definition essay on freedom

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What is freedom definition essay example.

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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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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.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

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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‘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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Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Political Philosophy — Definition Of Liberty Is Freedom

Definition of Liberty is Freedom

Categories: Civil Rights Political Philosophy

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Published: Mar 13, 2024

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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.

Table of Contents

1 Essay on Freedom in 100 Words
2 Essay on Freedom in 200 Words
3 Essay on Freedom in 300 Words

Essay on Freedom in 100 Words

Freedom is considered the essence of human existence because it serves as the cornerstone on which societal developments and individual identities are shaped. Countries with democracy consider freedom as one of the fundamental rights for every individual to make choices and live life according to their free will, desires and aspirations. This free will to make decisions has been a driving force behind countless movements, revolutions and societal progress throughout history.

Political freedom entails the right to participate in governance, express dissent, and engage in public discourse without the threat of censorship or retribution. It is the bedrock of democratic societies, fostering an environment where diverse voices can be heard.

Also Read: In Pursuit of Freedom- India’s Journey to Independence From 1857 to 1947

Essay on Freedom in 200 Words

Freedom is considered the lifeblood of human progress and the foundation of a just and equitable society. It is a beacon of hope that inspires individuals to strive for a world where every person can live with dignity and pursue their dreams without fear or constraint. Some consider freedom as the catalyst for personal growth and the cultivation of one’s unique identity, enabling individuals to explore their full potential and contribute their talents to the world.

On a personal level, freedom is synonymous with autonomy and self-determination . It grants individuals the liberty to choose their paths, make decisions in accordance with their values, and pursue their passions without the shackles of external influence.
In the political sphere, it underpins the democratic process, allowing individuals to participate in governance and express their opinions without retribution.
Socially, it ensures equality and respect for all, regardless of differences in race, gender, or beliefs.

However, freedom comes with the responsibility to exercise it within the bounds of respect for others and collective well-being. Balancing individual liberties with the greater good is crucial for maintaining societal harmony. Upholding freedom requires a commitment to fostering a world where everyone can live with dignity and pursue their aspirations without undue restrictions.

Essay on Freedom in 300 Words

Freedom is considered the inherent right that lies at the core of human existence. It encompasses the ability to think, act and speak without any restrictions or coercion, allowing individuals to pursue their aspirations and live their lives according to their own values and beliefs. Ranging from personal to political domains, freedom shapes the essence of human dignity and progress.

In the political sphere, freedom is the bedrock of democratic societies, fostering an environment where citizens have the right to participate in the decision-making process, voice their concerns, and hold their leaders accountable.
It serves as a safeguard against tyranny and authoritarian government , ensuring that governance remains transparent, inclusive, and responsive to the needs of the people.
Social freedom is essential for fostering inclusivity and equality within communities. It demands the eradication of discrimination based on race, gender, religion, or any other characteristic, creating a space where every individual is treated with dignity and respect.
Social freedom facilitates the celebration of diversity and the recognition of the intrinsic worth of every human being, promoting a society that thrives on mutual understanding and cooperation.
On an individual or personal level, freedom signifies the autonomy to make choices, follow one’s passions, and cultivate a sense of self-worth. It encourages individuals to pursue their aspirations and fulfil their potential, fostering personal growth and fulfilment.
The ability to express oneself freely and to pursue one’s ambitions without fear of reprisal or oppression is integral to the development of a healthy and vibrant society.

However, exercising freedom necessitates a responsible approach that respects the rights and freedoms of others. The delicate balance between individual liberty and collective well-being demands a conscientious understanding of the impact of one’s actions on the broader community. Upholding and protecting the principles of freedom requires a collective commitment to fostering an environment where everyone can thrive and contribute to the betterment of humanity.

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.

Someone with free will to think, act and speak without any external restrictions is considered a free person. However, this is the bookish definition of this broader concept, where the ground reality can be far different than this.

Writing an essay on freedom in 100 words requires you to describe the definition of this term, and what it means at different levels, such as individual or personal, social and political. freedom comes with the responsibility to exercise it within the bounds of respect for others and collective well-being.

For more information on such interesting topics, visit our essay writing webpage and follow Leverage Edu .

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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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The meaning of freedom today Analytical Essay

Introduction, personal freedom, sartre’s existentialist definition of freedom, equality and independence, karl marx on freedom, the practice of freedom, michael foucault on freedom.

In the contemporary society, people consider freedom a basic need in that person who is not free must be in a rough co-existence with him and others. It is therefore very important to exalt freedom, which begins with personal liberty to the sovereignty of nations.

The extent to which a person can be free as well as the exact definition of freedom has been subjected to philosophical discourses from time immemorial with renowned philosophers such as Karl Marx, Michael Foucault and Jean Paul Sartre having differing arguments in the matter. According to the school of thought that each one of them represented, the idea of freedom to them bears differing definitions and extends.

In order to come up with an agreeable and logical definition of freedom as it is in the contemporary society, people have critically analyzed the input of these philosophers and their definition of freedom in this paper with the intention of clearly understanding what freedom is according to the schools of thought they represent today.

As I reveal, the exact meaning of freedom must comprise of the different aspects such as personal liberty, the right to life, equality and independence from coercion and repressive conditions such as poverty, ignorance and diseases. Any meaning of freedom is wanting if it does not address the issue of personal liberty.

Freedom starts with a sense of self-control or rather self-ownership. In this case, reason influences the person’s sense of freedom. In a free state, every person receives an equal chance of exercising freedom at personal level. In this case, no other person influences another’s decisions and the extent to which he/she makes decisions remains strictly limited by him/her.

This is in other words to say that in a free state a person’s freedom is not limited as long as it does not impact negatively or limit the freedom of the other people. For instance, a person’s freedom cannot include enslaving other people. As a slave, a person is not free to make certain decisions, movements and interactions with other people in the society.

