Five Propositions on Freedom in Hobbes's Philosophy

In this study, Hobbes' ideas on liberty are given concrete content in terms of the ontological impossibility of liberty, the identification of liberty with peace, the definition of the concept of liberty through the principles of the absence of will and the absence of obstacles, and finally the rejection of the connection between liberty and self-government. The main claim of the article is that Hobbes, who grounded many theses on freedom at the same time, never abandoned the individualist natural right perspective. In this context, the negative freedom of the statist Hobbes is also a freedom against the state. Moreover, the conceptualization on the absence of obstacles reveals the first form of the perspective that would later turn into negative freedom. In this context, there is a significant parallel between Hobbes' view of freedom and the view of freedom of liberalism, which adopts a negative libertarian sensibility. The thinker's propositions against law and democracy seem to be the product of a style of interpretation that privileges the private sphere over the public sphere. In claiming that freedom can exist without democracy, Hobbes not only responds to the republican thinkers of his time, but also breaks the connection between politics and freedom, making freedom a derivative of natural right.