What is the difference between freedom and liberty?
Often used interchangeably, freedom and liberty have significantly different etymologies and histories. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Old English frei (derived from Sanskrit) meant dear and described all those close to or related to the head of the family (hence friends). Conversely in Latin, libertas denoted the legal state of being free versus enslaved and was later extended to children (liberi), meaning literally the free members of the household. Those who are one’s friends are free; those who are not are slaves. But, like love, freedom exceeds the subject. Liberty is linked to human subjectivity; freedom is not. The Declaration of Independence, for example, describes men as having liberty and the nation as being free. Free will—”the quality of being free from the control of fate or necessity” may first have been attributed to human will, but Newtonian physics attributes freedom—degrees of freedom, free bodies—to objects. Freedom differs from liberty as control di
