Liberty is the concept A concept is a cognitive unit of meaning—an abstract idea or a mental symbol sometimes defined as a "unit of knowledge," built from other units which act as a concept's characteristics. A concept is typically associated with a corresponding representation in a language or symbology[citation needed] such as a single meaning of a term of ideological and political philosophy Political philosophy is the study of such as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it should take and why, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a that identifies the condition to which an individual As commonly used, an individual is a person or any specific object in a collection. In the 15th century and earlier, and also today within the fields of statistics and metaphysics, individual means "indivisible", typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meaning "a person." . From the seventeenth has the right to behave according to one's own personal responsibility and free will Free will is the purported ability of agents to make choices free from constraints. Historically, the constraint of dominant concern has been the metaphysical constraint of determinism. The opposing positions within that debate are metaphysical libertarianism, the claim that determinism is false and thus that free will exists; and hard determinism,.

Individualist Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own interests, whether by society, or any other and classical liberal Classical liberalism is a political ideology that developed in the 19th century in England, Western Europe, and the Americas. It is committed to the ideal of limited government and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets. Notable individuals who have contributed to classical liberalism conceptions of liberty relate to the freedom of the individual from outside compulsion or coercion Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats, intimidation, trickery, or some other form of pressure or force. Such actions are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in the desired way. Coercion may involve the actual infliction of physical pain/. Social liberal Social liberalism is the belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in that it recognizes a legitimate role for government in addressing economic and social issues such as unemployment, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding civil rights. Under social liberalism, the good of the conceptions of liberty relate freedom to social structure and agency The debate concerning the primacy of structure and agency on human thought and behaviour is one of the central issues in sociology, political science, and the other social sciences. In this context, "agency" refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. "Structure", by contrast,. In feudal times, a liberty was an area of allodial land in which regalian rights had been waived.

Philosophy

Opinions on what constitute liberty can vary widely, but can be generally classified as positive liberty Positive liberty refers to having the power and resources to act to fulfill one's own potential, as opposed to negative liberty, which refers to freedom from restraint. Inherent to positive liberty is the idea that liberty is the ability of citizens to participate in their government, or in voluntary co-operation in the case of anarchists and negative liberty The concept of negative liberty refers to freedom from interference by other people. According to Thomas Hobbes, "a free man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do." . Positive liberty asserts that freedom is found in a person's ability to having agency, particularly in the sense of having the power and resources to carry out their own will, without being inhibited by the structural inhibitions from society such as racism, classism or sexism. In the negative sense, one is considered free to the extent to which no person interferes with his or her activity. According to Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, remembered today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory, for example, "a free man is he that... is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do."

John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although, in his work, On Liberty On Liberty is a philosophical work by English philosopher John Stuart Mill. It was a radical work to the Victorian readers of the time because it supported moral and economic freedom of individuals from the state, was the first to recognize the difference between liberty as the freedom to act and liberty as the absence of coercion.^[1] In his book, Two Concepts of Liberty Two Concepts of Liberty was the inaugural lecture delivered by the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin before the University of Oxford on October 31, 1958. It was subsequently published as a 57-page pamphlet by Oxford at the Clarendon Press. It also appears in the collection of Berlin's papers entitled Four Essays on Liberty and was more recently, Isaiah Berlin Sir Isaiah Berlin OM was a Russian-speaking, Latvian-Jewish British philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century, and as the dominant liberal scholar of his generation. He excelled as an essayist, conversationalist and raconteur; and as a brilliant lecturer who improvised, rapidly and formally framed the differences between these two perspectives as the distinction between two opposite concepts of liberty: positive liberty Positive liberty refers to having the power and resources to act to fulfill one's own potential, as opposed to negative liberty, which refers to freedom from restraint. Inherent to positive liberty is the idea that liberty is the ability of citizens to participate in their government, or in voluntary co-operation in the case of anarchists and negative liberty The concept of negative liberty refers to freedom from interference by other people. According to Thomas Hobbes, "a free man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do." . The latter designates a negative condition in which an individual is protected from tyranny In classical politics, a tyrant is one who has taken power by his or her own means as opposed to hereditary or constitutional power. This mode of rule is referred to as tyranny (τυραννίς turannis) and the arbitrary Arbitrariness is a term given to choices and actions subject to individual will, judgment or preference, based solely upon an individual's opinion or discretion exercise of authority Authority, from the Latin word auctoritas, means invention, advice, opinion, influence, or command. Essentially authority is imposed by superiors upon inferiors either by force of arms or by force of argument (sapiential authority). Usually authority has components of both compulsion and persuasion. For this reason, as used in Roman law, authority, while the former refers to having the means or opportunity, rather than the lack of restraint, to do things.

