The relationship between concepts of freedom and ontologies of self remains one of the deepest—and most contested—questions in philosophy, psychology, and social theory. Yet, too often, contemporary discourse flattens this complexity, eliding the paradigmatic commitments and incommensurable tensions that animate the debate. A genuinely rigorous analysis must begin by clarifying both the canonical definitions of freedom and the corresponding ontologies of self upon which they rest, before mapping their connections and divergences.

1. Negative Liberty and the Atomistic Self

Negative liberty, classically defined by Isaiah Berlin and rooted in the liberal tradition, conceives freedom as the absence of external interference. This position presupposes an atomistic, self-owning individual: a bounded subject whose rights and interests pre-exist social entanglement (Locke, Nozick, Mill). Ontologically, the self is substantial, ontically prior to society, and axiology is grounded in the sanctity of individual autonomy. The chief merit is its robust protection of individual rights; its limitation is a blindness to structural injustice and the inescapable embeddedness of selfhood.

2. Positive Liberty and the Rational/Unified Self

Positive liberty, by contrast, demands the capacity for self-mastery and rational self-legislation—not merely being left alone, but being able to be one's own master (Rousseau, Kant, Taylor). The self here is a rational, unified will, capable of subordinating desires to reason or the general will. Ontologically, this is not mere individualism but “authenticity”: freedom requires a self capable of reflexive self-determination. This view highlights self-realisation but is vulnerable to paternalism, as it authorises interventions in the name of the “true” or “higher” self.

3. Republican Liberty and the Civic/Relational Self

Republican or non-domination freedom (Aristotle, Pettit, Arendt) conceptualises liberty as freedom from arbitrary power and “non-domination,” demanding the status of civic personhood among equals. The self is neither atomistic nor absorbed into the collective, but emerges through public recognition and participation. This tradition recognises that both individual and collective liberty are constituted and mediated through political structures—a crucial insight for institutional analysis.

4. Capability, Recognition, and the Situated/Social Self

Sen, Nussbaum, and Honneth, among others, recast freedom as the real opportunity to function and flourish: not just non-interference, but the positive enabling of human capacities. Here, the self is fundamentally social and situated, realised through networks of recognition and supportive institutions. The measure of freedom is the presence of enabling conditions—not abstract rights, but concrete capabilities to do and be. This view is especially attentive to justice and equality but risks eliding tensions with individual autonomy.

5. Genealogical/Critical and the Constructed Subject

Foucault, Butler, and the critical tradition interrogate freedom as the capacity to resist and reconfigure power relations that produce subjects. The “self” here is not pre-social, but constructed through discourse, practice, and power/knowledge regimes—always already “subjected” as much as “agentic.” Freedom is a practice of critique and subversion, not a natural property. This position is methodologically radical but can undermine stable normative grounds for critique.

6. Existential/Narrative and the Projective/Becoming Self

Drawing on existentialists (Sartre, Beauvoir) and phenomenologists (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty), this tradition conceives the self not as a fixed substance but as an ongoing project of becoming, situated in the world and constituted through lived experience and/or narrative construction, fraught with ambiguity and risk. Freedom is understood as the capacity to author one’s life in the face of contingency, but also as fundamentally embodied and situated: agency is always exercised through our bodily presence, perception, and engagement with the world. This view foregrounds authenticity, responsibility, and the anxiety of choice, but also recognises that all freedom is mediated by the facticity and relationality of existence. This ontology captures the creative and interpretive dimensions of agency, but struggles with the societal embeddedness of identity.

 7. Dialectical/Collective and the Mediated Self

Hegel and his inheritors (Brandom, Honneth, Pippin) propose a dialectical freedom, realised only in and through mutual recognition—the self is constituted in a dynamic mediation between particularity and universality. True freedom is neither atomistic nor collective absorption, but emerges from participation in shared practices and institutions (Sittlichkeit) that secure reciprocal recognition and enable self-development. This view uniquely sublates the opposition between self and other, but is demanding in its institutional requirements, highlighting the ever-present possibility of misrecognition, exclusion, or alienation within social life.

These traditions are not simply interchangeable “perspectives”; they rest on fundamentally incommensurable assumptions about what it means to be a self, how agency is constituted, and what counts as legitimate freedom.

At the heart of the debate lies the is/ought problem: How can descriptive accounts of the self (what we are) justify normative accounts of freedom (what we ought to be)? Each tradition offers a different answer, but the path from ontology to ethics is never straightforward. To engage seriously with the nexus of self and freedom is to confront the deepest questions of human agency, justice, and flourishing. Only by clarifying our ontological and axiological commitments can we hope to navigate—and not merely instrumentalise—the complex realities of leadership, ethics, and collective life.

#Ethics #Leadership #Philosophy #Ontology #Freedom #Selfhood #Complexity