There is a famous adage in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, 『The poor animal of humans has nothing but a strong desire to find someone who can give the gift of birthright to the gift of freedom as soon as possible.』

   When we think about “Freedom”, there is more a positive image that everyone wants to be free from something around them. From the time we are born we look for freedom. We want to walk, we want to be an adult, we want to drive and we want to go abroad. Think about after you get freedom. What should you do then? Can you just enjoy your liberty without caring about other options which could be occurring? The answer will be “NO”. Freedom comes with responsibility. What Erich Fromm was trying to say is that people want to escape from freedom because of the sense of isolation and helplessness that comes with it. Having liberty can be a burden to people. Therefore, they want to be subordinated to the some other restriction. If you are an employee of a company your boss will give an instruction for what to do and you don’t need to worry about finding your own tasks to handle.

Dostoyevsky

   Capitalism has not only liberated humans from traditional restraints, but also increased the positive freedom devoted to developing an active, critical and responsible ego. This procedure was one of the results of the process of freedom created by the progress of capitalism. However, it makes a person more severely isolated, which brings a sense of meaninglessness and powerless. This book was telling that the desire to escape from freedom arouses masochism and sadism and tries to show their attire by two different ways. In other words, it’s about being unable to cope with being alone or escape from these fixed time schedules it might be difficult to be independent about their future which especially finding a job place.

   You can understand the idea of this book is that freedom can be a pressure and a burden to a person. The writer has given an accurate definition of freedom. There are two different types of freedom. One is ‘from freedom’, which is the negative freedom. The other is ‘to freedom’, which is the positive freedom. He said the freedom should follow the positive freedom way of progress that should be with spontaneity. When freedom works with democratic socialism it will be change from the negative way (from freedom) to the positive way (to freedom).

Democracy offer people the best positive opportunity to aggressively pursue self-realization and overcome nihilism. So now what do you prefer? Being free or escaping from freedom? We think doesn’t the younger’s will prefer to be free, enthusiastic and daredevil. Try to have many experiences as much as you can then you’ll find what kind of person you are. Don’t have to be afraid of anything just give it a try! We are too young to worry about the risk of freedom.

Min-Joo Cho majoring in English Literature