essay about freedom meaning

Freedom Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on freedom.

Freedom is something that everybody has heard of but if you ask for its meaning then everyone will give you different meaning. This is so because everyone has a different opinion about freedom. For some freedom means the freedom of going anywhere they like, for some it means to speak up form themselves, and for some, it is liberty of doing anything they like.

Meaning of Freedom

The real meaning of freedom according to books is. Freedom refers to a state of independence where you can do what you like without any restriction by anyone. Moreover, freedom can be called a state of mind where you have the right and freedom of doing what you can think off. Also, you can feel freedom from within.

The Indian Freedom

Indian is a country which was earlier ruled by Britisher and to get rid of these rulers India fight back and earn their freedom. But during this long fight, many people lost their lives and because of the sacrifice of those people and every citizen of the country, India is a free country and the world largest democracy in the world.

Moreover, after independence India become one of those countries who give his citizen some freedom right without and restrictions.

The Indian Freedom Right

India drafted a constitution during the days of struggle with the Britishers and after independence it became applicable. In this constitution, the Indian citizen was given several fundaments right which is applicable to all citizen equally. More importantly, these right are the freedom that the constitution has given to every citizen.

These right are right to equality, right to freedom, right against exploitation, right to freedom of religion¸ culture and educational right, right to constitutional remedies, right to education. All these right give every freedom that they can’t get in any other country.

Value of Freedom

The real value of anything can only be understood by those who have earned it or who have sacrificed their lives for it. Freedom also means liberalization from oppression. It also means the freedom from racism, from harm, from the opposition, from discrimination and many more things.

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Freedom does not mean that you violate others right, it does not mean that you disregard other rights. Moreover, freedom means enchanting the beauty of nature and the environment around us.

The Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech is the most common and prominent right that every citizen enjoy. Also, it is important because it is essential for the all-over development of the country.

Moreover, it gives way to open debates that helps in the discussion of thought and ideas that are essential for the growth of society.

Besides, this is the only right that links with all the other rights closely. More importantly, it is essential to express one’s view of his/her view about society and other things.

To conclude, we can say that Freedom is not what we think it is. It is a psychological concept everyone has different views on. Similarly, it has a different value for different people. But freedom links with happiness in a broadway.

FAQs on Freedom

Q.1 What is the true meaning of freedom? A.1 Freedom truly means giving equal opportunity to everyone for liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Q.2 What is freedom of expression means? A.2 Freedom of expression means the freedom to express one’s own ideas and opinions through the medium of writing, speech, and other forms of communication without causing any harm to someone’s reputation.

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Essays About Freedom: 5 Helpful Examples and 7 Prompts

Freedom seems simple at first; however, it is quite a nuanced topic at a closer glance. If you are writing essays about freedom, read our guide of essay examples and writing prompts.

In a world where we constantly hear about violence, oppression, and war, few things are more important than freedom. It is the ability to act, speak, or think what we want without being controlled or subjected. It can be considered the gateway to achieving our goals, as we can take the necessary steps.

However, freedom is not always “doing whatever we want.” True freedom means to do what is righteous and reasonable, even if there is the option to do otherwise. Moreover, freedom must come with responsibility; this is why laws are in place to keep society orderly but not too micro-managed, to an extent.

5 Examples of Essays About Freedom

1. essay on “freedom” by pragati ghosh, 2. acceptance is freedom by edmund perry, 3. reflecting on the meaning of freedom by marquita herald.

4. Authentic Freedom by Wilfred Carlson

5. What are freedom and liberty? by Yasmin Youssef

1. what is freedom, 2. freedom in the contemporary world, 3. is freedom “not free”, 4. moral and ethical issues concerning freedom, 5. freedom vs. security, 6. free speech and hate speech, 7. an experience of freedom.

“Freedom is non denial of our basic rights as humans. Some freedom is specific to the age group that we fall into. A child is free to be loved and cared by parents and other members of family and play around. So this nurturing may be the idea of freedom to a child. Living in a crime free society in safe surroundings may mean freedom to a bit grown up child.”

In her essay, Ghosh briefly describes what freedom means to her. It is the ability to live your life doing what you want. However, she writes that we must keep in mind the dignity and freedom of others. One cannot simply kill and steal from people in the name of freedom; it is not absolute. She also notes that different cultures and age groups have different notions of freedom. Freedom is a beautiful thing, but it must be exercised in moderation.

“They demonstrate that true freedom is about being accepted, through the scenarios that Ambrose Flack has written for them to endure. In The Strangers That Came to Town, the Duvitches become truly free at the finale of the story. In our own lives, we must ask: what can we do to help others become truly free?”

Perry’s essay discusses freedom in the context of Ambrose Flack’s short story The Strangers That Came to Town : acceptance is the key to being free. When the immigrant Duvitch family moved into a new town, they were not accepted by the community and were deprived of the freedom to live without shame and ridicule. However, when some townspeople reach out, the Duvitches feel empowered and relieved and are no longer afraid to go out and be themselves.

“Freedom is many things, but those issues that are often in the forefront of conversations these days include the freedom to choose, to be who you truly are, to express yourself and to live your life as you desire so long as you do not hurt or restrict the personal freedom of others. I’ve compiled a collection of powerful quotations on the meaning of freedom to share with you, and if there is a single unifying theme it is that we must remember at all times that, regardless of where you live, freedom is not carved in stone, nor does it come without a price.”

In her short essay, Herald contemplates on freedom and what it truly means. She embraces her freedom and uses it to live her life to the fullest and to teach those around her. She values freedom and closes her essay with a list of quotations on the meaning of freedom, all with something in common: freedom has a price. With our freedom, we must be responsible. You might also be interested in these essays about consumerism .

4. Authentic Freedom by Wilfred Carlson

“Freedom demands of one, or rather obligates one to concern ourselves with the affairs of the world around us. If you look at the world around a human being, countries where freedom is lacking, the overall population is less concerned with their fellow man, then in a freer society. The same can be said of individuals, the more freedom a human being has, and the more responsible one acts to other, on the whole.”

Carlson writes about freedom from a more religious perspective, saying that it is a right given to us by God. However, authentic freedom is doing what is right and what will help others rather than simply doing what one wants. If freedom were exercised with “doing what we want” in mind, the world would be disorderly. True freedom requires us to care for others and work together to better society.

“In my opinion, the concepts of freedom and liberty are what makes us moral human beings. They include individual capacities to think, reason, choose and value different situations. It also means taking individual responsibility for ourselves, our decisions and actions. It includes self-governance and self-determination in combination with critical thinking, respect, transparency and tolerance. We should let no stone unturned in the attempt to reach a state of full freedom and liberty, even if it seems unrealistic and utopic.”

Youssef’s essay describes the concepts of freedom and liberty and how they allow us to do what we want without harming others. She notes that respect for others does not always mean agreeing with them. We can disagree, but we should not use our freedom to infringe on that of the people around us. To her, freedom allows us to choose what is good, think critically, and innovate.

7 Prompts for Essays About Freedom

Freedom is quite a broad topic and can mean different things to different people. For your essay, define freedom and explain what it means to you. For example, freedom could mean having the right to vote, the right to work, or the right to choose your path in life. Then, discuss how you exercise your freedom based on these definitions and views.

The world as we know it is constantly changing, and so is the entire concept of freedom. Research the state of freedom in the world today and center your essay on the topic of modern freedom. For example, discuss freedom while still needing to work to pay bills and ask, “Can we truly be free when we cannot choose with the constraints of social norms?” You may compare your situation to the state of freedom in other countries and in the past if you wish.

A common saying goes like this: “Freedom is not free.” Reflect on this quote and write your essay about what it means to you: how do you understand it? In addition, explain whether you believe it to be true or not, depending on your interpretation.

Many contemporary issues exemplify both the pros and cons of freedom; for example, slavery shows the worst when freedom is taken away, while gun violence exposes the disadvantages of too much freedom. First, discuss one issue regarding freedom and briefly touch on its causes and effects. Then, be sure to explain how it relates to freedom.

Some believe that more laws curtail the right to freedom and liberty. In contrast, others believe that freedom and regulation can coexist, saying that freedom must come with the responsibility to ensure a safe and orderly society. Take a stand on this issue and argue for your position, supporting your response with adequate details and credible sources.

Many people, especially online, have used their freedom of speech to attack others based on race and gender, among other things. Many argue that hate speech is still free and should be protected, while others want it regulated. Is it infringing on freedom? You decide and be sure to support your answer adequately. Include a rebuttal of the opposing viewpoint for a more credible argumentative essay.

For your essay, you can also reflect on a time you felt free. It could be your first time going out alone, moving into a new house, or even going to another country. How did it make you feel? Reflect on your feelings, particularly your sense of freedom, and explain them in detail.

Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips !

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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‘Freedom’ Means Something Different to Liberals and Conservatives. Here’s How the Definition Split—And Why That Still Matters

W e tend to think of freedom as an emancipatory ideal—and with good reason. Throughout history, the desire to be free inspired countless marginalized groups to challenge the rule of political and economic elites. Liberty was the watchword of the Atlantic revolutionaries who, at the end of the 18th century, toppled autocratic kings, arrogant elites and ( in Haiti ) slaveholders, thus putting an end to the Old Regime. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Black civil rights activists and feminists fought for the expansion of democracy in the name of freedom, while populists and progressives struggled to put an end to the economic domination of workers.

While these groups had different objectives and ambitions, sometimes putting them at odds with one another, they all agreed that their main goal—freedom—required enhancing the people’s voice in government. When the late Rep. John Lewis called on Americans to “let freedom ring” , he was drawing on this tradition.

But there is another side to the story of freedom as well. Over the past 250 years, the cry for liberty has also been used by conservatives to defend elite interests. In their view, true freedom is not about collective control over government; it consists in the private enjoyment of one’s life and goods. From this perspective, preserving freedom has little to do with making government accountable to the people. Democratically elected majorities, conservatives point out, pose just as much, or even more of a threat to personal security and individual right—especially the right to property—as rapacious kings or greedy elites. This means that freedom can best be preserved by institutions that curb the power of those majorities, or simply by shrinking the sphere of government as much as possible.

This particular way of thinking about freedom was pioneered in the late 18th century by the defenders of the Old Regime. From the 1770s onward, as revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic rebelled in the name of liberty, a flood of pamphlets, treatises and newspaper articles appeared with titles such as Some Observations On Liberty , Civil Liberty Asserted or On the Liberty of the Citizen . Their authors vehemently denied that the Atlantic Revolutions would bring greater freedom. As, for instance, the Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson—a staunch opponent of the American Revolution—explained, liberty consisted in the “security of our rights.” And from that perspective, the American colonists already were free, even though they lacked control over the way in which they were governed. As British subjects, they enjoyed “more security than was ever before enjoyed by any people.” This meant that the colonists’ liberty was best preserved by maintaining the status quo; their attempts to govern themselves could only end in anarchy and mob rule.

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In the course of the 19th century this view became widespread among European elites, who continued to vehemently oppose the advent of democracy. Benjamin Constant, one of Europe’s most celebrated political thinkers, rejected the example of the French revolutionaries, arguing that they had confused liberty with “participation in collective power.” Instead, freedom-lovers should look to the British constitution, where hierarchies were firmly entrenched. Here, Constant claimed, freedom, understood as “peaceful enjoyment and private independence,” was perfectly secure—even though less than five percent of British adults could vote. The Hungarian politician Józseph Eötvös, among many others, agreed. Writing in the wake of the brutally suppressed revolutions that rose against several European monarchies in 1848, he complained that the insurgents, battling for manhood suffrage, had confused liberty with “the principle of the people’s supremacy.” But such confusion could only lead to democratic despotism. True liberty—defined by Eötvös as respect for “well-earned rights”—could best be achieved by limiting state power as much as possible, not by democratization.

In the U.S., conservatives were likewise eager to claim that they, and they alone, were the true defenders of freedom. In the 1790s, some of the more extreme Federalists tried to counter the democratic gains of the preceding decade in the name of liberty. In the view of the staunch Federalist Noah Webster, for instance, it was a mistake to think that “to obtain liberty, and establish a free government, nothing was necessary but to get rid of kings, nobles, and priests.” To preserve true freedom—which Webster defined as the peaceful enjoyment of one’s life and property—popular power instead needed to be curbed, preferably by reserving the Senate for the wealthy. Yet such views were slower to gain traction in the United States than in Europe. To Webster’s dismay, overall, his contemporaries believed that freedom could best be preserved by extending democracy rather than by restricting popular control over government.

But by the end of the 19th century, conservative attempts to reclaim the concept of freedom did catch on. The abolition of slavery, rapid industrialization and mass migration from Europe expanded the agricultural and industrial working classes exponentially, as well as giving them greater political agency. This fueled increasing anxiety about popular government among American elites, who now began to claim that “mass democracy” posed a major threat to liberty, notably the right to property. Francis Parkman, scion of a powerful Boston family, was just one of a growing number of statesmen who raised doubts about the wisdom of universal suffrage, as “the masses of the nation … want equality more than they want liberty.”

William Graham Sumner, an influential Yale professor, likewise spoke for many when he warned of the advent of a new, democratic kind of despotism—a danger that could best be avoided by restricting the sphere of government as much as possible. “ Laissez faire ,” or, in blunt English, “mind your own business,” Sumner concluded, was “the doctrine of liberty.”

Being alert to this history can help us to understand why, today, people can use the same word—“freedom”—to mean two very different things. When conservative politicians like Rand Paul and advocacy groups FreedomWorks or the Federalist Society talk about their love of liberty, they usually mean something very different from civil rights activists like John Lewis—and from the revolutionaries, abolitionists and feminists in whose footsteps Lewis walked. Instead, they are channeling 19th century conservatives like Francis Parkman and William Graham Sumner, who believed that freedom is about protecting property rights—if need be, by obstructing democracy. Hundreds of years later, those two competing views of freedom remain largely unreconcilable.

Annelien de Dijn is the author of Freedom: An Unruly History , available now from Harvard University Press.

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How Do We Define Freedom?

Reilience skills of communication and finding purpose and meaning are necessary..

Posted January 13, 2021

The New Oxford American Dictionary definition of freedom is the “power or right to act, speak or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.” What is your definition? What does the word "freedom" mean to you? How should freedom be exercised? And do you think that one of the purposes of the government of the United States is to ensure that people in this country have the freedom to act, speak or think as they want?

Realistically, there have always been limits to our freedom. One of the purposes of government is to make laws and to ensure that they are enforced. Relative to freedom, this means that we do not have the freedom to terrorize or endanger others. For example, we have laws against drunk driving. We have laws that require drivers and their passengers to wear a seat belt. In some states, there are laws that require a motorcycle rider to wear a helmet.

Freedom has traditionally been linked with the idea of responsibility. George Bernard Shaw expressed this succinctly, “Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” It is an existential concept. To be free means that one has the burden of making choices and decisions. And in making those decisions and choices, we are responsible for both our own and others’ freedom.

The right to act freely and speak freely should end when it endangers others’ rights to do the same. This country is in crisis. Interestingly enough, it is a crisis over how we define freedom in this country. Each one of us needs to ask ourselves our definition of freedom and what limits, if any, should be imposed on our freedom.

This has been demonstrated clearly to us in the last few weeks, specifically in regard to the pandemic. Do Americans have the right to decide if they should wear a mask in public or if they should social distance? Many would say no. If the behavior endangers others, then they do not have the right to engage in it.

Restrictions on an individual's behavior as it relates to the health of other people is not new. If we recognize a public health danger to ourselves and others, we should act to eliminate it. This is why smoking in public places has been banned in most areas in this country. We do not have the freedom to endanger others.

Creating meaning and purpose in our lives and in our institutions is a critical part of being resilient, and God knows we need resilience at this point in time.

Ron Breazeale, Ph.D. , is the author of Duct Tape Isn’t Enough: Survival Skills for the 21st Century as well as the novel Reaching Home .

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267 Freedom Essay Topics & Examples

Need freedom topics for an essay or research paper? Don’t know how to start writing your essay? The concept of freedom is very exciting and worth studying!

📃 Freedom Essay: How to Start Writing

📝 how to write a freedom essay: useful tips, 🏆 freedom essay examples & topic ideas, 🥇 most interesting freedom topics to write about, 🎓 simple topics about freedom, 📌 writing prompts on freedom, 🔎 good research topics about freedom, ❓ research questions about freedom.

The field of study includes personal freedom, freedom of the press, speech, expression, and much more. In this article, we’ve collected a list of great writing ideas and topics about freedom, as well as freedom essay examples and writing tips.

Freedom essays are common essay assignments that discuss acute topics of today’s global society. However, many students find it difficult to choose the right topic for their essay on freedom or do not know how to write the paper.

We have developed some useful tips for writing an excellent paper. But first, you need to choose a good essay topic. Below are some examples of freedom essay topics.

Freedom Essay Topics

American (Indian, Taiwanese, Scottish) independence
Freedom and homelessness essay
The true value of freedom in modern society
How slavery affects personal freedom
The problem of human rights and freedoms
American citizens’ rights and freedoms
The benefits and disadvantages of unlimited freedom
The changing definition of freedom

Once you have selected the issue you want to discuss (feel free to get inspiration from the ones we have suggested!), you can start working on your essay. Here are 10 useful tips for writing an outstanding paper:

Remember that freedom essay titles should state the question you want to discuss clearly. Do not choose a vague and non-descriptive title for your paper.
Work on the outline of your paper before writing it. Think of what sections you should include and what arguments you want to present. Remember that the essay should be well organized to keep the reader interested. For a short essay, you can include an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
Do preliminary research. Ask your professor about the sources you can use (for example, course books, peer-reviewed articles, and governmental websites). Avoid using Wikipedia and other similar sources, as they often have unverified information.
A freedom essay introduction is a significant part of your paper. It outlines the questions you want to discuss in the essay and helps the reader understand your work’s purpose. Remember to state the thesis of your essay at the end of this section.
A paper on freedom allows you to be personal. It should not focus on the definition of this concept. Make your essay unique by including your perspective on the issue, discussing your experience, and finding examples from your life.
At the same time, help your reader to understand what freedom is from the perspective of your essay. Include a clear explanation or a definition with examples.
Check out freedom essay examples online to develop a structure for your paper, analyze the relevance of the topics you want to discuss and find possible freedom essay ideas. Avoid copying the works you will find online.
Support your claims with evidence. For instance, you can cite the Bill of Rights or the United States Constitution. Make sure that the sources you use are reliable.
To make your essay outstanding, make sure that you use correct grammar. Grammatical mistakes may make your paper look unprofessional or unreliable. Restructure a sentence if you think that it does not sound right. Check your paper several times before sending it to your professor.
A short concluding paragraph is a must. Include the summary of all arguments presented in the paper and rephrase the main findings.

Do not forget to find a free sample in our collection and get the best ideas for your essay!

