The Russian existential theologian, Berdyaev (1965, pp. 183-4) puts it this way:
“That inward, profound and mysterious energy which creates life is revealed through spiritual causality. Here the opposition between freedom and causality disappears; in the determination of events and the production of life there is no longer anything external. . . . Freedom of the spirit which itself gives birth to consequences, which creates life, is revealed to us a bottomlessness, baselessness, as a force from out the boundless deep. We cannot feel a base, a foundation for freedom, no-where can we find some solid element which determines freedom from within. Freedom of the spirit is a bottomless well. . . . Freedom is rooted in ‘nothingness’. The act of freedom is primordial and completely irrational. To understand an act of freedom rationally is to make it resemble the phenomena of nature.”
There is irony here. When freedom produces something, then freedom itself is lost. As Berdyaev mentions, the process of freely creating something is “natural.” It lacks the bottomlessness of Freedom. The process of creation can be described, even though in some ways it remains elusive. Those who produce out of freedom often find themselves suddenly constrained into the role of caretaker for that which was produced. Seymour Sarason (1972) observes this in the creation of new settings. The creator often becomes the manager of this new setting, or they hand the leadership of this setting over to a manager (who ironically was often a manager in the old setting). Thus, with freedom comes acceptance of a short-term experience of “non-being” (Berdyaev, 1965, p. 136)
Escape From Freedom: Often this experience is too frightening to endure for long. In many ways, freedom is aligned with the experience of Rudolph Otto’s numinous. Both freedom and the numinous are bottomless and never quite comprehendible. Ta-Nehisi Coates (2024, p. 15) recently quoted the exceptionally articulate ex-slave and early abolitionist advocate, Frederick Douglass, regarding the elusive nature of freedom:
“. . . [F[ar away, back in the hazy distance where all forms seemed but shadows under the flickering light of the north star, behind some craggy hill or snow-capped mountain, stood a doubtful freedom, half frozen, and beckoning us to her icy domain.”
For Douglass, freedom might have taken on a numinous quality. He had experienced it in his own exceptional journey to liberation; however, as Coates (2024, p. 16) observes, the pursuit of freedom for an enslaved man requires that they:
“. . . forsake the very real land of their birth for a dream and maybe a nightmare—an ‘icy domain’ that looms ‘in the hazy distance under ‘flickering light . . . half frozen.’ Douglass’s freedom is not banners or anthems, but terror that he nonetheless embraced.”
While Douglass was primarily portraying the numinous experience of embarking on the journey to freedom for those enslaved in the American South as they followed the drinking gourd (North Star), his statement was also applicable to anyone pursuing freedom. It always required that one leave the land of one’s birth (be this land a physical location or tradition-laden state of mind). Freedom and the numinous are both frightening.
In a very different setting and very different time, Erich Fromm (1941,1955) has something similar to say about the “awe-ful” nature of freedom as it emerges from an old and established societal order. When living under an authoritarian regime, we know what we should believe and do. With freedom comes the initial void of nothingness. We must leave home and create new beliefs and actions. We must find (or create) our own drinking gourd to serve as a guide for our creation of something out of nothing.
