The Freedom for Paradigm

Freedom for is an original framework that follows on from liberal freedom (or freedom from) and positive liberty (freedom to). While acknowledging the historical significance of past conceptualizations of freedom, this emergent paradigm sheds light on the material underpinnings of freedom within the biological limits of a finite world. Indeed, the liberal and globally dominant paradigm has always framed freedom within the context of resource abundance and, as such, is divorced from the ecological realities in which freedom itself is actualized. 

 

Freedom for addresses this critical shortcoming by re-situating our understanding and practice of freedom within a framework mindful of ecological limits and societal stability. As the paradigm develops, it crafts a freedom narrative anchored in ecological realities, responsibility, and meaning that reconciles individual accomplishment and flourishing with environmental health, systemic stability, and social cohesion. In so doing, the paradigm makes the case that freedom is ultimately for something.

 

Because the future will be unlike the past, Freedom for does not merely propose a few tweaks and fixes from within the current neoliberal paradigm. Rather, it furthers the conceptual arc from freedom from to freedom to to freedom for, transcending historical ideological debates to articulate a viable future for human freedom, rooted in material realities, systemic stability, and necessity.