Freedom of Expression Essay For one to be in a position to gauge the eventuality of a gain or a loss, then there should be absolute freedom of expression on all matters irrespective of the nature of the sentiments […]
Freedom of Speech in Social Media Essay Gelber tries to say that the history of the freedom of speech in Australia consists of the periods of the increasing public debates on the issue of human rights and their protection.
Freedom Writers: Promoting Good Moral Values The movie portrays a strong and civilized view of the world; it encourages development and use of positive moral values by people in making the world a better place.
Philosophy and Relationship between Freedom and Responsibility Essay As a human being, it is hard to make a decision because of the uncertainty of the outcome, but it is definitely essential for human being to understand clearly the concept and connection between freedom […]
Freedom and equality According to Liliuokalani of Hawaii, the conquest contravened the basic rights and freedoms of the natives and their constitution by undermining the power of their local leaders.
Rio (2011) and the Issue of Freedom As a matter of fact, this is the only scene where Blu, Jewel, Linda, Tulio, and the smugglers are present at the same time without being aware of each other’s presence.
Human Freedom in Relation to Society Human freedom has to do with the freedom of one’s will, which is the freedom of man to choose and act by following his path through life freely by exercising his ‘freedom’).
Human Will & Freedom and Moral Responsibility Their understanding of the definition of human will is based on the debate as to whether the will free or determined.
Freedom and Determinism On the other hand, determinism theory explains that there is an order that leads to occurrences of events in the world and in the universe.
The Efforts and Activities of the Paparazzi are Protected by the Freedom of the Press Clause of the Constitution The First Amendment of the American constitution protects the paparazzi individually as American citizens through the protection of their freedom of speech and expression and professionally through the freedom of the press clause.
Four Freedoms by President Roosevelt Throughout the discussion we shall elaborate the four freedoms in a broader way for better understating; we shall also describe the several measures that were put in place in order to ensure the four freedoms […]
“Long Walk to Freedom” by Nelson Mandela In the fast developing world, advances and progress move countries and nations forward but at the same time, some things are left behind and become a burden for the people and evolution to better life […]
Fighting for the Right to Choose: Students Should Have the Freedom to Pick the Courses They Want Consequently, students should be allowed to pick the subjects which they are going to study together with the main one. Thus, students should be allowed to choose the subjects they need in accordance with their […]
Chapters 4-6 of ”From Slavery to Freedom” by Franklin & Higginbotham At the same time, the portion of American-born slaves was on the increase and contributed to the multiracial nature of the population.
Mandela’s Leadership: Long Walk to Freedom The current paper analyses the effectiveness of leadership with reference to Nelson Mandela, the late former president of South Africa, as depicted in the movie, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s Views on Freedom For example, to Sartre, a prisoner of war is free, existentially, but this freedom does not exist in the physical realm.
Rousseau and Kant on their respective accounts of freedom and right The difference in the approaches assumed by Kant and Rousseau regarding the norms of liberty and moral autonomy determine the perspective of their theories of justice.
“Gladiator” by Ridley Scott: Freedom and Affection This desire to be free becomes the main motive of the film, as the plot follows Maximus, now enslaved, who tries to avenge his family and the emperor and regain his liberty.
70’s Fashion as a Freedom of Choice However, with the end of the Vietnam War, the public and the media lost interest in the hippie style in the middle of the decade, and began to lean toward the mod subculture. The 70’s […]
Protecting Freedom of Expression on the Campus An annotated version of “Protecting Freedom of Expression on the Campus” by Derek Bok in The Boston Globe.*and these stars are where I have a question or opinion on a statement* For several years, universities […]
Voices of Freedom The history of the country is made up of debates, disagreements and struggles for freedom that have seen the Civil War, and the Cold War which have changed the idea of freedom in the US.
Social Values: Freedom and Justice It is evident that freedom and justice are mutually exclusive, as “the theory of justice signifies its implications in regards to freedom as a key ingredient to happiness”.
Women in Early America: Struggle, Survival, and Freedom in a New World The writer shows that women had the same capacities as those of men but were not allowed to contribute their ideas in developing the country.
Pettit’s Conception of Freedom as Anti-Power According to Savery and Haugaard, the main idea that Pettit highlights in this theory is the notion that the contrary to freedom is never interference as many people claim, but it is slavery and the […]
Freedom in Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” Literature Analysis In Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the main character, Nora is not an intellectual, and spends no time scouring books or libraries or trying to make sense of her situation.
Freedom in Antebellum America: Civil War and Abolishment of Slavery The American Civil War, which led to the abolishment of slavery, was one of the most important events in the history of the United States.
Freedom and the Role of Civilization The achievements demonstrated by Marx and Freud play a significant role in the field of sociology and philosophy indeed; Marx believed in the power of labor and recognized the individual as an integral part of […]
Balance of Media Censorship and Press Freedom Government censorship means the prevention of the circulation of information already produced by the official government There are justifications for the suppression of communication such as fear that it will harm individuals in the society […]
“Human Freedom and the Self” by Roderick Chisholm According to the author, human actions do not depend on determinism or “free will”. I will use this idea in order to promote the best actions.
“Freedom Riders”: A Documentary Revealing Personal Stories That Reflect Individual Ideology The ideal of egalitarianism was one of the attractive features of the left wing for many inquiring minds in the early decades of the 20th century.
Art and Freedom. History and Relationship The implication of this term is that genus art is composed of two species, the fine arts, and the useful arts. This, according to Cavell, is the beauty of art.
Power and Freedom in America Although it is already a given that freedom just like the concept love is not easy to define and the quest to define it can be exhaustive but at the end of the day what […]
Concept of Individual Freedom Rousseau and Mill were political philosophers with interest in understanding what entailed individual freedom. This paper compares Rousseau’s idea of individual freedom with Mill’s idea.
Predetermination and Freedom of Choice We assume that every happens because of a specific reason and that the effects of that event can be traced back to the cause.
Freedom and Social Justice Through Technology These two remarkable minds have made significant contributions to the debates on technology and how it relates to liberty and social justice.
Personal Understanding of Freedom Freedom is essential for individual growth and development, and it helps individuals to make informed decisions that are in alignment with their values and beliefs.
Balancing Freedom of Speech and Responsibility in Online Commenting The article made me perceive the position of absolute freedom of speech in the Internet media from a dual perspective. This desire for quick attention is the creation of information noise, distracting from the user […]
The Effect of Emotional Freedom Techniques on Nurses’ Stress The objectives for each of the three criteria are clearly stated, with the author explaining the aims to the reader well throughout the content in the article’s title, abstract, and introduction.
The Freedom Summer Project and Black Studies The purpose of this essay is to discuss to which degree the story of the Freedom Summer project illustrates the concepts of politics outlined in Karenga’s book Introduction to black studies.
Democracy: The Influence of Freedom Democracy is the basis of the political systems of the modern civilized world. Accordingly, the democracy of Athens was direct that is, without the choice of representatives, in contrast to how it is generated nowadays.
Freedom of Speech as a Basic Human Right Restricting or penalizing freedom of expression is thus a negative issue because it confines the population of truth, as well as rationality, questioning, and the ability of people to think independently and express their thoughts.
Kantian Ethics and Causal Law for Freedom The theory’s main features are autonomy of the will, categorical imperative, rational beings and thinking capacity, and human dignity. The theory emphasizes not on the actions and the doers but the consequences of their effects […]
Principles in M. L. King’s Quest for African American Freedom The concept of a nonviolent approach to the struggles for African American freedom was a key strategy in King’s quest for the liberation of his communities from racial and social oppressions.
Technology Revolutionizing Ethical Aspects of Academic Freedom As part of the solution, the trends in technology are proposed as a potential solution that can provide the necessary support to improve the freedom of expression as one of the ethical issues that affect […]
The Journey Freedom Tour 2022 Performance Analysis Arnel Pineda at age 55 keeps rocking and hitting the high notes and bringing the entire band very successfully all through their live concert tour.
Freedom of Speech and Propaganda in School Setting One of the practical solutions to the problem is the development and implementation of a comprehensive policy for balanced free speech in the classroom.
Twitter and Violations of Freedom of Speech and Censorship The sort of organization that examines restrictions and the opportunities and challenges it encounters in doing so is the center of a widely acknowledged way of thinking about whether it is acceptable to restrict speech.
Freedom of the Press and National Security Similarly, it concerns the freedom of the press of the media, which are protected in the United States of America by the First Amendment.
The Views on the Freedom from Fear in the Historical Perspective In this text, fear is considered in the classical sense, corresponding to the interpretation of psychology, that is, as a manifestation of acute anxiety for the inviolability of one’s life.
Freedom of Speech in Social Networks The recent case of blocking the accounts of former US President Donald Trump on Twitter and Facebook is explained by the violation of the rules and conditions of social platforms.
Emotion and Freedom in 20th-Century Feminist Literature The author notes that the second layer of the story can be found in the antagonism between the “narrator, author, and the unreliable protagonist”.
Analysis of UK’s Freedom of Information Act 2000 To preserve potentially disruptive data that must not be released to the public, the FOIA integrates several provisions that allow the officials to decline the request for information without suffering possible consequences.
Fight for Freedom, Love Has No Labels, and Ad Council: Key Statement The most important part of the message, to me, is the fact that the freedoms mentioned in the PSA are not available to every American citizen, despite America being the land of freedom.
Teachers’ Freedom of Speech in Learning Institutions The judiciary system has not clearly defined the limits of the First Amendment in learning institutions, and it’s a public concern, especially from the teachers.
Freedom of Expression in the Classroom The NEA Code of Ethics establishes a link between this Freedom and a teacher’s responsibilities by requiring instructors to encourage “independent activity in the pursuit of learning,” provide “access to diverse points of view,” and […]
Is There Press Freedom in Modern China? There is a large body of literature in the field of freedom of the press investigations, media freedom in China, and press freedom and human rights studies.
Freedom of the Press in the Context of UAE It gives the people the ability to understand the insight of the government and other crucial activities happening within the country.
Freedom of the Press in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) According to oztunc & Pierre, the UAE is ranked 119 in the global press freedom data, classifying the country as one of the most suppressive regarding the liberty of expression.
Mill’s Thesis on the Individual Freedom The sphere of personal freedom is an area of human life that relates to the individual directly. The principle of state intervention is that individuals, separately or collectively, may have the right to interfere in […]
Privacy and Freedom of Speech of Companies and Consumers At the same time, in Europe, personal data may be collected following the law and only with the consent of the individuals.
Review of “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” From the youth, Mandela started to handle the unfairness of isolation and racial relations in South Africa. In Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Chadwick’s masterful screen memoir of Nelson Mandela passes on the anguish as […]
Expansion of Freedom and Slavery in British America The settlement in the city of New Plymouth was founded by the second, and it laid the foundation for the colonies of New England.
Power, Property, and Freedom: Bitcoin Discourse In the modern world, all people have the right to freedom and property, but not all have the power to decide who may have this freedom and property.
Religious Freedom Policy Evaluation Ahmed et al.claim that the creation of the ecosystem can facilitate the change as the members of the community share their experiences and learn how to respond to various situations.
The Concepts of Freedom and the Great Depression Furthermore, blacks were elected to construct the constitution, and black delegates fought for the rights of freedpeople and all Americans. African-Americans gained the freedom to vote, work, and be elected to government offices during Black […]
Freedom of Choices for Women in Marriage in “The Story of an Hour” The story describes the sentiments and feelings of Louisa Mallard when she learns the news about her husband. The readers can see the sudden reaction of the person to the demise of her significant other.
Freedom of Speech in Shouting Fire: Stories From the Edge of Free Speech Even though the First Amendment explicitly prohibits any laws regarding the freedom of speech, Congress continues to make exceptions from it.
Personal Freedom: The Importance in Modern Society To show my family and friends how important they are to me, I try contacting them more often in the way they prefer.
Economic Freedom and Its Recent Statements Economic freedom is an important indicator and benchmark for the level of income of companies or individual citizens of a country.
The Freedom Concept in Plato’s “Republic” This situation shows that the concept of democracy and the freedom that correlates with it refers to a flawed narrative that liberty is the same as equality.
Freedom of Speech as the Most Appreciated Liberty In the present-day world, the progress of society largely depends on the possibility for people to exercise their fundamental rights. From this perspective, freedom of speech is the key to everyone’s well-being, and, in my […]
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom In the introductory part of the book, the author discusses his main theses concerning the link between the development of networks and shifts in the economy and society.
Freedom of Association for Radical Organizations This assertion is the primary and fundamental argument in the debate on this topic – radical groups should not use freedom of association to harm other people potentially.
Freedom of Expression on the Internet Randall describes the challenges regarding the freedom of speech raised by the Internet, such as anonymity and poor adaptation of mass communication to the cyber environment.
Black Sexual Freedom and Manhood in “For Colored Girls” Movie Despite the representation of Black sexual freedoms in men and women and Black manhood as a current social achievement, For Colored Girls shows the realities of inequality and injustice, proving womanism’s importance in America.
Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom Review He criticizes that in spite of the perceived knowledge he was getting as a slave, this very light in the form of knowledge “had penetrated the moral dungeon”.
The Essence of Freedom of Contract The legal roots of the notion of freedom of contract are manifested in the ideals of liberalism and theoretical capitalism, where the former values individual freedom and the latter values marker efficiency and effectiveness.
Why Defamation Laws Must Prioritize Freedom of Speech The body of the essay will involve providing information on the nature of defamation laws in the USA and the UK, the implementation of such laws in the two countries, and the reason why the […]
Domination in the Discussion of Freedom For this reason, the principle of anti-power should be considered as the position that will provide a better understanding of the needs of the target population and the desirable foreign policy to be chosen.
Freedom or Security: Homeland Issues In many ways, the author sheds light on the overreactions or inadequate responses of the US government, which led to such catastrophes as 9/11 or the war in Iraq.
War on Terror: Propaganda and Freedom of the Press in the US There was the launching of the “Center for Media and Democracy”, CMD, in the year 1993 in order to create what was the only public interest at that period. There was expansive use of propaganda […]
The Freedom of Expression and the Freedom of Press It is evident that the evolution of standards that the court has adopted to evaluate the freedom of expression leaves a lot to be desired. The court has attempted to define the role of the […]
Information and Communication Technology & Economic Freedom in Islamic Middle Eastern Countries This is a unique article as it gives importance to the role ecommerce plays in the life of the educationists and students and urges that the administrators are given training to handle their students in […]
Is the Good Life Found in Freedom? Example of Malala Yousafzai The story of Malala has shown that freedom is crucial for personal happiness and the ability to live a good life.
The Path to Freedom of Black People During the Antebellum Period In conclusion, the life of free blacks in 19th century America was riddled with hindrances that were meant to keep them at the bottom of society.
Civil Rights Movement: Fights for Freedom The Civil Rights Movement introduced the concept of black and white unification in the face of inequality. Music-related to justice and equality became the soundtrack of the social and cultural revolution taking place during the […]
Voices of Freedom: Lincoln, M. L. King, Kirkaldy He was named after his grandfather Abraham Lincoln, the one man that was popular for owning wide tracks of land and a great farmer of the time.
Freedom: Malcolm X’s vs. Anna Quindlen’s Views However, in reality, we only have the freedom to think whatever we like, and only as long as we know that this freedom is restricted to thought only.
Net Neutrality: Freedom of Internet Access In the principle of Net neutrality, every entity is entitled access and interaction with other internet users at the same cost of access.
The Golden Age of Youth and Freedom However, it is interesting to compare it to the story which took place at the dawn of the cultural and sexual revolution in Chinese society.
Academic Freedom: A Refuge of Intellectual Individualism Also known as intellectual, scientific or individual freedom, academic freedom is defined as the freedom of professionals and students to question and to propose new thoughts and unpopular suggestions to the government without jeopardizing their […]
The Literature From Slavery to Freedom Its main theme is slavery but it also exhibits other themes like the fight by Afro-Americans for freedom, the search for the identity of black Americans and the appreciation of the uniqueness of African American […]
John Stuart Mill on Freedom in Today’s Perspective The basic concept behind this rose because it was frustrating in many cases in the context of the penal system and legislation and it was viewed that anything less than a capital punishment would not […]
Conformity Versus Freedom at University To the author, this is objectionable on the grounds that such a regimen infringes on the freedom of young adults and that there is much to learn outside the classroom that is invaluable later in […]
US Citizens and Freedom As an example of freedom and obtaining freedom in the US, the best possible subject would be the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, particularly during 1963-64, as this would serve as the conceptual and […]
Value of Copyright Protection in Relation to Freedom of Speech The phrase, freedom of expression is often used to mean the acts of seeking, getting, and transfer of information and ideas in addition to verbal speech regardless of the model used. It is therefore important […]
Social Factors in the US History: Respect for Human Rights, Racial Equality, and Religious Freedom The very first years of the existence of the country were marked by the initiatives of people to provide as much freedom in all aspects of social life as possible.
Freedom of Speech and the Internet On the one hand, the freedom of expression on the internet allowed the general public to be informed about the true nature of the certain events, regardless of geographical locations and restrictions.
Freedom Definition Revision: Components of Freedom That which creates, sustains, and maintains life in harmony with the natural cycles of this planet, doing no harm to the ecology or people of the Earth- is right.
Freedom of Information Act in the US History According to the legislation of the United States, official authorities are obliged to disclose information, which is under control of the US government, if it is requested by the public.
Media Freedom in the Olympic Era The Chinese government is heavily involved in the affairs of the media of that country. In the past, it was the responsibility of government to fund media houses however; today that funding is crapped off.
Managing the Internet-Balancing Freedom and Regulations The explosive growth in the usage of Internet forms the basis of new digital age. Aim of the paper is to explore the general role of internet and its relationship with the society.
Freedom, Equality & Solidarity by Lucy Parsons In the lecture and article ‘The Principles of Anarchism’ she outlines her vision of Anarchy as the answer to the labor question and how powerful governments and companies worked for hand in hand to stifle […]
Ways Liberals Define Freedom Liberals are identified by the way they value the freedom of individuals, freedom of markets, and democratic freedoms. The term freedom is characterized by Liberals as they use it within the context of the relationship […]
Boredom and Freedom: Different Views and Links Boredom is a condition characterized by low levels of arousal as well as wandering attention and is normally a result of the regular performance of monotonous routines.
The Idea of American Freedom Such implications were made by the anti-slavery group on each occasion that the issue of slavery was drawn in the Congress, and reverberated wherever the institution of slavery was subjected to attack within the South.
Human Freedom: Liberalism vs Anarchism It is impoverished because liberals have failed to show the connection between their policies and the values of the community. More fundamentally, however, a policy formulated in such a way that it is disconnected from […]
Liberal Definition of Freedom Its origins lie in the rejection of the authoritarian structures of the feudalistic order in Europe and the coercive tendencies and effects of that order through the imposition of moral absolutes.
Newt Gingrich Against Freedom of Speech According to the constitution, the First Amendment is part of the United States Bill of rights that was put in place due to the advocation of the anti-federalists who wanted the powers of the federal […]
Freedom is One of the Most Valuable Things to Man Political philosophers have many theories in response to this and it is necessary to analyze some of the main arguments and concepts to get a clearer idea of how to be more precise about the […]
The Enlightment: The Science of Freedom In America, enlightment resulted to the formation of the American Revolution in the form of resistance of Britain imperialism. In the United States of America, enlightment took a more significant form as demonstrated by the […]
Determinism and Freedom in the movie ‘Donnie Darko’ The term determinism states, the all the processes in the world are determined beforehand, and only chosen may see or determine the future.
Spinoza’ Thoughts on Human Freedom The human being was once considered of as the Great Amphibian, or the one who can exclusively live in the two worlds, a creature of the physical world and also an inhabitant of the spiritual, […]
Political Freedom According to Machiavelli and Locke In this chapter, he explains that “It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than […]
Freedom From Domination: German Scientists’ View He made the greatest ever attempt to unify the country, as Western Europe was divided into lots of feudal courts, and the unification of Germany led to the creation of single national mentality and appearing […]
The Freedom of Speech: Communication Law in US By focusing on the on goings in Guatemala, the NYT may have, no doubt earned the ire of the Bush administration, but it is also necessary that the American people are made aware of the […]
Freedom of Speech and Expression in Music Musicians are responsible and accountable for fans and their actions because in the modern world music and lyrics become a tool of propaganda that has a great impact on the circulation of ideas and social […]
American Vision and Values of Political Freedom The significance of the individual and the sanctity of life were all central to the conceptions of Plato, Aristotle, or Cicero.
Democracy and Freedom in Pakistan Pakistan lies in a region that has been a subject of worldwide attention and political tensions since 9/11. US influence in politics, foreign and internal policies of Pakistan has always been prominent.
Spanish-American War: The Price of Freedom He was also the only person in the history of the United States to have attained the rank of Admiral of the Navy, the most senior rank in the United States Navy.
Male Dominance as Impeding Female Sexual Freedom Therefore, there is a need to further influence society to respect and protect female sexuality through the production of educative materials on women’s free will.
Interrelation and Interdependence of Freedom, Responsibility, and Accountability Too much responsibility and too little freedom make a person unhappy. There must be a balance between freedom and responsibility for human happiness.
African American History: The Struggle for Freedom The history of the Jacksons Rainbow coalition shows the rise of the support of the African American politicians in the Democratic party.
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Definition of Freedom The case of Nicola Sacco can be seen as the starting point of the introduction of Roosevelt’s definition of freedom as liberty for all American citizens.
Freedom of Speech and International Relations The freedom of speech or the freedom of expression is a civil right legally protected by many constitutions, including that of the United States, in the First Amendment.
Canada in Freedom House Organization’s Rating The Freedom in the World Reports are most notable because of their contribution to the knowledge about the state of civil and political liberties in different countries, ranking them from 1 to 7.
Philosophy of Freedom in “Ethics” by Spinoza Thus, the mind that is capable of understanding love to God is free because it has the power to control lust.
Slavery Abolition and Newfound Freedom in the US One of the biggest achievements of Reconstruction was the acquisition of the right to vote by Black People. Still, Black Americans were no longer forced to tolerate inhumane living conditions, the lack of self-autonomy, and […]
Japanese-American Internment: Illusion of Freedom The purpose of this paper is to analyze the internment of Japanese-Americans in Idaho as well as events that happened prior in order to understand how such a violation of civil rights came to pass […]
The Existence of Freedom This paper assumes that it is the cognizance of the presence of choices for our actions that validates the existence of free will since, even if some extenuating circumstances and influences can impact what choice […]
Philosophy, Ethics, Religion, Freedom in Current Events The court solely deals with acts of gross human rights abuses and the signatory countries have a statute that allows the accused leaders to be arrested in the member countries.
Mill’s Power over Body vs. Foucault’s Freedom John Stuart Mill’s view of sovereignty over the mind and the body focuses on the tendency of human beings to exercise liberalism to fulfill their self-interest.
Rousseau’s vs. Confucius’ Freedom Concept Similarly, the sovereignty of a distinctive group expresses the wholeness of its free will, but not a part of the group.
The Importance of Freedom of Speech In a bid to nurture the freedom of speech, the United States provides safety to the ethical considerations of free conversations.
Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox Jefferson believed that the landless laborers posed a threat to the nation because they were not independent. He believed that if Englishmen ruled over the world, they would be able to extend the effects of […]
Freedom in the Workplace of American Society In the workplace, it is vital to implement freedom-oriented policies that would address the needs of each employee for the successful performance of the company which significantly depends on the operation of every participant of […]
19th-Century Marxism with Emphasis on Freedom As the paper reveals through various concepts and theories by Marx, it was the responsibility of the socialists and scientists to transform the society through promoting ideologies of class-consciousness and social action as a way […]
Political Necessity to Safeguard Freedom He determined that the existence of the declared principles on which the fundamental structure of equality is based, as well as the institutions that monitor their observance, is the critical prerequisite for social justice and […]
Aveo’s Acquisition of Freedom Aged Care Portfolio The mode of acquisition points to the possibility that Freedom used the White Knight defense mechanism when it approached the Aveo group.
Aveo Group’s Acquisition of Freedom Aged Care Pty Ltd The annual report of AVEO Group indicated that the company acquired Freedom Aged Care based on its net book value. It implies that the Aveo Group is likely to achieve its strategic objectives through the […]
Freedom Hospital Geriatric Patient Analysis The importance of statistics in clinical research can be explained by a multitude of factors; in clinical management, it is used for monitoring the patients’ conditions, the quality of health care provided, and other indicators.
Hegel and Marx on Civil Society and Human Freedom First of all, the paper will divide the concepts of freedom and civil society in some of the notions that contribute to their definitions.
Individual Freedom: Exclusionary Rule The exclusionary rule was first introduced by the US Supreme Court in 1914 in the case of Weeks v.the United States and was meant for the application in the federal courts only, but later it […]
History of American Conceptions and Practices of Freedom The government institutions and political regimes have been accused of allowing amarginalisation’ to excel in the acquisition and roles assigned to the citizens of the US on the basis of social identities.
Canada’s Freedom of Speech and Its Ineffectiveness In the developed societies of the modern world, it is one of the major premises that freedom of expression is the pivotal character of liberal democracy.
Freedom and Liberty in American Historical Documents The 1920s and the 1930s saw particularly ardent debates on these issues since it was the time of the First World War and the development of the American sense of identity at the same time.
Anglo-American Relations, Freedom and Nationalism Thus, in his reflection on the nature of the interrelations between two powerful empires, which arose at the end of the 19th century, the writer argues that the striving of the British Empire and the […]
American Student Rights and Freedom of Speech As the speech was rather vulgar for the educational setting, the court decided that the rights of adults in public places cannot be identic to those the students have in school.
Freedom of Speech in Modern Media At the same time, the bigoted approach to the principles of freedom of speech in the context of the real world, such as killing or silencing journalists, makes the process of promoting the same values […]
Singapore’s Economic Freedom and People’s Welfare Business freedom is the ability to start, operating and closing a business having in mind the necessary regulations put by the government.
“Advancing Freedom in Iraq” by Steven Groves The aim of the article is to describe the current situation in Iraq and to persuade the reader in the positive role of the U.S.authorities in the promoting of the democracy in the country.
Freedom: Definition, Meaning and Threats The existence of freedom in the world has been one of the most controversial topics in the world. As a result, he suggests indirectly that freedom is found in the ability to think rationally.
Expression on the Internet: Vidding, Copyright and Freedom It can be defined as the practice of creating new videos by combining the elements of already-existing clips. This is one of the reasons why this practice may fall under the category of fair use.
Doha Debate and Turkey’s Media Freedom He argued that the Turkish model was a work in progress that could be emulated by the Arab countries not only because of the freedom that the government gave to the press, but also the […]
The Pursuit of Freedom in the 19th Century Britain The ambition to improve one’s life was easily inflated by the upper grade that focused on dominating the system at the expense of the suffering majority.
The Story of American Freedom The unique nature of the United States traces its history to the formation of political institutions between 1776 and 1789, the American Revolution between 1776 and 1783 and the declaration of independence in 1776. Additionally, […]
Military Logistics in Operation “Iraqi Freedom” It was also very easy for the planners to identify the right amount of fuel needed for distribution in the farms, unlike other classes of supply which had a lot of challenges. The soldiers lacked […]
The Freedom of Information Act The Freedom of Information Act is popularly understood to be the representation of “the people’s right to know” the various activities of the government.
The United States Role in the World Freedom The efforts of NATO to engage Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents in the war resulted in the spreading of the war into the North West parts of Pakistan.
Fighting Terrorism: “Iraqi Freedom” and “Enduring Freedom” One is bound to be encouraged by the fact that the general and both his immediate and distant families had dedicated their services to the military of the USA and had achieved great heights in […]
Freedom of Speech: Julian Assange and ‘WikiLeaks’ Case
Do Urban Environments Promote Freedom?
Claiming the Freedom to Shape Politics
US Progress in Freedom, Equality and Power Since Civil War
Thomas Jefferson’s Views on Freedom of Religion
Religious Freedom and Labor Law
Gilded Age and Progressive Era Freedom Challenges
Philosophical Approach to Freedom and Determinism
The Life of a Freedom Fighter in Post WWII Palestine
Fighting for Freedom of American Identity in Literature
Philosophy of Freedom in “The Apology“
Philosophy in the Freedom of Will by Harry Frankfurt
Advertising and Freedom of Speech
How the Law Limits Academic Freedom?
The Issue of American Freedom in Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”
The Jewish Freedom Fighter Recollection
Kuwait’s Opposition and the Freedom of Expression
Abraham Lincoln: A Legacy of Freedom
Freedom of Speech and Expression
Multicultural Education: Freedom or Oppression
“The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Citizenship, and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City” by Sharon Wood
Information Freedom in Government
Dr.Knightly’s Problems in Academic Freedom
Mill on Liberty and Freedom
Texas Women University Academic Freedom
Freedom of speech in the Balkans
Media Freedom in Japan
Rivalry and Central Planning by Don Lavoie: Study Analysis
Review of “Freedom Writers”
Freedom Degree in Colonial America
What Is ‘Liberal Representative Democracy’ and Does the Model Provide an Appropriate Combination of Freedom and Equality?
Is the Contemporary City a Space of Control or Freedom?
Native Americans Transition From Freedom to Isolation
“The Weight of the Word” by Chris Berg
What Does Freedom Entail in the US?
Leila Khaled: Freedom Fighter or Terrorist?
Environmentalism and Economic Freedom
Freedom of Speech in China and Political Reform
Colonial Women’s Freedom in Society

✍️ Freedom Essay Topics for College

The S.E.C. and the Freedom of Information Act
African Americans: A Journey Towards Freedom
Freedom of the Press
Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Black Freedom Movement
Freedom of Women to Choose Abortion
Human Freedom as Contextual Deliberation
Women and Freedom in “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin
The Required Freedom and Democracy in Afghanistan
PRISM Program: Freedom v. Order
Human rights and freedoms
Controversies Over Freedom of Speech and Internet Postings
Gender and the Black Freedom Movement
Culture and the Black Freedom Struggle
Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right and the UN Declaration of Human Rights
Personal Freedom in A Doll’s House, A Room of One’s Own, and Diary of a Madman
Hegel’s Ideas on Action, Morality, Ethics and Freedom
Satre human freedom
The Ideas of Freedom and Slavery in Relation to the American Revolution
Psychological Freedom
The Freedom Concept
Free Exercise Clause: Freedom and Equality
Television Effects & Freedoms
Government’s control versus Freedom of Speech and Thoughts
Freedom of Speech: Exploring Proper Limits
Freedom of the Will
Benefits of Post 9/11 Security Measures Fails to Outway Harm on Personal Freedom and Privacy
Civil Liberties: Freedom of the Media
Human Freedom and Personal Identity
Freedom of Religion in the U.S
Freedom of Speech, Religion and Religious Tolerance
Why Free Speech Is An Important Freedom
The meaning of the word “freedom” in the context of the 1850s!
American History: Freedom and Progress
The Free Exercise Thereof: Freedom of Religion in the First Amendment
Twilight: Freedom of Choices by the Main Character
Frank Kermode: Timelessness and Freedom of Expression
The meaning of freedom today
Human Nature and the Freedom of Speech in Different Countries
What Is the Relationship Between Personal Freedom and Democracy?
How Does Religion Limit Human Freedom?
What Is the Relationship Between Economic Freedom and Fluctuations in Welfare?
How Effectively the Constitution Protects Freedom?
Why Should Myanmar Have Similar Freedom of Speech Protections to the United States?
Should Economics Educators Care About Students’ Academic Freedom?
Why Freedom and Equality Is an Artificial Creation Created?
How the Attitudes and Freedom of Expression Changed for African Americans Over the Years?
What Are the Limits of Freedom of Speech?
How Far Should the Right to Freedom of Speech Extend?
Is There a Possible Relationship Between Human Rights and Freedom of Expression and Opinion?
How Technology Expanded Freedom in the Society?
Why Did Jefferson Argue That Religious Freedom Is Needed?
How the Civil War Sculpted How Americans Viewed Their Nation and Freedom?
Should Society Limit the Freedom of Individuals?
Why Should Parents Give Their Children Freedom?
Was Operation Iraqi Freedom a Legitimate and Just War?
Could Increasing Political Freedom Be the Key To Reducing Threats?
How Does Financial Freedom Help in Life?
What Are Human Rights and Freedoms in Modern Society?
How the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom Affects the Canadian Politics?
Why Should Schools Allow Religious Freedom?
Does Internet Censorship Threaten Free Speech?
How Did the American Civil War Lead To the Defeat of Slavery and Attainment of Freedom by African Americans?
Why Are Men Willing To Give Up Their Freedom?
How Did the Economic Development of the Gilded Age Affect American Freedom?
Should Artists Have Total Freedom of Expression?
How Does Democracy, Economic Freedom, and Taxation Affect the Residents of the European Union?
What Restrictions Should There Be, if Any, on the Freedom of the Press?
How To Achieving Early Retirement With Financial Freedom?
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The given prompt: How do political, personal, and societal freedoms differ?