In a free state therefore, a person is not entitle to take the freedom of another person for personal interests since it is against their wish to be treated so. My fellow panelist Sartre concurs with my view of freedom despite his limited definition of the freedom.

According to Jean Paul Sartre, man is condemned to be free. This is without regard to whether he acts from external constraints to repress it or just follows his pragmatic decisions.

A person is free when s/he refuses to act in bad faith and instead follow what he is. For instance, when the waiter who knows really well that he is impersonating a waiter stops that and instead does what his freedom grants, he is at that particular moment embracing freedom.

By being a waiter, the person is only denying his or her own freedom. According to existentialism, one cannot claim that external forces shape his/her deeds or actions. For instance, the profession of a person cannot shape the person’s identity considering that the roles played in that profession are only as a matter of bad faith and will eventually cease.

Being aware of one’s significance in the process of doing the roles in the profession inform the choices that a person makes and that seem directed to the person’s sense of freedom. However, I stand to criticize his definition based on how limited it appears.

Sartre, as well as other existentialists, concentrates more on the intrinsic definition of self-freedom rather than giving a definition and an extent to freedom that one can put into practice in the contemporary society. He does not clarify whether a person is free or not clearly defined in that existentialists hold that in every situation a person has still the freedom of choice.

Having the freedom of choice is not that important and does not qualify as being the absolute meaning of being free. This is basically for the simple reason that even a person who is enslaved by another has the freedom to choose either to rebel or to show complicity but that does not mean that they are free.

In the contemporary society, a person is only free if any other person or condition can implement his /her thoughts and choices without any repression. The issue of equality of freedom constitutes the meaning of freedom.

Equality is very essential in any situation for a person to be free in the contemporary society. This ranges from political, sexual, racial as well as religious equality.

For people to consider another as free in a free state, he/she must go through an equal treatment with others regardless of their gender or any other affiliations. When a person is marginalized on the any of the above areas, their freedom is interfered with and eventually the person is deprived the necessity of being free.

With equality comes independence in making decisions as well as living without any coercion from anyone. This implies that the different types of independence that Karl Marx and others who embrace the Marxist school of thought argued mostly about.

Karl Marx in his Manifesto of the communist party conceptualizes freedom from an economic point of view. Marx conceptualizes freedom from an individualistic point of view whereby he argues that freedom is an individual’s collective use of reason to create a reconciled definition of personal and public freedom.

From this, Marx argues that a person who exercises freedom at the expense of the masses abuses it since the freedom of the majority is the one that matters. For instance, a person who owns means of production and abuses his employees for the sake of enriching himself and expanding his financial freedom by enriching himself is infringing the freedom of the others.

It is therefore clear from his arguments that Marx’s view of freedom is more informed by the social relations of people in the society. He argues that for a state to be termed as free there has to be a revolution whereby the proletariat overpower the bourgeoisie and own the means of production.

In that case, the majority would be free in that they will be in a position to cope with life without the fear of being oppressed by a powerful ruling class. However, I stand to criticize the view based on its one-sidedness.

Marx’s idea of the masses overpowering the ruling class, as a necessary precondition for their freedom, is one sided and has failed to hold on for a long time. This stands out because he fails to address other important aspects such as equality, the addressing of human rights and the dealing with other factors that lead to the oppression of people.

His address however on the issue of economic oppression holds until today as evidenced by workers rising up against their oppressive employers in the contemporary society and demanding for a fair exchange for their labor. This is because a person’s freedom seems abused if he/she faces oppression in any given situation.

The fact that in order to be completely free one must keenly be aware of the limits of his/her freedom is a very important factor to consider when defining freedom in the society today.

This is in the sense that other people’s freedom is as important as your freedom. A question arises as to whether a person has or should have the right to defend him/herself against coercion. This brings forth a quite interesting aspect of freedom regarded as the freedom of defense.

In most Free states where freedom of people seems held with dignity, always a system acts to differentiate acts of coercion as either offensive or defensive. In this case, whether a person acted in an effort to defend him/herself or was interfering with another’s rights is established. Foucault’s meaning today’s of freedom is wanting based on its failure to explain how one can free him/herself.

According to Michael Foucault, being free is a practice of the different practices of freedom. To him it is therefore a continuous process. Foucault emphasizes more on the practices of freedom over the process of liberation. He argues that it the practices of freedom that eventually upholds freedom rather than the process of liberation.

For instance, he uses the example of a colonized nation, which liberates itself from the colonizers. The society would still be in need of practices of freedom as they engage in building their own government.

One can clearly notice that Foucault’s works are in a way, skeptical about the extent to which people can free themselves. If people cannot stand out of the constraints of relations of power, knowledge and subjectivity, then to him their practices of freedom are simply on a small notion of resistance from within.

In order to answer the question of what one exactly means by ‘being free’ in the contemporary society, it is of great essence to be all-round while addressing the aspects of freedom.

The problem with the definitions and the answers that philosophers Karl Marx, Michael Foucault and Jean Paul Sartre presents is that they are in most cases one sided whereby they all aimed at addressing a single aspect within the complex issue of freedom. Therefore, it is arguable that one can summon their arguments to contribute to the broad definition of today’s freedom.

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IvyPanda . 2018. "The meaning of freedom today." May 31, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-meaning-of-freedom-today/.

1. IvyPanda . "The meaning of freedom today." May 31, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-meaning-of-freedom-today/.

Bibliography

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Nietzsche’s and Sartre’s Views on Morality
Hell in Dante's Inferno and Sartre's No Exit
Satre human freedom
Nietzsche: Death of God
St. Augustine. Solution to the Problem of Evil
The Concept of Metaphysics and Nature
Inequality's Philosophical Description
“What Is the Meaning of Life?” in the Works of Gilgamesh and Agamemnon

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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Defining Freedom

How have the legacies of slavery shaped the struggle for freedom?

