Is freedom doing whatever you want? Or is it, on the contrary, being able to bind yourself by your own will? In Gethsemane the One from whom everything had been taken, and who could have called for "twelve legions," freely chooses the cup. Five thinkers argue over what kind of freedom this is: whim or self-giving, revolt or gift.
Born a slave and become a philosopher, Epictetus drew a line straight through the world: there is what lies in our power, and what does not. The body, property, life itself — these are not ours, and they can be taken away. But our will, our assent, are ours alone, and no chains can take them. The free man is not the one without fetters, but the one who has inwardly accepted his lot. The first hint of a cup that is accepted.
Kant took this down to the core: freedom is not doing as you please — that is slavery to the inclinations — but giving yourself the law yourself. The will is free precisely when it obeys neither fear nor desire, but a duty it has itself acknowledged. "Not as I will, but as Thou wilt" is autonomy in its pure form: a will freely binding itself to what is higher, against every inclination to flee.
Sartre pushed freedom to its limit and took God out of it: man is "condemned to be free," thrown into choice without excuses, creating himself by every act — there is no nature, no fate, only choice and full responsibility for it. Gethsemane would be a pure case for him: no one compels, there are no excuses, you are what you choose. But Sartre has no One to say that "yes" to — freedom hangs in the void, without the love to which one gives oneself.
Camus accepted freedom without God, yet did not fall into despair: since meaning is not guaranteed, a man is free to revolt — neither submitting to the absurd nor lying to himself with consolation. His freedom lies in fidelity to the earth and to people, with no reward at all. Of the unbelievers he stands closest to Gethsemane: also alone, also in the silence, also choosing — only his "yes" is said not to the Father but to himself and to the brother beside him.
Berdyaev drew the threads together: freedom is neither arbitrary will nor submission, but creative self-giving. The lower freedom is "freedom from," a whim, and it is empty; the higher is "freedom for," where the person freely gives himself away in love and for the first time becomes himself. The Gethsemane "yes" is its summit: not a renunciation of freedom but its uttermost act. A man is freest not when he can do anything, but when, having the power to walk away, he stays and gives himself.
From Epictetus to Berdyaev one thing comes through: freedom as whim is empty, freedom as self-giving is full. The freest of all is not the one who can do anything, but the one who, having the choice, gives himself away.
If the highest freedom is to give yourself away, then the Gethsemane "yes" is not weakness but a summit. Yet that very summit leads to the cross: where does a freedom that has chosen sacrifice go?