Freedom is a word that resonates deeply with most of us, often evoking powerful emotions. It is a term, however, that means different things in different contexts. From the vast political landscapes to the intimate corners of our minds, freedom has distinct implications. To grasp its true essence, let’s traverse the realms of political, personal, and societal freedoms.

Imagine living in a place where voicing your opinions could lead to imprisonment, or worse. Frightening, isn’t it? That’s where political freedom, or the lack of it, comes into play. Rooted in a country’s governance and laws, political freedom embodies the rights and liberties of its citizens. It speaks of democracy, of the right to vote, voice opinions, and participate in civic duties. This freedom ensures that power remains in the hands of the people and that leaders act in the nation’s best interest.

Shift the lens to a more individual perspective, and we encounter personal freedom. It’s about the choices we make daily, shaping our lives and destinies. Do you pursue a passion or follow a well-trodden path? Do you voice your disagreement in a conversation or remain silent? Personal freedom revolves around such choices. It’s the autonomy to think, act, and live according to one’s beliefs without undue external influence. This freedom lets us be authentic, honoring our true selves.

Now, imagine living in a society that dictates what you should wear, whom you should marry, or which profession you should choose. Sounds restrictive, right? Societal freedom is the antidote. It focuses on a community’s collective rights, ensuring that cultural norms or societal pressures do not stifle individual choices. This freedom ensures a harmonious coexistence, celebrating diversity and promoting inclusivity.

While these freedoms might seem distinct, they often intertwine and influence each other. A country that values political freedom is more likely to uphold societal and personal freedoms. Similarly, a society that cherishes diverse beliefs will likely advocate for both personal and political freedoms.

However, with freedom comes responsibility. Just as a bird must know its strength to fly high, individuals and societies must understand the boundaries of freedom. It should empower, not harm. It should uplift, not suppress. True freedom respects and values the freedoms of others.

In conclusion, while freedom is a universal aspiration, its interpretation varies across political, personal, and societal domains. It’s the right to vote, the power to choose, and the ability to coexist. In understanding these nuances, we appreciate the true depth of freedom. It’s a reminder that while freedom is a right, it’s also a privilege, one that we must cherish, nurture, and protect. Whether it’s in the ballot box, the choices we make, or the societies we build, freedom is the foundation of progress, happiness, and harmony.

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Question of the Month

What is freedom, each answer below receives a book. apologies to the entrants not included..

Freedom is the power of a sentient being to exercise its will. Desiring a particular outcome, people bend their thoughts and their efforts toward realizing it – toward a goal. Their capacity to work towards their goal is their freedom. The perfect expression of freedom would be found in someone who, having an unerring idea of what is good, and a similarly unerring idea of how to realize it, then experienced no impediment to pursuing it. This perfect level of freedom might be experienced by a supreme God, or by a Buddha. Personal, internal impairments to freedom manifest mainly as ignorance of what is good, or of the means to attaining it, while external impairments include physical and cultural obstacles to its realization. The bigger and more numerous these impairments are, the lower the level of freedom.

The internal impairments are the most significant. To someone who has a clear understanding of what is good and how to achieve it, the external constraints are comparatively minor. This is illustrated in the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom, an old slave who has no political (that is, external) liberty, endures injustice and hardship, while his owners enjoy lives of comparative ease. But, though he does sometimes feel sadness and discouragement at the injustices inflicted on himself and others, as a Christian he remains convinced that the real bondage in life consists in sin. So he would not trade places with his masters if it required renouncing his faith and living as they do. To take another angle, the central teaching of the Buddha is liberation from suffering – a freedom which surely all sentient beings desire. The reason we don’t have it yet, he says, is our ignorance . From the Buddhist point of view, even Uncle Tom is ignorant in this sense, although he is still far ahead of his supposed owners.

To become free, then, we must first seek knowledge of the way things really are, and then put ourselves into the correct relationship with that knowledge.

Paul Vitols, North Vancouver, B.C.

Let’s look at this question through three lenses: ethical, metaphysical, and political.

Ethically, according to Epicurus, freedom is not ‘fulfilling all desires’, but instead, being free from vain, unnecessary, or addictive desires. The addict is enslaved even when he obtains his drug; but the virtuous person is free because she doesn’t even desire the drug. Freedom is when the anger, anxiety, greed, hatred, and unnecessary desires drop away in the presence of what’s beloved or sacred. This means that the greatest freedom is ‘freedom from’ something, not ‘freedom to’ do something. (These two types of freedoms correspond to Isaiah Berlin’s famous distinction between ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ types of freedom.)

Metaphysically – as concerning free will – the key may be understanding how human choice can be caused but not determined . In the case of free will, freedom emerges from, but is not reducible to, the activity of the brain. In ways we do not yet understand, humans sometimes have the ability to look over and choose between competing paths. When it comes to consciousness and free will, I trust my introspection that both exist more than I trust the supposedly ‘scientific’ worldviews which have no room for either.

As for politics, the most important freedom is freedom of speech. We need this for truth, good thinking, tolerance, open-mindedness, humility, self-confidence, love, and humor. We discover truth only when we are free to explore alternative ideas. We think well only when people are free to give us feedback. We develop the virtues of tolerance and open-mindedness only when we are free to hear disagreeable ideas. We develop humility when our ideas are tested in a free public arena, while self-confidence arises from those ideas that survive these tests. We love only in freedom as we learn to love others in spite of their ideas, not because of them. And we can laugh deeply only where there is freedom to potentially offend. “Give me freedom or give me death!” is not actually a choice, for we are all dead without freedom.

Paul Stearns, Blinn College, Georgia

There are many kinds of freedom – positive, negative, political, social, etc – but I think that most people would say that generally speaking, freedom is the ability to do what one wants. However, what if what one wants is constrained by external factors, such as alcohol, drugs, or torture? We might also add internal impediments, such as extraordinary emotion, and maybe genetic factors. In these cases, we say that one’s will is not completely free. This view is philosophically called ‘soft determinism’, but it is compatible with having a limited free will.

One interpretation of physical science pushes the idea of constrained will to the ultimate, to complete impotence. This view is often called ‘hard determinism’, and is incompatible with free will. In this view, everyone’s choosing is constrained absolutely by causal physical laws. No one is ever free to choose, this position says, because no one could have willed anything other than what she does will. Hard determinism requires that higher levels of organization above atoms do not add new laws of causation to the strictly physical, but that idea is just a conjecture.

A third view, called ‘indeterminism’, depends on the idea that not all events have a cause. Any uncaused event would seem to just happen. But that won’t do it for freedom. If I make a choice, I want to say that is my choice, not that it happened at random: I made it; I caused it. But how could that be possible?

I would answer that if what I will is the product of my reasoning , then I am the cause, and moreover, that my reasoning is distinct from the causal physical laws of nature. At this point, I have left indeterminism and returned to soft determinism, but with a new perspective. Reasoning raises us above hard determinism because hard determinism means events obeying one set of laws – the physical ones – while reasoning means obeying another set: the laws of logic. This process is subject to human error, and the inputs to it may sometimes be garbage; but amazingly, we often get it right! Our freedom is limited in various further ways; but our ability to choose through reasoning is enough to raise us above being the ludicrous, pathetic, epiphenomenal puppets of hard determinism.

John Talley, Rutherfordton, North Carolina

Freedom can be considered metaphysically and morally. To be free metaphysically means to have some control over one’s thoughts and decisions. One is not reduced to reacting to outside causes. To be free morally means to have the ability to live according to moral standards – to produce some good, and to attain some virtue. Moral freedom means that we can aspire to what is morally good, or resist what is good. As such, the moral life needs an objective standard by which to measure which actions are good and which are bad.

If hard determinism is true then we have no control over our thought and decisions. Rather, everything is explicable in terms of matter, energy, time, and natural laws, and we are but a small part of the cosmic system, which does not have us in mind, and which cannot give freedom. Some determinists, such as Sam Harris, admit as much. Others try to ignore this idea and its amoral implications, since they are so counterintuitive. They call themselves ‘compatibilists’. But if determinism is true, moral freedom disappears for at least two reasons. Firstly, morality requires the metaphysical freedom that determinism rules out. If a child throws a rock through a window, we scold the child, not the rock, because the former had a choice while the latter did not. Ascribing real moral guilt in criminal cases also requires metaphysical freedom, for the same reason. Secondly, if determinism, or even naturalism, is true, there is no objective good that we should pursue. Naturalism is the idea that there is nothing beyond the natural world – no realm of objective values, virtues, and duties, for instance. But if this is true, then there’s no objective good to freely choose. All is reduced to natural properties, which have no moral value. Morality dissolves away into chemistry and conditioning.

Since metaphysical freedom exists (we know this because we experience choosing) and moral freedom is possible (since some moral goals are objectively good), we need a worldview which allows both kinds of freedom. It must accept that human beings are able to transcend the causal confines of the material cosmos. It must also grant humans the ability to act with respect to objective moral values. Judeo-Christian theism is one worldview which fulfils these needs, given its claim that humans are free moral agents who answer to (God’s) objective moral standards.

Douglas Groothuis, Professor of Philosophy, Denver Seminary

According to Hannah Arendt, thinking about freedom is a hopeless enterprise, since one cannot conceive of freedom without immediately being caught in a contradiction. This is that we are free and hence responsible, but inner freedom (free will) cannot fully develop from the natural principles of causality. In the physical world, everything happens according to necessity governed by causality. So, assuming that we are entirely material beings governed by the laws of physics, it is impossible to even consider the idea of human freedom. To say that we are free beings, by contrast, automatically assumes that we are a free cause – that is, we’re able to cause something with our will that is itself without cause in the physical world! This idea of ‘transcendental will’, first introduced by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), says that free will must be non-physical in order to operate – in other words, not part of the causal system of the physical world. Yet even this doesn’t fully address the issue of freedom. In order for freedom to have any meaning, one has to also act through something in the external world, thereby interrupting a necessary, physical, chain of causes. However, to act is to use a fundamentally different faculty than the one we use to think with. Thought cannot extend itself to the realm of action. This gap between action and thought – a gap through which freedom cannot pass – reveals that it is impossible to have a theoretical grasp of freedom! So all in all, the traditional understanding of free will is an incoherent conception.

Actually, politics and law both assume freedom to be a self-evident truth, especially in a modern liberal democracy. Indeed, the very evidence of human freedom, the tangible transformation that happens in the material world due to our ideas, flows best from our collective action in this public realm.

Shinyoung Choi, Centreville, Virginia

“I will slay the children I have borne!” are the words of Medea in Euripides’ play of that name. Medea takes vengeance on her husband Jason for betraying her for another woman, by murdering her own children and Jason’s new wife. The tragedy of this drama relates well to the question of human freedom. Medea showed by her actions that she was free to do things which by their nature would normally be assumed to be outside the realm of possibility. Having the ability to choose one thing over another on the basis of desire is what Immanuel Kant dismissively called ‘the Idea of Freedom’. Kant, though, asserts a different definition of freedom. He formulated a positive conception of freedom as the free capacity for choice that characterizes the essence of being human. However, the radical nature of this freedom implies that we are free even to choose the option of being free or unfree.

Kant argued of freedom that “insofar as it is not restrained under certain rules, it is the most terrible thing there could be.” Instead, to realize its true potential value, freedom must be ‘consistent with itself’. That is to say, my use of freedom must be consistent with everyone else’s use of their freedom. This law of consistency is established by reason, since reason requires consistency in its ideas. Indeed, Kant argues that an action is truly free only if it is motivated by reason alone. This ability to be motivated by reason alone Kant called ‘the autonomy of the will’. If, on the other hand, we choose to subjugate our reason to our desires and passions, we become slaves to our animalistic instincts and are not acting freely. So, by this argument, freedom is the ability to be governed by reason to act in accordance with and for the sake of the law of freedom . Thus, freedom is not what we want to do, but what we ought to do. Should we ignore the laws of nature, we would cease to exist as natural beings; but should we ignore our reason and disobey the law of freedom, we would cease to be human beings.

Medea, just like all human beings, had freedom of choice. She chose to make her reason the slave of her passion for revenge, and thus lost her true freedom. I believe that the real tragedy is not in that we as human beings have the freedom of choice, but that we freely choose to be unfree. Without true freedom, we lose our humanity and bring suffering on ourselves – as illustrated in this and all the other tragedies of drama and of history.

Nella Leontieva, Sydney

In an article I read just after Christmas, but which was first published in 1974, the science fiction author Ursula Le Guin says “To be free, after all, is not to be undisciplined.” Two weeks later, by chance I came across a quotation, apparently from Aristotle: “Through discipline comes freedom.” Both statements struck me as intuitively obvious, to the extent that to the question ‘What is Freedom?’ I would answer ‘Freedom is discipline’. However, I cannot ground this approach further except in the existentialist sense, in which sense I would say it is fundamental.

How can this inversion of freedom be justified? Broadly, freedom is the ability to choose. But no-one, or nothing, can choose in isolation – there are always constraints. How much freedom somebody actually has boils down to the nature of these constraints and how the individual deals with them. Constraints impose to varying degrees the requirement for an individual to discipline their choices. For example, a person might be constrained by a political system, and discipline themselves to act circumspectly within the confines of that system. They might consider that they physically have the freedom to act otherwise, such as to take part in a demonstration, but are constrained by other priorities. For example, they need to keep their job in order to feed their children, so that they choose not to use that freedom. Such an individual may still regard themselves as having freedom in other contexts, and ultimately may always regard their mind as free. Nothing external can constrain what one thinks: freedom concerns what we do with those thoughts.

Lindsay Dannatt, Amesbury, Wiltshire

Freedom is being able to attempt to do what we desire to do, with reasonable knowledge, which no-one can or will obstruct us from achieving through an arbitrary exercise of their will .

To clarify this, let me distinguish between usual and unusual desires. The usual ones are desires that anyone can reasonably expect to be satisfied as part of everyday life, while the unusual are desires no-one can expect to be satisfied. Examples of a usual desire include wanting to buy groceries from a shop, or wanting to earn enough money to pay your bills, while an example of an unusual desire is wanting to headline the Glastonbury Festival. Although it’s certainly the case that people might prevent me from achieving that goal through an arbitrary exercise of their will, it is not at all guaranteed that a lack of this impediment will result in my achieving the goal. We cannot claim a lack of freedom on the basis that our unusual desires go unsatisfied. Meanwhile, it is almost certainly guaranteed that I can shop for groceries if no-one else attempts to stop me through arbitrary actions.

An arbitrary act is an act carried out according to no concrete or explicit set of rules applicable to all. A person might invent their own rules and act according to them, but this is still arbitrary because their act is not mediated by a set of rules applicable to all. On these same lines, a person in a dictatorship is not free, because although there may be a set of rules ostensibly applicable to all, the application of these rules is at the discretion of the political leader or government. Contrariwise, a person can experience a just law as unfair and feel that their freedom is decreased when in fact the full freedom of all depends on that law. For example, a law against vandalism may be experienced by some political activists as unfair, or even unjust, but it applies equally to everyone. If this latter condition is not met, people are not free.

Let me add that we cannot define freedom as ‘the absence of constraint or interference’, since we cannot know that interference isn’t taking place. We can conceive of hard-to-see manipulative systems which evade even our most careful investigation. And their non-existence is equally imperceptible to us.

Alastair Gray, Brighton

Freedom is an amalgam of dreams, strivings, and controlled premeditated actions which yield repeatable demonstrable successes in the world . There is collective freedom and individual freedom . I’ll only consider individual freedom here, but with minimal tweaking this concept could apply to collective freedom, too.

Every baby is born with at least one freedom – the ability to find, suckle at, and leave the breast. Other actions are doable, but are ragged and out of control. Over time more freedom is achieved. How does that happen? First, through crying, cooing, smiling, the newborn learns to communicate. First word, first step, first bike ride – all are major freedom breakthroughs. All are building blocks to future successes.

Let a dot on a page represent a specific individual and a closed line immediately about the dot represent a fence, limiting freedom. Freedom is a push upon this fence. A newly gained freedom forces the fence to back even further away from the dot, expanding the area enclosed about the individual. This area depicts the accumulated freedoms gained in life. The shape is random, not circular, since it is governed by the diversity and complexity of the individual’s successes. If Spanish is not learned, freedom to use Spanish was not gained. But if freedom with the violin is gained, that freedom would force the fence to retreat, adding a ‘violin-shaped’ bulge of freedom. The broader the skill, the wider the bulge. The greater the complexity, the deeper the bulge.

The fence limiting each individual’s freedom is unique. Its struts consist of the individual’s DNA, location, historical time frame, the community morays, the laws of the land, and any barrier which inhibits the individual’s goals. At an individual’s maximum sustained effort to be free from their constraints, the fence becomes razor wire. Continued sustained effort at the edge, without breaking through or expanding one’s territory, leaves the individual shattered, bleeding, and possibly broken.

Years fly, in time the hair greys or is lost, along with the greying of memory and other mental and physical abilities. Freedom weakens. Strength to hold back the fence’s elasticity weakens as well. So begins freedom’s loss in a step-by-step retreat.

Bob Preston, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Freedom is an illusion. “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre. But man is not so much condemned to be free as condemned to bear the consequences of his choices and to take responsibility for his actions. This is not freedom . Freedom differs from free will. We do have choice , no matter what; but it is very questionable whether choosing between several unattractive options corresponds with actual freedom . Freedom would be the situation in which our choices, made through our free will, have no substantial consequences, which, say, limit our choices. This is impossible.

Man has a free will, but that does not make him ultimately free. On the contrary, our choices are mainly driven by survival in a competitive environment. Moreover, as long as people live with others, their freedom is limited by morals, laws, obligations and responsibilities – and that’s in countries where human rights are being respected. So all the freedoms we experience or aspire to are relative: freedom of opinion, freedom of action, freedom to choose a career, residence, or partner. Every choice necessarily leads to a commitment, and thus to obligations and responsibilities. These in turn lead to limitations; but also to meaning. The relative freedom to make a positive contribution to the world gives life meaning, and that is what man ultimately seeks.

Caroline Deforche, Lichtervelde, Belgium

Freedom? Bah, humbug! When humanity goes extinct, there will be no such thing as freedom. In the meantime, it is never more than a minimized concession from a grudging status quo. When it comes to dealing with each other, we are wrenching, scraping, clutching, covetous creatures, hard as a flint from which no generous fire glows. The problem with discerning this general truth is, not everyone is paid enough to be as true to human nature as merchant bankers, and society bludgeons the rest of us with rules that determine who does the squeezing in any given social structure – be it a family, a club, a company, or the state.

If this perspective seems to be a pessimistic denial of the ‘human spirit’, consider slavery and serfdom: both are means of squeezing others that their given society’s status quo condones. And, moreover, both states still exist, on the fringes – proving how little stands between humanity and savagery. The moral alternatives demand faith in the dubious artifice of absolute references: God(s), Ancestors, Equality, the Greater Good… However, if your preferred moral reference is at odds with the status quo’s, then you will feel you’re being denied your ‘freedom’.

So, freedom depends on the status quo, which, in turn, depends on whichever monoliths justify it. Absolute monarchies have often derived their power from the supposed will of God. Here there can be no freedom – just loyalty . Communism bases its moral claim on monolithic Equality, where the equal individuals cannot themselves be trusted with something as lethal as freedom, so it is held back by the Party. Capitalism says the squeezing should be done by those who succeed at accumulating economic spoils, and their attendant cast of amoral deal-brokers. Which is all fine. No system is perfect; and freedom is whatever exception you can wrench back from an unfavourable status quo. To win freedom, you must either negotiate or revolt. In turn, a successful status quo adapts to the ever-changing dynamics of who holds the power, and the will, to squeeze others. So freedom is a spectral illusion. If you’re lucky, you might catch a glimpse of it; but then it’s gone, wrenched back out of your feeble grasp.

Andrew Wrigley, York

As sky, so too water As air, so swims the silver cloud As body, so too the human mind is free To act to love to live to dream to be As circumstance reflects serendipity ‘I am the architect of my own destiny’ So say Sartre, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty. This strange friend and foe: freedom Is mine, is me A mind to mirror to will to learn to choose For as living erodes all roads and thee ‘You are the architect of your own history’ So say the existentialists in a Paris café, For freedom, like sky, cloud, rain, and air Is what it means to be. Yes, thinkers, dreamers, disbelievers This is freedom: At any moment we can change our course Outrun contingency, outwit facticity Petition our thrownness to let us be For we are the architects of our own lives. This is the meaning of being free.

Bianca Laleh, Totnes, Devon

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Freedom Essay

What is Freedom?

If we ever wonder what freedom is, we can look around and see the birds flying high up in the sky. While we in the land work in order to get something, we are actually captivated by that invisible power of want. The former indicates what freedom is while the latter indicates slavery. Well, this is a philosophical justification of what we mean about the term ‘freedom’. The real meaning of freedom is the state of independence where one can do whatever one likes without any restriction by anyone. Moreover, freedom is defined as the state of mind where we have the right and are free to do what we can think of. The main emphasis of freedom is we need to feel freedom from within.

Freedom is a very common term everybody has heard of but if you ask for its exact definition or meaning then it will differ from person to person. For some Freedom may mean the Freedom of going anywhere in the world they would like, for some it means to speak up for themselves and stay independent and positive, and for some, it is the liberty of doing anything whatever they like.

Thus Freedom cannot be contained and given a specific meaning. It differs from every culture, city, and individual. But Freedom in any language or any form totally depends on how any particular person handles the situation and it largely shows the true character of someone.

Different Types of Freedom

Freedom differs from person to person and from every different situation one faces. Hence Freedom can be classified as

Freedom of association.

Freedom of belief.

Freedom of speech.

