JOHN SOMERVILLE

Most of those who write on the subject of freedom seem
to imagine that freedom, as such, like justice or honesty, must
be classed as necessarily good rather than as something that can
be evil, or amoral, as well as good. This practice represents a
kind of secular piety which, upon analysis, is seen to rest on a
false foundation, both logically and ethically. The fact is that
freedom, like simple absence, of which it is a species, or like
power, to which it sometimes leads, is not necessarily either good
or bad in itself. Freedom may be good or bad, depending on
the context of circumstances; or it may become so, depending
on the forces and events. But in itself, in its root significance,
it is amoral. Stated more fully, our thesis is that when we clarify
the meaning of the word freedom in a way that is consistent
with the usages to which we are all committed already, then it
is impossible to maintain that freedom, as such, is necessarily
either a good or an evil.

When trying to define a term which we are already using in
a wide variety of contexts, it is of course necessary first of all to

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