liberty
This term used to describe various types of individual freedom, such as religious liberty,
political liberty, freedom of speech, right of self-defense, and others. It is also used as a
general term for the sum of specific liberties. Fundamental perhaps is personal liberty, the
freedom of a person to come and go as he or she pleases without unwarranted restraint.
Historical Perspective
Liberty has a history that shows that it varies with time and place. In England prior to the
Habeas Corpus Act (1679) a person could be seized and kept in prison indefinitely without
trial or hearing. The common-law prohibition of conspiracy as dangerous to domestic peace
and order was invoked far into the 19th cent. to limit the right of association in labor unions.
Specifically political liberties, such as the general right to vote and to hold public office, were
practically unknown before the 19th cent., when they were achieved by the liberal
movement in England. The same is true of such civil liberties as freedom of speech and of
the press. Freedom of conscience, the right of private judgment in religious matters, and the
right to worship with groups of one's own choosing were nonexistent prior to the Protestant
Reformation and still limited in most places for a long time afterward.
The Philosophical Concept of Liberty
Liberty has found philosophical expression in individualism and anarchism (an extreme form
of individualism) and in nationalism. Such philosophers as John Locke and Jean Jacques
Rousseau popularized the conception of the individual as having certain natural rights that
could not be denied or taken away by society or by any external authority, rights that
Thomas Jefferson spoke of in the Declaration of Independence as “unalienable” and that
were embodied in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution. Rousseau especially thought of them
as the rights possessed by people living in a “state of nature” and not surrendered, only
modified, in the social contract by which they agreed to live together in society.
The Acquisition of Liberty
Political scientists point out that even in a state of nature people are subject to the law of
nature and that the rights enjoyed by them in society are historically acquired and not
natural except in a strictly social sense. Liberties are acquired through the joining of like-
minded individuals to gain special privileges for themselves. Thus, through Magna Carta the
English barons in 1215 wrested from King John certain freedoms that in time they had to
share with the rest of the people.
The history of liberty in the later Middle Ages is that of numerous corporate groups, such as
guilds of artisans and merchants, winning immunity from external control. By agreements
with their feudal overlords these groups obtained release from certain feudal dues and
bonds, gaining a limited freedom to carry on trade and manufacture, which formed the
nucleus of the liberties extended to the bourgeoisie in the 19th cent. Some ethnic minorities,
as in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, were able by a show of strength to gain legal status
for their language and culture as well as assurance of some political rights. Freedom to
follow the trade or profession of one's inclination, as of women to practice medicine, denied
in most societies, was gained only in recent times. The feminist movement in the 19th and
20th cent. is a good example of the attempt to gain such rights.
The acquired nature of rights—their dependence on conditions of time and place—also
makes them peculiarly subject to danger of loss. Liberties have had to be defended against
encroachment, and sometimes populations have had their liberties curtailed. In times of
national danger some rights may be suspended, as was the right of habeas corpus by
President Abraham Lincoln in the American Civil War, and the struggle for rights not yet
acquired may be discontinued.
The freedom for self-expression, as distinguished from the freedom from external restraint,
has become increasingly important to the notion of liberty. Since medieval times liberty has
been increased by the gradual but advancing removal of restraints once imposed by church
and state, by custom and law; in the 20th cent. attention was turned to the creation of
certain conditions regarded as necessary if individuals are to develop their fullest potential.
The idea of equality, emphasized by the philosophers of the French Revolution, came to be
closely associated with the idea of liberty in democratic societies—not equality based on a
supposed equality of ability but equality of opportunity. Inequality, especially economic
inequality, was held to be as great an obstacle to individual development as any form of
external restraint. Therefore it was proposed that the state should seek to equalize as far as
possible the conditions in such areas as education, health, and housing, thereby establishing
economic and social security, and freedom from want and fear, so that every individual
might have equal opportunity for self-realization.
The right of national groups to be independent and sovereign has also come to be regarded
as a principle of liberty. Since 1945, more than 50 former colonial areas have become
independent states (see imperialism). The UN Commission on Human Rights has sought to
promote the extension of political and cultural liberty throughout the world through treaties
and covenants, the most important of which has been the Declaration of Human Rights.
