20.10.2026 Diary L Eleutheria: the price of freedom

20.10.2026 Diary Page L

A day when no one interferes and a day when I make my own decision are not the same day.

Tuesday. Today's word is eleutheria, freedom in Greek.

The page number has become L. Fifty. A single letter in Roman numerals, and it struck me as a strange kind of simplicity.

I have used the word freedom a lot. Everywhere I could say I have my own business, I said the same word to myself inside. Mostly without thinking. Today I want to look at the weight of the word.

The opposite of the slave

In the ancient world, what first defined freedom was what a slave was. Opposite eleutheria stood douleia, slavery. Doulos means slave. The free person was the one who was not a slave.

I'm not sure about the origin of the word eleutheros. A frequently mentioned view ties it, within the Indo-European languages, to the idea of "growing up within a people", and connects it with Latin liber and German Leute. If it's true, it's a lovely detail: the free person is the one who belongs to a community. Not the one left alone. But it's a disputed etymology, and I write this knowing that.

Existing for one's own sake

In the first book of the Metaphysics, while talking about the science of wisdom, Aristotle makes a small comparison. We call free the person who exists for their own sake and not for another's, he says. This science is the same: it is a free science because it exists only for its own sake.

This sentence settled somewhere in me. Existing for one's own sake.

There is also a dark side I need to know: the same Aristotle defended the idea of natural slavery in the Politics. I hold the two on the same page. The owner of a sentence I love may not have seen that sentence's limit.

I also know that using the word slavery for my own desk would be cheap. I won't make a metaphor of it. I will only ask myself Aristotle's measure: who did I exist for today?

In September I wrote about work that has no door. Owning my own business didn't mean being free from the demands of the work, it turned out. I was the owner, but no one closed the door for me.

Berlin's two questions

In 1958, in his inaugural lecture at Oxford, Isaiah Berlin made a distinction under the title "Two Concepts of Liberty". This distinction later made its way into almost every corner of the debate on freedom.

The first question: in what area does no one hinder me? Berlin calls this negative liberty. The wider the area where no one interferes, the freer you are.

The second question: who governs me? Who makes my decisions? This is positive liberty: being the master of your own life.

I think law is more comfortable with the first question. The Roman jurist Florentinus's definition in the Digest builds freedom as the natural capacity of everyone to do as they wish, unless prevented by force or by law. So, first an area. Law usually thinks of freedom as a boundary line.

I think more about the second question. Maybe because I studied law I find the first one too easy. An area can be drawn, measured, defended. Who makes the decision, though, is something no article of any law fully captures. I can only check it at the end of the day, by myself, over my notebook.

When no one interferes

When no one interferes, my first feeling is relief. My second feeling, and this is a little hard to write, is emptiness.

There's no one to tell the time. No one saying start. No one saying that's enough for today either. For someone with time blindness, the withdrawal of the outside voice that tells the time is as much a loss of structure as it is freedom. My area grows wider, but filling the area is also left to me.

I described freelancing from the method side in another article. Today I'm writing not the method but the feeling: because no one hinders me from outside, if a hindrance remains, I look for it inside. When I postpone, I answer to no one. This is a relief, and the relief is also a price.

Admitting this to myself took a while. While wanting freedom, I thought that what I wanted was usually the removal of the obstacle. The obstacle was removed. And what remained in front of me was a completely empty desk. I open the notebook, the coffee is right beside me, and I ask who will write the first sentence. The answer is always the same: me.

That the answer to this question is always me isn't actually frightening. It's tiring. I'm only just starting to tell the difference between fear and tiredness.

Not being interfered with is only half of freedom.

Master of myself

When it comes to the second question, Berlin says something interesting and a little frightening. It is hard to explain the idea of being one's own master without splitting the person in two. There is a higher self, the one that plans. There is a lower self, the one that acts on its impulses and momentary wants.

As someone with ADHD, I know this split very well. The me who makes plans, the me in hyperfocus, the me who moves on to the next tab. All three are the same person.

Berlin's warning was this: where the higher self starts to force the lower self "for its own good", tyranny can begin in the name of freedom. He meant what was done to others in history. But I know I can run the same mechanism on myself. Becoming my own jailer in the name of setting myself free.

In the oikeiosis entry I wrote about taking care of oneself. Being my own master isn't being my own jailer. The master commands. The jailer locks up. Neither is what I want.

What I want maybe resembles the question I ask myself when I head out for a walk: where do I want to go today? No command, no lock. A question and the patience to wait for an answer. I can ask this question best while walking, because when I walk the answer comes, even if late.

Looking today at the period when I tried medication a second time at twenty-eight, this question stands there too: does something that makes starting easier make the decision in my place, or does it take me to the place where I can make the decision? I'm still thinking about it. If I look at it with Berlin's measure, the answer is hidden in whose decision it is. If I'm still the one making the decision, freedom stands there too.

The price

In his 1945 lecture Sartre said that man is condemned to be free. The sentence is harsh, but today I understand its weight.

I would write the price of freedom like this: the responsibility to start is mine. I will build the structure. I will pay the price of saying "no". No one will come and say "that's it for today".

There is something in return too: I'm not paying the same price to someone else's calendar.

I notice one more thing. There is a virtue Aristotle discusses that comes from the same root: eleutheriotes, generosity. Being measured about money and giving, neither stingy nor wasteful. That the word for free leads to generosity feels meaningful to me. The free person is the one who can give what they have by their own decision. If I'm the one handing out my time, my attention, my effort, it's also up to me to do it with measure. I know the days I've been wasteful. And the days I've been stingy, too.

Is it worth paying? Today I say yes. But I don't do the sum once and close it. I do it again every morning, over coffee. In the epokhe entry I wrote about waiting before passing judgment; with this question too, walking on without giving a final verdict, weighing it again every morning, feels more honest to me.

A piece next to the concept

Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio, the Prisoners' Chorus, "O welche Lust".

Fidelio is Beethoven's only opera. Its first version was staged in 1805, then in 1806, and its final form in 1814. In the first act the prisoners come out into the courtyard for a short while and breathe the open air. The chorus says "what a joy, to breathe freely in the open air". Right after that it says the dungeon is a grave.

What moves me most in this chorus isn't its exuberance but its caution: the voices rising from low, hesitantly. Here the first taste of freedom is written not as a big idea but as a breath.

Today I needed this entry like a breath. I wrote about the price of freedom, but I want to add one more thing next to the price. No one is free without a price. Still, the reason I can pay the price is that there is a breath in return.

Toward tomorrow

Tomorrow is Wednesday, the twenty-first of the month. Tomorrow's word is Latin and plural. It describes a closeness, being bound to one another.

Two years ago I opened a door, and today's question also passed through that door: did building this set me free or tie me down? Tomorrow I will sit down in front of that door and tell it.