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865, formally abolished slavery throughout the United States. But ending slavery was only a first step toward securing full freedom and citizenship rights for African Americans. The struggle to fulfill the promises of liberty, equality, and justice for all, which began with the nation’s founding and took on new meaning and momentum during the era of Reconstruction, would continue for generations to come.

Defining Freedom: Securing the Promise of the 13th Amendment

Clockwise, Top Left: U.S. Colored Troops march through Charleston, South Carolina, 1865. Courtesy of National Park Service, Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park, FOSU 12614. Silent protest parade in New York City against the East St. Louis Massacre, 1917. Library of Congress . March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of James H. Wallace Jr. Protesters hold pictures of George Floyd as they march in a Juneteenth rally in New York City, 2020. Getty Images .

… the point of protest isn’t winning—it’s holding fast to the promise of freedom even when fast victory is not promised. Amanda Gorman “Fury and Faith,” 2020

Before The 13th Amendment

Freedom, slavery, and the founding of america: 1770s–1780s.

The desire for freedom by enslaved African Americans manifested itself during the early stages of the nation’s development. Their decisions to run away or to publicly express their disdain for slavery in writing or in the courts illustrated the importance of freedom for them. The language contained in the Constitution further reinforced their belief in their right to liberty and freedom despite the decision by the Constitutional Congress to allow for the continued existence of slavery—a decision which created a paradox for the new nation of espousing liberty but depending economically on enslavement.

In every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance. Phillis Wheatley, 1774

Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral , 1773.

Early Freedom Movements: 1830s–1850s

Brethren, the time has come when you must act for yourselves … Think how many tears you have poured out upon the soil which you have cultivated with unrequited toil and enriched with your blood; and then go to your lordly enslavers and tell them plainly, that you are determined to be free … Inform them that all you desire is FREEDOM, and that nothing else will suffice. Henry Highland Garnet “Address to the Slaves of the United States,” delivered before the National Convention of Colored Citizens, Buffalo, New York, 1843

African Americans spoke forcefully and regularly about ending slavery and claiming their rights as citizens. Individuals like David Walker produced powerful essays condemning the institution, appealing for equal rights, and encouraging the enslaved to throw off their enslavement.

David Walker’s Appeal, 1843.

The Black convention movement , which began in 1830, was another important national forum that voiced the demands of its participants for abolition, voting rights, and equal treatment. Gaining the right to vote and fair treatment were issues of national concern. In Ohio and Illinois African Americans protested state Black Laws, which, among other things, prevented them from voting, holding public office, or living in the state without paying a minimum bond of $500 to ensure good behavior. In light of this discriminatory treatment, African Americans sought to expand the focus of the abolition movement so it not only looked to end slavery, but to champion equal treatment of all Americans as well.

Freedom During Slavery

Nat Turner’s Bible, 1830s. Enslaved people seized freedom by any means possible, including rising up against their enslavers. Nat Turner, an enslaved preacher who led a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831, was carrying this Bible when he was arrested. Read More

Tin box made by Joseph Trammell to carry his freedom papers, 1852. During slavery, legally free African Americans were required to register with county courts and secure Certificates of Freedom, also known as freedom papers. Joseph Trammell, a free Black man in Loudon County, Virginia, used this handmade tin to protect and carry his precious documents.

Antislavery pamphlet about the Fugitive Slave Act, 1854. This printing of the Fugitive Slave Bill of 1850 was sponsored by antislavery groups as a protest against the new law that required authorities in free states to assist in capturing people who had escaped from enslavement.

Ambrotype of Elisa Greenwell with handwritten note early 1860s

Ambrotype of Elisa Greenwell, a self-emancipated woman, early 1860s. A handwritten note accompanying this photograph identified Greenwell as a resident of Philadelphia who had escaped from her enslaver in Leonardtown, Maryland, in 1859.

Civil War and Emancipation

Our new government is founded … upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, 1861

The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 threatened the survival of slavery in the eyes of many southern state officials and fueled their decision to secede. The Civil War which resulted did eventually evolve into a war to bring slavery to an end. Enslaved African Americans saw this possibility early in the war and flocked to U.S. Army lines where they believed they would gain their freedom. Fort Monroe in Virginia was one of the first places to have enslaved men arrive there in 1861 seeking freedom.

Print shows fugitive slaves arriving at the gate to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, seeking the protection of the Union army at the outbreak of the Civil War.

Freedom seekers approach U.S. Army guards near Fort Monroe, May 1861.

The District of Columbia instituted compensated emancipation in 1862. President Lincoln followed this action by issuing a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in the fall of that year and the final Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863. The 1863 Proclamation offered freedom to the enslaved in Confederate territory and allowed African Americans to enlist in the U.S. Army for the first time. By the end of the Civil War approximately 179,000 African Americans took up arms and made important contributions to the successful conclusion of the conflict for the Union.

Portrait of a U.S. soldier, ca. 1865.

Carte-de-visite of an emancipation watch night meeting, 1863

Carte-de-visite of a group of African Americans gathered around a man with a pocket watch. A sign on the wall reads "1 Jan-Slaves Forever Free." The text in chain links on the sides read "Waiting for the Hour - Watch Meeting Dec 31, 1862."