Mill offered insight into the notions of soft tyranny and mutual liberty with his harm principle The harm principle is articulated in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, though it is also articulated in John Locke's Second Treatise of Government and in the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt, to whom Mill is obliged and discusses at length. Mill concludes that government should not forcibly prevent people from engaging in victimless crimes.^[2] It can be seen as important to understand these concepts when discussing liberty since they all represent little pieces of the greater puzzle known as freedom Free will is the purported ability of agents to make choices free from constraints. Historically, the constraint of dominant concern has been the metaphysical constraint of determinism. The opposing positions within that debate are metaphysical libertarianism, the claim that determinism is false and thus that free will exists; and hard determinism,. In a philosophical sense, it can be said that morality Morality is a sense of behavioral conduct that differentiates intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and bad (or wrong). A moral code is a system of morality (for example, according to a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc.) and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code. Immorality is must supersede tyranny In classical politics, a tyrant is one who has taken power by his or her own means as opposed to hereditary or constitutional power. This mode of rule is referred to as tyranny (τυραννίς turannis) in any legitimate form of government A government is the organization, or agency through which a political unit exercises its authority, controls and administers public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its members or subjects. Otherwise, people are left with a societal system System is a set of interacting or interdependent entities forming an integrated whole rooted in backwardness An economically backward economy is defined as one which makes less progress than normal. USSR leader Gorbachev once said “If you don’t move forward, sooner or later you begin to move backward.” The backwardness model is a theory of economic growth created by Alexander Gerschenkron. The model postulates that the more backward an economy is, disorder, and regression.

The concept of negative liberty has several noteworthy aspects. First, negative liberty defines a realm or "zone" of freedom (in the "silence of law Law is a system of rules, usually enforced through a set of institutions. Laws can shape or reflect politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a primary social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus ticket to trading on derivatives markets. Property law defines rights and"). In Berlin's words, "liberty in the negative sense involves an answer to 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." Some philosophers have disagreed on the extent of this realm while accepting the main point that liberty defines that realm in which one may act unobstructed by others. Second, the restriction (on the freedom to act) implicit in negative liberty is imposed by a person or persons and not due to causes such as nature, lack, or incapacity. Helvetius Claude Adrien Helvétius was a French philosopher and littérateur expresses this point clearly: "The free man is the man who is not in irons, nor imprisoned in a gaol (jail), nor terrorized like a slave by the fear of punishment... it is not lack of freedom not to fly like an eagle or swim like a whale."

The dichotomy of positive and negative liberty is considered specious by political philosophers in traditions such as socialism Socialism is an economic and political theory based on public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources, social democracy Social democracy is a political ideology of the centre-left on the classic political spectrum. It is by tradition a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. The Frankfurt Declaration of the Socialist International, attended by many social democratic parties from across the world, committed the adherents to the replacement of capitalism with, libertarian socialism Libertarian socialism is a group of political philosophies that aspire to create a society without political, economic, or social hierarchies, and Marxism Marxism is a particular political philosophy, economic and sociological worldview based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism, a theory of social change, and a view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The three primary aspects of Marxism are:. Some of them argue that positive and negative liberty are indistinguishable in practice, while others claim that one kind of liberty cannot exist independently of the other. A common argument is that the preservation of negative liberty requires positive action on the part of the government or society to prevent some individuals from taking away the liberty of others.

A socialist, liberal and progressive defines liberty as being connected to the reasonably equitable distribution of wealth, arguing that the unrestrained concentration of wealth (the means of production) into only a few hands negates liberty. In other words, without relatively equal ownership, the subsequent concentration of power and influence into a small portion of the population inevitably results in the domination of the wealthy and the subjugation of the poor. Thus, freedom and material equality are seen as intrinsically connected. On the other hand, the classical liberal argues that wealth cannot be evenly distributed without force being used against individuals which reduces individual liberty.

Freedom as a triadic relation

In 1967, Gerald MacCallum argued that proponents of positive and negative liberty converge on a single definition of liberty, but simply have different approaches in establishing it. According to McCallum, freedom is a triadic relationship: "x is/is not free from y to do/not to do or become/not become z". In this way, rather than defining liberty in terms of two separate paradigms, positive and negative liberty, he defined liberty as a single, complete formula.

