Liberty 🗽

The concept of liberty or freedom denotes a very important principle of political philosophy.

It is sometimes regarded as the distinctive principle of liberalism, but freedom is acclaimed as a universal principle.

Freedom is eulogized by liberal, idealist as well as Marxist theory.

Nature of Liberty 🗽

• Freedom as the quality of human being.
• Freedom as the condition of human being.

• Freedom as the quality of human being

The animals have 'no aim of life' beyond mere existence. Man as homo sapiens has distinguished himself from other living beings as he claims to have an aim in his life.

He  has created the whole complex of institutions - civilization and culture - in pursuance of this aim.

Freedom as the condition of human being

'Absence of constraint' - Constraint or restraint may be internal as well as external.

The concept of liberty has very wide implications in the sphere of political philosophy.

         Scope of liberty 🗽

The problem of liberty involves the adjustment of claims between individual and society (or community).

The state comes into the picture because it is the instrument or agency for regulating their relations.

If the claim of the individual is stretched to an extreme in utter disregard of the interest of society, liberty would be reduced to 'licence'.

Dimensions of liberty 🗽

Natural liberty

Civil liberty 

Political liberty 

Economic liberty 

Liberty🗽&  authority 🚓

Liberty of the individual has to be restricted by a measure of equal liberty to be enjoyed by others.

Ernest Barker

(Principle of Social & political Theory) - 1951

1. By the need of each to enjoy similar and equal liberty

2. By the need of all to enjoy the specific liberty of realizing specific capacities.

Regulations of liberty implies the recognition of authority of the state over the individual.

D.D Raphael 

(Problems of political philosophy)- 1976

Most political theories recognize that individual liberty and state authority conflict with each other.

Liberty & Licence

When liberty is interpreted as the absence or removal of all restraints on the actions of individual in utter disregard of the interest of other individual.

Philosophers from earliest times have considered the question of liberty. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD) wrote:

a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed.

As per Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679):

a liberated person is he that in those things which by his solidarity and mind he can do isn't ruined to do what he hath the will to do.

— Leviathan, Part2, Ch. XXI.

John Locke(1632–1704) dismissed that meaning of freedom. While not explicitly referencing Hobbes, he assaults Sir Robert Filmer who had a similar definition. As indicated by Locke:

In the condition of nature, freedom comprises of being liberated from any predominant power on Earth. Individuals are not under the will or lawmaking authority of others yet have just the law of nature for their standard.

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), in his work, On Liberty, was quick to perceive the contrast between freedom as the opportunity to act and freedom as the shortfall of coercion.

In his book Two Concepts of Liberty, Isaiah Berlin officially outlined the contrasts between two points of view as the qualification between two inverse ideas of freedom: positive freedom and negative freedom. The last option assigns a negative condition where an individual is shielded from oppression and the self-assertive exercise of power, while the previous alludes to the freedom that comes from discipline, the independence from internal impulses like shortcoming and dread.