Narrowly, or negatively, freedom is thought of as the absence of constraint: ‘Freedom’, said Hobbes, ‘is the silence of the law.’ Positively, freedom is a condition of liberation from social and cultural forces that are perceived as impeding full self-realization. To become free is therefore a challenge that is only met by personal transformation, in Romantic and individualistic thought, or by social transformation, for instance in Hegel.
Philosophy dictionary. Academic. 2011.