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Liberty
Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom. In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society from control or oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views. In theology, liberty is freedom from the effects of "sin, spiritual servitude, rworldly ties". Sometimes liberty is differentiated from freedom by using the word "freedom" primarily, if not exclusively, to mean the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do; and using the word "liberty" to mean the absence of arbitrary restraints, taking into account the rights of all involved. In this sense, the exercise of liberty is subject to capability and limited by the rights of others. Thus liberty entails the responsible use of freedom under the rule of law without depriving anyone else of their freedom. Liberty can be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liberty (personification)
The concept of liberty has frequently been represented by personifications, often loosely shown as a female classical goddess. Examples include Marianne, the national personification of the French Republic and its values of '' Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité'', the female Liberty portrayed on United States coins for well over a century, and many others. These descend from images on ancient Roman coins of the Roman goddess Libertas and from various developments from the Renaissance onwards. The Dutch Maiden was among the first, re-introducing the cap of liberty on a liberty pole featured in many types of image, though not using the Phrygian cap style that became conventional. The 1886 Statue of Liberty (''Liberty Enlightening the World'') by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi is a well-known example in art, a gift from France to the United States. Ancient Rome The ancient Roman goddess Libertas was honored during the second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) by a temple erected on the Av ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
On Liberty
''On Liberty'' is a philosophical essay by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill. Published in 1859, it applies Mill's ethical system of utilitarianism to society and state. Mill suggests standards for the relationship between authority and liberty. He emphasizes the importance of individuality, which he considers prerequisite to the higher pleasures—the '' summum bonum'' of utilitarianism. Furthermore, Mill asserts that democratic ideals may result in the '' tyranny of the majority''. Among the standards proposed are Mill's three basic liberties of individuals, his three legitimate objections to government intervention, and his two maxims regarding the relationship of the individual to society. ''On Liberty'' was a greatly influential and well-received work. Some classical liberals and libertarians have criticized it for its apparent discontinuity with ''Utilitarianism'', and vagueness in defining the arena within which individuals can contest government infringements ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century", he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control. Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. He contributed to the investigation of scientific methodology, though his knowledge of the topic was based on the writings of others, notably William Whewell, John Herschel, and Auguste Comte, and research carried out for Mill by Alexander Bain. He engaged in written debate with Whewell. A member of the Liberal Party and author of the early feminist work '' The Subjection ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Two Concepts Of Liberty
"Two Concepts of Liberty" was the inaugural lecture delivered by the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin before the University of Oxford on 31 October 1958. It was subsequently published as a 57-page pamphlet by Oxford at the Clarendon Press. It also appears in the collection of Berlin's papers entitled ''Four Essays on Liberty'' (1969) and was more recently reissued in a collection entitled simply ''Liberty'' (2002). The essay, with its analytical approach to the definition of political concepts, re-introduced the study of political philosophy to the methods of analytic philosophy. It is also one of Berlin's first expressions of his ethical ontology of value-pluralism. Berlin defined negative liberty (as the term "liberty" was used by Thomas Hobbes) as the absence of coercion or interference with agents' possible private actions, by an exterior social-body. He also defined it as a comparatively recent political ideal, which re-emerged in the late 17th century, after its slow a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Libertas
Libertas ( Latin for 'liberty' or 'freedom', ) is the Roman goddess and personification of liberty. She became a politicised figure in the Late Republic, featured on coins supporting the populares faction, and later those of the assassins of Julius Caesar. Nonetheless, she sometimes appears on coins from the imperial period, such as Galba's "Freedom of the People" coins during his short reign after the death of Nero. She is usually portrayed with two accoutrements: the rod and the soft pileus, which she holds out, rather than wears. The Greek equivalent of the goddess Libertas is Eleutheria, the personification of liberty. There are many post-classical depictions of liberty as a person which often retain some of the iconography of the Roman goddess. Etymology The name ''Lībertās'' ('freedom') is a derivation from Latin ''Līber'' ('free'), stemming from Proto-Italic ''*leuþero'', and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ''*h₁leudʰero'' ('belonging to the peop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liberté, égalité, Fraternité
