Abstract

The paper criticises a number of accounts of freedom, including those which analyse freedom in terms of affording individuals ever widening opportunities, those which mistake liberties for rights and those which identify freedoms with duties imposed on others. All these inflated notions of freedom are liable to produce a shrinkage of of freedom in its basic sense of referring to areas of life in which there are rules preventing others from interfering with individuals or groups in doing things which are feasible for them.