Philosophy What Freedom and Liberty mean

[Big Steve]

The words "freedom" and "liberty" are often used in a synonymous fashion, but given the different roots I wonder if one can see differences between them.

I recall reading once - James Stokesbury's "A Short History of World War II" as I recall - that "freedom" was derived from "free doom", as in, the means to choose how one's life ends. I'm not entirely certain of the accuracy of this, but it would seem to contrast from "liberty" and the more direct connotations of being free from restraints. Yet the state of being "free" is often referred to as "freedom", and so we come back around.

Are the two synonymous, or are there differences in meaning, exercise, connotation, that mark the two?

 

[Lanmandragon]

I use the two interchangeably as do most people I know. It might not he techinacally correct but I'd say. The words have reached a point in colloequial use. That the technical difference is largely irrelvant in conversation.

 

[The Name of Love]

I think that any differences brought up between freedom and liberty are attempts to resurrect some of the older definitions of liberty found in various forms. Colloquially, they are interchangeable, but there are many different types of freedoms.

There are two main views of freedom: freedom for excellence and freedom of indifference. The latter is can be further divided into freedom of non-interference and freedom of non-domination.

Freedom for excellence is the view that freedom is teleological and that, at its root, it's the freedom to pursue one's ends. It's similar in idea to Isaiah Berlin's "positive liberty," in that freedom consists of self-mastery and the pursuit of moral excellence. This idea is best expressed by the words of Saint Augustine of Hippo: "a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.”

Freedom of indifference is associated with Isaiah Berlin's "negative liberty," and basically represents a kind of autonomy that disregards the ends of an individual. The kind of autonomy depends on the thinker. In general, those of the classical liberal tradition favor freedom of non-interference, the way Thomas Hobbes defined freedom, as "the liberty to buy, and sell, and otherwise contract with one another; to choose their own abode, their own diet, their own trade of life, and institute their children as they themselves think fit; and the like." Those pre-liberal classical republicans and progressives favor freedom of non-domination, the autonomy of the individual from arbitrary power or domination. This is the freedom of the slave from the master, the freedom of the liberated colony from its colonizers. Whereas freedom of non-interference is based on contingent circumstances, freedom of non-domination is structural, but both are concerned with the autonomy of the individual from those that would prevent him from doing as he willed.

 

[FriedCFour]

Freedom is a dozen fully automatic weapons you machined and 3-D printed yourself on your basement workshop on your self sustaining bunker/farm.