Freedom to express oneself.

Freedom of the press.

Freedom to choose one's state in life.

Freedom of religion.

Freedom from bondage and slavery.

The list can even continue because every individual's wish and perspective differ.

FAQs on Freedom Essay

1. What is democracy?

Democracy can be defined as - "a government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system". Also, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is a government that is "of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Democracy is such a form of government where the rulers are being elected by the people. The single chief factor that is common to all democracies is that the government is chosen by the people. The non-democratic government can be the example of Myanmar, where the rulers are not elected by the people.

2. Why is freedom important in our life?

Freedom is very important as this gives us the right to be ourselves, and this helps to work together after maintaining autonomy. Freedom is quite important as the opposite is detrimental to our own well-being and which is inconsistent with our nature.

Freedom is a necessary ingredient for the pursuit of happiness for an individual. Freedom also may be negative or positive – freedom from the constraints on our choices and actions, and the freedom to grow, in order to determine who and what we are.

3. What do you mean by ‘Right to Freedom of Religion’?

We all have the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and also religion. This right includes the freedom to change our religion or belief. We can change our religion either alone or in community with others in public or in private, to manifest this religion or the belief, in worship, in teaching also in practice and observance.

4. Why is Freedom essential in everyone's life?

Freedom is a space or condition in which people will have the sole opportunity to speak, act and pursue their own happiness without unnecessary or any external restrictions which may even involve their own parents, friends, or siblings. Literally no one has the right to get involved in someone else’s life and try to fit in their opinion. Freedom is really important in everyone's life because it leads to enhanced expressions of creativity and original thought, increased productivity in their own view, and overall high quality of life.

5. What does real Freedom actually look like?

Real Freedom is being able to do what you want and whenever you want without someone actually getting involved in your life, being duty and responsibility-free but that doesn't mean being unemployed and this means Freedom to choose your own career and working in your own space with full acknowledgment not really bothered by what other people think, being careless but not being irresponsible about whatever happens in your life by taking full control of your life in your hands, being Spiritually Free is definitely another form of Freedom from certain beliefs and superstitions and finally having enough money to enjoy your life in your taste is the most important form of Freedom.

6. Is Freedom a better option always in every situation?

It is definitely a no because we Indians are brought up in that way that we always tend to be dependent or rely on someone for at least one particular thing in our life. Because we tend to make mistakes and make wrong decisions when we are in an emotional state, hence it is good to have one soul you might go back to often when you are confused. Our parents have brought us up in a way where we are expected to meet certain family standards and social standards so we are bound to get tied under some family emotions most of the time. But it is necessary to decide what is good for you in the end.

7. What does the feeling of finally enjoying Freedom look like?

You will have an ample amount of energy for desiring and taking the required action, and you will finally move whole-heartedly towards your own decision. You feel happy with the Freedom of just existing on this earth itself. You think your individuality has value now among both family and society. It's important that you do not just have the right to do what you want but can also choose happiness over adjustments and don't do what you actually do not want.

8. Why is Freedom of Expression more important than anything else?

Freedom of Expression is the most important human right which is essential for a society to be democratic and equal in serving both men and women or anyone. It enables the free exchange of ideas, opinions, and information and thus allows members of society to form their own opinions on issues of public importance but not only public opinion but also regarding families or any relationship for that matter. Expressing what one feels or what they actually go through is absolutely their own right which no one can ever deny.

Essay On Freedom

Freedom Essay

500+ words essay on freedom.

We are all familiar with the word ‘freedom’, but you will hear different versions from different people if you ask about it. The definition of freedom varies from person to person. According to some people, freedom means doing something as per their wish; for some people, it means taking a stand for themselves. Ultimately, the fact is that every individual wants to be free and lead their life as per their choice.

Freedom Meaning

Freedom is all about a state of independence where individuals can do what they want without any restrictions. We inherit freedom from the day we are born. It is a quality that each individual possesses. Freedom is a feeling that is felt from within. It can also be defined as a state of mind where you have the right to do what you can think of. The concept of freedom is applied to different aspects of life, and it’s not an absolute term.

All societies describe freedom in their aspect. People of different cultures see freedom in different ways, and accordingly, they enjoy their freedom. We should remember that our freedom should not disregard the rights of others. As good human beings, we should respect others’ freedom and not just live freely. We have to consider the rights and the feelings of people around us when living our freedom.

Creative minds flourish in societies that encourage freedom of opinion, thoughts, beliefs, expression, choice, etc.

Indian Freedom Struggle

The Indian freedom struggle is one of the most significant progress in the history of India. In 1600, the Britishers entered India in the name of trade-specific items like tea, cotton and silk and started ruling our country. Later on, they started ruling our country and made our Indian people their slaves. So, our country has to face the most challenging times to gain independence from British rule. In 1857, the first movement against the British was initiated by Mangal Pandey, an Indian soldier.

India also started various movements against the Britishers to get independence from their rule. One of them includes the Civil Disobedience Movement that started against the British salt monopoly. India could not manufacture salt and had to buy it from the British people by paying huge sums.

After we gained independence, India became one country that gave its citizens some freedom with limited restrictions. Now, India is a free country and the world’s largest democracy.

Freedom of India

During the days of struggle with the Britishers, India drafted a Constitution, which became applicable after independence. Our Constitution provides several freedom rights relevant to all Indian citizens equally. More importantly, these rights are constitutionally equal to every citizen.

Our constitutional rights are the right to equality, freedom, right against exploitation, freedom of religion, culture and educational rights, and right to constitutional remedies.

Importance of Freedom

We can understand the actual value of something when we achieve or earn it by sacrificing our lives. Freedom also means liberalisation from oppression, freedom from racism, opposition, discrimination, and other relatable things. Freedom doesn’t allow us to violate and disregard others’ rights.

The Freedom of Speech

Freedom of Speech is one of the fundamental human rights of an Indian citizen. An individual can convey his emotions, needs, and wants through speech. For a healthy democracy, the right to freedom of speech is essential for the citizens. The framers of the Constitution knew the importance of this right and declared this a Fundamental Right of every Indian citizen. The Constitution of India guarantees the Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression under Article 19(1)(a). It entitles every citizen to express an opinion without fearing repression by the Government.

Conclusion of the Freedom Essay

At last, we can sum it up by saying that freedom is not what we think. It is a concept, and everybody has their opinions about it. If we see the idea of freedom more broadly, it is connected with happiness. Similarly, it has added value for other people.

Students of the CBSE Board can get essays based on different topics, such as Republic Day Essay , from BYJU’S website. They can visit our CBSE Essay page and learn more about essays.

Frequently Asked Questions on Freedom Essay

What were the slogans used during the indian struggle for freedom.

Slogans used during the Indian independence movement include ‘Karo ya Maro’ (Do or die), ‘Inqlaab Zindabad’ (Long live the Revolution) and ‘Vande Mataram’ (Praise to Motherland)

What is the meaning of freedom?

In simple words, freedom means the ability to act or change without constraint and also possess the power to fulfil one’s resources.

What are examples of freedom?

Even the act of letting a bird out of the cage is an example of freedom. A woman regaining her independence after ending a controlling or abusive marriage is another instance of freedom achieved.

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Essay on Freedom in 100, 200 and 300 Words

Updated on
Nov 15, 2023

Before starting to write an essay on freedom, you must understand what this multifaceted term means. Freedom is not just a term, but a concept holding several meanings. Freedom generally refers to being able to act, speak or think as one wants without any restrictions or hindrances. Freedom encompasses the ability to make independent decisions and express your thoughts without any fear so that one can achieve their goals and aspirations. Let’s check out some essays on freedom for more brief information.

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Shiva Tyagi

With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Lifestyle & Interests — Freedom

Freedom Essays

Freedom essay topic examples, argumentative essays.

Argumentative essays on freedom require you to take a stance on a particular aspect or definition of freedom and provide evidence to support your viewpoint. Consider these topic examples:

1. Argue for the importance of freedom of speech in a democratic society, addressing the limitations, responsibilities, and potential consequences of exercising this right.
2. Debate the balance between personal freedom and government intervention in areas like public health or national security, discussing the ethical and practical implications of restrictive policies.

Example Introduction Paragraph for an Argumentative Freedom Essay: Freedom is a fundamental pillar of democratic societies, providing individuals with the autonomy to express their thoughts and beliefs openly. In this argumentative essay, we will delve into the significance of freedom of speech as a cornerstone of democracy, exploring its limitations, responsibilities, and potential consequences.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for an Argumentative Freedom Essay: In conclusion, the analysis of freedom of speech underscores its crucial role in fostering a thriving democratic society. As we reflect on the importance of this freedom, we are reminded of our collective responsibility to preserve and protect it for future generations.

Compare and Contrast Essays

Compare and contrast essays on freedom involve examining the similarities and differences between various concepts or historical contexts related to freedom. Here are some topic ideas:

1. Compare and contrast the ideas of personal freedom and societal responsibility in the philosophies of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, analyzing their impact on modern political thought.
2. Contrast the concept of freedom in the context of different historical movements, such as the American Civil Rights Movement and the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights, highlighting the challenges and achievements of each.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Compare and Contrast Freedom Essay: Freedom has been a subject of philosophical inquiry and social movements throughout history, resulting in diverse perspectives and approaches. In this compare and contrast essay, we will explore the ideas of personal freedom and societal responsibility as articulated by John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, assessing their impact on modern political thought.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Compare and Contrast Freedom Essay: In conclusion, the comparison and contrast of Locke's and Rousseau's philosophies reveal the complexity of the concept of freedom and its enduring relevance. As we examine these differing perspectives, we gain a deeper appreciation for the multifaceted nature of freedom.

Descriptive Essays

Descriptive essays on freedom allow you to provide detailed descriptions and analysis of specific instances or personal experiences related to freedom. Here are some topic ideas:

1. Describe a moment in your life when you felt a profound sense of personal freedom, recounting the circumstances, emotions, and significance of that experience.
2. Provide a detailed account of a historical event or figure that symbolizes the struggle for freedom, highlighting the challenges faced and the impact on society.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Descriptive Freedom Essay: Freedom is a concept that can be deeply personal, shaping our individual experiences and perceptions. In this descriptive essay, I will recount a moment in my life when I experienced a profound sense of personal freedom, exploring the circumstances, emotions, and significance of that transformative experience.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Descriptive Freedom Essay: In conclusion, the description of my personal experience with freedom serves as a reminder of the transformative power of this concept. As we reflect on such moments, we gain a deeper understanding of the value of freedom in shaping our lives.

Persuasive Essays

Persuasive essays on freedom involve advocating for specific actions, policies, or changes related to the promotion or protection of freedom. Consider these persuasive topics:

1. Persuade your audience on the importance of comprehensive education on digital privacy rights and internet freedom, emphasizing the need for informed digital citizenship.
2. Make a case for the significance of protecting and preserving natural habitats as essential for the freedom of diverse ecosystems, citing examples of the interconnectedness of life on Earth.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Persuasive Freedom Essay: Freedom extends beyond individual rights and liberties; it encompasses the broader context of our digital and natural environments. In this persuasive essay, I will argue for the importance of comprehensive education on digital privacy rights and internet freedom, emphasizing the role of informed digital citizenship in safeguarding our online liberties.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Persuasive Freedom Essay: In conclusion, the persuasive argument for comprehensive education on digital privacy rights and internet freedom highlights the importance of proactive measures in protecting our online freedoms. As we recognize the significance of digital literacy, we empower individuals to navigate the digital world with confidence and responsibility.

Narrative Essays

Narrative essays on freedom allow you to share personal stories, experiences, or observations related to the concept of freedom. Explore these narrative essay topics:

1. Narrate a personal journey of overcoming a significant obstacle or limitation to achieve a newfound sense of freedom and self-discovery.
2. Share a narrative of an individual or community's struggle for freedom and equality, drawing lessons from their experiences and the impact on society.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Narrative Freedom Essay: Freedom is often realized through personal journeys of self-discovery and resilience. In this narrative essay, I will narrate a personal journey of overcoming a significant obstacle to attain a newfound sense of freedom and self-discovery, illustrating the transformative power of determination.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Narrative Freedom Essay: In conclusion, the narrative of my personal journey underscores the transformative nature of freedom and self-discovery. As we reflect on the challenges we overcome, we find strength in our ability to shape our destinies and embrace the freedom to be ourselves.

Freedom: a Multifaceted Definition

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The Complex Concept of Freedom in Paradise Lost

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It is hard to find an assignment duller than writing an essay. A freedom essay was my last task that I had performed thanks to lots of online sources and examples given on the Internet. How did I cope with it? I can share my plan of actions with you and I hope it will help to save your time and efforts. When I was a child there was a movie called “Braveheart”. Maybe you haven’t heard of it but people around me adored that cool epic war film with Mel Gibson . There was an episode when during horrible tortures Mel screamed “Freedom!” I thought that he had gone out of his mind. What was the point of being free and fighting for rights when you wouldn’t have a chance to live? When I got the task I decided to watch the whole movie and finally understood that our freedom really matters. That’s why firstly I started to look for the definition of the word “freedom”. I think that the primary thing is to find out what your topic means because if you don’t understand the meaning of the “freedom” concept, you’d hardly succeed. So, freedom is a state of mind, it is a right to make a choice, to be yourself. It depends on many things - the epoch and the culture. I’ve chosen several definitions of the word “freedom”– the philosophical, the psychological and the juridical. I considered my essay just a story. It simplifies the task. I imagined that I had to tell a story, that my assignment wasn’t retelling the collected information. It should be a story on the topic “Freedom”.

Don’t Forget About Boring Rules Which Steal Your Freedom

I wondered why a student hates academic writing. When I had written my first essay I realized why people hate coping with it. My personal experience showed that I didn’t like to write essays because of the following reasons:

It’s hard to concentrate on the topic when you don’t like or even don’t understand it. Firstly, my tutor didn’t allow me to choose the theme to discuss and I had to squeeze ideas from nowhere.
Tutors ask to write about the things THEY want. That’s a horrible mistake because a person has no chance to choose and get creative. There is no freedom.
I tried to get an “A” instead of writing something really qualitative and interesting.
The topic wasn’t catchy and I wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible.
I wanted to post my pictures on Instagram more than to deal with the paper.
I HAD to follow someone’s rules. Format, style, number of pages and words and a great number of other things irritate greatly.

I decided to find the right method of approach. I think that when a person takes a task as something pleasant, not just a duty, it will be much easier to cope with it.

Helpful Tips on Writing a Successful Freedom Essay

I decided to work out my rules which would help to write freely and not fear the task. Here they are! Think that it’s not an essay - just a blog story on freedom. I feel good when posting something. I share my ideas and get rid of the pressure. People love blog stories about freedom. So, imagine that you just develop your website.

Love what you do. Writing about freedom may be funny and bring much pleasure. Find the idea and highlight it the way you want.
Your opinion matters much. You are not to agree with everyone. Rebel and be original. If something about the topic “freedom” surprises you, it can surprise everyone.
Don’t limit yourself. I never depend on one source and don’t stick to one point. First, I investigate the topic and read the FAQ which concerns my essay to get different points of view. I never force myself to write at least something. I take a rest when I need it and write what I love because that’s MY essay.
Quote and respect somebody’s idea. And be sure that you know how to quote a quote . Tutors appreciate when students sound logical and clever. Quotes are not always good. It’s better to get ideas and rewrite them by adding your own opinion. “When I do something I do it for my country and don’t wait for the appraisal.” Sounds familiar? Yes! I just rewrote the idea taken from Kennedy’s speech. That’s how freedom quotes should be paraphrased.
Start with theme essay outline . Continue writing the body and then write the intro and the conclusion. I write the body of my freedom essay, investigate and improve it. I see the strongest point and present it in the intro and highlight it in my freedom essay conclusion. Once I tried to begin with the introduction soon found out that my essay had stronger ideas and, as a result, I had to delete it and write the new one.
Your writing is your freedom - enjoy it. I don’t like to measure myself. If I have something to say right now, I write it. It can be a single sentence or a paragraph. Later I insert it into my essay. I don’t always have time to finish the paper at once. I can write it for many days. One day I feel great and creative and the other day I feel terrible and don’t touch the keyboard. Inspiration is essential.
Don’t deal with taboo issues. Clichés and too complicated language spoil the paper. One more thing to remember is avoiding plagiarism. Once a friend of mine had copied a passage from the work and his paper was banned. I am unique, you are unique, and the freedom essay must be unique as well.
Learn the topic properly. It’s important to find the topic captivating for the society and for you. Freedom is not a limited topic and there are a number of variations.

Below are some topics offered by our creative title generator for essay :

Freedom of conscience
Freedom of worship
Freedom in choosing
Freedom of action
Freedom of speech
Freedom of assembly
Free people.

Now you can see that freedom can be different. Freedom is a part of the human life and you can describe it in different ways.

Freedom of Speech Essay Sample

It’s not easy to write a freedom of speech essay because freedom of speech doesn’t exist. Freedom is an illusion and our politicians try to serve freedom as a main course. People pay much attention to each word being afraid that social networks will ban their “freedom” paper. Every online website must keep within laws that our government creates. Why do people speak of freedom of the press and other freedom issues?

Contact our essay website and free yourself up from academic writing. Our professionals will deliver fantastic result on any topic even if you have 3 hours before the deadline is over.

Daniel Howard is an Essay Writing guru. He helps students create essays that will strike a chord with the readers.

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Positive and Negative Liberty

Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense. Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one’s life and realize one’s fundamental purposes. While negative liberty is usually attributed to individual agents, positive liberty is sometimes attributed to collectivities, or to individuals considered primarily as members of given collectivities.

The idea of distinguishing between a negative and a positive sense of the term ‘liberty’ goes back at least to Kant, and was examined and defended in depth by Isaiah Berlin in the 1950s and ’60s. Discussions about positive and negative liberty normally take place within the context of political and social philosophy. They are distinct from, though sometimes related to, philosophical discussions about free will . Work on the nature of positive liberty often overlaps, however, with work on the nature of autonomy .

As Berlin showed, negative and positive liberty are not merely two distinct kinds of liberty; they can be seen as rival, incompatible interpretations of a single political ideal. Since few people claim to be against liberty, the way this term is interpreted and defined can have important political implications. Political liberalism tends to presuppose a negative definition of liberty: liberals generally claim that if one favors individual liberty one should place strong limitations on the activities of the state. Critics of liberalism often contest this implication by contesting the negative definition of liberty: they argue that the pursuit of liberty understood as self-realization or as self-determination (whether of the individual or of the collectivity) can require state intervention of a kind not normally allowed by liberals.

Many authors prefer to talk of positive and negative freedom . This is only a difference of style, and the terms ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ are normally used interchangeably by political and social philosophers. Although some attempts have been made to distinguish between liberty and freedom (Pitkin 1988; Williams 2001; Dworkin 2011), generally speaking these have not caught on. Neither can they be translated into other European languages, which contain only the one term, of either Latin or Germanic origin (e.g. liberté, Freiheit), where English contains both.

1. Two Concepts of Liberty

2. the paradox of positive liberty, 3.1 positive liberty as content-neutral, 3.2 republican liberty, 4. one concept of liberty: freedom as a triadic relation, 5. the analysis of constraints: their types and their sources, 6. the concept of overall freedom, 7. is the distinction still useful, introductory works, other works, other internet resources, related entries.

Imagine you are driving a car through town, and you come to a fork in the road. You turn left, but no one was forcing you to go one way or the other. Next you come to a crossroads. You turn right, but no one was preventing you from going left or straight on. There is no traffic to speak of and there are no diversions or police roadblocks. So you seem, as a driver, to be completely free. But this picture of your situation might change quite dramatically if we consider that the reason you went left and then right is that you’re addicted to cigarettes and you’re desperate to get to the tobacconists before it closes. Rather than driving , you feel you are being driven , as your urge to smoke leads you uncontrollably to turn the wheel first to the left and then to the right. Moreover, you’re perfectly aware that your turning right at the crossroads means you’ll probably miss a train that was to take you to an appointment you care about very much. You long to be free of this irrational desire that is not only threatening your longevity but is also stopping you right now from doing what you think you ought to be doing.

This story gives us two contrasting ways of thinking of liberty. On the one hand, one can think of liberty as the absence of obstacles external to the agent. You are free if no one is stopping you from doing whatever you might want to do. In the above story you appear, in this sense, to be free. On the other hand, one can think of liberty as the presence of control on the part of the agent. To be free, you must be self-determined, which is to say that you must be able to control your own destiny in your own interests. In the above story you appear, in this sense, to be unfree: you are not in control of your own destiny, as you are failing to control a passion that you yourself would rather be rid of and which is preventing you from realizing what you recognize to be your true interests. One might say that while on the first view liberty is simply about how many doors are open to the agent, on the second view it is more about going through the right doors for the right reasons.

In a famous essay first published in 1958, Isaiah Berlin called these two concepts of liberty negative and positive respectively (Berlin 1969). [ 1 ] The reason for using these labels is that in the first case liberty seems to be a mere absence of something (i.e. of obstacles, barriers, constraints or interference from others), whereas in the second case it seems to require the presence of something (i.e. of control, self-mastery, self-determination or self-realization). In Berlin’s words, we use the negative concept of liberty in attempting to answer the question “What is the area within which the subject — a person or group of persons — is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons?”, whereas we use the positive concept in attempting to answer the question “What, or who, is the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, this rather than that?” (1969, pp. 121–22).

It is useful to think of the difference between the two concepts in terms of the difference between factors that are external and factors that are internal to the agent. While theorists of negative freedom are primarily interested in the degree to which individuals or groups suffer interference from external bodies, theorists of positive freedom are more attentive to the internal factors affecting the degree to which individuals or groups act autonomously. Given this difference, one might be tempted to think that a political philosopher should concentrate exclusively on negative freedom, a concern with positive freedom being more relevant to psychology or individual morality than to political and social institutions. This, however, would be premature, for among the most hotly debated issues in political philosophy are the following: Is the positive concept of freedom a political concept? Can individuals or groups achieve positive freedom through political action? Is it possible for the state to promote the positive freedom of citizens on their behalf? And if so, is it desirable for the state to do so? The classic texts in the history of western political thought are divided over how these questions should be answered: theorists in the classical liberal tradition, like Benjamin Constant, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Herbert Spencer, and J.S. Mill, are typically classed as answering ‘no’ and therefore as defending a negative concept of political freedom; theorists that are critical of this tradition, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx and T.H. Green, are typically classed as answering ‘yes’ and as defending a positive concept of political freedom.

In its political form, positive freedom has often been thought of as necessarily achieved through a collectivity. Perhaps the clearest case is that of Rousseau’s theory of freedom, according to which individual freedom is achieved through participation in the process whereby one’s community exercises collective control over its own affairs in accordance with the ‘general will’. Put in the simplest terms, one might say that a democratic society is a free society because it is a self-determined society, and that a member of that society is free to the extent that he or she participates in its democratic process. But there are also individualist applications of the concept of positive freedom. For example, it is sometimes said that a government should aim actively to create the conditions necessary for individuals to be self-sufficient or to achieve self-realization. The welfare state has sometimes been defended on this basis, as has the idea of a universal basic income. The negative concept of freedom, on the other hand, is most commonly assumed in liberal defences of the constitutional liberties typical of liberal-democratic societies, such as freedom of movement, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech, and in arguments against paternalist or moralist state intervention. It is also often invoked in defences of the right to private property. This said, some philosophers have contested the claim that private property necessarily enhances negative liberty (Cohen 1995, 2006), and still others have tried to show that negative liberty can ground a form of egalitarianism (Steiner 1994).

After Berlin, the most widely cited and best developed analyses of the negative concept of liberty include Hayek (1960), Day (1971), Oppenheim (1981), Miller (1983) and Steiner (1994). Among the most prominent contemporary analyses of the positive concept of liberty are Milne (1968), Gibbs (1976), C. Taylor (1979) and Christman (1991, 2005).

Many liberals, including Berlin, have suggested that the positive concept of liberty carries with it a danger of authoritarianism. Consider the fate of a permanent and oppressed minority. Because the members of this minority participate in a democratic process characterized by majority rule, they might be said to be free on the grounds that they are members of a society exercising self-control over its own affairs. But they are oppressed, and so are surely unfree. Moreover, it is not necessary to see a society as democratic in order to see it as self-controlled; one might instead adopt an organic conception of society, according to which the collectivity is to be thought of as a living organism, and one might believe that this organism will only act rationally, will only be in control of itself, when its various parts are brought into line with some rational plan devised by its wise governors (who, to extend the metaphor, might be thought of as the organism’s brain). In this case, even the majority might be oppressed in the name of liberty.

