Abstract

The author investigates the origin and development of the concept of liberty and its special meaning in the Republican tradition of political thought. The origin of the Western concept of liberty lies in ancient Greece, in the opposition between liberty and slavery conceived after the liberation of Athens from tyranny and the victory over the Persian empire. The author then investigates the Republican notion of liberty that originates in ancient Rome and reaches its peak with Cicero. This conception of liberty emphasizes self-government and partecipation in common deliberation and runs through Western political thought up to Rousseau, Tocqueville and the authors of the Federalist Papers.