The13th Amendment and Reconstruction

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Section 1

The constitutional amendment abolishing slavery in the United States was introduced in Congress in December 1863, midway through the Civil War, and finally passed on January 31, 1865. It would be almost another year before the 13th Amendment was declared ratified by the states, on December 18, 1865. By then, the Civil War had ended with the defeat of the Confederacy, and Vice President Andrew Johnson had become president following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

Read more about the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in "Our American Story"

The 13th Amendment was brief and to the point—in less than 50 words, it proclaimed the demise of slavery, an institution which predated the founding of the United States and had been supported, expanded, and enforced in North America by racist legal and social systems for nearly 250 years. While the amendment outlawed the institution of slavery, it also included a clause that allowed slavery and involuntary servitude to be used as punishment for a crime. This language, originally used in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 , protected the state’s right to force prisoners to work, a longstanding practice that would drastically expand in the aftermath of slavery.

Section 2 of the 13th Amendment granted Congress the right to pass legislation to enforce the abolition of slavery. This marked a significant shift in power between the federal government and the states by giving Congress new responsibility for protecting civil rights at the federal level. It laid the foundation for the passage of federal laws designed to protect newly freed African Americans from state laws and practices that deprived them of their civil liberties and attempted to return them to a condition of enslavement.

Abolitionists celebrated the ratification of the 13th Amendment as a moral victory over the inhumanity of slavery and a redeeming of the Constitution’s founding promise of freedom. But many African Americans also greeted the new law with wary skepticism. They recognized the outlawing of slavery as not the end, but only the beginning of what would be needed to secure full freedom and equal rights. The enemy still to be defeated was the systemic racism that had justified and supported slavery in the South and restricted the freedom of all Black people throughout the country.

Carte-de-visite of Frederick Douglass. The reverse side has a laurel wreath in ink in the center. Below the wreath is an inscription that reads “Helen Douglass.”

Testing the 13th Amendment: The Black Codes

… all the State laws imposing disabilities upon colored people on the ground of color, ‘being but a creation of slavery, and passed for its maintenance and perpetuation, are part and parcel of the system and must follow its fate.’ Equal Suffrage: Address from the Colored Citizens of Norfolk, Va., to the People of the United States, June 5, 1865

In order to regain representation in Congress, the former Confederate states agreed to ratify the 13th Amendment and write new state constitutions abolishing slavery. But the southern states also passed new laws, known as Black Codes, that restricted the rights of newly freed people in order to control their labor, maintain the racial status quo, and keep them in conditions as similar to slavery as possible.

In 1865 and 1866, African Americans held political conventions across the South to protest the Black Codes and demand full civil and political rights, including the right to vote. Congress responded by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Drawing on the authority granted to Congress by the 13th Amendment to enforce the abolition of slavery, this was the first federal civil rights legislation. The Civil Rights Act voided the Black Codes by declaring African Americans to be citizens entitled to the same rights, benefits, and protections under the law as white citizens. While it did not address voting rights, the law defined certain basic rights for all citizens, including the right to make and enforce contracts, give evidence in court, and own property.

Harper's Weekly Memphis riot scenes, 1866

Burning a Freedmen’s School-House, Memphis, Tennessee, 1866

Despite the new federal laws, many white Americans continued to resist the idea of Black freedom. President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat from Tennessee and a former enslaver, vetoed the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, but Congress overrode his veto. Less than a month later, violence erupted in Memphis, Tennessee. Mobs of white police and civilians attacked the city’s Black community, burning homes, churches, schools, and businesses. The Memphis Massacre, which lasted from May 1 to May 3, 1866, left 46 African Americans dead and dozens more injured. Soon after the massacre in Memphis, a group of Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, formed the Ku Klux Klan, an organization that used violence and intimidation to oppose Black civil rights and promote white supremacy in the South.

African Americans also continued to confront white resistance and discrimination in northern and western states, where slavery had been outlawed before the Civil War but free Black people were still not treated as equal citizens. During the 1860s, the city of Philadelphia became a focal point for civil rights struggles through the efforts of activists such as Octavius Catto, who led a successful movement to end racial segregation in streetcars and other public accommodations.

Civil rights activists viewed segregation, the denial of voting rights, and other restrictions on Black freedom as vestiges of slavery that should also be abolished under the 13th Amendment.

A prominent voice for African American civil rights, Octavius Catto (1839–1871) founded the Philadelphia chapter of the Equal Rights League of Pennsylvania in 1864. He led protests and helped draft legislation to outlaw segregated streetcars. On Election Day in 1871, Catto was shot and killed by a white man who was later acquitted by an all-white jury.

Restricting the 13th Amendment: U.S. Supreme Court

The Thirteenth Amendment … not only struck down the institution of slavery as previously existing in the United States, but it prevents the imposition of any burdens or disabilities that constitute badges of slavery or servitude. Justice John Marshall Harlan Dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896

During Reconstruction, the push for full freedom continued, supported by additional federal laws that built and expanded on the 13th Amendment of 1865 and the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The 14th Amendment , ratified in 1868, and the 15th Amendment , ratified in 1870, further revised the U.S. Constitution to specify rights that could not be denied on account of race or color, including birthright citizenship, equal protection, due process, and voting rights. In 1875, Congress passed another Civil Rights Act that prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations such as hotels, theaters, and transportation.

These federal laws drew on the 13th Amendment, which granted Congress the power to enforce the abolition of slavery. This included not only the former system of human bondage and forced labor, but the related system of racial oppression that political and legal discourse referred to as the “badges and incidents of slavery.” In this view, any laws that restricted or impinged on Black people’s freedom and citizenship rights were considered aspects of slavery, and thus prohibited by the 13th Amendment.

But by the late 1870s, the federal government had begun to retreat from supporting Reconstruction and defending Black freedom in the South. White supremacists used violence, fraud, intimidation, and other tactics to suppress Black voting and regain control of southern state governments. Once back in power, they passed state laws that established the system of racial segregation and Black disenfranchisement known as Jim Crow.

The Union as it was / The lost cause, worse than slavery, 1874.

Three U.S. Supreme Court rulings ( Civil Rights Cases (1883) ; Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) ; and Hodges v. United States (1906) ) significantly narrowed the definition of freedom granted by the 13th Amendment. These rulings weakened or repealed federal civil rights laws and allowed state Jim Crow laws and other forms of racial discrimination to stand. This revised, restricted view of the 13th Amendment—as only outlawing the institution of chattel slavery itself, rather than securing full freedom for Black people—would continue to hamper civil rights efforts until the 1960s.

A hand-painted sign used for segregating transportation terminal seating area.

The Legacies of Slavery

“except as punishment for a crime”: race and incarceration.

The 13th Amendment sanctioned involuntary servitude if convicted of a crime, which created an opening for the advent of convict leasing. Under the convict leasing system African Americans were arrested for fabricated reasons such as loitering or failing to sign a work contract. Law officials then leased their labor or used them to create roads, build factories, construct railroads, and perform other tasks without compensation. In many ways convict labor became a substitute for enslavement. Indeed In 1871 the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia ruled in Ruffin v. Commonwealth that convicts were “the slave of the state.” This point of view enabled prisons like Angola in Louisiana and Parchman Farm in Mississippi to notoriously exploit prisoners well into the 21st century.

The Convict Lease System and Lynch Law are twin infamies which flourish hand in hand in many of the United States. Ida B. Wells

The reinforcement of the courts caused Ida B. Wells and others to view convict leasing as racially oppressive as lynching in its victimization of African Americans. It is impossible to gauge how many men, women and children fell victim to this system, although some estimates suggest several million people were victimized. Not only were they often unfairly arrested, but they lost their rights as citizens while imprisoned and in many instances even after they were released from imprisonment.

Anyone who has been convicted of a felony in this country becomes a slave of the state, and you lose your human rights and in most cases your citizen rights for a long time, in some cases forever. Albert Woodfox, 2017 Activist and member of the Angola 3, who served 40 years in solitary confinement at the Louisiana State Penitentiary before his false conviction was overturned

Guard tower at Angola Prison, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana Many prison farms were founded on former slave plantations. One of the largest and longest-lasting of these plantation prisons is the Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Angola, established in 1880. Among the largest prisons in the United States, Angola for much of its history has been known as one of the harshest and most inhumane. In the 1950s it was deemed the “bloodiest prison in America.”

“The Vestiges of Slavery”: Racial Discrimination and Violence

Our country cannot wait any longer for the full realization of the abolition of all the remaining vestiges of slavery. Thurgood Marshall, 1953

Long after the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery in 1865, civil rights advocates continued to call on the nation to abolish the legacies of slavery that persisted in the form of racial discrimination. In a 1953 speech to the National Urban League, Thurgood Marshall—then Special Counsel to the NAACP—spoke of the need for “concerted action to remove many of the remaining vestiges of slavery.” Marshall was referring to the systemic racism that confined Black people to second-class citizenship, including residential segregation, denial of the right of employment, and the threat of physical violence. As long as these vestiges of slavery remained, the 13th Amendment’s promise of freedom would remain unfulfilled.

In 1968, a year after Thurgood Marshall was appointed as the first Black Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court issued its first major 13th Amendment ruling in over 60 years. In the case of Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Company , the Court determined that real estate practices that discriminated against Black property buyers could be outlawed by Congress under the 13th Amendment. This decision marked a return to original Reconstruction-era interpretations of the 13th Amendment, which defined it as a law intended to secure Black freedom by eliminating the “badges and incidents of slavery.”

“We Want White Tenants in Our White Community,” sign posted in Detroit, Michigan, 1942.

Demonstrators demand federal laws to end housing segregation, Chicago, Illinois, 1960.

The Jones ruling followed a series of major federal civil rights laws, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, passed in response to the mass movement for Black freedom during the 1950s and 1960s. Just as Reconstruction was regarded as a “second founding” of the United States—an opportunity to remake the nation without slavery, on a new foundation of freedom and equality—many referred to the modern Civil Rights Movement as a “Second Reconstruction,” another chance to take up the unfinished work of the 13th Amendment and fulfill its promise of freedom.

Freedom Quilt, ca. 1975. Jessie Telfair was inspired to make this quilt as an expression and memorialization of her experiences during the Civil Rights Movement. In the 1960s, Telfair was encouraged by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s efforts to register African American voters in Southwest Georgia. Telfair decided to register to vote. When her employers learned of her actions, they fired her from her job as a cafeteria worker at an elementary school in her small community of Parrott, Georgia. The quilt is an affirmation of her personal freedom as well as a statement about the freedoms guaranteed to all American citizens.

Revisiting the 13th Amendment

Abolition … is not a relic of history. It is an ongoing movement to rethink the systems that produce inequity and build a society that values the lives of the most vulnerable. Phillip Atiba Goff, 2021 Co-founder and CEO of the Center for Policing Equity

The 13th Amendment is a touchstone in the struggle to abolish slavery and secure full freedom for African Americans, a struggle that extends from the nation’s founding to Reconstruction, through the modern Civil Rights Movement to today. It is also a catalyst for ongoing debate, activism, and legislation about defining and protecting freedom for all Americans. In recent decades, Congress has applied the 13th Amendment to support the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (2000), the first federal law targeting modern-day human trafficking, and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009). In 2020, Democratic members of Congress introduced a joint resolution calling for an Abolition Amendment that would nullify the “except as punishment” clause in the 13th Amendment, as part of efforts to address issues of mass incarceration, human rights abuses, and racial disparities in the U.S. prison system.

Along with highlighting the need to address and eliminate the persisting legacies of slavery, the 13th Amendment inspires questions about how to carry forward the legacy of abolition and build new institutions that promote a more just and equitable democracy.

Million Man March, Washington, D.C., 1995.