Such justifications of oppression in the name of liberty are no mere products of the liberal imagination, for there are notorious historical examples of their endorsement by authoritarian political leaders. Berlin, himself a liberal and writing during the cold war, was clearly moved by the way in which the apparently noble ideal of freedom as self-mastery or self-realization had been twisted and distorted by the totalitarian dictators of the twentieth century — most notably those of the Soviet Union — so as to claim that they, rather than the liberal West, were the true champions of freedom. The slippery slope towards this paradoxical conclusion begins, according to Berlin, with the idea of a divided self. To illustrate: the smoker in our story provides a clear example of a divided self, for she is both a self that desires to get to an appointment and a self that desires to get to the tobacconists, and these two desires are in conflict. We can now enrich this story in a plausible way by adding that one of these selves — the keeper of appointments — is superior to the other: the self that is a keeper of appointments is thus a ‘higher’ self, and the self that is a smoker is a ‘lower’ self. The higher self is the rational, reflecting self, the self that is capable of moral action and of taking responsibility for what she does. This is the true self, for rational reflection and moral responsibility are the features of humans that mark them off from other animals. The lower self, on the other hand, is the self of the passions, of unreflecting desires and irrational impulses. One is free, then, when one’s higher, rational self is in control and one is not a slave to one’s passions or to one’s merely empirical self. The next step down the slippery slope consists in pointing out that some individuals are more rational than others, and can therefore know best what is in their and others’ rational interests. This allows them to say that by forcing people less rational than themselves to do the rational thing and thus to realize their true selves, they are in fact liberating them from their merely empirical desires. Occasionally, Berlin says, the defender of positive freedom will take an additional step that consists in conceiving of the self as wider than the individual and as represented by an organic social whole — “a tribe, a race, a church, a state, the great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn”. The true interests of the individual are to be identified with the interests of this whole, and individuals can and should be coerced into fulfilling these interests, for they would not resist coercion if they were as rational and wise as their coercers. “Once I take this view”, Berlin says, “I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture in the name, and on behalf, of their ‘real’ selves, in the secure knowledge that whatever is the true goal of man ... must be identical with his freedom” (Berlin 1969, pp. 132–33).

Those in the negative camp try to cut off this line of reasoning at the first step, by denying that there is any necessary relation between one’s freedom and one’s desires. Since one is free to the extent that one is externally unprevented from doing things, they say, one can be free to do what one does not desire to do. If being free meant being unprevented from realizing one’s desires, then one could, again paradoxically, reduce one’s unfreedom by coming to desire fewer of the things one is unfree to do. One could become free simply by contenting oneself with one’s situation. A perfectly contented slave is perfectly free to realize all of her desires. Nevertheless, we tend to think of slavery as the opposite of freedom. More generally, freedom is not to be confused with happiness, for in logical terms there is nothing to stop a free person from being unhappy or an unfree person from being happy. The happy person might feel free, but whether they are free is another matter (Day, 1970). Negative theorists of freedom therefore tend to say not that having freedom means being unprevented from doing as one desires, but that it means being unprevented from doing whatever one might desire to do (Steiner 1994. Cf. Van Parijs 1995; Sugden 2006).

Some theorists of positive freedom bite the bullet and say that the contented slave is indeed free — that in order to be free the individual must learn, not so much to dominate certain merely empirical desires, but to rid herself of them. She must, in other words, remove as many of her desires as possible. As Berlin puts it, if I have a wounded leg ‘there are two methods of freeing myself from pain. One is to heal the wound. But if the cure is too difficult or uncertain, there is another method. I can get rid of the wound by cutting off my leg’ (1969, pp. 135–36). This is the strategy of liberation adopted by ascetics, stoics and Buddhist sages. It involves a ‘retreat into an inner citadel’ — a soul or a purely noumenal self — in which the individual is immune to any outside forces. But this state, even if it can be achieved, is not one that liberals would want to call one of freedom, for it again risks masking important forms of oppression. It is, after all, often in coming to terms with excessive external limitations in society that individuals retreat into themselves, pretending to themselves that they do not really desire the worldly goods or pleasures they have been denied. Moreover, the removal of desires may also be an effect of outside forces, such as brainwashing, which we should hardly want to call a realization of freedom.

Because the concept of negative freedom concentrates on the external sphere in which individuals interact, it seems to provide a better guarantee against the dangers of paternalism and authoritarianism perceived by Berlin. To promote negative freedom is to promote the existence of a sphere of action within which the individual is sovereign, and within which she can pursue her own projects subject only to the constraint that she respect the spheres of others. Humboldt and Mill, both advocates of negative freedom, compared the development of an individual to that of a plant: individuals, like plants, must be allowed to grow, in the sense of developing their own faculties to the full and according to their own inner logic. Personal growth is something that cannot be imposed from without, but must come from within the individual.

3. Two Attempts to Create a Third Way

Critics, however, have objected that the ideal described by Humboldt and Mill looks much more like a positive concept of liberty than a negative one. Positive liberty consists, they say, in exactly this growth of the individual: the free individual is one that develops, determines and changes her own desires and interests autonomously and from within. This is not liberty as the mere absence of obstacles, but liberty as autonomy or self-realization. Why should the mere absence of state interference be thought to guarantee such growth? Is there not some third way between the extremes of totalitarianism and the minimal state of the classical liberals — some non-paternalist, non-authoritarian means by which positive liberty in the above sense can be actively promoted?

Much of the more recent work on positive liberty has been motivated by a dissatisfaction with the ideal of negative liberty combined with an awareness of the possible abuses of the positive concept so forcefully exposed by Berlin. John Christman (1991, 2005, 2009, 2013), for example, has argued that positive liberty concerns the ways in which desires are formed — whether as a result of rational reflection on all the options available, or as a result of pressure, manipulation or ignorance. What it does not regard, he says, is the content of an individual’s desires. The promotion of positive freedom need not therefore involve the claim that there is only one right answer to the question of how a person should live, nor need it allow, or even be compatible with, a society forcing its members into given patterns of behavior. Take the example of a Muslim woman who claims to espouse the fundamentalist doctrines generally followed by her family and the community in which she lives. On Christman’s account, this person is positively unfree if her desire to conform was somehow oppressively imposed upon her through indoctrination, manipulation or deceit. She is positively free, on the other hand, if she arrived at her desire to conform while aware of other reasonable options and she weighed and assessed these other options rationally. Even if this woman seems to have a preference for subservient behavior, there is nothing necessarily freedom-enhancing or freedom-restricting about her having the desires she has, since freedom regards not the content of these desires but their mode of formation. On this view, forcing her to do certain things rather than others can never make her more free, and Berlin’s paradox of positive freedom would seem to have been avoided.

This more ‘procedural’ account of positive liberty allows us to point to kinds of internal constraint that seem too fall off the radar if we adopt only negative concept. For example, some radical political theorists believe it can help us to make sense of forms of oppression and structural injustice that cannot be traced to overt acts of prevention or coercion. On the one hand, in agreement with Berlin, we should recognize the dangers of that come with promoting the values or interests of a person’s ‘true self’ in opposition to what they manifestly desire. Thus, the procedural account avoids all reference to a ‘true self’. On the other, we should recognize that people’s actual selves are inevitably formed in a social context and that their values and senses of identity (for example, in terms of gender or race or nationality) are shaped by cultural influences. In this sense, the self is ‘socially constructed’, and this social construction can itself occur in oppressive ways. The challenge, then, is to show how a person’s values can be thus shaped but without the kind of oppressive imposition or manipulation that comes not only from political coercion but also, more subtly, from practices or institutions that stigmatize or marginalize certain identities or that attach costs to the endorsement of values deviating from acceptable norms, for these kinds of imposition or manipulation can be just another way of promoting a substantive ideal of the self. And this was exactly the danger against which Berlin was warning, except that the danger is less visible and can be created unintentionally (Christman 2013, 2015, 2021; Hirschmann 2003, 2013; Coole 2013).

While this theory of positive freedom undoubtedly provides a tool for criticizing the limiting effects of certain practices and institutions in contemporary liberal societies, it remains to be seen what kinds of political action can be pursued in order to promote content-neutral positive liberty without encroaching on any individual’s rightful sphere of negative liberty. Thus, the potential conflict between the two ideals of negative and positive freedom might survive Christman’s alternative analysis, albeit in a milder form. Even if we rule out coercing individuals into specific patterns of behavior, a state interested in promoting content-neutral positive liberty might still have considerable space for intervention aimed at ‘public enlightenment’, perhaps subsidizing some kinds of activities (in order to encourage a plurality of genuine options) and financing such intervention through taxation. Liberals might criticize this kind of intervention on anti-paternalist grounds, objecting that such measures will require the state to use resources in ways that the supposedly heteronomous individuals, if left to themselves, might have chosen to spend in other ways. In other words, even in its content-neutral form, the ideal of positive freedom might still conflict with the liberal idea of respect for persons, one interpretation of which involves viewing individuals from the outside and taking their choices at face value. From a liberal point of view, the blindness to internal constraints can be intentional (Carter 2011a). Some liberals will make an exception to this restriction on state intervention in the case of the education of children, in such a way as to provide for the active cultivation of open minds and rational reflection. Even here, however, other liberals will object that the right to negative liberty includes the right to decide how one’s children should be educated.

Is it necessary to refer to internal constraints in order to make sense of the phenomena of oppression and structural injustice? Some might contest this view, or say that it is true only up to a point, for there are at least two reasons for thinking that the oppressed are lacking in negative liberty. First, while Berlin himself equated economic and social disadvantages with natural disabilities, claiming that neither represented constraints on negative liberty but only on personal abilities, many theorists of negative liberty disagree: if I lack the money to buy a jacket from a clothes shop, then any attempt on my part to carry away the jacket is likely to meet with preventive actions or punishment on the part of the shop keeper or the agents of the state. This is a case of interpersonal interference, not merely of personal inability. In the normal circumstances of a market economy, purchasing power is indeed a very reliable indicator of how far other people will stop you from doing certain things if you try. It is therefore strongly correlated with degrees of negative freedom (Cohen 1995, 2011; Waldron 1993; Carter 2007; Grant 2013). Thus, while the promotion of content-neutral positive liberty might imply the transfer of certain kinds of resources to members of disadvantaged groups, the same might be true of the promotion of negative liberty. Second, the negative concept of freedom can be applied directly to disadvantaged groups as well as to their individual members. Some social structures may be such as to tolerate the liberation of only a limited number of members of a given group. G.A. Cohen famously focused on the case proletarians who can escape their condition by successfully setting up a business of their own though a mixture of hard work and luck. In such cases, while each individual member of the disadvantaged group might be negatively free in the sense of being unprevented from choosing the path of liberation, the freedom of the individual is conditional on the unfreedom of the majority of the rest of the group, since not all can escape in this way. Each individual member of the class therefore partakes in a form of collective negative unfreedom (Cohen 1988, 2006; for discussion see Mason 1996; Hindricks 2008; Grant 2013; Schmidt 2020).

Another increasingly influential group of philosophers has rejected both the negative and the positive conception, claiming that liberty is not merely the enjoyment of a sphere of non-interference but the enjoyment of certain conditions in which such non-interference is guaranteed (Pettit 1997, 2001, 2014; Skinner 1998, 2002; Weinstock and Nadeau 2004; Laborde and Maynor 2008; Lovett 2010, forthcoming; Breen and McBride 2015, List and Valentini 2016). These conditions may include the presence of a democratic constitution and a series of safeguards against a government wielding power arbitrarily, including popular control and the separation of powers. As Berlin admits, on the negative view, I am free even if I live in a dictatorship just as long as the dictator happens, on a whim, not to interfere with me (see also Hayek 1960). There is no necessary connection between negative liberty and any particular form of government. Is it not counterintuitive to say that I can in theory be free even if I live in a dictatorship, or that a slave can enjoy considerable liberty as long as the slave-owner is compassionate and generous? Would my subjection to the arbitrary power of a dictator or slave-owner not itself be sufficient to qualify me as unfree? If it would be, then we should say that I am free only if I live in a society with the kinds of political institutions that guarantee the independence of each citizen from such arbitrary power. Quentin Skinner has called this view of freedom ‘neo-Roman’, invoking ideas about freedom both of the ancient Romans and of a number of Renaissance and early modern writers. Philip Pettit has called the same view ‘republican’, and this label has generally prevailed in the recent literature.

Republican freedom can be thought of as a kind of status : to be a free person is to enjoy the rights and privileges attached to the status of republican citizenship, whereas the paradigm of the unfree person is the slave. Freedom is not simply a matter of non-interference, for a slave may enjoy a great deal of non-interference at the whim of her master. What makes her unfree is her status, such that she is permanently exposed to interference of any kind. Even if the slave enjoys non-interference, she is, as Pettit puts it, ‘dominated’, because she is permanently subject to the arbitrary power of her owner.

According to Pettit, then, republicans conceive of freedom not as non-interference, as on the standard negative view, but as ‘non-domination’. Non-domination is distinct from negative freedom, he says, for two reasons. First, as we have seen, one can enjoy non-interference without enjoying non-domination. Second, one can enjoy non-domination while nevertheless being interfered with, just as long as the interference in question is constrained to track one’s avowed interests thanks to republican power structures: only arbitrary power is inimical to freedom, not power as such.

On the other hand, republican freedom is also distinct from positive freedom as expounded and criticized by Berlin. First, republican freedom does not consist in the activity of virtuous political participation; rather, that participation is seen as instrumentally related to freedom as non-domination. Secondly, the republican concept of freedom cannot lead to anything like the oppressive consequences feared by Berlin, because it has a commitment to non-domination and to liberal-democratic institutions already built into it.

Pettit’s idea of freedom as non domination has caught the imagination of a great many political theorists over the last two decades. One source of its popularity lies in the fact that it seems to make sense of the phenomena of oppression and structural injustice referred to above, but without necessarily relying on references to internal constraints. It has been applied not only to relations of domination between governments and citizens, but also to relations of domination between employers and workers (Breen and McBride 2015), between husbands and wives (Lovett forthcoming), and between able-bodied and disabled people (De Wispelaere and Casassas 2014).

It remains to be seen, however, whether the republican concept of freedom is ultimately distinguishable from the negative concept, or whether republican writers on freedom have not simply provided good arguments to the effect that negative freedom is best promoted, on balance and over time , through certain kinds of political institutions rather than others. While there is no necessary connection between negative liberty and democratic government, there may nevertheless be a strong empirical correlation between the two. Ian Carter (1999, 2008), Matthew H. Kramer (2003, 2008), and Robert Goodin and Frank Jackson (2007) have argued, along these lines, that republican policies are best defended empirically on the basis of the standard negative ideal of freedom, rather than on the basis of a conceptual challenge to that ideal. An important premise in such an argument is that the extent of a person’s negative freedom is a function not simply of how many single actions are prevented, but of how many different act-combinations are prevented. On this basis, people who can achieve their goals only by bowing and scraping to their masters must be seen as less free, negatively, than people who can achieve those goals unconditionally. Another important premise is that the extent to which people are negatively free depends, in part, on the probability with which they will be constrained from performing future acts or act-combinations. People who are subject to arbitrary power can be seen as less free in the negative sense even if they do not actually suffer interference, because the probability of their suffering constraints is always greater ( ceteris paribus , as a matter of empirical fact) than it would be if they were not subject to that arbitrary power. Only this greater probability, they say, can adequately explain republican references to the ‘fear’, the ‘sense of exposure’, and the ‘precariousness’ of the dominated (for further discussion see Bruin 2009, Lang 2012, Shnayderman 2012, Kirby 2016, Carter and Shnayderman 2019).

In reply to the above point about the relevance of probabilities, republicans have insisted that freedom as non-domination is nevertheless distinct from negative liberty because what matters for an agent’s freedom is the impossibility of others interfering, not the mere improbability of their doing so. Consider the example of gender relations with the context of marriage. A husband might be kind and generous, or indeed have a strong sense of egalitarian justice, and therefore be extremely unlikely ever to deny his wife the same opportunities as he himself enjoys; but the wife is still dominated if the structure of norms in her society is such as to permit husbands to frustrate the choices of their wives in numerous ways. If she lives in such a society, she is still subject to the husband’s power whether he likes it or not. And whether the husband likes it or not, the wife’s subjection to his power will tend to influence how third parties treat her – for example, in terms of offering employment opportunities.

Taken at face value, however, the requirement of impossibility of interference seems over demanding, as it is never completely impossible for others to constrain me. It is not impossible that I be stabbed by someone as I walk down the street this afternoon. Indeed, the possible world in which this event occurs is very close to the actual world, even if the event is improbable in the actual world. If the mere possibility of the stabbing makes me unfree to walk down the street, then unfreedom is everywhere and the achievement of freedom is itself virtually impossible. To avoid this worry, republicans have qualified their impossibility requirement: for me to be free to walk down the street, it must be impossible for others to stab me with impunity (Pettit 2008a, 2008b; Skinner 2008). This qualification makes the impossibility requirement more realistic. Nevertheless, the qualification is open to objections. Is ‘impunity’ a purely formal requirement, or should we say that no one can carry out a street stabbing with impunity if, say, at least 70% of such stabbings lead to prosecution? Even if 100% of such stabbings lead to prosecution, there will still be some stabbings. Will they not be sources of unfreedom for the victims?

More recently some republicans have sidelined the notion of impunity of interference in favour of that of ‘ignorability’ of interference (Ingham and Lovett 2019). I am free to make certain choices if the structure of effective societal norms, whether legal or customary, is such as to constrain the ability of anyone else to frustrate those choices, to the point where the possibility of such frustration, despite existing, is remote enough to be something I can ignore. Once I can ignore that possibility, then the structure of effective norms makes me safe by removing any sense of exposure to interference. Defenders of the negative concept of liberty might respond to this move by saying that the criterion of ignorability looks very much like a criterion of trivially low probability: we consider ourselves free to do x to the extent that the system of enforced norms deters others’ prevention of x in such a way as to make that prevention improbable.

The jury is still out on whether republicans have successfully carved out a third concept of freedom that is really distinct from those of negative and positive liberty. This conceptual uncertainty need not itself cast doubt on the distinctness and attractiveness of republicanism as a set of political prescriptions. Rather, what it leaves open is the question of the ultimate normative bases of those prescriptions: is ‘non-domination’ something that supervenes on certain configurations of negative freedom and unfreedom, and therefore explainable in terms of such configurations, or is it something truly distinct from those configurations?

The two sides identified by Berlin disagree over which of two different concepts best captures the political ideal of ‘liberty’. Does this fact not denote the presence of some more basic agreement between the two sides? How, after all, could they see their disagreement as one about the nature of liberty if they did not think of themselves as in some sense talking about the same thing ? In an influential article, the American legal philosopher Gerald MacCallum (1967) put forward the following answer: there is in fact only one basic concept of freedom, on which both sides in the debate converge . What the so-called negative and positive theorists disagree about is how this single concept of freedom should be interpreted. Indeed, in MacCallum’s view, there are a great many different possible interpretations of freedom, and it is only Berlin’s artificial dichotomy that has led us to think in terms of there being two.

MacCallum defines the basic concept of freedom — the concept on which everyone agrees — as follows: a subject, or agent, is free from certain constraints, or preventing conditions, to do or become certain things. Freedom is therefore a triadic relation — that is, a relation between three things : an agent, certain preventing conditions, and certain doings or becomings of the agent. Any statement about freedom or unfreedom can be translated into a statement of the above form by specifying what is free or unfree, from what it is free or unfree, and what it is free or unfree to do or become . Any claim about the presence or absence of freedom in a given situation will therefore make certain assumptions about what counts as an agent, what counts as a constraint or limitation on freedom, and what counts as a purpose that the agent can be described as either free or unfree to carry out.

The definition of freedom as a triadic relation was first put forward in the seminal work of Felix Oppenheim in the 1950s and 60s. Oppenheim saw that an important meaning of ‘freedom’ in the context of political and social philosophy was as a relation between two agents and a particular (impeded or unimpeded) action. However, Oppenheim’s interpretation of freedom was an example of what Berlin would call a negative concept. What MacCallum did was to generalize this triadic structure so that it would cover all possible claims about freedom, whether of the negative or the positive variety. In MacCallum’s framework, unlike in Oppenheim’s, the interpretation of each of the three variables is left open. In other words, MacCallum’s position is a meta-theoretical one: his is a theory about the differences between theorists of freedom.

To illustrate MacCallum’s point, let us return to the example of the smoker driving to the tobacconists. In describing this person as either free or unfree, we shall be making assumptions about each of MacCallum’s three variables. If we say that the driver is free , what we shall probably mean is that an agent, consisting in the driver’s empirical self, is free from external (physical or legal) obstacles to do whatever he or she might want to do. If, on the other hand, we say that the driver is unfree , what we shall probably mean is that an agent, consisting in a higher or rational self, is made unfree by internal, psychological constraints to carry out some rational, authentic or virtuous plan. Notice that in both claims there is a negative element and a positive element: each claim about freedom assumes both that freedom is freedom from something (i.e., preventing conditions) and that it is freedom to do or become something. The dichotomy between ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to’ is therefore a false one, and it is misleading to say that those who see the driver as free employ a negative concept and those who see the driver as unfree employ a positive one. What these two camps differ over is the way in which one should interpret each of the three variables in the triadic freedom-relation. More precisely, we can see that what they differ over is the extension to be assigned to each of the variables.

Thus, those whom Berlin places in the negative camp typically conceive of the agent as having the same extension as that which it is generally given in ordinary discourse: they tend to think of the agent as an individual human being and as including all of the empirical beliefs and desires of that individual. Those in the so-called positive camp, on the other hand, often depart from the ordinary notion, in one sense imagining the agent as more extensive than in the ordinary notion, and in another sense imagining it as less extensive: they think of the agent as having a greater extension than in ordinary discourse in cases where they identify the agent’s true desires and aims with those of some collectivity of which she is a member; and they think of the agent as having a lesser extension than in ordinary discourse in cases where they identify the true agent with only a subset of her empirical beliefs and desires — i.e., with those that are rational, authentic or virtuous. Secondly, those in Berlin’s positive camp tend to take a wider view of what counts as a constraint on freedom than those in his negative camp: the set of relevant obstacles is more extensive for the former than for the latter, since negative theorists tend to count only external obstacles as constraints on freedom, whereas positive theorists also allow that one may be constrained by internal factors, such as irrational desires, fears or ignorance. And thirdly, those in Berlin’s positive camp tend to take a narrower view of what counts as a purpose one can be free to fulfill. The set of relevant purposes is less extensive for them than for the negative theorists, for we have seen that they tend to restrict the relevant set of actions or states to those that are rational, authentic or virtuous, whereas those in the negative camp tend to extend this variable so as to cover any action or state the agent might desire.

On MacCallum’s analysis, then, there is no simple dichotomy between positive and negative liberty; rather, we should recognize that there is a whole range of possible interpretations or ‘conceptions’ of the single concept of liberty. Indeed, as MacCallum says and as Berlin seems implicitly to admit, a number of classic authors cannot be placed unequivocally in one or the other of the two camps. Locke, for example, is normally thought of as one of the fathers or classical liberalism and therefore as a staunch defender of the negative concept of freedom. He indeed states explicitly that ‘[to be at] liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others’. But he also says that liberty is not to be confused with ‘license’, and that “that ill deserves the name of confinement which hedges us in only from bogs and precipices” ( Second Treatise , parags. 6 and 57). While Locke gives an account of constraints on freedom that Berlin would call negative, he seems to endorse an account of MacCallum’s third freedom-variable that Berlin would call positive, restricting this variable to actions that are not immoral (liberty is not license) and to those that are in the agent’s own interests (I am not unfree if prevented from falling into a bog). A number of contemporary liberals or libertarians have provided or assumed definitions of freedom that are similarly morally loaded (e.g. Nozick 1974; Rothbard 1982; Bader 2018). This would seem to confirm MacCallum’s claim that it is conceptually and historically misleading to divide theorists into two camps — a negative liberal one and a positive non-liberal one.

To illustrate the range of interpretations of the concept of freedom made available by MacCallum’s analysis, let us now take a closer look at his second variable — that of constraints on freedom.

