Freedom versus Liberty

[Indy Texas]

English is somewhat unique in having these two words in its lexicon.

Liberty comes from the Latin libertas and is shared by Romance languages as the French liberté, the Spanish libertad, the Portuguese liberdade, the Italian libertà, and the Romanian libertate.

Freedom, the Germanic analog, is seen in the German Freiheit and the Dutch vrijheid.

Do these words mean the same thing to you? If not, how are they different?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

'Liberty' is a more explicitly political concept to me, in keeping with Latin-derived words tending to have more specific connotations.

[Figueira]

'Liberty' is a more explicitly political concept to me, in keeping with Latin-derived words tending to have more specific connotations.

Yeah, this sounds about right.

[Figueira]

'Liberty' is a more explicitly political concept to me, in keeping with Latin-derived words tending to have more specific connotations.

But in American political parlance, you hear "freedom" used as often as liberty, if not more.

Think of FDR's "Four Freedoms" or Dubya telling us that the terrorists "hate us for our freedoms" or Mike Huckabee's "Faith, Family, Freedom" slogan or the whole "muh freedoms" meme.

I think Madeleine was saying that liberty is more explicitly political, i.e. they both are used in politics, but freedom is also used in other contexts. For example, most people would say "I have the freedom to do what I want now that I'm not taking care of children" rather than "I have the liberty to do what I want now that I'm not taking care of children."

[Blue3]

They mean the same, but Liberty sounds more sophisticated.

[ElectionsGuy]

Freedom is the ability to do as you please, liberty is the ability to not be stopped from doing something. Both are essential. Libertarians talk about liberty all the time (obviously, since the word is the ideology itself). Freedom is a very simplistic and positive word, so politicians use the word freedom to appeal to people.

[dead0man]

Do you know how many words Eskimos have for snow?

[politicus]

Do you know how many words Eskimos have for snow?

Only two, it is a myth they have dozens - it is based on a misinterpretation of the the way they construct sentences. They have certain qualifiers, but that is like saying "wet, heavy snow" is a word in English.

[dead0man]

I know, was just making a joke/point.  There are lots of words that mean the same thing, and I'll assume not just in English.

[TNF]

They're the same thing.

[DavidB.]

Freedom is somewhat more concrete than liberty, I think. "The freedom to do X", "freedom of Y". I see liberty more as an abstract concept. But I might be wrong. I don't think the distinction between these two is very useful, but I might be wrong on that as well, because I might not really understand the difference. However, I have yet to find an instance where vrijheid wouldn't be an appropriate translation in Dutch.

[PJ]

They are basically the same concept, and in practice are buzzwords that can be construed to mean literally anything.

[°Leprechaun]

Basically the mean similar if not identical things, but it is interesting that "liberal" and "libertarian" have come to mean different things even though there is still some overlap between those two words.

[angus]

I regard them as exact synonyms.  As you point out, one has a saxon etymology, and the other is norman.  There are many examples of this in the English language, owing to the battle of Hastings.

Obviously some attempts have been made to distinguish between liberty and freedom, but I don't really think that these have caught on in the general press.

(See, for example:

Pitkin, H., 1988, ‘Are Freedom and Liberty Twins?’, Political Theory, 16: 523–52.

Williams, B., 2001, ‘From Freedom to Liberty: The Construction of a Political Value’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 30: 3–26.

and others.)

[/]

ech same thing