Being Free 1st draft Freedom is word used in a lot of contexts, but the official meaning of the word is “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants” (Freedom). Meaning that you have the right to do something, with the focus being on you as an individual. This means no one can tell you what to do, like for example a state. This is an important aspect and part of political theory. Liberty is also used and viewed as the same category of theory, and has the definition “The state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s behavior or political views” (Liberty). If you compare the two you can see that even though they aren’t the same, in the context of theory, it gets the same meaning, as being free from oppression imposed by authority, is liberty, having liberty is being free from oppression, and therefor, throughout the paper, the world will be used as having the same meaning as different theorist use different words. John Stuart Mill is a “British philosopher, economist, moral and political theorist, and administrator, was the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century” (Wilson). He’s known Another person is Philip Petit, who argues for republican freedom, which is different from libertarian freedom that Mill argues for. While Mill focuses freedom on individually and state, Petit argues that pure freedom is not being controlled by anything. Comparing those two gives the conclusion