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What does it mean to be free? To be free does not mean to be all-powerful and to do what ever one wants. Even if he wants to, no one can do whatever he feels like doing, but that does not stop him from being a free man. Can a lie make someone free? can a person whose ideas of freedom are based on falsehood and therefore on a false notion of freedom consider himself truly free?
Beside, freedom is not strictly the same as independence. Man is free but not independent. He needs many things from others people in order to live, even in order to survive.He is a real being made in a specific way and he can not change his nature unless he stops being a man. Living with others always implies giving something up.The troubles with the word "freedom", is that it is an ambiguous word, at least in certain sense. i am afraid every has is own ideas of what freedom is. but what is authentic freedom really.
if being free does not mean being all-powerful nor independent(in the most radical sense), the it is compatible with limitation and dependence. Actually limitation and dependence are in-born in man by mere fact of being man.
we cannot say that something irrational is free, whether a plant or a stone, even if a dog can go from one place to another, even if a plant grows freely. Free choice presupposes deliberation, reflection, consideration, evaluation of choices to be made.
Now, if every man is bound to something or someone, the quality of his freedom will depend on the quality of the bond which ties him and which he freely chooses to be tied by. And this is so because freedom is exercised in the choice of two or more possibilities,one of which the will must choose, because it can not remain indefinitely undecided. But it is not the will or freedom which chooses between two or more possibilities. it is reason.
