Različito shvatanje slobode u političkoj teoriji
Different Understandings Of Freedom In Contemporary Political Theory

Summary/Abstract: The topic of this paper is the consideration of different understandings of freedom in contemporary political theory. in the first part we shall review the attempts to define freedom. The idea of freedom has been contemplated from the understanding of internal freedom of a man, through consciousness of freedom, than through relationships between and among ownership and freedom, freedom and power, freedom, dignity and morality, freedom and value, up to freedom and responsibility. Historical path of freedom goes, in hegel’s sense as well, from freedom for one, in oriental despotism, through freedom for some in aristocracy, to freedom for all in western democracies. in the second part, that freedom is observed as a crossroad between liberalism and democracy. it is about democratic revolutions and their achievements in freedoms and rights of man and citizen. in respect to the question if an indi-vidual can be free if the society is not autonomous in relation to the state, the importance of civil society is considered. This part, also, points to the debate between egalitarians and liberals. The third part is devoted to relation be-tween positive and negative freedom, that is, freedom for and freedom from. Finally, freedom is put into frameworks of constitutionalism and rule of law. in the domain of “positive” freedom we can recognize and use civil and politi-cal rights; if we conditionally name that kind of arrangement as an active involvement in politics, that is the way to prevent politics from dealing with our destinies, while protecting “negative” freedom, i.e. maintain the protected sphere of privacy. in permanent relation between order and freedom, consti-tutionalism and rule of law embed freedom in constitution and laws, creating a framework in which the governance is executed, i.e. setting the limit which government must not, or should not cross. in modern societies, the need for “negative” freedom has grown, due to increasing efforts of the state to master the private sphere of citizens. if the question about the order was left with no real reply in the frameworks of tradition of natural law, in “order of freedom” and rule of law the liberal thought brings it to an end - although the order and the state should not be equalized, as the state is most often the “order of constraint”.

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