Fr. Enrico Gonzales, OP, gave me a distinction that has remained useful because it is simple enough to remember and difficult enough to keep unfolding: freedom from and freedom for. The distinction can be stated in a sentence, but its moral force appears only when it is applied to real choices.
Freedom from concerns release from coercion, fear, domination, oppression, dependency, or whatever prevents meaningful agency. Political liberation movements naturally speak this language. A people seeks freedom from colonial rule. A prisoner seeks freedom from captivity. A community seeks freedom from intimidation. A person seeks freedom from an abusive relationship.
This negative dimension of freedom is indispensable. Without it, moral language can be used to tell people to become responsible while leaving oppressive structures intact. A person denied meaningful choices cannot simply be instructed to choose better.
But liberation does not answer every question. Once one is freed from something, another question appears: what is freedom for?
A person can become free from control and still use freedom selfishly. A nation can win independence and reproduce inequality. A community can resist an outside power and still silence internal dissent. A corporation can operate legally and still cause avoidable harm. Examples such as these convinced me that freedom needs direction.
Sartre’s existentialism and Fr. Enrico’s distinction became complementary in my mind. Sartre asks whether I am hiding from my agency. Fr. Enrico asks what I am doing with the agency I admit.
This combination protected me from two errors. The first is fatalism: the claim that structures determine everything and that personal responsibility is an illusion. The second is moral individualism: the claim that every outcome can be reduced to personal choice regardless of unequal structures.
Environmental politics requires both corrections. Individuals should not be made responsible for climate change in the same way as fossil-fuel corporations, states, and high-consuming systems. Yet individuals are not therefore irrelevant. Consumption, voting, professional choices, community action, and cultural norms all matter within larger systems.
The important task is to distribute responsibility proportionately to power, capacity, benefit, and impact. Freedom from environmental harm is therefore only part of the ecological project. Communities need freedom from pollution, destructive extraction, forced displacement, ecological degradation, and decision-making processes that treat them as afterthoughts.
But they also need freedom for ecological flourishing: freedom for dignified livelihood, clean energy, food security, cultural continuity, participatory governance, healthy ecosystems, and development pathways that do not consume the future. This positive dimension is harder because opposition can unify people more easily than construction. It is possible to agree on what one does not want while disagreeing about alternatives.
“No to mining” can be necessary, but what kind of economy supports the island instead? “No to coal” can be necessary, but how will electricity remain reliable and affordable through transition? “No to deforestation” can be necessary, but what livelihoods reduce pressure on forests?
Environmental movements become mature when they develop the Yes with the same seriousness as the No. The same applies to government. Regulation can prohibit harm, but public policy must also create conditions in which better choices become possible. It is easy to tell families to reduce waste while providing no system for collection and segregation. It is easy to demand low-carbon transport where safe public transport does not exist.
Freedom depends partly on infrastructure. This insight changes moral judgment. A person who cannot afford an environmentally preferable option should not be judged as though all alternatives were equally available. Ecological responsibility without social justice can become a morality designed by those with choices for those without them.
The common good therefore requires expanding good options, not merely condemning bad ones. This is one reason I resist environmentalism that becomes primarily a lifestyle identity. Personal habits matter, but virtue should not become consumption with greener branding. The ecological transition requires public institutions, economic reform, technological change, cultural transformation, and different measures of progress.
Freedom for flourishing also involves restraint. Modern political imagination often associates freedom with the expansion of options: more mobility, more consumption, more technology, more control, more choice. Ecology introduces a difficult idea: some limits can protect freedom rather than diminish it.
A fisheries rule that limits harvest may protect the future freedom of fisherfolk to continue fishing. A protected watershed may restrict certain land uses in order to preserve water security. Emissions limits constrain present choices partly to preserve climatic conditions in which future choices remain meaningful.
The philosophical problem is therefore not simply liberty versus restriction. It is which limits are just, who bears them, who decides, and what freedoms they protect.
Democratic participation becomes indispensable here. Limits imposed on the poor by people whose own consumption remains untouched are difficult to defend as justice. Ecological restraint must be accompanied by fairness and by scrutiny of those whose power allows them to externalize costs.
Fr. Enrico’s distinction therefore became ecological without needing to be originally formulated as environmental philosophy. Freedom from destruction must become freedom for flourishing, and flourishing must be understood relationally.
A community does not flourish if its economy grows while its water becomes unsafe. A country does not flourish if aggregate wealth rises while ecological risk is transferred to those with less power. A person does not flourish by accumulating possessions while relationships, health, or moral integrity collapse.
Freedom is not merely the absence of a chain. It is the capacity to participate responsibly in a good that exceeds the self.
The Yes After the No
Environmental campaigns often become visible because of refusal. A road is blocked, a permit challenged, a project opposed, a forest defended. The No can be morally necessary, especially when a decision would cause irreversible harm or has been made without meaningful participation. Yet the work becomes more demanding after refusal because communities still need livelihoods, services, energy, transportation, and futures for young people.
Fr. Enrico’s “freedom for” thus became a discipline rather than a slogan. Opposition must eventually answer the constructive question. If not this mine, what economic pathways? If not this energy source, what transition? If not this land use, how will legitimate needs be met? Powerful actors can use the demand for alternatives cynically to force acceptance of a harmful project, but refusing that manipulation does not remove the responsibility to imagine a viable future.
The word “flourishing” helps me because it is wider than growth. A community can flourish through secure livelihoods, good education, public health, cultural continuity, ecological security, democratic trust, and the ability of younger generations to remain or return without being trapped by poverty. Economic activity belongs inside flourishing rather than serving as its sole measure.
This also changes how I think about restraint. Limits imposed without justice can reproduce inequality, but some limits protect the conditions of freedom. A closed season in fisheries can protect future catches. A watershed restriction can preserve water security. An emissions standard can protect health and climate stability. The relevant questions are who sets the limit, whether it is evidence-based, who bears the cost, what alternatives are available, and whether those with greater power are carrying proportionate responsibility.
Freedom for the good therefore cannot be reduced to paternalism. It has to be democratic, relational, and attentive to actual capabilities. People need not only moral exhortation but institutions that make better choices possible. A family cannot be blamed for using the only transport available. A worker cannot be asked to abandon a polluting industry without a credible transition. Ecological responsibility that ignores material alternatives becomes a morality designed by people with options for people without them.