For social individuals, freedom is a positive relation to the environment

Evidence

But, for an individual who does have relations to other individuals, freedom has a much more positive significance. For him, freedom itself is a specific relation to the environment. It is a correlative phenomenon which loses its very meaning in the absence of a counterpart. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 3668

Categorization

• DEFINE: Simmel redefines freedom: not the absence of constraint but a specific correlative relation to the environment the social individual inhabits.
• XREF: Raskolnikov’s solipsistic freedom — the belief that being unwitnessed frees him from social costs — is exactly the ‘freedom as negation’ Simmel rejects; the triad reasserts that freedom is relational. — connects to: The environment is revealed only through and within one’s free project — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1196; Social identity is constituted by one’s free manner of adopting it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1238; Marcuse argued individual happiness requires the universal attainment of positive freedom — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 238 (+6 more)