Paradoxes of freedom

the long version

Paradoxes of Freedom is a study of the philosophical and historical conception of liberty. Centering his argument upon the Romantic exaltation of freedom that followed the psychic explosion of the French Revolution, Thomas McFarland identifies freedom as one of the three chief transcendences, along with love and religion, by which humanity orientates itself. The book departs from contemplation of the significance of the Revolutionary motto 'live free or die'; and it discusses the apotheosis of freedom along with its vicissitudes. McFarland indicates, by an examination ranging from antiquity to the present day, both the reasons for the supreme valuation of freedom and the nature of the hindrances, in theory and in fact, that enmesh the realization of freedom. The volume concludes with a sombre assessment of the future of freedom as an orientating transcendence.