Freedom: a glorious and tantalizing word, universally loved, sought after, sloganized, sung about, and fought over. But when was the last time any of us paused to think through what it means? Is it a right, a gift, a choice, a responsibility, a conquest?
Most definitions of freedom focus on what the Russian-British philosopher Isaiah Berlin referred to as “negative liberty”: we are free when no one and nothing is constraining or coercing us. No one is preventing us from doing what we want, and there is no physical law that restricts us. Considerations of this kind of freedom often focus on gaining freedom in liberation from slavery or restraint.
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