The question is whether this formula fully captures what positive liberty means. Positive liberty, understood as "internal forces which determine how a person shall act" ^[3] is saying more than 'x is free to do z.' One is free when one becomes the ideal of oneself, which includes MacCallum's triadic relation; but the latter alone is insufficient to fully capture what positive liberty means.^{[citation needed]}

Liberty and political thought

Concepts of liberty in history

The first known use of the word freedom in a political context dates back to the 24th century BC, in a text describing the restoration of social and economic liberty in Lagash Lagash (Sumerian: Lagaš; transliteration: Lagaški; cuneiform logogram: ?𒁓𒆷𒆠 (literal signs: [SHIR.BUR].LA-KI); Akkadian: nakamtu; modern Tell al-Hiba, Iraq) is located northwest of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and east of Uruk, Lagash was one of the oldest cities of Sumer and later Babylonia. Nearby Ngirsu (modern, a Sumerian Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq. It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization. The Sumerian civilization spanned over 3000 years and began with the first settlement of Eridu in the Ubaid period (mid 6th millennium BC) through the Uruk period (4th city-state. Urukagina Urukagina , alternately rendered as Uruinimgina or Irikagina, was a ruler (énsi) of the city-state Lagash in Mesopotamia. He is best known for his reforms to combat corruption, which are sometimes cited as the first example of a legal code in recorded history. Although the actual text has not been discovered yet, much of its content may be, the king of Lagash Lagash (Sumerian: Lagaš; transliteration: Lagaški; cuneiform logogram: ?𒁓𒆷𒆠 (literal signs: [SHIR.BUR].LA-KI); Akkadian: nakamtu; modern Tell al-Hiba, Iraq) is located northwest of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and east of Uruk, Lagash was one of the oldest cities of Sumer and later Babylonia. Nearby Ngirsu (modern, established the first known legal code to protect citizens from the rich and powerful. Known as a great reformer, Urukagina established laws that forbade compelling the sale of property Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of persons. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property has the right to consume, sell, rent, mortgage, transfer, exchange or destroy their property, and/or to exclude others from doing these things. Important widely recognized types of and required the charges against the accused to be stated before any man accused of a crime could be punished. This is the first known example of any form of due process Due process is the principle that the government must respect all of the legal rights that are owed to a person according to the law. Due process holds the government subservient to the law of the land, protecting individual persons from the state in the history of humanity.

Like Urukagina, most ancient freedoms focused on negative liberty, protecting the less fortunate from harassment or imposition. Other ancient legal codes, such as the Code of Hammurabi The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved ancient law code, created ca. 1790 BC (middle chronology) in ancient Babylon. It was enacted by the sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi. One nearly complete example of the Code survives today, inscribed on a seven foot, four inch tall diorite stele in the Akkadian language in the cuneiform script, similarly forbade compulsion in economic matters, like the sale of land, and made it clear that when a rich man murders a poor one, it is still murder. Still, these codes relied on a certain virtuousness of kings and ministers, which was far from reliable.

In the Persian Empire The Achaemenid Empire , also known as the Persian Empire, was the successor state of the Median Empire, ruling over significant portions of what would become Greater Iran. The Persian and the Median Empire taken together are also known as the Medo-Persian Empire, which encompassed the combined territories of several earlier empires, citizens of all religions Religion (from O.Fr. religion "religious community," from L. religionem "respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods," "obligation, the bond between man and the gods" is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or more in general a set of beliefs explaining the existence of and giving meaning to the universe, and ethnic groups An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or assumed- sharing cultural characteristics This shared heritage may be based upon putative common ancestry, history, kinship, religion, language, shared territory, nationality or physical appearance. Members of an ethnic group are were given the same rights and had the same freedom of religion, women had the same rights as men, and slavery was abolished. All the palaces of the kings of Persia were built by paid workers in an era where slaves typically did such work.^[4]

In the Maurya Empire of ancient India, citizens of all religions and ethnic groups had rights to freedom, tolerance, and equality. The need for tolerance on an egalitarian basis can be found in the Edicts of Ashoka the Great, which emphasize the importance of tolerance in public policy by the government. The slaughter or capture of prisoners of war was also condemned by Ashoka.^[5] Slavery was also non-existent in the Maurya Empire.^[6]

Roman law also embraced certain limited forms of liberty, even under the rule of the Roman Emperors. However, these liberties were accorded only to Roman citizens. Still, the Roman citizen enjoyed a combination of positive liberty (the right to a trial, a right of appeal, law and contract enforcement) and negative liberty (unhindered right to contract and the right to not be tortured). Many of the liberties enjoyed under Roman law endured through the Middle Ages, but were enjoyed solely by the nobility, never by the common man. The idea of unalienable and universal liberties had to wait until the Age of Enlightenment.

In Chinese, freedom is written 自由(ziyou). 自(zi) is the character for self, and 由(you) is the character to follow, with an additional connotation of reason. Liberty thus implies a necessary connection between individualism and a rational duty.

Social contract

The social contract theory, invented by Hobbes, John Locke and Rousseau, were among the first to provide a political classification of rights, in particular through the notion of sovereignty and of natural rights. The thinkers of the Enlightenment reasoned the assertion that law governed both heavenly and human affairs, and that law gave the king his power, rather than the king's power giving force to law. The divine right of kings was thus opposed to the sovereign's unchecked auctoritas. This conception of law would find its culmination in Montesquieu's thought. The conception of law as a relationship between individuals, rather than families, came to the fore, and with it the increasing focus on individual liberty as a fundamental reality, given by "Nature and Nature's God," which, in the ideal state, would be as expansive as possible. The Enlightenment created then, among other ideas, liberty: that is, of a free individual being most free within the context of a state which provides stability of the laws. Later, more radical philosophies such as socialism articulated themselves in the course of the French Revolution and in the 19th century.

