Although freedom, as we have seen, is as complicated and variegated as it is simple and singular, it is also the case that freedom is essentially inseparable from happiness. One might even go so far as to claim that all happiness is the result of freedom, even though freedom's relationship to happiness is not so one-sided.

In this chapter, we shall attempt to elucidate freedom's relation to happiness, and vice versa, by examining three “artist-philosophers” who had much to say on this very subject. As we have already seen and will have numerous occasions to observe further in Part II of this work, artistic freedom is one of the most important “zones” of positive freedom where participants are able to operate outside the usual constraints of society in order to create a viable alternative to same which is nothing apart from the blissful state of happiness it enjoins upon both artist and audience—even Kant's notion of art is inseparable from pleasure. Examining the ideas about freedom from these three artist-philosophers will provide additional insight into our understanding of the joy of freedom as well as a transition to the other practical aspects of freedom discussed in Part II.

Nietzsche […] Much that has been written on the subject of Nietzsche and freedom falls into the “analytical/continental divide.” Discussion among the Anglo-American analytical school of philosophy is largely taken up by a discussion of Nietzsche's many problematic comments about the age-old shibboleth of “free-will” (updated with recent theories of “compatibilism”) and his notions of “sovereign individuals” who have it and a “herd mentality” which doesn’t. Unfortunately, as a number of those philosophers are forced to admit, this approach usually leads to the dead-end of sovereign individuals who don't really exist and a “herd mentality” which is all too real and, truth be told, impossible to completely overcome. Even Robert Pippin, who is less pessimistic than most about the reality of attaining freedom in Nietzschean terms, is forced to admit: