Liberty
Liberty is the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views. The concept of liberty can vary depending on perspective and context. In the Constitutional law of the United States, ordered liberty means creating a balanced society where individuals have the freedom to act without unnecessary interference and access to opportunities and resources to pursue their goals, all within a fair legal system.
Sometimes liberty is differentiated from freedom by using the word "freedom" primarily, if not exclusively, to mean the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do; and using the word "liberty" to mean the absence of arbitrary restraints, taking into account the rights of all involved. In this sense, the exercise of liberty is subject to capability and limited by the rights of others. Thus liberty entails the responsible use of freedom under the rule of law without depriving anyone else of their freedom. Liberty can be taken away as a form of punishment. In many countries, people can be deprived of their liberty if they are convicted of criminal acts.
Liberty's etymology is from the Latin word, from Proto-Italic louðeros, from Proto-Indo-European h₁léwdʰeros, from h₁lewdʰ- . The word "liberty" is commonly used in slogans or quotes, such as in "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" from the United States Declaration of Independence, and France's national motto "Liberté, égalité, fraternité".
Philosophy
Philosophers from the earliest times have considered the question of liberty. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote:According to compatibilist Thomas Hobbes :
John Locke rejected that definition of liberty. While not specifically mentioning Hobbes, he attacks Sir Robert Filmer who had the same definition. According to Locke:
John Stuart Mill, in his 1859 work, On Liberty, was the first to recognize the difference between liberty as the freedom to act and liberty as the absence of coercion.
In his 1958 lecture "Two Concepts of Liberty", Isaiah Berlin formally framed the differences between two perspectives as the distinction between two opposite concepts of liberty: positive liberty and negative liberty. The latter designates a negative condition in which an individual is protected from tyranny and the arbitrary exercise of authority, while the former refers to the liberty that comes from self-mastery, the freedom from inner compulsions such as weakness and fear.
Politics
History
The modern day concept of political liberty has its origins in the Greek concepts of freedom and slavery. To be free, to the Greeks, was not to have a master, to be independent from a master. That was the original Greek concept of freedom. It is closely linked with the concept of democracy, as Aristotle put it:This applied only to free men. In Athens, for instance, women could not vote or hold office and were legally and socially dependent on a male relative.
The populations of the Persian Empire enjoyed some degree of freedom. Citizens of all religions and ethnic groups 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 when slaves typically did such work.
In the Maurya Empire of ancient India, citizens of all religions and ethnic groups had some 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 also appears to have been condemned by Ashoka. Slavery also appears to have been non-existent in the Maurya Empire. However, according to Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, "Ashoka's orders seem to have been resisted right from the beginning."
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. Many liberties established under Roman law endured through the Middle Ages, but were generally limited to the nobility and ruling classes, seldom extending to common people. The idea of inalienable and universal liberties had to wait until the Age of Enlightenment.
Social contract
The social contract theory, most influentially formulated by Hobbes, John Locke and Rousseau, was 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 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. This conception of law would find its culmination in the ideas of Montesquieu. 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 universal as possible.In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill sought to define the "...nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual," and as such, he describes an inherent and continuous antagonism between liberty and authority and thus, the prevailing question becomes "how to make the fitting adjustment between individual independence and social control".
Origins of political freedom
According to a 2024 study, a global conception of liberty took form during the late Middle Ages, as "emic terms used across Afro-Eurasia to denote liberty were interconnected through various translingual practices resulting from multilingual governance, courtly encounters, and the spread of religions. Words for liberty in different languages paralleled each other in bilingual legal documents, resonated with each other in different translations of religious texts, and stood next to each other in bureaucratic glossaries and dictionaries." The study concludes, "thus, the concept of liberty, instead of being a product of the West, is more accurately seen as a result of interactions among different parts of the world; the globalization of liberty did not start with the global expansion of the Euro-American empires but has a rich and complex history that predates them."England and Great Britain
Timeline:- 1066 – as a condition of his coronation William the Conqueror assented to the London Charter of Liberties which guaranteed the "Saxon" liberties of the City of London.
- 1100 – the Charter of Liberties is passed which sets out certain liberties of nobles, church officials and individuals.
- 1166 – Henry II of England transformed English law by passing the Assize of Clarendon. The act, a forerunner to trial by jury, started the abolition of trial by combat and trial by ordeal.
- 1187-1189 – publication of Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Anglie which contains authoritative definitions of freedom and servitude.
- 1215 – Magna Carta was enacted, becoming the cornerstone of liberty in England, then Great Britain, and later the world.
- 1628 – the English Parliament passed the Petition of Right which set out specific liberties of English citizens.
- 1679 – the English Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act which outlawed unlawful or arbitrary imprisonment.
- 1689 – the Bill of Rights granted "freedom of speech in Parliament", and reinforced existing civil rights in England. The Scots law equivalent the Claim of Right is passed.
- 1772 – the Somerset v Stewart judgement found that slavery was unsupported by common law in England and Wales.
- 1859 – an essay by philosopher John Stuart Mill, entitled On Liberty, argued for toleration and individuality. "If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility."
- 1948 – British representatives attempted to but were prevented from adding a legal framework to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was not until 1976 that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights came into force, giving a legal status to most of the Declaration.
- 1958 – Two Concepts of Liberty, by Isaiah Berlin, identified "negative liberty" as an obstacle, as distinct from "positive liberty" which promotes self-mastery and the concepts of freedom.
United States
By the later half of the 20th century, liberty was expanded further to prohibit government interference with personal choices. In the 1965 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. Jacob M. Appel has summarized this principle:
In modern America, various competing ideologies have divergent views about how best to promote liberty. Liberals in the original sense of the word see equality as a necessary component of freedom. Progressives stress freedom from business monopoly as essential. Libertarians disagree, and see economic and individual freedom as best. The Tea Party movement sees "big government" as an enemy of freedom. Other major participants in the modern American libertarian movement include the Libertarian Party, the Free State Project, and the Mises Institute.