Individual freedom - Definition and Overview

Statue of Liberty - Liberty is one meaning of "freedom".

Definition

Freedom refers in a very general sense to the state of being free (unrestricted, unconfined or unfettered).

In Philosophy and History

The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserted that the condition of freedom was inherent to humanity, an inevitable facet of the possession of a soul and sapience, with the implication that all social interactions subsequent to birth imply a loss of freedom, voluntary or involuntary.

See Liberty for the main article on freedom in philosophy and history.

Examples of usage

• Political freedom is the absence of political restraints, particularly with respect to speech, religious practice, and the press.

• Freedom of a person refers to not being in prison as well as not being a victim of false imprisonment.

• Economic freedom is sometimes equated with economic power. The term as used by economists usually means the degree to which economic actors are unfettered by governmental restrictions, as in the Index of Economic Freedom. Some economists, such as those responsible for the Wall Street Journal/Heritage Foundation Index, frame the issue of economic freedom as "the degree to which the public sector interferes with the private sector," and argue that the less a government acts to interfere with the economic freedoms of businesses and individuals, the healthier the economy will tend to be. Other schools of economic thought argue that the public sector need not always be seen as an unwanted intruder on the economy, that government action should not be seen as necessarily freedom-infringing. (See also [1] (http://cf.heritage.org/index/pastScores.cfm))

• Software freedom or other freedom of information (or ideas); i.e.: software (or information) being free of practical or (more commonly) legal restrictions on its use, modification, distribution and (less often restricted) creation.

• Freedom of expression (or speech) is similar to software freedom, but refers to a general lack of such restrictions (on the creation, use, modification and dissemination of ideas) in a society by the government or those that hold power in that society.

• Being not in any relationship (be it a romantic relationship or a cooperative, for example), free to do what one wants, including starting a new relationship or having relationship tests (like one-night-stands, casual physical intimacy, etc).

• Leaving one's parents' home and coming of age

• Freedom of choice i.e. free will

• The absence of interactions in physics; for example, asymptotic freedom discovered by David Gross, David Politzer, and Frank Wilczek

• For the shorter term, being free also means having holidays, weekend, finished work for the day, having a break.

• It is also the name of a British newspaper, an album by Neil Young, two otherwise unrelated songs by Richie Havens and Rage Against the Machine, and small towns in New York, New Hampshire and Wyoming.

• Political philosopher Gerald MacCallum designed the following concept of freedom, allowing for its 'fleshing out' into many different conceptions: "X is free/not free from Y to do/not do/become/not become Z."

Quotes about freedom

• The Eagles : "Freedom? Oh, freedom, that's just some people talking, you're in chains while you walk through this life on your own."

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau : "All men are born free, and yet everywhere lie in chains."

• "Eλευθερος γ θανατος" (Freedom or Death!)
  —Cretan War cry.

See also

• Liberty
• Freedom (political)
• Liberty (disambiguation)

External links

• Democracy's Century (http://freedomhouse.org/reports/century.html)
• Center for the study of democracy  (http://www.democ.uci.edu/democ/)
• The Global Social Change Research Project (http://gsociology.icaap.org/) has links to data and research about freedom