Think about whether this country truly wants Black people to be free. If it doesn’t, how will we become free anyway? Patrisse Cullors, 2020 Co-founder of Black Lives Matter

Reconstruction changed the nation in fundamental ways. Three new amendments to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery, provided equal protection of the law for all citizens, and banned racial discrimination in voting. But the promise of these laws alone would not secure the visions of freedom that African Americans pursued, if the nation was not willing to uphold and enforce them.

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How to Write a Definition Essay: New Guide with Samples

Have you ever found it difficult to explain certain words or ideas? That's because understanding them isn't always easy. To avoid confusion, it's important to really understand the words we use and be able to explain them well.

That's why teachers often assign definition essays in high school and college. But these essays aren't just about repeating dictionary definitions. They dive deep into complex terms, exploring their rich backgrounds and meanings.

In this article, our rewrite essay service will cover different types of these papers, give you practical tips for writing them, and even provide examples to simplify this journey for you!

What is a Definition Essay

A definition essay is a type of writing assignment where you explain the meaning of a specific word or concept. Instead of just giving a simple definition from the dictionary, you dive deeper into what the word really means and explore its different aspects.

For instance, if you're tasked with defining 'success,' you might discuss what success means to different people, how it can vary based on cultural or societal norms, and whether it's purely based on achievements or encompasses personal fulfillment as well.

The purpose of writing definition essays in school is multifaceted. Firstly, it helps you refine your understanding of language by encouraging you to analyze words more critically. It also fosters your ability to think deeply and express complex ideas clearly. Additionally, it cultivates your skills in research, as you may need to gather evidence and examples to support your interpretation of the word or concept. Now that we've cleared the definition essay meaning, let's explain its common types in detail.

Definition Essay Examples

Here's a definition essay example from our custom essay service to help you understand what a good paper looks like. Take a look at how it's structured and formatted if you want to use it as a reference for your own work. And if you're interested, you can always buy essay cheap and get high-quality paper from our platform anytime.

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Commonly Used Definition Essay Types

When choosing an intriguing term with a rich historical background for your definition essay, it's essential to carefully consider your options and determine the most effective approach. Here are some common types, as suggested by our dissertation writing help :

Analysis : Break down the topic into its constituent parts and define each part separately.
Classification : Determine the categories under which the topic can be classified.
Comparison : Highlight the uniqueness of the topic by comparing and contrasting it with more common subjects.
Details : Identify the key traits and distinctive qualities that best encapsulate the central idea of your essay.
Negation : Clarify what your topic is, not to narrow down its definition.
Origins and Causes : Explore the historical origins and background of the concept, examining where it first appeared and any relevant historical details.
Results, Effects, and Uses : Discuss the consequences, effects, and practical applications of the subject matter.

How to Write a Definition Essay

Just like with any writing, a definition essay structure involves an introduction, body, and conclusion. But what makes it interesting is what you explore in the body paragraphs.

For example, you could organize your definition essay outline by discussing the term from various angles. Start with a personal anecdote or story that illustrates the term in action. Then, provide a definition from a reputable source like a textbook or scholarly article. Next, consider interviewing people from different backgrounds to get their perspectives on the term. You could also analyze how the term has evolved over time, looking at historical examples or cultural shifts. Finally, offer your own interpretation of the term, drawing on your own experiences and insights.

For a more in-depth guide on writing a definition essay, let's explore the following sections provided by our experienced research paper writer .

Definition Essay Introduction

In the beginning stages of a definition essay, your reader gets their first taste of what your topic entails. It's crucial that this introduction is both informative and captivating, setting the stage for the rest of your essay. Here's what you need to include:

Start with something attention-grabbing, like a thought-provoking question or an interesting fact.
Provide a brief overview of the topic and why it's important to define it.
Clearly state the term you're defining and your interpretation of it.

Definition Essay Body Paragraphs

In your essay, break down the phrase into its different parts, look at it from various angles, and then provide a relevant explanation. Depending on what your assignment calls for, you might need more than three paragraphs. Feel free to mix up the order or add sections depending on how complex the term is. Here are some ideas for what you can include:

Start by talking about where the term came from and how it has changed over time. Understanding its origins can give insight into its meaning and significance.
Look up the official definition of the term and compare it to your own understanding. This can help clarify any differences and give a broader perspective.
Share your own thoughts and interpretation of the term, using examples or stories to illustrate your point. Your personal experiences can add depth and context to your analysis.
Find a definition or explanation from an expert or scholar in the field and discuss how it aligns or differs with your own perspective. This can provide credibility and further insight into the term.
Explore how the term is used in popular culture and what it reveals about societal values and beliefs. This can shed light on how the term is understood and interpreted in different contexts.

Definition Essay Conclusion

In the concluding paragraph, you should tie everything together neatly. Here's how you can structure your conclusion:

Remind the reader of your main points and why the definition of the term is important.
Highlight how having a clear understanding of the term can influence our thoughts and actions. This is where you show the broader significance of your analysis.
Encourage your audience to apply the term accurately in their own discussions and advocate for precision in defining terms within their communities. This empowers readers to take action based on what they've learned.

Tips for Definition Essay Writing Process

Now that we're nearing the end, you might have already grasped how to write a definition essay. However, if you still feel like you're threading a needle while wearing mittens, fear not! Our essay writer has laid out some nifty guidelines to help you ace this challenge:

Choose a term with depth, something that's not ordinary but has a rich backstory and multiple meanings. Think of it like picking a word that's like a Russian nesting doll – there's plenty to explore.
Use vivid language to paint a picture that engages the senses. For instance, when talking about 'love,' describe the warmth of a hug, the sweetness of Valentine's chocolates, or the sound of laughter with a partner. It helps your readers feel like they're right there with you.
Explore both the positive and negative associations of your term. Words aren't simple; they come with different meanings. For example, 'power' can mean strength and influence but can also be linked to negative things like abuse and control.
Use real-life examples to make your points clear in your definition essay. Whether you're talking about successful people from different fields or sharing stories that illustrate 'love,' concrete examples help readers understand.
Be creative with your approach. Use metaphors, illustrations, or humor to keep things interesting. Remember, it's your essay – make it come alive!

