Like justice, 'freedom' is something almost all people are in favor of. Virtually every religion and political ideology promises freedom or liberation, with or without simultaneous equality for everyone. This is a reason to listen to any talk about freedom or liberation with skepticism. (Even when a religion or political ideology brought freedom in one respect, it has but too often brought a new kind of lordship or dictatorship at the same time.) Yet, it is when freedom is blatantly absent that one best realizes that it means something important. This is first and foremost the case when people are murdered, tortured, injured, raped, imprisoned or enslaved who have not violated other people's personal rights. In one country it may be the state or an army of occupation which commits such atrocities, in another it may be individual citizens or groups of citizens who commit them. Freedom is not there because the law says so; freedom is there when the authorities respect people's rights in actual fact and when the structure of society is such that it does not create or perpetuate the conditions in which violence is stimulated, provoked or even made necessary.

Freedom is often denied in the name of freedom. That is why one theorist has argued that people should differentiate negative and positive liberty and stick to the first form of it. 'Negative liberty' is the absence of interference or domination, that is, the absence of interference by the state, of the pressures of social conformism and of invasions by other individuals. 'Positive liberty' is on this account the absence of impediments over and above simple, deliberate coercion. It is said to derive from 'the wish on the part of the individual to be 'er own master'. This notion of positive liberty has proved to be highly prone to abuse in the hands of those who conceive of self-mastery as mastery of some 'higher' or 'real' self over some 'lower' or 'animal' self. The higher or real self is then the sort of self which best suits the ideals or aspirations of certain 'liberators' who are but too willing to arrogate all power and influence unto themselves, especially in the name of a god or a political party.

It has been objected that the above-mentioned division between 'negative' and 'positive liberty' does only count as interference direct, physical obstruction and neglects the form of domination exercised by withholding the means of life or labor from people. The alternative division proposed is one between counterextractive and developmental liberty. Counterextractive liberty is defined as immunity from the extractive power of others and is a wider notion than negative liberty. Developmental liberty, on the other hand, is narrower than positive liberty and is said to denote 'individual self-direction' and 'the ability to live in accordance with one's own conscious purposes'. It is clearly not meant to denote coercion of 'those who do not (yet) know the truth' by 'those who say that they know it'.

In terms of metadoctrinal and doctrinal considerations both the division between 'negative' and 'positive', and that between 'counterextractive' and 'developmental liberty' are faulty or too vague. Roughly speaking, negative and counterextractive liberty deal implicitly with the right to personhood. Negative liberty underscores the aspect of freedom in the mere sense of personal and bodily autonomy, whereas counterextractive liberty focuses on the property aspect inherent in the right to personhood, not only where it concerns the person's body, but also where it concerns external things. Again roughly speaking, positive and developmental liberty deal with doctrinal rights and ideals. But the so-called 'ability to live in accordance with one's own conscious purposes' is, of course, first of all a metadoctrinally required condition. It is additional demands which make it more and more doctrinal. To the extent that it is metadoctrinal, that is extrinsic, we ought to support this ideal; to the extent that it is supposed to be doctrinal, that is intrinsic, it depends on the person's ends whether we ought to support it or not. To live in accordance with one's own, individual purposes (whatever those purposes might be) is nothing intrinsically good in itself.

What it all hinges upon is the distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic freedom or liberty. 'Extrinsic liberty' is the liberty of the active, discretionary right to personhood and closely related to the notions of negative and counterextractive liberty. But this proposition cannot be reversed: the notion of the right to personhood is not merely a notion of extrinsic liberty, it is as much a notion of extrinsic property (a notion to be discussed in 4.4.5). 'Intrinsic liberty' is liberty on the principles of the DNI, that is, liberty as warranted, or insofar as warranted, from the perspective of neutral-inclusivity and truth. It is a form of 'positive' and 'developmental liberty' when the person or persons concerned have the freedom to do what is best for their own well-being without violating anyone's rights and without doing more harm than good on the whole.

Metadoctrinally, liberty must be defended; doctrinally, it can be defended, not only on the basis of people's well-being but also on the basis of the minimization of unhappiness, on the basis of interpersonal equality and on the basis of nondiscrimination. However, each time it is a particular type of liberty which is then justifed. For example, (positive) liberty has also been interpreted as the greatest number of options available. Such a form of liberty is extremist and not a perfective value to be strived for on the neutralistic model. Ultimately, there is nothing intrinsically good in a great number of available options, let alone something better in a number which is even greater, and that ad infinitum. If and when the freedom of a great number of available options is good, this is only so for instrumental reasons.

The right to personhood teaches us that we have a certain freedom, an extrinsic freedom to be precise. The DNI teaches us what we should do or not do with this freedom. This does only partially confirm our freedom, for in a way every sensible, doctrinal principle solely restrains people's extrinsic freedom. For example, the principle of truth does in the first instance nothing else than this: instead of telling the truth and lying as we please, we must now always tell the truth. Whereas we had (and still have) the extrinsic freedom to lie, we do not have the intrinsic freedom anymore to do so. Only indirectly could it be argued that all of us eventually will have more freedom on the whole by not lying. For the agent who is to act morally it is the very essence of the normative to limit the number of physical or metaphysical options open to 'im. With morality the number of options an individual decision maker has is smaller than without (altho this may only hold so long as enough other people lead moral lives). Therefore morality itself contravenes '(total) freedom' in a normative sense. It does not contravene 'freedom' in a social or legal sense, however, because that kind of freedom does not interfere with it. This is not to say, of course, that a lack of social or legal freedom could not interfere with what one ought to do or refrain from doing in practise.