Instead, it has led to the freedom of a few at the expense of the many. As Isaiah Berlin would have it: Freedom for the wolves; death for the sheep.

I t is remarkable that , in spite of all the failures and inequities of the current system, so many people still champion the idea of an unfettered free-market economy. This despite the daily frustrations of dealing with health-care companies, insurance companies, credit-card companies, telephone companies, landlords, airlines, and every other manifestation of modern society. When there’s a problem, ordinary citizens are told by prominent voices to “leave it to the market.” They’ve even been told that the market can solve problems that one might have thought would require society-wide action and coordination, some larger sense of the public good, and some measure of compulsion. It’s purely wishful thinking. And it’s only one side of the fairy tale. The other side is that the market is efficient and wise, and that government is inefficient and rapacious.

Mindsets, once created, are hard to change. Many Americans still think of the United States as a land of opportunity. They still believe in something called the American dream, even though for decades the statistics have painted a darker picture. The rate of absolute income mobility—that is, the percentage of children who earn more than their parents—has been declining steadily since the Second World War. Of course, America should aspire to be a land of opportunity, but clinging to beliefs that are not supported by today’s realities—and that hold that markets by themselves are a solution to today’s problems—is not helpful. Economic conditions bear this out, as more Americans are coming to understand. Unfettered markets have created, or helped create, many of the central problems we face, including manifold inequalities, the climate crisis, and the opioid crisis. And markets by themselves cannot solve any of our large, collective problems. They cannot manage the massive structural changes that we are going through—including global warming, artificial intelligence, and the realignment of geopolitics.

All of these issues present inconvenient truths to the free-market mindset. If externalities such as these are important, then collective action is important. But how to come to collective agreement about the regulations that govern society? Small communities can sometimes achieve a broad consensus, though typically far from unanimity. Larger societies have a harder go of it. Many of the crucial values and presumptions at play are what economists, philosophers, and mathematicians refer to as “primitives”—underlying assumptions that, although they can be debated, cannot be resolved. In America today we are divided over such assumptions, and the divisions have widened.

The consequences of neoliberalism point to part of the reason: specifically, growing income and wealth disparities and the polarization caused by the media. In theory, economic freedom was supposed to be the bedrock basis for political freedom and democratic health. The opposite has proved to be true. The rich and the elites have a disproportionate voice in shaping both government policies and societal narratives. All of which leads to an enhanced sense by those who are not wealthy that the system is rigged and unfair, which makes healing divisions all the more difficult.

Chris Murphy: The wreckage of neoliberalism

As income inequalities grow, people wind up living in different worlds. They don’t interact. A large body of evidence shows that economic segregation is widening and has consequences, for instance, with regard to how each side thinks and feels about the other. The poorest members of society see the world as stacked against them and give up on their aspirations; the wealthiest develop a sense of entitlement, and their wealth helps ensure that the system stays as it is.

The media, including social media, provide another source of division. More and more in the hands of a very few, the media have immense power to shape societal narratives and have played an obvious role in polarization. The business model of much of the media entails stoking divides. Fox News, for instance, discovered that it was better to have a devoted right-wing audience that watched only Fox than to have a broader audience attracted to more balanced reporting. Social-media companies have discovered that it’s profitable to get engagement through enragement. Social-media sites can develop their algorithms to effectively refine whom to target even if that means providing different information to different users.

N eoliberal theorists and their beneficiaries may be happy to live with all this. They are doing very well by it. They forget that, for all the rhetoric, free markets can’t function without strong democracies beneath them—the kind of democracies that neoliberalism puts under threat. In a very direct way, neoliberal capitalism is devouring itself.

Not only are neoliberal economies inefficient at dealing with collective issues, but neoliberalism as an economic system is not sustainable on its own. To take one fundamental element: A market economy runs on trust. Adam Smith himself emphasized the importance of trust, recognizing that society couldn’t survive if people brazenly followed their own self-interest rather than good codes of conduct:

The regard to those general rules of conduct, is what is properly called a sense of duty, a principle of the greatest consequence in human life, and the only principle by which the bulk of mankind are capable of directing their actions … Upon the tolerable observance of these duties, depends the very existence of human society, which would crumble into nothing if mankind were not generally impressed with a reverence for those important rules of conduct.

