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| LIBERTY |

Liberty is generally considered a concept of political philosophy and identifies the condition in which an individual has the ability to act according to his or her own will.

Individualist and liberal conceptions of liberty relate to the freedom of the individual from outside compulsion; A socialist perspective, on the other hand, associates liberty with equality. As such, a socialist connects liberty (i.e. freedom) to the equal distribution of power (i.e. democracy), arguing that liberty without equality amounts to the domination of the most powerful. Thus, freedom and democracy are seen as intrinsically connected.

John Stuart Mill, in his work, On Liberty, was the first to recognize the difference between liberty as the freedom to act and liberty as the absence of coercion. In his book, Two Concepts of Liberty, Isaiah Berlin formally framed the differences between these two perspectives as the distinction between two opposite concepts of liberty: positive liberty and negative liberty. The latter designates a negative condition in which an individual is protected from tyranny and the arbitrary exercise of authority, while the former implies the right to exercise civil rights, such as standing for office.

Mill offered insight into the notions of soft tyranny and mutual liberty with his harm principle. Overall, it is important to understand these concepts when discussing liberty since they all represent little pieces of the greater puzzle known as freedom. In a philosophical sense, morality must supersede tyranny in any legitimate form of government. Otherwise, people are left with a societal system rooted in backwardness, disorder, and regression.