Timothy Snyder On Freedom

Book Review: Timothy Snyder’s “On Freedom”

A critical review of the book On Freedom by Timothy Snyder. Published by Crown in 2024; 345 pages.

In an era where the word “freedom” is used, abused, and tragically misunderstood, Timothy Snyder’s book, On Freedom, arrives as an obtuse re-examination of the concept. In our contemporary discourse, “freedom” has been hollowed out, reduced to a political slogan or a consumerist impulse. Snyder, a historian known for his clear-eyed analysis of modern tyranny, challenges us to look past the clichés and confront the true, demanding nature of liberty. This work is not a detached academic treatise. It’s a deeply personal and polemical argument for progressive readers concerned about contemporary threats to democracy, though it may frustrate students of history and philosophy seeking rigorous engagement with the philosophical tradition or balanced historical analysis. My impression after reading the preface is that the book seems designed for those who already share Snyder’s postmodern political philosophy rather than for deeper historical or intellectual exploration across ideological lines.

Negative Freedom vs. Positive Freedom

The book tackles a genuine problem: Americans often understand freedom simply as “being left alone.” Snyder calls this “negative freedom” — freedom from government interference, from barriers, from obligation. He argues this concept is failing us. Modern challenges like oligarchy, technological manipulation, and eroding democratic norms expose its limitations. According to Snyder, this narrow definition doesn’t secure our autonomy. Instead, it leaves us vulnerable to forces seeking control. His solution is “positive freedom” — the freedom to create, to choose, and to build meaningful lives with others.

My Book Review Method

In this book review I will first try to clearly portray Timothy Snyder’s thoughts On Freedom. Secondly, I will provide a critical analysis of his viewpoint, political philosophy, and writing style. My goal is to summarize the content of Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom with clarity and honesty — before criticizing it. In this way, I hope to avoid the Newman effect. After reviewing Snyder’s five forms of freedom, and his conclusion, I will provide a short critique and several questions for further inquiry.

A Short Video Review of Timothy Snyder’s Book: On Freedom

I realize some people will not read the full review (since it might take 20 or 25 minutes to read) — so I made a 6 minute video that captures all the main points in my book review.

Timothy Snyder On Freedom – Preface

In the preface to On Freedom, Timothy Snyder establishes the core arguments of the book, contrasting the common American understanding of freedom with a positive definition derived from his experiences in wartime Ukraine.

The Problem with Negative Freedom

According to Snyder, Americans typically understand freedom as negative freedom — the absence of obstacles, particularly government interference. (This is the strawman he wants to burn down at the next Burning Man Festival.) Snyder argues this view is a dangerous “conceptual trap” that treats freedom as a natural default state requiring no effort to maintain.

Freedom as Positive Creation

Snyder redefines freedom as positive freedom — not the absence of evil but the presence of good. Freedom is the “value of values” and the “learned capacity to make choices.” It means knowing what we value and actively bringing those values to life through our commitments and actions. This positive freedom requires active work: virtues must be learned and practiced, structures (both moral and political) must be collectively built, and individuals must affirm and create rather than merely deny and destroy.

Lessons from Ukraine

Snyder’s observations in wartime Ukraine illustrate positive freedom through Ukrainians’ pursuit of a meaningful future with public goods like schools and playgrounds, contrasting with Russian forces’ embodiment of negative freedom via destructive acts that obliterate such spaces.

The Five Forms of Freedom

Snyder introduces the five interconnected forms that structure his views about freedom: (1) Sovereignty: The learned capacity to make choices. (2) Unpredictability: The power to adapt circumstances to personal purposes. (3) Mobility: The capacity to move through space and time following one’s values. (4) Factuality: Understanding reality well enough to change it. (5) Solidarity: Recognizing that freedom belongs to everyone.

