Liberte

phil:notion:liberte

Freedom (la liberté) — the power to act or will otherwise, from free will to political liberty. The Stoics located freedom in inner assent, not outer circumstance; Descartes affirmed an infinite will; Spinoza denied free will and defined freedom as acting from one's own nature; Kant made it autonomy — obeying a law one gives oneself; Sartre held the human 'condemned to be free'.