Abstract

Just about everyone sees freedom, or liberty, as having huge importance. After all, our freedoms are a foundation that political authority is built on. But if you ask what freedom is, there can be very different answers about how it is defined. So, what is freedom? When can we said to be free or unfree? Is freedom about having options or achieving goals? How, if at all, can we justify limits on freedom? This chapter discusses these questions. We will begin by considering the foundational issue of how we might understand ourselves as "free." This is followed by examining the relevance of having choice and options. The chapter then surveys three broad theories of freedom called negative freedom, positive freedom and republican freedom. We next consider the importance of convictions for any theory about freedom. The chapter concludes considering the issue of paternalism and justifying constraints on freedom.