''Liberté, égalité, fraternité'' (), French for "liberty, equality, fraternity", is the national motto of France and the Republic of Haiti, and is an example of a tripartite motto. Although it finds its origins in the French Revolution, it was then only one motto among others and was not institutionalized until the Third Republic at the end of the 19th century. (abridged translation, ''Realms of Memory'', Columbia University Press, 1996–98). Debates concerning the compatibility and order of the three terms began at the same time as the Revolution. It is also the motto of the Grand Orient and the Grande Loge de France. Origins during the French Revolution Some claim that Camille Desmoulins in number 35 of ''Révolutions de France et de Brabant'', published on July 26, 1790. Speaking of the festival of July 14, 1790, he described "the citizen-soldiers rushing into each other's arms, promising each other ''liberty, equality, fraternity.''" (French: ''les soldats-citoyen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas. Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks were sometimes recorded and transcribed, and many of his spoken words were converted into published essays and books, both by himself and by others, especially his principal editor from 1974, Henry Hardy. Born in Riga (now the capital of Latvia, then a part of the Russian Empire) in 1909, he moved to Petrograd, Russia, at the age of six, where he witnessed the revolutions of 1917. In 1921 his family moved to the UK, and he was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1932, at the age of twenty-three, Berlin was elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. In addition to his own prolific output, he translated works by Ivan Turgenev from Russian into English and, during World War II, wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book '' Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, theology, and ethics, as well as philosophy in general. Biography Early life Thomas Hobbes was born on 5 April 1588 (Old Style), in Westport, now part of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England. Having been born prematurely when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, Hobbes later reported that "my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear." Hobbes had a brother, Edmund, about two years older, as well as a sister named Anne. Although Thomas Hobbes's childhood is unknown to a large extent, as is his mother's name, it is known that Hobb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Freedom
Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving oneself their own laws", and with having rights and the civil liberties with which to exercise them without undue interference by the state. Frequently discussed kinds of political freedom include freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of choice, and freedom of speech. In one definition, something is "free" if it can change easily and is not constrained in its present state. In philosophy and religion, freedom is sometimes associated with free will, without undue or unjust constraints on that will, such as enslavement. It is an idea closely tied with the concept of negative liberty. Charles Taylor resolves one of the issues that separate "positive" and "negative" theories of freedom, as these were initially distinguished i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Positive Liberty
Positive liberty is the possession of the power and resources to act in the context of the structural limitations of the broader society which impacts a person's ability to act, as opposed to negative liberty, which is freedom from external restraint on one's actions.Berlin, Isaiah. ''Four Essays on Liberty''. 1969.Steven J. Heyman, "Positive and negative liberty." ''Chicago-Kent Law Review''. 68 (1992): 81-90 online/ref> As Heyman notes, it is important to understand Isaiah Berlin's two definitions of liberty in the context of the ideological circumstances of the 1950's, so a conception of positive liberty includes freedom from external constraints, leading to an understanding of positive liberty in the context of human agency. According to Charles Taylor, Positive liberty is the ability to fulfill one's purposes. Negative liberty is the freedom from interference by others.Charles Taylor, “What’s Wrong With Negative Liberty,” in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosoph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Negative Liberty
Negative liberty is freedom from interference by other people. Negative liberty is primarily concerned with freedom from external restraint and contrasts with positive liberty (the possession of the power and resources to fulfill one's own potential). The distinction was introduced by Isaiah Berlin in his 1958 lecture "Two Concepts of Liberty". Overview '' Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' describes negative liberty: "The negative concept of freedom ... 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, although some have contested the claim that private property necessarily enhances negative liberty." Charles Taylor clarifies that negative liberty is a concept that is often used in political phi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Happiness
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is a well-known phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence. Scanned image of the Jefferson's "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence, written in June 1776, including all the changes made later by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and other members of the committee, and by Congress. The phrase gives three examples of the unalienable rights which the Declaration says have been given to all humans by their Creator, and which governments are created to protect. Like the other principles in the Declaration of Independence, this phrase is not legally binding, but has been widely referenced and seen as an inspiration for the basis of government. Origin and phrasing The United States Declaration of Independence was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, and then edited by the Committee of Five, which consisted of Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. It was then further edite ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
