Definition Essay: Are We Free?

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A very common question such as, “What is Freedom?” could have quite a few different answers because everyone has a different understanding of this broad phenomenon in his or her own way. There are many things that could influence a person’s viewpoint of the concept, such as their cultures or their belief system. But, at the end, we know everyone is born free and have the right to live a free life. For any reasonable person, freedom could mean to be able to “do whatever they want to.” However, that is always not the case. Even though, we do have “freedom”, it still comes with many restrictions. For an example, one can’t just decide to burn down someone’s house just because they are able to or have the freedom to do so, despite having any rough relationship with that individual. The very basic meaning of freedom we have known so far is to have the right to do what we want, say whatever we want, to be able to live where we want and even choose to believe whatever we want to. But at the end, there will always be someone telling us to do something, so the question stands, “are we free?” In my opinion, freedom is to not have anyone’s interference in anyone else’s decisions or what they choose to do. Even though, we are “free” to do …show more content…

In simple words, the negative liberty is one’s “freedom from” restrictions and positive liberty is “freedom to” accomplish any goals and live life as one wishes to. Basically, the main idea of the definitions is that negative liberty talks about having a small government as there would be fewer laws and restrictions and positive liberty means to have a large state government that would be able to provide a secured system and other means for people to be able to accomplish their goals. Another way of viewing the difference among the two would be to see the negative liberty as to not having any external limits while positive liberty means to not have any internal