Purpose and Method

Snyder argues that freedom should guide good government, not justify its absence. Drawing on five non-American thinkers (Frantz Fanon, Václav Havel, Leszek Kołakowski, Edith Stein, and Simone Weil) Snyder blends philosophy, history, and personal experience. He uses a Socratic method of interrogation to articulate what freedom means.

Timothy Snyder On Freedom – Introduction

Discovering A Crack in the Liberty Bell

The introduction opens with a reflective scene from the summer of 1976, when the author, at age six going on seven, participated in celebrating the American bicentennial by ringing a replica of the Liberty Bell on an Ohio farm. This memory establishes freedom as commonly understood in the United States: a negative concept suggesting that liberty was perfectly achieved long ago and requires only the absence of government interference to persist. Yet Snyder immediately complicates this nostalgic view.

The Liberty Bell itself is cracked, and it gained its iconic status not as a symbol of completed freedom but through its adoption by abolitionists and the woman suffrage movement, who used it to signal their claims for a better future.

The negative conception of freedom, Snyder argues, draws its plausibility from a history of exploitation: those who enslaved others and denied women political rights preferred to define freedom as absence of government constraint precisely because only government intervention could end these injustices.

Growing Up During the Cold War

Growing up during the Cold War, Snyder initially absorbed this negative framework, understanding freedom primarily as freedom from Soviet communism and the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation. As a young person, he sought to combat the fear that seemed to be making the country less free by aspiring to become a nuclear arms negotiator. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 exposed the profound limitations of negative freedom as a political philosophy. An “odd euphoria” swept the United States, promoting a deterministic belief that the mere absence of Soviet state ownership would automatically produce both democracy and capitalist equilibrium. Yet observing the transition in Moscow in 1990, Snyder recognized that privatizing centralized Soviet industry would likely produce oligarchy (rule by the very wealthy) rather than perfect markets. He warned that oligarchy is also an equilibrium, though this insight was largely ignored.

Negative Freedom vs. Positive Freedom – Exemplified in War

This embrace of negative freedom led to dangerous overconfidence and catastrophic misjudgments. The 2003 invasion of Iraq exemplified this failure: conceived as an “adventure in negative freedom, waged to create an absence,” it presumed that removing a dictator would automatically yield democracy. The inability to think beyond negative freedom also obscured the rise of an aggressive Russian empire under Vladimir Putin, as American observers failed to recognize threats that couldn’t be understood through the lens of mere absence versus presence of constraints.

In contrast, Snyder writes that positive freedom is exemplified by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s decision to stay in Kyiv during the 2022 Russian invasion, demonstrating that true freedom is not about running away from problems, but about presence, commitment, and character.

Timothy Snyder On Freedom – Five Forms of Freedom

The five main chapters of the book describe what Snyder calls the five forms of freedom. I found it difficult to visualize the architecture of his ideas about freedom. He erects five columns, but never really explains the bedrock foundation he’s building upon. Snyder claims that freedom is “the value of values”, but rarely describes and defends the classic virtues. Perhaps there is no bedrock foundation to his philosophy of freedom. This was disorienting, but I forced myself to keep reading.

1. Sovereignty

The chapter on Sovereignty establishes this as the first form of freedom. Sovereignty is not defined by the state, but by a person’s ability to know themselves and the world sufficiently to make judgments about values and to realize those judgments.

Personal Sovereignty: Leib vs. Korper

This personal sovereignty hinges on recognizing the self and others through the concept of the Leib, the living human body as experienced from within, which is fundamentally different from the Körper, a mere physical body or object subject solely to physical laws. Drawing heavily on the work of Edith Stein, Snyder argues that we only gain knowledge of ourselves when we acknowledge others as fellow Leib — recognizing that they share the same human predicament. This process requires empathy, which is described not as a vague urging to be kind, but as a precondition for objective knowledge of the world that liberates us from isolation. If we view others only as Körper (objects), we lose essential knowledge about them, ourselves, and the world, thereby jeopardizing our own freedom.

