Individual Freedom vs. Majority Rule

Individual Freedom vs. Majority Rule

Freedom is one of the most central and certainly most emotive issues in political philosophy. It has been discussed since the times of ancient Greece, and is still as controversial and divisive a topic as ever. This question deals with two separate questions concerning freedom: Firstly, why we consider freedom necessary, and secondly, what exactly is meant by freedom. Clearly, the answer to the second part will greatly affect the answer to the first, but it shall be seen that it is a very challenging task to arrive at a definition of freedom. It is possible, however, to make this job easier by not strictly defining freedom, and using an examination into the desirability of freedom to help form this definition. This will be done below.

One of the first issues to be resolved is the relationship between 'freedom' and 'liberty'. There has been several theses proposing a distinction between these two concepts. Theorists such as Belaief and Pitkin claim that liberty is a political term, while freedom is metaphysical. This distinction, however, is a false one. The only difference between these two terms is linguistic convenience. To illustrate, in the example above, liberty could be described as 'political freedom'. This shows the error in the apparent distinction. The two terms are synonymous, and will be used interchangeably in the remainder of this essay.

We use the terms 'freedom' and 'liberty' in everyday language without giving much thought to a detailed description of the concept to which these terms refer. It is possible, to a certain degree, to examine why we see freedom as morally good, also without completely defining it. The investigation into a definition of freedom wi...

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...as a whole.

In answering this final question raised, the conclusion to the essay emerges. We have seen how difficult it is to simply define liberty as a single conception, but have discovered many properties that a statement of freedom must posses. In the question between the conflicts of freedom, where two persons individual freedoms create a zero-sum game, the idea of social freedom emerges, and the idea that it is possible for there to be restrictions on an individual's freedom that are morally desirable. To best, and most simply explain in what sense we want people to be free, a balance must be found between the extent to which society may restrict an individual's freedom, and vice versa. As can be seen by observing politics throughout the ages, it is finding this balance that has proven to be the most challenging aspect of the ongoing question of freedom.