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Freedom is the power or right to speak, act and change as one wants without hindrance or restraint. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving oneself one's own laws". [1] In one definition, something is "free" if it can change and is not constrained in its present state.
John Stuart Mill. Philosophers from the earliest times have considered the question of liberty. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD) wrote: . a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed.
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The second statement is not a definition, which has the form of a full equivalence, but merely one implication, though a highly suggestive and methodologically important one. For the full account of freedom, which includes four different characterizations of freedom, we must wait until Chapter 9, "The Idea of Freedom".
Gerald C. MacCallum Jr. spoke of a compromise between positive and negative freedoms, saying that an agent must have full autonomy over themselves. In this view, freedom is a triadic relationship because it is about three things, namely the agent, the constraints they need to be free from and the goal they are aspiring to. [20]
Berlin initially defined negative liberty as "freedom from", that is, the absence of constraints on the agent imposed by other people. He defined positive liberty both as "freedom to", that is, the ability (not just the opportunity) to pursue and achieve willed goals; and also as autonomy or self-rule, as opposed to dependence on others. [5]
The natalibus restitutio was a decree in which the princeps gave to a libertinus the rights and status of ingenuus; [13] it was a form of proceeding that involved the theory of the original freedom of all mankind, for the libertinus was restored not to the state in which he had been born but to his supposed original state of freedom.
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