Personal sovereignty thus understood is intrinsically linked to positive freedom, or “freedom to” — the conscious project of deciding who we want to become and how we will realize our values. Those who present freedom as purely negative (“freedom from”), by contrast, ignore the Leib and treat the human body as just another external object or constraint. Snyder presents negative freedom as both a self-deception and a conceptual trap: it contains no program for its own realization and offers opportunities to tyrants. When the bodies of others are not recognized as Leib – as in slavery or racism – individuals fail to understand their own predicament, leading to self-deception, abuse, and unfreedom. The failure to recognize the Leib of the other eventually leads to ignorance and abuse of one’s own Leib. The capacity to be sovereign is realized when a person is able to make small passages between the world of values and the world of things, turning physical restraints into opportunities.

Growing Up in a Blurry Storm of Circumstance

Achieving personal sovereignty is neither instantaneous nor solitary; it is a social and generational project that begins not from death (fatality) but from life (natality). The traditional view of sovereignty, based on a largely fictional social contract among idealized adults, fails because it ignores the actual bodily predicament of birth and the formative period of life. Since a newborn is thrust into a “blurry storm of circumstance” and requires help to develop the cognitive and emotional capacities necessary for freedom (such as evaluation and choice) the creation of individuality must be a social act. A government’s legitimacy therefore resides not in power, but in its capacity to enable the freedom and sovereignty of coming generations by guaranteeing the conditions that allow children to grow up free: quality caregiving by parents, and the material security that makes nurturing possible.

2. Unpredictability

The chapter titled Unpredictability establishes freedom as the opposite of predictability, exploring how tyranny seeks to reduce human life to foreseeable patterns while freedom introduces genuine novelty into the world. Snyder draws heavily on Václav Havel’s political philosophy, particularly his experience resisting Czechoslovak communist “normalization” — a regime that aimed to reduce life to “the most probable states” by encouraging adaptation and cynicism, where life became an “echo chamber” of unspoken conformity.

True Freedom: Autonomy Within the World of Values

True freedom, or “autonomy,” arises when a sovereign person makes choices not only within the physical world of space and time but also within what Snyder calls the “world of values” — a realm of good and evil, virtue and vice that he describes as a “fifth dimension.” This dimension serves as a crucial reservoir of unpredictability for our world. When people affirm values, they bring a “different geometry” into physical reality, making both themselves and their world less predictable. This affirmation is a struggle against “entropy” and the “death principle,” bringing a “restlessness of transcendence” that generates new capacity for combining and realizing values.

The Design of Dangerous Digital Deathtraps

This inherent human unpredictability, however, faces an unprecedented threat from modern technology—”our digital nemesis,” as Snyder terms it. Havel anticipated that tyranny could evolve from physical violence to making victims into “predictable objects,” a threat realized today through networked systems that ceaselessly collect data and calculate human vulnerabilities to identify “our most probable states.” These machines exploit specific “brain hacks,” including experimental isolation and intermittent reinforcement — techniques derived from behaviorist experiments on isolated rats and pigeons. Designed to keep users online, these systems feed us what we like and occasionally what we fear, encouraging confirmation bias and social conformity. This relentless focus on the “how questions” of efficiency and optimization, rather than the “why questions” concerning values, risks turning individuals into rationalizing “zombies” who collaborate in their own unfreedom by accepting the status quo and failing to realize their full potential as Leib (living selves).

Active Resistance – Fueled by the Unpredictability of Rock and Roll

The path to freedom requires active resistance, beginning with understanding these mechanisms of control. Freedom is the ability of sovereign people to “declare and accommodate” values and recognize others doing the same, thereby generating unforeseen possibilities. Snyder illustrates this through dissidents like Havel, who defended rock musicians embodying the “hidden life of society,” linking the concrete freedom to play music with deeper philosophical reflection on human dignity and creativity. Such acts demonstrate how unpredictability emerges from moral courage rather than mere randomness.

