Freedom

For other uses, see Freedom (disambiguation).

Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving oneself their own laws", and with having rights and the civil liberties with which to exercise them without undue interference by the state. Frequently discussed kinds of political freedom include freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of choice, and freedom of speech.

In one definition, something is "free" if it can change easily and is not constrained in its present state. In philosophy and religion, freedom is sometimes associated with free will, without undue or unjust constraints on that will, such as enslavement. It is an idea closely tied with the concept of negative liberty.

Charles Taylor resolves one of the issues that separate "positive" and "negative" theories of freedom, as these were initially distinguished in Isaiah Berlin's seminal essay, "Two concepts of liberty". Taylor sees it as undeniable that there are two such families of conceptions of political freedom. Negative liberty is a concept that is often used in political philosophy. It is the idea that freedom means an ability to do what one wants, without external obstacles. This concept has been called too simplistic for discounting the importance of individual self-realization. Positive liberty is the ability to fulfill one's purposes.^[1][2]

Types

 

Four Freedoms, a series of 1943 paintings by Norman Rockwell honoring Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, meant to describe the freedoms for which allied nations fought in World War II.

Main articles: Academic freedom, Artistic freedom, Intellectual freedom, Scientific freedom, Economic freedom, Freedom of religion, Political freedom, Civil liberties, and Liberty

In political discourse, political freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving oneself their own laws", and with having rights and the civil liberties with which to exercise them without undue interference by the state. Frequently discussed kinds of political freedom include freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of choice, and freedom of speech.

In some occasions, particularly when discussion is limited to political freedoms, the terms "freedom" and "liberty" tend to be used interchangeably.^[3][4] Elsewhere, subtle distinctions between freedom and liberty are noted.^[5] John Stuart Mill differentiated liberty from freedom in that freedom is primarily, if not exclusively, the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do, whereas liberty concerns the absence of arbitrary restraints and takes into account the rights of all involved. As such, the exercise of liberty is subject to capability and limited by the rights of others.^{[6][failed verification]}

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun explains the differences in terms of their relation to institutions:

"Liberty is linked to human subjectivity; freedom is not. The Declaration of Independence, for example, describes men as having liberty and the nation as being free. Free will—the quality of being free from the control of fate or necessity—may first have been attributed to human will, but Newtonian physics attributes freedom—degrees of freedom, free bodies—to objects."^[7]

"Freedom differs from liberty as control differs from discipline. Liberty, like discipline, is linked to institutions and political parties, whether liberal or libertarian; freedom is not. Although freedom can work for or against institutions, it is not bound to them—it travels through unofficial networks. To have liberty is to be liberated from something; to be free is to be self-determining, autonomous. Freedom can or cannot exist within a state of liberty: one can be liberated yet unfree, or free yet enslaved (Orlando Patterson has argued in Freedom: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture that freedom arose from the yearnings of slaves)."^[7]

Another distinction that some political theorists have deemed important is that people may aspire to have freedom from limiting forces (such as freedom from fear, freedom from want, and freedom from discrimination), but descriptions of freedom and liberty generally do not invoke having liberty from anything.^[4] To the contrary, the concept of negative liberty refers to the liberty one person may have to restrict the rights of others.^[4]

Other important fields in which freedom is an issue include economic freedom, academic freedom, intellectual freedom, scientific freedom and political freedom.

See also

• Internet freedom
• Freedom Riders
• Freethought
• Statue of Freedom, an 1863 sculpture by Thomas Crawford atop the dome of the US Capitol
• Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World), 1886 statue by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi in New York City]]
• Goddess of Liberty, an 1888 statue by Elijah E. Myers atop the Texas State Capitol dome, in Austin, Texas
• Miss Freedom, 1889 statue on the dome of the Georgia State Capitol (US)
• Freedom, 1985 statue by Alfred Tibor in Columbus, Ohio
• Freedom songs

References

1. Charles Taylor, “What’s Wrong With Negative Liberty,” in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 211–29.
2. Berlin, Isaiah. Four Essays on Liberty. 1969.
3. See Bertrand Badie, Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Leonardo Morlino, International Encyclopedia of Political Science (2011), p. 1447: "Throughout this entry, incidentally, the terms freedom and liberty are used interchangeably".
4. Anna Wierzbicka, Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words (1997), p. 130-31: "Unfortunately... the English words freedom and liberty are used interchangeably. This is confusing because these two do not mean the same, and in fact what [Isaiah] Berlin calls "the notion of 'negative' freedom" has become largely incorporated in the word freedom, whereas the word liberty in its earlier meaning was much closer to the Latin libertas and in its current meaning reflects a different concept, which is a product of the Anglo-Saxon culture".
5. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (2008), p. 9: "Although used interchangeably, freedom and liberty have significantly different etymologies and histories. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Old English frei (derived from Sanskrit) meant dear and described all those close or related to the head of the family (hence friends). Conversely in Latin, libertas denoted the legal state of freedom versus enslavement and was later extended to children (liberi), meaning literally the free members of the household. Those who are one's friends are free; those who are not are slaves".
6. "I. Introductory. Mill, John Stuart. 1869. On Liberty". www.bartleby.com. Retrieved 2022-11-14.
7. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (2008), p. 9.

External links

• "Freedom", BBC Radio 4 discussion with John Keane, Bernard Williams & Annabel Brett (In Our Time, 4 July 2002)

 

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