Summary and Conclusion

Abstract

My purpose has been to explore the nature of the concept of freedom. I have attempted to do so firstly, in Chapter 1, by examining its meaning, concluding that there can be general agreement on the formal definition of freedom encapsulated in MacCallum’s value-free formula that ‘X is free from Y to do or be Z’ This is the root of the concept of freedom, the common denominator of all views about freedom, the framework within which every interpretation can be fitted. Where there is disagreement, it is over the way in which this concept is to be interpreted; in particular over the meaning of the three term-variables (X, Y and Z) in MacCallum’s triadic formula. Such value-laden disagreements give rise to different conceptions of freedom — i.e. different interpretations of what the concept of freedom substantially entails, not disagreements about what it formally means. These different conceptions of freedom are many and varied in character, not reducible, as Berlin claims, to a simple division between a so-called ‘negative’ and a so-called ‘positive’ concept.