We rarely choose the conditions that most decisively shape us. We do not elect to be born; as Augustine put it, our lives begin under conditions we inherit rather than author. From the first breath, then, freedom is not a constant field but an intermittent clearance—a vertical event that pierces the horizontal flow of time. This essay sketches that view, locates it among classic debates, and—perhaps surprisingly—ties it to real estate, where human choice meets hard limits of land, law, and liquidity.
1) Not choosing to begin: freedom without election
If free will meant sovereign authorship over all conditions, the absence of birth-choice would refute freedom at once. Yet most philosophers keep a humbler notion in play: freedom concerns how we respond within conditions we did not select.
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Aristotle distinguishes voluntary from involuntary action by reference to control and knowledge. We do not choose to be born—an involuntary condition—but we deliberate about means under given ends and circumstances (Nicomachean Ethics III).
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Heidegger calls our thrownness (Geworfenheit) the fact of finding ourselves “already in” a world; the question is what we make of that thrown situation.
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Frankfurt reframes freedom not as absolute authorship but as alignment among levels of willing (second-order volitions guiding first-order desires).
These views already suggest punctuated freedom: not a steady state but episodic possibilities for authorship amid givenness.
2) The spectrum and ceiling of options
We cannot will ourselves into aeronautical anatomy, nor abstain indefinitely from water. Aquinas would say our nature fixes basic goods (life, knowledge, sociability), so freedom works within teleological rails rather than against them. Spinoza pushes harder: we call ourselves free only because we are ignorant of the causes that necessitate us; the option-set at any instant is a thin slice of what the total network of causes allows. Hume and later Dennett treat freedom compatibilistically: the relevant contrast is not between action and uncaused action, but between acting from one’s reasons versus being externally constrained. Either way, choice looks like a bounded region—a spectrum with walls made of biology, history, and institution.
3) Vertical freedom: moments that stand up from the timeline
Think of ordinary life as a horizontal timeline. Most of it is drift, habit, inertia. Then suddenly: a choice “stands up” from the line—a vertical event. It is the Kierkegaardian “moment” (Øieblikket), a cut in time where possibility becomes actuality; or, in Bergson’s language, a qualitative contraction of duration where attention intensifies and new patterns can crystallize. These are the seconds in which we endorse a desire, reverse a habit, or accept a cost. Freedom is not the water we swim in; it is the clearing that opens intermittently, and it opens only inside a bounded field of live options.
4) Other schools and the pressure they put on “vertical freedom”
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Hard determinism (e.g., d’Holbach): the “vertical” feeling is an illusion embroidered on necessity.
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Agent-causal libertarianism (e.g., Chisholm; Kane with self-forming actions): there really are undetermined pivots where the agent originates a causal chain.
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Semi-compatibilism (Fischer & Ravizza): even if determinism is true, responsibility depends on guidance control—reasons-responsiveness in those vertical moments.
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Kant splits the deck: empirically we are determined; noumenally we are free. The “upright” moment is intelligible as a standpoint we must take to hold ourselves responsible, even if physics never isolates it.
Each school either denies the vertical moment (determinism), reifies it (agent-causation), or redeems it as rational authorship within necessity (compatibilisms). All agree, however, that the background constraints—biology, economy, culture—are not artifacts of choice.
5) Real estate: freedom meets ground truth
Real estate is where our metaphysics meets concrete. It dramatizes how choice lives inside constraints:
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Natural and legal ceilings: One cannot “choose” to build a multistory tower on a floodplain beyond code, or convert a single-family lot to a mid-rise by will alone. Zoning, setbacks, seismic codes, environmental rules—these are the non-negotiable edges of the option spectrum. (Hobbes would call these external impediments; remove them and liberty increases.)
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Capital structure and market time: Interest rates, lending standards, and liquidity cycles narrow or widen option sets. A developer’s “vertical moment” (buy, hold, refinance, exit) is a decision spike inside market path-dependence—contracts, amortization schedules, tax treatment, and sunk costs.
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The social city: Locke sees property as an extension of labor; Rousseau warns property inaugurates inequality; Lefebvre and Jane Jacobs suggest the built environment scripts our possibilities. The block you buy or design alters future strangers’ option sets—walkability, affordability, small-business viability—thus reshaping the distribution of vertical moments across a population.
So real estate both limits and manufactures freedom. A permit is a gate; a mixed-use, transit-rich plan is a freedom-generator. Choosing a site plan is not choosing to “be a bird,” but it can create or close the human equivalents of flight—mobility, access, safety, opportunity.
6) Responsibility inside constraint
Nietzsche counsels amor fati: love your fate, then transfigure it. That is not resignation; it is craft. In property terms: you do not pick the macrocycle, but you can design robustness—capital reserves, flexible program, incremental phasing—so that more vertical moments remain open when the market turns. Frankfurt adds: freedom matures when our higher-order commitments shape the lower-order impulses (for builders: mission governs margin). On this view, “vertical freedom” is not maximal choice at every second; it is meaningful authorship at the right seconds.
7) Objections and replies
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“If we didn’t choose birth, talk of freedom is incoherent.” Reply: Freedom needn’t entail authorship of origins; it can mean authorship of responses (Aristotle, Hume, Dennett).
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“The spectrum makes freedom trivial.” Reply: Boundedness does not trivialize agency; it defines intelligent action (choosing well among feasible sets).
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“Vertical moments are just feelings.” Reply: Even if they are phenomenological, institutions treat them as real—contracts, permits, closings, elections, vows. Our moral and legal life presupposes such punctuated authorship.
8) A practical corollary for the built world
If freedom arrives as punctuated decision clearings within constraints, then good stewardship—of a self or a city—aims to (a) widen feasible sets ethically, and (b) improve the quality of those decision spikes. In real estate that means:
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designing codes and capital stacks that keep multiple exits viable;
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favoring plans that increase others’ option sets (mixed housing typologies, access to transit/work);
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timing decisions to kairos (the opportune moment), not just chronos (clock time).
Free will is not the background hum of existence; it is a vertical accent that occasionally breaks the line of time. We do not choose the start, we cannot will wings, and yet within a spectrum of hard limits we meet decisive instants where authorship is real enough to ground responsibility and redesign futures. Real estate makes this vivid: on the ground, freedom is planned, financed, permitted, and then—at a few critical moments—chosen.
