Freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.

The concept of freedom means understanding fundamentally different ways in which the concept has been used by various philosophers. Therefore, the concept of freedom is better described than defined.

From its origin in the Ancient Greek city-states and their democracies, freedom has been usually been considered a political ‘good’, good for individuals, organizations, and society. Freedom has great advantage as a rallying call in politics arising from its opaqueness in popular usage. Literally, freedom is necessary condition, of rationality, of action, or achievement. Sir Isaiah Berlin (1859) in his work “Two Concept of Liberty”.

Freedom is chiefly freedom from ill-health, fear, want, arbitrary arrest and public opinion (Heywood, 1992). Plato’s Republic is an attempt to establish the meaning of the term ‘justice’ and identify the characteristics of the ‘good’ state. Plato believed that freedom was bound up with self-discipline and morality.

In contemporary political theory the idea of freedom or liberty is the most central issues.

Heywood (1992) identified and categorize the following as summary of above scholars’ notion on freedom as perspectives, these are.:

•Conservatives: they see freedom as the willing recognition of duties and responsibilities, negative freedom posing a threat to the fabric of the society. The new right, however, endorses negative freedom in the economic sphere, freedom of choice in the marketplace.

•Socialists: the socialist generally understood freedom in positive terms to refer to self-fulfillment achieved through either free creative labor or cooperative social interaction;

social democrats have drawn close to modern liberalism in treating freedom as the realization of individual potential.

•Anarchists: they regard freedom as an absolute value, believing it to be irreconcilable will of any form of political authority. Freedom is understood to mean the achievement of personal autonomy, not merely being left alone but being rationally self-willed and self-directed.

•Fascists: they reject all form of individual liberty as a nonsense “true” freedom, in contrast means unquestioning submission to the will of the leader and the absorption of the individual into the national community.

•Ecologists: they treat freedom as the achievement of oneness, self-realization through absorption of the personal ego into the universe. In contrast with political freedom, this is sometimes seen as inner freedom as self-actualization.

•Religious fundamentalists see freedom as essentially in an inner or spirit quality.

Freedom means conformity to the revealed will of God spiritual fulfillment being associated with submission to religious authority (Heywood, 1992).However, the concept of freedom in political theory has various philosophers theorizing, from the classical era to the contemporary political theorists. This is because the concept of freedom will remain a prominent topic for political discussion and debate among philosophers because it touches the very essence of human nature and the society we live in.

Freedom’ can mean many different things; the word can have a powerful emotive force. We are concerned here with political freedom. Isaiah Berlin distinguished between a concept of negative freedom and a concept of positive freedom. Negative freedom is freedom from interference, it is a matter of the opportunities that lie open to you. Positive freedom is the capability of doing what you really want to do. Historically, according to Berlin, the concept of positive freedom has been used to justify various kinds of oppression. Berlin also believes that there is

no ‘final solution’, no simple way of reconciling the different goals that different people have. ‘Freedom’ is not usually a neutral term. Freedom seems noble and worthy. It is hard to imagine anyone declaring that they are fundamentally opposed to it.

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