Modern perspectives

The modern conceptions of democracy, whether representative democracies or other types of democracies, are all found on the Rousseauist idea of popular sovereignty.^{[original research?]}

Liberalism is a political current embracing several historical and present-day ideologies that claim defense of individual liberty as the purpose of government. Two main strands are apparent, although both are founded on an individualist ideology. Economic liberalism is the right of the individual to contract, trade and operate in a market free of constraint. Social liberalism is the right to dissent from orthodox tenets or established authorities in political or religious matters. Both are core political issues, and highly contentious.^{[citation needed]}

United States

In the United States Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut, Justice William O. Douglas argued that liberties relating to personal relationships, such as marriage, have a unique primacy of place in the hierarchy of freedoms.^[7] Jacob M. Appel has summarized this principle:

I am grateful that I have rights in the proverbial public square—but, as a practical matter, my most cherished rights are those that I possess in my bedroom and hospital room and death chamber. Most people are far more concerned that they can control their own bodies than they are about petitioning Congress.^[8]

A school of thought popular among U.S. libertarians holds that there is no tenable distinction between the two sorts of liberty—that they are, indeed, one and the same, to be protected (or opposed) together. In the context of U.S. constitutional law, for example, they point out that the constitution twice lists "life, liberty, and property" without making any distinctions within that troika.

Anarcho-Individualists, such as Max Stirner, demanded the utmost respect for the liberty of the individual. Some in the U.S. see protecting the ideal of liberty as a conservative policy, because this would conform to the spirit of individual liberty that they consider is at the heart of the American constitution. Some think liberty is almost synonymous with democracy, at least in one sense of that word, while others see conflicts or even opposition between the two concepts, with democracy being nothing more than the tyranny of the majority.^{[citation needed]}

Liberty Canon

• On Liberty - John Stuart Mill, 1859
• Liberty, Equality, Fraternity - James Fitzjames Stephen, 1874

See also

• Civil liberty

• Social liberty
• Freedom (political)
• Freedom (philosophy)
• Freedom Team of India
• Gratis versus Libre
• Liberté, égalité, fraternité
• Libertarian Party

References

1. ^ Westbrooks, Logan Hart (2008) "Personal Freedom" page 134 In Owens, William (compiler) (2008) Freedom: Keys to Freedom from Twenty-one National Leaders Main Street Publications, Memphis, Tennessee, pages 133-138, ISBN 978-0-9801152-0-8
2. ^ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Utilitarianism, (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), 12-16.
3. ^ Miller, David, 'Introduction', in Miller, ed., Liberty, 1991
4. ^ Arthur Henry Robertson, John Graham Merrills (1996). Human Rights in the World: An Introduction to the Study of the International Protection of Human Rights. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0719049237.
5. ^ Amartya Sen (1997). Human Rights and Asian Values. ISBN 0-87641-151-0.
6. ^ Arrian, Indica:

   "This also is remarkable in India, that all Indians are free, and no Indian at all is a slave. In this the Indians agree with the Lacedaemonians. Yet the Lacedaemonians have Helots for slaves, who perform the duties of slaves; but the Indians have no slaves at all, much less is any Indian a slave."

7. ^ GRISWOLD v. CONNECTICUT U.S. Supreme Court 381 U.S. 479 (1965) Decided June 7, 1965
8. ^ A Culture of Liberty

Categories: Political philosophy | Social philosophy | Liberty symbols

See Also:

• Liberty: Encyclopedia
• Liberties: Encyclopedia
• Civil Liberties: Encyclopedia
• Claim Rights and Liberty Rights: Encyclopedia
• Society: Issues: Human Rights and Liberties: Directory

What Links Here:

Recently Viewed Pages:

• Starboard: Dictionary
• Home
• Left: Dictionary
• List of Convicted War Criminals
• Guaraní: Blogs
• Society: Issues: Crime and Justice: Death Penalty: Directory
• Society: Law: Organizations: Civil Liberties: Directory
• Human Rights: Encyclopedia
• Right Away: Dictionary
• Right Triangle: Dictionary

Most Popular Pages:

• Starboard: Dictionary
• Hiligaynon: Dictionary
• Hiligaynon: Images
• Oslo Freedom Forum: Answers
• Oslo Freedom Forum: Blogs
• History of India
• Cartographic Aggression: Blogs
• Guaraní: Blogs
• Oslo Freedom Forum: Toc
• Starboard: Dictionary (200 Ok) ACCEPTED

Related 'Liberty' Searches: