The Freedom to Stay

• No. 22 of the SPIEGEL Bestseller List
• Shortlisted for the NDR Non-Fiction Book Prize
• No. 2 of the Non-Fiction Bestenliste June
• Reviewed and recommended for translation by New Books in German
• “One of this country’s most exciting young philosophers.” — Philosophie Magazin
• Sample translation available here

A radical new concept of freedom from a passionate voice of contemporary philosophy

Rarely has freedom been discussed as intensively as during the pandemic: freedom to travel, to move around without restriction, to meet up with people wherever one would like. But just how future-proof is such a spatially defined concept of freedom when we are facing times in which habitable places are disappearing and the climate crisis or wars are rendering entire regions uninhabitable? For this reason, philosopher Eva von Redecker has reconceptualised freedom: as the freedom to live in a place where we can stay. The freedom to stay evolves over time. In considering liveable freedom in the future, she not only focuses on the preservation of our present living conditions, she also reduces the gap between the freedom of individuals and that of the community. The freedom to stay can only be achieved communally. And it expands when we share it.

"Erudite, rigorous, playful, and readable, at once of the world and soaring above it, von Redecker is a brilliant and wondrous intellectual, driven by the philosophical question of how we can make a better future through what we do now." — Prof. Wendy Brown, Princeton University NJ/USA

"With "Freedom to Stay", von Redecker has succeeded in bringing together a series of theoretical and practical philosophical questions at the centre of a well-founded contemporary critique" - Philosophischer Literaturanzeiger, Reinhard Margreiter