ABSTRACT
Can we still talk about human freedom, or has the word ‘freedom’ so often been misused and misapplied that it lacks any substance? Freedom as an idea is not the exclusive property of liberal democracies, for all kinds of political regimes have exploited our uncertainties about what we mean by freedom for their own uses, for example ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ (Work gives Freedom) was inscribed on the gates of Auschwitz. Have such regimes so corrupted the word that freedom is no longer in our living vocabulary? Can we afford to live without the idea of freedom? I do not think we can, and the recent experience of liberation in Eastern and Central Europe has shown us that the idea of freedom still has the power to change even the most rigid of totalitarian systems.
