Political theory can be explored by the use and significance of key political concepts. However, concepts are usually confusing because of their multi-dimensional usage. In its simplest sense, a concept is a general idea about something, usually expressed in a single word or a short phrase.
We build up our knowledge of the political world not simply by looking at it, but by developing and refining concepts which help us make sense of it. Political concepts are therefore political thought's basic units of meaning. The three important concepts of political theory are liberty, equality and justice.
Liberty
Liberty as a concept has been viewed variously by thinkers in various stages of the history of political thought. The word liberty is derived from the Latin word 'Liber', Liberty once came to be understood as something 'free', a situation of absence of restraints.
It generates toleration, strengthens understanding and creates an atmosphere where rights are exercised and enjoyed to their full. Hobbes provided a valid descriptive concept of liberty that one wishes in relation to any given set of acts and omissions that are feasible for one to perform.
Evolution of the Concept of Liberty
The concept of liberty or freedom denotes a very important principle of political philosophy. Liberty though sometimes regarded as the distinctive principle of liberalism, but freedom is acclaimed as a universal principle.
The ideal of liberty has inspired many revolutionary struggles against despotism and foreign regimes. The struggle for liberty is always informed by a philosophy of equality.
The concept of liberty evokes democratic spirit. 'Liberty' is being interchangeably used with 'freedom'. Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty' regards liberty and freedom as giving the same meaning.
It is meant as an absence of restraints which Locke qualifies further as "where there is no law, there is no liberty". It is because liberty has no licence, in order to be true, it has to be regulated within a framework. Liberty signifies inner autonomy, ability to act in accordance with the dictates of one's reason. In short it is the ability to act in accordance with universal values. It is because, limitless and restraint free liberty is not conducive to peaceful development.
Various Thoughts of Liberty
The concept of liberty has undergone changes with time and place. The ancient Greeks would, divide themselves among 'free' and ' unfree', 'citizens' and 'non-citizens', a vast majority of the population in the Greek city-states comprised of the latter.
In ancient Greek society, liberty was equated with active citizenship. Romans prized liberty as a collective good, which means both freedom from foreign domination and the absence of internal oppression.
Some of the opinions of great political thinkers regarding Liberty are as follows
• Martin Luther (1483-1546)
He opened the door to claims of public respect for Liberty of Conscience and eventually freedom of worship. In the 17th century, the theme of religious liberty became more pronounced.
• Spinoza (1632-77)
He argued for a right to liberty of thought and belief without interference from the sovereign's power. His thought on liberty open a way for democratic ideas in modern political thought. He challenges the Hobbesian principle for not being liberal by spirit.
• Rousseau
He wants civil liberty for the people in return for the natural liberty which they surrender while creating the sovereign on the basis of the 'General will', Thus, by the end of the 18th century, there had emerged numerous dimensions of liberty i.e. religious, social, economic through the writings of Adam Smith. Political aspect was manifested through the writings of Locke, Bentham in the European life.
Liberty From Rights
An individual's civil liberty consists in the abstract of a set of recognised rights and duties. This idea of liberty is normative because it's implicitly relies on a legal or moral theory of rights and duties. Civil libertarians have agreed that civil liberty involves obedience to social rules of justice that distribute rights and duties, including certain basic rights i.e. human rights or natural rights which are held to be virtually sacred and due equally to all human beings.
Locke makes clear that civil liberty under government is no different in this respect, from natural liberty in a state of nature. Civil liberty depends on positive laws that distribute legal rights and duties enacted with the consent of the citizens, whereas natural liberty depends on laws of nature that distribute basic rights and duties, which can apparently be discerned in outline (although not in concrete detail) by any individual capable of reflection.
According to Locke's contract theory, civil liberty must harmonise with natural liberty. Legal rights must help to clarify basic natural rights by declaring their concrete meaning within that particular community. Government is required to enact and enforce laws that distribute such legal rights, so as to better preserve and secure basic rights. Otherwise, reasonable individuals would never consent to live in a civil society under government.
Locke's Treatise of Government
First treatise is a criticism of Robert Filmer's patriarcha, which argues in support of the divine rights of kings. In this treatise, Locke defines political power as the right to make laws for the protection and regulation of property. Second Treatise presents a Social Contract theory that justifies people's moral right to revolt actively against unjust government.
Concepts of Liberty : Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin has drawn an influential distinction between two concepts of liberty that he calls respectively, negative liberty and positive liberty.
Negative Liberty
It is freedom from interference by other people. Others must not deny the individual (either directly or by means of institutional practices), opportunities to choose acts or omissions within the relevant domain. The theory of negative freedom, has been criticised on the basis of its starting point, an individual with given desires and preferences.
By defining freedom as non-interference in the fulfillment of a person possible preferences, this theory fails to consider that the notion of freedom as self-determination requires an examination of whether the formation of these preferences is autonomous or not.
A theory of freedom must include an analysis of such circumstances not only with respect to the absence of physical and legal interference, but also to make autonomously formed desires and preferences possible.
