ABSTRACT
Fortunately, we do not have to be possessed of mystical powers or to have a command of esoteric terminology to understand what freedom is or more usually what it is not! The fact of imprisonment, restrictive government legislation, the controls exercised by corporate bureaucracies and the censorship of opinion are pretty familiar no matter what society we are members of. Most of us, then, view freedom ‘negatively’ as the absence of these kinds of constraints-the absence of constraints, that is, upon our wishes, desires, wants and needs.1 Of course we do not believe that the exercise of freedom is always justified. Our moral and political evaluations depend upon particular contexts. Whether we approve of ‘government interference in the market place’ or are opposed to restrictions upon ‘free collective bargaining’ is dependent upon the degree to which we feel that the freedom granted to the few diminishes the freedom of the many or whether we feel that certain freedoms may be sacrificed in the interests of promoting social harmony, full employment, equality of opportunity or some other perceived socially desirable end.
