Month: January 2023

Freedom as Freedom of the Human Being Not the Individual Our survey above suggests that liberal tradition, in all its forms—classical, modern and neo-liberal, focuses on individual freedom either in terms of absence of external interference in the sphere of individual actions or removal of obstacles in the development of faculties of the individual. This… Continue reading Marxian Views of Freedom

Liberal theorists have developed different grounds to support negative liberty. On the basis of natural liberty and natural rights of individuals, Physiocrates (Francois Quesnay and Mirabeau), early laissez-faire economists (Smith, Ricardo and Malthus) and contractualists (Hobbes and Locke) proposed individual liberty and argued for either complete non-interference or limited interference by authority in individual liberty. This basis… Continue reading Negative Liberty

Within the liberal fold, liberty of individual has been understood and explained in two ways. In the first sense, liberty is described as that sphere or area of individual actions that is not restrained or interfered by others. In the second sense, it is associated with effective conditions or power of self-realization or moral freedom.… Continue reading Negative and Positive Liberty

Liberty, both in its positive and negative sense, is identified within the liberal framework and is related to the individual as the agent to be either left without interference or to be provided with enabling conditions to realize liberty in the sense of self-realization or development. Liberation, however, does not imply such a meaning. Liberation… Continue reading Liberty, Liberation, Freedom, Licence, Anarchy and Authority

In the context of colonial subjugation, nationalist struggles in Asia and Africa and also Latin America against the foreign domination has been termed as national freedom or liberation movements. In India also, we generally refer to the struggle for independence as India’s national freedom movement. With the emergence of nationalist consciousness and awareness for political… Continue reading National Freedom or National Liberation

Liberal thinkers support both the negative and positive views of liberty. In the negative view, liberty is treated as the absence of restraint in the sphere of individual actions. This is to counter interference of authority/state in the individual’s area of activity. One school of liberal thinkers supports the negative view of liberty and would… Continue reading Negative and Positive Liberty

While thinkers have related civil liberty in the capacity of an individual person, economic liberty in the capacity of a worker, they associate political liberty in the capacity of a citizen. When the Greeks and the Romans speak of liberty or freedom of participation by citizens in public affairs of Greece and Rome respectively, they… Continue reading Political Liberty

Economic liberty could be treated as a part of civil liberty in the sense of liberty of business, employment and work, profession, property and trade. However, it is generally associated with the individual in the capacity of a worker or producer using physical or mental work. Thus, economic liberty could mean different things for different… Continue reading Economic Liberty

In his book, On Liberty, J. S. Mill declares that the subject of his book is not ‘Liberty of the Will’, … but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual.’ In the sense of safeguarding the liberty of individual or the minority… Continue reading Civil or Social Liberty

We can understand natural liberty in terms of liberty naturally available to the people. It implies unrestricted and unfettered liberty to do what one wills in a stage of natural condition. This can be possible only when we conceive a stage in which either there is a situation of licentious liberty as Hobbes thought it… Continue reading Natural Liberty