John Locke’s views on the nature of freedom of action and freedom of will have played an influential role in the philosophy of action and in moral psychology and so did the ideas of Hobbes. Albeit different, political philosophy decentered it’s focus towards ‘freedom’ as more demand for republics and a less authoritarian rule was being made in different parts of the Western world. Hobbes saw unlimited freedom as evil, Locke considered society to be protecting the freedom of natural rights. The Encyclopédistes saw freedom as liberation from authoritarian rule and Karl Marx considered freedom as the liberation of the working class from capitalist exploitation.
Apart from French political philosophers, in other parts of the work such as the British – where liberalism took its flight from John Mill’s principle of freedom go through American and French revolutions – where the word Liberty was being chanted. Similar to the notion of justice, virtue and happiness, freedom is difficult to define. It was only in the 20th century when the work of Isaiah Berlin suggested two definitive concepts of liberty.