For instance, contracts have to be honored. The cost of enforcing every single contract through the courts would be unbearable. And with no trust in the future, why would anybody save or invest? The incentives of neoliberal capitalism focus on self-interest and material well-being, and have done much to weaken trust. Without adequate regulation, too many people, in the pursuit of their own self-interest, will conduct themselves in an untrustworthy way, sliding to the edge of what is legal, overstepping the bounds of what is moral. Neoliberalism helps create selfish and untrustworthy people. A “businessman” like Donald Trump can flourish for years, even decades, taking advantage of others. If Trump were the norm rather than the exception, commerce and industry would grind to a halt.

We also need regulations and laws to make sure that there are no concentrations of economic power. Business seeks to collude and would do so even more in the absence of antitrust laws. But even playing within current guardrails, there’s a strong tendency for the agglomeration of power. The neoliberal ideal of free, competitive markets would, without government intervention, be evanescent.

We’ve also seen that those with power too often do whatever they can to maintain it. They write the rules to sustain and enhance power, not to curb or diminish it. Competition laws are eviscerated. Enforcement of banking and environmental laws is weakened. In this world of neoliberal capitalism, wealth and power are ever ascendant.

Neoliberalism undermines the sustainability of democracy—the opposite of what Hayek and Friedman intended or claimed. We have created a vicious circle of economic and political inequality, one that locks in more freedom for the rich and leaves less for the poor, at least in the United States, where money plays such a large role in politics.

Read: When Milton Friedman ran the show

There are many ways in which economic power gets translated into political power and undermines the fundamental democratic value of one person casting one vote. The reality is that some people’s voices are much louder than others. In some countries, accruing power is as crude as literally buying votes, with the wealthy having more money to buy more votes. In advanced countries, the wealthy use their influence in the media and elsewhere to create self-serving narratives that in turn become the conventional wisdom. For instance, certain rules and regulations and government interventions—tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, deregulation of key industries—that are purely in the interest of the rich and powerful are also, it is said, in the national interest. Too often that viewpoint is swallowed wholesale. If persuasion doesn’t work, there is always fear: If the banks are not bailed out, the economic system will collapse, and everyone will be worse off. If the corporate tax rate is not cut, firms will leave and go to other jurisdictions that are more business-friendly.

Is a free society one in which a few dictate the terms of engagement? In which a few control the major media and use that control to decide what the populace sees and hears? We now inhabit a polarized world in which different groups live in different universes, disagreeing not only on values but on facts.

A strong democracy can’t be sustained by neoliberal economics for a further reason. Neoliberalism has given rise to enormous “rents”—the monopoly profits that are a major source of today’s inequalities. Much is at stake, especially for many in the top one percent, centered on the enormous accretion of wealth that the system has allowed. Democracy requires compromise if it is to remain functional, but compromise is difficult when there is so much at stake in terms of both economic and political power.

A free-market, competitive, neoliberal economy combined with a liberal democracy does not constitute a stable equilibrium—not without strong guardrails and a broad societal consensus on the need to curb wealth inequality and money’s role in politics. The guardrails come in many forms, such as competition policy, to prevent the creation, maintenance, and abuse of market power. We need checks and balances, not just within government, as every schoolchild in the U.S. learns, but more broadly within society. Strong democracy, with widespread participation, is also part of what is required, which means working to strike down laws intended to decrease democratic participation or to gerrymander districts where politicians will never lose their seats.

Whether America’s political and economic system today has enough safeguards to sustain economic and political freedoms is open to serious question.

U nder the very name of freedom, neoliberals and their allies on the radical right have advocated policies that restrict the opportunities and freedoms, both political and economic, of the many in favor of the few. All these failures have hurt large numbers of people around the world, many of whom have responded by turning to populism, drawn to authoritarian figures like Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Vladimir Putin, and Narendra Modi.