Advocates of negative conceptions of freedom typically restrict the range of obstacles that count as constraints on freedom to those that are brought about by other agents. For theorists who conceive of constraints on freedom in this way, I am unfree only to the extent that other people prevent me from doing certain things. If I am incapacitated by natural causes — by a genetic handicap, say, or by a virus or by certain climatic conditions — I may be rendered unable to do certain things, but I am not, for that reason, rendered unfree to do them. Thus, if you lock me in my house, I shall be both unable and unfree to leave. But if I am unable to leave because I suffer from a debilitating illness or because a snow drift has blocked my exit, I am nevertheless not unfree, to leave. The reason such theorists give, for restricting the set of relevant preventing conditions in this way, is that they see unfreedom as a social relation — a relation between persons (see Oppenheim 1961; Miller 1983; Steiner 1983; Kristjánsson 1996; Kramer 2003; Morriss 2012; Shnayderman 2013; Schmidt 2016). Unfreedom as mere inability is thought by such authors to be more the concern of engineers and medics than of political and social philosophers. (If I suffer from a natural or self-inflicted inability to do something, should we to say that I remain free to do it, or should we say that the inability removes my freedom to do it while nevertheless not implying that I am un free to do it? In the latter case, we shall be endorsing a ‘trivalent’ conception, according to which there are some things that a person is neither free nor unfree to do. Kramer 2003 endorses a trivalent conception according to which freedom is identified with ability and unfreedom is the prevention (by others) of outcomes that the agent would otherwise be able to bring about.)

In attempting to distinguish between natural and social obstacles we shall inevitably come across gray areas. An important example is that of obstacles created by impersonal economic forces. Do economic constraints like recession, poverty and unemployment merely incapacitate people, or do they also render them unfree? Libertarians and egalitarians have provided contrasting answers to this question by appealing to different conceptions of constraints. Thus, one way of answering the question is by taking an even more restrictive view of what counts as a constraint on freedom, so that only a subset of the set of obstacles brought about by other persons counts as a restriction of freedom: those brought about intentionally . In this case, impersonal economic forces, being brought about unintentionally, do not restrict people’s freedom , even though they undoubtedly make many people unable to do many things. This last view has been taken by a number of market-oriented libertarians, including, most famously, Friedrich von Hayek (1960, 1982), according to whom freedom is the absence of coercion, where to be coerced is to be subject to the arbitrary will of another. (Notice the somewhat surprising similarity between this conception of freedom and the republican conception discussed earlier, in section 3.2) Critics of libertarianism, on the other hand, typically endorse a broader conception of constraints on freedom that includes not only intentionally imposed obstacles but also unintended obstacles for which someone may nevertheless be held responsible (for Miller and Kristjánsson and Shnayderman this means morally responsible; for Oppenheim and Kramer it means causally responsible), or indeed obstacles created in any way whatsoever, so that unfreedom comes to be identical to inability (see Crocker 1980; Cohen 2011, pp. 193–97; Sen 1992; Van Parijs 1995; Garnett forthcoming).

This analysis of constraints helps to explain why socialists and egalitarians have tended to claim that the poor in a capitalist society are as such unfree, or that they are less free than the rich, whereas libertarians have tended to claim that the poor in a capitalist society are no less free than the rich. Egalitarians typically (though do not always) assume a broader notion than libertarians of what counts as a constraint on freedom. Although this view does not necessarily imply what Berlin would call a positive notion of freedom, egalitarians often call their own definition a positive one, in order to convey the sense that freedom requires not merely the absence of certain social relations of prevention but the presence of abilities, or what Amartya Sen has influentially called ‘capabilities’ (Sen 1985, 1988, 1992; Nussbaum 2006, 2011). (Important exceptions to this egalitarian tendency to broaden the relevant set of constraints include those who consider poverty to indicate a lack of social freedom (see sec. 3.1, above). Steiner (1994), grounds a left-libertarian theory of justice in the idea of an equal distribution of social freedom, which he takes to imply an equal distribution of resources.)

We have seen that advocates of a negative conception of freedom tend to count only obstacles that are external to the agent. Notice, however, that the term ‘external’ is ambiguous in this context, for it might be taken to refer either to the location of the causal source of an obstacle or to the location of the obstacle itself. Obstacles that count as ‘internal’ in terms of their own location include psychological phenomena such as ignorance, irrational desires, illusions and phobias. Such constraints can be caused in various ways: for example, they might have a genetic origin, or they might be brought about intentionally by others, as in the case of brainwashing or manipulation. In the first case we have an internal constraint brought about by natural causes, and in this sense ‘internally’; in the second, an internal constraint intentionally imposed by another human agent, and in this sense ‘externally’.

More generally, we can now see that there are in fact two different dimensions along which one’s notion of a constraint might be broader or narrower. A first dimension is that of the source of a constraint — in other words, what it is that brings about a constraint on freedom. We have seen, for example, that some theorists include as constraints on freedom only obstacles brought about by human action, whereas others also include obstacles with a natural origin. A second dimension is that of the type of constraint involved, where constraint-types include the types of internal constraint just mentioned, but also various types of constraint located outside the agent, such as physical barriers that render an action impossible, obstacles that render the performance of an action more or less difficult, and costs attached to the performance of a (more or less difficult) action. The two dimensions of type and source are logically independent of one another. Given this independence, it is theoretically possible to combine a narrow view of what counts as a source of a constraint with a broad view of what types of obstacle count as unfreedom-generating constraints, or vice versa . As a result, it is not clear that theorists who are normally placed in the ‘negative’ camp need deny the existence of internal constraints on freedom (see Kramer 2003; Garnett 2007).

To illustrate the independence of the two dimensions of type and source, consider the case of the unorthodox libertarian Hillel Steiner (1974–5, 1994). On the one hand, Steiner has a much broader view than Hayek of the possible sources of constraints on freedom: he does not limit the set of such sources to intentional human actions, but extends it to cover all kinds of human cause, whether or not any humans intend such causes and whether or not they can be held morally accountable for them, believing that any restriction of such non-natural sources can only be an arbitrary stipulation, usually arising from some more or less conscious ideological bias. On the other hand, Steiner has an even narrower view than Hayek about what type of obstacle counts as a constraint on freedom: for Steiner, an agent only counts as unfree to do something if it is physically impossible for her to do that thing. Any extension of the constraint variable to include other types of obstacle, such as the costs anticipated in coercive threats, would, in his view, necessarily involve a reference to the agent’s desires, and we have seen (in sec. 2) that for those liberals in the negative camp there is no necessary relation between an agent’s freedom and her desires. Consider the coercive threat ‘Your money or your life!’. This does not make it impossible for you to refuse to hand over your money, only much less desirable for you to do so. If you decide not to hand over the money, you will suffer the cost of being killed. That will count as a restriction of your freedom, because it will render physically impossible a great number of actions on your part. But it is not the issuing of the threat that creates this unfreedom, and you are not unfree until the sanction (described in the threat) is carried out. For this reason, Steiner excludes threats — and with them all other kinds of imposed costs — from the set of obstacles that count as freedom-restricting. This conception of freedom derives from Hobbes ( Leviathan , chs. 14 and 21), and its defenders often call it the ‘pure’ negative conception (M. Taylor 1982; Steiner 1994; Carter and Kramer 2008) to distinguish it from those ‘impure’ negative conceptions that make at least minimal references to the agent’s beliefs, desires or values.

Steiner’s account of the relation between freedom and coercive threats might be thought to have counterintuitive implications, even from the liberal point of view. Many laws that are normally thought to restrict negative freedom do not physically prevent people from doing what is prohibited, but deter them from doing so by threatening punishment. Are we to say, then, that these laws do not restrict the negative freedom of those who obey them? A solution to this problem may consist in saying that although a law against doing some action, x , does not remove the freedom to do x , it nevertheless renders physically impossible certain combinations of actions that include doing x and doing what would be precluded by the punishment. There is a restriction of the person’s overall negative freedom — i.e. a reduction in the overall number of act-combinations available to her — even though she does not lose the freedom to do any specific thing taken in isolation (Carter 1999).

The concept of overall freedom appears to play an important role both in everyday discourse and in contemporary political philosophy. It is only recently, however, that philosophers have stopped concentrating exclusively on the meaning of a particular freedom — the freedom to do or become this or that particular thing — and have started asking whether we can also make sense of descriptive claims to the effect that one person or society is freer than another, or of liberal normative claims to the effect that freedom should be maximized or that people should enjoy equal freedom or that they each have a right to a certain minimum level of freedom. The literal meaningfulness of such claims depends on the possibility of gauging degrees of overall freedom, sometimes comparatively, sometimes absolutely.

Theorists disagree, however, about the importance of the notion of overall freedom. For some libertarian and liberal egalitarian theorists, freedom is valuable as such. This suggests that more freedom is better than less (at least ceteris paribus ), and that freedom is one of those goods that a liberal society ought to distribute in a certain way among individuals. For other liberal theorists, like Ronald Dworkin (1977, 2011) and the later Rawls (1991), freedom is not valuable as such, and all claims about maximal or equal freedom ought to be interpreted not as literal references to a scalar good called ‘liberty’ but as elliptical references to the adequacy of lists of certain particular liberties, or types of liberties, selected on the basis of values other than liberty itself. Generally speaking, only the first group of theorists finds the notion of overall freedom interesting.

The theoretical problems involved in measuring overall freedom include that of how an agent’s available actions are to be individuated, counted and weighted, and that of comparing and weighting different types (but not necessarily different sources) of constraints on freedom (such as physical prevention, punishability, threats and manipulation). How are we to make sense of the claim that the number of options available to a person has increased? Should all options count for the same in terms of degrees of freedom, or should they be weighted according to their importance in terms of other values? If the latter, does the notion of overall freedom really add anything of substance to the idea that people should be granted those specific freedoms that are valuable? Should the degree of variety among options also count? And how are we to compare the unfreedom created by the physical impossibility of an action with, say, the unfreedom created by the difficulty or costliness or punishability of an action? It is only by comparing these different kinds of actions and constraints that we shall be in a position to compare individuals’ overall degrees of freedom. These problems have been addressed, with differing degrees of optimism, not only by political philosophers (Steiner 1983; Carter 1999; Kramer 2003; Garnett 2016; Côté 2020; Carter and Steiner 2021) but also by social choice theorists interested in finding a freedom-based alternative to the standard utilitarian or ‘welfarist’ framework that has tended to dominate their discipline (e.g. Pattanaik and Xu 1991, 1998; Hees 2000; Sen 2002; Sugden 1998, 2003, 2006; Bavetta 2004; Bavetta and Navarra 2012, 2014).

MacCallum’s framework is particularly well suited to the clarification of such issues. For this reason, theorists working on the measurement of freedom tend not to refer a great deal to the distinction between positive and negative freedom. This said, most of them are concerned with freedom understood as the availability of options. And the notion of freedom as the availability of options is unequivocally negative in Berlin’s sense at least where two conditions are met: first, the source of unfreedom is limited to the actions of other agents, so that natural or self-inflicted obstacles are not seen as decreasing an agent’s freedom; second, the actions one is free or unfree to perform are weighted in some value-neutral way, so that one is not seen as freer simply because the options available to one are more valuable or conducive to one’s self-realization. Of the above-mentioned authors, only Steiner embraces both conditions explicitly. Sen rejects both of them, despite not endorsing anything like positive freedom in Berlin’s sense.

We began with a simple distinction between two concepts of liberty, and have progressed from this to the recognition that liberty might be defined in any number of ways, depending on how one interprets the three variables of agent, constraints, and purposes. Despite the utility of MacCallum’s triadic formula and its strong influence on analytic philosophers, however, Berlin’s distinction remains an important point of reference for discussions about the meaning and value of political and social freedom. Are these continued references to positive and negative freedom philosophically well-founded?

It might be claimed that MacCallum’s framework is less than wholly inclusive of the various possible conceptions of freedom. In particular, it might be said, the concept of self-mastery or self-direction implies a presence of control that is not captured by MacCallum’s explication of freedom as a triadic relation. MacCallum’s triadic relation indicates mere possibilities . If one thinks of freedom as involving self-direction, on the other hand, one has in mind an exercise-concept of freedom as opposed to an opportunity-concept (this distinction comes from C. Taylor 1979). If interpreted as an exercise concept, freedom consists not merely in the possibility of doing certain things (i.e. in the lack of constraints on doing them), but in actually doing certain things in certain ways — for example, in realizing one’s true self or in acting on the basis of rational and well-informed decisions. The idea of freedom as the absence of constraints on the realization of given ends might be criticised as failing to capture this exercise concept of freedom, for the latter concept makes no reference to the absence of constraints.

However, this defence of the positive-negative distinction as coinciding with the distinction between exercise- and opportunity-concepts of freedom has been challenged by Eric Nelson (2005). As Nelson points out, most of the theorists that are traditionally located in the positive camp, such as Green or Bosanquet, do not distinguish between freedom as the absence of constraints and freedom as the doing or becoming of certain things. For these theorists, freedom is the absence of any kind of constraint whatsoever on the realization of one’s true self (they adopt a maximally extensive conception of constraints on freedom). The absence of all factors that could prevent the action x is, quite simply, equivalent to the realization of x . In other words, if there really is nothing stopping me from doing x — if I possess all the means to do x , and I have a desire to do x , and no desire, irrational or otherwise, not to do x — then I do x . An equivalent way to characterize the difference between such positive theorists and the so-called negative theorists of freedom lies in the degree of specificity with which they describe x . For those who adopt a narrow conception of constraints, x is described with a low degree of specificity ( x could be exemplified by the realization of any of a large array of options); for those who adopt a broad conception of constraints, x is described with a high degree of specificity ( x can only be exemplified by the realization of a specific option, or of one of a small group of options).

What perhaps remains of the distinction is a rough categorization of the various interpretations of freedom that serves to indicate their degree of fit with the classical liberal tradition. There is indeed a certain family resemblance between the conceptions that are normally seen as falling on one or the other side of Berlin’s divide, despite there being some uncertainty about which side to locate certain particular conceptions. One of the decisive factors in determining this family resemblance is the theorist’s degree of concern with the notion of the self. Those on the ‘positive’ side see questions about the nature and sources of a person’s beliefs, desires and values as relevant in determining that person’s freedom, whereas those on the ‘negative’ side, being more faithful to the classical liberal tradition, tend to consider the raising of such questions as in some way indicating a propensity to violate the agent’s dignity or integrity. One side takes a positive interest in the agent’s beliefs, desires and values, while the other recommends that we avoid doing so.

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Essay on Freedom

Students are often asked to write an essay on Freedom in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Freedom

Understanding freedom.

Freedom is a fundamental human right. It is the power to act, speak, or think without restraint. Freedom allows us to make choices and express ourselves.

The Importance of Freedom

Freedom is vital for personal development. It helps us discover who we are and encourages creativity and innovation. Without freedom, our world would lack diversity and progress.

Freedom with Responsibility

However, freedom comes with responsibility. We must respect others’ rights and freedoms. Misuse of freedom can lead to chaos and conflict. Therefore, it’s crucial to use freedom wisely.

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250 Words Essay on Freedom

Freedom, a concept often taken for granted, is a cornerstone of modern civilization. It’s synonymous with autonomy, self-determination, and the capacity to make choices without coercion. Freedom, however, is not absolute; it’s a relative term, defined by societal norms, legal frameworks, and cultural contexts.

The Dialectics of Freedom

Freedom can be broadly categorized into two types: positive and negative. Negative freedom refers to the absence of external constraints, allowing individuals to act according to their will. In contrast, positive freedom is the ability to act in one’s best interest, which often requires societal support and resources. The dialectics of these two types of freedom form the crux of many political and philosophical debates.

Freedom and Responsibility

Freedom is inextricably linked with responsibility. Every choice made in freedom has consequences, and individuals must bear the responsibility for their actions. This interplay between freedom and responsibility is a key aspect of ethical and moral judgments.

Freedom in the Modern World

In the modern world, freedom is often associated with democratic rights and civil liberties. However, the rise of digital technology poses new challenges. Questions about data privacy, surveillance, and censorship have sparked debates about the boundaries of freedom in the digital age.

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500 Words Essay on Freedom

Freedom, a concept deeply ingrained in human consciousness, is often perceived as the absence of restrictions and the ability to exercise one’s rights and powers at will. It is a fundamental right and the cornerstone of modern democratic societies. However, the concept of freedom is multifaceted, and its interpretation varies across different socio-cultural and political contexts.

The Philosophical Perspective

Philosophically, freedom is more than just the absence of constraints; it is about the ability to act according to one’s true nature and fulfill one’s potential. This perspective, known as positive freedom, contrasts with negative freedom, which focuses on the absence of external interference. The tension between these two interpretations of freedom has been a central theme in political philosophy.

Freedom and Democracy

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Freedom and Human Rights

Freedom is also closely linked to human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations, recognizes freedom as a basic human right. It encompasses not only political and civil liberties but also economic, social, and cultural rights. However, the realization of these rights remains a challenge in many parts of the world, where freedom is curtailed by oppressive regimes, social inequalities, and cultural norms.

The Paradox of Freedom

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Conclusion: The Future of Freedom

In conclusion, freedom is a complex and multifaceted concept. It is a fundamental human right, a cornerstone of democracy, and a philosophical concept that has been debated for centuries. As we move forward into the future, the quest for freedom continues. It is our responsibility to ensure that freedom, in all its forms, is respected and protected. The challenge lies not only in ensuring our own freedom but also in upholding the freedom of others, thereby contributing to a just and equitable world.

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5 Freedom and Equality

Elizabeth Anderson is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Published: 05 October 2016
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Freedom and equality are often viewed as conflicting values. But there are at least three conceptions of freedom-negative, positive, and republican-and three conceptions of equality-of standing, esteem, and authority. Libertarians argue that rights to negative liberty override claims to positive liberty. However, a freedom-based defense of private property rights must favor positive over negative freedom. Furthermore, a regime of full contractual alienability of rights-on the priority of negative over republican freedom-is an unstable basis for a free society. To sustain a free society over time, republican liberty must take priority over negative liberty, resulting in a kind of authority egalitarianism. Finally, the chapter discusses how the values of freedom and equality bear on the definition of property rights. The result is a qualified defense of some core features of social democratic orders.

Freedom and equality are typically presented as opposing values. In the quick version of the argument, economic liberty—the freedom to make contracts, acquire property, and exchange goods—upsets substantive economic equality ( Nozick, 2013 : 160–164). Suppose some people sail to an uninhabited island and divide its territory and the provisions they brought into shares of equal value. If they are free to produce, trade, and accumulate property, some would rapidly get richer than others due to good luck and good choices, while others would become poor due to bad luck and bad choices. Any attempt to enforce strict material equality across large populations under modern economic conditions would require a totalitarian state. Gracchus Babeuf, a radical of the French Revolution, and the first modern advocate of strict material equality under state communism, understood this perfectly. He saw that the only way to ensure strict material equality was for the state to run society like an army—to control all property and production, assign everyone to their jobs, and control everyone’s thoughts (lest some get the ideas that they deserve more than others, or that they should be free to choose their own way of life) ( Babeuf, 1967 ; Buonarroti, 1836 ). He thought such equality was worth the sacrifice of freedom. Few who have actually lived under communism agree.

While the quick argument is true and of great historical importance, it does not address moderate types of egalitarianism. Virtually no one today advocates strict material equality. Social democrats, particularly in northern Europe, embraced private property and extensive markets well before the collapse of communism. Friedrich Hayek (1944) argued that social democratic experiments would lead societies down the slippery slope to totalitarianism. His prediction failed: moderate egalitarianism of the social democratic type has proved compatible with democracy, extensive civil liberties, and substantial if constrained market freedoms.

To make progress on the question of normative trade-offs between freedom and equality within the range of options for political economy credibly on the table, we must clarify our concepts. There are at least three conceptions of freedom—negative, positive, and republican—and three conceptions of equality—of standing, esteem, and authority. Republican freedom requires extensive authority egalitarianism. To block arguments that freedom requires substantial material equality, libertarians typically argue that rights to negative liberty override or constrain claims to positive liberty. This chapter will argue that, to the extent that libertarians want to support private property rights in terms of the importance of freedom to individuals, this strategy fails, because the freedom-based defense of private property rights depends on giving priority to positive or republican over negative freedom. Next, it is argued that the core rationale for inalienable rights depends on considerations of republican freedom. A regime of full contractual alienability of rights—on the priority of negative over republican freedom—is an unstable basis for a free society. It tends to shrink the domains in which individuals interact as free and independent persons, and expand the domains in which they interact on terms of domination and subordination. To sustain a free society over time, we should accept the priority of republican over negative liberty. This is to endorse a kind of authority egalitarianism. The chapter concludes with some reflections on how the values of freedom and equality bear on the definition of property rights. The result will be a qualified defense of some core features of social democratic orders.

1. Conceptions of Freedom and Equality

Let us distinguish three conceptions of freedom: negative freedom (noninterference), positive freedom (opportunities), and republican freedom (nondomination). Sarah has negative freedom if no one interferes with her actions. She has positive freedom if she has a rich set of opportunities effectively accessible to her. She has republican freedom if she is not dominated by another person—not subject to another’s arbitrary and unaccountable will.

These three conceptions of freedom are logically distinct. They are also somewhat causally independent: one can enjoy high degrees of any two of these freedoms at substantial cost to the third. Lakshmi could have perfect negative and republican freedom on an island in which she is the only inhabitant. No one else would be interfering with her actions or dominating her. She would have little positive freedom, however, since most opportunities are generated in society with others. Maria could have high degrees of negative and positive freedom while lacking republican freedom. She could be the favorite of an indulgent king, who showers her with wealth and privileges, and permits her to say and do what she likes—but who could throw her in his dungeon at his whim. Finally, Sven could have high degrees of positive and republican freedom while being subject to many constraints on his negative liberty. He could reside in an advanced social democratic state such as Norway, where interpersonal authority is constrained by the rule of law (so he is not subject to anyone’s arbitrary will), and a rich set of opportunities is available to all, at the cost of substantial negative liberty constraints through high levels of taxation and economic regulation.

Traditionally, most discussions of freedom focused on the contrast between negative and positive freedom. The recent revival of the republican conception of freedom as nondomination adds an important dimension to thinking about the lived experience of unfreedom and the social conditions of freedom. Pettit (1997 : 22–25) stresses the contrast between negative and republican freedom in the case where a dominator could but chooses not to interfere with subordinates. He argues that such vulnerability to interference can make subordinates submissive, self-censoring, and sycophantic toward their superiors. It is also important to consider some differences between negative liberty constraints imposed by a dominating power and those imposed in accordance with the rule of law by a liberal democratic authority. Domination is often personal: think of the husband under the law of coverture or the violent husband today, the slaveholder, the bullying, micromanaging boss. Rule-of-law constraints are impersonal and of general applicability. This arm’s-length character of the rule of law often relieves people of the humiliation of submission to domination, since they know “it’s not about me.” Dominating interference can arrive unannounced. Rule-of-law constraints must be publicized in advance, giving people time to figure out how to pursue their projects in ways that avoid interference. Dominating interference does not have to justify itself. Rule-of-law constraints in a liberal democratic order must appeal to public reasons, which limits the constraints that can be imposed. Dominating interference is unaccountable. Applied rule-of-law constraints in a democracy are subject to appeal before an impartial adjudicator, and those who enact them can be removed from power by those to whom the constraints apply.

These remarks apply to ideal types only. Actually existing formally liberal democratic regimes have devised innumerable ways to exercise domination under the guise of the rule of law. It is possible to devise a set of impersonal, generally applicable, publicized laws that regulate conduct so minutely that almost anyone innocently going about their business could be found to have run afoul of one of them. Such is the case with traffic laws in the United States. If enforcement action on the trivial infringements were limited to mere warnings or token fines, as in police stops to warn drivers that their tail lights are broken, they could be a service to the drivers and others on the road. Often, however, such traffic stops are a mere pretext for police exercise of arbitrary power to harass, intimidate, invade privacy, and seize people’s property without due process of law. 1 In other cases, impersonal rule-of-law regulations impose constraints so out of touch with local conditions, with such draconian penalties for noncompliance, that enforcement amounts to domination. Such is the case with the high-stakes testing regime imposed by the federal government under No Child Left Behind, with uniform arbitrary progress goals foisted on local school districts without any empirical research demonstrating that these goals were feasible. In some cases, the NCLB regime has created a culture of intimidation and cheating ( Aviv, 2014 ). This is a centralized planning regime akin to the five-year plans of communist states. In both cases, the imposition of goals plucked out of thin air in combination with severe sanctions is premised on the assumption that lack of sufficient will is the primary obstacle to progress—an assumption that rationalizes domination of those required to meet the goals.

