Liberty is a concept that is familiar to almost everybody. Each person uses this concept in a daily discussion. We hear people say, “we are at liberty to do this or that.” In this work, liberty and freedom will be used interchangeably or to mean the same thing. The word “liberty” is derived from the Latin term liber, which means free.58 Liberty has different connotations to different people, and it is used very often loosely and carelessly. Great difficulty is experienced in furnishing exact definitions and meanings of concepts like liberty. It is difficult to distinguish between the two terms liberty and freedom. They are generally used as synonymous terms, though there are writers who make a distinction; but even such writers are unable to explain any clear and significant difference. Their hair – splitting arguments add to the vagueness instead of making any lucid and meaningful difference.59 Liberty means the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty, against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.60 The state is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in
110 its own immediate sphere. Beyond the limit of things necessary for its well being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life, by promoting the influences which avail against temptation – religion, education, and the distribution of wealth.61 In ancient times, the state absorbed authorities not its own, and intruded on the domain of personal freedom. In the middle, ages it possessed too little authority, and suffered others to intrude. Modern states fall habitually into both excesses. The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.62
Narrowly, or negatively, freedom is thought of as the absence of constraint. Freedom says Hobbes, is the silence of the law. Positively, freedom is a condition of liberation from social and cultural forces that are perceived as impeding full self – realization.63 For A. Appadorai:
The term “liberty” is used in politics to mean two things, national liberty and individual liberty. The former obviously means the independence of a State from other States. It is with the latter, individual liberty, that we are concerned in this chapter. In its absolute sense, liberty means “the faculty of willing and the power of doing what has been willed, without influence from any other source or from without.” A moment reflection tells us that a liberty of this unlimited character is an impossibility for all at the same time. Neither the presence of the state nor its absence can ensure it. Politics rests on two fundamental facts of human nature; everyman likes to have his own way; at the same time he possesses an instinct for sociability. From this, it follows that the maximum freedom that an individual can enjoy is, as the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) puts it, the power to do everything that does not injure another.64
He further stresses that in practice; therefore, an analysis of the modern concept of liberty shows two main ideas:
(i) The individual wants to express his personality in thought, word, and act. He demands freedom, i.e. an absence or a lessening of restraint (or restrictions) on his freedom of thought, speech and action both from the government and from private individuals and associations.
(ii) Freedom implies, paradoxically, the imposition of some limitation with a view (a) to securing the equal freedom of all, e.g. the law of libel and criminal law generally, and (b)
111 to providing opportunities or conditions of life which will enable men to develop their personalities, e.g. the provision of compulsory education, factory laws etc.65
Caudwell quoted by Richard Norman contends that any definition of liberty is humbug, that does not mean liberty to do what one wants. A people are free whose members have liberty to do what they want-to get the goods they desire and avoid the ills they hate. What do men hate? They want to be happy, and not to be starved or despised or deprived of the decencies of life. They want to be secure, and friendly with their fellows, and not conscripted to slaughter and be slaughtered.
They want to marry, and beget children and help, not oppress each other. Who is free who cannot do these things, even if he has a vote, and free speech? Who then is free in bourgeois society, for not a few men but million are forced by circumstances to be unemployed, and miserable, and despised, and unable to enjoy the decencies of life.66 He goes ahead to say that:
As Russia shows, even in the dictatorship of the proletariat, before the classless State has come into being, man is already freer. He can avoid unemployment, and competition with his fellows, and poverty. He can marry and beget children, and achieve the decencies of life. He is not asked to oppress his fellows.67
Hayek contends that though one can indeed use the term “liberty” or “freedom” as one wishes, the only sense with which he is concerned is the negative definition of freedom as absence of coercion by other human beings. Freedom so defined presupposes, as he says, that the individual has some assured private sphere, that there is some set of circumstances in his environment with which others cannot interfere: here we have the classical negative picture of liberty – liberty as absence of interference, the non intrusion by other human being into what J.S.
Mill calls “a circle around every individual human being” a ‘‘space entrenched around’’ “a reserved territory”.68 J.S. Mill says that:
The struggle between Liberty and authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar....
But in old times this contest was between subjects, or some classes of subjects and the Government. By liberty, was meant protection against the tyranny of the political rulers. The rulers were conceived... as in a necessarily antagonistic position to the people whom they ruled. They consist of a governing one, or a governing tribe or caste, who derived
112 their authority from inheritance or conquests, who, at all events, did not
hold it at the pleasure of the governed, and whose supremacy men did not venture, perhaps did not desire, to contest whatever precautions might be taken against its oppressive exercise.69
Mill says that the aim, therefore of patriots was to set limits to the power which the ruler should exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by liberty. It was attempted in two ways. First, by obtaining recognition of certain immunities, called political liberties or rights which it was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler to infringe, and which if he did infringe, specific resistance, or general rebellion was held to be justifiable. A second, and generally a later expedient, was the establishment of constitutional checks, by which the consent of the community or of a body of some sort, supposed to represent its interest was made a necessary condition to some of the more important acts of the governing power.70 For him, the sole end for which mankind is warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their members is self protection. That is to say, the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others to do so, would be wise or even rights.71
These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or for reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concern others. In the part which merely concerns himself, this independence is of right, absolute.72 Mill asserts that over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. This doctrine according to him is only meant to apply to human beings in the maturity of their faculties. Under this condition, it implies that children or any young person below the age which the law may fix as that of manhood or womanhood are not involved.
113 Those who are still in a state to require being taken care of by others must be protected against their own actions as well as against external injury.73 A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction and in either case, he is justly accountable to them for the fury.
The latter case, it is true, requires a much more cautious exercise of compulsion than the former.74 Essentially, what the study of political thought and action seeks to achieve in any society is an appropriate balance between wide range of freedom, order and the satisfaction of human needs.75 John Locke is of the view that the liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what the legislative shall enact, according to the trust put in it.
He avers:
Freedom then is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us, a liberty for everyone to do what he lists, to live as he pleases , and not to be tied by any law: but freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to everyone of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraints….76
This freedom from absolute arbitrary power is so necessary to and closely joined with a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it but by power of his own life, cannot by compact or his own consent, enslave himself to anyone nor put himself under the absolute arbitrary power of another, to take away his life when he pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has himself and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it.77