Positive Liberty
It symbolises a positive role for the state in removing certain impediments in the way of the individual in exercising his freedom. Positive liberty advocates to enlarge the area of self-determined action as much as possible. They do this in two ways, the first being their inclusion of internal restraints in the conception of constraints of action.
Positive freedom in its political form has been achieved through correctivity. Perhaps the clearest case is that of Rousseau's Theory of Freedom. According to this theory individual freedom is achieved through participation in the process whereby one's community exercises corrective control over its own affairs in accordance with the 'general will'.
According to Rousseau
The impulse of mere appetite is slavery. while obedience to a self-prescribed law is liberty.
Kant had a similar agrument that how can one's freedom be evinced in actions that are the product of brute nature working through one by prompting desires which one blindly follows. Instead, to count as free, one must choose or select amongst one's desires according to some rational principle that one has oneself endorsed.
After Rousseau, TH Green was an important advocate of positive liberty. In his 1881 essay, Green said when we speak of freedom, we do not mean merely freedom from restraint or compulsion. When we speak of freedom, we mean a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something and something that we do or enjoy in common with others. The ideal of true freedom is the maximum power for all members of human society alike to make the best of themselves.
Views of Political Thinkers on Liberty Various thinkers have defined liberty on their own way, few of them are
John Stuart Mill
According to Mill, liberty consists in doing what one desires, which means the absence of external constraints. Individuality to Mill means the power or capacity for critical thought and responsible thought. It means self-development and the expression of free will. He stresses on absolute liberty of conscience, belief and expression which is crucial for human progress. In his book On Liberty. Mill primarily argued that liberty is essential if a state composed of civilised people is to be legitimised.
GWF Hegel
Hegel refers to 'freedom realised' as 'the absolute end and aim of the world'. Freedom is both the substance of right and its goal, while the system of right is the realm of freedom made actual.
Karl Mannheim
Freedom, according to Mannheim is to be seen in the social context in which it was suppposed to be meaningful. He argued that in the social context class distinctions interfered with a full enjoyment of freedom.
Only in a more egalitarian society with a fairer distribution of goods which are produced on a larger scale, liberty could become meaningful for all. He interpreted freedom in four competing concepts i.e. the anarchists, the totalitarian, the liberal and the plutocratic. Mannheim criticised both the plutocratic and the liberal views.
Their is an emphasis on liberty that is sociologically blind, as in fact the liberties they propagated, such as political freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of occupation and freedom of consumer choice.
FAV Hayek
FAV (Fedrick August Von) Hayek in his book The Road to Serfdom saw great danger for humanity in the advance and possible triumph of socialist planning. He pointed out a danger to freedom from the admixture of Fascism and Marxist socialism. Hayek agreed that political freedom is meaningless without economic freedom.
According to Hayek, more important was the freedom of choice of one's work because it is more important for our happiness than freedom to spend income during the hours of leisure.
Anarchists
Anarchists are extreme libertarians. Godwin praises liberty as the most valuable of all human possessions. Proudhon acclaims it as his banner and guide. For Bakamin, liberty is the absolute source and condition of all good. Kropotkin desires a form of society which will give complete and perfect freedom to the individual man.
Feminist Concept of Liberty
It has been claimed that freedom began its long journey in the Western consciousness as a woman's value. Women constituted the first slaves in the period of rudimentary state formation in late 9th and 8th century BC Greece.
As the first slaves in early Greek society, women, both those who were actually slaves, and those who lived in dread of capture and enslavement, thought of, and valued the condition antithetical to that of slavery-that of freedom.
Patterson calls this ideal of freedom that emerged in the consciousness of the women of Ancient Greece is a conception of personal freedom.
Another leading feminist scholar, Carole Pateman, also seeks to tell a new story of freedom.
She argues, that the attraction of social contract theory is the myth lying beneath the idealised contract as described by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, it is a more fundamental contract concerning men's relationship to women. Efforts to construct women's freedom have remained unsatisfactory. she explains, because most feminists failed to see that modern society is based not only on a social, but also a sexual contract.
The original contract created not just a civil society, but a patriarchal civil society because the contract was between men and among other things, "enjoy equal sexual access to women". This resulted in "men's freedom and women's subjection", civil freedom remains a "masculine attribute". The original contract was simultaneously a social-sexual-slave contract, and if one focuses merely on its social aspect, one cannot see how women cannot be free in a society based on it.
Marxist Concept of Freedom/Liberty
Marx analysed the concept of freedom against the background of socio-economic conditions. Marxism does not accept the theory of an atomised, alienated and possessive individual being capable of enjoying freedom. Marx pointed out the alienation of man as the most prominent dehumanising effect of capitalism.
Capitalism subordinates all human faculties and qualities of the conditions created by the private ownership of capital and property. Marxist theory thus, envisages the transformation of the capitalist system itself to secure the conditions of freedom.
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