Fear of freedom

By David Bidussa*

“Man believes he wants freedom. He actually has a great fear of it because it forces him to make decisions”. So Erich Fromm in Escape from Freedom. It is 1941. Fromm is on the other side of the Atlantic and sees his former continent as a world adrift.
More or less in the same months, other men find themselves reflecting on this side of the Atlantic and have the same image. Among them, Carlo Levi. Paura della libertà (Fear of freedom) is the book that converses at a distance with Escape from freedom. It would be a good book to have in hand these days.

*Social historian of idea.