The Plastic People of the Universe

One of the many vignettes (some might call rabbit trails) in the book explores the unexpected (unpredictable) influence of rock and roll music on Czechoslovakian dissidents. (p.74,75) Snyder explains how Frank Zappa and Andy Warhol influenced the Plastic People of the Universe, and how Václav Havel led the Czech people to freedom from the oppressive Soviet regime. (I’ve included a short video explaining this unexpected chain of events – below.)

A Creatively Courageous Future

Furthermore, freedom necessitates a strong connection to the historical past, which serves as a “reservoir of power and self-liberation,” ensuring that the future is not merely a static extrapolation of present trends. By focusing on the Leib and prioritizing distinctively human capacities (connection, attention, memory, and moral judgment) qualities that machines fundamentally lack — people can resist “predictification” and realize their potential for a creatively courageous future.

3. Mobility

The chapter on Mobility defines it as the third form of freedom: capable movement in space and time and among values — the ability to shape one’s life trajectory and make meaningful choices over time. Snyder argues that mobility requires collective political attention to the necessities of life, including access to food, health care, pensions, and infrastructure like roads, and railways.

Timothy Snyder On Finding Freedom While Hiking

To illustrate this dependency, he contrasts a personal memory of finding freedom while hiking on trails in Costa Rica with the realization that such a “right of way” is made possible by the labor and efforts of others. When these enabling conditions fail, unfreedom manifests as either immobilization or coercive mobilization. Under Jim Crow, for instance, African Americans could not travel freely; every journey became fraught with anxious anticipation of where they could eat, sleep, or even use a restroom.

Mobility in the Age of Empires – Roman Roads and the Internet?

Historically, the mobility of the age of empires relied on technological and immunological advantages to achieve territorial expansion — what Snyder calls “imperial mobility,” exemplified by the American frontier experience. After World War II, as imperial mobility declined, it gave way to “social mobility” in Europe and the United States. This shift created the American Dream: unpredictable but possible social advancement where the permeable borders were those of social classes, not territories. Snyder claims this positive freedom depended on enabling structures like the welfare state, public education, and health care.

Question: Does the welfare state enable social mobility or promote permanent poverty?

The Rise of Oligarchy and Mass Incarceration

However, beginning in the 1980s, American policies reversed course, abandoning social mobility in favor of a negative conception of freedom that removed barriers only for the wealthy. This facilitated the rise of oligarchy, where concentrated wealth freezes social mobility by blocking competition, weakening public services, and preventing people from breaking into new social classes. According to Snyder, the consequence is pervasive immobility, most drastically exemplified by mass incarceration in the US, which deprives millions of Americans (disproportionately Black) of time, movement, and political voice.

4. Factuality

This chapter defines Factuality as the fourth form of freedom, essential for existence, life, and liberty. Gaining factuality means understanding the facts of our existence and confronting “significant roughness” — the challenging, bruising truths that temper minds and resist predictive algorithms. According to Snyder, this starts with knowledge of biology, chemistry, physics, and the planet we inhabit. This foundation allows us to realize values and apply scientific knowledge for survival, such as understanding that life on Earth depends on the balance of solar fusion and photosynthesis. Snyder believes factuality points toward graceful solutions: fusion power plants, renewable energy, and reforestation to achieve sustainable equilibrium.

Timothy Snyder On Freedom: Factuality vs. The Big Lie

Factuality is severely threatened by the Big Lie. It works by offering a all-encompassing narrative that confirms the Leader’s power and eliminates the need to grapple with actual facts. Historical examples include Nazi racial fictions and the communist “party line” requiring “doublethink.”

To resist big lies, society requires institutions that produce “millions of little truths” (p. 184) — primarily investigative reporting and local journalism. The collapse of local newspapers (and unbiased investigative journalism) leaves communities without fact-checkers, allowing social media to amplify anxieties and fears. In this void, manufactured fiction outcompetes real news. Ultimately, freedom of speech is positive — it requires affirming truth and creating safe circumstances for those who take risks to help others perceive reality. Personal note: This is my favorite part of the book. Having served as the editor and publisher of The Dearborn Free Press, I know first hand how we desperately need trustworthy local journalism.

