Original Publish Date » April 14 , 2025
Last Updated » 6 days
Available as the CBC IDEAS podcast “Do you truly live in a ‘free’ society” It’s complicated,” dated April 14, 2025.
CBC Radio » Timothy Snyder is one of three prominent Yale scholars who’ve publicly criticized Donald Trump and moved to teach at the University of Toronto, the other two being Marci Shore, a specialist in intellectual history (and who is married to Snyder) and philosopher Jason Stanley, who has written about fascism.
His most recent book is entitled On Freedom, and in it he draws a crucial distinction between freedom “from” and freedom “to.”
Freedom “to” is active, entails community, responsibility, fidelity to reason.
Freedom “from” is now the dominant definition of freedom, a definition that he believes is undermining the very notion of freedom itself.
Timothy Snyder joined IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed at the Toronto Public Library to talk about why he says the concept of “freedom from” is misguided, and ultimately dangerous.