Final Words

As we wrap up, we trust you've grasped the ins and outs of how to write a definition essay and feel inspired to tackle your own. Nobody wants to be left scratching their head over complex topics, right? So why not leverage our academic writing assistance to your advantage? Whether you need help brainstorming extended topics, crafting a sharp analytical piece, or any other form of writing, we've got you covered. Say goodbye to confusion and ignorance – Order essay and let us guide you toward clarity and knowledge.

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is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

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Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition, by Russell Kirk

The central proposition of Russell Kirk’s brief but valuable book on academic freedom is that academic freedom is part of the natural law, “and if theorists deny the reality of natural law, logically they must deny the reality of academic freedom.” According to the conception of natural law that Mr. Kirk espouses, society is composed of groups of people with specialized jobs to do, and each group has certain rights and responsibilities arising from and appropriate to the nature of its job. Academic freedom is the name for the rights appropriate to that group in society who devote their lives to study and teaching. Since it is the responsibility of the scholar to discover the truth, and of the teacher to instruct others in it, he must have the freedom to fulfill his responsibility. No one, however, has more than a courtesy right to participate in academic freedom who does not believe in the natural law which sanctions it. Since academic freedom is a kind of “benefit of clergy,” the non-cleric can hardly expect to enjoy its protection.

Mr. Kirk’s first line of defense for this position is historical. He discusses Plato’s Academy as an early example of academic freedom, and quotes from the Apology of Socrates. But the Apology is not a defense of academic freedom; Socrates makes that clear at the outset. Emphatically and repeatedly he denies “that he is a teacher, and takes money.” In this conjunction of ideas he puts his finger right on the issue. Whatever else academic freedom may be, it is a professional right, a right to accept payment for services while maintaining some independence of judgment about how those services are to be executed. Whether Socrates favored academic freedom is not clear from the Apology , but certainly he did not claim it for himself. He defended his right to free speech, which both Mr. Kirk and I think is a different thing from academic freedom.

Far more central to Mr. Kirk’s argument from history is his opinion that the modern idea of academic freedom derives from the medieval university. This is of the greatest importance to his position, since the medieval university was the home of that conception of natural law which he considers the only sound philosophical basis for a defense of academic freedom. If it can be demonstrated that academic freedom comes out of the medieval university, that it has been for centuries symbiotically linked with natural law, and that the two ideas come to us in direct historical continuity from the Middle Ages, then his position must be taken very seriously.

But Mr. Kirk does not demonstrate this. In the brief compass of his book so much could scarcely be expected, but Mr. Kirk ought to be expected to do more than he has done. The line of descent he traces for academic freedom from the Middle Ages to 20th-century America seems to be mostly missing links. His description of the institutional framework of the medieval university is too sketchy to enable the reader to find out if key elements of academic freedom—tenure, for instance—were in force. He does not discuss, indeed he does not even cite, a single specific instance of how a problem involving academic freedom was handled in a medieval university.

_____________

The more usual historical view is that the idea of academic freedom derives from Germany and from a period well after the close of the Middle Ages. Arthur O. Lovejoy puts the evidence for this view succinctly in his admirable article on academic freedom in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences , and Mr. Kirk’s attempt to dispose of it by claiming that American professors did not accurately understand what academic freedom meant in Germany is not to the point. To say that American professors misunderstood the idea as it was held in Germany is not to deny that they got it from there, and Professor Lovejoy is too careful and too experienced an historian of ideas for his conclusions to be brushed aside as a misunderstanding. This much seems to be indisputable: it was only after American universities began to feel the influence of German universities (about 1870) that academic freedom began to be talked about in this country. Mr. Kirk has various ingenious ways of accounting for such a delay in the discussion of an idea that he regards as continuous from the Middle Ages, but certainly the view that the idea came from Germany looks more convincing by the usual standards of historiography.

Investigation of the origin of academic freedom is by no means idle. Like others interested in its defense, I would rather find its origin in the medieval universities than in the German universities of later date, because I would rather think that it led to the atmosphere of modern Oxford and Cambridge than to the atmosphere of the German universities of the 30’s. But history is not whatever we wish it to be, and if the idea of academic freedom comes to us from Germany we shall be doing ourselves no service by pretending that it comes from some other source; because we ought then to recognize, for our own good, that the idea may contain within itself the possibility of abdication of moral responsibility, and be on our guard against it. My own, not very well-informed guess is that the contemporary idea of academic freedom has several sources, and that this multiplicity of sources contributes a good deal to the vigor of the idea at the same time that it complicates the problems of defining, applying, and defending it.

Mr. Kirk’s second line of defense for his position is philosophical. In a sense, the philosophical defense of academic freedom based on natural law is incontrovertible. It is impossible to study anything, to teach anything, or for that matter to lead our lives without assuming that nature—whether the nature that surrounds us or the nature that is ourselves—exhibits some kind of regularity that can be called, however roughly, natural law. And academic freedom certainly derives from that assumption. There would be no reason to be free to study and teach if nothing could be studied or taught, and nothing could be studied or taught if we were random beings in a random universe.