5. Solidarity

Solidarity is identified as the fifth form of freedom and functions as the practical recognition that a free person cannot stand alone. It is the “guiding light of a land of the free” because the fundamental necessities of freedom, including knowledge, cannot be produced individually. Solidarity serves as essential support for social mobility, enabling young people to become sovereign and shape their futures.

No Freedom Without Solidarity

Morally, logically, and politically, there is “no freedom without solidarity.” It ensures that our individual truths can be acknowledged by others through shared understanding of truth and mutual recognition of one another’s dignity and bodily experiences. If freedom is claimed individually, it must be claimed for everyone. Freedom can only be brought to life as a common project.

Historical movements exemplify this concept. The Polish labor movement Solidarity operated under the motto “No freedom without solidarity!” American civil rights movement Freedom Riders appealed to solidarity and mobility, resulting in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — an example of applied solidarity that resonated worldwide.

Conversely, according to Snyder, the absence of solidarity leads toward racism, and postimperial immobilism. The “opposite of solidarity is escapism” (p.203) — the predictable posture of oligarchs who prioritize selfish choices and wealth preservation over the national work needed to create freedom. This obstruction leads to unfreedom and death for others. Libertarianism fundamentally opposes solidarity, counseling selfish behavior while guaranteeing wealth concentration and impeding social mobility.

Questions: Does identity politics lead to solidarity or division, polarization, and fragmentation?

The Conclusion to On Freedom by Timothy Snyder

Imperfection and the Fifth Dimension

In the final chapter, Snyder concludes that freedom is fundamentally tied to how individuals affirm and combine values — a necessary pursuit made possible (or necessary) by the world’s inherent imperfection. He describes the realm of what ought to be as the “fifth dimension,” a space distinct from the physical world and governed by its own rules: plurality and tension among virtues mean that no single value can be perfectly ranked or fully achieved.

Imperfection, Tension, and Resistance

This acknowledgement of imperfection is crucial. It denies any machine or singular leader the ability to dictate a unified truth or correct course of action — a tyrannical fantasy that Snyder rejects. Instead, he sees opportunity in the space between “what is and what ought to be.” True freedom, exemplified by Ukrainian resistance, cannot be entrusted to powerful corporations or impersonal forces but must be built with values and collective effort (“our own hearts and hands”). Individual practice is key: remaining unpredictable, reading “against the machine,” and fostering empathy — the capacity to see others as embodied beings — what Snyder calls Leib.

Freedom is the Value of Values

Yet, Snyder believes individual practice alone is insufficient. Achieving liberty requires structural support and political commitment, as freedom must be realized through functioning institutions and policy. Snyder asserts that freedom is the “value of values,” and democracy is the system it naturally leads to, resolving freedom as a governing principle. However, American democracy faces existential threats from oligarchy and extreme wealth inequality, which must be addressed through measures like higher top tax rates and wealth taxes. Furthermore, a “land of the free” cannot be reconciled with mass incarceration, which currently cages approximately 1.7 million Americans and disproportionately affects African Americans; this system must be dismantled and replaced with investments in youth capabilities.

To move beyond current political divides, Snyder proposes a synthesis: the Left must accept that freedom needs structures, and the Right must accept that structures need freedom. This mutual recognition could enable broader agreement on how to secure liberty for all. Looking toward the future, Snyder argues that if Americans want a “land of the free” by the tricentennial in 2076, they must secure the conditions for freedom for children born today. Snyder claims this goal necessitates confronting the catastrophic threat of climate change by eliminating fossil fuel subsidies and taxing carbon emissions.

