Bentham claimed priority for defining liberty as absence of restraint

Evidence

It may have been half a year or a year or more, I do not precisely recollect the time, since I communicated to you a kind of discovery I had made, that the idea of liberty, imported nothing in it that was positive: that it was merely a negative one: and that accordingly I defined it ‘the absence of restraint’: I do not believe I then added ‘and constraint’: that has been an addition of your own. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 235

Categorization

• DEFINE: Primary-source statement of the negative definition of liberty Pettit is positioning his positive republican account against.
• XREF: connects to: Eighteenth-century Anglo thought distinguished civil liberty from the natural liberty law restrains — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 232; Hobbes defined liberty as the mere absence of legal coercion. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 201

Broader Connections

• Hobbes defined liberty as the mere absence of legal coercion. #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 201
• Eighteenth-century Anglo thought distinguished civil liberty from the natural liberty law restrains #qualifies (0.75) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 232