Perhaps we should not be surprised by where the U.S. has landed. It is a country now so divided that even a peaceful transition of power is difficult, where life expectancy is the lowest among advanced nations, and where we can’t agree about truth or how it might best be ascertained or verified. Conspiracy theories abound. The values of the Enlightenment have to be relitigated daily.

There are good reasons to worry whether America’s form of ersatz capitalism and flawed democracy is sustainable. The incongruities between lofty ideals and stark realities are too great. It’s a political system that claims to cherish freedom above all else but in many ways is structured to deny or restrict freedoms for many of its citizens.

I do believe that there is broad consensus on key elements of what constitutes a good and decent society, and on what kind of economic system supports that society. A good society, for instance, must live in harmony with nature. Our current capitalism has made a mess of this. A good society allows individuals to flourish and live up to their potential. In terms of education alone, our current capitalism is failing large portions of the population. A good economic system would encourage people to be honest and empathetic, and foster the ability to cooperate with others. The current capitalist system encourages the antithesis.

But the key first step is changing our mindset. Friedman and Hayek argued that economic and political freedoms are intimately connected, with the former necessary for the latter. But the economic system that has evolved—largely under the influence of these thinkers and others like them—undermines meaningful democracy and political freedom. In the end, it will undermine the very neoliberalism that has served them so well.

For a long time, the right has tried to establish a monopoly over the invocation of freedom , almost as a trademark. It’s time to reclaim the word.

This article has been adapted from Joseph E. Stiglitz’s new book, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society .

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Support for this project was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

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On Politics

How six-week abortion bans went from fringe to reality.

Even opponents of abortion saw such curbs as too controversial just over a decade ago. Times have changed.

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By Jess Bidgood

Just over a decade ago, six-week abortion bans were seen as too radical even by many members of the anti-abortion movement, who worried they carried too much political and legal risk.

On Wednesday, Florida became the latest state to put one into effect.

The law, which was signed last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, cuts off access to the procedure before many women even know they are pregnant, leaving millions of women in the South hundreds of miles from a clinic offering abortion.

The ban represents another victory for the true believers of the anti-abortion movement that seek sharp curbs on the procedure. But when such a ban was first introduced, mainstream abortion opponents who preferred gradually chipping away at abortion rights felt such restrictions could backfire and undermine their broader goals.

My colleague Elizabeth Dias covers religion and is the author, with Lisa Lerer, of a forthcoming book about the fall of Roe v. Wade. I asked her how the six-week ban moved from the fringe to the mainstream — and why those early warnings from anti-abortion allies might be coming true now. Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.

When did the concept of six-week abortion bans first emerge?

The Florida law didn’t just come out of nowhere — it’s related to a push that began more than a decade ago, in Ohio. There, in 2011, an evangelical activist, Janet Porter, began to advocate for a bill that would ban abortion when a fetal “heartbeat” is detectable, about six or eight weeks into a pregnancy.

That was during former President Barack Obama’s first term, a time when the Tea Party was rising and the anti-abortion movement was fairly weak relative to its power today. The fall of Roe was a long way away. How did leaders of the anti-abortion movement react to Porter’s proposal?

The big players in the anti-abortion movement were focused on incremental change, on moving the needle slowly. Porter and her wing of the anti-abortion movement were considered really fringe. Groups like Ohio Right to Life and the state’s Catholic conference refused to support the ban , which they thought could be dangerous, and unproductive, for their movement because it seemed too extreme. The bill didn’t pass that year — it didn’t pass, in fact, until 2019 .

The concept of the “heartbeat bill” banning abortion as early as six weeks traveled far beyond Ohio. Why did the movement come to embrace it?

Many opponents of abortion have a deep and often spiritual conviction that, at the moment of conception, a fully human person worthy of rights is created, and they have worked hard to rally the public to think of a fertilized cell in this way. So the way that this wing of the movement started to talk about it was, well, what’s more human than the heart?

It’s important to note, though, that this was a powerful messaging tactic and that embryos don’t have fully developed hearts that early in a pregnancy . Most experts actually describe what is detected at this point as an electric pulse from a primitive tube of cardiac cells.

When did these bans start picking up speed, and actually passing?