Three New Rights and Courage To Confront the Past

Snyder also advocates complementing traditional liberties (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) with three new rights: the right to vote, the right to one’s mind (habeas mentem), and the right to health care. Universal health care, for instance, would make citizens less fearful, increasing their sovereignty and mobility. The right to one’s mind requires reforming social media to prevent algorithms from making users predictable and transparent to corporate surveillance. Ultimately, freedom is an “awakening” and a continuous, generational labor that requires courage to confront the past honestly, to truly see and understand the experiences of others, and to make active choices that improve the world.

A Critique of Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom

At first I found the book difficult to read because of his many personal vignettes (rabbit trails), and his secular (godless) vocabulary. Jane and I decided to read a few pages together every night — because we feel it’s important to read books by authors we might not agree with. However, by plodding along, taking notes, highlighting various passages, and writing this book review, I’ve found a better understanding of Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom.

Straw Men Burn Faster Than Real Men

The central critique revolves around Snyder’s decision to champion ‘positive freedom’ (freedom to achieve potential) while wholesale rejecting ‘negative freedom’ (freedom from interference). Snyder’s core argument rests on faulty presuppositions, particularly his uncharitable treatment of negative liberty. He does not engage with serious philosophical defenses of negative liberty. Instead, he creates “straw men” — clichéd images of “bad business owners” — scraped from the evening news in 2024.

A History Professor Wrote This?

Timothy Snyder was a professor of history at Yale University from 2001 until he moved to a new position at the University of Toronto in 2025. His expertise is Eastern European history for the past several hundred years. It’s not surprising that he suffers from tyrannophobia after studying the discouraging history of Eastern Europe for many years. However, in writing On Freedom, he seems to ignore 2500 years of history and philosophy on the topic of freedom. Snyder does not engage with defenders of negative liberty, such as John Stuart Mill, David Hume, Adam Smith, and economists like Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, or Ludwig von Mises. He pretends other ideas don’t exist — hoping the reader won’t notice.

What About Isaiah Berlin?

Snyder studied under Isaiah Berlin at Oxford, where he learned Berlin’s theories of negative freedom vs. positive freedom. Berlin defended negative freedom as essential to protect individuals from coercion, and warned that positive freedom can rationalize authoritarian regimes in the name of the collective good. Unfortunately Snyder fails to actively engage with these ideas from his former professor.

What About Hannah Arendt?

Snyder’s concept of freedom echoes ideas from Hannah Arendt’s book, “The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951). Arendt is listed (end notes) alongside Isaiah Berlin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Simone Weil as holding the view that the “highest human achievement was the creation of virtues“. I’m wondering if people invent new virtues, or simply discover the virtues that are a reflection of God’s character, and have been observable since the beginning of time. Hannah Arendt described herself as non-religious, but paradoxically defined “the abstract nakedness of being nothing but human” as the “greatest danger” (end notes).

What About Timothy Dwight?

Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) was the eighth president of Yale. As mentioned above, Timothy Snyder taught history at Yale for over 20 years, yet seems unfamiliar with the history of Yale. Or perhaps he’s embarrassed by the history of Yale, and doesn’t want to talk about it. From my viewpoint, Snyder is ignoring some valuable lessons from history. Timothy Dwight taught that tyrants will arise when people lack virtues like wisdom, self-control and courage. In 1795, Dwight preached about: The True Means of Establishing Public Happiness. Dwight positioned virtue as the genuine, invariable, and efficient source of public happiness. Dwight defined virtue as “The love of doing good”.

Dwight argued that virtue is the ultimate source of stability for a free community, outweighing even the importance of liberty itself. When citizens lack self-control (temperance or self-government) — heavy fisted rulers will arise to smash the anarchy. Dwight taught that virtue always aims at the happiness, freedom, and common good of a society. In contrast, selfish interests like avarice, ambition, and sensuality always clash with the common good — robbing, oppressing, or wounding the community. Why does Snyder ignore these helpful lessons about virtue?

