LECTURE #1. FROM SOCRATES TO MILTON: THE FORMATION OF THE BASIC CONCEPTUAL IDEAS OF FREEDOM

The lecture is devoted to the analysis of the use of the concept of «freedom» in different periods of the formation of European civilization: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation period. The role in understanding the category of «freedom» of such thinkers as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Dante and Vico, Machiavelli and Montaigne, Guicciardini and Rinuccini, Hugo Grotius and Martin Luther, Montaigne and Milton is shown. The existing definitions of the concept of «freedom» are analyzed.