To be free is to be the author of one's life and of the rules one follows, not merely to be left alone.

Supports

Rousseau · The Social Contract, I, 8 · 1762

One can be under no constraint and yet be led from start to finish: by impulses, by fashion, by opinion. No one would call such a person self-governing.
What they lack is not a larger space but self-mastery: acting on reasons and rules they recognize as their own upon examination.
The same demand holds in the city, where there are common rules in any case: whoever takes no part in shaping them undergoes them as an alien will, however lightly they weigh.
Taking part in making the laws, not to press one's own interest but to seek with others a rule good for all (the ), changes the nature of obedience: to obey a law one has prescribed to oneself is no longer to obey another.

Therefore Free is the one who authors, rather than merely receives, the rules they follow, in their life as in their city.

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Deepenings

Moral liberty, in Rousseau

distinguishes natural liberty, doing whatever tempts me, from moral liberty: the impulse of mere appetite is slavery, and obedience to the law one has prescribed to oneself is liberty.
Only life under rules one has examined and made one's own yields self-mastery: the city is not a hindrance to this liberty, it is its school.

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Put to the test

Problems