Political Freedom Is Not My Own Freedom; It Means That the Concern of the Polis Becomes My Concern

Political freedom is not my own freedom because my own will (Eigenwille) is negated. It is true that in the citizen state each citizen negates the will of the ruler, who had suppressed individual will up until then, and takes a stand on personal free will. But at the same time the citizen voluntarily suppresses individual will to seek an idealized actualization of the will and freedom of the self through the state. This political freedom means that the polis becomes free and the concern (Sache) of the polis becomes my concern--but this means precisely that I am tied to the state from within myself.

--Keiji Nishitani, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, trans. Graham Parkes and Setsuko Aihara, SUNY Series in Modern Japanese Philosophy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990), 112-113.