We should be skeptical of attempts to operationalize the conditions for nondomination in formal terms. Powerful agents are constantly devising ways to skirt around formal constraints to dominate others. Republican freedom is a sociologically complex condition not easily encapsulated in any simple set of necessary and sufficient conditions, nor easily realized through any particular set of laws.

Turn now to equality. In other work, I have argued that the conceptions of equality relevant for political purposes are relational: they characterize the types of social relations in which members of society stand to one another ( Anderson, 2012b ; Anderson, 2012a ). Relational equality is opposed to social hierarchy. Three types of hierarchy—of standing, esteem, and authority—are particularly important. In hierarchies of standing, agents (including the state) count the interests of superiors highly, and the interests of inferiors for little or nothing. In hierarchies of esteem, some groups monopolize esteem and stigmatize their inferiors. In hierarchies of authority, dominant agents issue arbitrary and unaccountable commands to subordinates, who must obey on pain of sanctions. Egalitarians oppose such hierarchies and aim to replace them with institutions in which persons relate to one another as equals. For example, they want members of society to be treated as equals by the state and in institutions of civil society (standing); to be recognized as bearing equal dignity and respect (esteem); to have equal votes and access to political participation in democratic states (authority). Each of these conceptions of relational equality is complex and implicates numerous features of the social setting.

These three types of hierarchy usually reinforce each other. Groups that exercise power over others tend to enjoy higher esteem, and often use their power to exact special solicitude for their interests from others. Sometimes they come apart. Upper-class married women under the law of coverture enjoyed high esteem and standing, but had little authority and were subordinate to their husbands and to men generally. Some ethnic minorities, such as Chinese Malaysians, enjoy high standing and authority through their ownership and control of most businesses in Malaysia, but are racially stigmatized in Malaysian society.

Given this array of distinct conceptions of freedom and equality, it is harder to argue that freedom and equality are structurally opposed. There is a deep affinity between republican freedom as nondomination and authority egalitarianism. These are not conceptually identical. Domination can be realized in an isolated, transient interpersonal case (consider a kidnapper and his victim). Authoritarian hierarchy is institutionalized, enduring, and group-based. Yet authority hierarchies cause the most important infringements of republican freedom. Historically, the radical republican tradition, from the Levellers to the radical wing of the Republican party through Reconstruction, saw the two causes of freedom and equality as united: to be free was to not be subject to the arbitrary will of others. This required elimination of the authoritarian powers of dominant classes, whether of the king, feudal landlords, or slaveholders. Republican freedom for all is incompatible with authoritarian hierarchy and hence requires some form of authority egalitarianism.

Authority egalitarianism so dominates public discourse in contemporary liberal democracies that few people openly reject it. However, conservatives have traditionally supported authority hierarchy, and continue to do so today, while often publicizing their views in other terms. For example, conservatives tend to defend expansive discretionary powers of police over suspects and employers over workers, as well as policies that reinforce race, class, and gender hierarchies, such as restrictions on voting, reproductive freedom, and access to the courts.

The connections between relational equality and conventional ideas of equality in terms of the distribution of income and wealth are mainly causal. Esteem egalitarians worry that great economic inequality will cause the poor to be stigmatized and the rich glorified simply for their wealth. Authority egalitarians worry that too much wealth inequality empowers the rich to turn the state into a plutocracy. This radical republican objection to wealth inequality is distinct from contemporary notions of distributive justice, which focus on the ideas that unequal distributions are unfair, and that redistribution can enhance the consumption opportunities of the less well off. 2 The latter notions are the concern of standing egalitarianism. Concern for distributive justice—specifically, how the rules that determine the fair division of gains from social cooperation should be designed—can be cast in terms of the question: what rules would free people of equal standing choose, with an eye to also sustaining their equal social relations? The concern to choose principles that sustain relations of equal standing is partly causal and partly constitutive. In a contractualist framework, principles of distributive justice for economic goods constrain the choice of regulative rules of property, contract, the system of money and banking, and so forth, and do not directly determine outcomes ( Rawls, 1999 : 47–49, 73–76). From this point of view, certain principles, such as equality of rights to own property and make contracts, are constitutive of equal standing.

Absent from this list of conceptions of equality is any notion of equality considered as a bare pattern in the distribution of goods, independent of how those goods were brought about, the social relations through which they came to be possessed, or the social relations they tend to cause. Some people think that it is a bad thing if one person is worse off than another due to sheer luck ( Arneson, 2000 ; Temkin, 2003 ). I do not share this intuition. Suppose a temperamentally happy baby is born, and then another is born that is even happier. The first is now worse off than the second, through sheer luck. This fact is no injustice and harms no one’s interests. Nor does it make the world a worse place. Even if it did, it would still be irrelevant in a liberal political order, as concern for the value of the world apart from any connection to human welfare, interests, or freedom fails even the most lax standard of liberal neutrality.

2. A Freedom-based Justification of Property Must Favor Positive or Republican over Negative Freedom

The conventional debate about freedom and distributive equality is cast in terms of the relative priority of negative and positive freedom. If negative liberty, as embodied in property rights, trumps positive freedom, then taxation for purposes of redistribution of income and wealth is unjust ( Nozick, 2013 : 30–34, 172–173; Mack, 2009 ).

One way to motivate the priority of negative freedom is to stress the normative difference between constraints against infringing others’ liberties, which do not require anyone to do anything (merely to refrain from acting in certain ways), and positive requirements to supply others with goods, which carry the taint of forced labor. This argument applies at most to taxation of labor income. Nozick (2013 : 169) tacitly acknowledged this point in claiming that “Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor” (emphasis added). People receive passive income (such as interest, mineral royalties, capital gains, land rents, and bequests) without lifting a finger, so taxation of or limitations on such income does not amount to forcing them to work for others. Such taxation is the traditional left-libertarian strategy for pursuing distributive equality consistent with negative liberty constraints. Land and natural resource taxes can be justified in Lockean terms, as respecting the property rights in the commons of those who lost access to privately appropriated land. Paine’s classic version of this argument (1796) claims that Lockean property rights should be unbundled: just appropriation entitles owners to use the land and exclude others, but not to 100 percent of the income from land rents. Citizens generally retain rights to part of that income stream. This grounds a moderate egalitarianism without resort to the extravagant premises needed to support a more demanding distributive equality in libertarian terms, as for instance in Otsuka (1998) .

Arguments for the priority of negative over positive freedom with respect to property rights run into more fundamental difficulties. A regime of perfect negative freedom with respect to property is one of Hohfeldian privileges only, not of rights. 3 A negative liberty is a privilege to act in some way without state interference or liability for damages to another for the way one acts. The correlate to A’s privilege is that others lack any right to demand state assistance in constraining A’s liberty to act in that way. There is nothing conceptually incoherent in a situation where multiple persons have a privilege with respect to the same rival good: consider the rules of basketball, which permit members of either team to compete for possession of the ball, and even to “steal” the ball from opponents. If the other team exercises its liberty to steal the ball, the original possessor cannot appeal to the referee to get it back.

No sound argument for a regime of property rights can rely on considerations of negative liberty alone. Rights entail that others have correlative duties. To have a property right to something is to have a claim against others, enforceable by the state, that they not act in particular ways with respect to that thing. Property rights, by definition, are massive constraints on negative liberty: to secure the right of a single individual owner to some property, the negative liberty of everyone else—billions of people—must be constrained. Judged by a metric of negative liberty alone, recognition of property rights inherently amounts to a massive net loss of total negative freedom. The argument applies equally well to rights in one’s person, showing again the inability of considerations of negative liberty alone to ground rights. “It is impossible to create rights, to impose obligations, to protect the person, life, reputation, property, subsistence, or liberty itself, but at the expense of liberty” ( Bentham, 1838–1843 : I.1, 301).

What could justify this gigantic net loss of negative liberty? If we want to defend this loss as a net gain in overall freedom, we must do so by appealing to one of the other conceptions of freedom—positive freedom, or republican freedom. Excellent arguments can be provided to defend private property rights in terms of positive freedom. Someone who has invested their labor in some external good with the aim of creating something worth more than the original raw materials has a vital interest in assurance that they will have effective access to this good in the future. Such assurance requires the state’s assistance in securing that good against others’ negative liberty interest in taking possession of it. To have a claim to the state’s assistance in securing effective access to a good, against others’ negative liberty interests in it, is to have a right to positive freedom .

Considerations of republican freedom also supply excellent arguments for private property. In a system of privileges alone, contests over possession of external objects would be settled in the interests of the stronger parties. Because individuals need access to external goods to survive, the stronger could then condition others’ access on their subjection to the possessors’ arbitrary will. Only a system of private property rights can protect the weaker from domination by the stronger. The republican argument for rights in one’s own body follows even more immediately from such considerations, since to be an object of others’ possession is per se to be dominated by them.

Thus, there are impeccable freedom-based arguments for individual property rights. But they depend on treating individuals’ interests in either positive or republican freedom as overriding others’ negative liberty interests. Against this, libertarians such as Nozick could argue that the proper conception of negative liberty is a moralized one, such that interference with others’ negative freedom does not count as an infringement of liberty unless it is unjust . Such a moralized view of liberty is implicit in Nozick’s moralized accounts of coercion and voluntariness (1969: 450; 2013: 262–263). Hence, no genuine sacrifice of others’ negative liberty is involved in establishing a just system of property rights.

In response, we must consider what could justify claims to negative liberty rights in property. The problem arises with special clarity once we consider the pervasiveness of prima facie conflicts of property rights, as in cases of externalities settled by tort law or land use regulation. Whenever prima facie negative liberty rights conflict, we must decide between them either by weighing their value in terms of non-liberty considerations, or in terms of some other conception of freedom—positive or republican. If we appeal to considerations other than freedom, we treat freedom as subordinate to other values. For example, desert-based arguments for property rights, which point to the fact that the individual created the object of property, or added value to it through their labor—treat freedom as subordinate to the social goal of rewarding people according to their just deserts. Similarly, Nozick’s resolution of conflicting claims in terms of a moralized notion of negative liberty covertly imports utilitarian considerations to do the needed normative work ( Fried, 2011 ). To base the justification of property rights on considerations of freedom itself, we must regard freedom as a value or interest and not immediately as a right. That is, we must regard freedom as a nonmoralized consideration. Otherwise we have no basis in freedom for justifying property rights or resolving property disputes when uses of property conflict.

A contractualist framework can offer a freedom-based justification of private property rights that departs from libertarian premises. In this picture, the principles of right are whatever principles persons would rationally choose (or could not reasonably reject) to govern their interpersonal claims, given that they are, and understand themselves to be, free and equal in relation to one another. If they chose a regime of privileges only, this would amount to anarchist communism, in which the world is an unregulated commons. Such a regime would lead to depleted commons—razed forests, extinct game, destroyed fisheries. It would also give everyone a greater incentive to take what others produced than to produce themselves. Few would invest their labor in external things, everyone would be poor, and meaningful opportunities would be rare. By contrast, adoption of an institutional scheme of extensive private property rights, including broad freedoms of exchange and contract, would create vastly richer opportunities for peaceful and cooperative production on terms of mutual freedom and equality. All have an overwhelming common interest in sustaining an institutional infrastructure of private property rights that generates more positive freedom —better opportunities—for all.

This argument justifies rights to negative freedom with respect to external property in terms of positive freedom. It does not suppose, as libertarian arguments do, that the liberty interests of the individual override the common interest. Rather, it claims that people have a common interest in sustaining a regime of individual rights to property. On this view, individual rights are not justified by the weight of the individual interest they protect, but by the fact that everyone has a common interest in relating to each other through a shared infrastructure of individual rights ( Raz, 1994 ). The infrastructure of private property rights is a public good, justified by its promotion of opportunities—of positive freedom—for all. A well-designed infrastructure provides a framework within which individuals can relate to one another as free and equal persons.

So far, the argument is one of evaluative priority only. It has been argued that if one wants to justify private property rights in terms of freedom, one must grant evaluative priority to positive or republican over negative freedom. Discussion of the implications of this argument for the content of a just scheme of private property rights—to whether a just scheme would look more libertarian, or more egalitarian—will be postponed to the last section of this chapter.

3. Republican Freedom and the Justification of Inalienable Rights

If negative freedom were the only conception of freedom, it would be difficult to offer a freedom-based justification of inalienable rights. If Sarah’s right is inalienable, then she is immune from anyone changing her right. This could look attractive, except that it entails that she is disabled from changing her own right—that she lacks the power to waive others’ correlative duties to respect that right ( Hohfeld, 1913–1914 : 44–45, 55). This is a constraint on her higher-order negative liberty. This liberty is higher-order because it concerns not the liberty to exercise the right, but the liberty over the right itself.

Inalienable rights might also leave the individual with an inferior set of positive freedoms than if her rights are alienable. Contracts involve an exchange of rights. There is a general presumption that voluntary and informed contracts produce gains for both sides. To make Sarah’s right inalienable prevents her from exchanging it for rights she values more, and thereby reduces her opportunities or positive freedom.

However, there are strategic contexts in which individuals can get much better opportunities if some of their rights are inalienable ( Dworkin, 1982 : 55–56). In urgent situations, when one party cannot hold out for better terms, the other can exploit that fact and offer terms that are much worse than what they would otherwise be willing to offer. Peter, seeing Michelle drowning, might condition his tossing her a life ring on her agreeing to become his slave, if her rights in herself were fully alienable. But if she had an inalienable right to self-ownership, Peter could not exploit her desperation to subject her to slavery, but would offer her better terms.

Such considerations leave libertarians torn between accepting and rejecting the validity of voluntary contracts into slavery. 4 Those tempted by the negative liberty case in favor of full alienability of rights should recall the antislavery arguments of the Republican Party before the Civil War. Republicans objected to slavery because it enabled slaveholders to subordinate even free men to their dominion. The Slave Power—politically organized proslavery interests—undermined the republican character of government. It suppressed the right to petition Congress (via the gag rule against hearing antislavery petitions), censored the mail (against antislavery literature), and forced free men, against their conscience, to join posses to hunt down alleged fugitive slaves. It violated equal citizenship by effectively granting additional representation to slaveowners for their property in slaves (via the three-fifths rule for apportioning representatives). By insisting on the right to hold slaves in the territories, the Slave Power threatened the prospects of free men to secure their independence by staking out individual homesteads. Slave plantations would acquire vast territories, crowding out opportunities for independent family farms. Chattel slavery of blacks threatened to reduce whites to wage slaves, subordinate to their employers for their entire working lives ( Foner, 1995 ).

The Republican antislavery argument is similar to the positive liberty argument above: it stresses how the constitution of a scheme of liberty rights provides the public infrastructure for a society of free and equal persons. The critical point is to institute a scheme of individual rights that can sustain relations of freedom and equality—understood as personal independence and nondomination—among persons. While the Republican Party limited its arguments to securing relations of nondomination among men, feminist abolitionists extended their arguments to married women, who, like slaves, lacked the rights to own property, make contracts, sue and be sued in court, keep their earned income, and move freely without getting permission from their masters (husbands) ( Sklar, 2000 ). Like the positive liberty argument for individual rights, it recognizes how individuals have a vital stake in other people’s liberty rights being secure against invasion or appropriation by others. The stability of this public infrastructure of freedom depends on individual rights being inalienable.

It is to no avail to reply that a libertarian scheme of fully alienable rights that permits voluntary slavery would reject the forced slavery of the antebellum South, along with the violations of free speech and republican government needed to secure the institution of slavery against state “interference.” For the Republicans’ antislavery argument was about the stability of certain rights configurations under realistic conditions. It was that a society that enforces rights to total domination of one person over another will not be able to sustain itself as a free society of equals over time. How the dominators acquired those rights, whether by force or contract, is irrelevant to this argument. Slaveholders, in the name of protection of their private property rights, used the immense economic power they gained from slavery to seize the state apparatus and crush republican liberties. This is a version of the classical republican antiplutocratic argument against extreme wealth inequality. But it was also directed toward the threat that slavery posed to economic independence of free men—to their prospects for self-employment, for freedom from subjection to an employer.

Debra Satz ( 2010 : 180, 232n40), citing Genicot (2002) , offers a similar argument against debt bondage, adapted to contemporary conditions. Two dynamics threaten the ability of workers to maintain their freedom if they have the power to alienate their right to quit to their creditor/employer. First, the availability of debt bondage may restrict opportunities to obtain credit without bondage. Bondage functions as a guarantee against destitute debtors’ default: they put up their own labor as collateral. However, the institution of debt bondage makes it more difficult to establish formalized credit and labor markets by which alternative methods of promoting loan repayment (such as credit ratings and garnishing wages) make credit available without bondage.

Second, living under conditions of bondage makes people servile, humble, and psychologically dependent—psychological dispositions that they are likely to transmit to their children. Servile people lack a vivid conception of themselves as rights-bearers and lack the assertiveness needed to vindicate their rights. Moreover, the poor are unlikely to hang on to their freedom for long, given their strategic vulnerability when others are already giving up their alienable rights under hard bargaining. A system of fully alienable libertarian rights is thus liable to degenerate into a society of lords and bondsmen, unable to reproduce the self-understandings that ground libertarian rights. A free society cannot be sustained by people trained to servility and locked into strategic games where some individuals’ alienation of their liberty rights puts others’ liberties at risk ( Satz, 2010 : 173–180).

This argument generalizes. Workers may have a permanent interest in retaining other rights besides the formal right to quit, so as to prevent the authority relations constitutive of employment from conversion into relations of domination. For example, they have a permanent interest against sexual and other forms of discriminatory harassment. Under U.S. law, workers have inalienable rights against such degrading treatment. In addition, since lower-level workers have minimal freedom at work, but spend their workdays following others’ orders, they have a vital interest in secure access to a limited length of the working day—in having some hours in which they act under their own direction. This is the purpose of maximum hours laws, which forbid employers from conditioning a job offer on having to work too many hours per week. The logic in both cases is strategic: once employers are free to make such unwelcome “offers” (or rather, threats), the decision of some to accept removes better offers from other workers’ choice sets, and thereby deprives them of both positive and republican freedom.

As in the case of contractual slavery, libertarians are divided over this type of argument. Mill (1965 : XI, §12) supported maximum hours laws as an exception to laissez faire, on strategic grounds. The early Nozick would probably have accepted laws against sexual harassment, because conditioning a job on putting up with a hostile atmosphere or compliance with the boss’s sexual demands makes workers worse off relative to a normative baseline of not being subject to unwelcome sexual affronts, and hence counts as coercive. 5 However, the Nozick of Anarchy, State, and Utopia would have rejected such laws as interfering with freedom of contract, given that he accepted contractual slavery. Eric Mack (1981) also upholds an absolute principle of freedom of contract, and so would be committed to the alienability of rights against sexual harassment and even assault in labor contracts.

Mack recognizes that it is disingenuous to claim that restraints on freedom of contract that improve workers’ choice sets violate their freedom of contract. Hence minimum wage laws, if they only raise wages and do not increase unemployment, do not violate workers’ rights. His complaint is that such restraints violate employers’ rights, coercing them into offering better terms to workers than they wanted to make. They treat employers as mere resources to be used by others in pursuit of goals the employer does not share ( Mack, 1981 : 6–8). This argument, if applied to laws against sexual harassment and similar forms of personal domination, is bizarre. One would have thought that employers who threaten their workers with job loss if they do not put up with sexual subordination are treating them as mere resources to be used by the employer in pursuit of goals the workers do not share.

Mack contrasts a morality of “social goals” with one of deontological side constraints, claiming that the former treats people as mere means and the latter treats people as ends in themselves. A deontology of complete alienability of rights in one’s person, however, leads to a society in which some are made others’ partial or total property, reduced to instruments of the others’ arbitrary wills, and deprived of all three kinds of freedom. That they entered such a state by choice does not undermine the conclusion. Rather, it proves that liberty does not only upset equality—it also upsets liberty. To be more precise: negative liberty upsets liberty.

Suppose our “social goal” is to sustain a society in which individuals relate to each other as free persons—which is to say, as equal and independent, not subject to the arbitrary will of others? That would seem to be not merely unobjectionable to a libertarian, but the very point of a libertarian view. The scheme of rights required to realize such a society cannot be devised without tending to the likely consequences of choices made within it. The infrastructure of rights needed to sustain a society in which individuals relate to each other as free persons requires that the rights most fundamental to the ability to exercise independent agency be inalienable, so that no one becomes subject to another’s domination. Thus, the fundamental freedom-based rationale for inalienable rights is based on considerations of republican freedom. It entails that a free society requires substantial authority egalitarianism.

4. Freedom, Equality, and the Definition of Property Rights

I conclude with some remarks on the definition of property rights. Much libertarian writing supposes that as soon as an argument is given to justify a right to private property in something, this justifies all the classical incidents of property—including rights to exclude, use, alter, and destroy it, to give, barter, or sell all or any parts of it or any rights to it, to rent, loan, or lease it for income, all with unlimited duration ( Honoré, 1961 ). Why is a separate argument not required for each of these incidents? Shouldn’t the nature and function of the property in question play a role in determining which rights are attached to it, and for how long? For example, while the right to destroy is easily granted to most chattels, the positive liberty of future generations provides compelling reasons to deny it to property in land and water resources. Such interests also justify limits on dividing property into parcels or rights bundles too small to use ( Heller, 1998 ). It is also questionable how any case for intellectual property rights can be grounded in considerations of negative liberty, given that a regime of universal privilege with respect to ideas does not interfere with the liberties of authors and inventors to create and use their works. A freedom-based case for intellectual property can only be made on positive liberty grounds, and then only justify limited terms for copyrights and patents, given the role of the intellectual commons in expanding cultural and technological opportunities.

A just system of legal rules of property, contract, banking, employment, and so forth constitutes a public infrastructure that can sustain a free society of equals over time. Since, in a well-ordered society, members sustain this infrastructure by paying taxes and complying with its rules, each member has a legitimate claim that the rules secure their access to opportunities generated by that infrastructure. The case is no different from the system of public roads. Fair distributions of access to opportunity matter here, too. A system of roads that accommodates only cars, with no pedestrian sidewalks, crosswalks, and stop lights, denies adequate opportunities for freedom of movement to those without cars. It would be absurd for drivers to object to pedestrian infrastructure because it interferes with their negative liberty. They have no claim that the publicly supported infrastructure be tailored to their interests alone.

Arguments over the rules defining private property rights are comparable. Since everyone needs effective access to private property to secure their liberty interests, property rules should ensure such access to all. Such distributive concerns might be partially secured, for example, by way of estate taxes, the revenues of which are distributed to all in the form of social insurance. As Paine (1796) argued, such taxes do not infringe private property rights, but rather constitute a partial unbundling of property rights to secure the legitimate property rights of others. That one of the incidents of property (protecting wealth interests) partially expires upon the death of the owner is no more a violation of property rights than the fact that patents expire after twenty years: such rules simply define the scope of the right in the first instance.

Three features of the public infrastructure of economic rights in social democratic orders promote, and arguably are needed to secure, decent opportunities for all to live on terms of republican freedom and hence authority egalitarianism with respect to everyone else. First, as argued above, individuals need a robust set of market inalienable rights, to avoid domination by their employers. Second, as Paine argued, they need a universal system of social insurance to secure their independence in cases of inability to work or to find work ( Anderson, 2008 ). Third, under modern conditions, they need free, universal education, to avoid domination by parents and others, and to secure a self-conception as someone with rights of personal independence. Each of these can be understood as individual property rights, secured via partial unbundling of classical private property rights. None require state ownership or management of productive enterprises, or bureaucratic administration of individuals’ lives. They merely constitute an alternative type of private property regime. It is superior to a libertarian one on grounds of freedom , because it better secures positive and republican freedom for all. Since any credible freedom-based argument for private property rights must already recognize the normative priority of positive and republican freedom over negative freedom, it is hard to run credible freedom-based arguments against these core institutions of social democracy at the level of abstraction at which these arguments proceed in political philosophy. Of course, the details of any particular implementation of these institutions may have many objectionable features, as is also true of private employment relations. Because the conditions of republican and positive freedom are sociologically complex, we cannot expect arguments at a high level of abstraction to settle disputes over the details of a property regime suitable for a free society of equals. The current chapter demonstrates that the ideal of a free society of equals is not an oxymoron: not only is relational equality not fundamentally opposed to freedom, in certain senses equality is needed for freedom. Inequality upsets liberty.

