Liberty and Authority

Abstract

‘Freedom’ means the absence of restraint. A man is free in so far as he is not restrained from doing what he wants to do or what he would choose to do if he knew that he could. The idea of choice itself implies a kind of freedom. Choice is the selection of one possibility among others. More than one possibility must be open to us before we can be said to have a choice. If we were always bound to do the one thing that we in fact do, we should not be free to choose; there would be no freedom of the will. The concept that I wish to discuss, however, is not the freedom of the will or freedom of choice, but the freedom to carry out what one has chosen to do. This is what is commonly meant by freedom or liberty in social and political discussion.