 |
|
Subject: Liberty или Freedom Привет!Буду благодарен если кто-нибудь объяснит мне разницу между словами Liberty и Freedom в значениях: свобода, вольность, право и тп. Спасибо! Single |
|
link 11.03.2003 20:06 |
|
Dear Single. I can give you a rough explanation in English, but would be grateful for a corresponding explanation of Russian terms! Freedom and liberty are more or less synonymous with very subtle stylistic differences even for a native speaker. However, 'liberty', seems much more restricted to me in its frequency and grammatical distribution and is less likely to form collocations (in its сочетаемость). For instance, freedom is clearly related to the very common adjective 'free' which is to be found in numerous collocations, such as 'free (freedom) to .., free(dom) from..., free as', whereas liberty has no corresponding adjective - words such as liberal have more specialised usage. Liberty has a slightly more American connotation in its usage to me (an englishman), as in Liberty Bell, Statue of Liberty. You can say 'freedom from' and 'freedom to' but 'liberty from' and 'liberty to' don't sound natural. You can, however, say 'You are at liberty to ...' but not 'You are at freedom to...)*. In philosophy you will find that liberty and freedom have specialised meanings referred to as 'negative liberty' and 'positive liberty'. One refers to 'freedom to (do something)' while the other is 'freedom from (something – eg oppression), though I am unable to say which one is which without the original texts at hand. This distinction was made in a very famous seminal work by the philosopher Isiah Berlin, called 'Two essays on liberty' which is required reading on moral philosophy courses. You might find more by entering 'Isiah Berlin' in a search engine or even John Stuart Mill, another seminal philospher in this field. Lastly, it is worth noting that etymologically 'freedom' is a Germanic root, whereas 'liberty' is a latinate root. Generally, in English, words with germanic roots tend to be everyday, common-or-garden words, whereas latinate words tend to be more stylistically elevated, which would support my intuitions about their grammatical distribution. Is that alright for a start? Phew! |
| You need to be logged in to post in the forum |