Negative liberty

The distinction originated with Bentham, was popularized by T. H. Green and Guido De Ruggiero, and is now best known through Isaiah Berlin's 1958 lecture "Two Concepts of Liberty".

"[2][3]According to Thomas Hobbes, "a free man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do" (Leviathan, Part 2, Ch.

2, stated that: "Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of Government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights, in order to vest it with requisite powers."

Fromm sees the distinction between the two types of freedom emerging alongside humanity's evolution away from the instinctual activity that characterizes lower animal forms.

"[7] For Fromm, then, negative freedom marks the beginning of humanity as a species conscious of its own existence free from base instinct.

[2] Although he is not a socialist nor a Marxist, Berlin argues: It follows that a frontier must be drawn between the area of private life and that of public authority.

[6]Objectivist thinker Tibor Machan defends negative liberty as "required for moral choice and, thus, for human flourishing," claiming that it "is secured when the rights of individual members of a human community to life, to voluntary action (or to liberty of conduct), and to property are universally respected, observed, and defended."

The monarchy provides for its subjects, and its subjects go about their day-to-day lives without interaction with the government: The commonwealth is instituted when all agree in the following manner: I authorise and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition; that thou give up, thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner.