Freedom has become perhaps the most central value in current political debate. America, for example, promises ‘freedom to the Iraqi people’. But what exactly is the content of this promise? The lecture tries to clarify what is involved in invoking freedom as a justification. Quentin Skinner is Regius Professor of Modern History and a Fellow of Christ’s College. His interests lie in the intellectual history of early-modern Europe, and he specialises in the Renaissance and in seventeenth-century political philosophy - in particular the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, on which he has published two books and numerous articles.