d, it was only necessary to look at things as they actually exist now in order to understand human beings' relationship to freedom. In his analysis freedom depends on the use of intelligence to make choices that will expand one's range of action. Such choices are invariably developed in interaction with existing conditions and freedom is always relative to the present distribution of liberty among the rest of humanity--from the smallest to the largest units of which the individual is a member.
Each of these three conceptions opposes its idea of freedom to the oppressiveness of tyranny and each places responsibility for securing freedom on human beings themselves. But where Locke saw this as an occasional matter that arose when tyrants gained control of government, Rousseau believed that individuals, having imposed their corrupt institutions on themselves by giving up too much of their freedom, needed to rid themselves of these limiting conditions and replace them with new institutions that worked in accordance with the natural liberty that had been forfeited by civilized humanity. Dewey, who lived, after all, in a representative democracy, disregarded such concerns and saw it as each individual's responsibility to expand her/his sphere of action by making intelligent choices--regardless of whether such choices involved action within one's family, one's profession, or one's society.
Locke believed that liberty was a natural possession of human beings, or of 'man' at any rate, that was granted to them under natural law by God. This meant that human liberty in societies could be "under no other legislative power but that established, by consent, in the common-wealth" and that no individual will or law instituted by any other means than the duly constituted legislature had legitimate dominion over society (17). Locke held that even though this liberty was provided by divine providence it could be discerned by the power of reas...