Ferguson, Missouri, the site of protests triggered by the police homicide of a black man stopped for jaywalking, illustrates this phenomenon. With a declining tax base, Ferguson turned to police to raise revenue by incessantly harassing mostly black citizens with traffic citations. They turned citations into the second-highest source of city revenue by issuing an average of three warrants and $321 in fines per household . Poor individuals who cannot pay the fines and fail to appear in court to explain why are often arrested and thrown into jail for weeks ( Tabarrok, 2014 ). By comparison to such gross violations of republican freedom, the negative liberty constraints of a regular tax raising the same total revenue are trivial.

Rawls clearly distinguished the republican concern that extreme wealth inequality leads to plutocracy from the egalitarian interest in the fair division of income and wealth as such. This is why he grounded progressive inheritance taxes in the principle of equal basic liberties (including the fair value of political liberties—an antiplutocratic principle), rather than the difference principle, which takes the fair distribution of income and wealth as its direct object ( Rawls, 1999 : 245, 70).

For the classic distinction between privileges and rights, see Hohfeld, 1913–1914 : 30–44.

For libertarians who oppose contractual slavery, see Mill (1859 : 184) and Rothbard (1998 : 40–41). For those who think slave contracts should be enforceable, see Nozick (2013 : 331), Alexander (2010) , and Block (2003) . Locke, an inspiration to libertarians, rejected contractual slavery; see Locke, 1824b : §23 and more aptly Locke, 1824a : §42. However, both his arguments rely on non-libertarian premises: in the Second Treatise , against a right to suicide; in the First Treatise , asserting a positive right to charity.

Nozick (1969) argues that a proposal can count as a threat, and hence be coercive, even if the proposer has a legal right to carry out the negative consequence for the recipient (452), and that such cases of coercion can include employer threats to fire workers if they fail to comply with the employer’s wishes (for example, by voting to be represented by a union) (453). Hence, in his early view, employers can coerce workers even if workers have exit rights and employers have the right to fire them at will. See also Flanigan (2012) , arguing that sexual harassment at work constitutes wrongful coercion if the empirical expectation for the job does not include sex work. This allows employers to get off the sexual harassment hook simply by listing sexual harassment in boilerplate contractual language for all employees, even for jobs such as cashier and carpenter that have nothing to do with performing sexual services. Still, it reflects some appreciation by a libertarian, however ambivalent, of the reality of workplace coercion.

Alexander, Larry , 2010. Voluntary enslavement. San Diego Legal Studies Paper No. 10–042. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1694662 .

Anderson, Elizabeth , 2008 . How should egalitarians cope with market risks? Theoretical Inquiries in Law , 9, pp.61–92.

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Aviv, Rachel , 2014 . Wrong answer. The New Yorker , 21 July. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/21/wrong-answer .

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Bentham, Jeremy , 1838–43. Principles of the civil code. In: John Bowring , ed. The works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the superintendence of his executor, John Bowring . Vol. 1. Edinburgh: William Tate. pp.297–364.

Block, Walter , 2003 . Toward a libertarian theory of inalienability: a critique of Rothbard, Barnett, Smith, Kinsella, Gordon, and Epstein. Journal of Libertarian Studies , 17(2), pp.39–85.

Buonarroti, Philippe , 1836 . Buonarroti’s history of Babeuf’s conspiracy for equality . Bronterre [pseud.]. London: H. Hetherington.

Dworkin, Gerald , 1982 . Is more choice better than less? Midwest Studies in Philosophy , 7, pp.47–61.

Flanigan, Jessica , 2012. Workplace coercion. http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/03/workplace-coercion/ . Posted on 12 March 2012; Accessed on: 29 July 2014.

Foner, Eric , 1995 . Free soil, free labor, free men: the ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War . New York: Oxford University Press.

Fried, Barbara , 2011 . Does Nozick have a theory of property rights? In: Ralf Bader and John Meadowcraft , eds. The Cambridge companion to Nozick’s Anarchy, state and utopia. New York and Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Http://ssrn.com/abstract=1782031 .

Genicot, Garance , 2002 . Bonded labor and serfdom: a paradox of voluntary choice. Journal of Development Economics , 67(1), pp.101–127.

Hayek, Friedrich A. , 1944 . The road to serfdom . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Heller, Michael , 1998 . The tragedy of the anticommons: property in the transition from Marx to markets. Harvard Law Review , 111, pp.621–688.

Hohfeld, Wesley , 1913– 1914 . Some fundamental legal conceptions as applied in judicial reasoning. Yale Law Journal , 23, pp.16–59.

Honoré, Anthony , 1961 . Ownership. In: Anthony G. Guest , ed. Oxford essays in jurisprudence . Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp.107–147.

Locke, John , 1824 a. First treatise of government. In: The works of John Locke in nine volumes . vol. 4. 12th ed. London: Rivington. pp.212–337.

Locke, John , 1824 b. Second treatise of government. In: The works of John Locke in nine volumes , vol. 4. 12th ed. London: Rivington. pp.338–485.

Mack, Eric , 1981 . In defense of “unbridled” freedom of contract. American Journal of Economics and Sociology , 40(1), pp.1–15.

Mack, Eric , 2009 . Individualism and libertarian rights. In: Thomas Christiano and John Christman , eds. Contemporary debates in political philosophy . Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp.119–136.

Mill, John Stuart , 1859 . On liberty . London: J. W. Parker and Son.

Mill, John Stuart , 1965 . Principles of political economy . Vol. 3 of Collected works of John Stuart Mill , edited by J. M. Robson . Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Nozick, Robert , 1969 . Coercion. In: Sydney Morganbesser , Patrick Suppes , and Morton White , eds. Philosophy, science, and method: essays in honor of Ernest Nagel . New York: St. Martin’s Press. pp.440–472.

Nozick, Robert , 2013 . Anarchy, state, and utopia . New York: Basic Books.

Otsuka, Michael , 1998 . Self-ownership and equality: a Lockean reconciliation. Philosophy and Public Affairs , 27(1), pp.65–92.

Paine, Thomas , 1796. Agrarian justice. http://www.ssa.gov/history/paine4.html . Accessed on 27 July 2012.

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Raz, Joseph , 1994 . Rights and individual well-being. In: Ethics in the public domain . Oxford: Clarendon. pp.44–59.

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Satz, Debra , 2010 . Why some things should not be for sale: the moral limits of markets . Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Sklar, Kathryn Kish , 2000 . Women’s rights emerges within the anti-slavery movement, 1830–1870: a brief history with documents . Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Tabarrok, Alex , 2014. Ferguson and the modern debtor’s prison. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/08/ferguson-and-the-debtors-prison.html . Posted on 21 August 2014; Accessed on 22 August 2014.

Temkin, Larry , 2003 . Egalitarianism defended. Ethics , 113, pp.764–782.

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Definition of freedom

independence
independency
self-determination
self-governance
self-government
sovereignty
sovranty

freedom , liberty , license mean the power or condition of acting without compulsion.

freedom has a broad range of application from total absence of restraint to merely a sense of not being unduly hampered or frustrated.

liberty suggests release from former restraint or compulsion.

license implies freedom specially granted or conceded and may connote an abuse of freedom.

Examples of freedom in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'freedom.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

see free entry 1

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing freedom

academic freedom
degree of freedom
freedom of the seas
freedom fighter
freedom of the press
freedom ride
freedom of speech
intellectual freedom
freedom of expression
freedom of religion

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The History of Freedom w/Lea Ypi: The Ancients - Socrates, Seneca & Jesus Past Present Future

In episode two of our new series David and Lea explore some ancient ideas of freedom and ask what they mean today. What can Socrates teach us about the nature of free inquiry and the pitfalls of democratic freedom? Is Stoicism a guide to emancipation from desire or an exercise in selfishness? And how did Christianity upend the notion of freedom by annexing it to ideas of salvation and love? A conversation about dissent, self-knowledge and faith. Sign up now for PPF+ to get ad-free listening and bonus episodes to accompany this and all future series. Just follow the top link https://linktr.ee/ppfideas Coming next on the History of Freedom: Machiavelli, republicanism and what it means to live in a free state, then and now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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‘Leaving home used to be a rite of passage’: Andrew O’Hagan on family, freedom and a generational divide

The Scottish novelist moved out as early as he could. His son says he might never leave. Do young people still want to flee the nest, he asks, and what happens when a population comes to maturity feeling ‘made’ by their parents?

I f you were a working-class teenager in the 1980s, the thing most expected of you in the family home was that you would soon be leaving it. There were imminent romances to be imagined, but few of them burned brighter in the two-bar fire of the soul than the notion that you might soon have keys to your own front door. I think I dreamed about it, the Hoovering whose frequency I could personally control, the music at full volume, the sleep-overs that would never turn into psychodramas involving Bell’s whisky and the police – my own flat , where all the grief could be left behind and tins would be banned from the fridge.

Back in the late 1950s, my parents hadn’t done “single life”. They were “married out of the house”, as they used to say in Glasgow, my mother at 19. “You’ve made your bed, so you can lie in it,” was one of my grandmother’s favourite phrases, as if looking after yourself wasn’t a fledgling activity but a moral imperative carrying a high price for failure. The ability to “stand on your own two feet” (another favourite) went along with the expectation that you wouldn’t let the grass grow under them, a directive to pastures new, one street over perhaps, with a spouse, children and a washing machine of one’s own. “In 1961,” writes the British historian David Kynaston, “only 98,466 houses were built in the public sector, compared to 170,366 for owner-occupiers.” My parents were suddenly in a world where progress meant leaving home and getting a mortgage. As it turned out, they were bred-in-the-bone tenants who shared a heartstopping fear of debt; their kids, on the other hand, each had a flat before they were 30.

The dream of leaving went deep, a kind of poetry for my generation, which spelled out its political demands on T-shirts, always with a melancholy touch. We went on marches. We rocked against racism. But there was something domestic and more quietly political in the songs I loved, from the Beatles’ She’s Leaving Home to the Smiths’ Back to the Old House. It was the bid for a different life and a kind of regretful acceptance that you might have to live that life on your own. Feminism, rock music and the pill appeared to have completely passed my parents by, with their preference for Shirley Bassey, Perry Como, and frequently getting pregnant by accident. (I shouldn’t complain: I was the last.)

There’s no evidence that my mum and dad spent any time in their youth imagining they could live alone. But for me, getting away was an early, passionate theme, and I fantasised about British cities where I might land and discover life. One of my favourite TV programmes was The Liver Birds, about two girls sharing a flat in Liverpool. To me, it was a promise of what the world out there might possibly be at its best: a feast of independence. I watched it with my mother and could see from her reactions that this was something she’d never had – those hairdos, that backchat, those boyfriends, that coat – and I’m sure there was a certain amazement in her voice when she talked about it, as if a person like her never got to leave home. Sons can be brutal in their sense of “can do”, and I was already departing. At school, we spent half an hour every morning writing in our “news books”. It was supposed to be handwriting practice, but I took it as an opportunity to try out some wish-fulfilling autofiction, composing stories from the frontline of our war-torn living room, and reporting on how I would soon be living in a penthouse in Paris.

We were all expected to leave home, but it was a fault in your stars, perhaps, if you travelled too far or forgot the innate superiority of your origins. I went to London, and as the decades passed my mother said it made her sad – “I always thought you’d come back” – yet she also advertised it as one of her achievements, that each of her children had gone off and built their own nest. Pride and proximity have a complicated dance to perform in lives like ours: my father didn’t care about proximity (he only did pride), and once we were in flats of our own he scarcely ever came to visit. For my mother, it was harder. She wanted us to do well, have work, gain a partner, build a home, but she also clearly bracketed it with what felt to her like personal loss. It was a breakup. Unmistakably. I’ll never really know what to say about it, but I find it emerges in my stories – the small dramas of distance that can play out between people who love each other. When I left, aged 21, the bus from Glasgow had scarcely passed Carlisle before my mother emptied my old room and replaced my desk with a doily-festooned dressing table. In her heart (and she lived in her heart) I had betrayed her by wanting to go, and life, for her, was just like that, a series of gains enjoyed by other people at her expense. She could remark that we’d “settled”, and would enjoy saying that to her friends, but I could hear it in her voice that she felt we’d abandoned her in a house of old school photographs.

Leaving home used to be a rite of passage. It’s there in the classics, from Jane Eyre to The Color Purple , with especially vivid depictions of it in postwar British literature – Arthur Seaton battling his way towards a council house in Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning , Jo in Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey , manufacturing by necessity the family she never had, while characters in David Storey’s and Beryl Bainbridge’s novels are always fleeing the coop or flying into Camden or challenging the old domestic habits as they struggle to establish a life of their own. “It had become necessary for me to look for safety elsewhere,” wrote Anita Brookner in Leaving Home . Later in that novel she describes the leave-taking from one’s original family as “the great drama of our lives”. That was true in Brookner’s youth and also in mine, but is it still?

The suggestion now is that young people often can’t afford it, and that very many – weaned on Brexit and versed in the negative isolationism of the pandemic – have trouble imagining themselves as self-elected foreigners or people who would choose to eat alone. The suggestion also is that with house prices as they are, and space limited, the young might be trapped, many of them seeming to find the outside world on their phones while still living with their parents. I’m not sure about that – each generation, especially in Britain, tends to see other generations by its own lights, but I feel there may be something different now in the way we think about space: perhaps it’s less to do with buildings and more to do with rooms. It might be possible to leave home not by actually leaving but by retreating into your own space. According to some artists, TikTok heroes, influencers and hackers, the box bedroom is a stage, an icon of the age – a place where strong feelings are often had at some distance from experience, where bills are paid by other people, where friendships are intense but carried out in a confusion of physical absence, where sex is mostly a rumour or a miasma of breathless scenes online, and where your private choices are commodified by social media. Apart from the financial impossibility, leaving home, for a lot of young people, might feel like leaving the self behind – swapping one’s centre, free wifi, a stocked fridge, the entire production studio of the self, for the anxieties of “freedom” in a totally unaffordable world. Between the British censuses of 2011 and 2021 , the number of adult children living with their parents in England and Wales rose by almost 15%.

Andrew O'Hagan outside his home in London.

Here’s a possible irony. People who are young now may not have had the initial luck their parents had, but commentators say they are going to be much better off in the end, because they will inherit everything. A recent report says they will become the “richest generation in history”. Liam Bailey, who does research for the estate agency Knight Frank, argues that the ramifications of this transfer of wealth will be enormous. I think he means the effect on rental and property markets, but it could also signal a terrifying increase, in the future, of the gulf between those who inherit and those who don’t. (I would vote for a social housing tax on property windfalls beyond a certain value, even after inheritance tax and capital gains, just to close the gap a little and reduce inequality.) Bailey’s report also made me think of other sorts of ramifications, mainly psychic ones, or Freudian ones. What happens when a population that had a less fruitful youth comes to maturity still feeling “made” by their parents? (Hello, Ibsen. Thank you, Philip Larkin .)

Leave-taking is big with writers. We give airtime to the transit of regret, the power of the unsaid. Look at Andrew Haigh’s wonderful new film All of Us Strangers . A writer living on his own in an empty-seeming tower block tries to remember his late parents. He takes a train and goes back to the house where he grew up, and he knocks on the door, which is then opened by his dead mum. And then the writer, played by Andrew Scott, goes into the living room and sits down with his dad and tries to explain the years. That’s what every writer does, every day, as we sit down at the desk and knock again at the door of the old house, hoping to be known this time, recognised for who we actually are. The same music is playing that was playing back then, the same curtains are covering the windows. It doesn’t matter what year it is because we are always borrowing from lost time.

There are lines by Philip Larkin that are truer to me than the ones about your mum and dad fucking you up. Home Is So Sad:

It stays as it was left Shaped to the comfort of the last to go As if to win them back. Instead, bereft Of anyone to please, it withers so, Having no heart to put aside the theft And turn again to what it started as, A joyous shot at how things ought to be, Long fallen wide.

I think I wanted to make a home more than I wanted any other thing in life. I notice only now that my work is full of falling buildings and broken homes, missing children and last hurrahs and carefully furnished rooms. Making a beautiful home, making it yours and making it welcoming and peaceful at last, is one of the hostages to fortune that the child of difficult parents may hold against the future. We left home to reinvent it: that was the plan, but of course life will always bring new disorders and fresh schisms. The task is perhaps to forge both your own home and your own sense of culpability, too.

But the old house is always there, waiting for you. I’ve spent a lot of the last 10 years working on a novel called Caledonian Road, about the fall from grace of an art historian and bon vivant called Campbell Flynn, who thought of himself as a good man. The book is about class, politics and money – but to me it also tells the story of a person who might have left part of himself back in the Glasgow high-rise where he grew up. Perhaps that’s a story of society that we are always seeking to tell in new ways: how we stay progressive as the years pass, and how we might join the hopes of our past to the realities of the turbulent present. Campbell will find out who he really is in the London he fell for, and that fell for him, but perhaps the bid for success and your own story is always to risk estrangement. I’m the father of a 20-year-old, and I suppose I’m both relieved and perplexed when he says he might never leave home. I nod in assent, trying to comprehend, while remembering the person I was in my early 20s, holding in a closed palm the key to my first rented flat.

Philip Larkin

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2024 American Legion Post 403 essay contest winners named

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Rochelle Township High School winners from left to right: John Gruben (commander, American Legion Post 403), Brizuela Xitlali (honorable mention), Kyra Bivins (honorable mention), Kathryn Groves (second place, Class II), Jessica Nguyen (first place, Class 1), Steve Korth (adjutant, American Legion Post 403) and Magdalene Good (first place, Class II). Not shown: Aiden Ramsey, second place, Class I.

ROCHELLE — The 2024 Rochelle-area American Legion Essay Contest is complete. The topic was “What does freedom mean to me?”

In the eighth year of this program, it was a banner year. Almost every area school participated, and the Legion had a total of 90 essays. The program is for grades seven & eight (American Legion Competition Class III), freshman & sophomore (American Legion Competition Class II) and junior & senior (American Legion Competition Class I).

For American Legion Competition Class III, St. Paul Lutheran, which has participated every year, contributed 25 essays. Eswood, which has also participated every year, had 15 essays. Back this year was Kings with 20 essays, Steward with 19 essays and Creston with five. There were six essays at Rochelle Township High School for American Legion Competition Classes I & II with several of these students having been involved with the program since seventh grade.

Winning top honors in each class were: Class I: first place, Jessica Nguyen; Class II: first place, Magdalene Good; and Class III: first place, Makenzie Johnson. These winning essays were forwarded to the 13 th District of the American Legion for competition at that level.

First and second places were named at all participating schools:

RTHS – Class I: First - Nguyen; secnd place - Aiden Ramsey. Class II: First place - Magdalene Good; second place - Kathryn Groves.

St. Paul: First place - Makenzie Johnson; Second place - Andrew Eyster.

Eswood: First place - Nolen Schweitzer; Second place - Chyenne Somers.

Kings: First place - Preslee Sanders; Second place - Kenna Beck.

Steward: First place - Morgan DeLille; Second place - Benjamin Hayes.

Creston: First place - Jasmyn Mascote; Second place - Caroline Montgomery.

Thanks to all students for their participation.

A very special thank you goes out to the Rochelle Culver’s Restaurant. They have been a supporter of the veterans of the Rochelle area, the American Legion Post 403 and this program since its start-up. Every year they provide every student who submitted an essay with a free scoop of custard. Please thank them for their generosity.

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Guest Essay

Hong Kongers Are Purging the Evidence of Their Lost Freedom

An illustration of a giant red snake wrapped around the feet of four people on a dark and empty street.

By Maya Wang

Ms. Wang is the acting China director for Human Rights Watch.

“What should I do with those copies of Apple Daily ?”

Someone in Hong Kong I was chatting with on the phone recently had suddenly dropped her voice to ask that question, referring to the pro-democracy newspaper that the government forced to shut down in 2021.

“Should I toss them or send them to you?”

My conversations with Hong Kong friends are peppered with such whispers these days. Last week, the city enacted a draconian security law — its second serious legislative assault on Hong Kong’s freedoms since 2020. Known as Article 23 , the new law expands the National Security Law and criminalizes such vague behavior as the possession of information that is “directly or indirectly useful to an external force.”

Hong Kong was once a place where people did not live in fear. It had rule of law, a rowdy press and a semi-democratic legislature that kept the powerful in check. The result was a city with a freewheeling energy unmatched in China. Anyone who grew up in China in the 1980s and 1990s could sing the Cantopop songs of Hong Kong stars like Anita Mui, and that was a problem for Beijing: Freedom was glamorous, desirable.

When Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, the city’s people accepted, in good faith, Beijing’s promises that its capitalist system and way of life would remain unchanged for 50 years and that the city would move toward universal suffrage in the election of its leader.

Not anymore. Now Hong Kong people are quietly taking precautions, getting rid of books, T-shirts, film footage, computer files and other documents from the heady days when this international financial center was also known for its residents’ passionate desire for freedom.

I used to joke that I never needed to watch dystopian series like “The Handmaid’s Tale” or “The Hunger Games.” As someone who has lived and worked for years in Hong Kong and China, I know what it feels like to descend into deepening repression, remembering our free lives.

As Beijing kept breaking its promises over the years, Hong Kongers took to the streets to defend their freedoms nearly every sweltering summer. In 2003, demonstrations by half a million people forced Hong Kong’s government to shelve an earlier attempt to introduce Article 23. In 2014, hundreds of thousands peacefully occupied parts of the city for 79 days to protest moves by Beijing to ensure that only candidates acceptable to the Communist Party could run for election as Hong Kong’s top leader.

But Hong Kongers were unprepared for the coming of President Xi Jinping of China, the architect of another frightening crackdown far away on the mainland.

In 2017, I started to receive reports that Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities were disappearing into “ political education” camps in the northwestern region of Xinjiang . People who had managed to get out told me how Xinjiang’s borders were suddenly closed, escape was becoming impossible and speech or behavior that was once acceptable — like simply praying at a neighbor’s house — could get you jailed. Officials would enter homes to inspect books and decorations. Uyghurs were discarding copies of the Quran or books written in Arabic, fearing they would be disappeared or jailed for insufficient loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. One man told me he had burned a T-shirt with a map of Kazakhstan on it — many of Xinjiang’s inhabitants are ethnic Kazakhs with family members across the border — because any foreign connection had become risky.

As these stories of repression and fear emerged from Xinjiang, they were instantly recognizable in Hong Kong. In 2019, the city’s government proposed a bill that would have allowed extradition to China. Fear and anger — and the feeling that Hong Kong people needed to make one last stand while they could — exploded in months of protest .

One of the 2019 protest slogans — “Today’s Xinjiang is tomorrow’s Hong Kong”— sounded to me like hyperbole at the time. Now, five years later, it feels prescient. Today, it’s Hong Kongers who are disposing of dangerous books and T-shirts. Some people I know have quietly left an online chat group that includes foreign organizations and individuals; such contact could put the group’s Hong Kong members at risk. Others are quitting social media; tens of thousands have already left Hong Kong.

After Beijing imposed the National Security Law in Hong Kong in 2020, it used the law to decimate the city’s pro-democracy movement by jailing its leaders. More than 1,000 people remain in jail. Fearful of arrest, independent labor unions and media outlets disbanded. Libraries pulled hundreds of books off shelves. Films and plays were censored. Civil servants can no longer stay neutral and are forced to pledge allegiance to the government.

Both the National Security Law and Article 23, passed last week, are broad, vague and blunt instruments intended to critically wound civil liberties and transform institutions that protected people’s freedoms into tools of repression. Under Article 23, anyone found guilty of participating in a meeting of a “prohibited organization” or who discloses “unlawful” and vaguely defined “state secrets” could face a decade behind bars.

Beijing has couched this repression in terms like “the rule of law,” and visitors to Hong Kong often fail to recognize the transformations taking place beneath the enduring glitz of the city. That leaves the rest of the world detached from the reality on the ground — unable to sympathize with Beijing’s victims or to feel their breathlessness under this growing weight.

One acquaintance in Hong Kong told me that people he knew had become blasé about their sudden loss of freedom and were just coldly watching the destruction of the city and what it stood for. But others, toughened over the years, still express hope and defiance. The solidarity forged through nearly two decades of widespread activism won’t die easily. A Pew Research Center survey this month found that more than 80 percent of Hong Kongers still want democracy, however remote that possibility looks today.

The Chinese government wants the world to forget about Hong Kong, to forget what the city once was, to forget Beijing’s broken promises. But Hong Kong’s people will never forget. Don’t look away.

Maya Wang (@wang_maya) is acting China director for Human Rights Watch.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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