This book is a defense of freedom. It is directed at those who argue that freedom is incompatible with a scientific worldview, as well as at those in the political arena who are willing to sacrifice freedom for a seemingly higher purpose. The two issues are dealt with in the context of each other. Freedom appears to be a multidimensional phenomenon, whether it is existential (ontological) and metaphysical to its political or personal aspects. As a result, one of the core ideas of this book is simply that many of the difficulties we encounter in understanding freedom stem from the mixture of various concepts of freedom. We use, for example, the concept of political freedom to explain personal freedom or vice versa. Therefore, it was important to me to write a huge book in which I could try to understand how concepts of freedom on so many different levels relate to and deviate from each other. The valuable addition that the book provides in this sense is its handling of the general concept of freedom rather than being a result of its own components. At the same time, I believe, I have made many new contributions along the way in terms of my interpretations and criticisms of different philosophies and theories.
