Freedom - is the world closed?

The concept of freedom has intrigued me a lot, and continue to bewilder me. Perhaps it is what Marx called the "snare of abstract though" that we should avoid, but it is interesting mental exercise if nothing else.

What I oppose above all is the idea that freedom would be a Platonic Idea. Freedom seems far more to be freedom from something, freedom in degrees. Freedom demands a relation to something, because you are always free from something - from debt, from your own prejudices, from gravity.

I've written about the queerness of freedom before, and I think that thinking about it as relations, even as a nexus of relations, makes freedom intelligible and reveals our actual usage of the word. Using it in a platonic sense must certainly stem from linguistical confusion and political ideology.

Consider my freedom to surf the web and write annoying blog posts that no-one actually reads. If I go outside, that freedom still remains but cannot be actualized. If the Internet crashes, then obviously that freedom is entirely gone. I can also be hampered in many other ways, all pertaining to my ability to write this post. They form a nexus of some sort.

So the world starts "closed". Our natural abilities gives us freedoms. To operate things, to move, to speak, etc. From the very particular to the very general. These freedoms depend on our abilities, our intelligence and so on and so forth. They are as categories that are opened to us as we progress.