Unlimited freedom to achieve generates more coercion than external prohibition

Evidence

We are living in a particular phase of history: freedom itself is bringing forth compulsion and constraint. The freedom of Can generates even more coercion than the disciplinarian Should, which issues commandments and prohibitions. Should has a limit. In contrast, Can has none. Thus, the compulsion entailed by Can is unlimited. And so we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation. Technically, freedom means the opposite of coercion and compulsion. Being free means being free from constraint. But now freedom itself, which is supposed to be the opposite of constraint, is producing coercion. Psychic maladies such as depression and burnout express a profound crisis of freedom. They represent pathological signs that freedom is now switching over into manifold forms of compulsion. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 13

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharp contrast between the bounded coercive ‘Should’ and the unbounded coercive ‘Can’ introduces the book’s core conceptual framework for why the positive-affirmation regime dominates rather than liberates.
• DEEPTHINKING: Core to the whole book’s thesis: depression and burnout reframed as pathologies of freedom itself, not of oppression — a genuinely paradigm-shifting frame.
• XREF: connects to: The crisis of freedom is that power exploits rather than negates it — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 47; Exploiting voluntary freedom yields higher returns than coercing labor — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 16; Unlimited individual freedom breeds new repression through natural inequality — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 534

Broader Connections

• Unlimited individual freedom breeds new repression through natural inequality #expands (0.90) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 534
• Exploiting voluntary freedom yields higher returns than coercing labor #corroborates (0.88) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 16
• The crisis of freedom is that power exploits rather than negates it #expands (0.85) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 47