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a pivot point for the whole movement. Legislators in Ohio soon advanced their six-week bill , although it was vetoed . The window of what was possible suddenly expanded for them, although with Roe still in place, the mainstream anti-abortion movement didn’t see six-week bans as an effective way to undercut the country’s abortion protections.

But once the balance of power on the Supreme Court shifted with the appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, things changed. When state legislatures met in 2019, they began to pass a wave of abortion restrictions . Five states, including Ohio, passed so-called heartbeat bills that banned abortion as early as six weeks. Missouri passed a bill banning abortion around 8 weeks , and Alabama also passed a ban on abortion. Those bans could not immediately take effect because of Roe, but it was all part of laying the groundwork for what they hoped would be its eventual fall.

When doctors measure the length of a pregnancy, they start from the date of a woman’s last period, which is about two weeks before conception is possible . So a six-week ban is an even smaller window than some people realize.

Yes. The point of all of these laws is to stop as many abortions as possible — the movement talks about making abortion “unthinkable.” And some of the people who initially worried about a six-week ban ended up supporting them. But it became so broadly unpopular after Roe was overturned, others pushed 15-week bans instead , though that’s not their ultimate goal, either. This is a movement that thinks and plans in generations.

For much of the history of the six-week ban, lawmakers voted for such measures knowing they couldn’t be put in place. How has support for these bans changed since the fall of Roe?

Thirteen years ago, in Ohio, some abortion opponents warned that a six-week ban could hurt their movement. The reaction to the Florida law shows us that they may have been right all along.

The Florida law is completely controversial. Yes, they’re achieving their goal of limiting abortion access, in practical terms, but they’re taking on a huge risk, too, since this fall voters will have a chance to enshrine the protection of abortion rights into their state constitution through a ballot measure.

So the anti-abortion movement is experiencing real whiplash. They’re achieving policy goals they’ve been pursing for years, and they stand to lose them for having overreached — which was a fear many of them had at the very beginning with Janet Porter’s law.

The backlash in Florida

For a long time, a six-week abortion ban was not considered as seriously in Florida as it was in other states. That changed last year, when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it as he stacked up conservative policy victories ahead of his presidential run. I asked The New York Times’s Miami bureau chief, Patricia Mazzei , to tell us how his decision to sign the ban may have actually intensified the campaign for expanded abortion rights in Florida.

In 2022, DeSantis signed a 15-week abortion ban at a big church near Orlando. But when he signed the six-week ban, he did it behind closed doors. That signaled, I think, that he knew it was going pretty far for a state where public opinion polls still suggested most Floridians wanted legal abortion far beyond six weeks.

Critics of the ban channeled their efforts into gathering petition signatures to put an amendment on the ballot that would directly ask Floridians if they wanted to expand abortion access, and bring it back up to about 24 weeks. They had begun that effort after the 15-week ban was enacted, but it really ramped up after the six-week ban was signed. They were successful, and that question will appear on the ballot in November.

So the people who feel that the ban is wrong, they feel like there is a way out, that there is light at the end of the tunnel if they can get this passed. They have a way to channel their anger, or their opposition — although the ballot measure will require more than 60 percent support to pass, and that’s a high threshold.

The anti-abortion movement’s victory was really attenuated by this ballot measure, and they are now gearing up for a tough campaign.

— Patricia Mazzei

Read more of Patricia’s coverage of Florida’s abortion ban:

Florida’s abortion ban is now law, with political implications

Inside an abortion clinic in the last days before the six-week ban

Florida’s abortion ban will cut off a major access point in the South

… and more abortion news

Vice President Kamala Harris seized on Florida’s ban at a campaign event in Jacksonville, Fla., on Wednesday, warning that a second Trump term would bring “more bans, more suffering, less freedom.”

The Arizona State Senate repealed the state’s 1864 law banning abortion. Two Republicans broke with their party and joined Democrats in backing the repeal.

In an interview with Time magazine on Tuesday, Trump refused to commit to veto a national abortion ban.

Jess Bidgood is a managing correspondent for The Times and writes the On Politics newsletter, a guide to the 2024 election and beyond. More about Jess Bidgood