Structural Weakness: Disorganized Anecdotes or Planned Propaganda?

In the opening paragraph, I stated that Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom is an obtuse re-examination of freedom. Apparently, I’m not the only one who noticed this. On Freedom is frequently criticized for lacking academic rigor and coherence, because of it’s structure and style. The book is a mishmash of Snyder’s personal stories, childhood reminiscences, political philosophy, and historical facts. Snyder calls them vignettes. His philosophical work in On Freedom is lacking the evidence-based rigor of his historical treatises.

Question: Is the lack of structure and hodgepodge of ideas simply a result of rushing to publish before the 2024 election, or is it a deliberate attempt to disorient ideological opponents? (This is speculation on my part.)

The structure (or lack of structure) seems modeled after Walter Benjamin’s Arcade Project which Snyder mentions reading while studying Marxism in Moscow in 1990. The Arcade Project combines history, philosophy, cultural criticism, and literary montage. Benjamin assembled the project as a vast collage of notes, quotations, and reflections — organized as “convolutes” (thematic bundles). Benjamin’s approach is highly fragmentary. The method is meant to capture the dialectical images of history: fractured, non-linear constellations in which critical insights erupt unexpectedly out of juxtapositions between past and present.

Timothy Snyder references Benjamin’s Arcade Project in the context of analyzing the limits of conventional historical narratives and the crisis of meaning in modern politics. Snyder uses Benjamin as an exemplar for critical, non-linear thinking about history — a mode in which the obscure, the discarded, and the forgotten fragments of the past are gathered to reveal “deeper truths” about culture and society. 

Influenced by the Frankfurt School Ideology?

Walter Benjamin was connected to the Frankfurt School through his intellectual collaboration with Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. The Frankfurt School also provided financial support for Benjamin while he resided in New York with Adorno and Horkheimer. While the Frankfurt School is not named in On Freedom, Snyder engages extensively with related critical concepts and thinkers. See That Hideous Strength: How the West Was Lost by Melvin Tinker for analysis of the Frankfurt School ideology.

Factual Errors and Historical Misunderstandings

Several critical reviews demonstrate that Snyder makes claims about American politics that reflect TV sound bytes, with no citations to prove the factuality of his statements. Do your own research.

Timothy Snyder On Freedom: Questions For Further Reflection

Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom is written primarily from a secular or godless perspective — so the structure and vocabulary might be difficult for readers approaching the topic from a Christian worldview. However, when one tries to find common ground (or shared values) it’s not impossible. In this section, we explore similarities and differences with other worldviews and political philosophies.

Snyder’s Understanding of Jesus and the Bible

Does Snyder write from a totally secular (or godless) perspective? What does he think about Jesus?

Snyder writes (p.26,27): “Unlike God the Father, Jesus is neither litigious nor vengeful, emphasizing instead the simple laws of loving God and loving one’s neighbor. Whereas God quickly lost patience with his creations, exposing their imperfection by killing them, Jesus spoke patiently in riddles and allegories” compelling His listeners to engage in thoughtful reflection. Snyder carefully recounts the story of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10:30-33. While Snyder’s understanding of God’s trinitarian nature appears limited, he nevertheless offers some valuable insights into Jesus’s teachings. He demonstrates a better grasp of the Gospels than many Biblically illiterate Americans, though his interpretation lacks engagement with the depth of historic Reformed Covenant Theology.

Does Snyder show any historical awareness or engagement with ideas of the Reformation?

Snyder writes: “Unlike contemporary German, Martin Luther’s first German translation of the Bible always uses Leib for the human body. As a Leib, we are neither gods nor objects, but nor are we just a dilution…” (p.26)

Are there similarities between Snyder’s view of the Leib and the Christian doctrine of ‘imago Dei’ — that man is created in God’s image?

