在当代社会的公共生活中，价值多元冲突、全球风险社会的加持等使得个体自由的不确定性与日剧增，它多维地展示了日益加剧的人际冲突。个体自由的存续既离不开人的共存共处状态，更有赖于人际冲突的和解，其根源在社会生产力中，生产力的发展程度决定了冲突和解的程度。拥有自由的个体也不是孤立、封闭的原子状态，而是处在基于一定生产力基础之上的特定社会生活之中，个体是自然、社会和历史的统一体。人的自由和人自身一样，都受特定社会历史发展水平的影响和制约，呈现出不同的历史形态。

现代个体的生成是一个不断从“始发纽带”中脱离的过程，个体的自由状况也在随之发生着历史的变化。在“人的依赖社会”阶段，个体并未获得独立性，而是淹没在整体中，个体之间的和解主要是一种“政治人”在城邦之内的和解，个体的自由一度表现为作为城邦公民的自由。随着中世纪的个体逐渐脱离神学的束缚，一种在拥有和使用意义上作为所有权的自由登上历史舞台，但它还没有与作为权利的自由区分开。进入“以物的依赖性为基础的人的独立性”的社会阶段后， 随着传统生活世界的瓦解和现代资本主义的发展，现代个体在经济、哲学和法权三个主要层面得以确立，它在理论上被预设为抽象自足的原子个体。个体之间冲突的和解被置于“契约模式”中，其自由意味着：个体拥有一个不受国家和社会干涉的私人领域，个体的所有行为都是基于自我的独立选择和决定，并获得了自我实现，它存在于个体与社会和国家之间的张力之中。然而，自足是人存在状态的可能性，而非自足才是人存在状态的最大现实性。在自我权利优先的诉求下，基于契约的和解打破了个体自然、社会和历史的统一性，谋求私有财产的自我难以达至他者，而实际上仍处于相互竞争的斗争关系之中，人与其所生活的世界也陷入分裂和对抗。

从卢梭经康德到黑格尔呈现出另外一条和解路径。个体间相互依赖、相互承认维度逐渐在精神领域展开，并抽象地超越原子个体的孤立和自足。对抗关系转向承认关系，一个和解的社会意味着，公共生活是个体实现自由的机会，而非对个体自由进行限制的结果。在这样的历史情境下，自由呈现出一种基于主体互动的公共性转向。个体被赋予了一个主体间性的内核，通过言语的中介，主客体的理性一致转向主体间的理性的理解、相互承认，主体之间籍此在交往活动中达成“和解”，但这一方案显得过于理想化，并未超越资本逻辑及其支配下的阶级关系。在唯物史观的视域下，基于私有制和分工的私人关系注定要发展为阶级关系，并不可避免地走向阶级对抗，进而危及个体的真实自由。

而能够从根本上消解这一对抗逻辑、实现真实自由的正是唯物史观下的实践个体。对这种个体来说，自由不是抽象的、静态的，而是历史的、动态的，是一个从“可能的自由人”不断走向“现实的自由人”的历史过程。马克思对现代资本主义社会中的抽象个体及其自由进行了彻底批判，并在实践活动基础上呈现出个体与社会之间的一种动态的互构关系，在这种动态关系中，不但实现了对互动主体交往范式的超越，而且也是对人及其自由的新的自我反思的开始，实践个体面向未来的自由正是在“自由人的联合体”之中。在生产力高度发达的基础上，个体之间在涉及彼此的所有事项上达成完全的和解，个体将会获得完整的、真实的自由。

In the public life of contemporary society, individual freedom has become Increasingly uncertain, due to the competition and conflict between different cultures and races, and the systematic global risk society in the public life, ect. It demonstrates interpersonal conflicts in multiple dimensions. The existence and development of individual freedom is inseparable from the status of coexistence of people, and it also depends on the reconciliation of interpersonal conflicts. The productivity, as the root cause, determines the degree of reconciliation. The individuals with freedom are not isolated, atomic states, but in a specific social life based on a certain productivity, and they are the unity of nature, society and history. Individual freedom, like human itself, is affected and restricted by the development of specific social history, showing different historical forms.

The generation of modern individuals was a process of continually breaking away from the “original bond”, and the situations of individual freedom are also changing in history. The individuals didn’t gain independence in the “human-dependent society”, or freedom in a modern sense, but completely submerged in the whole. The reconciliation between individuals is just a reconciliation of “political man” within the city-state, the freedom of individual was once expressed as the freedom of being a citizen of a city-state. As the medieval individual gradually divorced from the bondage of theology, a kind of freedom which was in the sense of possession and application had Already on the stage of history. But it had not been distinguished from the freedom as rights. After entering the social phase of “the dependence of human being based on the dependence of the object”, with the disintegration of the traditional living world and the development of modern capitalism, modern individuals wre established in three main aspects of economy, philosophy and legal rights. And it was theoretically preset as an abstract self-sufficiency individual. The reconciliation was placed in the “social contract model”. Freedom means and exists in a private realm, where all behaviors of the individual are based on self-independent choice and decision, that is free from interference by the state and society and also has an access to self-realization. However, self-sufficiency is only the possibility of human existence, but non-self-sufficiency is the greatest reality of human existence. Under the claim of priority for rights, contract-based reconciliation breaks the unity of individuals as nature, society and history. The individuals, which are seeking private property, are hardly to reach the others, but in fact are still in a competitive relationship, people and the world they live in are also fallen into division and confrontation.

From Rousseau via Kant to Hegel presents another path of reconciliation. The interdependence and mutual recognition among the individuals had been expanding in the spiritual form, and abstractly surpassed the isolation and self-sufficiency of the atomic individual. Relationship between individuals shifted from confrontation to recognition. A reconciled society means that public life is an opportunity for individual freedom, not the restrictions. Under such historical circumstances, freedom appeared to be a publicity turn based on subject interaction. The individual was given a core of intersubjectivity. Through the intermediary of language, the rational agreement between subject and object turned to rational understanding and mutual recognition. By this, the “reconciliation” could be achieved in the communicative activities. But this plan seems too idealistic and does not go beyond the logic of capital and the class relations under its control. From the perspective of historical materialism, private relations, which are based on private ownership and division of labor, are destined to class relations, and inevitably toward class confrontation, thereby endangering the true freedom of individuals.

It is the practical individual that can fundamentally dispel this confrontation logic and achieve true freedom, from the perspective of historical materialism. To the individuals, freedom is not abstract, static, but it should be a historical process from “the possible” to “the real”. Karl Marx had made a thorough critique on abstract individual and freedom in modern capitalist society, and presented a dynamic inter-structured relationship between the individuals and society based on practical activities. In this relationship, not only has it achieved the transcendence of the interaction paradigm, but it is also the beginning of a new self-reflection of people and their freedom. The freedom to the practical individual will be in the “community of free individuals”. On the basis of highly developed productivity, individuals will achieve complete reconciliation on all matters with each other, and true freedom.