If Mr. Kirk based his defense of academic freedom on the concept of natural law just described we would have to agree with him that to deny the reality of natural law is to deny the reality of academic freedom. But in fact what Mr. Kirk means by natural law is a particular historical formulation of moral principles which many members of the academic community can no longer embrace. While Mr. Kirk tends to be a natural-law fundamentalist, believing, like the religious fundamentalist, that the whole of revelation is contained in the ancient documents, they tend to be committed to a belief in progressive revelation, a belief that we can discover more of nature’s laws than our ancestors knew. Since they hold such a belief, they attach great importance to standards of procedure, the means by which they hope to make discoveries, and, in order to be true to themselves, they must in turn measure the discoveries of the past by the same standards. To a man of Mr. Kirk’s persuasion all this is likely to seem an impious concern with mere methodology to the neglect of principle, but those that I would call the best modern scholars and teachers do not make such a distinction between means and ends; they do not expect their results to receive any sanction that is not implicit in their methods.

Probably the most important difference between Mr. Kirk’s position and the position that seems to me to prevail in the academic world is this: he believes (I infer) that the natural moral law is finished and complete and beyond the need of traffic with natural physical law, while a good many of us in academic life believe that there ought to be a continuous exchange between the two. To take a simple example: for many centuries left-handedness was considered morally reprehensible in our society, as it still is in much of the world. When I was a boy I was told by an old lady that any mother ought to be ashamed of herself who would let a child of hers grow up left-handed. I have no doubt that the old lady (who was no fool) would have defended her position on grounds of natural law: the right hand is simply the natural hand to use. But now most mothers would no more regard the handedness of a child as a moral problem than they would regard the size of his feet as one. The reason for this is that a considerable body of research has increased and altered our knowledge of the “natural laws” of handedness.

Mr. Kirk’s book is marred by several errors of fact, and by exaggerations and inconsistencies. Many of these lapses are of little consequence to his main argument; some result from haste, and others arise from the impatience with qualification that often accompanies a vigorous and aphoristic style. One line of reasoning is in serious error. In the second chapter Mr. Kirk tries, unfairly and unpersuasively, to make progressive education and the ideas of Sidney Hook and John Dewey on the subject of democracy responsible for a particular piece of academic misbehavior. And how Mr. Kirk can think that he has disposed of progressive education in a chapter in which he never discusses the subject escapes the most attentive reader.

Yet for all that I remain finally unconvinced by Mr. Kirk’s historical account of academic freedom, for all that I regard his philosophical position as too narrow and (as he would say) too doctrinaire, for all that I am annoyed by occasional inaccuracies, when I called his book valuable at the beginning of this review I meant it. I think the book makes a major contribution to the discussion of academic freedom in this country.

For one thing, it is all written out of conviction, conviction based upon wide reading, considerable first-hand investigation, and (usually) careful thought. Mr. Kirk provides a moral force where one is needed. He has formulated a conservative position on academic freedom that is a challenge not only to other conservatives but to all who are concerned for the subject. He has reminded the conservative of his role in defending academic freedom, and in fact placed upon him the chief burden for its future care. If the academic world has concentrated on breaking the tyranny of the past where the past was mistaken, at the expense of reaffirming those values in the past that have stood the test of time, Mr. Kirk provides a powerful reminder that the balance needs to be redressed.

There are many admirable passages in Mr. Kirk’s book. His rebuttal of William F. Buckley’s position on academic freedom is a model of analysis, charitable but incisive, terse but thorough. Though Mr. Kirk’s manners fail him sometimes, as when he speaks of Professor Commager, he is nearly always an astute critic of previous writers on the subject. Some of the accounts of particular instances where academic freedom has been allegedly violated are equally good. I doubt that a better brief relation of the principles involved in the California controversy over the teachers’ oath has been or can be written.

On the subject of the Communist teacher Mr. Kirk writes very intelligently. He recognizes that the defender of academic freedom cannot supply a simple yes or no answer to the question, “Should Communists be permitted to teach?” because the defender of academic freedom supports a whole context of values that makes him pose other and prior questions: Who is making the decision about a particular Communist teacher, the responsible officers of the educational establishment or political figures? On what grounds is the decision being made? What procedures have been employed? What rights are involved? Has the question of quality—the quality of the teacher’s assent or dissent, the quality of the man himself—been regarded? And so on. On this whole subject Mr. Kirk takes a sensible position, and incidentally one considerably more latitudinarian than many writers otherwise well to his left have taken. Mr. Kirk believes, as I do, that academic freedom may be worth the price of some abuse of it.

Unlike many writers on academic freedom, Mr. Kirk is aware that we have a system of educational pluralism in this country, and it is a tribute to the accuracy of his insight, if not to the consistency of his argument, that he is an ardent champion of such pluralism. Because he knows and values the differences among our educational establishments, Mr. Kirk is saved from the common error of defenders of academic freedom, the supposition that they can talk about academic freedom in “the college” as if the history and purpose and problems of every college were exactly the same as those of every other college. At the same time, Mr. Kirk does not for a moment suppose that academic freedom is whatever the president or trustees of a particular college choose to call by that name. Academic pluralism very considerably complicates the problem of defining academic freedom, but the reality of academic freedom would be very considerably lessened if our academic pluralism were lost.

Perhaps no other single contribution Mr. Kirk makes is so valuable as his emphasis on the importance in academic freedom of academic dignity and, by implication, academic trust. Too often earnest defenders of academic freedom speak as if the academic community were full of Einsteins about to be prevented by Grand Inquisitors from announcing intellectual discoveries of the greatest magnitude. This tends to make the whole idea of academic freedom ridiculous, because anyone can glance at the academic community and see that it is not full of Einsteins. The rights of the Einsteins and the potential Einsteins must be looked to, of course, but so must the day-to-day rights of the mass of teachers, including the right to be treated as dignified and trusted members of a community of learning. Mr. Kirk recognizes that academic freedom ought not to be only a code by which the academic community can defend itself against depredators from without, but that it should also be a code by which members of the academic community can live together in seemliness.

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