Yes, as demonstrated in the paragraph above. While Snyder does not explicitly use the Christian theological concept of imago Dei (man being made in the image of God) to define his notion of the Leib (the living body), the sources reveal similarities between the functions and unique status assigned to each concept in defining human dignity, moral capacity, and freedom. Snyder explains: “We are a special form of life, capable of freedom because we are capable of seeing our own purposes and realizing them. In the Christian Gospels (Luke 17:21), the ‘kingdom of God’ is within us.” (p. 230)

However, Snyder appears to be cherry picking biblical references here. The broader context of Luke 17:21: when Jesus says “the kingdom of God is within you” (or “in your midst”), he’s speaking to Pharisees who were asking when the kingdom would come. The passage doesn’t suggest that the kingdom is automatically or naturally present within all humans by virtue of their created nature. Rather, throughout the gospels, the kingdom is something that must be entered through repentance and faith. Luke 13:3 says: “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” John 3:3 echoes a similar thought: “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Snyder’s use of Luke 17:21 to suggest that humans are inherently “capable of freedom because we are capable of seeing our own purposes and realizing them” appears to read the passage through a humanistic lens rather than its theological context. The Gospel of Luke consistently teaches that access to the Kingdom of God requires repentance, regeneration, and divine grace — not merely the natural human capacity for self-reflection and purpose. Let’s be careful here. We should not conflate the imago Dei (which does grant humans unique dignity and moral capacity) with regeneration (the transformative work needed to fully participate in God’s kingdom).

• Connection to Values: The Leib touches both the realm of “what is” (necessity, gravity, physics) and the realm of “what should be” (virtues, values, the fifth dimension)
• Source of Freedom and Sovereignty: The Leib is the indispensable prerequisite for freedom; “No Leib, no freedom”. Because we are Leib, we are capable of seeing our own purposes and realizing them.

Similarities Between Snyder and Augustine

How is Snyder’s understanding of the inherent imperfection of the world, similar to Augustine’s concept of original sin?

Snyder’s understanding of the world’s inherent imperfection shares several key structural similarities with Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, particularly in how both define the present condition as fundamentally flawed, lacking an essential unity, and producing constant internal and external struggle. Snyder begins with the premise that reality is NOT “Eden, a place where all the light comes together” (p. 239). This broken condition of humanity dictates that freedom is not a comfortable state of affairs but rather a courageous navigation among clashes and tensions.

Augustine accounts for the imperfection of the world and human nature by tracing it back to original sin — the historic fall of Adam. The world, and humanity within it, lost its initial condition of uprightness, resulting in the brokenness of the whole human race. (See Augustine’s City of God.) Thus, for both Augustine and Snyder, the current state is defined by a fundamental deficiency or deviation from a perfect, unified good. Both systems recognize that the present mode of existence is characterized by unavoidable internal conflict or external tension, demanding conscious, continuous effort — rather than passive acceptance, whether that effort is characterized as striving against vice (Augustine) or striving for freedom (Snyder). See Augustine’s Political Philosophy Explains Our Political Chaos.

How is Snyder’s concept of the “fifth dimension” similar to Augustine’s view of the transcendence of God?

This one is a stretch, but I would never have discovered it if I was not actively pursuing ways to be charitable towards Mr. Snyder. However, both Snyder’s “fifth dimension” and Augustine’s transcendent view of God define the essential, non-physical realm that gives meaning and moral direction to human existence:

• The Realm of the Ideal and Perfect: Snyder defines the fifth dimension as the world of “what ought to be”, distinguishing it from the four dimensions of the physical world or “what is”. Similarly, Augustine identifies God as the unchangeable good and the good in reference to which things are to be done, providing the supreme standard against which all temporal things are judged.
• The Ultimate End: For Snyder, the fifth dimension is the realm of values and virtues — although he rarely defines and defends the virtues. For instance, he speaks of “a law of freedom that allows us our endless combinations of virtues”.

Published on 30-Oct-2025. Updated on 8-Nov-2025. AI tools were used to edit portions of this article.