Made of Duties
“But freedom is not made up principally of privileges; it is made up especially of duties.” ALBERT CAMUS · BREAD AND FREEDOM
In May 1953, Camus stood in front of a hall of union workers in Saint-Étienne and gave a speech called Bread and Freedom. He had spent years watching two camps trade halves of the human good, one offering bread without freedom, the other praising a freedom that fed no one. In the middle of the speech he set down the definition above.
We mostly talk about freedom as a possession, a fence around what is ours, a list of things no one can make us do. Camus does not deny that side of it, but he calls it secondary. A freedom made only of privileges belongs most to whoever already has the most, and it slowly becomes a decoration for the comfortable. In the same speech he warned that freedom built that way insults the people who labor, and cuts them off from it.
A freedom made of duties works differently, because a duty always points at someone else. The freedom to speak becomes the duty to speak for the silenced. The freedom to think becomes the duty to think honestly, at your own expense.
Use one of your freedoms as a duty this week. Say the true thing that costs you something, or take the responsibility nobody can force on you. Freedom carried that way gets heavier and, strangely, more valuable.
